Promissory Note

by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  Amil, Havel and Anson had arranged a ninth desk in the coders’ room. There was not enough space to add it to the end of one of the two rows, so they had turned it to face the two rows, on the far side of the room. It meant she was facing the kitchenette, which was on the other side.

  The desk was fully automated and had access to the coding group’s datariver. The house AI looked over Laura’s shoulder as promised. The AI had been an enormous assistance setting up the database to record all the data and she found herself asking it a lot of stupid questions she didn’t have the bravery to ask the other coders. The AI, at least, did not judge.

  The coders were more friendly than she had expected coders to be. In truth, she’d had no idea what they might be like. She had anticipated resentment to her presence, as she was not one of the gifted few chosen to learn their work.

  However, they seemed to find her company more than welcome and she was relieved enough by their cooperation and lack of resistance to spend time trying to get to know all of them, as she would any new person she met.

  It made the time she spent in the coding suite tolerable, because Micah had been absolutely correct when he said that coders did not go home at the end of their shift. They stayed until the work was done.

  In a way, that was what she was doing, too.

  Rose was the one to tell her about Micah’s box. Laura noticed the hand-carved box every time she stepped into Micah’s office, which wasn’t often. The box drew the eye because it was the only object in the room that looked even remotely personal or warm. It didn’t seem to match Micah at all.

  Only, Micah was a riddle wrapped up inside a conundrum, inside a fistful of conflicting traits and inexplicable behavior.

  If coders really did enjoy solving puzzles, then Laura didn’t understand why they weren’t digging into Micah’s life, trying to unravel him. No one went near him, though.

  “He would flay us alive if he caught us poking around,” Rose said, with an atavistic shiver. “You know about the coder he shut inside his own quarters for three days, right?”

  “I heard,” Laura said. “Yet he’s your supervisor. Aren’t you even a little bit curious? What about that box in his office? Do you know what’s in it? Or is it empty?”

  “Oh, there’s something in it,” Rose said, rolling her eyes.

  Havel grinned.

  “Why do you say it in that way?” Laura asked.

  “Because he looks in it all the time,” Rose said. “We’ve all seen him, at least once. If you go into his office without warning him, there’s a good chance he’ll have the box open, staring down into the middle of it as if it was revealing Destination itself.”

  “Guys, change the subject, huh?” Amil said from his desk next to Laura’s.

  Anson grinned. “You’re just an old softie,” he told Amil. “I still think he’s got cocoa beans in it.”

  “You would think that,” Havel shot back. He looked at Laura. “Amil thinks it’s something tragic in the box and we shouldn’t stir Micah up by speculating.”

  “Does he look sad when he’s looking in it?” Laura asked curiously.

  “No, that’s not what I’d call it,” Rose said. She thought about it. “Moody?”

  Havel shook his head. “No. It’s anger. When he looks in the box, he gets angry.”

  Laura stopped digging after that. Micah had given her every reason to work harder than she ever had in her life, which precluded searching through public profiles. Instead, she enjoyed the company of the coders and kept busy.

  A week after she had started the punishing routine of double shifts, she came home from her normal shift with the intention of maybe snatching a thirty-minute nap before heading to the Aventine for the next shift. She was tired, in a way that a normal night’s sleep didn’t seem to fix. Even her bones ached. She knew she was pushing herself too hard, which came with dangers she knew far too well, only she didn’t like the idea of slowing down at all. The slower she worked, the longer it would take her to work off the note.

  Besides, the coders all seemed to thrive working such long hours. She had to keep up.

  Laura rounded the corner of Lars’ house, which was the house in front of hers, and came to a halt.

  Keton was bent over in front of her door, placing a green bag on the step.

  “It was you?” she said.

  Keton whirled, his round face turning pink. “Ah, damn it. I wanted to surprise you.”

  She faced him. “You put the first bag there, too?”

  His face fell. “Wish I could say yes. It was such a nice idea, I thought I’d help, too. They took the soil off the top of your house today, did you know?”

  She looked up. The berry bushes that had fringed the roof edge were gone. “I was in the engine room today. I missed some of the excitement around here, it seems.”

  “I saw the crane overhead. It was quite the operation.” Keton shrugged. “I watched it for a while from the Field and it seemed such a shame. So I thought…well…” He looked down at the bag. “It’s not much, but it’s a start, right?”

  She hugged him. “You’re such a good friend,” she said, trying to hold in her tears.

  “Hey, are you okay?”

  “I’m just tired.”

  Keton’s face tightened. “He’s working you too hard.”

  “No, he’s not,” she said quickly. “He’s not telling me to work at all, Keton. I’m just trying to get the note paid off. That’s all. Once it’s cancelled, then I can get back to my life, including using this soil to start another garden.”

  Keton’s eyes narrowed as he studied her carefully. “Well, okay, then,” he said doubtfully. “You’ll tell me if there’s anything I can do to help? You know Tivoli would drop everything and come immediately if you asked. We both would. So would lots of others.”

  “There is something you could do for me,” she said. She touched the bag of soil with her foot. “Your dad is still a Bridge guard, isn’t he?”

  Keton looked down at the soil, trying to spot the connection. “He’s talking about retiring,” he said slowly.

  “He’s still working for now. The Bridge guards have access to the ship’s security feeds. He would be able to look back to a week ago and tell me who put the first bag on my doorstep, wouldn’t he?”

  Keton frowned. “I suppose I could ask, only lots of people know what happened to you. Lots of people are asking if they can help in some way. It could have been any one of them that left the first bag. Do you really want to know? Wouldn’t it be nicer to just accept it and appreciate everyone for it?”

  Laura smiled. “You’re such a good man,” she told him. “Tivoli’s a lucky guy.”

  “Yeah, well….” He gave her another hug.

  “Ask your dad? Please?”

  “Because it’s you, I will ask him,” he promised.

  Keton’s father refused to access the feeds. He sent a message back to Laura via Keton that cited ship codes of conduct and more, that boiled down to a solid refusal, along with an invitation to dinner that she had to regretfully refuse.

  The days rolled into weeks, into months of virtually unchanging routine. On every seventh day of her personal week, when she did not have to report for a standard shift, Laura thought about not going to the Aventine and taking a genuine day of rest. Yet she found herself heading for the coders’ suite, anyway. Losing a whole day of progress was intolerable.

  On one of the rest days, she found herself alone in the big front room. She didn’t check to see if Micah was there. He monitored her work via the datariver. It was only when she had questions about the data itself and how he wanted anomalies handled that she was forced to speak to him directly.

  It was very quiet in the room. The silver walls made her feel cold, too. Laura shivered. The coders were all so wrapped up in their work they barely noticed their environment. Normally, she did not, either. The work was the thing—the faster and harder she worked, the sooner this would be over. She barely looked up from t
he screens the AI had arrayed for her.

  Only, today was a day of rest and relaxation and the sterile room bothered her. She pulled up the AI interface. This AI didn’t have a voice the way Micah had programmed his personal AI to talk.

  Give me access to the environmental controls for the suite, she told the AI.

  The dashboard popped up. It was a standard arrangement of controls.

  Grimly pleased, Laura got to work.

  When Rose arrived a few hours later, she came to a halt just inside the door to the suite and looked around silently, taking it all in.

  Three of the walls were now a vibrant teal color, while the fourth wall was darker, heading into turquoise. The kitchen area, behind the plasteel glass divider, was a paler version of the teal. The floor was a burnt orange. Laura had changed the texture of the floor to a warmer, more fibrous feel, too. The rest of the elements were crisp white. She had switched the lighting to a yellow spectrum instead of pure white.

  “Damn….” Rose muttered. “Who’d have thought color would make such a difference?” She looked at Laura and grinned. “Except you, of course.”

  “If I had the energy rations to spare, I’d print off some artwork.” Laura shrugged.

  “Like what?” Rose said, as she sat at her desk.

  Laura passed one of the pictures she had been contemplating over to Rose’s screen. It was a representation of an ocean, with white sand and a white building next to it. There were boats floating on the surface, which always fascinated Laura. She understood the physics that made something that large and heavy float, for everyone made their own tiny boats when they were children and floated them on a dish of water. To see a real boat, though…to stand on one, floating on the water, was almost too scary to contemplate.

  “I’ve seen that one before,” Rose said, looking at the picture. “The bumpy things—”

  “Waves,” Laura added.

  “Waves,” Rose said in agreement. She shook her head, staring at the picture. “It’s fascinating, isn’t it?”

  “It’s the idea that there is more and more and yet more of all of it, beyond what I can see in the painting. The land goes on forever. So does the ocean. There are more buildings beyond this one, going for thousands of miles. There are people who don’t know each other, that haven’t even heard of each others’ names and didn’t know they existed.”

  “Scary,” Rose said.

  Laura nodded.

  “I’ve got energy rations to spare. I’ll print it,” Rose said. “We can mount it there, next to the interior door.”

  The picture was printed and mounted where Rose suggested, although it wasn’t Laura who did the hanging. By the time the picture had finished printing, Havel and Anson had arrived and they argued good-naturedly over who got to work with their hands and finally put up the picture together.

  Amil looked around when he came in and nodded. “We need a lamp, too,” he decided.

  An hour later, a standard lamp was placed in the corner of the room and turned on, shedding its own pool of yellow light. The cover over the diode was a deep reddy-brown, which reminded Laura of the bags of soil sitting in the corner of her house.

  Pleased, she got back to work. So did everyone else and it seemed to her that the coders’ attitudes adjusted to match the new surroundings. The teasing lost its harsh edge, the chat became more friendly and less competitive. She noticed more smiles, too.

  It was almost a shock to step beyond the interior door and find herself back in the harsh, silvered corridor of senior coder rooms.

  The first week rolled into the first month. Then four months went by. Laura struggled with long-term exhaustion. She was always tired. Taking time off from any of her work was impossible, though. She had settled into the routine and didn’t want to break it now.

  Besides, what would she do if she wasn’t doing this? All her friends had become Forum-only acquaintances. She had been forced to refuse every invitation. Oskar had a new lady hanging on his arm now, too.

  So Laura tried to juggle getting enough sleep with getting more work done. It was a fine balance that kept eluding her grip, until Micah stepped in and forced the issue.

  He rarely came into the front coders’ room. He had to pass through it when he left at the end of the day. As he was usually still working when Laura went home each night, she only saw him when she was giving him a verbal update or answering his questions, or asking her own.

  That night, though, he emerged from the back corridor and paused at the other end of the double row of desks to look at her. “You are still here?” The little scowl that lived almost permanently on his face was there as usual.

  “Apparently.”

  “Everyone else has left. Why haven’t you?”

  “I didn’t realize the time,” she confessed. Now that he had drawn her attention to it, she could feel the ache in the back of her eyes and the strain in her neck. She was very tired. “Besides, I’ve nearly finished Kelly Peck’s notes. I wanted to—”

  “You need more rest.”

  Laura shook her head. “I want to get this done.”

  He stood at the end of the row, his black eyes unreadable in the warm light in the room, studying her. His fingers rested on the end of Anson’s desk, as if he was weighing something up. “If you must work such long hours,” he said at last, his voice low, “then perhaps you should consider living in the dormitory with the other coders. There is room and they seem to like you.”

  Sleep with a roomful of people she didn’t know well enough to trust? Horror spilled through her. “Not in a million years,” she said flatly.

  His head tilted. Her reaction had been too strong and now his curiosity was raised. Laura shrugged, trying to ease her tension, to make it look casual. “I like my home. I like my things.” Her heart was squeezing in a way that was making sickly, hot waves wash over her.

  Calm down, she commanded herself. You have to stay on top of it.

  “You like them enough to put up with a long journey back there late at night, every single night?” he asked.

  Laura gripped her hands together under the cover of the desktop. “I won’t live with anyone, ever again.” She tried to keep her tone sounding relaxed and non-confrontational, except her throat was closing up, making it hard to speak at all.

  It was coming. She could feel the thing in the back of her mind, drawing closer. Desperately, she focused on Micah. There was no way to stop it now. If she was looking right at him, he might just think she was concentrating on what he was saying.

  He was speaking. She could hear him, yet the words didn’t register. She could smell the coffee in the kitchen, stale and burnt.

  She could hear her heartbeat, racing far too fast.

  She couldn’t move. The thing was in her mind, beckoning her. Enticing her. All she could do was strain to see what it might reveal. The lost memory that wasn’t a memory at all beckoned with seductive fingers.

  Then, the compulsion broke. She blinked and drew in a deep breath.

  Micah was still talking. Perhaps it had only been a few seconds. Sometimes they only lasted that long. It didn’t matter, anyway. He hadn’t noticed.

  She began to shake and gripped the edge of her chair, making herself stay upright. Relief was doing that to her as much as the after-effects of the thing.

  “…understand why you drive yourself so hard,” he said. “This arrangement may last for years. You can’t keep up this pace for that long.”

  “I won’t default,” she said flatly. Her voice wasn’t strained or unnatural. It didn’t show any signs of the moment that had just gone.

  “You value your little apartment that much?” Micah asked. Disbelief colored his tone.

  “I value my reputation.” Laura got to her feet, moving carefully. She was going to have to take it very slow, going home, or another one would come. She would get home much later than usual. “You’re right, it’s late. I should go.” She walked over to the door.

  Micah moved so th
at he was right next to her when she reached it. Laura would have reacted with surprise to his closeness, except that she was physically incapable of it right now. She was beyond tired. She was drained. She looked up at him.

  “You’re not in a state to get yourself home,” he said, his voice low. “Why must you drive yourself this way?”

  “I told you.” She didn’t have the energy to repeat it again.

  “I do not believe you.”

  She hadn’t noticed until now how full his lips were, or that his lashes were thick, emphasizing his dark eyes and the scowl that never seemed to leave his face. It was only her exhausted mind falling back into almost pure observation mode that let her see it now.

  “Excuse me,” she said. It took effort to say that much.

  “I’m taking you home. You’re swaying on your feet.”

  She shook her head. It was the only denial she could muster.

  “The unit has a private car, small enough to move through the districts. I’m going to take you right to your front door.” His fingers closed around her arm and he opened the door. “This way.”

  She wanted to protest at his high-handed manner. She wanted to tear her arm from his grip and go home by herself. Only, she didn’t have the energy. She also wanted to scream in protest because a small part of her was relieved that she wouldn’t have to concentrate on getting herself home.

  Micah led her along the wide public corridor in the opposite direction to the one she usually used to access the suite. The corridor ended with a door to the outside of the building. Just beyond that was one of the little private cars that were small enough to squeeze between just about any building in any district, yet fast enough to use the Artery, too. They were a new design that very few people had the resources to acquire. Of course, that meant everyone wanted one.

  There were two seats only. Micah watched her climb into one and she was very grateful to be able to sit down once more.

  She watched him circle the car to the other side and frowned. Was he limping?

  Laura remembered the first time she had met him, when he had rubbed his leg almost absently, then snatched his hand away when he realized he was being observed.