by Stefan Bolz
"It looks like it," Aries says.
Kiire looks to the side, a hint of embarrassment in his face.
"Sorry, I didn't mean it that way,” she adds. “At all. It just seems like you have enough to eat. Um, that didn't come out right, either..."
For the first time since she came into his room, she takes in his face completely. The brown hair surrounding it is disheveled and curly. His eyes are round and clear, and a boyish fuzz is developing in some areas of his face not yet able to cover the red, healthy-looking cheeks. His stature is stout but when he’d moved earlier, Aries had noticed that he was quick on his feet and in control of his body.
"Don't worry," Kiire assures her.
"No! I want you to know that... I don't share in what's going on in the dining room. And I'm not... judging you. In any way. I want you to know that. I just meant before that it looks like you can take care of yourself. Which brings me to the question of why is there still nobody busting through that door?"
"Can you keep a secret?" Kiire asks.
"I think we're past that point."
"Right. You're right. Okay. I'm basically an empty folder."
"An empty folder?"
"Yes. Imagine you have a folder on your pad that has 65,000 subfolders in it. They're all there and information flows in and out of all of them and you scan all the information that comes out of all of the folders—all the video surveillance, all the social habits, eating habits, what you do in your free time, etcetera. The mainframe has all this data. It knows everything at once but one thing it doesn't know is what it doesn't know. I'm an empty folder because there is no feed to my room. But nobody knows because nobody's looking closely.”
"So, they don't know when you're not in here and what you're doing?"
"Yes and no. They don't know that they don't know what I'm doing in here. They have no reason to look closer and so they don't. So far it has worked. As for you, you've got eight minutes before your loop runs out."
"And if I were to ask you how you are privy to this kind of information you would say...?"
"I would say I hacked into the mainframe computer to make them not know what they don't know, and while doing this I stumbled upon someone who was almost as clever as I was. Well. At least clever enough to get an hour a day."
"Can you help me with the rest of the time?"
"If you're asking whether or not I can make the mainframe believe that it knows you when, in fact, it doesn't? Yes. But I need your pad."
"That's going to be a problem."
"I know. It can't leave your room and it's traceable."
"Yes."
"I'll think of something. In the meantime, what're we going to do with our new friend here? She can't go to your room. Not if you want to keep her."
"Can she stay here?" Aries asks. "Sorry. I am asking too much. I can't ask you to do this. I don't know you."
"Are you kidding me? To see a red-tailed hawk on a screen and spend a week's worth of pay on it is one thing. To have one as a roommate would be fantastic!"
"Really?"
"Yes!"
"Okay. It's settled then. Can I come by to visit?"
"You can come here every day for one hour if that's what you want."
Aries smiles. "I'd love that. Thank you! And thank you for... being here and for... having this room and no other room in this building and for being unnoticed and..."
"You need to go, Aries Egan, D."
"Okay. Thanks. Thanks so much."
"You said that already. About twenty times. I'm going to blush if you keep this up."
"Okay. I will see you tomorrow. Maybe in the dining room—”
"No! Sorry, but I don't think it's a good idea if we even look at each other down there. There can't be any suspicion. Otherwise they begin to want to know me and that's the last thing I need."
"Yes, you're right. Good. I'll see you around."
Aries kneels in front of the vent.
"You can try to think of a name for her," Kiire says.
"I have. It's Leila. It means Born-of-Night."
Kiire grins. "Born-of-Night it is."
Aries crawls into the air duct and away from the vent. When she hears Kiire closing the vent screen, she's already at the intersection and moving toward her room. She thinks about the baby hawk with her dark-feathered wings and soft, white belly, and when she reaches her room she enters it with the comforting realization that she did not make a friend today. She made two.
//Taken from**recording// M.L. [mainframe log] .1/-/770.45.19000.008FTL//
"Who are you? ... No!... What are you... Let me GO! ... No! ... No! ... You can't do that! ... You can't!... NO!... Where are you taking m—?"
**End of recording M.L. [mainframe log] .1/-/770.45.19000.008FTL//
Chapter 4 — Fluctuations
"Any electric charge, if the particles are moving, has a magnetic field associated with it: electrons, with a negative charge, attract protons or ions, with positive charges, and vice versa. Gravitational fields are associated with such magnetic fields. So yes, it is apparently possible to warp space-time with just an electric current."
[Ford and Roman, Negative Energy and Wormholes]
Aries wakes up from a strange dream. She was back in Kiire's room but she was eating ham and walking around on his futon and Kiire spoke to her as if she were a baby. She decides that she must have taken last night's encounter with her into her sleep. When she enters the dining hall, she scans the room for Kiire but can't see him. She looks into the camera above the monitor at the food counter. Her name appears and the two small compartment doors open. She takes two bottles out of one and a piece of bread out of the other.
There is an almost empty table in the far corner of the cafeteria, but she decides not to risk getting into any kind of fight today. She sits at the only empty chair at a table surrounded by younger kids. Except for the occasional giggle, they eat quietly. There are security personnel—two men and one woman—dotted throughout the room. They are mostly here to watch the younger kids and are only to interfere if or when something gets completely out of hand. Only twice has Aries witnessed them going into action: Once during a medical emergency when someone choked on a piece of apple. The other when one of the older boys suddenly started screaming without any previous inclination to do so. He had been sitting alone at his table when he’d suddenly begun to scream until the two men had physically taken him to the floor while the woman injected him with something. It wasn't clear what he had screamed at but from where Aries sat, she thought it might have been one of the flat screen monitors. But she could have been wrong. The whole thing hadn't lasted more than forty-five seconds. But the incident had left a permanent impression on her. Sometimes she thinks about what could have driven the boy to freak out like that. The screams were filled with rage and anger, but Aries could hear the pain in them as well. The pain and the sense of utter powerlessness. She has not seen him since.
She opens the cap to her first drink—a mixture of synthetic algae and amino acids in liquid form. It tastes nasty and she usually washes it down with the content of the second bottle—vitamin enriched water. The slight iron taste of that she gets rid of with the bread. She takes a sip of the water while watching the room and letting the individual voices of the kids meld together into one sound, into one big murmur. When she looks at the bottle, she sees a handwritten arrow drawn on the label. It points downward.
Now she sees that there’s part of a napkin stuck to the bottom of the bottle. She picks it up nonchalantly and palms it. It's upside down. She has no trouble deciphering it in one glance, despite its small letters:
Like the wind o’er forgotten plains
When the storm clouds whisper names
Like the girl that came from light
Like the bird ’twas born of night
1:38
Aries smiles at the fact that there is possibly a poet hidden away in a small room somewhere, flying below the radar, and as of yet completely und
etected, despite the Corporation's airtight social surveillance system. For reasons unbeknownst to her, this note, this scribbled piece of barely average phrasing, gives her more hope than anything she has encountered in a long time.
She crumples the napkin into a tiny ball inside her palm and slips it into one of her coverall pockets. The water bottle goes into the other, while the bread stays in her hand. She gets up and places the tray onto the belt on the opposite wall of the room. When she turns around she almost runs into Seth. Or better, he almost runs into her.
"I'm sorry," he says quietly, while maneuvering around her.
"No problem," she answers.
He looks pale, tired. His eyes are red and the spikes in his hair are gone. That concerns her more than his pale look. Their eyes meet. Then he looks away.
"Are you okay?" Aries asks.
"Yes," he replies. "I'm sorry for what I did. The other day. It won't happen again. It won't happen again, I promise..."
His voice trails off and he walks away. He seems smaller. Aries wants to follow him and tell him that it's okay and that it wasn't a big deal and that she's sorry for what she said about cockroaches and that she didn't really mean what she said. Seeing him like this is worse than when he’d bullied her the other day. But he's gone before she can move, and she doesn't want to draw any attention to him or herself.
She leaves the cafeteria and climbs the ladders toward Electrical. The brief encounter with Seth has left her strangely affected. What happened to him? Were there any additional measures the Corporation had taken after the incident yesterday morning? This brings her thoughts to C.J., who she still hasn't heard a word from. Aries is aware of the sting of guilt in the back of her mind, telling her that she should have asked about her sooner. I'll do it today," she promises herself. Finding the hawk last night and subsequently stumbling into Kiire's room so unexpectedly has completely blotted out her concern for C.J.
She puts on her gear at the locker and enters the command center. Ty stands there, hunched over some blueprints and completely focused on them.
"You're early," he says, without looking up.
"I am," she answers. She can't remember him ever telling her anything other than that she was either early or late. She knows he doesn't mean anything by it other than that, by now, it's just banter between friends.
"What you got?" Aries asks, ready for work.
When she looks over Ty's shoulder she sees a blueprint that she hasn't seen before. It shows the core of the building, from above, as a round center. From there, and like spokes in a wheel, eight arms reach outward, crossing through Tier One all the way to the third tier. Horizontal maintenance shafts. Tiers Four and Five have their own maintenance crew. So does Tier Six. The three groups don't usually communicate with each other. Tiers One through Three are on the same self-contained system of heat, cooling, and power. Four and Five have their own utility structure as well. Six is completely separate from the rest, as it houses the superrich and SELKom's headquarters. The shafts on the large blueprint end in the third tier.
"We are getting a bunch of current fluctuations in some of the exchange units," Ty tells her, while pointing at the blueprint. I want you to check them out. Each one. There are four in each arm, eight arms, so we're talking about thirty-two units. It'll take you a couple of hours for each one, so you'll be busy for a few days. Sound good?"
"Yes, sir," Aries answers.
"One thing, though." Ty looks up from his blueprint and straight at her.
"What is it?"
"You'll be taking the lift. The units are on the 282nd floor."
"No problem," Aries replies.
"You're such a bad liar," Ty says. "One day you're gonna get caught."
"I know. But I'm gonna have you to bail me out."
Ty grins as he takes out the DIAG, a small rectangular box that has several wires attached to it. Its greasy exterior belies its wondrous capabilities. Among many other things, it measures the smallest fluctuations in electrical current. Aries hangs it over her shoulder.
"I can get Bailey to go with you," Ty says, while checking the batteries on a walkie-talkie and handing it to her.
"I'm okay," Aries replies.
"You sure? I can spare him."
"I'm good."
"Okay."
Her smile hides her relief that Ty is not insistent. Bailey has made a couple of strange remarks toward her when they worked together in the past. At the moment they happened, they went straight over her head but when she thought about them afterward, she began to feel creeped out by them, and subsequently by him. He lives in the second tier and must be in his fifties. She doesn't think he's married and doesn't know anything about him other than that she never feels a hundred percent comfortable in his presence, even though (aside from those two remarks) their interaction is usually distant but professional.
"Ready?" Ty brings her out of her train of thought.
"Yes," Aries answers. She checks the walkie-talkie and clips it onto her belt.
They climb a couple of metal stairs two levels up and arrive at two small cabins, mounted next to each other and to a steel column at the outermost edge of the large, round opening at the center. Each cabin fits two people plus some material, or one person and a larger item. They are part of a system of lifts connecting large sections of the vertical structure at the innermost core of the building. From the lift, one can see far down until blackness swallows all light coming in from the floors over two hundred stories below.
Aries feels her heart pounding within her chest when she approaches the lift. She stifles the impulse to check each of the steel bolts connecting it to the column, together with the cogwheels that transfer power to pull the lift upward and to break its descent when it comes down. There is so much that can go wrong with a machine like this, she thinks.
"Let me know your progress once you're up there," Ty says, as he opens the metal louver and lets Aries step into the lift. The distance between the individual steel rods in the grid are such that one can see straight through it. Without spending another thought on this and thereby exponentially increasing her unease, she pushes the numbered buttons on the keypad: 282. After hitting the completely greased over Enter button, the lift begins its ascent. Not quietly, though. There is a slight delay between her pushing the button and the lift actually rising. Then there is a snapping sound when the brakes disengage and the motor begins to turn the cogwheels. The sounds are utterly disconcerting. One glance past the steel grid into the abyss below is enough to make Aries dizzy, so she looks straight ahead, breathing through her nose. Deep breaths. She is fully aware of the small camera mounted in one of the corners of the lift interior. Her face, she knows, is an emotionless mask.
After an eternity, the lift stops, not without shaking and sputtering loudly. Aries exits, glad to have solid ground under her feet once more. As she orients herself on the floor, she sees the eight doors leading into the maintenance shafts. She heads for the first one.
"I'm here. Opening door number one," she says into the walkie-talkie.
"Sounds good," Ty answers. "Oh, by the way, C.J. is sick. I got a message from her parents this morning. They don't know when she'll be back."
"Okay."
Aries approaches the first door. This floor is basically a large circular landing with doors leading to the eight shafts. The rest is covered with rusted steel plates. Aries has no clue what's behind them. Aware of the camera right above the door, she punches in the code she got from Ty. The light switches from red to blue, and the door opens with a slight suction sound.
"Did they say what C.J. had?" Aries asks into the walkie-talkie, while she enters the long shaft.
"No."
"Okay. Talk to you when I'm done."
When she enters the narrow shaft she has to duck her head, as it is just under five feet high. She walks along the green LED lights that illuminate the floor and ceiling. When she's about ten feet into the shaft, the door behind her closes again, hermeti
cally sealing itself into the frame. This is the third time she's been up here. Once with Ty and once with C.J. But being alone in the narrow shaft is a completely different experience from being with someone.
"Approaching the unit," she says into the walkie-talkie. There is no answer. "Ty, I'm approaching the unit. Just thought I'd let you know."
Nothing. Just before she is about to push the button again, Ty's voice comes on.
"Got it. Sorry I couldn't answer right away."
She registers the relief she feels when she hears his voice on the other end and kneels down to open the trapdoor in the floor. She flips on her headlamp and climbs down the five rungs of the narrow ladder. This brings her into a cube-like space. The six-by-six-by-six-feet cubicle holds servers and other equipment that line the four walls of the space. She pulls the strap of the DIAG over her shoulder and places it on the floor in front of one of the units.
She takes off the front cover and connects some of the wires of the DIAG with contacts in the unit. To find the right contact for one of the wires she looks at the electrical blueprint Ty had placed in the bag. She turns on the small screen on the DIAG and an oscilloscopic image appears. It shows the wavelength of the current, represented in a curved sinus line. She compares the image on the screen with the one she has on a small pocket card. They are identical. She disconnects the clips, closes the panel, and moves to the one next to her. When she opens the front panel she hears a sound, not unlike air escaping from a sealed container. She gets up and peers through the opening in the floor of the shaft. From there she can see that the door is open. Maybe an inch, probably less. That's odd, she thinks. As far as she knows, this can only happen when someone with the proper authorization code stands outside.
"Ty?" Her voice echoes in the long shaft.
She stands still, listening intently and looking into the semidarkness of the shaft.
"Ty, you there?"
She climbs out and before she reaches the door, Ty's voice comes through the walkie-talkie.
