Chapter 2

          Fifty-six light years is nothing in astronomical terms. Compared to the size of the galaxy, Tarran was Mobius’s next-door neighbor. Yet before the discovery of hyperspace, before a certain apprentice astronomer shook the world with the observation of radio signals from an alien system, even one light year might as well have been the other side of the universe. Tarran’s star had been just one pinprick in the night sky among millions, and the two civilizations, both human, had evolved, explored, and matured with absolutely zero knowledge of the other’s presence.

           In a small industrial town in southwest Norreba, a young Tarranian woman nearly tripped over her feet as she scurried off the bus toward the worker’s entrance of a machine factory. The drowsy effect of the floodlights flickering on the empty loading lot was countered only by the pre-dawn chill. Wrapping her arms around her shivering body, the hood of her jacket drawn tight, Ghina Taea muttered a prayer to the Twelve Archetypes, pleading for them to be lenient with her karma. Her shift had missed three quotas in a row. One more, and they would be split up and sent off to new occupations, Prophet-knew-where. And this morning, Taea was late.

           Above the door, a camera observed her approach with a glassy undead eye. Taea lifted her face to let it recognize her and unlock the door. A yellow LED beneath the lens blinked. Blinked again. Buzz. Taea jumped as the light flashed crimson. It hadn’t recognized her. Maybe her hood was obscuring her face. She reached to pull the opening wider. Buzz. She let out an “Eep!” cowering aside. That one wasn’t fair. She hadn’t been ready. A third failed recognition would alert security, and they would yell at her, and twice in one month was enough already, thank you. Her back to the camera, she pulled off her hood, smoothed a stray dark curl from her face, and turned to present herself once more to the pitiless sentry. The LED blinked. Realizing her nervous smile might confuse the machine, she forced her face to relax. It blinked again. She held her breath as the light went dark a third time. Just as she began to think it might have broken, it lit up green, and the latch clicked open. Taea let out a whimper and yanked open the door. That was one bullet dodged for today.

           Inside, she stowed her sweatshirt in a locker, strapped a hard hat to her head, tapped the steel toes of her shoes for good luck, and stepped out onto the floor. The familiar stench of oil and hot metal snubbed Taea’s nose. Machines rumbled, cutters screeched, and holers punched. In the dim illumination of the fluorescent lights high above, a pair of her coworkers looked up. “You’re late again,” a stocky man shouted over the racket.

           “I know, sorry!” Taea called back.

           The man smirked at her back. “Keep it up and you’ll be sent to sanitation.”

           “I know!” Taea’s heart pounded. She did her best, she really did. Pulling ten hour shifts seven days out of eight, scarfing down meals, starting new tasks the minute the previous ones were finished. Yet no matter what she did, it was never enough.

           She barged into the Overseer’s office. “I’m here!” she panted. “I’m sorry, I missed the bus.”

           Sitting behind his raised desk between piles of clutter, Burrman Shak glared down at her, his face carved with sharp lines and edges, his eyes a rare yellow. “You missed the bus,” he repeated.

           “I’m sorry, I—”

           “Need I remind you, your shift has missed three quotas in a row. A fourth, and the Pyramid will reassign every last one of you to some backwater garbage dump or sewage plant, and I’ll be stuck with a bunch of newbies who don’t know a ratchet from a torque wrench.” He punctuated his words by thrusting a finger onto the desk. “You can’t miss the bus.”

           Taea began to stammer an excuse, but Shak cut her off. “We’ve got a shift meeting this morning. Now that you’ve finally arrived, we can start. Go spread the word to meet outside my office.”

           A few minutes later, the workers stood in a mass around Shak. A feeling of dread hung over Taea like a stench. She leaned to the short, stout woman next to her. “You think we’re on track for our quota this time?” The other woman grunted, not bothering look at her.

           “All right, you sorry lot,” Shak boomed, “I’ll cut to the point. You’re falling behind on your quota again.” There was a spatter of groans, given with little effort. Hands were stuffed in pockets and tuned-out eyes stared into corners. At that moment, Taea’s ember of hope that a final warning with real impending consequences would shock the team to pull their act together at the last minute was stamped out.

           “I’ve only got one warning left for you,” Shak continued. “Get your asses in gear, or it’s off to sanitation for the lot of you. You know what you have to do. Hop to it.” He shooed them away with both hands, signaling the end of the meeting.

           Taea watched helplessly as her coworkers shuffled back toward their stations. There had to be something she could do. The Purpose didn’t demand of people more than they could handle. She hurried after the man who had spoken to her when she arrived. “Hey,” she said, “are you going to lay down and let your karma be dragged through the mud? Don’t you care about what you’ll end up as when you’re reborn into the next life?”

           The man turned, walking backward, and grinned at her. “I’m going to be the worm that lives in your intestines.” He laughed at her dumbstruck face and turned his back to her.           Crazy. That’s what they all were. Taea was surrounded by nutcases. As she approached her workstation, she floundered for options. She could try pushing herself to eleven hours a day, but the thought of keeping up that effort for weeks on end made her shudder. Not for the first time, she considered requesting approval to upgrade her stimulant from caffeine to amphetamine. She couldn’t carry the whole shift herself, though. The only way to catch up to the quota would be for everyone to pick up the pace together. Glancing over the task packet on her desk, she threw herself into her work. She would give everything she had and pray to the Archetypes that the rest of the world would work out around her.

           The machine parts flew under her hands. When one motion was finished she was already reaching for the next. By midday she was tired, and, pushing her muscles to the limit as she was, she began to grow sluggish. Time dragged into the ninth hour. The tenth. Despite taking her caffeine, Taea could hardly keep her eyes open.

           “Taea!”

           Hearing Shak bark her name made her jump. The Overseer strode toward her, brows drawn sharply down over his piercing yellow eyes. “Where’s the job I gave you this morning?”           Taea looked from the bins of parts arrayed before her to the job packet she’d set aside. “I’m out of 232’s,” she whimpered. “I was—”

           “There’s a full box right over here.” Shak strode to cardboard box on a nearby shelf and tossed a small metal shaft onto her desk.

           “Those are—”

           “I don’t wanna hear it. This order comes all the way from the Capital, and District has been hounding my ass about it. Get it done.”

           Taea stared helplessly at his back. The object on her desk looked like a 232, with screw threads on one end and a connector on the other, but the serial number on the box Shak had pulled from ended in 644. Every factory worker knew you couldn’t substitute parts, or the machine you were building wouldn’t work.

           She hadn’t slacked off. The moment she’d realized she didn’t have enough 232’s, she’d gone to Supply and requested more. After that, there wasn’t anything she could do except keep things moving with a new task. She picked up the 644 and turned it in her hand. It did look a lot like a 232. Had she heard right when he said this order came all the way from the Capital? She’d done jobs for the Province before, and even a few for the Region, but never for the Capital. No wonder Shak was so edgy today.

           Maybe the 644 would work. Taea eyed the rack of arm-sized devices waiting for 232’s. At the very least, she could try it. Placing one of the devices belly-up on her desk, she twisted the 644 into the 232 socket. The screw threads were too snug, and she had to use a tool to twist it in. When it was as deep as it would go, the connector didn’t quite touch its target. But maybe if she bent it so . . . There!

           She surveyed her work. It was awful. But the device—whatever it was—should function. Nobody would notice anyway, since this area would be covered. She picked up a piece of casing from a stack and fit it over the 644, pressing it to snap its metal tabs into place.

           Crack.

           Taea froze. The sound was like bone crunching within the device. Fumbling with weariness from pushing her limits all day, Taea pried the casing open, hoping whatever had made the noise would be an easy fix. Just a replacement part, please. As the casing came off and she saw the damage beneath, she slumped. The 644 had stressed a circuit board, causing a fracture to run almost all the way across it. The damage had cascaded to other elements, making the interior of the device a useless mess. There was no way around it. The whole thing would have to be scrapped and started over, a process that would take half a day, at least. She didn’t have half a day, though, if she wanted any chance of meeting the quota. But what else could she do, cover it up and bluff it through inspection?

           She paused at that thought. Glanced up at the monitoring camera. The feed went to Shak’s office, but anyone placed above her in the Pyramid could key into it, from City, District, Province, Region, all the way up to the High Rotation of the Archetypes. And while she certainly didn’t think the top would take interest in her, the camera was a reminder that someone was always watching.

           Except, of course, that was unreasonable. Faced with the dilemma of the ruined device in front of her, Taea realized something she could have seen all along if only she had taken the time to consider it. Every level up the Pyramid had fewer people than the one below. If each of the sixteen billion citizens of the world were watched all the time, those in positions of management and governance would be able to do nothing but sit in rooms full of monitors all day, and the work of actually managing and governing would be left undone. Which meant that sometimes—or more likely, most of the time—nobody was watching.

           Maybe nobody was watching now.

           Taea stiffened as, among the stacks of half-assembled machine organs, Shak appeared. Her pulse raced, breath held, until something caught his attention and he strode, shouting, out of view.

           She had to act now. Taking another look at the camera, she snapped the cover into place, tagged the device as ready, and sent it on its way.

           She didn’t make it eleven hours. After the incident, she broke into a cold sweat. Unable to keep her hands from shaking, she decided she had done all she could that day. She took the back aisles to avoid attention, and chided herself for her sheepishness. She had already stayed longer than usual. No one would fault her for leaving now.

           As she returned her gear and retrieved her jacket, it dawned on her that she had done something unthinkable. She had made a mistake and covered it up. And, despite the ever-present eyes of the Pyramid, there was a possibility she could get away with it.

           Out on the loading lot, the flickering floodlights watched her departure coldly under the starless sky.

© Christian D. Horst, 2024, christiandhorst.com