Fiction 09.02.05
OUR FATHERS
2053 words by Stanley Lieber
| I couldn't get the spamming lid off, so I just bashed the object's base against the corner of a nearby counter (avoiding the spray of flying smart glass rebounding from solid granite) and kicked the resulting debris out of my path before moving back to the terminal to finish transcribing. I worked quickly and had most of the inscription keyed in by the time one of the big kitchen doors dissolved into its frame. In sauntered Paris Mold. He glided smoothly across the tile floor, making a bee-line for the object (and by extension, for me), where he proceeded to peer deeply into my screen, observing my progress without actually announcing his presence. I flashed him my teeth, along with a look I'd developed for occasions such as this, all while continuing to type at an unlikely speed. Carefully, I unlatched the bag under my table with an obscured foot. Paris slid his gaze up easily from my keyboard to my shoulders to my scrambled face in a single continuous gesture, maintaining a blank Nipponese expression I couldn't have mustered even with help from all the electronics. I hadn't acquired his mastery in sixteen years on the job, and had long ago come to grips with the fact that I probably never would. That's why I was in the field instead of jockeying a mug of hard coffee in the board room. I still needed the expression sleeve for close-up work, which put me at a disadvantage when it came to interactions with this particular spamhole. But as he began to speak, I noticed there was a loose eyelash stuck to his cheek -- it may sound petty, but a small detail like that could be my anchor in the moments ahead. "That's some portable," Paris stated, nodding in the direction of my table-top device and its broadcast antenna, now fully extended and lit. The room was folding back upon itself and pulling all kinds of visual transforms that reminded me of the elementary programming exercises given to young school children, where they're made to model the cellular automata that generate snowflakes, tree branches, flocks of birds, etcetera. Being this close to Paris was like chewing taffy made from ropes of electricity. I couldn't keep my head straight for long, but leaned forward and smiled feebly in agreement. I paused for a second then, and coughed. Hesitantly, I fastened the strap on my helmet and clenched my eyes together until my inner ears again reached equilibrium. I shot Paris one last, hapless glance, then tightened up my scrotum and pushed at something on the floor with the tip of my boot. Following a short series of digital pulses, the whole place went wobbly for real, and began to collapse around us. The look that took hold on Paris' face as the ceiling rushed toward its communion with the floor, as he realized what I'd done -- a face that was, at last, no longer inscrutable -- was well worth the effort I'd put into the whole operation. I allowed myself some measure of satisfaction, doling it out carefully. Precisely. No more than was appropriate. Still, this was going to kill me, too. I (apparently) rolled over. The next one was different. I dropped in another pat of margarine substitute and inhaled over the sizzling pan. Sprinkling in bits of shredded paper as I folded the eggs, I could make out some disconnected sentence fragments on the collage board which came online when my eyes closed. These were definitely the requisition forms I'd sought -- the informant who'd led me to them would keep his life -- but these fragments of what seemed to have been a triplicate copy were only partially complete; missing something. Tabasco. I thumbed the labels of three different brands (there were several in this cabinet) before selecting one at random after I'd figured out the ingredients and proportions of each bottle were identical. I went ahead and emptied them all into the mix then, for good measure. For some reason a brief shot of green-smelling flame licked the shelf above the stove. Shit! I batted it with my spatula, left-handed because I was holding the frying pan with my other appendage; clumsily because I had to guess about where the tongues of flame were going to dart next. In walked Paris Mold. I couldn't actually see him or make friendly eye contact because I'd been blinded thirty years previous to his visit, whilst toiling on one of the very first jobs he'd thrown my way. On account of my disability he still brought me work from time to time, and not a little bit of mock sympathy, which I tolerated with a smile because Paris Mold was God damn rich. Morally indebted though he was (or at least, I had convinced myself he labored under the burden of a personal morality), he still preferred to keep an eye on how I was making use of my expense account. Results where what mattered to him; cripple or no. It was reasonable. "Can't sleep?" "Horseshit, boss. I'm re-assembling the Codex receipts because that's the only alternative to sleep. Plus, I'm hungry." Paris wanted to pick up and tell the caller to take that attitude and line his briefs with it -- but maintaining a professional demeanor was part of the job, and in any case politeness to real employees had not been in the Contractor's job description. (Not part of the job description this time, he told himself, marking down notes for revisions to the standard contract.) Letting the Lunchbox field his calls had been a tradeoff for actually showing up in the office, these past few weeks. Paris was striving to avoid verbal contact with any of those most persistent clients, the ones who would check in for daily updates despite the binding contracts that only pledged his company to bi-monthly reportage (no extra-contractual communication was ever to occur in either direction). It all sounded very clean and pragmatic at the time of each signing, but upon contact with reality, day-to-day transactions hardly resembled the smooth continuity of process he had envisioned when drawing up the policies. Ideally, there would never be a need to speak to anyone out loud. In the real world, you couldn't get these nominal "consumers" to stop calling you. For anything. Paris realized that what he was really selling each day were slivers of his lunch hour, if not raw hunks of his remaining lifespan. The Contractor, of course, wasn't exactly a client, but still needed far too much phone coaxing, which kept Paris away from his pressure screen far more than he'd like. Paris pushed a button and cut the call short, mid-message. He didn't care if the Contractor knew he'd hung up on him. The Lunchbox went back to blinking passively and Paris opened his sandwich, resting an elbow on the touchpad of his pressure screen while he pushed bread and lettuce into his face through a grate of yellowing teeth. The Contractor didn't call back for several hours. Paris didn't wonder what the guy had wanted, while he ate, but later, peering over the financials, he thought maybe he should have answered. Whatever the problem was might have been service impacting. More credits lost, and it was probably down to his inattention. He hadn't even asked his assistant for the story behind the calls. My pressure screen was tempting me to murder-suicide. The unit goaded me without displaying any remorse whatsoever. I began to find its arguments, ostensibly aimed at getting me into my office and behind my desk at a reasonable time, less than compelling. I told it so by way of a firm gesture into the touchpad, but it just shrugged blandly and continued with its monologue. Pressure screen ad stars like Lilo Bitch and Martin Crunch, in spite of what anyone with common sense knew were exemplary credit ratings, held insufficient funds to complete a transaction with me; not even they could afford my glassy-eyed attention to their nonsense, interspersed into each of my waking seconds. Anyway, I rejected the notion of paid advertising outright (which for obvious reasons helps to price me out of the market). Rots your pockets and drills your sockets. Trash; refuse; waste. Advertising is not entertainment. Shows my lack of culture, I suppose, but there's always time to get educated before I'm retired and need income. There will be plenty of droll incapacitated days to absorb and advise on commercial pitches when the coffers start to drain into the negative. Until then, I'll keep my reflexes to myself and stave off bankruptcy through sheer recalcitrance of will. Scan this, ad bastards. I tapped against the screen with the edge of my boot, but decided at the last second against destroying the fairly-new unit, because unlike Bitch and Crunch, I wasn't made of credits. Complain as I might, I needed this thing for my legitimate work. The touchpad shrunk away from my boot, but crept back into place when it realized I wasn't serious about striking it. My shoulders drooped and I sagged back into the couch. Momentarily (but completely) defeated. I would try to give myself a break. I propped my broken eyes against my lower eyelids and tried to sink into the meditation I hadn't practised in a decade. Things were tense lately. Forcing myself to scan screens for familiars, night after night, was only exacerbating problems which had started outside the home. In all honesty, I could not really blame pressure screens for what had lately begun to ail me. Besides, scanning was a family responsibility. It fell on me to pull myself together and put protein in the sacks of my children. Scanning made that happen, even if eschewing the higher-paying advertising work meant I had to burn more hours behind a touchpad than any person should. I was a man, and I wouldn't complain. Much. After my useless eyes had remained closed for about fifteen minutes, the pressure screen clicked twice and went into powersave mode. I would not want to speak about the dreams that followed. I held my finger over the "eight" key while Paris regarded my handiwork. I wasn't about to enter negotiations with this sanctimonious scumfuck without leverage of some sort -- even if that ultimately meant blowing his forehead into spun glass with both barrels of the rigged-up ten gauge I had concealed in the drop ceiling. With one flick of my finger, the panel would swing open and the shotgun would project a hot lead sandwich through Paris' face, displaying unambiguous prejudice. Eat that for lunch! I judged from the sound of his low, even breathing that he was standing right on the mark. Almost... The bandages on my face started itching, and I twitched a little to try and adjust them with the edge of my nose before they slid off of my face -- which would have been awkward looking, given the situation. "What is that? Sign language?" Paris snickered. My eyelids started to burn. I punched the "eight" key vigorously, but nothing happened, save for a long, piercing beep once I'd filled the keypad's buffer with "eights." My hands weren't on home row. That wasn't an eight. It was too late. When they woke me up, I'd been chewing on my left hand, apparently trying to get at my identification chip, and complaining that I couldn't manage to kill Mr. Mold, no matter how many arcane strategies I'd put into play. He was just too clever. His training, or something. That's what got me taken into the Blue Room. They wanted to know if I was through wasting time, and ready to get back to doing some serious work. When would I straighten up? Was I really so sick I couldn't produce? What was this nonsense I'd been ranting about? Disable the DRM on these forms? Surely I knew we couldn't do that. The words "dishonorable discharge" were floated in my presence. All I was trying to say was that, if taxpayer credits were being spent to produce these documents, then taxpayers should be able to save them, trade them, reuse them however they saw fit. Does that sound so wrong? Well? |
creative.commons.attribution-noncommercial-noderivs.2.5
