It wanted to stay out of the nexus for as long as It could, but It’s break was almost over. It got up on It's titanium skeletal legs and waddled across the asphalt to the hatch. The hatch swung open. Ignoring the ladder, It jumped down with arms against It’s sides and legs together, a so-called pencil dive, something kids used to do into swimming pools.
The one so-called Marble was below on the upper deck of the DOP tunnel 77, 3rd nexus. Marble cursed at It when It landed on the corrugated metal deck in a three point stance, all points simultaneously hammering in the small room. Marble jumped and spun in its swivel chair.
Marble was covered in patches of orange fuzzy mold, an amusing side effect of being a claustronaut, which now swayed on the top of its metal skull like hair when Marble spun. It had once seen a wiki picture of a glass marble with an orange fuzz inside that looked just like that. It had so-called Marble “Marble” from then on.
The human part of It wanted to stifle a laugh, though for It, laughter was impossible.
“That was loud,” said It.
“I'm trying to run jobs here,” said Marble.
“Was gonna be late coming back from my break, took the fast way down.”
Marble pressed a mute button on the mixer console behind it.
“Most of us avoid being late by simply taking shorter breaks,” Marble’s gaping mouth speaker intoned. A bit of orange mold residue was crawling up the side of Marble’s eyeless face.
“You might want to go take a shower,” said It, brushing the soil from outside off of Itself with It's forearm and walking away.
“Format yourself,” said Marble.
It hit a button and a lift carried It jiggling down 5 levels to the scheduling room. It hopped off the lift before It had reached the ground, another clang reverberating, quieter this time though.
The scheduling so-called room was more of a long rusty hallway where so-called dumb terminals lined the walls. Below each terminal there was a hand dispensary chute. A few others were milling around, also just back from breaks and waiting to be assigned a task for their next shift. It walked up to the nearest terminal which sensed It’s presence and turned on automatically. It expected to get a repair shift or feed redirection shift, but the words that appeared on the dumb terminal made It’s so-called heart sink.
DISCIPLINARY SHIFT. NO TOOLS WILL BE ADMINISTERED. REPORT TO COMMANDING OFFICER.
It would have liked to blink and stare dumbfounded, had it had eyes. This couldn’t be about the loud noise It had just made, could it? It’s mind searched recent memory for any kind of foul up from the past few days, any mistake at all. What was It being punished for? It had no idea. It couldn’t get fired for something It didn’t even remember doing, right? That thought gave It a little confidence, It felt It was in the right, whatever the offense was. Justice would prevail, but still, It would have gulped if It had had a throat.
It, so-called, felt like it had seen a ghost. That's what It thought it felt like ambling into the CO’s room. The walls were covered with what It thought to be a pastiche of some kind of coach or principal's office. Awards and trophies adorned the walls, their plaques reading all different ancient names like Dennis Haversham and Sarah Forsythe. There were even filing cabinets stuffed with lorem ipsum pages and boxes of torn envelopes and balled up notes. All of it was to give the illusion that work was being done, but the effect was more like a grown-up child’s playhouse, It thought.
The CO sat behind it’s desk, as usual. Looked like a brick wall, rust red shoulders nearly as wide as the desk, but no taller than It. So the CO was squat and fat and had frowning eyebrows electronically inked onto it’s wide moon grey faceplate above a mesh of little holes for its mouth speaker. It wondered if the CO had any other emotes it could display. If they existed, It had never seen them.
“I’m so sorry for the noise.”
The V of the CO’s eyebrows deeped. It would have shuddered, if It had been able.
“I heard that. That is not what I called you here for,” the CO said, it’s voice deeper than anyone It knew.
The CO telescoped its arms out from its table-wide shoulders and put it’s hands on It’s shoulders in an almost fatherly way. This was it, the end. The CO was going to tear It’s head off. It wanted to duck and run, as much as It could run. If It could get out of the CO’s grasp, It would go up the lift, up the hatch and out forever. Maybe find another nexus to work in or disguise itself as a normal human and stow away on a ship headed for space.
“You’re an obedient worker,” the CO began. “That’s why I’m sure you aren’t going to share this meeting with anyone.”
“Of course.”
The the CO gripped It’s shoulders tightly and lifted It like a doll, It’s legs swinging. The CO’s arms un-telescoped, pulling It forward until It was directly over the desk.
“Have a seat.”
The CO set It down on the desk. It sat, next to an ashtray containing fake ashes and a perpetually lit fake cigarette, and pulled It’s knee hinges up to the protrusion that served as It’s so-called chin. The CO flipped some big switch deep in the mechanical workings of its own body and the CO, the desk, and of course, the seated It, began to descend out of the room. Or maybe the room was moving up, It wasn’t sure. There was a lot of rumbling and screeching of gears. They sank all the way into the office floor, down into a grease streaked shaft, and the floor closed above them leaving them in darkness.
An LED lamp, made to look hundreds of years old, lit up on the CO’s desk.
“So, did you bring me down here?”
“Privacy.”
“Privacy?” It asked.
“The whole nexus is compromised. They’re listening everywhere. The walls, the electrical outlets, even your pack of cigs is bugged.”
It was very confused.
“Electrical outlets? Like for plugging old appliances in?”
“Plugs in the walls. I know what they were doing. Came and installed new ones last week.”
“Who did?”
The CO’s massive body had no ability to lean forward and whisper, so instead, its eyebrows glanced furtively at the ceiling of the shaft, which was actually the floor of the office. Then its eyebrows went low and the volume of its mouth speaker went low too.
“We’re the only ones that can know about them, alright?”
“Alright.”
“The KGB,” the CO said, spacing each letter out.
“Oh,” whispered It, nodding. It would have liked to say more, had It known what KGB was. “What is that?”
“The red menace, commies! You know?” The CO’s voice went a little louder. “The Soviets?”
Oh right, that KGB. It knew some of those words, but they had the same relevance to It as popsicles and orangutans. They were things from the wikis. And like almost everything in the wikis, they were ancient history. It didn’t know whether It should be playing along or showing It’s confusion.
“That’s,” It paused. The CO seemed to be waiting for It’s reaction, “awful.”
“You’re damn right. And I bet you can guess what they’re after, can’t you?”
It had no idea what was going on in the CO’s brain, actually. It said the first thing it thought of.
“Our brains?”
“No, they’re after our oil. Our natural resources. The precious lifeblood that powers this great nation. This is America, God bless it!” The CO’s arms telescoped a few centimeters in and out frantically, like so-called gesticulations. It, so-called, whispered again “And any pinko commie terrorist wants to take it, well, they’ll have to pry it from our cold dead hands, right soldier?”
It glanced at the stubs at the end of It’s arms.
“Yeah, you’ll need the tools, sure. I’m gonna give you everything you need for your mission. Don’t worry.”
“Mission?”
“That’s right. Now listen.” The CO’s synthetic voice was becoming strangely affected as it spoke, drawing out certain phonemes longer than usual. “Cause I ain’t gonna tell you this outside of these walls. I need you to temporarily shut off communications to this particular nexus. Cut off all upstreams and downstreams, just long enough for me to take care of the-- infestation.”
“Shut off all communication, won’t that cut off our nutrient and air supply controls too? Not to mention the oil pumps.”
“I said temporarily! Only for a minute. Then you’ll bring us back online. Be like nothing’ ever happened. ‘Cept the bugs’ll be gone.”
“Uh, sure. That’s a good plan and all but, can’t we just, you know, let the police in the arcology handle it?”
“Format no! How do you expect to communicate with the arco without the Soviets finding out, huh? They’d know we were on to them in a microsecond. God save us.”
There was so much in the CO’s voice. So strange hearing all that come from an immobile machine with just a little bit of human inside.
“Now, you’ll be handled by the control deck, business as usual. But they’ll just be running your timing, won’t know what you’re up to. Don’t need to know. Just get down there, cut the comms, wait for the signal from control then turn ‘em back on. Can I count on you, soldier?”
It didn’t like being called soldier and It didn’t like not having a throat to clear or fingers to twiddle nervously. If It was being honest, It wanted an out, but in the moment couldn’t think of one.
“Sure. I’ll do it.”
“How do you speak to your commanding officer?”
“Y-- yes sir?” It guessed that was what the CO wanted to hear.
“Good.”
They rode the desk back up into the CO’s office. It clunked off the desk and headed for the door.
“Hey,” the CO spoke once more. It turned back. “When this is over, you’re gonna get a vacation.”
It nodded and left the CO in its room. Vacation sounded nice.
There were two communication systems in every nexus, local and global. Currently, It was jacked local, quarter inch plug in It’s cranium, as was the case for all routine intranexus jobs. Jacking into global was for big jobs that required internexus coordination; pipe replacements, new construction and the like.
It stood, now with a ratchet for a left hand and a trio of rubberized springy digits for a right hand, in a wide mud colored tunnel. The ceiling was a high parabola with vertical shafts punched through the apex every fifty meters. Humming fluorescent mold-killers hung further down the parabola at intervals as far as It could see in either direction. Lolling tongues of old white paint still dangled off the walls in places, and flecks of it piled up on the metal floor grate where it had fallen off. The paint had been eaten away some years ago by the orange mold and no one had been assigned to repaint it.
The floor grate cut through the tunnel where the walls went vertical. Through the diamond shaped holes in the grate It peered down at the shafts which poked into the cavernous black rend below, sucking up oil, water, and slurry, like so-called straws.
Marble was still the one up on the control deck, and It’s brain was jacked directly into Marble’s brain with a long black cable that ran up through all 47 floors of DOP tunnel 77, 3rd nexus.
“Heard you got a talking to. How much trouble are you in?” Marble asked.
“So-called trouble. This job actually, you might call it trouble. CO send you the program yet?”
“Just now. Downloading it. And stop using that phrase wrong.”
“What phrase?”
“Program loaded. Service hatch B. Down you go.”
It found hatch B, a hole in the floor against the wall and climbed down into it on a ladder, using the tri-manipulator to hold the rungs, intranexus comms cable following. It led down to a relatively small platform that jutted out from the wall above the abyss. An organized array of cables ran along the wall and intersected with a maintenance box next to the ladder. It hopped off the ladder and opened the door on the front of the maintenance box.
It sensed a carbonic breeze from the deep. Sensed dust, energy, and orange mold. Knew mold was breeding just below, outside the light. Sensed this was a screwed up job, an indicator of change, of power. Power It shouldn’t let go of.
“What’s next?” It asked.
“All it says is you’re supposed to perform a task, which I assume you already know how to do, then you’re supposed to tell me when you’re done. We’ll go from there.”
It raised the ratchet hand to a nut on the complicated maintenance board, one that would expose the network cutoff switch for upstream comms. Then stopped.
“Okay, I’m done,” said It.
“On my signal, undo whatever it is you did.”
The moment passed in silence.
“Now.”
It undid nothing, then closed the door to the maintenance box.
“Okay, all done.”
“That’s it?” asked Marble.
“Guess so.”
It had come back up the lift from the 47th sub-floor. It was a long ride, during which a lot had happened. The CO had been right, of course. Someone was always listening.
A so-called funeral procession, medical machines in bright white, paraded through the hall outside the CO’s office. The CO itself was shut off, it’s addled brain in a sensory cutout, and being carried on a cart to the big ramp that went up out into daylight. The CO was going to be trucked away somewhere, disassembled and euthanized.
A sleek black Eclipser, detective from the rig, stepped out of the CO’s office after the medical team. It was graceful, so unlike the machines It saw most of the time.
“Are you the unit that called us?”
“Yes, that was me,” said It.
“I’d like to extend my personal thanks for your call. There are a lot of CO’s to keep track of, good to know there are still good citizens such as yourself willing to report losses.”
“I was only trying to protect the nexus.”
The Eclipser seemed to glide closer. It had uncommonly subtle characteristics. Their combined effect was a more detailed personality than most had.
“That’s the thing. I’m not sure you were. The unit up in the control room says you never said anything to it about your CO’s condition during the job. If that’s true, that means… well. You’re the one that made the call. You’re the hero.”
A twinge of guilt pulled at It’s resolve, trying to topple it. It stayed silent. For-mat. What kind of sensors did Eclipsers have? It was like it could see directly into It’s skull.
A faint green mood light appeared around the edges of the Eclipser’s faceplate. An emote meant to indicate pleasure. A so-called smile.
“Seems you have the kind of brain certain agencies look for.” The Eclipser leaned back then. “Expect a promotion.”
The Eclipser walked away after the medicals.
It stepped into the CO’s trashed office. The police hadn’t gotten to it before it had torn up the walls and desk, turned over all the fake filing cabinets and memorabilia. Someone would have to clean it all up. But, that wouldn’t be It’s job, It was getting out of the nexus.