Edited!
Violet was one of the finest planets in the three systems; resources under the fertile ground; the water-, helium- and oxygen-rich atmosphere similar enough to Earth’s to sustain human life; even the landscape was pleasant to the eye, rolling hills dappled green with human-grown algae or blue with the alien flora. The original explorers had landed near the equator of the planet (the current site of Lowe, a mining town and the capitol for the planet) and named it for the hue the planet seemed swathed in when viewed from above the purple atmosphere. Even after they landed and found the true ground-color to be mainly blue, the name stuck, and soon after became the official title (despite bureaucratic squabbles).
Now, seven hundred years since the first colony ship touched down, Violet was teeming with algae farms, retirement resorts and interplanetary tradeports. Already, Violet was suffering a fate similar to Earths’, accumulated pollution and space junk, and looked to become another Seljik within a foreseeable future.
Lowe, once a prosperous mining town, became cluttered with factories that smeared the sky with a dark grey smudge, marring Violet’s atmosphere for the first time since the planet’s cosmic-dust beginnings. One such factory, on the border of a government housing development, employed thousands of workers (most from the development) to keep their product on the shelves: servile robots.
One tenth of the thousands of workers lived in cheap apartments downtown, about a third lived in the Projects, most of the rest were homeless…and one lived in her space cruiser, docked forever in an abandoned parking facility.
Lorna Nadir, Advanced Technician 27 for the Handybots™ factory, worked the ten-hour shift six days a week, 60 weeks a year. She wore the same grease-stained technician’s uniform everyday, and tied her amber hair up in a dirt ponytail that bobbed like mad when she ran (running was essential around the faulty machinery Handybots™ provided for their workers).
If you were to talk to her, she would keep her steady, grey eyes focused directly at your forehead –never the eyes– and speak around a wad of gum. Her hands never fidgeted, and often she would continue working even when spoken to by a factory foreman. Some said she had ‘eyes in her hands’, some said her arms were robotic prosthetics, a few even suggested that she was a former GGS gone AWOL, but they all meant the same thing: Lorna was the best damn technician this side of the three systems.
“It was a long time ago,” was all she would say when asked about her past, both to her coworkers and higher-ups.
She’d gotten by the interviews and forms (which were mandatory for the other workers) simply for the fact that her work was better, faster and more cost-efficient than any other worker. Indeed, sometimes it seemed like she was one with the machines she built; her emotions were ever on a steady keel, her decisions never hasty, her records perfect.
“She’s a dem fine worker, and a gud woman too,” her foreman often said, speaking up for her when she wouldn’t (usually when an inspection crew passed by) “Oi’d vouch for ‘er any day, Oi would.”
But no one knew where she (or the derelict cruiser that was her home) had come from, nor of her stubborn desire to remain where she was; she could have easily been promoted a dozen times over if she’d only allowed her superiors to put the star on her uniform. No one knew her secret, and (if her sentiments about her personal life were to remain so) no one ever would.
“Please re-insert memory chip; facility functions disabled until further notice.”
“Darn,” Kari muttered around two wires gripped tightly in her mouth while trying to connect another pair with her hands.
Tools lay strewn about where she kneeled in front of an open command-mainframe hatch; wires cut and stripped snaking out of the darkness like alien monsters.
Kari Mentrolli (or junior technician 53) had only been on the job for a few weeks, and the only experience she’d had besides the crash-course on electronics wiring and Basic Hydraulics 102 was poking around at dusty old comcons in her father’s workshop. Now, palms sweaty and fingers shaking from tension she hadn’t known since the foreman had shouted at her to fix or lose her job, Kari was beginning to understand why most workers started at the bottom and didn’t pay their way to the top: what a waste of money.
“If only 27 was here,” she thought, at the same time wondering if she should cut the green wire from the circuit board or splice it with the black one. “She’d fix this mess up and probably get the foreman off my back.”
Lorna’s reputation had quickly come to be part of Kari’s knowledge, as was her helping and patient nature, but it was starting to look like nothing short of a miracle would fix the mess she was in.
The girl was just about to splice the green wire when a hand clamped down on her shoulder. She jumped, dropping wires and scattering tools, and then suddenly realized it was her foreman.
“Leave,” he was saying. “I got 27’s foreman to send her over here, she’ll fix this crap.”
“You can’t fire me!” Kari shouted frantically, grasping again for the wires. “I need this job! Please!”
If her foreman was in any way moved, he showed it through a stern look and a thumb jerked in the direction of the door. Kari looked at the wire mess –which was blurring through her tear-filled sight– and then sighed, getting up and brushing dust from her uniform. As she walked towards the door, it opened and a technician entered at a brisk speed. Kari turned in amazement, realizing it was 27 herself, and watched as the other technician sat down, reconnected wires within seconds and had the computer working before she even put the hatch back. The speed and dexterity of Lorna’s fingers through the tangle of wires shocked Kari, and left her standing with one hand on the doorknob, mouth slightly agape.
“Enjoying the show?” her former foreman sneered, nodding towards 27, who was already picking up Kari’s scattered tools. “She’s ten times better than you’d ever be, so don’t let it go to your head.”
Kari nodded dumbly and, after a final glance at the legendary factory worker, slipped out the door and down the grimy halls towards the building exit. She scanned her nanochip for the last time and handed her credit chip to a rusty Handybot behind a bullet-proof glass counter.
“Two hours of pay added to account,” the robot buzzed, the voice more metallic than the sound of banging pipes together would have been; obviously not part of the original robot’s design. “Current balance: seven-hundred fifty credits. Have a nice day…”
Kari left before the robot could determine whether she was male or female and then address her as “…Ma’am.”; a process that would have taken at least five minutes.
The girl stripped her uniform in the anteroom and handed them in exchange for her own clothes to another robotic clerk, who’d already received the data of Kari’s termination from her foreman. Kari dressed in her coffee-stained white T-shirt and jeans as the robot informed her of her employment suspension and pension benefits: none. She ground her teeth when it told her about the foreman’s report, saying “The results were not satisfactory, and were not likely to be accepted by Handybots or other factories in the future.
Her temper was already seething by that point, and could’ve put her fist through the metal plate that was the robot’s face, but it would only mean a fine for assaulting a robot and damage payment: a defrayment on her measly account that she couldn’t take. Instead, she turned on her heel and stepped into the streets of Lowe.
Normally she would have taken a hovercab to her apartment building, but it would cost her a good tenth of her capital, so she opted for the ancient mode of transportation that had died with Earth: walking.
As she went down the concrete sidewalks strewn with last year’s newspapers and foodcube wrappings, Kari’s mind wandered over her choices; now she was wishing she’d taken the brochure from the robot. Homelessness was high in Violet, but unemployment wasn’t, so the government branch that managed it would be low-budgeted and most likely to waste her time in useless interviews and dead ends. She could probably scrape together a mouthful from bussing tables as a waitress, but she’d stay there forever if she did: all Kari wanted was to escape Violet, it was the reason she’d invested so much money toward getting herself a high-paying job. Once again, she regretted using up every last drop of her assets in bribing her way to the top job.
“If only I had my Wasp,” she muttered, clenching her fists and glaring at every passerby; it got her weird looks, but she was having a bad day, and for an unemployed, blackballed technician, every day on Violet is a bad day. “I could race and make a few K’s within a week!”
Kari stormed on, frustrated by the fact that, with just her Wasp space craft (and some gas money), she could earn millions in race prizes in as little as a year. Within ten years, she could be off Violet, striking a course for Grebe or Old Sol with a treble-billion-credit stash in her pockets. It was more than she’d hoped to make as a technician, and probably ten times as much as 27 was paid.
Remembering the Advanced Technician brought goosebumps to Kari’s skin; who was that girl anyway? The whole factory knew her (or at least knew of her) and one thing was certain, 27 could have easily gone on to replace the head overseer. But with skill like hers, surely she could pilot a Wasp, and a race like the Asteroid Cup would have been a breeze, yet she didn’t. It puzzled and scared Kari a little, who would have lunged at the chance if she had even the slightest potential.
Her heavy footsteps at last rang out on the hollow steps of her apartment building. Mentally, she checked off her rent as another thing that would have to be scratched off her budget; the Projects awaited her.
Up the stairway she puffed, never having walked so far in her life, and stopped outside her door to regain her breath. Posed like that, hands on her knees with her back arched upward, she had a sideways view of the hallway before her. About two dozen doors scattered in a haphazard array across the hall and looked like a game of pick-up-sticks on a vertical surface.
Just as Kari was about to fish out her door-pass chip and shut the outside world behind her, a man walked out of one of the numerous doors. His dark eyes, stubble-beard chin and stained outfit instantly put Kari on her highest level of alertness. She quickly grabbed her chip from her jean pocket and jammed it into the slit above the doorknob.
“Wait!” the man shouted, running out towards her. “Hold on a second! Kari!”
Kari switched her eyes between the still-locked door and the man a million times a second –for about three seconds.
“Card accepted. Welcome, Kari,” the door said, popping backwards with a little hiss. “Enter.”
The door’s computer and voice AI had been extras to the apartment door, since Kari wouldn’t trust the flimsy, wood-and-metal thing that originally guarded her from characters like the dark-eyed man.
Kari grabbed her chip, which had ejected from the slit, and entered her room, slamming the door behind her. For a few seconds she stayed where she was, back to the door, ears strained, nerves tense. Finally, she could take it no longer and opened the peephole flap. An empty hallway –with the same peeling paint and tiled floor she’d seen every day for a few years¬– met her gaze; the nature of the peephole prevented her from seeing down the left or right wings of the hall.
Satisfied that her pursuer wasn’t trying to break in or hack the key, Kari turned herself towards the final tasks of her day: a meal, and then a long hour of budget-cutting and life re-planning.
She sighed and set about unwrapping a foodcube to nuke in her microwave oven.
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