Engineer
Josiah Wilke decanted whiskey into a tumbler with a large chunk of ice at its bottom. The ice was his reward for a successful launch; the tumbler was from his wife; the whiskey was from his mistress.
Brown liquid splashed over misshapen ice as it cracked and creaked. He tilted his head back, savoring the sunlight that poured through the window. Fifteen floors up, away from the central axis—exactly where an Engineer of his stature belonged. He checked the time. Twenty minutes until rotation would sweep his module out of the sun's warmth. Twenty minutes of respite before work called him back.
Josiah's eyes darted across the blueprints on his desk. He tapped the screen, absently scanned and zoomed and poked and prodded at the mechanisms sketched within. A pause as the first pleasant burn of smoky cocoa, oak, and spiced honey hit his tongue. He held the whiskey in his mouth, letting it soak and flow back. With a tap of finality on the screen, he swallowed.
He was greeted by an overview of the entire machine, an automaton built at the request of Multivac for the newest mining operation off Titan. Another sip, another look.
The machine was hexapedal, each foot a pentagon of vices with a suctioned palm. Its nose was a fierce drill of diamond, its thorax able to carry several tons of ice off each asteroid it visited. The machines were familiar. Josiah Wilke's newest design contained no radical changes to its external structure to please artists or salesmen, laymen or technicians.
A dashboard showed minor material improvements to the synthetic rubber on the vices and a thinner, tougher material in the storage compartments, allowing at least two percent greater payloads on each trip.
Whiskey was not had for such numbers, though. Engineers did not get sun and oak and honey for hardware iteration. Right out of school, sure, you do what you must, but Josiah did not like rubbing shoulders with Houstons and Solars. Instead, the longest part of the dashboard's list enumerated updates to the machine's intelligence.
Half an hour later, Josiah tapped his approval code onto the schematic and called in the Houston, who'd been waiting outside.
“The adjustments are ready,” Josiah said, not bothering to look up as the man entered. “Have the production line running by tomorrow.”
The Houston—Mentz was his name, probably—nodded stiffly. “Yes, sir. Though the materials estimates you've approved are... optimistic.”
“That's what makes my work first-rate, Mentz. Optimism.” Josiah finally glanced up, catching the minute eye roll the Houston couldn't entirely suppress. Behind closed doors, Josiah knew his reputation among the technicians, indeed, the reputation of all the Engineers. But Multivac had established the castes for a reason—society needed visionaries and it needed button-pushers. The processes worked, had worked for generations. If they required adjustment, Multivac would make it so.
Mentz gathered the approved schematics with careful hands. “Will that be all, sir?”
Josiah shooed him away.
He eased back in his chair and surveyed the office. An ice chip sat in a clear refrigerated cube at the edge of his desk. The etching on the small plaque on its base read, “D.T. Academy's Best Asshole.” Josiah pulled the cube closer and stared into, then through, the ice. His time at the Academy off of Europa did not comprise his glory days. They were undoubtedly magnificent, but he always knew that greater days were still to come. The aftertaste of whiskey assured him of that.
The memento was a gift from a young woman on their commencement day. She'd been in the crowd during their first year when he sauntered up to a group of boys playing Starbowl. He caught her eyes, shot a devilish grin, and tossed a kilogram cooler of ice chips into the fray once the game concluded.
“Any two of you,” he called to the crowd. “I'll put all these down that I win without a partner.”
Without much fanfare, the group nodded to the presiding victors. The one on the left, a redheaded boy Josiah determined was a wrong step from winding up a Naught, crossed his arms. “Yeah? We have to put anything up?”
Josiah shook his head. “My treat.”
The redheaded boy raised an eyebrow at his companion, whose blue eyes sparkled with exciting opportunity at the cache of ice.
Five minutes later, the pair were without planets or stations and considered silencing Josiah's impish laugh with a fist or mostly non-lethal laser. He stood up and presided over them with a well-bred confidence and smarm that made any lack of stature immaterial; the seething of the redheaded boy and his partner subsided against the growing tittering among the crowd. He tossed them each an ice chip, winked, and left the circle by way of the girl who now stood at the periphery. He sent his communicator frequency to her as he brushed by.
Elissa had only raised an eyebrow.
Josiah picked up the cube from his desk and let it rest in his palm for a moment; he grabbed it again and idly toyed with it. He chuckled, remembering the day he finally managed any attention from his conquest. It was nearly two years after the rout of the redhead—who, Josiah was pleased to see, ended up a rather fine Solar—when he had again opted to complete a group project on his own.
The task was to justify the existing design of Naught suits and adjust one variable in the analysis to determine how that would change their structure and material components. Additional credit would be awarded to any group that successfully recreated and demonstrated their augmentations.
Josiah's redesign of the neck gasket, though ambitious, was overshadowed by the group headed by Elissa, which recreated a functioning propulsion system with a five percent increase in efficiency. Their instructor, gobsmacked, immediately forwarded the designs to ensure they received Multivac's notice, and within six months, the improved mechanism was standard across the System.
Engineers were trained to spot opportunities at any point in a structure. Josiah found Elissa after the presentations concluded. She saw him coming down the hallway and stood still, letting him approach.
“That was amazing,” he said. “I learned two things from all that.”
“Two?” Elissa raised her eyebrow. “I'd ask 'only two?' to most people, but I'm surprised you just admitted to learning anything. That doesn't seem your style.”
“Not in the style of admitting it, at least,” he agreed. “But today, I saw how thoroughly brilliant you are, and I saw that we both need partners to reach our potential.”
“Partners?”
“Strictly platonic.”
“Right.” She chuckled. “That also doesn't seem your style.”
Elissa Wilke hung her lightweight, mesh coat behind the door. Her red top and gold necklace, now revealed, shone alongside her piercing green eyes, creating all the colors in the world, as Josiah had said so many years ago.
Sighing, she glanced around and saw Jacob's discarded bag next to the sleek, gray couch that she so hated trying to nap on. Its metal frame dug into her hips and back, and the strictly orthogonal arms were just the wrong height for her neck.
There was a glass left in the kitchen with the residue of some synthetic juice. She rolled her eyes as she moved it the six inches necessary to get it within reach of the washer, whose fibrous, metallic neck snatched the glass with its rubberized fingers and whisked it beneath the counter, on top of which it would reappear well before tomorrow when the silent routine between mother and son would repeat.
Elissa set her purse down on the side table of the couch, covering a discolored rectangle worn into the faux wood surface over years of precision placement despite a long day of work.
The purse was genuine leather. She'd used all her charms to convince Josiah to get it ten years ago during their honeymoon. Like many Engineers before her, Elissa had requested their destination to be the lunar surface. There, Bound would have loud, brazen, exciting storefronts laden with vintage, unique, and grotesque goods. The Sea of Tranquility, so long ago filled by efforts to terraform, was littered with the high-society types who couldn't afford the resorts on Mars and were too wary of culture to get any closer to Earth.
With a sweet tone of voice befitting a loving mother, all but eliminating the deep undertones she maintained when meeting with her male colleagues, Elissa called out, “Jacob, come tell me about Academy today.”
Jacob skittered out of his room, a small replica of his father's robot trailing behind him. Without the sun shining through the many tinted windows, Jacob's hair looked nearly brown, his modest freckles all but disappearing in the artificial light of the room, a light that emanated a sterile, uniform glow as if Elissa and her son were constantly preparing for a medical operation the world hadn't seen performed by human hands for several centuries.
All five feet of the boy dropped to the ground. He grabbed at the robot and tucked it under its arm, after which it immediately stiffened. He finally turned to his mother.
“Academy was good. I learned how to write new programs to teach Hubble. I'm going to make him as smart as Daddy's robot. I'm gonna show him tonight!”
Elissa nodded and smiled although the light slowly drained from her eyes. “That's very exciting. I'm sure Daddy will love to hear about it whenever he gets home. But I don't think he'll have time tonight.”
“Oh, okay.” Jacob stroked Hubble's head, and it sprang back to life, performed an awkward, hobbled circle around itself, and then looked up at Jacob for instruction.
“Hubble, let's explore.”
“You know,” she said with a whisper of licorice and smoke, “we probably have time for a little exploration before the meeting.” One hand cradled his inner thigh as her arm, tumbler in hand, wrapped around his neck, letting the icy glass brush his cheek as her lips moved along his ear.
Josiah Wilke glanced at the large grandfather clock he had shipped from the lunar surface ten years ago. “Why yes, I suppose we do.”
Elissa gazed across at Jacob's half-eaten dinner as she picked at her own, idly moving pieces of a culinary chess game. Jacob had begged to play with Hubble, having experienced what he called a breakthrough, an epiphany of an idea for a new command. The meal would be promptly reheated by the table once the floor determined Jacob's path was inevitably bringing him back to the cushioned velvet chair of fiery orange.
Her eyes wandered to the screen. When will you be home?
Her previous message, Picking up some food and electronics. Anything I should get for the shop?
And one more near the top of the screen, I hope you're having a good morning. I missed having you next to me last night.
She took a large forkful of pasta, incomparably flavorful after last year's firmware upgrade to the kitchen. It was an early version, still not released to the public, that Josiah had secured somehow. Along with the vase of real flowers, none of which either could name, it had made for a lovely birthday. Yet it did not take much longer for the flowers to wilt than the palette adjustments to their daily meals left Elissa unimpressed. Tonight, it had a particularly sour taste, nearly rancid, and she hit the disposal button.
She went to check on Jacob in the other room. He happily tapped away on several screens, seeing what response his robotic partner in experimentation would have. A foot twitch, a hop, an opening and closing of a storage compartment. He giggled with delight at each new discovery, and Elissa silently shared his glee and wonder, quietly revealing that sad smile again. He had all the opportunities the System could provide, and she only wished she could shield him from the worst of them.
Back in the living room, she gazed at the panoramic hologram of their wedding ceremony: her side of the aisle full and spilling into the chairs opposite, sparsely occupied by a group of Academy friends and distant relatives of her husband's.
She'd never had a chance to plead her case before Mr. and Mrs. Wilke, shocked as they were to find their young son, an Engineer through and through, throwing in with the offspring of a Houston and Bound. He had confidence to spare and money to throw around if it didn't suffice; she had nothing but a force of will to shield an anxious fear and frustration, none of which would ever make an impression on her in-laws.
When word of their partnership spread across the Academy, most assumed Elissa was particularly good in bed. That led to three years of promises, threats, and attempts that would leave her weeping in Josiah's arms.
A few entertained the idea that Josiah simply liked the girl enough and had a soft enough heart to bear the burden of shame.
Elissa shook her head and fetched herself a soda, berating the kitchen apparatus as it attempted to fill her need and, in turn, being berated by the ambient health system that warned what habituating soda intake could do to one's figure.
She spent another night trying not to ponder what potential it was they were attempting to reach.
Josiah clasped his belt and saw the woman out with a firm grab of her rear. She blew a kiss behind her before letting the door close softly.
He returned to the leather chair, let it hug his legs and press firmly against his back, cool to the touch. Once the glow of the encounter began to wear off, another draught of whiskey reached his lips. He checked his agenda. At least four days to recover until he had to do that again.
At a firm knock on the door, Josiah rose with a hasty grace, topping off his drink and rapidly pouring another, neat. While some guests, their confidence depleted by Josiah's presence and thus needing some way to claw back their self-worth, would take offense at not being offered ice during a negotiation, Josiah knew the man behind the door simply preferred a whiskey neat.
Before whiskey was even a concern in the encounter, others who were uncomfortable with their station and standing prepared for a tense, one-sided conversation in Josiah's office, shrinking before this immense department head, anticipating verbal blows and perhaps punishment if he were in a raw mood; they would seek compensation by convincing themselves of their worth, of how unfair and improper it was to be cussed out in this way while ensuring their external visage communicated solely the fact that they deserved what they were getting. And so, with the worst phrases garnered from experience and rumors rattling around in their heads, a sea of awful possibilities drowning their swagger when put up against the man they were to face, they walked a shameful path through the hallways to the door of Josiah Wilke's office. A deep breath. Perhaps, anticipating the future offense of a whiskey neat, they also nipped the drink they kept in their coat. Then, a knock. Behind the thick wooden door, they would hear nothing. No footsteps, no effort to get anything ready. Several seconds later, their anxiety climbing, the door would open itself to reveal Josiah Wilke sitting in his armchair. And so, in the final act of mental desperation to save face within themselves, the person at the door would be convinced that it was wholly improper in this situation for Josiah not to open the door himself. Meanwhile, at Josiah's command, they shuffled to the chair—no, not that one, the shitty chair—and awaited their fate.
The man who had just knocked needed no pretense, no show, and suffered from none of these maladies of confidence. So Josiah, two drinks on the side table next to him, one neat, pressed a small black switch tucked beneath the table, and the door slid open.
The man was short, with equally short and impeccably groomed gray-black stubble. His brown leather shoes shone as they clacked across the floor, and Josiah took in the vibrant blue suit on its approach. The man shook Josiah's offered hand, sat on the edge of another chair near the side table, took the whiskey, swirled it once, and took an appreciative sip.
“Good to see you, Josiah. How's the family?”
“Good to see you as well, Tom. They're just fine. Elissa continues to make strides over at Intelligence, and Jacob has been exceptional at the daytime Academy.”
Tom nodded and took another sip, a bit quicker, then set the glass back on the table. He ran a hand along his chin and let the chair absorb him as he slowly leaned back. Being less worn over the years, the chair held him up higher and straighter than Josiah's, only slightly reducing the effect of Josiah towering over him.
Unaware of the physical divide or simply not caring, Tom clapped his hands and held them together. “To business.” At Josiah's nod, he continued.
“There's an offer on the table for the schematics. Five more years paid on top level, a year's worth of titanium, plus a few favors you can cash in with the group.”
Josiah grinned, stifling a slight chuckle. “Not nearly good enough, and you know it. Don't lowball me, Tom. Unlike you, I just might get offended.”
“I hear you, but it's a hard pitch to make, even with these being pre-release. There's nothing to work with here. All you told me is that the physical adjustments are compatible with the current model. And that doesn't raise the price.”
“Tom, it's like you don't listen.” Josiah took a drawn-out splash of whiskey from his glass. “That's not all I said. I told you that the schematics, although uninteresting at first glance or even second and tenth glance from the layman, contain a new paradigm in how we approach robotics. But I can't just say what the new idea is because that's what's up for sale. It's the promise of something bigger, and it's right in these files. If a buyer isn't smart enough to gamble on it, they're not who we're trying to sell to.”
Dropping his head and propping it up with his fist, Tom took a minute.
“Look, Josiah. You know these guys like to gamble, but they don't like to lose. All you've been feeding them are bigger and badder machines. Tougher inside and out. That sells. That's a clear win. They want to gamble on how they run with the idea, not whether the idea is any good.”
Josiah began to stiffen and fix his gaze on Tom, who, ignorant or not, did not meet the intense eyes and pushed forward with his speech.
“You know I love what you do here; I appreciate that we're in business. It's not easy for you, and I'm just trying to make it worthwhile. That one year plus a little bonus is the best we can get unless you can tease some more, give me something substantial to bring back to everyone.”
“The idea is good, Tom. They all know who they're buying from, and now I really am going to get offended at the idea that what I have here,” he slapped the screen on the desk firmly, “is not worth their investment. I can do without the money, but I won't have my insight, and definitely not my wife's, called into question. You know, I wasn't even planning on selling these, and I can take it off the market whenever I want.”
Tom grinned. “Bullshit about your intellect, your insight. We both agree that you and Elissa know what the hell you're doing, but don't play the righteous inventor in this room. And bullshit that you don't want or need their money. You really want to see your new office, what your day looks like when you don't have the money to throw around like you did at the Academy?”
Josiah shook his head, holding his mouth tight and straight. He muttered a “Fuck you” under his breath, which Tom politely ignored. After a few sips of whiskey, a long time staring at the slowly diminishing ice within the glass, watching it move about, listening to it clink as he gave the tumbler a gentle shake here and there, Josiah let out a deep breath.
“Yeah, I want to sell them, but I've been doing this with you long enough that I know, I know, these are worth more. We don't even care about paying for top. We want five years of lab materials, the titanium, and two renovation credits. This is a big item, and if you can't sell them based on the reputation we've spent all this effort building up, then I don't know what the hell you spend your time doing. Get it together, and make the goddamn sale.”
The first sale was on their wedding night, consummating the partnership of Josiah and Elissa, of opportunity and potential.
“I'll meet Tom at the bar,” Elissa said. “Nobody will be too interested in the business we'll play at. You entertain everyone at the Academy club.”
“Just remember, you need to be prepared to bargain a little. We don't want to come off as easy to play. Establish our worth, but don't get greedy.”
Elissa nodded. Josiah gave his new bride a perfunctory kiss on the forehead and headed to meet the gentlemen in his finely tailored tuxedo, a small abacus pinned to his lapel, a thin silk bag containing a bottle of whiskey in his hand. Elissa saw him out, then changed from her wedding dress to a traditional red and black post-reception outfit. Confirming the small chip, no larger than her fingernail, contained what she needed, she dropped it into a small clutch and sauntered along the curved top floor of the rotating hotel to the bar where a clean-shaven man, short, wearing all black, sat sipping his whiskey neat.
Elissa approached from behind, hating how she relished the stares of the few clientele out this night, knowing what they were picturing would happen perhaps fifteen minutes from now between her and Tom. She pushed the thoughts aside, focused on her part, and slid her finger down Tom's spine from the nape of his neck, whispering a “Hello” near his ear.
Focusing on his part, Tom forced a shiver through his stoic body. He pulled a barstool out for Elissa and snapped toward the bartender. “A rum and coke with ice for this lovely woman.” The bartender raised an exaggerated eyebrow at the two of them and quickly complied when he saw this strapping, if short, man scoot a few inches closer to the radiant woman and lay down several more chips than was necessary on the counter. The bartender put the drink down with a minimal flourish, just enough to earn the right to grab his payment and little enough to easily excuse himself to the back room with no further interaction.
Tom waited until he was gone, then lifted his glass, moving his eyes to Elissa's drink to encourage the same. The glasses tapped, echoing briefly through the sparsely furnished area.
“You both were stunning today.”
Elissa blushed. “Thank you, Tom. It was lovely. But let's not dwell on that.”
“No, never one to dwell, are we? God forbid I try to get some attempt at maintaining the upper hand when you look like that.”
She stopped herself from rolling her eyes as she recalled her role, replacing it with an arresting, sultry smile, and leaned in close. “We have the designs ready, complete with scale drawings, a list of materials, and access to the complete firmware that will work if all materials are used as denoted. What's the current set of bids?”
Tom took out a portable screen, a bit sleeker than the one Intelligence had issued Elissa. “There are three bidders right now, all of whom wish to remain anonymous. Your first is an offer of six months of housing on the tenth level and some travel considerations. The second is two years on the first level and an account with your Academy of choice guaranteed to accrue full tuition. The third is a year on the first level, a year of materials equal to your current allowance from the Department, and access to the wait list for the top level.”
Elissa nodded along, slightly muttering under her breath to keep the details in her mind.
“Thank you, Tom.” She placed a delicate hand on his shoulder. “And which of these offers have you been authorized to negotiate on behalf of?”
“Now, Elissa, do we need to do this? These are excellent offers—”
“Yes, we do need to do this. These offers are certainly worth considering, but knowing a buyer is prepared to come to the table is important.”
Tom grinned. “A fair point. And are you authorized—”
“Don't insult me, Tom. What can you negotiate?”
Tom tapped his foot on the metallic ring around his stool and drummed his fingers on the counter. “The second and third options. I must assure you, though, that being on the tenth level gives you the best chance for mobility to the top, and the travel options, particularly to the inner moons of Jupiter and Saturn, should not be taken lightly by you two. You can go as often as you want, pick up new materials, meet new minds like yourselves, and even have family vacations. I don't want you to dismiss it out of hand.”
“We're not field scientists, and we're not tourists. If the buyer doesn't want to anticipate our needs, that's not our fault. And I'd prefer it if you didn't let your cut of the sale work its way into this. Josiah and I know about travel kickbacks, and it's insulting that you even considered it for us.”
“Elissa, I'm offended,” Tom said, mockingly raising his hand towards an open mouth. “I would never, I mean never, let my self-interest as your broker try to sway your decision. I simply thought it was worth having a clean three options to discuss. But, I can see your mind is made up.” He glanced up to confirm. Elissa, not blinking, nodded. “Okay, let's talk those other two.” With a little grunt and movement of finality, he made a sweeping motion across the top of his screen. “What's the concern with them?”
“Starting on the first level is ridiculous. Completing this project will cleanly get us on first and probably close to three months' worth of bonuses for the mining improvements. It's appalling that one of your clients can barely match standard Department payment. We'd want a minimum of fifth level before selling.”
“Let's not be so eager, my dear. There are multiple parts to these offers. I'm sure we could move you up a level or two, but let's not forget we could also aim to improve the Academy account or perhaps gather more materials for private use.”
“Josiah and I are firm here. We all know how this works behind the scenes. Fifth level is the minimum for actual consideration on that waitlist, and we aren't waiting ten years before we're even considered.”
“Okay, I can do fifth level. But then, for that third offer, I can't also keep you on the waitlist.”
Elissa gazed through Tom at the couch at the far end of the room, a third of which was blocked by Tom's stocky shoulders. Sleek, gray, with a thin metal frame. It looked luxuriously uncomfortable and stylish.
One night, near the end of her Academy days, a friend smuggled the floor plan of a top-level apartment. The girls spent the next week debating the ideal layout, the specifics of the furnishings, the direction of the lighting depending on the axis tilt compared to the sun during certain months. Elissa had focused on the massive living room, an open space with the opportunity to become whatever its designer held in mind. She had sketched a sectional as the focal point of that space, with a side table at the far end, all of it framing a coffee table in front of it, and two lamps with directional light of variable temperature.
This hotel couch would have fit perfectly.
“We can't budge on the wait list either. Fifth level, a year of materials, and the waitlist.”
Tom gave a low whistle as he spun toward the counter. As the sound puttered out, he wet his mouth with another sip of whiskey. “Elissa, you really are starting to get some lofty ideas of yourself. The buyers all know you both are untested.”
Elissa turned red as her eyes narrowed. She spoke with a low, deep voice, leaning into Tom's face. “Don't give me that shit, Tom. If the buyers know that, they also know we're the only shot they have. And if we weren't the only shot, we'd still be the best available. Every goddamn Engineer there knows what our trajectory is, and if we get to its apex a little faster, that won't surprise anybody. We can do it without selling this; in some ways, it'd be easier. But we're trying to play ball with the community of buyers you've set up, trying to help a friend get started, so cut the act and let this end the way we both know it's going to. If we aren't done in the next twelve minutes, I won't get any action tonight, and you'll owe me an extra year of materials before I feel satisfied with how this went. Your share can probably cover that.”
Tom sighed, scratched at his chin, then took another sip of his drink and regained his slight loss of composure. He made a few notes on his screen, then flipped it around for Elissa to sign. “I admire your passion, and I have approved your adjusted request. But, to be candid, I do hope you're too busy for this part in the future.”
Elissa went over her notes to the sound of Jacob chortling and hiccuping with delight while he taught Hubble to scale the coffee table. As she lounged on the couch as best she could, making remarks under her breath and directing them across the nodes on her screen, she occasionally glanced up to make sure Hubble wasn't encroaching upon any items of importance. Each year, everything she owned seemed to move either higher or deeper, at least out of sight and hopefully out of reach.
She was several layers into the schematics, each of which contained dozens of pages of documents cross-referencing the functionalities of different nodes. As each sale approached its conclusion, she labored to obfuscate as much as possible while maintaining the standards any buyer would expect from them.
Elissa's GateKeeper ran continuously, availing itself of her attention as often as Jacob, popping up out of nowhere, asking an inane question that, a few seconds later, made her look closer. Unlike her son—bright as he was—GateKeeper subtly redacted, reworded, and rewrote everything to ensure that invention did not imply advancement outside of their control.
Her first version of GateKeeper began at the Academy as a glorified style bot. It simplified building new frameworks with different documentation requirements, saving her time on drudgery to focus more on new research and development. Now, each time it ran its processes and methods, she found ways to improve it for both above-board and extracurricular work; each tweak, no matter how finicky and difficult to implement, reminded her of their second sale, six months after their first.
Josiah and Elissa had sat in the lounge of a mid-tier club on eighth level despite Tom's wishes—or, perhaps, explicitly in spite of them. The stocky man much preferred dining above tenth level. The couple shared a spartan meal of salads and a drink each. Just as Josiah was toying with the idea of asking for a small dessert, Tom appeared, briskly walking through the threshold towards them. He sported a slight shadowing across his cheeks and chin and already had a glass of something in his hand.
Flashing a smile to each of them, he slid into one of the two remaining chairs at the table. “I hope you are both doing well. Any movement on the wait list?”
Elissa smiled, shaking her head. “No, not this time around. But we're hopeful we might get in by the time this one comes.” She lightly patted her stomach.
Tom's eyes brightened. “Congratulations!” He raised his glass to them and gave his toast, “To the success of your future together.” Josiah took a healthy sip of his whiskey, and Elissa likewise from her glass of water.
Josiah said, “Yes, our success. And I may be so candid as to say we're eager for more.” He grinned, and Elissa gave him a playful nudge to the shoulder. “We have the plans here.”
“Does it have software and sufficient operating instructions? The Andromedae are still upset about their inability to move past the firmware. I burned several favors to keep them at the table this time.”
Elissa nodded. “We appreciate your hard work, Tom. Everything is documented. The jargon is still jargon, but there aren't any gaps. They follow those steps, and the machine will be functional. That's a guarantee.”
“Then we have something to work with. I got to play auctioneer before I arrived, so I expect you'll find the starting offers quite intriguing. There aren't many defense designs floating around, and your potential customers understand the benefit of certified System Engineers as the source compared to whatever ad-hoc mechanisms the rabble put into the market. That said, only two parties remained close enough in the bidding.
“Your first offer,” he said while glancing down at his screen, more as an act of professionalism than one of memory, “is an additional two years on fifth, access to a century of uptime each month through new facilities on Titan, and a hundred kilos of chips.
“The second offer is a year on seventh, another year's worth of materials—with the understanding that expenses will grow along with your ambition and abilities—and private lab space in the general level of the Research Department.”
Josiah swirled his drink, disappointingly devoid of any ice. He tapped his fingers on the table, glanced over to Elissa, who had rested her face in the steeple of her hands, then looked over at Tom, who sat calmly, hands folded.
After another minute of silence and a few more exchanges of looks between husband and wife, Tom excused himself to the bathroom.
“Do you think pretending that we argued about this would work?”
Josiah chuckled. “I think Tom sees through us pretty easily, but it might be fun. Really though, what more are we asking for on that second offer?”
“We could ask for them to toss in some chips. I know you're still waiting on the bonus from the operation last month. Or this could be the chance for an Academy account?”
“I'll come out shooting high, and you find the middle ground with Tom. How about that?”
Elissa smiled, relishing in the camaraderie. “I'm ready to be surprised.”
They did not attempt to maintain stoic faces or stilted body language when Tom returned. Looking between them and seeing what appeared to be resolution, Tom asked, “Have we made a decision?”
Josiah cleared his throat. “We're not entirely happy with the second offer. We'd like a two percent matched Academy account and an annual dinner at the restaurant of our choosing.”
“Well,” Tom said, interrupting himself with a small drink, “I must say this is one of the first times a client of mine has truly caught me unawares. I believe the Academy account is within my permission to authorize. Although I cannot disclose the entity that put in this offer until we sign, I believe they'll be even more tickled than me to indulge that final request.”
Once the paperwork was signed and Tom had bid them an excellent remainder of their evening, Elissa playfully slapped at Josiah's hand. “You didn't shoot high enough!”
A few months later, they made good on their dinner before parenting obligations fully took hold. On a Venutian station, sharing what was still known as Italian cuisine, both Josiah and Elissa received a message. a Alert Level Orange. Please Report In.
All Engineers from Intelligence, Robotics, Special Projects, Defense, and Maintenance, please report.
Rushing to separate rooms just outside the luxurious restaurant, each dressed in their finest blacks and reds and purples, surrounded by drapery, vines, and minuscule yellow and white lights that dotted every surface, they called into their respective departments. Once all the Engineers were present, the Principal opened the meeting.
“We are at Alert Level Orange. We have received notice that a group of Chosen near Venus have successfully built and iterated on one of our turret designs. It has been modified to be useful in more terrain than its original asteroidal purpose and, by all accounts, has managed to be outfitted with a near-replica of our targeting and projectile software, as shown by its juvenile success at eliminating idle bits of debris in orbit. While they have not been shown to pose a serious threat, it has been requested that Defense and Special Projects outline measures to be taken against it in the case that is necessary, and the rest of you focus on any methods we have to disable it, assuming it is running firmware similar enough to our own. Department Heads, report back to me when you have answers. Thank you.”
Elissa spent that night in a room with interminable meetings punctuated by spurts of inspiration and collapses of desperation.
Josiah was next door, getting drunk on camera with his group, waiting for a call from Defense that would never come, requesting that Robotics somehow assist the asteroid miners within range of the turrets.
Fourteen hours after meeting with the Principal, a Houston in Maintenance found a procedural flaw in the construction design that could be exacerbated by a firmware adjustment. This was passed to the lead Engineer, up to the Maintenance Head, to the Principal, down to the Intelligence Head, and off to Elissa, who used a one-way exploit she had built into the firmware to force the update, a backdoor she designed to rapidly patch turrets deployed across the System.
With the immediate threat handled, Elissa spent the next five hours alone, distraught, irate at her own naivete. Tom had assured them that their buyer was a respectable outer-System mining company looking for a slight edge, and that their new turret design could be safely adapted to reduce microasteroidal impacts. Had she so quickly been drawn in by the promise of success as to neglect the existence of a black market outside the gray market? If the designs had been flipped to a group more radical, or more capable, the results would have been catastrophic.
Staring at the wall, a mental pendulum swung between her two futures. She considered settling, leaving the market entirely, and leaving Josiah if necessary. (Had he known this was a possibility?) It would almost certainly mean falling to Houston. That thought's kinetic energy would run out and swing across to all the work she had put in, everything she had built to break out of her family and move up in the world, and whether she was someone who could throw it all away because of a grievous oversight, but one that could be mended. She had mobility and freedom, a clear and comfortable path for her growing family.
As the pendulum swung back down from its apex of letting the secrets of the System out into the wider world, having them slip from the incompetent hands of their first buyers, picked up by the greasy paws of power brokers, and then sold to the firm and envious grasp of those who knew precisely what they could do with such information, she looked down at her swelling midsection. Could she possibly risk leaving behind a hidden legacy of chaos for her child? Was her climb up the ladder all an abhorrent post-hoc justification from the start, her concern for the unborn child's future a disgusting rationalization to bathe in her own excess? Was she, Josiah, or their offspring accounted for by Multivac or just a blip in the cosmic timescale it oversaw on its quest to provide humanity permanence among the stars?
Elissa contemplated these extremes, letting her mind oscillate until tears were wiped and angry reproaches suppressed. A convincing thought entered as the pendulum, succumbing to friction, finally fell at rest in the middle.
She went to a nearby desk and began writing a new version of GateKeeper that would bring the designs down to their bare essentials, a recipe for precisely the design put forth with no room for further thought. It hamstrung software and locked it down, giving the buyers more than they could get elsewhere but less than what the System held. It provided all the instruction for a mechanism to function with none of the insight into how it operates.
As this tense balance remained in Elissa's mind, a connection was made somewhere near the center of the System, as a small value represented somewhere in Multivac's vast hardware incremented, causing a new directive within the Engineering Corps to be emitted to the Principal.
Within six months, Elissa was the new Intelligence Head.
“Daddy, look! I made the planets!”
“Wow, kiddo,” Josiah heard himself say off-screen, “That's wonderful! I love the colors you gave Venus.”
“Mrs. Thomas said so, too. She said it's one of the prettiest Venuseses she's ever seen!”
“My, that's quite high praise! An eye for design like that, and you'll be quite the asset to the System.”
“I'm gonna have so much fun being an Engineer! Do you have fun, Daddy?”
“Oh, I certainly try. Sometimes, it's difficult work, but we do the difficult work because it's important. And besides, if I don't have fun at work, I always know you'll be here to help.”
He watched Jacob jump up and down. “You bet, buster!”
The recording stopped. Josiah looked at the clock. Bedtime wasn't far off. “Missing it again,” he muttered. At least it was Thursday, and Jacob would have plenty to show off for him this weekend. Hopefully, on Sunday, they could send him to play with the neighbors, and he'd have the energy for Elissa.
When he reached the door he turned back and looked over the office. What was it a monument to? His labor, hard work, and realized potential? No, just a room in which a rich man played at misogyny so well that he built a career selling his wife's work.
It wasn't his office. Not really.
Elissa smiled as Jacob showed off Hubble doing some mix of a roll and a flip, starting from the table near the couch and launching itself to the kitchen. Jacob stood up, giggling yet again, each centimeter of his mother's smile causing his to grow two.
He followed his friend towards the kitchen, where he saw the remains of his dinner and began hastily gobbling them up.
“When is Dad going to be home? I want to show him everything Hubble can do now!”
“He's busy at work, but I'm sure he'll be home in the next hour or two.”
“But you're busy with work, and you're home now. That's not fair.”
Elissa turned to look at Jacob's face stuffed with pasta. “I agree, it is not fair. But not everything is going to be fair in life.”
Jacob slowed his chewing and slurping, letting his mind take a bite from this new idea. “Maybe not everything.” He took up another few strands of pasta. “But, I think things should be fair between you and dad.”
“I think they are in their own way. Not every part of your dad and I needs to be equal, but if you could see everything all at once, I think it would be fair.”
Jacob nodded, confused but satisfied.
Josiah sat at the bar in the Department's restaurant as was expected before getting home to the wife. A group of Houstons walked through, and Josiah decided to try some small-scale trickle-down economics. “How's Pluto, boys?”
He saw the blonde roll his eyes. The redhead spoke up. “Not too bad, Mr. Wilke. The nice thing about Pluto's existence is that it lets the other planets feel special.” The blonde sniggered.
“I like the confidence. You two want a drink? It's on me. Big day.” Josiah saw them hesitate and look at each other. He turned around, allowed himself a grin, and got the bartender's attention. “Two stiff drinks for these young men, on ice. It's a special day for them.”
The redhead sat down, keeping a stool between himself and Josiah. The blonde sat next to the redhead. After being served their drinks, they mumbled an undirected “Thanks” into the air and were about to take a sip when Josiah stopped them.
“Come on now, I said it's a big day! We're here to have a toast!”
The redhead did not fully face Josiah but picked up his glass nonetheless. “Okay, Mr. Wilke. What are we toasting to?”
Josiah motioned to the blonde, who rolled his eyes again but lifted his drink as well.
“To new directions and future innovation.”
The redhead smiled and crinkled his eyes, looking sideways at Josiah. Shaking his head, he moved his glass to tap Josiah's and his companion's, and then all three emptied their drinks and let out various gasping sighs of burn in unison.
Josiah left payment on the bar counter, then flicked a few chips to the Houstons. “Thanks for sharing that with me, and have a good one.”
“Do I have to?”
“Yes, it's your bedtime. You have to get good sleep to have another great day at Academy tomorrow.”
“But Dad still isn't home. He was supposed to be home so I could show him everything I can do with Hubble now.”
“I know, buddy. I'll talk to him and make sure he knows he's in trouble with you. He'll be home on time tomorrow.”
“Okay. I don't want Dad to be sad, though. I'm not mad at him. I just wanted to see him.”
“I understand, Jacob. It's good to say your feelings like that. Just think about all the fun you had with Hubble today, and you'll fall right asleep.”
“Okay, Mom. Good night, love you.”
“I love you too, Jacob. Good night.”
The lights switched off as Elissa closed the bedroom door and went to her spot on the couch. When Josiah walked in two hours later, she looked him over as he took off his coat and shoes. His clothes were surprisingly free of wrinkles, his hair groomed nearly as well as when he left that morning, and the familiar veins in and around his eyes from excessive drink were nowhere to be seen.
“Welcome home. What have you been up to?”
Josiah grabbed the glass of water from the robotic arm at the edge of the kitchen and sat cross-legged on the floor next to the couch. He drained the glass and set it on the side table.
“Josiah, are you okay?”
“I made the sale today. Might be our best one yet. Five years of materials, another year of titanium, and two reno' credits.” His natural enthusiasm was nowhere to be found in the news.
Before Elissa could respond, he looked up at her and asked, “What comes next?”
Elissa placed her screen in her lap. “We see how this moves through the string of buyers like usual and prepare for the next sale.”
“No, I mean after all this. We've been doing this for ten years, Elissa. We have the apartment, everything we need for the lab. Do we just keep selling System secrets until we're washed up and have nothing more to give? We keep playing this game, and it's unfair to both of us. Mostly to you.”
Elissa shifted a few inches and patted the thin gray cushion next to her. Josiah gave a small grunt as he eased himself onto the couch. “The floor is more comfortable.”
“I know,” she said with a small chuckle. Then, a sigh. “I don't know what's next. I've been thinking the same thing. I cannot understand how Tom keeps doing it. It's exhausting. We always stay ahead, always running to the next winning move because the moment we don't, we've lost.”
Silence.
Josiah leaned against his wife, who held his head to her chest. He exhaled and said, “She came back today.”
Elissa, long accustomed to the rituals of high-level Engineers, having entertained a few herself when necessary, did not even flinch at her mention. “Hopefully, she could at least relieve a little stress, if nothing else.”
“It was alright. It's just a chore when it's not with you.”
“And,” she said with a smile that managed to be both sympathetic and salacious, “your lack of stamina is making me suffer.”
They sat silently, leaning into each other's arms, moving through the past ten years. Josiah clasped Elissa's hand. “Do you remember when this became love?”
Elissa giggled and kissed his forehead. “Josiah Wilke, what is wrong? Do you really want to leave the market?”
“Don't you? Imagine what you could do if you weren't sneaking around, spending all this time trying to cover our tracks and making sure all this nonsense I had us to start doesn't, you know, destroy the System. If the nights we made sales, we spent at home instead, seeing what Jacob was up to. The Academy will screw him up enough; we don't need to add to it.”
“Honey, do you remember our first dinner off Venus? That night?”
“A bit. Not much more than anyone else on my team does, I bet. Why? I know you fixed things up pretty well.”
“I suppose I did. After that, I stared at a wall, wondering if I should leave you, thinking about the future I wanted Jacob to have, weighing everything I was working for with whatever the hell it meant to be right. I chose to keep pushing forward, to keep selling, but take that time to cover our tracks. I consciously made that choice, on my own, and here we are. But you're right, we need to reevaluate. This time I don't want to stare at a wall, though. I don't want to figure it out alone.”
Josiah held Elissa's hand tighter and tenderly ran his hand along her leg. “Then let's figure it out together, on our own terms. We have to keep playing the game, but not how we've been playing it. We take the windfall from this sale, but then it's done. I want to keep working with my team and fix my reputation. I want to see how high you can soar without being weighed down by deception, and I want to experience Jacob growing up and seeing everything he builds in this world. We can find ways to get materials down the road, and our salaries will keep us covered near the top level. I just don't want to keep being this pawn, playing with brokers and dealers. I think I've had enough.”
Elissa sat silently, gazing off into the distance. He waited patiently until she turned back and looked him in the eyes. “Okay, then that's what we'll do. A new strategy.” Elissa nodded sharply, slowly rose from the couch, and grabbed the screen from beside her. She tapped and swiped a few times, and the kitchen began whirring behind the couple. Josiah asked, “So, what's the first step you have in mind?”
“Jacob is missing school tomorrow in lieu of the ice cream and robotics party we're about to have. He has a few new tricks he wanted to show you.”
Digital tendrils wind their way through each other, weaving complicated patterns. States swapping and switching, memory building and moving, as Multivac continues to adjust its programming to serve its purpose. Millions of innocent conversations are all but discarded, noisy data inconsequential to the flow toward a desired, inevitable future. A handful more push and pull against each other, making their way across the System, fluctuating calculations until they are readily resolved as compatible, as a unit, to finish this unhaltable machine.
One conversation that night, sweet and final, determined and caring, causes several increments and decrements of note to anyone capable of following the solid-state movement of the machine. A new direction, something unaccounted for. The next morning, a Houston working in the top-level housing management office has an eviction notice to deliver. At the same time, unsubstantiated rumors flood the Intelligence and Robotics departments about a powerful couple brokering secrets to a degree that even Engineers did not have the stomach for.
It all faded away in the minds of the masses as a blip in society, two people trying to take a bigger bite than was warranted from prey too powerful for their jaws, a dirty secret that surfaced and was promptly dealt with through the swift, exacting judgment of bureaucracy. Then, the flow of thinly veiled and tacitly approved scandals continued, leaving two outcasts and a child to fight their way to find a piece of the world that would allow them to belong.