Solar Flare, page 28
Leoni started to speak, then hung her head and just listened.
“I put up with it because I had a goal.” Broderick twitched a shoulder. “Nothing specific. I just wanted to make things better. I had read all the Pang-Jepson propaganda and thought they might be the kind of place where I could make a mark.”
“You did.” Leoni thought back to the man’s evaluations, which had been glowing until they weren’t. “You were awarded the President’s Cup in your third year. It had never been given to someone so young.”
Broderick snorted. “That award. What did I win it for?”
“You’re asking me?”
“What were you told?”
Leoni hesitated. “I’m not a process engineer—”
“Oh, come on, investigator.” Broderick’s voice emerged a sing-song. “Pang-Jepson’s domestic power arrays? The ones that are installed in just about every domicile in the United Worlds? They had a rep for losing efficiency, many to the point that they needed to be replaced well before their advertised lifespan. Customers complained. P-J blamed misuse, lousy install, the usual end-user errors. But they tasked me with determining the real cause. Me, a new engineer with no experience in that particular array.” He leaned towards her. “Why do you think they did that?”
Because they expected you to fail. Because they didn’t want the answer, but had to look like they did. Leoni imagined Harrell’s face, his smug expression as he formed his plan to make a fool of an outpost boy. “They must have thought a lot of you.”
Broderick’s eyes widened. Then he laughed silently for a few moments, shoulders bouncing up and down as though he rode a carnival jostle cart. “The array senses power needs and can divert additional resources as needed. When it does that, it also restricts flow to nonessential systems. Imagine gates closing to funnel people towards a particular tram.” He waited for Leoni to nod. “Except the gates didn’t always close, not all the way. There was leakage, and as the leakage continued, the system came to accept it as part of the process. It learned to leak. Arrays became less and less efficient over time because that was what they were training themselves to do. If we repaired that glitch, they would easily last twice as long before slipping below optimum. But then P-J wouldn’t be able to sell as many, would they?”
Leoni said nothing. She had heard enough about Pang-Jepson business practices over the years to believe every word Broderick said. Why didn’t she feel shock or anger? Or even a touch annoyed? So blasé we’ve become, haven’t we, woman?
Broderick shrugged at her silence, then continued. “I documented it in a report. Next thing I know, I’m being called into executive offices and congratulated.” He cocked his head one way— “Then I was asked to sign a nondisclosure agreement.” —then the other. “Then they transferred me to another division. Hefty raise. Corner office. Fancy title. Director of Exploratory Research, like there’s any other kind. But no job description. No staff. Not even a share of an assistant.”
Leoni struggled to find something to say. “They expected you to develop the new position.”
“It was a payoff to keep my mouth shut.” Broderick smiled, the expression laced with a cynical curl of lip that aged him like no wrinkle or gray hair ever would. “And to make sure I didn’t find any more glitches.”
They stood in silence for a time. Then Broderick stepped back up to the window and rested his elbows on the sill, seemingly intent on the scenery. “Why are you here, Leoni?”
“Really?” Leoni concentrated on her voice, on keeping it level, cool of tone. “I’m here to bring you back to work.”
“But why are you here?” Broderick eyed her sidelong. “I did study procedures before I left, how P-J might react to my leaving. What steps they might take to compel me to return.” He turned towards her, one elbow still on the sill, like they stood at Alex’s bar. “Investigators like you travel in packs, and those packs have a set hierarchy.” He pointed to her. “You’re a chief investigator—you manage the resources, approve the expense vouchers. You send out underlings to do the legwork, and they report findings to you. You don’t go out in the field, especially not on your own with no set plan.”
“How do you know—”
“A storage facility? A building site? A bar? Not the sorts of places I was known to frequent when I lived at the corporate compound.”
“So you had people informing you of my whereabouts.”
“I have friends. Perhaps you’ve heard the term?” Broderick flinched. His face darkened. “I’m sorry. That was uncalled for.” He picked at the chipped edge of the sill, then pushed away and walked about the space, hands shoved in pockets. “After my payoff, as I tried to adjust to what had happened and why, I took walks around the P-J campus. I’d visit labs. Offices. Talked to people. I made some of them damned uncomfortable. I guess they thought I was one of you lot.” He glanced in her direction, then continued pacing. “I’m still not sure what I was looking for. What I thought I’d find. Maybe another place to land, or some sign that I wasn’t wasting my life.” He pulled the bandanna from his head, undid the knot, then retied it, again and again.
“It’s not perfect here. I mean, how can it be—we’re people. But we beat this world into dust and smoke the first time, and now we’re working to bring it back. To do it right.” Broderick’s hands stilled. “But we’re going to do it our way. We’re not going to let the Pang-Jepsons and Brainards and all the other conglomerates turn us into another pit to shovel their crap into.”
Leoni waited until Broderick unwound a little, shuffled his feet, stuck the bandanna in his pocket. “Does your family know you’re here?” She watched his expression harden, as though he saw her for the first time and didn’t like that view. He has no reason to trust me. And those he cared about were his pressure points.
Then Broderick’s glare lightened. “That was the main reason I hesitated. Because they’d been so proud, and here I was throwing it all away.” He took a step towards her. “But no one who really loves you would want you to live a lie because you think that’s what they want. You tell them, and yes, maybe they cut you loose.” He paused. “Or maybe they decide that your new truth is theirs as well.”
Leoni stared. Then the realization hit. “They’re here with you? Your family? How did you get them here without—”
“Without you finding out?” Broderick arched a brow. “We have a pretty broad knowledge base here about all manner of things. We’re not starry-eyed children.” Another step closer. “And we’re not thieves, or forgers, or pirates, or whatever else P-J told you we are. Everything we do here, we follow the rules as they exist. Now if the conglomerates want to go changing those rules to regain what they never lost in the first place? If they want to try to stop us from, well, call it competing?” He smiled. “We have some pretty impressive people here building foundations and counting birds. Like I said, not children.” He took the bandanna from his pocket and retied it around his forehead. “We even have lawyers. They just started showing up, aggravated and fed-up and looking for something more. Worthless in the field and the lab, but boy, do they love paperwork. Show them a contract or a patent and stand back.”
Leoni responded eventually, her voice touched with wonder. “You think you can beat them?”
“I know we can. Tell your bosses that, and whoever else you can get to listen.” Broderick turned and headed for the door, paused when he reached it, and looked back at her. “We want to give back to this world what we took from it. If we can do that, maybe we can also get back all we’ve lost.” He remained still for a time, mouth moving in soundless speech. Then he fixed her with a look that held, if not friendliness, maybe something close enough. “I wasn’t going to talk to you. But they told me how you were just walking around and something Alex said once—” He grinned. “I mean, bartenders, right? Students of human nature. But he’s had a life and he’s dealt with people like you before. He says there are the ones who come in like your new best friend all bright-eyed and asking so many questions, and you don’t tell them a thing because you know it’s an act. But then there are the quiet ones. Maybe they talk but it’s all just chatter and they have this expression Alex calls ‘the look.’ Like they’re lost. No idea what to do next. Most of them leave. Maybe they feel they have no choice. But some of them…” He watched her for a few moments. Then he nodded farewell and left.
Leoni remained at the window and listened to the birds. Smelled the air. She walked to the door, struggling to think of what she could say to Harrell and how in hell she could say it, and coming up empty again and again. She stepped outside and looked up at the sun, now on its downward trek.
…maybe they decide that your new truth is theirs as well.
Leoni stood frozen, stuck between a task she despised and the fear of what might happen if she walked away. Then she hurried back to the settlement and up and down the passageways until she found a shaded corner. She sat on the ground, pulled out her handheld, and keyed in a code she never should’ve possessed, a private stream to Tisa connected to one of the high security rapid tracks that were picked up by ship traffic through the gateways and released as they emerged, clear, clean, and unaffected by the weird spacetime conditions inside the engineered wormholes.
“Tisa? Baby, it’s me.” She looked up at the sun again and calculated the com time lag. Minutes, but maybe hours depending on the traffic. Still, what choice did she have? She had made her decision when she asked for this job. Now it was time to contain the damage as much as possible. “I hope you read the note I left. Where I am.” Her mind raced. Words tumbled. “They’re doing things here you can’t imagine. No, you can imagine them because they’re the sorts of things we used to talk about during exam week at Uni after too much coffee and those booster tabs that always made us babble. They have amazing things here. Walls that are batteries and a flat block that runs on plants.” Images flashed through her mind like some weird memory test. “The walls smell like flowers. They’re all different colors. You have to see them.”
She examined her palms, found a few tiny scratches. “A bird fell from the sky into my hands. I felt its heartbeat. For the first time in a long time, I felt…something good. And I don’t want you to think it’s you because I love you so much but…” Tears fell. “But pieces of me were missing and I feel like I found them here.”
She paused. “I don’t want you to feel like you have to—to give up what you worked so hard for because it’s marvelous and you’re marvelous. But I need to stay here for a while, and I don’t know what that will mean. Because of the things I know, I’m a threat—” She fell silent as one simple truth choked the newly found life out of her. That she knew where so much trash had been buried over the years, and that knowledge made her dangerous. That her employers played a rough game, and if they couldn’t roll over her, Tisa would be the next best target.
They’d destroy her. Her only chance would be to come to Earth. And sacrifice everything she’s built.
Leoni canceled the recording and deleted the message. Then she slumped against the wall and tried to work out how she could confine the fallout to her life alone. She constructed, then discarded, one rickety scenario after another when her handheld mail alarm dinged. A special sound, coded for one person.
Heart thumping, Leoni activated the device. An oh-so-familiar face filled the display, elfin blonde delicacy that obscured the steel beneath.
“Do you remember when I set our message system to save all the drafts and deletions after I lost that carefully worded reply to the Society of Architects?” Tisa arched her brow. “I didn’t think so.” She sat, arms folded, her crammed office bookcases filling the backdrop. “You always wait until the barriers have been breached and people are scrambling for the life pods. Why?” A headshake. A sigh.
Then they talked like they used to, as they hadn’t for years, words interspersed with pondering and planning and careful consideration and time lags large and small until in the end they decided, together, what they would do and how they would do it.
When Leoni cut the com after what seemed like minutes but had in fact been well over two hours, she stared at the display, trembling as though with chill, her mind a blank. When she came back to herself, she wondered if this was how Broderick had felt when he decided to flee to this place. When he realized he could no longer live a lie now that he had found something real.
I’ll ask him when I see him. She knew they would meet again.
She stood, and with a much lighter step returned to the shuttle and gathered her staff. “He isn’t here. It appears he stowed away on a cargo shuttle bound for Luna—from there, he could find passage to half a dozen sectors. Alert Mr. Harrell’s ship. Tell him I suspect he’s headed to Outpost Delta. I’ll remain behind in case he attempts to return.” Sending the CEO of a major corporation on a wild goose chase to one of the most distant settlements in the Union—no turning back now. She eyed Artur, who didn’t bother to conceal his glee. And knowing you, you’ll take all the credit. That would be her parting gift to him—leaving him to explain to so many highly-placed individuals how he could’ve been so wrong and why he had left her behind and had that always been the plan and how much did he know and when did he know it?
The thought of Artur scrambling for purchase on the slippery slopes of terminal careerism made Leoni smile, but not for long. Once they figured out what she had done, they would come looking for her. And I’ll tell them what Broderick told me. That if they played fair, Earth would as well. And if they didn’t? She knew they would have a fight on their hands, that they would lose some battles. But they would win some as well. And as they did, they would repair this world, and maybe a few others along the way. Just as, in its way, this world would repair them.
THE PALMDALE COMMUNITY NEWSLETTER
by Anthony Lowe
Albert Jenkins lived on the corner of Sweetbrier and Veinte Street and never let anyone forget it. On his front lawn sat an old picnic table, lawn chair, and poster board sign advertising the Palmdale Community Newsletter: “A better world, free for all.”
Every day, before printing, he woke up with the sun and put on a pot of coffee, though this took some finagling since the machine was old enough to have known another century and he accidentally broke the glass pot during his lateral move from Lancaster a decade ago. If not set inside the machine at the right angle, the coffee spilled out over the counter, so he created a little canal made up of plastic bottles he found during his morning walks that harmlessly drained into the sink.
“Why don’t you just get another coffee machine?” I asked.
Albert laughed heartily, which caused him to rock a little in his recliner. When he realized I wasn’t joking, he just stared at me with concern. “It still works.”
“You’ve constructed a whole system to account for your coffee machine failing to make coffee.”
“Most of it gets in the pot anyway. I just don’t like mopping it up anymore. The coffee canal helps with that.”
“Right.”
After having his coffee, he treated himself to a piece of buttered toast with a sprinkling of cinnamon on top.
“I tried to convince the bakery a few blocks over to just make some cinnamon bread and it would save me a whole extra step. I mean, I buy from them every week and I can’t think of a soul bound for Heaven that doesn’t like cinnamon bread.”
“Did they make it for you?”
“Nah,” Albert said, rocking much more slowly to match his sinking mood. “Wouldn’t even consider it. Common courtesy is much more uncommon these days. Damn near elusive, lemme tell you.”
While eating his toast, he read through his copy of the Antelope Valley Enterprise, the last printed newspaper in the area that still offers home delivery.
Albert harrumphed. “Of all the papers to survive the gauntlet that the twenty-first century created for printed media, of course it was the goddamn Enterprise.” He snorted, sipped his coffee. “You couldn’t trust anything they printed back in the Nineties… Oh, sure, you’d have to have another paper around to verify anything they printed. Movie times, football scores, the weather, election results. They called the presidency for Bob Dole two weeks after the polls closed. If the Enterprise said we were due sunny skies for the day, you got your umbrella out of the closet.”
“Right, so about your newsletter…”
“The Enterprise barely succeeds at being good bedding in a hamster cage— What was that you said?”
“Your newsletter.” I had already been at his house for an hour, pen poised over my notepad long enough I had absently drilled through the first page with little impatient ink circles. “Anytime you’re ready.”
“The newsletter! Right!” Albert pulled his cane from the wall and used it to assist his rocking in the recliner. “You’ve read it?”
“I have, yeah. There are a few I haven’t been able to track down.”
“I’ve got all kinds of issues.”
“Right…”
“Got ’em all in the shed if you’re missing some. Usually print about fifty, plus ten extra and ten I send to the community college.”
“That’s where I found them. A friend of mine’s in charge of digitizing your work over there. He’s the one who talked to you on my behalf.”
“Right, right, so I heard. Digitizing. Ha! When I was a younger man, I never woulda thought computers would have a talent like that. The future can still amaze.”
I asked, “How long have you been running the newsletter?”
“Oh.” Albert scratched his head. “’Bout near five years, I suppose.”
“When did you decide to tackle this project?”
“Project?”
I nodded. “Yeah, this running narrative you’ve been building out these five years.”
“Narrative?”
From beside my seat, I produced my backpack that I had filled with copies of Albert Jenkins’ Palmdale Community Newsletter. I had read through the bulk of them, nearly 1800 issues for the nearly five years that he had been writing the PCN.
