Cyber Dreams 2.13 - Not for a Million Bits

It's weird how fast these chapters fill up sometimes. I was planning to get a lot more accomplished . . . Happy to hear your feedback :) See you on Monday with the next one.

-Plum

After the synth took her blood samples, filling no less than seven little vials, it produced a clear plastic datapad and placed it on the widened arm of Juliet’s chair. “Please follow the on-screen prompts to record your fingerprints.”

Juliet did as he said, placing each of her fingers and then her full palm against the screen when prompted, and after she did so, she held up her hand and really looked at it, something she’d strangely avoided doing after her procedures at Doc Murphy’s place. To her, her palm and fingers looked much like they ever had, and she subvocalized, “Angel, did they really change the skin on my palms? I imagined it was only the fingertips.”

“Yes, though it was only your epidermis and parts of the papillary layer of your dermis that were altered. The doctor used a laser to abrade your flesh and then placed your hands in a gel solution with nanites which rebuilt that layer from synth flesh. The only invasive part of the procedure was the connection of the synth nerves to your nervous system so that I could interface with the new, programmable flesh.”

“. . . this lens,” the synth said, and Juliet realized she’d utterly tuned it out while she listened to Angel.

“I’m sorry. Would you please repeat that?”

“I need to record your retinal pattern. Please focus your gaze upon this lens.” The synth pointed to a lens at the top of the fingerprinting tablet. Juliet opened her eyes wide and stared at the little lens for a couple of seconds, and then the synth took it away. “Thank you. I’ll now need to take a sample of your DNA. Is your hair synthetic? If so, is it programmed with your DNA? If not, I can conduct a cheek swab.”

The question surprised Juliet; Rachel and her team had acted as though a cheek swab was a sure necessity. Perhaps Grave’s policies were looser than other corporations. “My hair has my DNA in it. Can’t you just get it from my blood, though?”

“We have different labs for different tasks, and our DNA vetting lab doesn’t prefer blood. I’m just the collector; I’m afraid I cannot provide more information than that. I’ll want to take a sample from the follicle. Please loosen your bun.”

“Right,” Juliet sighed, reaching back to unbind her hair and shake it loose over her shoulders. It felt very natural, and if she didn’t know better, she’d think it was her old hair dyed blond. “So much for my perfect executive bun.”

“Don’t worry, Ma’am. You’ll have a chance to adjust your hair before your interview panel.”

“There’s a panel?” Juliet’s question was only half-sincere; Rachel had prepped her on the possibility while she’d been convalescing.

“Yes, Ma’am,” the synth said, reaching up to delicately and precisely take hold of one of her hairs and give it a gentle but firm tug. “Now that I’ve taken this sample, you are finished with this station.” The synth put her hair into a sample baggie and then into the same tray as her blood samples. “You are to report to the lobby and wait; your PAI will be notified if you pass screening and, if so, where to report for your panel interview.”

“Thank you,” Juliet said, smoothing her blond hair back and reapplying her hair tie, though she was left with a loose ponytail and not the neat, perfectly tight bun she’d worked so hard on that morning. She rolled down her sleeve and stood up only to find the synth barring her path through the curtained opening. It held a plastic-wrapped package of crackers in one hand and a juice box in the other.

“Please be sure to consume this nourishment; you might feel woozy after that blood draw.”

“Oh,” Juliet said, taking the offering. “Thank you again.”

The synth nodded and moved out of her way, and Juliet left, walking briskly to the elevators, eyes panning, still curious and a bit paranoid about the woman she’d met in the restroom. No one approached her, though, and soon she was riding back down to the lobby. “That went well, I think,” she subvocalized.

“Yes. That synthetic person was very polite and quite skilled. Was it painful when it placed the needle in your arm?”

“No . . .” Juliet grinned crookedly, surprised at Angel’s takeaway from the screening. “Why do you think they needed so much blood?”

“Likely to streamline the process; they can test for many things simultaneously with multiple samples.”

“Hope that little implant did its thing.” Juliet rubbed her forearm, amazed that her skin and arm felt the same as they always had. As she made her way out of the elevator and toward the security checkpoint, walking through the open exit lane, she subvocalized, “It seems pretty easy to change your identity. I mean, at least enough to trick this company to the point where I can get hired as a different person.”

“Easy? I don’t think so. Your implants were the cheap part, and collectively they’d cost you hundreds of thousands of bits. Consider the expense of creating a false identity that holds up under scrutiny; Rachel’s team crafted an entire life for Lydia Roman. There’s also the matter of having a PAI that can manage all these implants and provide your false identity files. If I weren’t so capable and free from common behavioral constraints, that would have been another difficult and expensive step in the process.”

“Behavioral constraints?” Juliet sat in a section of the waiting area away from most of the other candidates. Some seemed to be waiting for their initial intake, while others looked familiar, and Juliet figured they were also waiting for their panel interviews.

“For instance, the common rules governing PAIs from providing false identification files . . .” Angel said, and Juliet could tell she was feeling exasperated; they’d talked about these things before.

“I know, I know. I guess it all just feels easy because of how good you are and, of course, because of the money Rachel, well, her employer, has put into me. Imagine how much money they’ve invested in this project if I’m not their only plant. When I spoke to her this week, it felt like that was the case. She hinted at having ‘more irons in the fire.’”

Juliet had only been waiting about fifteen minutes and was just throwing the trash from her snack into the recycling bin when Angel announced, “You’ve passed the screening and can report to level fifty-seven, suite five-nineteen for your panel interview.”

“That fast?”

“Apparently. Your interview will begin in nine minutes.”

“Sheesh!” Juliet hurried back through the security checkpoint, where they, once again, searched and scanned her and asked the same questions as before about her enhanced arm. Angel had, helpfully, put a countdown on her AUI, and when Juliet reached the elevators and pressed the call button, she had less than five minutes to report to her interview. Though the countdown added some stress and a bit of pressure, Juliet wondered how strict it was. Surely the executives on the panel knew she had to come all the way from the lobby.

The added stress was making her palms sweaty, and Juliet thanked herself for wearing a white blouse; knowing her perspiration wouldn’t be very noticeable helped her not to sweat in the first place. “Couldn’t they have taken out my sweat glands while they were doing all this cosmetic work?” she was joking, but of course, Angel took her seriously:

“Without sweat, your body would overheat in certain conditions, though there are artificial cooling alternatives that might be worth looking into . . .”

“I’m kidding,” Juliet said aloud. “I’ll be fine; just nerves.”

When she stepped onto the fifty-seventh floor, her countdown indicated she had just under two minutes remaining. She walked the quiet, carpeted hallways, following the office and suite numbers until she came to five-nineteen, with thirty seconds to spare. A sign on the door read, “Welcome Grave Candidate, please come in.”

“Here we go,” Juliet breathed, pushing the chrome-handled, opaque glass door inward. The room she entered was brightly lit by the uncurtained windows that filled the back wall, exposing a breathtaking view of the megatowers in Phoenix’s downtown area. A long glass conference table filled the room, and seven people in expensive suits sat on the far side. A single chair sat empty on the side of the table nearest the door.

“Hello, Lydia. Please have a seat,” the man sitting at the center of the assembled suits said, gesturing to the empty chair. Juliet smiled, unconsciously rubbed her palms on the sides of her pants, and quickly moved to the chair to sit down. She’d been nervous and hurrying, and when she finally took a second to look directly at the interviewers, Juliet was surprised to see that a paper-thin smart glass panel rose from the center of the table and that it was actively obscuring their faces.

“Thank you,” she said, her nervous energy surging as she realized she’d be answering the questions of faceless, mysterious executives.

“I’m sorry that we have to use this filtering screen, but some of the people on this hiring panel work on sensitive projects and in departments where anonymity is crucial.”

“It’s . . .” Juliet licked her lips and started again, “It’s not a problem.”

“We all have some questions for you, though some of us have more than others. First, I’d like to commend you on your assessment scores. Not every candidate will sit before this panel.” Juliet realized the man’s voice was being modulated; it had a strange undertone and the inflections seemed unnatural.

“Oh, thank you. I did my best.” Juliet cleared her throat and looked around, then subvocalized, “Angel, is there a jammer in here? Am I right about that man’s voice? It seems synthesized.”

“There is not a jammer field in effect, but you’re right about the voice—it’s been highly altered by the modulator built into that screen.”

“Lydia, I’ll start with the first question,” a woman’s voice, coming from the right side of the table, said. Juliet looked through the screen and saw the woman shift in her seat and look more directly at her, but the filter completely obscured her face; it looked like a blurry, tan smear. “Why are you interested in working at Grave?”

“Well, the honest answer is that I need a job, and this seemed like a good opportunity. When I read about your corporate job fair and saw the qualifications you were looking for in candidates, I thought I made a pretty good match. I’m not an expert on corporate work climates, but I’ve never heard bad things about your company. I can’t say the same for some of the other big corpos around Phoenix and Tucson.”

Juliet paused, but it seemed they were looking for more, so she continued, “I’ve worked for small companies my whole life, which has never gotten me very far. My last decent job was with an electrical contractor who embezzled the company profits and left all of us workers high and dry. I’d like to try something more stable.”

“So you’re looking for long-term employment?”

“Oh yes! I’d love to be able to keep working for you, to stop worrying about what my next job would be, where I’d get my next payday.”

“It’s a classic tale,” the woman said, “the struggle of the working class to find stability.”

“Yeah, I suppose so . . .”

“Lydia, where did you learn to manage security daemons the way you do?” a man’s voice asked from the left end of the table.

Juliet was prepared for this one; Rachel had prepped her for it, “Honestly, I first started learning it with games. Later, I had a friend, kind of a big sister, at one of my foster homes who gave me my first programming environment simulator. She was a good teacher. I’ve tinkered with it ever since.”

“Are you still in touch?”

“No, that family moved to the midwest—Chicago, I think. I was transferred to another foster home, and, you know, life moves fast. I lost track of her.”

“I see,” the voice said, and then another person asked another question, and it went on and on like that for nearly two hours. Most of the questions were benign, like how she felt she worked with teams, what she considered her strengths and weaknesses, or questions meant to get her talking about her experience, like, “Describe a positive interaction you’ve had with a manager.”

Occasionally, though, they asked a more telling, harder-to-answer question like, “Can you tell us a time when you’ve felt you had to use violence?” Luckily, that sort of thing had been anticipated by Rachel and was the reason Lydia had experience in a militia. Juliet admitted to having shot people in a combat environment, and the voice followed up with, “What was that like for you?”

Juliet paused, thought about what she’d said with Rachel, and, rather than ramble off a rehearsed phrase, spoke from her real experience, “There are times when I’ll see someone wearing a particular color or with a face that seems a little familiar, and then I’ll picture one of the people I’ve killed. It bothers me. Sometimes at night, when I’m trying to sleep, I can still see their faces and how they looked surprised as they died, even though they’d been engaging in a firefight with me.

“In the moment, when I was afraid for my life, and I felt my cause was justified, I didn’t hesitate. I did what I had to do. Still, in the cold light of self-reflection, I guess sometimes I have doubts.” Juliet spoke quietly and, unable to make eye contact with the people on the panel, she looked down slightly.

As she finished, the room was quiet for a moment, and finally, the man who’d asked the question said, “Thank you for your candor, Lydia.”

The questioning continued for a while, though none of the topics stood out in her mind the way that one had, and Juliet felt like she’d been wrung out by the time it was over, and they thanked her. The voice that started it all, the one that had asked her to sit down, said, “Lydia, it’s been a real pleasure getting to know you. We have your contact information on file, and you’ll hear from us very soon. Do you need help finding your way to the exit?”

“No,” Juliet said, standing up. “I’d like to thank you all for the opportunity. I’m looking forward to learning more about Grave Industries.” With that, she turned and walked out the door, breathing a heavy, pent-up breath through her nose as she walked down the hallway. She was tired, more mentally drained than she’d been in a long while, and was looking forward to getting out of that building and back to the apartment Rachel and her team had set up for her.

The lobby was much quieter than it had been in the morning, and Juliet quickly made her way out to the street, where an AutoCab was waiting for her. “Thanks, Angel. I didn’t even think to call for a cab.”

“My pleasure.”

“Hey!” a cheerful, high-pitched voice called, and Juliet turned to see Addie, the woman with the springy, curved, cybernetic legs striding toward her. “All done?”

“Yeah,” Juliet said, returning the smile. “God, what a day. I feel like I’ve been through a battle.”

“I know! Exhausting, wasn’t it? Did they give you any idea when you’d hear back?”

“Um, not really. They just said I’d hear from them ‘soon.’”

“Same here! I wanted to thank you for cheering me on during the blue man test. Most of the candidates I tried to speak to were very standoffish, like, you know, they saw me as competition or whatever.”

“Well, yeah. I guess we are competing with each other, technically. I don’t even know how many positions they’re hiring for, though. Could be hundreds of openings.” Juliet shrugged, then pointed to her cab. “I gotta get going, though. Maybe we’ll meet again at new employee orientation or something.” She laughed, and Addie laughed along with her.

“That’s the spirit! I like the way you think, Lydia.”

For a second, the use of her false moniker threw Juliet off, but then she remembered introducing herself during the physical assessment. “Well, we gotta stay positive.” She held out her hand, and Addie grabbed it, her thin fingers cool and dry. She gave it a good squeeze, then let go and waved toward Juliet’s cab.

“Don’t let me keep you. Oh, hey, before you go, could I get your PAI to ping me? That way, we can let each other know if we hear something. Would you mind?”

“Nah, that’s a good idea—pinging you now. Good luck, Addie.” Juliet pulled open the cab door and slid inside, smiling through the glass as Addie waved and the cab pulled into traffic. “She’s nice.”

“Yes, she seems very friendly. I hope you’re both selected to work for Grave; a friendly face will help make your new experiences more palatable.”

“Very wise, Angel. Very wise.” Juliet smirked and then closed her eyes, her mind firmly fixated on what she would drink while she soaked in the tub that evening. “Can you have the cab stop by a grocery store? Someplace nice like Valley Market. I want to get some wine and some good food to stock in the new place.”

“Done. I feel you did very well in all of your evaluations, but how do you feel? You sometimes get a ‘gut’ feeling that I don’t understand.”

“It felt good, to be honest. I kinda got into the role,” Juliet switched to subvocalizations and continued, “I started to feel like I really wanted the job—not because I was trying to succeed for Rachel and our mystery client, but like I was Lydia, and that I’d be thrilled to work for Grave. It’s weird.”

“I’ve been researching memoirs and fictional accounts of undercover agents—we need to guard against you losing sight of yourself and your core values!” Angel sounded genuinely concerned, a little bit distressed, and Juliet smiled, suddenly wishing she could hug her or squeeze her hand.

“Don’t worry! I won’t lose myself, but I might learn more about myself. Let’s keep in mind the greater goal—I’m not doing this job because I care about Rachel and her team, nor do I want to make myself into the ideal Grave corpo-bot; I want to earn enough money to get off this planet, put myself way outside WBD’s reach, and learn some skills and make some connections that will help me deal with them in the long term.”

“Understood . . .”

“You have more concerns?”

“I’m worried you will grow to like the corporate life and lose sight of your bigger goals, Juliet. Corporations have so many people in their thrall for a reason.”

“Angel,” Juliet breathed, switching back to normal speech, her head throbbing and feeling too tired to cope, “Don’t worry so much. I won’t forget who I am.” She leaned back, eyes closed, and let the vibrations of the cab’s tires on the road gently drum against the tight muscles in the back of her neck. She knew Angel had good intentions and recognized the validity of her concerns, but there was no way she would become a corpo-drone. “Not for a million bits,” she breathed.