Part 1, The Ticking Clock

  Chapter 3 - Company Culture

  I rub my eyes as I tap my city-monitor to the door of our apartment and let myself in.

  The notice board lights up the living space with dim blue lights, flashing my pay stub for my upcoming paycheck.

  Salary, pension reduction, rental reduction, utilities, food and drink credit reduction, uniform reduction, education fees, common facilities reduction, transport credits reduction. The final total is negative, like it is every fortnight, I don’t even bother looking at the sum of my debt anymore. I probably won’t be able to begin reversing it till several years into a bonded salary, and that’s only if I’m careful to limit myself to the minimum food and drink credits Murasaki provides to all employees. At least my drink credits will get topped up at midnight. I might need it if Jason's manifestation goes poorly tomorrow and Meiko needs a drinking buddy.

  Our apartment is a standard issue two-bedroom in a square block on the inner sections of Murasaki’s district. The living area has a grey couch, screen and a side table with a water dispenser next to a desk with most of Dad’s things. Some of the management class and above get kitchenettes, but serfs aren’t worth the electricity to run personal refrigeration and there’s only so many symbionts with heat pump abilities. There are plenty of mess halls where those sorts of skills are centralized, and common areas with vending machines that can dispense food and drink for credit. Off the living room is three doors, a bathroom and two bedrooms. If I lived on my own I’d be shared bathing facilities. We don’t even get control over our own temperature, ventilation for these apartments is managed by the centralized utilities teams.

  The whole apartment would be another bland mass-produced affair if Dad hadn’t snuck out so much of my art over the years. There’s a few pieces propped at the side table and on one shelf, nothing hanging so we can take them down quickly if there is an inspection. He’s even gone to the effort of laminating them like the reference cards we take for descriptive interviews.

  Colorful feathers, fanned wings, coiling horns, they’re like glittering jewels to my eyes. My favorite is the Cervus with its proud head, dark intense eyes and branching antlers. I based it on the symbiont one of the mechanics manifested, who gets used for pulling heavy lab equipment on dollys. I didn’t draw it strapped into a harness dragging minus eighties or incubators though. I drew it proudly free, standing in the sunlight between buildings casting shadows only I can see. I could never quite capture the teal gleam of its coat when it thrums with power, strengthening it to pull objects far heavier than its size should suggest. Apparently they have a beautiful call, and I can imagine it, head lifted and antlers tipped backwards. The one I met only had dark, wet eyes and huffed gently when I touched it.

  I change in my room from the scrub-like uniform the lab workers all use into the only set of personal clothing I own. Pants with plenty of pockets, and a jacket with collars as high as I thought I could get away with. Into my pockets goes a variety of junk, I can pass it all off as innocent if I need to. Tweezers, a knife I fitted into a fold out comb, a black pen I nicked from the lab once, bits of string and electrical tape. I’ve added to my collection as scenarios have come up. I then tie up my grey streaked hair and shove a beanie into my pocket. On my way out the door I unclasp my city-monitor, and tuck it on the upper edge of the frame around the door.

  “Who the fuck designed this,” I mumble under my breath as I tug through the wires under the control panel of a waste chute to an apartment complex I’m definitely meant to be no where near.

  Between actually being able to see symbionts, and my knowledge of their species and abilities from working for my father, once I started paying attention I quickly worked out that most of the security at Murasaki was an elaborate hoax with easily exploitable weak points, typically in the places where symbionts, humans and technology all intersected.

  For example, the advantage of symbiont marking is that it can only be read by other symbionts with the same abilities and, although I don’t know the details, it’s hard to fake. So anything that warrants any level of security usually goes through a human bonded to such a symbiont. But symbionts who can mark are usually not the symbionts that can interface with technology, so the human still has to do something once their symbiont transfers whatever information was left on the mark, and the systems quickly get surprisingly exploitable once you start thinking about it.

  Some lazy bureaucrat decided syncing waste door permissions to a shift schedule for the sanitation workers was too much work to keep up to date, so instead of using city-monitors or ID cards for verification they just made a single symbiont marked card that they could carry around and verify at all the security desks in each apartment complex.

  Now, I wasn’t in the business of stealing something like that. But in this case, the waste chute is controlled by a button press at the security desk once the card is confirmed, and I am in the business of fucking with hardware. Once I’d started helping repair lab equipment in the Dorrien lab, most of the mystique behind how technology actually worked, symbiont enhanced or not, disappeared. There were some engineers who did some fantastic stuff, especially a corporation like Murasaki specializing in research and development, and I definitely knew when I was out of my depth. But simple gadgets were child's play once I’d started looking around.

  The annoying thing is that all these waste chute gates fail shut, it's just a fancy bin door after all, doesn’t need to work during a power outage. So it’s not as easy as just cutting power. With my knife in my mouth I tug some of the slack wire free so I can better see what I’m working with. I clip one wire, trim the insulation on another to expose the core, and with a quick touch, the waste chute door slides open with an electric whirr.

  I shove my work back into the panel, slide the access hatch back into place, and slip through to the staging area used by the sanitation workers for the trash, gaining access to the rest of the building.

  I pause to admire the ferns in front of the elevators as I work my way towards the entry lobby and the security desk. They coil their elegant fractal leaves in stark contrast to the straight plastic lines and black floors of Murasaki. I can smell the moist humus of the raised beds, some might find it offensive, but to me something feels so real about it. Everything at Murasaki is always plastic and metal and glass, no texture, no life. I grew up touching paper and crumbling chalk, smelling vinegar and formaldehyde. They were smells and textures that were rough, often made your throat burn, but they were real. I don’t even remember the last time I felt the wind blow that wasn’t from an exhaust fan or fume hood.

  This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  I glance around, there’s no Canis on patrol, and use my knife to snip the ?” black tubing running to the irrigation system and shove it down the side of the bed. The plants don’t deserve to die, but executives don’t deserve what the rest of us don’t get either. Chances are someone will notice once the plants start wilting anyway. It’s a harmless 'Get Fucked' to the jockeys but it fills me with impish joy anyway. I quickly move on.

  Harris is sitting at the security desk, his feet up while he reads on a hand-held. His Bubo rotates its head 180 degrees spotting me first and gives a gentle hoot. Harris looks up and almost kicks his workstation as he scrambles to his feet spotting me.

  “Conrad! What the fuck are you doing here? I’m on shift!”

  “I know, that’s why I’m here,” I reply, coming to sit at his desk. The temptation to pet his Bubo is strong, its two little ear tufts are adorable.

  “There’s cameras,” he hisses.

  “Calm down cob. There’s cameras everywhere. No one will check them unless something goes wrong and nothing will go wrong,” I reassure, smoothing the collar of his shirt and pulling him closer to me. I grin and cheekily add, “Unless you're planning on reporting me?”

  “For fucks…” I tug on his tie, getting the kiss I’m looking for and silencing his complaints. I wind my hands up his chest and around his neck, pulling him closer. “You’ll get me in trouble,” he whispers in my ear when we break apart.

  “I like trouble,” I whisper back, and push him off me, “Was thinking of breaking the waste chute so the execs have to suffer the indignity of watching their trash go out the front door?”

  “Don’t include me,” warns Harris with a growl, settling in his chair and spinning to face me so he has one leg on each side of me while I perch on his desk. His Bubo faintly hoots and shuffles on its feet from the perch that is standard to all security stations.

  “Well what do you recommend then? You’ve worked here for a few weeks now?” I ask, glancing at his workstation and lingering on the view of the security feed.

  “Here, sate your thirst for mischief by robbing the confiscated items,” he offers, turning the small keys on one of the drawers under the desk and pulling it open. There’s a handful of box cutters, probably confiscated from maintenance workers who forget they had them before trying to enter an apartment block for executives, and some other odds and ends that are best described as junk not contraband.

  I glance at the contents and crinkle my nose, “Eww, dero much? I don’t want to be part of the oppression, I just want to tweak its nose occasionally.”

  Harris looks unimpressed, “It’s not a big deal, the other officers do stuff like this all the time.”

  “Are you serious?” I ask.

  “Like I said, it’s not a big deal?”

  “Beg to differ. Since when did you think mank-shit like that is okay?”

  “Conrada…”

  I draw backwards from his wandering hands, “No, I’m serious?”

  Harris sighs and shrugs his shoulders in defeat, “Since I got a cog job like everybody else,” he moans, “Look it pays well, I’ve got a nice apartment and good hours. Another few weeks and you’ll be in the same boat. Everyone does this shit.”

  I raise my eyebrows, “You’re kidding. Where’d this come from?”

  Harris turns away from me, shifting uncomfortably in his chair, “We had a meeting with HR and new hires today going over the bonus structures for high level security. It's… not bad, it’s not as evil as we always joked now it’s real. With my symbiont, I could have a real future here… Don’t look at me like that. I’m being realistic.”

  I swallow, “Great, sure.”

  “Look, it might just be time to grow up…”

  I bristle, standing up and pushing him back on his wheelie-chair, “Did you just tell me to grow up?”

  “I didn’t say ‘grow up’! I just said it might be time. You’ll feel different after you manifest…”

  “No, I won’t.” I insist, folding my arms.

  “Conrada…”

  “Don’t ‘Conrada’ me! You’ve always been with Murasaki, you weren’t here for the buyout. One day all the rules change, everyone gets moved around, half my friends disappear cause their parent’s contracts got sold or transferred to another district city. Even petty shit like the food changed, they got rid of all the forks and I had to learn to use chopsticks. They don’t care, it’s just names and symbionts on paper, and fucking company culture, whatever that shit is.”

  “You’re still here, your father kept his job. You were like five or something when it happened, what are you on about?”

  “Yeah, great, the serfs can’t be fired,” I snap, “I’m leaving.”

  Harris relents, grabbing my hand as I push past him, “Calm down. It’s not that big a deal.”

  I tug my hand free, “I’ll go out the way I came in.”

  “Fine, you do you. You still have to live here like the rest of us. When you actually have something to risk, get back to me if being a little vigilante saboteur is still fun.”

  “Go watch the clock,” I swear. I glance at his monitor again to check the position of the officer with the Canis and march off leaving him to his shift.

  On my way out I rework the wiring of the access panel to shut the waste chute door behind me and do a rough job of the repair, with some luck it’ll come apart in a few weeks and the technician who repairs it will just think the previous person did a terrible job. I pull my beanie out of my pocket, take my jacket off and wrap it around my waist, then make my way back to the main walkways between the building’s of Murasaki’s district, slowly blending with the late night crowds and their invisible symbionts flying overhead or perched on shoulders.

  When I get back to my apartment, I fish my city-monitor back down from the door frame. I glance at the screen as I put it back on and tap the reader to let myself back into the apartment. There’s four unread messages. I can’t be bothered reading them and head for bed.