Day 13
5: Work
I woke up the next day wondering if somehow the day before had been a dream, in much the same way I had woken up on the day in question. Adding to the eerie sense of deja vu, Orin's and Jamie's voice streamed up from the first floor. It was only until I heard an interjection of Dana's that I convinced myself I wasn't somehow reliving the previous day. I dressed and made my way downstairs.
“Ah, it's nice to see you awake, Derek.” Orin said by way of greeting. He followed this up with a distinct pause, then, “I was stopping to see if your PDA was going to greet me in return this morning, too.”
I smiled and laughed, but without much feeling. I hadn't even had the chance to look over the previously hidden information there, and it had been a worry in the back of my mind all day. Even if, as many had suggested at this point, the information was decades out of date, I still had to know what it was. I had no memory of my father. He'd left – or, more accurately, been taken prisoner by those who would later become the Troopers – when I was too young to remember. The only thing he'd left me was the PDA, which Dana had given me as soon as I was old enough to read. I still didn't know how he got it out of his prison or how it got to Dana, especially given that it was apparently destined for Orin instead.
Orin either sensed my discomfort or recognized it from the strained laughter. Mercifully, he changed the subject. “Now that you're all here, I'd like to give you the tour of our town. I've procured a slightly larger car for this, but it will still be a bit of a stretch to fit us all. This will hopefully be made up for by the fact that the tour will be slightly shorter. You've already been given a rather hands-on tour of the hospital.”
With this he led the first part of the tour; out of the house and to the car. It was, as promised, only slightly larger than the previous one, but it would hold five.
“When I was talking to the nurse yesterday,” Dana mentioned in a too-casual voice, “I got the impression that Haven here tries very hard to be an egalitarian sort of society.”
“We do the best we can.” Orin admitted. “There are laws here still, and they have to sadly be enforced from time to time. We only get away with the communal feel as much as we do because we have too many resources here. Finding houses is not hard, the inhabited portion of the town is small enough to walk across given enough time so there is very little traffic, and I've long made sure that acquiring food and water is given the highest priority.”
Dana seemed to take this in. “But there are aspects of older societies here. For instance, I'm willing to bet that you recognize the old traditional method of seating declaration-” at this she slid ahead of the group and walked in front of the car, “-specifically: Shotgun.”
Orin laughed, loudly, while everyone else save Dana just seemed annoyed they hadn't thought of it first. He gestured to the door in front of her. “The passenger's seat is yours.”
He took the driver's seat, and the rest of us piled in the back. Jamie sat in the middle, and as everyone was still trying to get comfortable, she slipped an arm around me. I returned the favor in kind. If anyone noticed, they weren't saying anything, but both of us must have been smiling like idiots.
“This is the north end of town, mostly houses as you can tell.” Orin began as the car left the driveway. “Also mostly uninhabited, we're trying to put people in houses all around the city before we expand outward any farther. It makes for not seeing many neighbors, but I think we'll be in a better situation tactically if we have eyes on all sides of us.” He paused to consider. “I should give credit where it's due; Robin came up with the plan. Many of the details of our fortifications were her idea.”
He drove into the downtown area and pointed out the shops that Jamie and I had discovered the plaza we'd eaten at, the park where we'd spent the better part of the day, a bookstore where we'd spent another part, and finally the rent-a-'net cafe where we'd spent the rest. Even in a romantic mood, apparently, we gravitated toward what we were used to.
We passed the hospital, then, which Orin of course pointed out. He pretended to begin a long-winded speech about it, one which apparently John had heard before from one of the nurses at the hospital itself. John registered this disapproval of hearing the story twice by kicking the back of Orin's seat. Duly chastised, Orin drove on.
We passed a few civic buildings: A library, a police station and firehouse, a building which Orin informed us was the mayor's office (“Robin's the mayor now. I was until about ten years ago, which is when I got tired of running.”), and a featureless brick building. Orin parked in a structure next to this and exited the car.
“This is where the fun stuff happens.” he said simply as he guided us to an elevator. It seemed more spacious than the car, and Orin hit the Lobby button without comment.
The doors opened, we piled out through a glass-encased walkway that connected the brick building with the parking structure. It occurred to me just now that the featureless building had been exactly that. Other than the walkway we were in, a walkway which exited on the other side of the elevator from that we had entered, there seemed to be no entrances to it. No windows, no doors, not even an air conditioner. I strongly suspected that the glass which surrounded us was actually a far stronger material.
We entered the building into a room which was apparently the lobby. This building, Orin informed us, dated back a century to the first construction of the town. It'd been intended as an observation post for smaller, non-nuclear tests to be performed. Nowadays, he told us with a wink, it was the heart of the rebellion.
With that he stopped us all. “Before we go in, let me just say. You don't have to join us. I give this tour to every newcomer who comes into the city, but I usually leave this last part off until they've been here a month or two. I like them to get their bearings, see if they like any job in the city before I offer them a job here. I stress, this isn't because they are untrustworthy but rather because I don't like to dirty people's hands. Most cells in the rebellion are strictly instructed not to take life if it can be otherwise helped. Hack accounts to move money, smuggle Afflicted to safety, sabotage Trooper operations at every given opportunity, yes. But do not kill. Too many troopers are exactly like ordinary people. Raised a certain way to believe certain things, they do not know they are part of a monster. They have never done anything themselves to warrant death.”
He paused to glance over at us. “You may say that isn't fair, that we are in a war. You are right. It isn't fair, and we are in a war. That's why cells usually train in firearms, because they may need it. That's why, behind these doors, we make weapons. You four are different than most people who come to Haven. Most people arrive here because they are refugees, either smuggled out of cities by cells like your own, or from the experiment centers. They haven't fought before. I know you all have.”
“Still,” he continued. “If there is any among you who wishes to give up the life of war, you can step aside and I will not hold it against you. And also know that going through this door does not doom you to be one of our field agents. If you find that being a fireman or a schoolteacher or other civic job suits you better, you are welcome to it. Haven needs everyone. Now, who will stay and who will come with me?”
“I'm in.” John said. He'd been wanting to speak up ever since Orin had said 'weapons'.
“Me too.” Dana added. She was far more reluctant. The idea of forever giving up war appealed to her, I could tell, but enough of her mind agreed with John's sentiment of the day before, that it was inevitable.
“Might as well.” Jamie said. “All the cool things to do with 90% of a net degree are illegal anyway.”
I just nodded at Orin. This had been the life my father was meant to live. I was going to do it right.
“Okay.” Orin said, and opened the doors. We walked down the ensuing hallway past several video cameras to another elevator. Orin instead took the stairs. “We're going to the basement, naturally. All the floors above this one are for show, and full of traps and explosives and twisty mazes of cubicles, all alike. The city was not built for defensiveness, but we've gone through as much effort as possible to retrofit it that way.”
The stairs were poorly lit, which was probably the point. We walked until we got to another door, this one obviously heavy and made of solid metal. Two cameras watched it, and a lone electronic keypad sat on its face as the only apparent way to open it.
Orin pressed a series of numbers. Nothing happened for a moment, then he took a step back and the door swung slowly outward. The metal was a full inch thick, and reinforced with steel cylinders that made it seem like a bank vault. We all stepped through as quietly as we could, as though we were being watched. The cameras on the wall did not help this illusion.
The door shut behind us, leaving us in a steel corridor with another similar metal door at the far end. As Orin punched in another keycode, he mentioned “This is actually the way we found it, and it took us forever to discover the codes that opened it up. A fallout and nuclear blast shelter, it's actually built into the bedrock below the city. If you went far enough back, you'd find the natural caves that spread back into the mountains. There are a number of them that come back into the city in ways like this. If you have an interest, I'll show you later.
The door finally opened, relieving the sense of claustrophobia and letting some fresh air in. I hadn't realized until now that our room had been airtight. I was about to ask Orin what its purpose was, until I caught sight of perhaps a half dozen small nozzles in the walls and ceiling of the room. Of course, it was to gas intruders. I was happier than ever to step out of there.
The room we stepped into was large, and despite the fact it'd been finished repeatedly in the past century it was obvious that it had once been a cave. Now it seemed to serve as a security center. A literal wall of televisions covered one side. Apparently there were cameras throughout the city and surrounding desert, not just in the headquarters.
In front of the TVs were several people with cordless microphones. One of them murmured “Guests have arrived, re-sealing entryway.”
Once the door behind us had closed, it was that one who looked up. “Nice to see you, Orin. Giving the tour a bit early, huh? I always thought we should step up the recruitment effort. I'm getting tired of these long six-hour shifts.”
“A pleasure to see you as well, Aaron.” Orin said, as though the other hadn't spoken a word out of line. “Is Robin here?”
“Does she ever leave?” Aaron countered. “I think she's with Chad right now.”
“Good, good.” Orin said. “Thank you for your vigilance.”
Aaron replied with a mock salute then turned back to look at the monitors. Orin motioned us to follow.
There were several exits from the main area, and Orin chose one seemingly at random, with the air of someone who'd traveled them many times before.
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“Officially, I was employed. A professional test subject, I supposed. They poked, they prodded, they made vague notes of disapproval as they injected me with something that would later set my nerves afire. I don't want to say it was the worse job that's ever existed, but on top of it all the pay was lousy, I couldn't leave to spend it on anything, and I suspected I'd never see my family again.”
I woke up the next day wondering if somehow the day before had been a dream, in much the same way I had woken up on the day in question. Adding to the eerie sense of deja vu, Orin's and Jamie's voice streamed up from the first floor. It was only until I heard an interjection of Dana's that I convinced myself I wasn't somehow reliving the previous day. I dressed and made my way downstairs.
“Ah, it's nice to see you awake, Derek.” Orin said by way of greeting. He followed this up with a distinct pause, then, “I was stopping to see if your PDA was going to greet me in return this morning, too.”
I smiled and laughed, but without much feeling. I hadn't even had the chance to look over the previously hidden information there, and it had been a worry in the back of my mind all day. Even if, as many had suggested at this point, the information was decades out of date, I still had to know what it was. I had no memory of my father. He'd left – or, more accurately, been taken prisoner by those who would later become the Troopers – when I was too young to remember. The only thing he'd left me was the PDA, which Dana had given me as soon as I was old enough to read. I still didn't know how he got it out of his prison or how it got to Dana, especially given that it was apparently destined for Orin instead.
Orin either sensed my discomfort or recognized it from the strained laughter. Mercifully, he changed the subject. “Now that you're all here, I'd like to give you the tour of our town. I've procured a slightly larger car for this, but it will still be a bit of a stretch to fit us all. This will hopefully be made up for by the fact that the tour will be slightly shorter. You've already been given a rather hands-on tour of the hospital.”
With this he led the first part of the tour; out of the house and to the car. It was, as promised, only slightly larger than the previous one, but it would hold five.
“When I was talking to the nurse yesterday,” Dana mentioned in a too-casual voice, “I got the impression that Haven here tries very hard to be an egalitarian sort of society.”
“We do the best we can.” Orin admitted. “There are laws here still, and they have to sadly be enforced from time to time. We only get away with the communal feel as much as we do because we have too many resources here. Finding houses is not hard, the inhabited portion of the town is small enough to walk across given enough time so there is very little traffic, and I've long made sure that acquiring food and water is given the highest priority.”
Dana seemed to take this in. “But there are aspects of older societies here. For instance, I'm willing to bet that you recognize the old traditional method of seating declaration-” at this she slid ahead of the group and walked in front of the car, “-specifically: Shotgun.”
Orin laughed, loudly, while everyone else save Dana just seemed annoyed they hadn't thought of it first. He gestured to the door in front of her. “The passenger's seat is yours.”
He took the driver's seat, and the rest of us piled in the back. Jamie sat in the middle, and as everyone was still trying to get comfortable, she slipped an arm around me. I returned the favor in kind. If anyone noticed, they weren't saying anything, but both of us must have been smiling like idiots.
“This is the north end of town, mostly houses as you can tell.” Orin began as the car left the driveway. “Also mostly uninhabited, we're trying to put people in houses all around the city before we expand outward any farther. It makes for not seeing many neighbors, but I think we'll be in a better situation tactically if we have eyes on all sides of us.” He paused to consider. “I should give credit where it's due; Robin came up with the plan. Many of the details of our fortifications were her idea.”
He drove into the downtown area and pointed out the shops that Jamie and I had discovered the plaza we'd eaten at, the park where we'd spent the better part of the day, a bookstore where we'd spent another part, and finally the rent-a-'net cafe where we'd spent the rest. Even in a romantic mood, apparently, we gravitated toward what we were used to.
We passed the hospital, then, which Orin of course pointed out. He pretended to begin a long-winded speech about it, one which apparently John had heard before from one of the nurses at the hospital itself. John registered this disapproval of hearing the story twice by kicking the back of Orin's seat. Duly chastised, Orin drove on.
We passed a few civic buildings: A library, a police station and firehouse, a building which Orin informed us was the mayor's office (“Robin's the mayor now. I was until about ten years ago, which is when I got tired of running.”), and a featureless brick building. Orin parked in a structure next to this and exited the car.
“This is where the fun stuff happens.” he said simply as he guided us to an elevator. It seemed more spacious than the car, and Orin hit the Lobby button without comment.
The doors opened, we piled out through a glass-encased walkway that connected the brick building with the parking structure. It occurred to me just now that the featureless building had been exactly that. Other than the walkway we were in, a walkway which exited on the other side of the elevator from that we had entered, there seemed to be no entrances to it. No windows, no doors, not even an air conditioner. I strongly suspected that the glass which surrounded us was actually a far stronger material.
We entered the building into a room which was apparently the lobby. This building, Orin informed us, dated back a century to the first construction of the town. It'd been intended as an observation post for smaller, non-nuclear tests to be performed. Nowadays, he told us with a wink, it was the heart of the rebellion.
With that he stopped us all. “Before we go in, let me just say. You don't have to join us. I give this tour to every newcomer who comes into the city, but I usually leave this last part off until they've been here a month or two. I like them to get their bearings, see if they like any job in the city before I offer them a job here. I stress, this isn't because they are untrustworthy but rather because I don't like to dirty people's hands. Most cells in the rebellion are strictly instructed not to take life if it can be otherwise helped. Hack accounts to move money, smuggle Afflicted to safety, sabotage Trooper operations at every given opportunity, yes. But do not kill. Too many troopers are exactly like ordinary people. Raised a certain way to believe certain things, they do not know they are part of a monster. They have never done anything themselves to warrant death.”
He paused to glance over at us. “You may say that isn't fair, that we are in a war. You are right. It isn't fair, and we are in a war. That's why cells usually train in firearms, because they may need it. That's why, behind these doors, we make weapons. You four are different than most people who come to Haven. Most people arrive here because they are refugees, either smuggled out of cities by cells like your own, or from the experiment centers. They haven't fought before. I know you all have.”
“Still,” he continued. “If there is any among you who wishes to give up the life of war, you can step aside and I will not hold it against you. And also know that going through this door does not doom you to be one of our field agents. If you find that being a fireman or a schoolteacher or other civic job suits you better, you are welcome to it. Haven needs everyone. Now, who will stay and who will come with me?”
“I'm in.” John said. He'd been wanting to speak up ever since Orin had said 'weapons'.
“Me too.” Dana added. She was far more reluctant. The idea of forever giving up war appealed to her, I could tell, but enough of her mind agreed with John's sentiment of the day before, that it was inevitable.
“Might as well.” Jamie said. “All the cool things to do with 90% of a net degree are illegal anyway.”
I just nodded at Orin. This had been the life my father was meant to live. I was going to do it right.
“Okay.” Orin said, and opened the doors. We walked down the ensuing hallway past several video cameras to another elevator. Orin instead took the stairs. “We're going to the basement, naturally. All the floors above this one are for show, and full of traps and explosives and twisty mazes of cubicles, all alike. The city was not built for defensiveness, but we've gone through as much effort as possible to retrofit it that way.”
The stairs were poorly lit, which was probably the point. We walked until we got to another door, this one obviously heavy and made of solid metal. Two cameras watched it, and a lone electronic keypad sat on its face as the only apparent way to open it.
Orin pressed a series of numbers. Nothing happened for a moment, then he took a step back and the door swung slowly outward. The metal was a full inch thick, and reinforced with steel cylinders that made it seem like a bank vault. We all stepped through as quietly as we could, as though we were being watched. The cameras on the wall did not help this illusion.
The door shut behind us, leaving us in a steel corridor with another similar metal door at the far end. As Orin punched in another keycode, he mentioned “This is actually the way we found it, and it took us forever to discover the codes that opened it up. A fallout and nuclear blast shelter, it's actually built into the bedrock below the city. If you went far enough back, you'd find the natural caves that spread back into the mountains. There are a number of them that come back into the city in ways like this. If you have an interest, I'll show you later.
The door finally opened, relieving the sense of claustrophobia and letting some fresh air in. I hadn't realized until now that our room had been airtight. I was about to ask Orin what its purpose was, until I caught sight of perhaps a half dozen small nozzles in the walls and ceiling of the room. Of course, it was to gas intruders. I was happier than ever to step out of there.
The room we stepped into was large, and despite the fact it'd been finished repeatedly in the past century it was obvious that it had once been a cave. Now it seemed to serve as a security center. A literal wall of televisions covered one side. Apparently there were cameras throughout the city and surrounding desert, not just in the headquarters.
In front of the TVs were several people with cordless microphones. One of them murmured “Guests have arrived, re-sealing entryway.”
Once the door behind us had closed, it was that one who looked up. “Nice to see you, Orin. Giving the tour a bit early, huh? I always thought we should step up the recruitment effort. I'm getting tired of these long six-hour shifts.”
“A pleasure to see you as well, Aaron.” Orin said, as though the other hadn't spoken a word out of line. “Is Robin here?”
“Does she ever leave?” Aaron countered. “I think she's with Chad right now.”
“Good, good.” Orin said. “Thank you for your vigilance.”
Aaron replied with a mock salute then turned back to look at the monitors. Orin motioned us to follow.
There were several exits from the main area, and Orin chose one seemingly at random, with the air of someone who'd traveled them many times before.
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posted by Roger Ostrander at 6:12 PM
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