He gave in too quickly. He wasn’t even listening to what I was saying — just succumbed to my pressure. He had tried to play the tough guy, but his thin layer of mental protection crumbled with ease under my onslaught.
He passed me the bottle. It was odd — wide, with a long, thick neck and no trace of a label.
He kept playing the victim. He reluctantly loosened his grip to pass me the bottle, and turned away with a gloomy expression. I could almost hear his thoughts: ‘Go on, rob me, you bastard. Two sips, my ass!’ He was going to listen to me drink and count each gulp, calculating exactly how many milliliters of water he was losing! Yeah... definitely a deer. Skittish, defenseless prey.
“Hey!”
His eyes flashed again from the thicket covering his face.
“Watch me,” I said, uncapping the bottle, “and count my sips. One.”
Water filled my mouth. Of course, it was disgustingly warm — he had been holding the bottle between his thighs. At least he hadn’t been sitting on it. But... water was water. I swallowed slowly and blew out a breath.
“Two.”
Down the hatch again. I screwed the cap on and gave pathetic little triple fours his bottle back.
“Thank you.”
“Oh, it was really nothing…” he muttered, tucking the bottle away.
I winced in disappointment. He behaved just as I expected from prey. This idiot willingly devalued his precious water, calling it ‘nothing’ like it wasn’t worth anything!
“Triple fours!” He flinched. His frightened eyes seemed to say, ‘Why did I have to sit here? Why didn’t I jump up and leave as soon as I got my bottle back? I’m not giving you another sip! Well, maybe just one. You hear me? Just one!’
“Thanks for the water.” I repeated. “We have a deal. I owe you two liters now. Got it?”
“Got it…”
“Hey!”
That look again… ‘Why are you still bothering me?’
“Now you say it!”
“I owe you… I mean, you owe me… Two liters… That’s too much, you know. One liter is enough… Really, just however much you can…”
I sighed. He was natural prey, and there was no way to fix that in a short time. Well, at least he seemed talkative, and wouldn’t snap at me like most of the others.
“Can you answer a few questions for me? I’m new, you know. And I think I’m screwed — I can’t get today’s job done on time.”
“Oh, man,” he perked up, compassion rising in his eyes. “You
He just needed dreadlocks and a joint to complete the picture of a crazed old druggie.
“Let’s talk a little,” I suggested, seizing the moment.
“Well, I have like ten minutes before I have to get to work. I gotta keep up — I don’t want to lose ORL! Ask away, man.”
Chapter 3
THE CONVERSATION ended up being both interesting and educational.
Deciding not to get bogged down in deep thoughts, I started with the most important question:
“What happens if I can’t keep my ORL status?”
“What happens? You start down the chute... It’s the first step towards bankruptcy.”
“Wait, hold on. What do you mean, ‘the chute’? Is that a figure of speech? Like I’ll get thrown in the trash if I don’t keep my status?”
“No! If you don’t stay at ORL, you’ll be sent down to GBL. Graded Basic Labor. Didn’t they tell you anything? Didn’t your waker explain this?”
“Who?”
“Your waker. Your personal alarm clock. The guy who woke you up, got you up, carried you to the hallway, and explained everything.”
“It wasn’t a guy. It was a girl.”
“Whatever. Did he, or she explain the workloads to you?”
“Nope. Just said to read the interface.”
“As if there’s anything to read there. What is it, five lines of text?”
“Yeah. My waker did a shitty job. So explain the loads to me.”
“ORL is your current work load. It pays more. This is your first day, which means that they gave you GBL but pay you like it’s ORL...”
I could feel the gears start to turn in my poor thirsty head. My thick blood was desperately trying to deliver glucose to my brain as it started to work.
ORL, GBL...
The guy with three fours on his chest noticed I was paying attention, and started talking faster and more animatedly. A few times, he even risked taking his hands off the bottle clamped between his legs. The more he talked, the more I learned.
This was a simple, cold, and dispassionately cruel place. Everything was extremely rational.
Everyone who came to the Zone, as they called these hallways — and everyone started their path here — started with ORL status. Optimized Regular Labor. Everyone here got an ORL job from the system every day, and the system credited their account with sol if they did the job.
