[The City that Never Wakes] Wageslave

"Woah!" he jumps a bit, startled by her motions, but it only takes him a moment to embrace her in return. "Woah, Ash. I'm only..." He seems to run out of things to say, and then holds her tighter, his jaw working silently as he searches for the words. "I want to see it work out for you."
 
For a long moment Ash just sits there. Safe, her reptile brain tells her, and this time - just this once - she's going to stomp on all the higher cognitive functions that are calling bullshit on the idea, and just enjoy the feeling.


Then she closes her eyes and lets sleep claim her.
 
Ash's sleep is fitful, and troubled. Though her nightmares are neither as sharp nor as cruel as her first vision, shadowy shapes and vague concepts of fear torment her during the night, and she wakes up at several points. Each time, she finds that Mark is still asleep next to her, the two of them slumped back in her bed, the back elevated like a chair. Sometimes, her motions wake him as well, and he offers reassurance. Sometimes, he sleeps through them, and she has to find her own comfort by his side.


It's only four hours later that she opens her eyes. She should feel tired. She should. She has every right to feel tired. Stressed. Weak and achy.


But of course, she feels perfectly peppy and alert.


Mark is already wired into his simrig, and doesn't immediately rose when Ask awakes. He has one arm around her, though she's not clear if he tucked her in against him, or if she found that spot on her own. His appearance is a tad disheveled—falling asleep in full uniform will have that effect—and his head is tucked down into the mess of pillows at the head of the bed. Ash has only barely lifted her head when the room senses her presence, and the lights slowly start to rise.


At once, Mark snaps awake. momentarily disoriented as he comes out of sim.
 
Ash gives him an awkward half-sitting hug, then smiles as she carefully detaches herself from his embrace.


"Thank you," is all she says before she begins looking around for her comm, trodes and other peripherals. But even without saying anything, even without the limbic DNI sideband, it's obvious that she's better already. Maybe even better than she's been all week. Calmer. More secure. Not, perhaps, good just yet. But better.
 
"Oh, uh..." Mark says, as Ash fishes around. Her peripherals are still in the corner of the living room, and her path there is currently blocked by a reasonable amount of orc. Mark seems to have mistaken her looking for a way around him for looking at him, and sits up a little straighter in response. "Yeah, don't mention it. Are you feeling better? I talked to HR this morning."
 
"It's not all bad," he says, after a moment, though his tone is carefully controlled. "We talked about what your options are if you want to drop out. They're not all terrible. You need to be accepted in the training to have a security clearance in the company. You know... because of your background."


He takes a breath. "But, there's local subsidiary work that doesn't require a clearance. And you'd get to keep your SIN. It's all hypothetical at this point, but they said you'd be a shoe-in to teach security theory for the educational outreach program." He pauses. "The pay isn't very good, and you'd still have to return the signing bonus, but the company is really good about actually getting you out of debt. They might even waive some of the difference for the bonus, since you're not intentionally flunking out."


He smiles, though it's clearly forced, trying to comfort her. "If it goes well, you could be out in two or three years."
 
Ash gives a heavy sigh.


"Don't take this the wrong way, because I really, really appreciate how you stuck your neck out for me like that. But I swear your HR people are singing from the same hymn sheet Renraku's use. At Renraku they at least offered me a raise if I took their stay-out-of-trouble busywork. You'd think that at some point they'd start learning from their failures, but that blessed day never seems to actually roll around."


She rolls her shoulder to work out a kink she got from curling up against a bedful of orc, and it gives an audible crack. "So," she gives him a smile which, for the first time Mark can recall, actually reaches her eyes, "thanks again for talking to them. I really mean that. But I also meant it last night when I said that the brain damage is a sunk cost."


"So unless NeoNET's wage mages can do some tricks Renraku's couldn't, I'm getting paid sixty two grand a month to give this thing my best shot. A hundred and eighty six thousand nuyen can buy the Company a lot of misery."
 
Red text flashes on the screen beside Ash's bed.


Aggro System Suspended by Request of MHR. Further Aggro alerts will not be displayed.


And then the text vanishes.


"I'm not sure that's... um..." Mark slides his legs off the edge of the bed, resting his hands there. He set his jaw in thought, which has a noticeable effect on an orc. Makes him look very rigid. "I talked with Lisa. She is sorry about what happened. I think she feels like a real asshole right now, actually. And the others all want to help you too. But... Ash."


He pauses to consider his words carefully, and then takes a breath. "You haven't... used your skillwires since you arrived. Like, ever. You haven't used hotsim. You've been tossing your performance enhancers in the trash. And HR said... that can be constituted as intentionally failing." He catches her eye, making sure she's with him before he continues. "There's a review at the three week mark. At that point, if you're still under-performing, an adviser will make suggestions about how to improve. It varies by individual, but yours will almost certainly involve more aggressive technological help. And declining your advisers advice is..."


He nods, letting her finish the thought. "I don't want you to... feel hurt. Ash. Or... well. Violated."
 
Ash sighs. "I'll cross that bridge when I get to it. I would very strongly prefer to keep above the two thirds mark on my medical assensings, and right now that's hanging by a hair. But I guess if it comes to that, that's negotiable."


"I'm not sure anybody actually believes me when I say that I have nothing against stims, or hot sim. But I do and have and will use them in any situation that is actually mission-critical. But they are not toys and I don't use them for training or routine performance evaluations. I hope I can get that point across when the time comes."


"But if not," she shrugs, "sixty grand a month does not buy the Company a stimmie habit."
 
Mark pauses, and and lifts one of his hands to his head. He rests it there for a moment before giving a small shrug, and spreading his hands. "I don't know what you want me to tell you. The workload is calibrated assuming you use Hot Sim, and Psyche, and PuSHed, and sleep regulators, and everything else. I... I mean you're smart, so I won't say it's impossible that you pass without them. But..."


He takes a breath, and then sits up straighter, continuing in a more sure tone of voice. "I want to help you get somewhere you're going to be okay. You know, have a plan. And 'keep doing the same thing and hope for a different result' isn't a plan. It's insanity. I... respect," he chooses that word carefully, "your views on Hot Sim. And your right to have them. But the official company policy is that you're wrong. So they won't carry any weight with HR."


"Ash I..." Again, he lifts his hands to his face for a moment while he thinks, then folds them again. "You can't keep avoiding this or last night will just happen again."
 
"Mark..." Ash grasps one of his hands with both of hers. "It's obvious that my pain causes you pain. And..." she trails off. "You're good people, Mark, and I'm sorry I'll be causing you pain."


"But I'm going to do it anyway, because the job I'm actually able to do? The one Renraku paid me for, and the one I was recruited because I'm actually good at? I can't do that job with a stimmie habit, or if I can't stay out of hot sim for fifty hours straight without getting twitchy. I'm not trying to cast aspersions on people who stim up before going to work, and I'm not trying to belittle the people who live their life in hot sim. I'm just stating the facts here: In the job I'm actually qualified to do, either of those is an instant disqualification. And if NeoNET HR has a different view?" She shrugs. "They need to take it up with Darwin, not me."
 
"Ash, don't give me that crap," Mark replies, pulling his hand out of hers and leaning away. "Yeah, I'm a super nice guy. Doesn't mean I have any interest in holding your hand as you self-destruct. I've got enough going on in my life without getting emotionally invested in people who don't want to be helped."


He seems to regret his choice of words, or perhaps his tone, for he pauses and then leans forward again—moderating his expression. But, he still presses on. "Look... I don't know why you feel this way, okay? I don't. But for whatever reason, you're... Christ, Ash. Last night, you woke up, screaming incoherently, and insisting that the company's fascist doctors sent tiny robots into your room to access your datajack and give you nightmares!" He lifts his hands, gesturing wildly as he looks at her. "Do you have any idea how completely insane you sounded? Like, actually insane."


He leans back again, lifting his hand to the back of his neck. "You act like it's some big moral struggle between you and the company, but it's not. The company doesn't care. You can't intimidate the Aggro system, you can't negotiate with the employee manual. You're in a staring contest with a rock, and the rock's going to win, Ash! I mean... do you even understand how much danger you're in? You're a probationary employee, IE, not an employee. You have no rights. If you end up in debt, the company can put your indenturment on the open market." His speech accelerates, and his tone hardens. "Do you understand that, Ash? Do you understand that if you fuck this up badly enough you could be sold into slavery?"





Pejorative Language. +10 Aggro. Flashes on the screen next to him. He glances at it, but only briefly.


"If you're lucky, you'll be sold to Saeder-Krupp. Most indenured staff aren't lucky," he says, hotly. "They get sold to Aztechnology. Do I have to spell that out for you Ash?"
 
Ash sighs, while she continues to assemble her peripherals, sticking on trodes with audible little plopping sounds. When she speaks, it is in the same level, dispassionate voice she uses to discuss Matrix node diagrams. "Mark, I have precisely one set of payskills, precisely one profession I can actually conceivably qualify for. And if, once I am out of this program, I go back into that profession with a stimmie habit, or sim ad...aptation, or randomly hallucinating from a botched brain implant? The first time something goes even a little bit wrong, I. will. die. Instantly." She switches on her comm, reaching out to find Mark's PAN, and after a brief moment pushes him a data package containing the literature she collected on the side effect profiles of skillwires and sleep regulators during her convalescence. Certain particularly pertinent parts are highlighted and summarized.


> Also, context.


> I may be insane, and I am almost certainly brain damaged, but the suggestion that the Company's doctors are responsible for that brain damage is not as far-fetched as you make it sound.


"You want to talk about holding people's hands while they self-destruct? Everyone who passes this program - everyone, right down to the 120th graduate, and a large fraction of the washouts - will have developed a comprehensive catalog of self-destructive behaviors. And most of those self-destructive behaviors are also ridiculously obvious security risks. A security guard who's high on combat stims? I'd rather have a starved anger spirit, it'd be on less of a hair trigger. A hallucinating rigger? She'd be a greater danger to her own team than to the bandits. A combat hacker who can't pull out of hot sim to save her life? Gonna die instantly the second the facility is attacked by anyone with enough brains to start by cutting power to the spider nest. A rapid response officer who's continually looking over his shoulder to check for little frowny-faces? His entire team might get wiped out because he's not keeping his full attention on the bandits. It's the perfect catch-22. Without a security clearance, I self-destruct. But the requirement for getting a security clearance is that I self-destruct."


Ash shrugs.


"Of the two, I prefer to self-destruct with my full mental faculties intact."
 
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"Ash," Mark cuts her off partway through her speech, about when he gets the data. When her words do not instantly end, he raises her voice, snarling out a sharp: "Ash!"





He lifts his hand into the air before him, as though uncertain what gesture to make, and then folds it back to the bed beside him. Finally, he shakes his head. "Ash, I don't care. I don't care if you think it's the company's fault. I don't care if it is actually is the company's fault. You know why? Because quantifying blame here? That's like knowing the exact mass, velocity, and shape of the train that's about to hit you. Real fucking great. It's great, it is. But it doesn't make you any less dead. So maybe, maybe, you should focus your efforts on getting out of the way instead? You..."


He makes a vague gesture at her, sharp and exasperated. "If you really think you're going to die if you use hot-sim. Which is stupid, and paranoid, but I'm not going to try to talk you out of it, so whatever. But if you really think you're going to die if you use hot-sim, why not take the teaching job? If you stay in, flip the company off, and then fail, you'll... you'll what? You'll have the pride of knowing the company didn't break you? Aztechnology will break you, Ash. They'll break you starting with your fingers every time you give them attitude!"


His expression twists into a snarl, and he punches the wall next to the bed. Not as hard as he could have, she's sure. "So why don't you try coming up with a plan to actually help yourself instead of just talking about what a fucking heroic martyr you'll make? What about Razor, huh? The troll you spend all that time with? What about your other friends? How are they going to feel when you've gotten yourself killed making some goddam point?"
 
Ash's face gradually falls as Mark's speech progresses, and by the time he's done she sits curled up in the corner of the bed, just looking at him with suddenly tired eyes.


"I haven't washed out yet," she says softly once he seems to have run out of words. It could have been a defiant challenge, but her tone and posture are, if not precisely pleading, clearly submissive. "I haven't so much as heard an official reprimand, beyond a so far trivial amount of frowny-points. And I haven't actually been made any tangible alternative offer yet. Last time this company sent a very dear friend to me bearing a job offer that fluffy," her voice heats up a little, regaining some of its indignation as she continues, "I turned out to be walking straight into a booby trap that's so far managed to cripple me, probably permanently, seems to be trying really hard to make me unemployable, and threatens to..." She trails off, then shakes her head. "Sorry, that last bit was unproductive."


"I promise you that the moment I hear any official complaint about me or my performance, anything that isn't an automated frowny-face from some pilotsoft or an ominous warning of vagueness, I'll go straight to metahuman resources and discuss my options. And I promise I'll open with groveling, not shouting. And I promise that I'll very seriously consider any offer that's actually made. And I promise that I will keep in mind that I am dealing with an entity that routinely sells people to Aztechnology before I reject anything or start escalating to higher management. But until any of those things happens, I'll continue operating under the assumption that I will be able to graduate if I'm smart enough, and work hard enough. Because I haven't washed out yet."


"Is that okay?"
 
"Yes!" Mark yells. "Yes, that's fine! That..." It seem to occur to him to wonder why he's yelling, and he catches himself, falling silent for a moment as he collects his thoughts. "...yes." He lifts a hand to his face. "Yes, Ash, that's fine."


His face sinks down into both his hands, and he takes a breath like that -- before lifting his his head binding his hands in his lap. "I wish you'd consider... I don't know. Therapy? I can understand the hot sim thing, I guess? I still don't like that you think we're all cripples, but whatever. I'm not... mad." He waves it off. "But what about skillwires? You had the option of getting good ones, and you got really cheap sets and never use them."


Finally, he shakes his head. "Forget it. Nevermind. I'm really not in the mood to how they're fumigating my brain."
 
That actually draws a tired smile from Ash. "Skillwires are harmless, Mark. Assuming no fuckups during the surgery, they're no worse than a datajack. I got a minimally invasive set because I'm a security expert, and 'being able to receive mojo' is a payskill when you're in security. Nobody told me I'd have to cram for three concurrent postgraduate doctorates in fields I haven't touched since before I hit puberty. Not until after I was out of med bay, anyway, and I don't see two weeks for post-surgical convalescence opening up in my calendar anytime soon. Do you?" She seems to have recovered some of the happy feeling she had when she woke up. At least her eyes are smiling.
 
"Don't be silly," he says, though his mind isn't really on this particular topic of conversation, and the distraction in his voice shows it. "The company has wage-mages for that. You'd be out of surgery before the end of the day." He seems to mull that over. "Not much point though. Skillwires are great, but you don't have the mindset for them."


"I mean..." He makes a helpless gesture, a vague wave. "I don't know what happened. No offense, but your recruiter fucked up. You should have had a better idea of what you were going into and... well. Again, nothing against you, but I don't think you're really a good fit for the company. Or... well. The team."


He glances up at Ash, a small frown on his face. "Sorry."
 
Ash chuckles. "You can say that again. 'Oh, by the way, we have a job offer for you. Comparable position, better pay, big-ass signing bonus. And since we just broke into your apartment's surveillance feeds, and we're fifteen minutes deep in an extraterritorial enclave of a corp that might shoot us for having this conversation, we - uh - may need an answer right now.' Hell of a way to make small talk over after-dinner drinks."


"But right now," Ash continues, crawling down in the bed next to him, "we have nodes to subscribe to and trainings to attend. So you need to either get out of my bed, or scoot over so I can fit in here without spilling out on the floor once the RAS kicks in."
 
The rest of the day goes better at least. Ash feels well rested. Lisa apologizes profusely and promises to do everything she can to help Ash through it all. People stop snapping at her for being slow to respond or not having read all of her material. Someone sends her a box of cookies through the internal delivery system, and she gets to spend a good bit of time out of sim during lunch. Her share of the day-to-day workload is heavily reduced, and while it's still significant, she's able to find time to catch up during the day. The pile of waiting work decreases. Razor is online in the evening, and a little time in private sim does Ash a world of good. Just the chance to opt out of the entire NeoNET world and talk to someone sane—and hearing that Razor is doing well helps too.


Razor has to say good night early, and it's still before 23:00 when Ash logs out. There are a number of messages waiting for her when she does, some of it work stuff, some of it encouragement. Notably though, there are also a handful of personal messages, queued up until she stepped out of sim.


Adrian: Hey, Ash. I heard about what happened.


Adrian: I'm sorry.


Adrian: We should meet tonight.


Adrian: 1:30 work for you?
 
Ash for her part is apprehensive but appreciative. Apprehensive because it's obvious that someone - either the team or metahuman resources - is taking pity on her, and it worries her. Playing the sympathy card gets you precisely nowhere in the sprawl, a fact Arborvitae managed to instill in Ash and Willow very thoroughly. And no matter how much they might pity her, or even like her, there's only so long a team can pull part of your weight, or tolerate preferential treatment, before relations start souring. And none of the underlying gross mismatch between her talents and training and the content and structure of the program has actually gone away.


But in the sprawl you also take any break you catch and hold on to it with both hands, and you make sure the people cutting you a break know that you know they're going out of their way for you, and that you're grateful to them for doing it. Ash takes particular care to ensure that Lisa knows, and hopefully believes, that it wasn't her fault, she couldn't have known, and she shouldn't beat herself up over something she couldn't have helped even if she had known. Or at least has records to the effect that Ash believes this, in case someone in metahuman resources starts looking for a convenient scapegoat.


> Hi Adrian


> 0130 is possible, but I'd prefer to push it to 0200 and call it a morning meeting instead


> Or 0210 if you want to meet up in person.


> Little bit uncomfortable about shaving my sleep cycle closer than design specs these days
 
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Adrian: 2:10 is fine.


Adrian: I've been spending a lot of time in sim lately.


Adrian: I could stand to go cold for awhile.


Adrian: See you soon.


Ash hasn't had much call to enter the recreational areas of the arcology since she arrived. She's been in working, recovering, or resting, and what free time she has she usually spends in sim with Razor. It makes it easy to think of the building as just a place of work, but of course, that's not true. It's a city inof itself, home to over a million people. It has its own schools, parks, malls, public spaces, and more. It has geniuses, and delinquents, and children, and teenage punks, and mages who are just awakening to their powers. Fanatics like Linda, troubled souls like Lisa, and carefree airheads between them. It has people who don't particularly like the company they were born into, and people who just don't care—the full variety of human life. Ash settles back on her bench in the park Adrian selected, watching people go past. It's quite a mix that goes in front of her vision.


Except skillwires. They all seem to have skillwires. But when Ash shuts her eyes, and tilts her head back, and listening to the wind rustling in the trees, she can forget that. She can even feel like she's outside. Really outside. She can feel like it's a sunny day.


"Hey, Ash," Adrian calls, his voice coming from a few steps away from the bench, and when Ash opens her eyes, she can see that there is no sun. Just the beautiful stars, and the glass dome, and the silvery lines that run across it. Like the lines under her skin, and under Adrian's. "Uh... how you holding up?" he continues.


She must have been slow to respond.
 
"Worse than I'd hoped, better than I've feared." Ash stands up to hug him. She's still wearing nothing but her jumpsuit - no jewelery, no cosmetics beyond her tattoos, head shaved bare.


"I'm probably broke, the next best thing to unemployable, recently discovered I have incurable, chronic brain damage, and I'm still waiting for a shoe to drop. On the other hand I ended up with a nice orc gentleman in my bed night before last, so I guess this whole fiasco hasn't been a total loss." She motions for Adrian to sit with her. "But I'll live. How about you, what are you up to these days?"
 
"I saw that," Adrian says, pausing a moment. Then, he sits next to Ash. "I'm not sure he's your type," he continues. "But, I'm glad it helps, I suppose."


Adrian's manner is odd as he sits on the bench, and he clenches and unclenches his hands a lot, keeping them resting over his knees. "I'm sorry things worked out this way," he says. Then, suddenly, he adds: "Don't wait for HR to... talk to you. Take the teaching job. Or don't. But you should... quit. Ash. Sooner rather than later."
 
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