[The City that Never Wakes] Wageslave

"He doesn't have to weigh every word," Linda says, but her tone isn't confrontational. She isn't seeking to disagree with Ash, at least not in so many terms. If anything she seems... well. Sad. "He never did. I already know that he hates it when I cook, and doesn't like my friends, and that it annoys him how much I talk. I know he drinks a lot more when I'm out of town, and then lies about it after. I know that he sometimes downloads sim modules of attractive women from work. I know that he still has feelings for you, and there are times he touches himself when he thinks of you."


Her tone doesn't change through it all, and at the end, she lets out a breath and lifts her head. "And I forgive him for all that. I love him. He's not being judged. He has no secrets from me. There's not some scorecard in my head were I'm totaling up his every flaw. I don't want him to be perfect, I just... want him. But in his mind, he has to be perfect. It's like I'm jabbing a pin in him every time he finds out I know. I've tried forgiving him, tried telling him I don't care. I mean... God. I gave him permission to sleep with you if that's what he really wanted."


She makes a slight, helpless half-shrug. "And that's how it is with the company too. I've been in the Box. Most people with a security clearance above 3 have been in it at least once. It's not a punishment—it's a loyalty test. They drug you so that you can't remember you're in sim, and then someone offers you something to betray the company, and... that's it. Even if you fail, the worst that can happen is your clearance gets knocked down a few levels. And if you want to pass, all you have to do is not be a traitor and you have nothing to fear."


She shuts her eyes and shakes her head. "But of course, he doesn't see it that way."
 
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Ash lets out a long sigh. "No. No, he does not."


"I can't speak for Adrian - hell, I didn't even realize that he hadn't finished dealing with our breakup." She holds her hands up, palms out as she adds: "Also, way too much information."


"But," Ash continues, "I can tell you why I think Adrian's situation would be stressful to me, and you can decide how much of that you think is applicable to your situation."
 
Linda gives a slight humorless smile when Ash holds up her hands. It isn't really funny, not under the circumstances, but something about Ash's embarrassment strikes her just so. The smile only lasts a moment though, soon replaced with a flat expression, and a nod. "Please."
 
Ash frowns, and takes a sip from her coffee mug before continuing, stealing a respite to gather her thoughts. "Okay. The one thing that strikes me most glaringly is the mismatch between the..." she sips her coffee again. "The comprehensiveness of the information you routinely gather about Adrian, and your claim of relative equanimity toward his assorted vices."


Another sip. "Every time you run a breath test on him, or break his encryption, or tap a camera feed, you incur a cost in order to obtain the information. Perhaps a small cost, perhaps it is even a trivial one. But at the very least, you pay a few brain cycles of your attention." Ash puts her coffee mug down and leans back into the cushions. "Now, to me the fact that you incur a cost to obtain this information suggests that you do, in fact, place a value on it. So when you say, for instance, that his taste in evening trid shows does not matter... Well, the question I ask myself - that I cannot help but ask myself - is 'so why do you go to the trouble of finding out?'"


"It's... like the difference between a comm operating in open or hidden mode." Ash pauses to see if Linda is still following.
 
"But I..." she starts correct Ash. But she bites her tongue, and lets Ash finish making a point of sitting forward and listening. Through there is clearly something she wishes to say, she doesn't speak immediately after Ash is finished, giving it all a second to collect. "I'm sorry, I know you're... trying to explain how you feel. How he feels. And I know that a feeling can't be right or wrong, it's just an opinion. But..." She makes an open gesture with both hands, clearly taking the time to think of the words.


"I don't run a breath test," she finally says, exasperated, a sudden burst of frustration coming out in her words. "His breath just smells like trace alcohol. I didn't stalk you and him through the park, he just came back smelling like dirt and... well. You." She pauses for a moment, like she wasn't sure if she needed to apologize for that, before finally falling back in her chair. "And I don't tap camera feeds. This is my house. They're my cameras. It's like... it's like someone walks in with something written on their forehead, but if I read it, I'm suddenly spying on them!"


The frustration in her voice peaks, and she lifts a hand to her face, resting it there a moment. She lets out a breath.


"Sorry," she finally says, letting her hand fall back to her lap, and restoring her neutral face. "Sorry. You were saying."
 
"Yes, they're your cameras. And I'm not saying you're wrong to have them. But... you have a dog-brain to do the grunt work of monitoring them, right?" It's not really a question - nobody spends their time slogging through raw camera feeds from their living room. "Well, you're the one who decides what that dog-brain should alert you to immediately, what it should flag for review, what it should summarize for you in its daily or weekly précis to you, and what simply gets buried in the ever-increasing pile of old footage that no living being will ever bother to view because it contains nothing interesting."


"What I'm saying is that when you say you aren't interested in something, and you then ask your home network to flag that sort of events for review when they show up in its footage..." Ash shrugs. "There's a mismatch," the expression that crosses her face is perhaps best described as 'mental backspace.' "There appears to be a mismatch between your words and your actions. And that's potentially stressful, particularly to someone who thinks the world of you and would like to have your approval."
 
"But that's not-!" Linda starts to snap, but again she bites her tongue. She raises both her hands to her face again, and this time it's with considerably more force that she returns them to the chair cushions. "Sorry," she hisses out. Then a moment later, more calmly, "Sorry. And I'm sorry I called you a bitch earlier. I'm just..." She takes a moment. "I'm upset and this is very frustrating."


She needs a moment more to consider her answer, and when she finally does speak, she's at least ground a bit of the edge off her words. "I don't review anything. I'm just aware of it. Sure, in the abstract, there's an algorithm—a "dog brain," whatever—somewhere deciding what is and isn't relevant, but I don't experience that. I don't get an AR alert-" She lifts her hand.


>Linda K.: Interesting thing detected! Click here for details of how Ash has been cuddling with an orc boy.


"-you just smell like a male orc, but you don't smell like sex. You might as well ask me to stop using my peripheral vision."
 
Ash shakes her head. "Don't be sorry for calling me a bitch earlier. I was being a bitch, and you weren't wrong to call me on it."


She makes a helpless little shrug. "I'm not sure precisely what wetware you have that scares Adrian so. Apart from that olfactory enhancement of yours, which I honestly don't get the appeal of. Of course de gustibus, etc. But..." she pauses for a heartbeat or two before pressing on, "if it stresses Adrian that you're inadvertently picking up on sensory cues that shatter the polite fictions he attempts to maintain... Well..." Ash hesitates for a moment. "Have you considered turning down the gain on your senses?"


"Even with wetware, there are several helpful technological solutions for, as you put it, turning off the peripheral vision." She looks down at her hands as she speaks, as if she almost find the suggestion unclean, and a humorless bark of a laugh escapes her as she adds "God, I can't believe I of all people am suggesting that," more to herself than for Linda's benefit.
 
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"Yeah, it's kind of fucked up," Linda agrees, but it's with a sympathetic note, and she turns away to look at the lamp in the corner of the room.


"Ah..." She lets out a breath. "Well, yeah. I've considered it. I'm not sure how much good it'll do as long as we're here, since I'm not exactly unusual in that respect. I figured if it came to that, we'd move away and see if... well. He got better first."


She taps her fingers on the arm rests, still not matching Ash's eyes. "And, if I'm being honest, I'd rather not stab my eyes out. I mean, it's a romantic gesture and all, but..." She smirks slightly, giving the slightest of shrugs.
 
"Yeah, I feel like I need a shower just for suggesting it." Ash holds up a hand in a defensive gesture. "And I know I actually do need a shower for other reasons, you don't need to remind me."


"Seriously, though, it sounds like what stresses Adrian is that he wants to maintain certain polite fictions, such as the polite fiction that he is assumed to not watch titillating trids. And he can't maintain those polite fictions when you can, literally, smell the metabolic detritus created by his limbic responses to those trids. I don't think it'd matter so much if other people around him could sense it, so long as you can't. But I'm guessing here - this is something I can't really know, and I'm not even sure Adrian knows for certain."


Ash shrugs. "I'm not saying it's fair, but Adrian obviously isn't going to 'get over' that particular cultural difference. So it seems like your choices amount to turning down his production of metabolites or turning down your olfactory gain. And since I'm not terribly fond of vegetables, I'm going to strenuously object to the former option."
 
"I don't mind polite fictions when we all understand they're a fiction. And don't mind Adrian having secrets from me, I just don't want to cripple myself so he can have the privilege." Linda shakes her head, finally turning back to Ash. "I don't understand why he can't adjust. I mean... what's your strategy? You're surrounded by nine people whose senses are about as sharp as mine. How were you planning to deal with it?"
 
Ash shrugs. "My situation is not comparable. I don't intend to make a career working hundred hour week gigs and never leaving the arcology. I just have to make it through ARAT and the first project, which is expected to take roughly six months, then HR has assured me that I can scale down to something that gives me a more reasonable balance between income and time to spend it. I will, bluntly put, have a life outside the arcology and a life inside it, and those two lives will have to be somewhat compartmentalized. If nothing else then because perimeter security around here is even more intrusive than at my old job. I'm not saying that'll be a walk in the park either, but it's a different set of challenges from what you two are facing."


"And of course I'm not currently in the sort of relationship where my cultural conditioning demands that I attempt to maintain polite fictions. If and when that happens, I'll need to sit down with whoever I'm shacking up with and talk boundaries and cultural expectations up front, to avoid this kind of misaligned expectations. If that turns out to not work... well, then that relationship isn't going to work. That will cost some tears, but it's not the end of the world: I've spent most of my adult life without an exclusive romantic partner, and I've so far managed to remain on excellent terms with the ones I've shared something with that turned out to, for whatever reason, not work. Roughest breakup I've had was when Adrian dumped me for a better paid gig. You can imagine what kinds of questions I was asking myself after that. But we're still close friends."
 
Linda gives Ash a curious look—and a bit confused. "I wasn't asking about your working hours. I meant... well. Isn't there a... well. Privacy concern for you?"
 
"No." Ash shakes her head. "Privacy is not a thing when you are on the premises of a corp-owned facility. Out in the sprawl, you can have reasonable levels of privacy - in the sense that there is a number of cheap measures you can take to make it more expensive to monitor your actions. But when you're inside a facility where Eve has full physical hardware control?" She makes a throwaway gesture and an amused noise. "Not even worth the brain-cycles it takes to consider. Which is why work hours matter - they define how much time I am forced to spend inside perimeter security, and how much time I have the option to dive into the sprawl and chaff the pursuit until it goes away."


"And in that respect, what livery the building is painted in doesn't matter: The only difference between this arcology and my previous residence is that Renraku lies a lot more than NeoNET does about how they value the privacy of their tenants."
 
Linda frowns slowly. It's an expression that grows gradually, as opposed to her hot anger from earlier. It seems deeper though, and it's with some attention that she sits forward. "Is that really all there is for you?"
 
Ash frowns. "As far as privacy goes? That's all there is, full stop." She takes a moment to consider. "But it's actually a fairly minor part of my life. Most of my free time I spend..." she shrugs, "well, living. You know. Talking with friends, playing games, reading books, seeking romance or enjoying it when I've found it."


"I just happen to have spent a lot of time on the clock thinking about these issues."
 
Linda doesn't seem reassured by that answer, and the look she gives Ash is unhappy, and considering. "No, I mean... forced. You said forced to stay here." She pauses, trying to articulate the words. "I just don't see what comes after this, for you."
 
Ash raises an eyebrow. "You realize that the SINless sprawlers call us 'wageslaves' for a reason, right? If I want to eat real food, have regular medical care, live in a part of town where I don't have to wear a respirator mask and keep one eye on my dosimeter at all times... yeah, then I'm forced to spend some of my time in a place like this. You can pretend that you have the freedom to quit your job and go live in the sprawl. But that's not actually true. You don't live in the sprawl. You just survive for a while, and then you die."


"So yeah, I'm forced to spend a lot of my time in corp facilities." Ash shrugs. "That doesn't mean I can't have fun, or that I can't find my job interesting. But if I want to live, and not merely survive, I can't not spend time in here. So I don't think that's an unreasonable way to put it."
 
"Oh..." Linda seems more disappointed than anything, tilting her head to the side. "No." She says. "I don't get it. I mean... right. You want to come out of the sprawl, sure. But... you're out." She lets out a breath, looking off towards Adrian's room, and then back at Ash. "I'm sorry, I just don't understand what you're waiting for. Adrian always talked about how you were this self-made woman who pulled herself up out of poverty. It's why I thought you'd like it here, among other reasons. A secure facility, a steady job, creature comforts. I assumed you'd... I don't know. Unwind. Maybe help him get over some things too."


She pauses. "Sorry if this is getting too personal."
 
Ash makes a vague motion at the last question. "Not at all, it's just... A secure place to sleep, a steady income, regular medical checkups, those are all things I don't want to do without. But they're not the point. They're just what enable me to spend time living, instead of merely surviving."


"Of all the creature comforts, the only thing that I really like for its own sake is being able to afford real food instead of the soy crap you get at Stuffer Shack. All the rest of it is valuable to me because it gives me freedom. Freedom from having to worry about where my next meal is going to come from. Freedom from worrying about getting pneumonia and dying when I get caught in the rain. Freedom from having to keep one eye on a rad counter and one hand on my breath mask. Freedom from having to check that my escape routes are clear before I go to sleep, so I can get away if I'm woken up by some grabby asshole copping a feel."


"I'm not 'waiting for' anything in particular to do with that freedom. That's the whole point: I get to decide what I want to use it for as I go along."
 
"Forgive me," Linda says, "but you seem to spend all that free time hating your job."


She glances down at the floor then. "Sorry, that did get too personal. I just don't understand what you want. Or... well. What Adrian wants, frankly."
 
Ash gets up from the sofa and takes a seat next to Linda, putting a hand on her shoulder. "I don't know what Adrian wants. You need to talk to him about that, and I don't think that's something I can help you with."


"But I know he wants you in his life. I just... I think he also wants a life for you to be in."
 
"I don't understand why you both see it that way!" she snaps, the frustration briefly running hot again. "It's always just building up walls around you and worrying about what other people think and saying that when finally, all the walls are perfect, then you'll actually live your life but I don't see the point. What is it that you're looking for you can't have here!?"
 
Ash puts her arm around Linda's shoulders and just steadies the other woman for a while as she thinks on how to put a whole jumbled mess of inchoate instincts into words. What she finally settles on turns out to be surprisingly simple and straightforward.


"Independence."
 
Shuts her eyes a moment and hangs her head, resting it on the palm of her hand. "Great," she says, so quiet Ash can barely make out the words. "That's just great." 
The nightmares don't go away. They come in waves, like a brawler varying his attacks to keep an opponent off his feet. She spends the rest of the week watching Adrian kill himself and others in increasingly brutal ways. When that stops being new or shocking, she gets visions of the commune. There's rioting in the district, and too many elves at Arborvitae. She watches them hunted down, cornered, shot. When that stops being threatening, it's Mark's turn. The things he does to her in sim. Never to her properly of course, just to a personsoft wearing her face. He is a civilized creature. After every dream, she wakes up convinced it was all real.


And it could have been real. These dreams aren't like normal nightmares. They aren't wild, or chaotic. They make sense, they portray people as true to their character. They are all things that could happen. That are, by some measures, likely to happen. There is only one thing that marks them all for dreams—that lets Ash know that she isn't simply going mad.


In the waking world, Willow is dead. In the dreams, she's always there. Sometimes she's there to die. Sometimes she's there to cheer. Sometimes she just watches. But she's always there.


She never talks to Ash though.


"I'm sorry?" Glen asks, looking up from his book. They're out in the common spaces together at about 2:30 AM, after the others have gone to bed. Or at least into sim. Ash can't tell if he actually didn't hear her, or if he's feigning deafness to an awkward question. "What was that?"
 
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