[The City that Never Wakes] Wageslave

Ash stands, bows politely and smiles when Cahya enters, but as the other woman speaks her face stiffens into something that can only in the most technical sense be mistaken for a smile.


"I am happy to see that we have started moving toward a mutually agreeable outcome, though I'm afraid that the time it will take to, as you put it, wrap this up, will depend entirely on how willing you are to work with me to find workable solutions to our common problem." Ash motions to the chairs, inviting the other woman to take a seat. "You have stated the actions you feel compelled to take in the event that we fail to reach agreement today, and I will extend to you the same courtesy. If we fail to reach agreement, while I will make every effort to complete the ARAT program, I will not consent to anything on your list." Ash makes a throwaway gesture at the e-paper on the table.


"Maybe you, or someone else, will decide to embark upon various punitive actions, which I will then have to contest to the full extent of my abilities and using all avenues available to me. That would be unfortunate. I might even lose that contest." The two women in the room live in an age where 'the temperature in the room seemed to drop to freezing' can sometimes be more than a mere metaphor. This is not one of those times, but Ash's voice and the set of her eyes none the less bring the phrase forcibly to mind. "However, I am confident that you have no legal options which will impose a long-term cost even vaguely comparable to beginning our business relationship by setting the precedent that I can be bullied, threatened or cajoled into consenting to gratuitous abuse of my body and spirit."


The way Ash's face and body language opens up after she has made this statement is perhaps best likened to the breath of fresh air following a thunderstorm. "Now," she says, voice suddenly open and approachable in a way that no chip nor wire set can fake, "I think our long-term interests are sufficiently well aligned that we should be able to achieve a much happier outcome than that. Are you willing to work with me to make that happen?"
 
"No," Cahya answers, brusquely. "Consider this a lesson in reading things before you sign them. Acting in conjunction with your assigned advisory and pertinent to the supervisory role of my department, I hereby officially advise you to follow through with all items on this list. While compliance with this suggestion is voluntary, be aware that if you do not pass the program, your failure to do so may be interpreted as intentionally flunking yourself out of the program, with all consequences therein."


She gets up. "That's your advisory session. We're done."


Then she leaves. And she leaves the door open behind her.


Outside, Ash can hear that her teammates are already gathered, talking among themselves.
 
Ash bows politely to her superior and waits for her to depart the room before she touches the 'wipe' button on the e-paper, shrugs and walks out of the room, the look of casual boredom on her face only partially an affectation. As she leaves the room, tattoos trace intricate light-and-dark blue patterns over her skin.
 
Ash gets a lot of information from the team chat, the very second she steps out of the booth. If she was on a datajack, it would hit her like a wave. As is, it rushes past her like a train that isn't stopping at this station, the faces in the windows barely seen. She has to stop, and wait, carefully sorting through it for anything important. At least she has programs to pick out the key details.


Brett is out. Cultural mismatch.


Kyle is out. Poor performance.


Allen is out. He had the third-best performance in the group, but he'd like it if he got to see his wife and kids. So he quit.


Mark, Laura, Nora, Glen, Lisa, and Virginia all made it. They're outside, chatting with each-other while they wait for Ash. Spirits seem high, and moods light. Nora is making a joke about Mark being the only guy left. Glen seems unsure if he should find that offensive or not, and his uncertainty starts another round of laughter. Virginia's embarrassed. Apparently her adviser was so afraid of actually criticizing her that they had to call in a replacement. The replacement isn't named, but all the Enter the Dragon Lady jokes make it pretty clear.


"And if it isn't the lady of the hour!" Nora calls. Cheers come from everyone but Lisa—she's always incredibly pissy out of hot-sim, and not ripping people's heads off is currently taking her full concentration. "We were getting worried."


Mark steps up to her, perhaps to give her a hug, but when he takes her wrists, he notices the change in the tattoos, and pauses. A moment later, Virginia notices as well.


Then a photo hits the group chat.


"...uh," Mark says. "What happened?"
 
Ash shrugs. "I infer from the use of a Faraday cage that actually works that the details are confidential." She gives Mark a brief hug, more to affirm her presence than to draw strength from his.


"But very briefly, there was no discussion of actual performance, beyond the fact that you're all stuck with me for another month. They sent in a flunky with a mandate and a briefing that made him objectively worse prepared for the conversation than a low-rent agentsoft with a fuller précis would have been. So after taking all the things he said under advisement, and after having carefully considered," she gives Mark a pointed look as she carefully emphasizes the words, "the implications of escalating the matter, I told him to fuck off and get me someone who was using their pulse for something other than appearing like a fellow human being." Ash smiles at the shocked expressions that cross a few faces. "I was more polite than that," she reassures them. "Obviously."


"So they sent in a boss-lady bearing fifty gram of brass and the same script. I told her that piling more brass on the same script wasn't gonna get them a different response. Then she spent the rest of the discussion reminding me of all the reasons I got these things in the first place. So I guess you're stuck with those for another month as well."
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Reactions are mixed. Some faces fall. Others are set. Mark just looks confused. "Oooh," Nora winces. "That might explain why she looked pissed."


"I don't understand," Virginia says, frowning. "Mine was all about my performance. They talked about managing my workload and gave me a bunch of skillsofts. I mean, that's what happened with everybody else, right?"


"Mine focused primarily around new content to study, and a recommendation of PuSHeD treatments," Glen answers. "I found it quite helpful. But I had a different guy than you."


"I'm going to go out on a limb here!" Lisa growls, "And say that our dear old Ashie's policy of relentlessly antagonizing every manager she comes across may just have come back to bite her on the ass. Or are we pretending that doesn't happen any more? Are we? Huh?"


An awkward silence follows, and Laura puts a hand on Lisa's shoulder. "Let's get you jacked in," she suggests, but Lisa violently shrugs her off.


"Don't touch me," she snaps. 
A long quiet follows that, and people slowly change their posture -- folding their arms or looking away. It's Mark who finally speaks: "Ash, can we uh... talk in private? Please?"
 
He grimaces at that, but takes the cable from her, and quickly plugs it in. "Guys... er. Girls. Give us a bit?"


Make makes a 'shoo' gesture, and the others slowly move away, giving Mark and Ash some measure of privacy. Mark turns to Ash, reaching up to take her shoulders. He draws in a breath, and lets it out slowly.


>Ash, you know I like you, so please don't take this the wrong way but WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?
 
> I'm telling MHR that while I appreciate their advice I choose to decline it, without prejudice to my willingness to work with them going forward.


> More prosaically and to the point, I'm telling MHR that when I have already turned down the same cookie-cutter, boilerplate drek not once, not twice, not thrice, but four times, then they should probably assume it's because I've carefully considered the matter, and that wrapping it in a pile of brass and an attitude isn't gonna make any damn difference.
 
>Yes, Ash! MHR knows that! They don't care because if you flunk out they can take the money back and then make up the difference by selling you into slavery!


It's quite odd, to see someone shout without saying a word. To watch the way Mark's face contorts, while his lips stay pressed together.


>This may sound weird, but somewhere between living with you for a month, working with you eighteen hours a day, and screwing you, I actually kind of got to like you. So maybe it bothers me a little bit how calm you are with your impending INDENTUREMENT. We talked about this, Ash! We all talked about what would happen! It's why we pulled together to help you!
 
Ash shakes her head.


> I love you, Mark, and I really do appreciate how supportive everyone has been. But I have already considered everything you just said, and I am confident that if worst comes to worst I have enough money in the bank that I can scare up the balance from people who will only break my kneecaps if I fail to pay them back.


> So yes, I am calm right now. Because nothing that happened today fell outside the bounds of what I had, after all due consideration, decided that I can live with. Nothing I heard today was in any way unanticipated or unexpected. Disappointing, but not unexpected.


She pauses for a moment.


> Apart from the part where MHR sent a senior director to deliver a message they could have equally well delivered with a hundred-nuyen agentsoft. That was just sad. And embarrassing. For everyone involved. That part I regret, but that wasn't my decision and there wasn't much I could do about it.


Ash stands there for a few heartbeats before she hugs Mark.


> I'll live, Mark. I've survived most of my adult life in the sprawl. Worst comes to worst, I'll beg, borrow and steal enough that I can buy out my contract and go back to the sprawl. Survive for a while. Take the bullshit busywork, teach hillbillies how to turn their comms on. I can live with... I can survive that.


> But I haven't washed out yet.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
>Yes, Ash. You have! In case you didn't notice, we just lost three people. That means you just went from ranking at about 40% to ranking DEAD LAST. And I'm trying Ash! I'm trying to help you stick around, but there's only so much...


Abruptly, he reaches up to the back of his head, and yanks the cables out.


"You know what? Forget it. Just forget it." He snaps, bitterly. "Why don't you just go back to the sprawl now and save us all the trouble?"


And with that bitter phrase, he leaves at a quick walk. From their moderate distance, the others give Ash worried looks.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Ash's face falls and her shoulders slump, as she looks at the angry, departing orc. Absently, she grabs the end of the cable Mark left hanging and jacks it into the comm she used to record the meeting, synchronizing it with a software facsimile of her spinal comm hardwiped back to factory defaults, which she can only hope is sufficiently convincing to fool the rootkit that automatically attempts to hijack her upper brainstem as soon as she connects it to the rooted device. Without really even noticing, she moves aside to avoid blocking the door into the Faraday cage, looking down at her hands with a blank expression as they pop out the antenna of her comm and depress the three switches that trigger a hard wipe of the storage medium.


She isn't running a hardware skillsoft - there's no point, really. Even a hillbilly fresh off the acclimatisation training could have done it, wirelessly. But to the casual onlooker, she might as well have been. Her motions have that stilted, mechanical quality you usually get from low-rent skillchips and cheap pilotsofts.
 
And of course, the group chat goes silent. Looks like she's out of the loop again. She can tell they're talking. It's how they look at eachother. How they stare back and forth. But there's nothing over the chat, the electronic signals between them hidden to Ash's eyes.


Finally, Virginia steps up to her. "Ash," she says, gently. "Do you want to leave? Like... if the money wasn't an issue either way. Do you want to be here?"
 
Ash shakes her head. "I haven't considered that hypothetical," she says, her voice infused with a certain brittle quality that her voice modulator defaults to when it doesn't get intelligible input. She sighs. "I guess the fact that I even need to consider my answer is itself an answer, of sorts."


When she continues after another small pause, her voice is at least recognizably human, even if it remains hollow, and she keeps looking down at her hands. "NeoNET does amazing work. Even just the taste I've had of it being here is enough to convince me of that. So yeah, there's a part of me that wants to be a part of making that happen. I want to do good work, work that uses my actual skills and aptitudes." She pockets her comm, but her hands remain folded over her stomach, a far cry from her usual animated gesticulation. "And the whole sales pitch about bettering metahumanity, or at least avoiding another atomic firestorm? Yeah, I could buy that too, if I believed that the Company actually believes it."


She lets out a shaky breath. "But this program? It does precisely nothing even tangentially related to any of that. The stated objectives are nonsense, the instructors, when they are not absent, behave like schoolyard bullies, HR starts pissing contests where they should be solving problems. And all of this has to be intentional, because everyone involved is chipping themselves up to at least passable competence."


Ash suddenly looks up at Virginia, and her eyes are wet. "When you first explained to me why my tattoos bother you, you told me that at NeoNET skillwires are worn as a badge of pride, not a brand of ownership." She swallows. "Turns out, to use a turn of phrase management is very fond of in this place, the Company does not share that view."
 
Virginia pauses, and then nods. She pulls out her commlink, and taps at the screen for a moment. It's not clear why she's actually using her fingers instead of trodes or a datajack, but after a moment, she presses her thumb to the side of the device, and a chip ejects out the side. She reaches up and takes it between two fingers, handing it over to Ash.


"Fine," she says, with a certain gravity to her words, "You're fired."


Looking down at the chip in her hands, Ash sees a tiny little display on the side. "CERTIFIED NEONET COMPANY CREDIT" it reads "150,000NY"
 
Ash nods, but it's clear that her body is running on something resembling autopilot for a few moments as she takes the chip and slots it into her comm, watching dumbly as it settles her debts for her.


"I guess this is where my line would normally be something along the lines of 'this is too much, I can't accept that.' But, uh, right now I can't really afford that kind of heroics. So. Thank you." Ash straightens her back and looks up at Virginia again. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry it came to this. I'm sorry you ended up spending your money to fix someone else's mess. And I'm really, truly sorry I cannot honestly say that it has been a pleasure to do business with NeoNET."
 
Virginia pauses. She seems torn, and when she speaks her voice is a bit unsteady start-stop. "I think you might be happier in the sprawl, Ash," she finally says. "But I'm sorry it didn't work too."
 
Ash gives Virginia a fierce hug, and when she speaks again her voice is mostly back to its old, chipper self. "Someone is going to come along shortly to escort me down to outbound decon, but... I'd like to see you for dinner sometime when I've settled into a nice place and re-stocked my liquor cabinet, and your schedule is less crazy. Goes for the peanut gallery as well. And Kyle and Allan too."


She suddenly looks down. "Mark... took all this pretty hard, and I wouldn't like our last words to be spoken in anger. I'm... going to have to make a call now, I think."
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Users who are viewing this thread

Total: 9 (members: 0, guests: 9)
Back
Top