“Nate Benson to the Shift Manager’s office. Nate Benson, please report immediately to the Shift Manager’s office. That will be all.”
Nate stared up at the loudspeaker mounted on the wall above his head and felt the sudden urge to rip the thing from its moorings and hurl it across the room as far as it would go.
He’d been expecting the call all morning, was not, in fact, surprised that it had come, only that it had taken this long. He had no doubt what that call meant for him and his future here at General Electronics. Rumors of layoffs had been floating around for weeks and it seemed that the day had finally come; not a single one of those who’d been called throughout the morning had come back to the assembly line floor.
Nate remained still until he was certain that he had a lock on his anger, then he shut down his drill press. He took off his work gloves, shoved them in the back pocket of his coveralls, and began making his way across the floor to the steel staircase that led to the boss’ office on a platform high above the workroom floor. Most of his fellow workers studiously kept their eyes focused downward on the task in front of them, as if looking at Nate might cause them to share in his fate. But a few, George, Harris, and Daniels, for instance, caught his gaze and nodded in commiseration.
They were survivors, just as he was, veterans of the conflict that had consumed nearly an entire generation and left a third of the Earth as nothing more than a barren, decimated wasteland. What had started as a regional turf war over possession of natural resources had blossomed when the fanatics came to power, sending the religious and political ideologies of the east crashing headfirst into those of the west. Within weeks the conflict had spun out of control like a metastasizing cancer that consumed everything in its wake. For the third time in less than a century the major nations of the world found themselves embroiled in a war to end all wars. Twenty-three years later they were still feeling the fallout, both physically and figuratively. Millions had died. Entire nations were turned into twisted plains of blasted radioactive glass. Men like Nate came home to a country that saw them as nothing so much as living reminders of humanity’s capacity for murder on a grand scale, and shunned them as a result.
The Faith War left the world’s economy in shambles, with unemployment rates over twenty-five percent in even the most developed nations and inflation at an all-time high. The job market, already overburdened with too many qualified applicants for far too few jobs, was swamped by the return of thousands of trained soldiers. Nate was one of the lucky ones, landing this assembly line job after only ten months of searching. He knew guys who had been looking for two years and still hadn’t found a job.
Looks like you’re going to join them soon, he thought.
Nate knocked on the door to the boss man’s office and then waited for the muffled “Come in” to reach him before palming the lock and stepping inside.
Southwick was seated behind his desk, his fat body oozing over the sides of the suspensor chair that strained to do its job of keeping him off the floor. Flanking Southwick were two corporate security guards. Nate glanced at them as he came through the door, then dismissed them as no threat. They stood with their backs ramrod straight and their arms crossed over their chests, reducing their ability to move quickly if the situation necessitated. They scowled at him, trying to be intimidating, and Nate had to squelch the urge to laugh. After what he’d seen and done in the Arabian Desert, a couple of thugs like these two barely registered.
As usual, Southwick didn’t waste any time with pleasantries. Nate was hardly in the door before the shift boss tossed an envelope on the desk in front of him and said, “Two weeks’ pay, which is more than I would have given you. The contents of your locker will be forwarded to your last listed address.”
Nate didn’t ask why nor did he bother protesting. It wouldn’t have done any good. Southwick wasn’t the one pulling the operational strings; he just did as he was told, like all the other management hacks this far down the food chain. For Nate to keep his job he would have to talk to one of the execs back at the home office and he didn’t even know where that was, never mind who he’d need to speak to.
Besides which, they’d never listen to a guy like him.
Southwick’s next comment made that abundantly clear.
“It’s about time I got to fire your sorry ass. You go anywhere but straight through the back door and I’ll have you arrested for trespassing and thrown into a hole so dark you won’t remember what the light of day even looks like,” Southwick sneered. “You hearing me, Cutter?”
Nate was in the process of turning away when the insult stopped him cold.
The end of the war had dumped thousands of troops onto an already overburdened job market. Someone higher up the food chain had recognized that leaving hardened men who’d just been through hell and back without anything to do was a sure recipe for disaster, so the government fast tracked applications from veterans over those from civilians, even those with more experience or training in the job. This, of course, generated a wave of resentment among the civilians and lines were drawn in the sand.
Violence broke out on more than one occasion, usually started by hot-headed civilians and normally ended by grim-faced ex-soldiers who were more than happy to take out some of their frustrations on those who didn’t know well enough to leave things alone. Insults were tossed back and forth from both sides of the conflict, “Cutter” being one of them, a term meant to describe anyone who “cut the line,” so to speak and received benefits for which they weren’t actually entitled. It wasn’t the strongest of insults — there were far worse ones being bandied about— but it was an insult nonetheless.
Normally Nate’s desire to keep his job would have kept him from reacting, but Southwick himself just relieved the ex-soldier of that particular burden. Nate turned around to face his former employer, a grin spreading across his face as he realized he was no longer constrained by the need to behave.
“What did you say?” he asked.
Southwick either thought he was safe with his guards beside him or he’d forgotten the basic rule of the jungle — always know who the predator is and who is the prey — for he grinned up at Nate.
“I said get the fuck out of my office, Cutter scum!”
Nate wasn’t the type to let an insult go by without answering it. All the crap he’d taken from Southwick during his time here welled up in the back of his mind and he decided it was time to teach the fat fuck a lesson about respecting his betters. Nate was still smiling politely when he threw himself across the top of the desk and slammed into Southwick, driving the man and his ridiculous floating chair into the tiled floor beneath their feet before the bodyguards realized what was happening. By the time their brains had caught up with the action going on in front of them, Nate had already landed several good blows to Southwick’s face with his thick fist, smashing the man’s nose and fracturing at least the left cheekbone, possibly the right as well. By the time the guards managed to drag Nate off of his former boss, the other man was lying bloody and unconscious on the floor.
There won’t be any more layoffs today, Nate thought, just before the guard on his left drew his stun baton, jammed it in Nate’s ribs, and pulled the trigger. Even the stun charge that shot through his frame and froze him into immobility couldn’t wipe the smile of satisfaction off his face.
Lisa refused to come down and bail him out, so Nate was forced to use the services of one of the bondsman that set up shop across the street from the lock-up. The interest the sonofabitch was charging was outrageous, but what choice did he have? If he didn’t make bail he’d sit inside the cell and rot for a few weeks before they brought his case before a judge. Nate knew he’d end up getting in trouble if he stayed on the inside. There were plenty of gangs who would shank a veteran just for the hell of it and Nate would have no choice but to kill anyone who came after him. That would add years to whatever sentence the judge would give him for assault against Southwick. So he paid the fee, ignoring the bondsman’s vulpine grin as he did, then waited the requisite twenty-four hours for the paperwork to be processed. He kept to himself and made it through the evening without incident. Late the next day he went home, only to receive the second surprise in what was turning out to be a pretty shitty week.