He hadn't bothered to explain; he had treated her as if she were a slave, or a robot, with no choice but to carry out his every order.
She was no robot.
Casper's question came back to her. Did she respect herself?
Yes, she did. She stood up and marched back to Casper's cubby.
Casper looked up at her approach, and quickly blanked his screen. He had given up on doing the job he was supposed to be doing, tracing through the mazes of interlocking directorates, shared subsidiaries, and stock options to determine just who owned what, so that companies would not unwittingly sue their own managers or stockholders in the ongoing torrent of liability litigation; instead, he had been doing some very simple, basic searches, seeing just what in the company network he could access easily and what was relatively secure.
Mirim probably wouldn't have noticed, but why risk it?
“Come to torment me further, wench?” he asked, smiling.
“Sort of,” Mirim said, not smiling back. “I wanted to warn you.”
His own expression collapsed into mild wariness. “Warn me of what?” he asked.
Mirim hesitated. It wasn't too late to throw it off with a joke, to keep from offending Quinones, to avoid risking her job.
Then she got a look at Casper's face-thin, long-jawed, pale, framed by brown hair in need of trimming, and watching her intently from deep-set brown eyes.
He didn't look drugged or wired. He looked sincere, attentive, and almost… almost noble.
“I think Quinones is on your case,” she said. “He wanted me to tell him the minute you stepped out of the office.”
Casper blinked once, slowly, coolly. Then he turned and looked over his cubby.
There was no way of knowing just what Quinones actually wanted. Perhaps he intended to check Casper's files-though he should be able to access those from his own computer. Perhaps he wanted to set up some little surprise.
Or…?
“I think he's decided you're a vicious drug fiend, and he wants to ferret out your stash before you can pollute the rest of us,” Mirim said, perching herself on the edge of Casper's desk.
Or that, Casper thought.
There weren't any drugs to find, of course, nor anything else suspicious; Casper's life was dreary and utterly innocent of any wrongdoing. Even his debts weren't his own, but inherited.
However, sooner or later, Quinones would discover that Casper wasn't working. Maybe he already had discovered it, and wanted to see if he could discover the reason. Quinones wouldn't believe that the imprinting had screwed up, and that instead of adding to Casper's liability-tracing skills it had apparently wiped them out.
Even if he did believe, it wouldn't do any good. Casper had signed that stupid waiver at NeuroTalents, and Data Tracers, Inc. wasn't about to waste their time and money fighting NeuroTalents on his behalf. A second imprint might not do any better; Casper's brain might have indetectable quirks. Much easier to just throw him out and find a replacement whose brain was still virgin and imprintable.
He was going to lose his job.
Well, screw that. He didn't want the lousy job anyway. He was sick of kowtowing to that fat fool, Quinones. A person had to stand on his own two feet.
Better to go out now, rather than waiting to be fired.
And there was no reason to go quietly.
While he ran through all this he had been gazing mildly up at Mirim. Now he smiled broadly, reached over and took her hand and squeezed it gently. He did this without knowing why; it went against all the habits he had always had, but it felt right. He had never touched Mirim before, and he felt her start slightly at the first contact.
“Thanks for telling me, Mirim,” he said. Then, to Mirim's utter astonishment, he stood, climbed up onto his desk, and shouted, “Listen, everybody!”
The normal hum of the office faded slightly as faces turned toward him. Most of the workers couldn't see him, because of the partitions, but they could hear him.
He looked across the partitions and saw that the door to Quinones’ office was closed. He wouldn't hear anything.
“Some of you know me, some of you don't,” Casper called out. “I'm Casper Beech; I've worked here for nine years now. Nine lousy, boring, painful years!”
A few voices tittered nervously.
“Well, that nine years is ending; I'm about to leave here for good. You know why?” He paused dramatically. No one replied; the decrease in office noise deepened as a genuine hush fell.
“Because last week they sent me for a neural imprint-they were too cheap to train me properly, or buy software a normal human being can run. They sent me for a neural imprint-they ordered me, a free-born American, to take it. They sent me to have my brain rewired. They sent me to be force-fed skills I'll never be able to use anywhere else. They sent me to be programmed like one of their infernal machines!”
Casper could feel the people listening. He heard a chair scrape as someone stood up for a better view.
“Well, I'm not a machine to be programmed. I've been living like one for nine years, but I'm not a machine! I've been taking their orders for nine years, but I'm not a machine! But I didn't rebel-after nine years, I think even I thought I was a machine! I did what they wanted, I took the imprint-but my brain rebelled! The imprint didn't take. I was sick as a dog for a week, my memory's fouled up, I can't work-but I didn't rebel. I came in here and tried to work anyway, like a good little machine…” He paused again, and then bellowed out, “And they fired me! Because their imprint screwed up, they fired me!”
A murmur of sympathy-probably more feigned than genuine-ran through the room.
It wasn't sympathy Casper wanted, though. It struck him suddenly that he had no idea what he did want, or why he was doing any of this, but he knew he had to do it, he knew he had to carry on, he knew what to say next.
“And you know what, folks? I'm glad. Because at least I'm out of here, and the rest of you aren't. But I won't be the last to go-no, I'm just the first! Because do you know what our dear Mr. Quinones told me, when he sent me to have my brain reprogrammed, my mind tampered with? I'll tell you what he told me. It seems software that runs in people is cheaper than software that runs in computers, because we can do our own debugging. It seems that dear old Data Tracers intends to do a lot of imprinting from now on-I was just the first! And do you know what the failure rate for neural imprinting is? Do you?”
He waited, but nobody replied.
“Neither do I,” he announced. “Because I'm damn sure it's not what they've published. Most of you work with data all the time, bend it around to suit management, to suit the customers’ whims. You think any of the data we get hasn't been tampered with? Ha!”
He waved in dismissal, and his tone changed from anger to false joviality.
“Well, boys and girls, I'm out of here, and glad to be free. I'll leave you all to enjoy your imprints-or if they don't take, I'll see you on the streets, with the other unemployables. Stop by and say hello, and remember-my name's Casper Beech.”
Then he jumped down, grabbed Mirim by the hand, and said, “Come on.”
“Come where?” she said, startled.
He stopped in mid-stride, turned, and smiled at her. “Wherever you like,” he said, “but back to your desk for a start. You don't want anyone to tell Quinones it was you who warned me, do you?”
The room was buzzing; several people had emerged from their cubbies and were approaching Casper uncertainly.
Mirim hesitated.
Casper abruptly leaned forward and kissed her, taking her head between his hands-and as he did, he whispered, “I need to leave now, or it'll ruin my exit.” Then he released her and strode toward the door.
Mirim blinked, then ran after him. She detoured just far enough to grab her purse.