She and Stephen were relatively alike in looks. They were both tall, and they both had spare, well muscled bodies with well developed arms and shoulders and powerful legs. The same training had stamped them, and though the biological differences were still obvious they didn’t obscure the fact that here were two people who had come out of the same mold.
Might even have been sibs, once up on a time.
Jess wondered how long it would take for him to corner her into whatever it was Bricker wanted.
She’d already decided to refuse. What would the threat be? What would the price be?
Did she really even care?
**
Dev woke to the soft chime of her scheduler, opening her eyes to find the soft neutral colored interior of her sleeping pod surrounding her. The sedate glow that accompanied the chime intensified a little and she stretched, waiting expectantly until the latch triggered and the pod opened.
She sat up and swung her legs over the side, leaning her hands on the edge and peering out to see the normal, placid activity of the early dayshift in the crèche.
All around there were people emerging from sleep pods, some entering them as well who had worked the night through, groups of her crèche mates briefly chatting nearby. Overhead the walls curved to meet a dome, and beams of sunlight arched through to hit solar panels, moving from one to the other in a stately dance as the station that held the crèche rotated.
To either side of her, a line of sleeping pods extended around the curved wall, layered one over the other on sliding tracks that positioned the units for exit at the right time and place. Once a pod was evacuated, it slid up and out of the way, allowing the next one to use the landing space.
And speaking of that, her own pod was gently beeping, warning her of imminent motion.
She stood up on the platform outside, and moved away from the pod, hearing it close behind her as she walked down the sloping ramp and joined a line of bodies heading into the bathing and changing center, all in light sleep-suits, all with bare feet, all with faintly lit collars around their necks.
Like hers. Dev never thought much about it, since she could hardly remember the time when she hadn’t worn one. It was light and fitted very well to her skin, never chafing or causing her any trouble and with the delicate tracery of the electronics on it, she actually found them rather attractive.
Or at least, that’s what she told herself.
“Morning , Dev.” Aybe 285 was in front of her, flexing his hands and stifling a yawn. There were five or six of his set in front of him, and behind her were some Ceebees, and she spotted Gigi and another of her set as well.
“Morning.” Dev responded. She could hear the soft hum of conversation around her, and behind the edge of the crèche she spotted a splash of the sun coursing through the station walls and it brought to mind the fact that she was due in the lab right after she broke the night’s fast.
She had new skills. She could feel them, a tickly sensation in the back of her skull that almost made her want to scratch her head there as she wondered what the scope of the new knowledge was.
It was tech, that she knew, and a lot of it. She’d spent an evening and the following day in programming, and she’d seen the rings of dark fatigue under the eyes of the programmer when they’d finally let her come up, in a hazy mixture of adrenaline and euphoria that had her breathing hard and shaking.
A little dizzy, and ravenous. One of the meds had walked her to the dining hall and sat with her as she’d consumed her tray, her head finally clearing by the time she drained her second cup of cinnamon tea as her body adjusted back to something close to normal.
The med had gotten her a second sandwich, giving her a pat on the shoulder before he left her there to finish up. It wasn’t unusual, he’d told her, but she’d never taken that much programming at one time, and she had to admit it had unsettled her.
She was next in line, and went to an open cleaning station, stepping inside and ducking her head a little as the air blasted away the set of paper clothing she’d been wearing to sleep in, the warm pressure feeling good against her skin.
A quick flash of irradiated light cleaned her, and then she was stepping out, turning to the right and going to the line of cabinets that ringed the outer wall. Twenty third in the row to the right of the door, on lower level A, was hers.
She opened the door and stepped inside, waiting for it to close after her. The inside light came on and the sound around her faded and she was in the only piece of privacy she’d ever known, given to her when she’d graduated from basic instruction.
Her crib, as they called it. Barely big enough for her to stretch her arms out twice, it held a cabinet, a padded bench and a counter, her workspace and the narrow, shallow drawer she kept her few personal possessions in.
Not everyone got one. Only those destined for higher skill programs were issued one of the limited cribs and it was a definite mark of status in the crèche along with the ability that went with it to manage the small amount of unregulated time in their day.
She could come here, and study, or watch a lecture from the library or just sit and think for a few minutes by herself. It was nice to have a place of quiet and peace in the crowded crèche, and the padded bench was even long enough for her to lay down and relax if she wanted to though she seldom did.
Dev went over to the closet and opened it, sliding into an under tunic, then pulling on a snug jumpsuit over that. The fabric was soft, and a soft blue green in color, the gears patches on either shoulder indicating her assignment to tech and a change for her from the neutral beige of the unassigned.
It felt good. She liked the color. It contrasted with her pale hair much better than the other ones had and it made her feel happy to be getting new skills and the opportunity to be a part of something that the director had told her was so important.
She was still a little apprehensive about the programs, but so far nothing felt strange or out of sorts – she’d had some bad programs that had left her sick to her stomach and once had come up with such a headache they’d had to put her back down again and adjust something.
This was nothing like that. She remembered a brief dream in her sleep last night which she sometimes would have after a long session, but it had been nothing more than a few images, a gray space, a cliff, a face, and the smell of brine but they were new and different and she found them intriguing because they weren’t skills.
They were something that was intended to get her ready, programs that would let her know what to do when she got to wherever they were sending her and give her enough information for her to know the proper way to respond and interact with the people she’d meet there.
It wasn’t knowledge, precisely, it wasn’t facts she could call up and examine. This was deep stuff.
She picked up her ident badge and clipped it to her front pocket then she went to the small mirror and picked up her comb, raking her thick, short hair into some kind of order. She peered at her reflection, nodding a little at it as she put the comb back down.
She checked the chrono over the door, then she pulled back the simple chair in front of the equally spare desk and sat down to review her notes before the time she was due in the dining hall. After a minute, though, she pushed the monitor pad on it’s arm aside and opened the drawer to her right hand, removing a tattered square object and setting in on the desktop.
With a faint smile, she opened the cover of the book and read the first page, as she had so many times before, savoring the images the words brought to her and in the simple luxury of reading – a skill not always programmed in her crèche mates.