Epigraph

content/read/016.md

@@ -1,131 +1,143 @@
-# RJ Brewster --- 2112
+# Dr. Carter Ramirez --- 2112
 
-It took AwDae just under two hours to find the microphone.
+"Avery. What's up?"
 
-The first hour was spent searching the auditorium top to bottom. Ey walked around clapping and humming, then quoting lines half-remembered from productions ey had worked with Sasha in the past. "So set its Sun in thee," ey called in an affected accent. "What Day be dark to me." Wistful Dickinson to fill an empty hall.
+The ping had sounded in Carter's ears like a soft bell, and the faint outline of a door had appeared at the periphery of her vision. Someone had requested a meeting. After a moment of dictating a note to herself for when she got back, she made her way through the door. One of the stats-and-history folks stood, waiting with arms crossed, in the private space.
 
-Ey would've whistled if it wasn't for the structure of a canid muzzle.
+"Running up against a bit of a snag, Dr. Ramirez," they said. "This new patient, uh...0224ebe8?"
 
-Silence.
+"What about them?"
 
-After an hour, venturing even into the overhead areas where sound was muffled, damped, ey gave up and took a break.
+"Well, I'm getting some doubled records. Weird things are duplicated. Sort of."
 
-*It's probably fruitless to be this thorough in the auditorium,* ey thought. *The gain's high enough that even a quiet clap should be enough.*
+"Duplicated? How?"
 
-Ey slouched in an auditorium seat and pulled out the slip of paper with Cicero's transactions. Ey had found that if ey focused on the page just so, rows would sort themselves by columns, so ey spent a few minutes aimlessly zooming through the page of digits.
+"Well, we've got some records from way back with a different gender marker on them and no pronouns." They looked thoughtful. "I ran into a bit of that when I changed everything over, myself, but the process changed all of my past records, too."
 
-Ey scanned over the titles of the initiatives voted on. Very little there to latch onto. Or, rather, way too much. AwDae couldn't hope to boil down the table into any single sentence, much less something useful. The cat had apparently voted on just about everything, without taking any breaks.
+Carter frowned. "So e8 changed their marker and pronouns officially, but you're seeing duplicate records under a different one?"
 
-Eventually, when neat rows of letters began to blur into one another, ey levered emself up from the seat. Paper refolded, ey slipped it back into a pocket before checking on the board once more. Everything remained set as it was.
+"Mmhm. I was wondering, do we have any location data on them?"
 
-AwDae had imagined ey would work in concentric circles away from the auditorium. That turned out not to be the best idea. The hall was nestled between two arms of the school which did not meet except via the auditorium itself. Eir route grew arduous: ey'd walk down one hallway, poke into classrooms, and make noise before moving on.
+"Not really, no. You've got all the same data I do. Most have been redacted."
 
-When ey reached the end of eir circle, though, ey had to jog around the auditorium through the student center to go down the other hallway and do the same.
+"I figured, yeah, but wanted to ask. I just know some friends back in America ran into similar, too. Some ancient conglomerate or something holding onto old records or not updating their systems, so I was wondering if e8 was over there."
 
-Ey gave up on the concentric circle plan and started working from north to south, instead. Ey worked through the entirety of one hallway, clapping and hollering, without hearing anything. From there, on to the area of the student center near the auditorium.
+Carter shrugged. "I don't really know. That sort of thing is scrubbed before we get the cases. I'm actually surprised the files weren't normalized before we got them."
 
-It was there that ey heard the first, faint hum of feedback.
+Avery laughed. "We're one of the big three, so of course it's all extra difficult." Carter must have looked nonplussed, as Avery continued, "Banking, government, and healthcare. Ask any one of the big three to adopt to social change, and you'll get eighteen different reasons why it's impossible to update their systems."
 
-It threatened to skim beneath eir attention, sounding too much like an echo from eir own voice in the cavernous common area. The door to the auditorium caught eir eye, and ey tried once more, getting another faint hum. It slowly died out as space and air dissipated tone.
+"Fair enough. So they have two markers and no pronouns."
 
-It was only a few minutes from there to find the microphone itself. A lavalier mic, disguised as a button resting obsequiously atop the door handle leading into the principal's office. It was just to the northeast of the auditorium doors. Ey would've found it soon enough. It was surprising, in a way, that ey hadn't managed to trigger any feedback earlier.
+"Well, ey has two markers, X and M, but only the one set of pronouns. None listed on the records with the M marker."
 
-The door was labeled 'Admin.'. Ominous.
+"Is this going to be much of a problem?"
 
-There was a head office at the front of the school, but administration was where the principal and vice principals' offices were. One of those places that lingered in the mind of every student who passed through the doors of the school. Getting called to the front office was usually bad enough --- a call from a parent? --- but getting called to the admin office was more oh-shit than that.
+"Don't think so," Avery said thoughtfully. "The records are complete so long as we take both sets into account. You might want to run it by Sandra, though, is the thing. I don't know if us knowing that this change occurred is too much information for us to have. Legally, I mean."
 
-Ears pinned back, AwDae picked up the microphone delicately through mounting feedback and quickly shut it off. The hum had grown loud enough that ey could hear faint clicks from the speakers. Magnets clicking, popping as the physical limitations of the ancient-and-not-so-great speakers reached their limit.
+Carter knit her brow. "And there's the snag."
 
-The sound stopped a scant few moments after, bouncing around the auditorium and the student center. Echoes.
+Avery nodded.
 
-Eir ears slowly uncringed. Ey pocketed the mic in eir trouser pockets and straightened up. The school was silent once more.
+"Well, hopefully not." Carter leaned against the wall and thought for a moment, then asked, "What can we do with this information, anyway? We've seen a pretty good spread across gender markers with our set of cases, do you think this'll change anything?"
 
-Remembering the position where ey had found it, AwDae pocketed the mic and straightened up, wandered back over to the auditorium, turning the gain down on the board and lowering the house volume to a reasonable level. Ey even turned the mic back on and mumbled a quick "one-two" to ensure that none of the speakers had been damaged.
+"I don't know. The friends back in America who ran into this were all ones that made the change later in life. The younger you are when you change markers and such, the easier it is because the less of a record you have to change. It's kind of like you're burdened with a marker from birth, and the longer you go before changing it, the heavier the burden gets."
 
-*This is a sim. Not even mine,* ey thought, the inside of eir ears flushed warm with embarrassment. *What does it matter if a speaker blew?*
+"And they had a big one?"
 
-Ey shrugged it off. Habits were habits. No reason to break them now.
+"Not so big, all told, but it's enough that all of eir records from when ey got eir implants are under a different marker."
 
-Back to the admin office, then. AwDae couldn't help but feel as though ey was trapped within a game. One of those first-person puzzle solvers that seemed forever popular. One of eir favorite of the genres.
+Carter nodded.
 
-It was surprising the adroitness with which eir perspective had shifted. Sobbing: now behind em.
+"From a history standpoint, that also means that eir marketing footprint takes something of a hard left at one point."
 
-Perhaps the fact that ey seemed to be receiving what amounted to clues while in a complex abandoned building added to that. Perhaps it was the shift from RJ to AwDae. Perhaps something about emself. Countless hours in sim. Countless changes in scenery. Countless changes in form.
+"When th--" Carter backtracked. "When ey changed eir marker?"
 
-Shaking eir head, ey turned the knob on the admin office and peeked inside.
+It was Avery's turn to nod.
 
-There were no traps, no jump-scares. Just the six-sided room with three doors on the walls this one. One for the principal, and two for the vice principals. Taking the game metaphor to heart, ey started poking around the office where ey could, flipping through a datebook on the secretary's desk (empty) and rummaging through the drawers (office supplies).
+"So we've got someone who's advertised to with a masculine marker, then with a neutral marker--"
 
-The waste baskets were empty.
+"And ey seemed to have given the whole romance thing a miss, too. Eir marketing footprint is mostly just rig gear and furry stuff. It's like ey slipped through filters unnoticed, which, in itself, leaves a trail."
 
-Steeling emself for something...something what, shocking? The game mentality still holding tight, perhaps. Ey tried each of the doors in turn.
+"Well, if you can't sell em sex, what's left to sell?" Carter laughed.
 
-Surprising. It wasn't the principal's office that opened, but one of the vice principals. The name of the one who had worked there when ey was a student escaped em, and no tags adorned the doors. The office was dark, but the lights responded to a touch on the pad. Ey set it to a comfortable level; warm without being cozy, bright enough to read without being intimidating.
+"Oh, plenty, I assure you. Just that, pushing nine billion, advertisers mostly rely on larger demographics. GQ folks and asexuals aren't broad enough segments to bother wasting ads on. Granted this is only going by the transparency reports. There's all sorts of weird guerrilla marketing going on these days."
 
-Memories of being hauled into the room, all those years ago, with the lights all the way up, a gesture of power.
+"Yeah, fair enough. Any similarities with our other furry?"
 
-Rummaging through the desk revealed little of note.
+Avery shook their head. They swiped their hand to the side to bring up a snippet of desktop, dug through a few decks of vcards. "Being a furry seems to be the big thing they have in common. e8 is X, d7 is M. e8 is single and not looking, d7 is in a long-term relationship. d7 is almost a parody of a DDR junkie, e8 has almost no...well, hold on."
 
-Rather than a planner on the desk was a workstation. Simple. Ancient. It didn't respond to any of AwDae's interactions. How it would work, ey couldn't guess. A sim within a sim? Ey had perhaps hoped that a connection like that might lead...outside. Outside of this mess.
+Carter waited.
 
-The only other items on the desk were a scratch pad and a pencil. The expected tools. The perpetual desk-toppers that never seemed to go out of style.
+"Looks like ey was prodding around the DDR spaces a few hours before the event." Avery had that far-away look to their eyes that one got while digging through data on cards. They shook their head to clear their vision, smiled to Carter. "Sorry, looks like I've got a bit of work ahead of me on that end. Any thoughts on the snag?"
 
-The pad contained a breakdown of costs, divided into departments, for the coming year. A simple three-column setup tallying subject, expense, and deductions from some number at the top. Budgets, perhaps. At the bottom of the page, was a final number, circled in dark, angry strokes. Apparently, the administrator hadn't liked the result.
+"No, carry on as you were, I think. Sandra will keep an eye on it and let us know if we're at risk of overstepping our bounds."
 
-AwDae flumped down in the chair at a jaunty angle, eir tail flopping down between armrest and chair back. Tired, so very tired.
+Avery nodded and stepped back out of the meeting cubicle.
 
-Ey rubbed away the sandy grit of tears already shed. Ey was moving in this search with determination. As much as ey could muster. Anything to occupy eir mind, anything to keep em from collapsing into a depression borne of hopelessness and despair. It occurred to em that getting lost was the perfect prison: complete freedom, or nearly so (ey had already fantasized about jimmying open the other doors), with nothing to do. Nothing to dream, nowhere to go, nothing to know.
+Back in the sim proper, Carter watched as the cards surrounding 0224ebe8 began to sift into two piles as the shadowy form that must be Avery worked. White cotton thread began to string itself around two groups, followed by the tags '0224ebe8 (M)' in one and '0224ebe8 (X)' in the other.
 
-Ey didn't even know the time. No clocks adorned the walls.
+After a few minutes, she walked back to her constellation of decks. On a hunch, she created a small grouping in her area and labeled it "DDR Activity Pre-Event". She began looping in relevant cards from both 0224ebe8 and aca973d7.
 
-Ey would go mad without a task. Could ey create anything? But why create in these empty halls? What would ey even begin to make that would matter the worth of a damn? Ey would never be able to share it. Ey would only be able to spiral endlessly inwards.
+There was a soft *ding* within the sim, and a wave of shadowy heads looked up, Carter's included.
 
-All AwDae wanted to do was curl up in the chair. It was comfortable enough. Perhaps ey could get some sleep in.
+Directly above them in the middle of the 'ceiling' was the current time in faintly luminescent letters. As always, they would look different for each member; for Carter, traced out in fine cotton string was the '12:00' that indicated lunch.
 
-Instead, ey ground the heels of eir paws against eir face and leaned toward the desk. Numbers, digits, columns. Something familiar. Mindlessly working through the sums in eir head simply for lack of anything else to do.
+Carter's vision began to dim. She backed out before the ominously cheery message instructing her to stretch her legs urged her to do so. University policy stated employees should work in a sim no longer than four hours in a row without fully backing out, so when she pulled back from her rig, she saw everyone else doing the same.
 
-"Weird," ey murmured sleepily.
+Most of the team gathered around the fridge and microwave by the coffee station to collect their lunches. She hadn't had the time or energy this morning. Lunch out it was.
 
-The numbers didn't add up. Rather, everything added up within its own row. It was as though a row were missing.
+At least she wouldn't be alone. There a few folks who made their way across the street from the campus building to the shops, hunting falafel or curry. She put on her best chummy face and tagged along with. The group chatted, inevitably but amiably, about work, comparing notes on the cases they were focusing on.
 
-Ey stretched out an arm, snatching up the scrap of note and holding it up to the light. No erasures, whiteouts, or scribbles. There was just not enough information.
+The group --- three of them, with Carter --- decided on a small Vietnamese place nearby. It would be a long lunch, with the wait and all, but she was promised that the food was amazing. Besides: Friday. Even the boss can enjoy a lunch every now and then.
 
-Digits. Numbers. Ledger. Paper. Notes?
+Standing outside as they waited on a table, they made an obvious target for the tabloid sellers. They were wandering a little further than usual from the tube station entrance today, and the restaurant hadn't noticed them yet to shoo them off.
 
-If ey was meant to be looking for clues, then...
+Carter rolled her eyes when Prakash bought a copy.
 
-Ey fished the previous 'clue' out of eir pocket. The ledger of Cicero's DDR interactions.
+"Hey, don't look at me like that. I promise I read it for the laughs," he said.
 
-It wasn't nearly so simple as the single-column arithmetic on the scratch paper. Each referendum had three columns of digits: a cost, a bounty (if that referendum was referred back to the house), and any number of comments made on the issue. Often out of order on the sheet, as well, given Cicero's habit of voting on everything. Perhaps it was the first thing he did on waking.
+Carter shrugged, "It's less about why you reading it, and more who you're giving money..."
 
-Given the note's interactivity level of expanding on closer examination, ey tried to will a sum out of the columns to match the final row.
+Prakash and Aiden stood in silence, eyes on Carter. They exchanged glances before Prakash broke in, "Hey boss, you doing okay?"
 
-No luck. Ey wished for eir rig more than anything. It'd make the task almost trivial.
+"Can I see that?" She didn't wait for an answer before she snatched the flimsy paper from his hands.
 
-Ah well.
+> **Soho Theatre Mourns Lost Tech**
+>
+> RJ Brewster was the pride of the Soho Theatre Troupe's tech department.
+>
+> The brainy American who blessed them with boosted bass was admitted to the University College Hospital after apparently getting lost during a rehearsal on Wednesday. Ey was discovered during an intermission completely unresponsive. Medical crews declared em lost on the scene after analysing eir implants.
+>
+> The genderqueer young man was described as "bright, but obsessed." Ey was a member of the furry cult and spent most of eir time on the 'net, which friends blame for em getting lost.
+>
+> The STT promises that productions will go on as planned, with back-up techs running the sound system.
+>
+> Brewster represents the 135th case of the lost marked in the world. Ey will be cared for by doctors at the UCH. Members of the University College London studying the lost were unavailable for comment.
 
-Ey snagged the half-used pencil and the rest of the scrap and worked it out. Each cost and comment would be a debit, and each bounty would be a credit. One could also buy DDR credits through a mechanism that basically acted as an additional withholding on one's taxes. There were two of those in there, possibly ensuring that Cicero would have enough DDR credit to make what AwDae assumed was some scathing political snipe on an upcoming high-stakes referendum.
+Carter let the paper droop. Aiden retrieved it before it was closed completely, opening to the page where she had been reading.
 
-Even so, it was clear that the section of numbers on the paper, a month's worth, perhaps, didn't add up. Once more, there was a missing interaction. Three missing interactions, rather: one vote's cost, one vote's comment, and one vote's bounty, at AwDae's best guess. Perhaps a few smaller votes to add up to those totals? It was recent, too. A few days before he had gotten lost
+"Oh, hey! Stuff about a lost person!" He read down further, then looked up at Carter. "Did you get an interview request from them?"
 
-Except that one's DDR records were public. Not which way one voted, but that one had voted. Comments were public perforce. The information had to be public for the system to work.
+She shook her head. "Not a word. Not to me, at least. Maybe PR turned the interview down."
 
-Unless it had been tampered with, there was a combination of 1,252,000 credits unaccounted for in terms of transactions. One million debit to the comment, a quarter of a million credit for bounty, and two thousand to the vote cost.
+Prakash read over Aiden's shoulder. "Do you think we could go see em? We're with UCL. Maybe we could--"
 
-AwDae tore the top sheet off the pad and, working faster this time, ran the numbers once more. Same result.
+He fell silent at a look from Carter. She spoke carefully, voice carrying the weight of a prepared statement. "Ey's in good hands. Trust the doctors on this. We'll receive all relevant info from them. Any contact with a patient may introduce bias in the study."
 
-"Well, huh." Ey sat, frowning, for a little while longer before gathering eir notes. Ey folded them together with the original clue and stuffed them into eir pocket. Ey couldn't create a deck here, apparently, but ey could sure take items with emself.
+Aiden frowned, shutting the paper. "We shouldn't have this."
 
-If this all had something to do with what was going on outside, where ey was counted among the lost, that was all well and good, but how would ey get that information back out remained a mystery.
+"No, we shouldn't."
 
-Too early to be thinking of such things. Ey wasn't going anywhere for the time being. Sleep was becoming an imperative.
+He quickly balled up the tabloid and, finding no rubbish bins nearby, set it on the restaurant's outside windowsill. Researchers were as jealous of their data as the lawyers were of patient privacy. Keeping the tabloid would only be a risk.
 
-Ey gave token consideration to where ey would be able to sleep before deciding on the auditorium. The fold-down seats were cushioned. Not very well, but better than the floor.
+"But what about the theater troupe?" Prakash asked.
 
-And the place had a sense of home about it, too. The thought was a barb tugging at eir heart, but there was nothing to be done. Not in this state. Not right now.
+Carter caught herself in the act of shaking her head, turned instead toward the restaurant. She tilted her head back and let her eyes trace the sharp contrast between the gutters of the building and the steel-gray sky, seeing neither.
 
-Sleep, then.
+"We can't," she finally murmured. "Same risk of bias."
 
-Sleep, and perhaps dreams.
+A safe answer. A rote one. A required one. The legal aspect was plain, the ethics clear. If she wanted to learn anything from the doctors treating this RJ or the Troupe, she'd have to file a request, wait for the ethics board, wait again for the lawyers, and even then, even if she succeeded, she would only be able to write a questionnaire for them to fill out.
 
-Or perhaps not. Sleep to get away. Sleep for nullity. Sleep for nothingness.
+And yet here, a half hour tube ride away, was a social connection. The very thing she wanted most to understand.
+
+She was distracted, thankfully, by the host inviting them in to eat.