Peter Stoneman – Freelance Writer and Researcher

(Work in progress.)

The worker bees only knew something had gone sideways when Director Hakiro broke with protocol and interrupted the eternal stream. Wearing an unnatural, contradictory smile, Hakiro breached the fourth wall and delivered the melancholy news in his hallmarked, optimistic style.

 “Code Red,” he said. Like his throat was coated with wisps of cotton candy. “Assemble in the lounge,” he told them. Pretty please, with sugar sprinkles and a spoonful of honey.

 It was Hakiro’s gift that the command shared more in kind with an apology. He might’ve headed up the Beehive, but he sure as shit wasn’t hardboiled. Anyone who knew anything could see the old man was a pussycat. Sure, they paid lip service to the chain of command, but even the Drones (who knew nothing) understood the Director had been woefully miscast. The New Guy, Bellringer, and probably even the New New Guy understood Hakiro was merely a lightning rod. He was there to absorb any heat that came their way. Still, as the confused proclamation found their 100 screens, they went through the tired rigmarole of springing to attention. All but one, responded with Sunday Best smiles and made a decent fist of not rolling their eyes. It was the least they could do – and their least was the best any of them could muster. Good soldiers all, the Geisha Drones covered their modesty and grudgingly logged off.

 The only holdout was Weegee, a second-storey drone and first-class wiseass. For sure, he was only half-listening, but even he could tell Hakiro seemed more anxious than usual. Like he’d been prompted by a grade school guidance counsellor to maybe try to be more direct. But truly, it didn’t matter if Hakiro was apologetic or assertive or whether the situation was Code Red or Tangerine. Weegee would’ve been pissed whatever the colour. Up to his eyes in strands of code and in no mood for distractions, he tossed his controlpad across the floor and approached the screen wall of his pod, acknowledging Hakiro with a smile that he wiped clean in a heartbeat. Like a mall brat who’d spotted the high school track star, only to realise her mistake a second later. It was just some poor schmo from the chess club and she’d wasted a perfectly good smile on him.

 “What is it?” Weegee sighed. He hadn’t caught the gist. He figured Hakiro was going to fix them with the colours of the day or somesuch workaday BS.

 “Weegee. Downstairs. Lickety Split. Code Red,” Hakiro repeated, but his delivery undercut his authority. Amid the static, he sounded like he was tiptoeing on deep pile carpet, trying to not wake a hospice patient.

 “Gimme a minute.” Weegee drew an insolent breath of recycled air. It tasted of peppermints and the sweat of the other Drones. He was ice cool but he knew what Code Red meant. It meant Code Dead. It was an occupational hazard. A cross to bear. The Drones didn’t get to venture outside so much anymore, but they still got lost somehow. They got lost in the data.

 Hakiro made to reply, but Weegee clicked Quit Chat. For a second, as the screen fizzed to black, Hakiro’s eyes sparkled with relief and Weegee had to fight back a snicker. Then, because he was all heart, he offered an ironic salute to his fallen comrade, whoever it was.

 “Nostrovia buddy. Happy trails,” he toasted the dear departed and took a swig of something white to dull the pain. He should’ve felt guilty, but – hand on heart – he was relieved that whoever got lost out there wasn’t him.

 Two hundred miles thataway, the sun was melting into the ocean, but this was probably the closest Weegee had come to serenity all day. Full disclosure, he was still a little cranky from the previous night shift. Monday’s schedule had bled into today without his even realising and he’d awoken to a familiar fug. As he stirred from sleep, with the engrams of another life still hanging over him, he managed to drift into the day somehow, but he was off-balance from the get-go. It wasn’t so uncommon. Every year he stayed on the payroll, the further it drifted that way. He figured he wasn’t addicted, but he understood he’d grown too accustomed to it. That trippy sensation of opening his eyes and never quite knowing who he was, then slowly piecing his personality back together like it was a crashed vase. Today it had taken till the early bird special in the mess hall before he found his equilibrium. He only remembered it was Tuesday over a plate of enchiladas with the new new guy and Mitchko the new guy.

Poor, sweet, stupid Mitchko. Weegee smiled at the lunchroom memory. He wasn’t such a new guy these days, but Weegee wasn’t going to do him the honour of reclassifying him simply because he was yesterday’s news suddenly. Weegee’s brain was scrambled, but he knew for sure he hated the guy. It was a shame, probably. The kid was such a good-natured chump, but he couldn’t help but get under Weegee’s skin. He’d imprinted himself on Weegee some years back and, despite Weegee’s worst inclinations, Mitchko continued to live in expectation of being taken under his wing. He probably imagined someday they’d reach a kinda cutesy, symbiotic nirvana, like a shark and one of those suckerfish that latch on and pick away the scraps of shit and dead skin, but everyone understood it was a forlorn hope. Everyone except Mitchko. He’d never win Weegee’s favour and, try as he might, no matter how many shitty messages Weegee sent upstream, Weegee could never get off Mitchko’s shift pattern. It got to the point that Weegee began to think the redhead running operations must’ve died in her sleep – or maybe she was alive and she was just trolling him? He didn’t know, but he remained steadfast in his low regard for Mitchko. Naturally he knew his complaints made no difference, that much was inevitable, but still he messaged the redhead once a week, regular as a train. His pleas either went unanswered, or were greeted with an out-of-office reply. The replies seemed hand-tailored expressly to keep his frustration simmering, but not quite enough for his anger to boil over.

“This is operations,” the redhead’s out-of-office replied every time he pitched a complaint or asked that Mitchko be transferred. “We REALLY wish we could answer your query at this time but we’re like super busy and possibly away from our desks. Your message is important to us. Please allow 5-10 working days before following up. Have a great day!”

For Weegee, this was an unsatisfying outcome. The phony baloney automatic replies drifted into his inbox like confetti and Mitchko continued to follow him around like a pain in the ass Labrador puppy. For three solid years, whenever Weegee took his lunch or went for a quiet think on the crapper, Mitchko was ever present, like a mote in his eye. Some of the other Drones gave Weegee a hard time about it. They urged him to get to know the kid. He was probably a genuine guy. A proper, corn fed county fair specimen, they said. They figured Weegee just needed to give the kid a break, but they were way off base. Others figured Weegee’s disdain was irrational, but again, they couldn’t have gotten further from the truth if they tried. The truth was, Weegee had his reasons and they were manifold. He couldn’t list them all right now, but reason number one, in BOLD CAPS and underscored in red, was that Mitchko the new guy didn’t have a low setting to his dial. Everything was ratcheted to a hundred. It was either the giddy heights or the absolute worst. No grey area. His every word arrived like a piledriver and it was always the same tired BS. As for reasons two to ninety? Well, that was just his prerogative, Weegee figured. Maybe it was irrational. It made no difference now because Weegee had already tallied Mitchko’s score. It came down to simple math. The kid was O for ninety. Still, like today, if Weegee couldn’t find a table to himself in the lunchroom, eating with Mitchko was maybe the least bad of several available options. He hated the new guy but he was reliable at least. Out of necessity, he’d hone in on his table and have him scooch over.

“Scooch over, New Guy,” Weegee grunted without affection and Mitchko lit up like Christmas, Jesus and Moses had arrived at his dorm, bearing kegs of beer and a bag of weed apiece. Mitchko was in the process of breaking the new new guy’s cherry and giving him the benefit of his experience. Weegee stood over them a minute, summoning his annoyance like a genie from a brass bottle, holding his dinner tray like a cat he was about to strangle.

“Sure thing, Weegee,” Mitchko said, loyally shuffling along the bench. “You wanna try some?” he batted his eyelids and pushed his plate toward Weegee out of deference. Weegee looked at the pile of ketchup and fritas and pulled a face.

“This isn’t prison. You understand that, right?” Weegee frowned as he sat down. He saw right away the insult hadn’t landed. Mitchko just wagged his tail and panted. He wanted to please him so bad.

“Yeah, I get that.” Mitchko cracked up like they were buddies sharing a joke. “You wanna soda?” Mitchko held up a dewy, virgin bottle and Weegee shook his head, even though he could’ve used a cold soda right then. “You met Eriksson?” Mitchko nodded to his companion, hoping to draw him into their circle. Weegee gave Eriksson a thin smile.

“You’re the new new guy, yeah?” Weegee took a bite of his food. Already it was getting cold, but it tasted pretty good.

“Nice to meet ya,” the new new guy held out his hand, but Weegee didn’t look up from his plate. He regretted not taking the soda. But more than anything, he wished they’d both shut up and let him think. Put the pieces of the vase back together in his head.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Weegee told them both, “But I really don’t wanna engage right now.” He said it reasonably, he thought, and the new guy and the new new guy mulled that over for a while, maybe a full minute. Weegee enjoyed the silence and the smell of refried beans. It might’ve been the best minute of his day if he hadn’t felt a sudden flash of conscience. Seeing their forlorn frowns, he urged them to carry on. “Pretend I’m not here,” he told them. “Maybe I’ll pretend I’m not here too,” he said and they stayed silent another minute while Weegee horned more food from his fork into his mouth.

“So. Jeez. Where was I?” Mitchko turned back to Eriksson finally and the new new guy just kinda opened and closed his mouth like a blowfish. Maybe he was hoping Mitchko would lose his thread and change the subject, but Mitchko never lost his thread. Weegee knew that all too well. It was reason eighty-eight – stickability.

“I’m gonna guess it was the Military Industrial Complex,” Weegee wiped the corner of his mouth with a napkin. “Am I right?” He knew he was right. He wished he could’ve stayed out of it, but the temptation to be a wiseacre was overwhelming.

“That’s right,” Mitchko grinned. “The Military Industrial Complex, yeah. They got their fingers in everything, yeah?” The new new guy’s eyes opened in phony wonder and Weegee swallowed a sneer at Mitchko’s expense. Mitchko clocked him but Weegee flashed his best choirboy smile to throw him off the scent.

“Sneaky bastards,” Eriksson agreed and took a wet bite. The kid wasn’t a day over 16, but he was a beast. Seven feet of neatly stacked white meat and scalp. He looked mean, but the meanness was undermined, unconvincing. His face was round and welcoming, pasty white, with a decent sized strawberry for a nose. His voice was a kind of sing-song affair. Probably a Canadian accent, maybe Minnesota, Weegee guessed. At the shoulder of his regulation jumpsuit, Weegee thought he could just make out the faint edge of some backstreet ink. An American Beauty rose, in tribute to the loving Mom who shipped him south for a billfold of Hakiro’s dollars. Weegee imagined an old lady with a similar open face and strawberry nose, red from the eternal winter. Even if nothing else in Weegee’s life made sense, it seemed clear Eriksson didn’t know the Military Industrial Complex from his own asshole. The couple of kilos of muscle that passed for his brain was focussed solely on the act of half-chewing his food and spitting flecks of meat and sourdough onto the tabletop. His frontal lobe was 100% preoccupied with the mouthful of wet burger sliding sideways around his sideways mouth.

“Yeah. Those sons of bitches,” Weegee laughed hard. As he looked up from the wet mess of spitballs on the table, Weegee could see the grey-pink mass, turning to mulch on Eriksson’s pink-grey tongue. He had a piece of pickle hanging over his bottom lip like a comma. Weegee couldn’t take his eyes off him. Suddenly he was staring at the kid like he’d just fallen in love for the first time.

“You better believe it,” Mitchko declared and Weegee snapped out of it. “If they don’t got you one way, they got you another,” Mitchko shovelled in a mouthful of beans. He was leaning back in his seat like a great raconteur.

Weegee sighed. Mitchko was always regaling some poor sap with his bogus 9/11 theories and how certain he was it was an inside job. Every day he held court. Just like his pappy and his grandpappy before him. Always spinning the same lines of horseshit or shooting the breeze about The Grand Conspiracy with one the weak gazelles. Someone from maintenance or some poor stray from the new intake like Eriksson. Sometimes, if Weegee was feeling crabby, he’d shrug and tell Mitchko to let it slide. Forget it Mitchko, he’d say. NYC got lost to the tides 100 years back. They built a wall in the wrong place, don’t you remember? He’d tell him, hey, it’s ancient history now, let sleeping dogs lie, just so he could see Mitchko’s face turn blue and watch him stutter and reach for the water and his heart pills. He knew it was cold, but what could he do? It was an irresistible urge.

“Just let it go,” Weegee looked up from his plate and grinned. “It’s old news now.” He fixed Mitchko with his best innocent expression, but it wasn’t in his wheelhouse. He knew he looked like a gloating asshole and he was pretty ok about it.

“Buh…You just gotta look at the footage, bae,” Mitchko was stammering like he just caught an electric shock. He held up his screen for them both to see. “The towers. They’re coming down at freefall speed. Jeez, I mean. Those poor bastards. Those poor murdered bastards.”

“Yeah, I don’t buy it,” Weegee told him, just like every other time. He didn’t really know if he bought it or not, but he enjoyed rubbing the kid the wrong way. It was better than enchiladas, and Weegee liked enchiladas a lot. Mexican food was his favourite thing about Tuesdays. Tuesdays. Tuesday, he thought vaguely. Memory finding him finally as he landed his fork on his plate. It chimed against the grey China like a Pavlovian bell.

“What is it Weegee? You okay?” Mitchko sat forward. The kid was so loyal. He looked like he was getting set to perform the Heimlich. Weegee made a point of ignoring him.

“Hey, new new guy,” Weegee swallowed a lukewarm mouthful and tried to not look at the cold soda he now wanted more than anything in the world. “What day is it?”

“Today? It’s the third.” The new new guy looked as proud as Mitchko looked crestfallen.

“Not the date you asshole. What day?” Weegee pushed his tray to the middle of the table.

“It’s Tuesday, Weegee,” Mitchko hurried to tell him. He was trying to assert his dominance over the rookie, but he couldn’t stick the landing. He had this look in his eye like he wanted Weegee to ruffle his fur, or take him for a long walk, but Weegee got up and walked out without a word.

Weegee didn’t speak again until a couple of hours later when the Code Dead came from Hakiro. That’s where we came in. Weegee had just got his room set right. After blowing off the lunch room, his life was a blurred amphetamine rush, but somehow he’d gotten everything exactly the way his Tuesday John liked it. Weegee had a rep for being a flake, an asshole, but in truth, he was a stickler for detail. So, after he abandoned the new guy and the new new guy and remembered who he was finally, he laboured for two hours to ensure his code was just so. He reconfigured the program safeties because, hey you couldn’t be too careful, then went over the metrics from their last liaison and screwed around with the algorithm to guarantee a sleek ride for his phony love. Like a cautious mom, dipping an elbow into the bathwater, he tinkered with the atmospherics to make certain everything was just right. Not too cold, not too balmy. He busted a nut so the light would be more flattering, the bedding smelled daisy fresh and the playlist was just the right side of romantic. It was not too seedy and not too proper. Just the right combo. He was just setting himself to kick back and admire his adjustments to the program when the apologetic summons came down from the Director. A lesser soul might’ve bitched, but Weegee understood his place in the scheme of things. After cutting off Hakiro, he scouted the grey floor for his terminal pad. He found it finally, beside his modest box of possessions, then fumbled through the display and clicked ‘save as’ to record the overwrites. While he waited for his status to update, he hung his ‘back real soon, baby’ Chiron against his avatar and clicked shut down. Outside his door, already he could hear Bellringer coming down the hallway. He was pounding on every door and cheerfully hollering like a dinnertime mom. When he arrived at Weegee’s door he stopped a whiles.

“You coming down, buttercup? Weegee darling? You comin’? Wanna find out who died?”

Weegee heard him smacking his lips like he was kissing the pod door but he didn’t rise to the bait. He gave Bellringer an old country minute to pass so they wouldn’t have to engage in conversation on the stairwell. Once he heard him move on, he stubbed his smoke and pulled his robe tight around himself, arriving in the cold grey entrance hall to find the flag flying upside down, all their banners inverted, as if in distress. Already, one of the water carriers from services was switching the number over the operations room door. The roached sign read, “0 days since last Lost Soul.” The zero, from a happier time, was fashioned from an upside-down smiley. The last time Weegee even bothered to check the digits, they’d gotten as high as 706 days. This was the first time he’d seen it hit zero in three or four years, he realised, standing in line in the grumbling pack of Drones.

Something on the third floor had gone sideways. They all knew that much. What they each felt about it, well that was their own business. Naturally, as they grabbed their callsheets and made for the breakout room, there were mutterings amongst the Proxies, but nothing you could hang a coat on. Everyone was standing in line speculating. Etienne said he was sure it was the Aryan kid. The one who played out those shady Nazi fantasies. The kid sold it on the corridors as simple roleplay for old midwest white dudes, rather than a Fourth Reich thing but no one was buying that line. His go-to was that it was a Teutonic fields and farmers daughters type deal, but everyone knew that behind his paywall it was all Kristallnacht and verboten POV handjobs. In any case, if Aryan Pete turned out to be their fallen comrade, nobody was going to lose any sleep. Then Bellringer started a short-lived rumour that the kid who worked the Manga quarter had killed a John when he tried to mess with her matrix, but that little fantasy fizzled out as soon as Anna-May wandered into line and asked what the hell was happening. Then the Director shuffled out of his office.

“So. Something happened,” the Director told them when they’d all assembled. “Something bad,” he coughed, confirming his status as the master of understatement.

“You think?” Bellringer barked. He allowed himself a badass cackle and took a stride toward Hakiro. Bellringer was a dough-faced alpha and Hakiro was a cowering beta, but everyone knew Bellringer was playacting. He was a half-metre taller than the Director, perhaps a half-metre broader, but no one was alarmed or living in expectation that one day Bellringer might simply tear the Director’s head from his shoulders and take a hot piss down his neck. It didn’t matter how committed Bellringer was to his role. Like everyone else, he understood his place in the pecking order.

“What’s that, Behringer?” Hakiro peered up from his tablet. He could’ve been asking about the weather outside.

Bellringer repeated himself but his second pass was a ways off target. His expression was still 100% passive-aggressive teen, but Hakiro’s gaze was like a poultice. He was smiling amiably like they were riding an elevator to the same floor. Hakiro was just too literal a soul to pick up on anything like subtext. He was too unsophisticated to notice a slight. Except of course if it was his wife Lotte, but she made a sport of challenging his every word. Within the Beehive, Lotte was Queen. To her, Hakiro was simply another Drone. She was never going to throw him a bone of consolation and Hakiro knew enough to never expect one. That was the official version, leastways. Weegee suspected Hakiro was shrewder than that and that maybe he used his demeanour as cover.

“Yes, I think so,” the Director agreed finally – 100% deadpan – and Behringer crumbled. Weegee snickered under his breath. Despite his failings, and they were many, Weegee kinda liked the Director. He had the unintentional good timing of a comic. Maybe he was an acquired taste though. Weegee had to concede as much when no one else in the line-up flickered. Their eyes were fixed on the smiling, upside-down zero over the door, taking bets on who might’ve died.

“You gonna tell us anything?” Bellringer pressed, but he was a busted flush now.

“Uh…yes,” the Director tried for a sage nod. “Or maybe not. We’re still…uh…looking at the tapes.” He continued to nod his head. It was like a reflex. The Beehive was a service industry and Hakiro was trained to reassure.

“Should we maybe call someone? Public health or something?” Weegee suggested. “I got my Tuesday John any minute. That’s a lot of coin. I gotta be online.” He looked down the line at the other Proxies for a reaction. The new new guy and another Drone were staring ahead like a pair of dogs who’d just been shown a new scientific theorem and they were giving it some thought. Only Bellringer allowed himself a sideways snicker. Weegee told him to eat shit.

“Fuck you, buttercup,” Behringer smiled back. He called everyone Buttercup. He said it like a sideswipe. It wasn’t meant to endear. In return, everyone called him Bellringer, just never to his face. He was just too brutish, too slow-witted to grasp subtlety, so nobody took any chances with him. Still, behind his back everyone called him The Bellringer – nobody knew the genesis but Weegee assumed it was because Behringer was always first on the scene with bad news. Hey Weegee, your mom’s dead. I’m sowwy. Yo Mitchko, your kid brother got taken away. You think maybe he’s dead too? I like to think he is, buttercup. Always smiling, Bellringer. Bring out your dead. Bring out your dead.

“Who bought it?” Weegee threw the boss his best concerned look. He almost pulled it off.

“No one is confirmed dead.”

“Lost then.” Weegee let some air out between his teeth.

“I can’t say,” Hakiro frowned. Then everyone laughed hard. It was an automatic response like the out-of-office from the redhead in operations. The Director ignored the laughter and shuffled where he stood a moment.

“You can’t say, or won’t?” Weegee looked down the line and performed a headcount. His lips didn’t even move. “Hey. Where’s Mitchko?” he said, after a minute. “What happened to the new guy?”

“I can’t say,” the Director said but he couldn’t lie for shit.

“Jeez. Tough break,” Weegee didn’t even smile.

“Maybe the Military Industrial Complex got him,” the new new guy stuck his head out from the line and the deed was done. Weegee was in love. Momentarily.

“Maybe I’ll call Lotte. She’ll know what to do,” Hakiro decided finally. He cast a nervous eye over the Proxies to see if anyone had another plan, then turned back to his office to place the call. Everyone knew calling Lotte would be better than calling the feds.

“You need a hug, buttercup?” Bellringer catcalled after him. Hakiro turned briefly and smiled benignly. Behringer sniffed and wiped his nose with the back of his shovel hand. Weegee regarded him a moment, imagining the trail of broken jaws left in his unfortunate wake.

“Maybe you should all take five,” Hakiro suggested, closing the door behind him. “Stay off the third floor while the clean up crew gets done.”

“If they find a bottle of soda, I got dibs.” Weegee snarked but his heart wasn’t in it. He could feel himself turning on a dime. He was mercurial like that. It was like a pain in his heart. Then, when the new new guy snorted, everyone except Weegee laughed.

“Show a little respect,” Weegee told him. “Haven’t you heard? The new guy is dead.”