At the security checkpoint men clad in black and grey stood guard. Their job was to weed out unwanted elements. An idea born of thoughts of security, and practised as should, but nevertheless gave cause for paranoia. They were equipped with equipment manufactured at the very same factory they stood guard for. An observation Ceru found to be ironic.
As she walked through the metal detector, it beeped, and one of the soldiers gestured for her to draw closer. The black, genderless person nodded to her as her feet laid to rest just before it. "Worker," it acknowledged her.
She straightened her back, "Sir," the words were loaded with as much confidence as she could muster. Though it was a daily thing to meet the guards, it always got her worries firing off. She didn't have anything that would trigger the detector, at least she thought, and hoped. Her heartbeat began being noticeable.
The guards were, and would most likely always be, an unknown and intimidating presence in the factory. The workers and guards were kept separated, to the extent that socializing beyond your group was illegal. To further this cause of alienating, they all wore the same armor, uniform in look. A transformation from individual to an extension of authority. It was unknown to her as to when that law had come into place, but she knew of whispers that said it hadn't always been so. To prevent familiarity creating holes. A memory of a voice she couldn't place.
Her eyes were kept fixed on the guard's blank screen of a helmet as she awaited response. She awaited a response, a command, an allowance to move, but this one stood as still as the screen. To defeat silence diseased in nature, she made an attempt to smile, but none were to be found, and she only found her lips curl to something different than intention.
To that the soldier finally reacted. With a finger it pointed towards a small room. One of the search rooms. Her eyes followed, and as realization quickly came upon mind, her eye twitched in reaction she couldn't completely control. She sighed and began walking towards it. It was more an annoyance than a threat, but the feeling of ant beneath boot festered in her mind.
The room was around three square meters big, barely enough for both of them and a little table situated at the side. It was one of many set up to protect what little of privacy the workers had. The guard took up place in the corner with its arms in cross. The routine was known by her, and she emptied her clothes of all possessions, and put them on the table to be inspected. With her possessions exposed, she placed her hands and legs out to the side, in reminiscence to a creature of existence was long forgotten. It had been called a starfish, and she only knew of it by one that had lived in the past.
The soldier took its cue and moved in, but stopped up only a brief moment before continuing. An action that shouldn't have mattered, but still did. As suspicious hands moved to touch her, she tried to take her thoughts to other places, but not for reasons expected. Because the hands weren't only despised, they were also disturbingly enough welcomed. It was from wish of touch long longed for. Warm embrace she herself saw denied because of ideals of love, not born nor able to live in this world. Thoughts absent happiness. Of longing and desperation, for the futility of mind versus emotion.
Turning from inwards thought to outwards observation, she gave the soldier's equipment attention. A distraction to feed observational mind, to lessen conscious thought of conflicting feelings. But as all the other times she had done this. There were no new information to be gained, though maybe new reflections could be made?
The dark guard wore light combat armor. The lightest available from her knowledge. So light a class that it was not even necessary to augment its strength through means of external skeleton. For protection there were fibers of immense strength woven to clothing. For pacifying there was a weapon, built upon technology based on composite chemical powder and machined metal parts, put together in destructive symphony. For reasons of interaction, helmet made of processed sand tinted with layer of darkness, and screen of lights able to light with symbols. Symbols intended for formatting in written text, but that had evolved into meaning of expression.
With mind distracted by creating complex sentences of equipment, explained by base components and reasons for existence, time was suddenly done, and the guard rose up to greet her with symbol upon screen and words to accompany. The symbol was "=)," and only lasted a brief second. "You're clear, but keep wrenches inside the next time." The voice was digitally scrambled. Another alteration to keep workers away from the guards. It was a bit excessive she had always thought, but she did work at a military facility.
Items were quickly put into respective pockets, except the wrench, which was confiscated. One item was left out though. Ear buds of old origin, with promises of peace for her. They defeated the noise that was sure from manufacturers of equipment of death. The wire was strapped to her arm down to the commy. To keep wire away from tools which could create injury.
The sound of heavy machinery, welding and fans was quickly replaced by music hailing from files scoured by her father. It was a blessing. This movement of air waves harmonized with her mind. It was like silence that could otherwise never be gained.
She hadn't always had the ear buds, they were bought by hard earned SSP's. SCI Solidarity Points. The cost had been excruciating, but in her mind it had been worth it. At the time she had bought them, her father had inspected them and concluded that they came from the old world. That the internals were too sophisticated to have been produced in Ancora. So in a confusing fact, she was walking around with a piece of equipment from a time the government itself denied had existed, issued by the state itself.
The factory itself, beside noise, was populated by machinery, conveyors, tools and technicians operating it all. There were different sections inside, each dedicated to produce its class of armor. In general terms, there were, the non-augmented as seen by the guard. Fittingly called the "Police class," then the "Guard class," which were a step up and had an external exoskeleton, after that came the "Sentinel class," a complete enclosed armor system around the user and the machinery, and finally the "Ranger class," made as a step up from the Sentinel, but only in terms of customization and equipment, not in size. She was well versed in maintenance of the Sentinels, but the others were no stranger.
Her day at the factory usually started with her going up to the factory supervisor, or the big guy upstairs, as she sometimes liked to call him. He resided in a box with rounded corners high up over the factory floor. It was seemingly welded and nailed to the wall. Along with a flight of stairs. The box had a window, and from there he had complete view of the factory floor.
The walk up the stairs, which felt flimsy in construction, was quick and after a squeaky walk she had arrived in front of his door. She knocked three times, and put her hand on the handle.
"Come in!" he yelled from inside, and Ceru entered. Inside the rugged face of her boss greeted her. He was looking gritty as always, with his big nose and unfitting slanted eyes. He motioned for her to come over with his prosthetic metal arm. In his other, normal arm, he held a white mug with a faded black paint band with a heart on. He used to sometimes call it "ZEE MUG" for some reason.
"Hiya John! Enjoying the black death?" she always put on a smile for him.
"Of course girley, as usual," he smiled. How were the guards today? Giving ye any troubles?"
"Nothing big, but I had to go through a physical check again. I kinda tried to smile to one, but I failed and I guess it made me look suspicious," she shrugged.
"Still trying that? Ye know we're not allowed to socialize with em?"
"Yeah, I know, and..."
"Best way of handling em is by being as expressionless as those expression screens they never use!" John laughed bit.
"...futile attempt and all that but..." She just left her argument out in the cold to die. No reason to pursue it.
"Ye forget bout those, and come take a cup of coffee with me!" John reached for an empty mug placed in the window. "It'll wake you up in no time!" John offered holding the mug up to her while looking a bit sly, like he tried to sell her into a drug habit.
"I'll pass. It tastes awful, and last time I got really anxious and jacked up. You still sure that's legal?" Ceru cocked an eyebrow.
The substance known as coffee was apparently quite the rarity. John had explained that it was so because it was grown, and done so privately which was, per se, not illegal, but very hard to do. The concept of private property for reasons other than necessity was not big in Ancora.
"Trust me!" John smiled, showing off a record of bad dental jobs. In another world it might have made her disgusted, but here it was frighteningly common to have ones teeth falling out because you hit fifty.
"I do John, but no thanks," Ceru laid the offer off for the second time. "What do you have for me today?"
"Suit yerselves," John shrugged. "Lemme check the database."
John turned around and brought up some files on his computer. In relation to the rest of the room, the computer was very modern looking. The screen easily took up almost a fourth of the wall. Not standard equipment, that was for sure. John had said that it had cost alot to get that, but that it was worth it in the end. Ceru often wondered if John lived in his office in order to make such an investment worth it.
"Ye got two cases today. Sentinel class and one Ranger class. The first one seem easy. A faulty power supply reported at the assembly station. Shoulda be fixed by either a pair new fuses or a full replacement," John shrugged.
"And the other?" Ceru inquired.
John tilted his head a bit before answering, "Technician couldn't find the cause, but suspects the software," he frowned, "a tough case. I'm sending the files now."
Ceru scratched her head "Software problems? Shouldn't that be fixed before it reaches assembly?"
"In a perfect world yes, but ye know reality and its imperfections," John turned around and gave her a sad smile. "The file transfer should be done now, check it will ye?"
"Files are here, I'll see what I can do about the suits," Ceru nodded and archived the files to the bottom of the hierarchical file system. Under her work folder, in a folder she named "111.04.20." She found it important to organize her files. It made it easier to track her previous work in case something came up.
"I know ye will girly. Now get going, ye have work to do!"
"Yes sir," Ceru nodded and walked off in direction of her work station.
When she arrived at her workplace, she found the two suits present, hanging from massive hangers. They had both been stripped of their armor plating which laid in a box beside. To undiscerning eyes they had no difference between them, but being an experienced worker Ceru knew the differences. Like the improved mark two servos the Ranger used and the upgraded electronics suit.
On the rack they hung, big as a small vehicle and bulky as a boulder. They were far from the designs she had seen in pictures from the old world, whom had a knack for putting appearance before functionality. No these were purely utiliarian in design.
Todays work was with two of the suits. One which had a faulty power supply and one with some kind of software error. Ceru went over to the terminal connected to her workstation. She could find the same files on her commy, but it was more oversightly to use the bigger screen. The service order told her that the PSU had to be replaced on one of the suits, while the other was to be put through a number of test manuevers with an occupant inside.
As her eyes read the last few lines she drew a nervous smile. Even though she absolutely admired the technology and the craftmanship of the suits it was pure hazard entering one which was faulty. The problem was that the joints on the suits were able to go further than a human's normal range of movements. Normally such movements were restricted by software programmed into the suit during fitting of the user making sure the joints mirrored the range of movements the driver could do. In a suit with faulty software however, those limits were not set, and could easily twist any part of her body beyond its threshold. Potentially resulting in bruising or the breakage of ones bones. Such an injury could very well land her hospitalized and if it was a terminal injury which resulted in an inability to work… Well, then her life could very much be forfeit.
But she had her work laid out and there was no way outside. The PSU was the first one to undergo maintenance anyway.
The suits were identified through their serial numbers. "A543F" the first one and "4N63L" for the second one. She had never managed to understand the naming scheme, but still thought the second was different than what it should have been. She pushed the thought away, useless use of brain power.
Finding "A543F" was easy. And after hoising the suit of the rack with a crane she put it in place for work. Since the suits were both over two meter high, the suit was lowered into a depression in the ground, which could be adjusted to give the technician room for doing its work.
After the suit was lowered so that her chest was on the same level as the back of it, she flinged her screwdriver out of her toolkit and gave it a twirl in her fingers.
The suit was powered by a miniature fusion reactor, cutting edge technology from before the departure. The fusion process happened through immense magnetic pressure which made the fuelant, deutrium, an isotope of hydrogen, so compressed the temperature increased to many thousands degrees. At some point the atoms would begin to fuse together releasing immense amounts of energy in the process. It was this energy that the suit ran off via some clever engineering and heat exchangers.
Once started the reactors could run years on the fuel initially supplied. The one problem with the design was that the suits had to be constanttly powered, the energy surge required to start the reaction was immense. Tolling in the megawatt range. It was more energy than could practically be stored in the suit, so the suits were only able to be activated on a faciility that supplied enough energy.
Though while she knew all that theory about the suits as a result of her own interest and pursuing research it wasn't really applicable here. In order to change the power supply, also known as the reactor and it's supporting equipment, one would have to dismantle the whole backpack of the suit. Nimbly removing each part and remember how to put it together.
It took the better part of the day to finish the job. She had to be very careful during assembly, as if she forgot to attach some electronics to the power supply the whole suit could fry, overheat and cook the inhabitant or in some of the worst cases, literally blow up. Though the chances of that was very small.
At 14:34 she finally put the backplate back on. She wiped her face from the sweat that was now dripping down from her face. What was left now was to test start it before shutting it down again and ship it out.
In order to supply the suit with the jolt of energy required she had to use a cable consisting of super conductors, anything below and the cable itself would melt. Super conductors were a true marvel, it was material with that special property that it had no electrical resistance. Meaning you could pump gigawatts through a line the size of a hairstraw. They were though, the one thing that the scientists of the old world never seemed to completely get to where they wanted. You still had to chill the cable down to a -70 degrees celsius for it to have superconducting properties.
Ceru lifted the suit out of the depression and over to the cold room. She put on one of the thermosuits and through the use of all her strength turned the wheel to the door. Cold smoke flowed out along the floor as she did. She then maneuvered the suit on a rack and drove it inside the cold room.
From there she opened the box where the cable was stored on even lower temperatures. She put it into the port on the suit and went outside the room. She had to wait a few minutes before she could start the process. While not exactly superconducting, the internal power wiring in the suit had to be chilled down before it was safe to jolt the energy through, the wiring wouldn't be able to last long even chilled down to those temperatures, but it would be enough time for the jolt to activate the reactor.
A few minutes later and a status lamp switched from red to green, and Ceru yanked the power switch. The lights around her flickered for a moment and she could physically hear the electricity buzzing from capacitors into the suit. A moment later it was done and the switch reset itself. She pulled up the terminal to the cold room and checked the data feed from the suit.
It reported a green board. Reactor was up and running. Nominal output and all. She allowed herself a small smile, not more fuzzing around with it then. She then shut the reactor off again and took it over to the packing station to be packed and then shipped.
After having done that, she checked the time again. To her minor surprise it had actually passed her work time. She shrugged and headed out of the facility. The guard who had searched her earlier was nowhere to be seen, not that she would have been able to identify them anyway. She checked out via a terminal, found a guard actually appearing with her wrench and was let out.
She felt dirty and sweaty from the work, but paid little heed to those feelings. They were far too common to make a fuzz over. Everyone she knew went through the same and at some point they just got used to living as stinky pink skinned creatures.
Her destination was one of the public kitchens where everyone gathered for their state mandated nutrition. It was an annoyance. She was never able to enjoy her food alone or in good company as her father had spoiled her to when she was younger. No, she had to sit and eat her dinner along with a hundred others. The number itself wasn't too bad, but it was all the conversations, she alienated.
"Well if it isn't the white haired bitch," a voice suddenly rang out, snapping her from her exposition to an imaginary audience.
"It's the white haired, really tired, not in the mood to make snidy remarks girl," Ceru said, "You fuckwad," she offered him a tired smile.
"You're still using big words," he laughed back as he approached her, making his was through the mass of people. The guy was Reilly, a guy, she had made out with a number of times while wasted on slammer, a beverage containing both the intoxicating alcoholic substance ethanol and something called THC. Which was supposedly some drug that had been wildly popular for it's intoxicating and relative safe effects in the old world.
"Go grab me a bite will ya? I might have a reward for polite behavior afterwards," she winked to him. She definitely didn't expect to give him anything.
"I like this, what you call it, classic conditioning?" Reilly smiled with teeth a bit too nice for the norm, and went off to get her some food. She was surprised he had actually remembered her lecture about psychology.
He didn't mind his attention. She knew it was of purely superficial reasons, but she didn't put too much mind into it. He was a good conversation partner when he had relaxed with a bit of
slammer. The extra THC laden one of course. The other times he was easy to get doing stuff for her. She knew he was thinking pretty single minded about the reason why he did stuff for her, but he didn't seem to mind that much. She knew he was going around elsewhere, and that fact, was ironically for his part the reason she kept him at an arm's length. Most of the time anyway. She wasn't a robot either.
ns 15.158.61.8da2
