As Yet Untitled
(Wolf: can't even do your waiting where you please. no, sorry, you'll have to sit in the waiting room. such bullshit. aren't we giving her enough already?)
I'm at the Etiennestown branch office of the Northstar Current Affairs Exchange, a modest commercial low-rise with threadbare carpeted floors and uncomfortably white lighting. The receptionist stares daggers at me (Wolf: well, fuck you too, sir) from behind a glass desk bigger than some apartments I've lived in, as though I'm soiling the place by my mere rumpled presence. The only other occupant is an ancient, hairy man in a tweed-covered suit, who keeps clicking his tongue.
My contact here is a cut above my usual crowd, in both class and reputation. Ms Elizabeth Tshuma is a deputy commissioner at NCAE. Her social core is on one of the more law-abiding subnets, with a trail of posts and interactions tying her credibly to this building. She has her own atmopedia page, and a quick IP crawl earlier revealed that she didn't even write it herself. She seems safe. Trustworthy, even.
(Rat: but we know all about seeming, don't we?)
A guard approaches, stocky and lead-footed - likely not from around here. A heavyworlder. (Magpie: that jacket's looser than it needs to be. hangs a little on one side. she's armed, and it's heavy.) Her name badge introduces her as T. Abbot, Operational Assistant.
"Thank you for your patience, Mr Rook," she says. "Ms Tshuma was unavoidably detained, but she will see you now. I'll just need to scan you first..."
I know how this goes. I stand to my full, slightly crooked five-foot-eight and let her run the scan baton over me. It squeals with some annoyance at my belt buckle and at the water bottle in my satchel, which she asks me to take a sip from, but otherwise I'm clean. (Rat: and she needn't know about the glass stun wand built into our phone.)
"All good," Abbot mutters, folding away and stowing the scanner. "If you'd like to follow me, Mr Rook, the elevator is just this way..."
(Rat: no! no exit! no escape! no elevator!)
(Magpie: this is an old build. cable elevators, not mag-lift. if one of those breaks down, you could be stuck for hours.)
"Actually," I cut in, "if it's all the same to you, I'd prefer to take the stairs."
Abbot gives me a momentary, quizzical glance, then shrugs. "Very well. This way."
She buzzes me through two sets of card-locked doors, up two flights of bare concrete steps - "refurbished any day now," she tells me - and down a long glass-walled corridor, past expansive open-plan offices on both sides. Only a few tired figures are on shift, hunkered down at their workstations. NCAE moved most of their operations to a shiny new orbital off Franklin a few years ago, leaving only skeleton crews to run the system's planetside branches. A sensible business decision, really. Nothing good stays on Etiennestown for long.
The walls of Ms Tshuma's office, at the corridor's far end, are opaque and reflective (Magpie: one-way glass) and her heavy polycarbonate door has no card reader, only a chunky analogue lock. As we approach, it clunks, and the door opens just enough to let through a pale, wide-eyed man in a tattered bomber jacket and stonewashed jeans, his bright orange hair in disarray.
"Perfect timing," chirps Abbot. "Mr Petrobolou, you can follow me to the exit, and Mr Rook, if you'd like to wait here -"
"I'm ready for you now, Bede," says a voice from behind the door, smooth and lyrical. (Wolf: like a summer breeze.) (Rat: like a coiling snake.) (Magpie: odd accent, sort of dancing over the syllables. probably out-of-system.)
Abbot and Mr Petrobolou are already off down the corridor, so all I can do is straighten up (Rat: as far as we ever straighten up) and ease the door open.
***
