The Chain

“Good evening, Team! Are you ready to save the world?” Ford’s level 6 astronaut themed avatar glowed on the screen above his credit score, which was rocketing thanks to the enthusiastic start he’d made to the briefing. “The Citvore nightshift security chain is entering its 567^th night of unbroken vigilance, you should all be so proud!” Clapping emojis floated up and hearts exploded in a tumbling column down the right side of the screen. “Remember, nightshift is a sacred duty entrusted to only one in ten people. It is vital to the security of our society. You are literally maintaining world peace, guys!” A tide of floating yellow hands, hearts and dove emojis washed over the screen. “Okay! Keep those click rates up and remember; We watch because we care. Our time zone is about to come online in 3, 2, 1! Go, go, go!”

The animated astronaut hopped into a little cartoon rocket and was gone in a cute blast-off screen wipe. Hunt’s screen flickered more than it should have. He moved his half-drunk coffee from the pile of supplies next to his bed and grabbed a new screen, tore off the shrink wrap and clipped it into his tray console. It sprang to life immediately and there was tonight’s 3 x 3 grid. He slid the burned-out screen into the scuffed rubber mouth of the waste chute in the wall by his bed and got back to the grid. He tapped each panel to start his shift and his tumbling credit score stabilised and started to slowly tick back up. Stats flashed up, 0.43 seconds for hitting all nine. Not bad, normal smile emoji. The new screen was the smaller size, as required by the revised regulations. A row of the grid could be covered by the span of the first three fingers of an average adult hand in one quick triplet drum. They had also made the new screen edgeless. It looked like the grid of images were floating over Hunt’s tray console in the permanent dusk of his bed pod. A three-story dolls’ house made up of single, spartan bedrooms.

Bottom right had a red filter. A death. Hunt tapped it and the message feed opened. Already reported by the day shift, last week. No action required. He would still need to watch in case the Biosalvage crew turned up. He drummed each panel, well inside the ten second limit.

Back to top left, what could he say? He was a conservative, and the Citvore research backed him up. Left to right, top to bottom was the best. The Book Age may have been a moral calamity, but at least it had taught the world the most efficient way of scanning a screen. Top left was a baby, blue under its heat lamp. The camera was inside the incubator so Hunt could see that the oxygen and feed lines were secure. All the numbers were green. He tapped the panel to make them stay on the screen, extra vigilance for a baby. His credit score accelerated ever so slightly. 

Top middle, a jellyfish thrashed on the screen, green in the camera’s night vision setting. The flapping sheet stirred a memory of clothes on a line, swelling in a breeze that he could feel on his face. Someone was there, with grey hair and those solid Book Age forearms. He cared for the person, wanted to keep watching them. He tapped the top middle panel to turn the light on in the room. As the screen flared and the camera switched night vision off a child appeared from the knot of sheets. Nightmare over but still fresh, the child started to wail. Hunt tapped the phone in the cradle by the child’s bed and it glowed to life. The child picked it up and stopped crying, swiping at the screen with all of the fingers of a chubby hand. Hunt tapped all of his nine panels before returning to the child to dim the lights.

Top right, a teenager, a boy? Who could tell these days. Hunt blamed the Book Age. The teenager was cross-legged on their bed, scrolling something on their phone, nose inches from the screen. Hunt opened their content flow. It was a stream of popular Scintvids, all had green lights and the Citvore watermark. The kid’s consumption rate was impressive. Kids these days. Animal videos tumbled after war reports after game streams after anime stings. The only pause longer than 1.5 seconds was on some suspicious Book Age content. Hunt flagged it and it disappeared from the feed. Kids, they never change. He buffed the teenagers credit score to reward their impressive activity levels and to make sure nobody had any hard feelings about the cut content. 

Nine taps. Hunt adjusted the tightness of his wrist splint. The new suspension system was working well. The cables ran from the roof of the pod down to the splint and kept his right arm hanging effortlessly in front of the screen, his left hand was free for screen swaps if he had another burn-out, and coffee. Nine more taps and he reached for his coffee bottle, squeezing the remains of the drink into his feeder tube. He put the bottle back on the delivery plate next to the bed ready for a refill.

Middle left, really? only just getting ready for bed? Minutes after the start of Hunt’s shift, therefore minutes into curfew. He tapped for a credit sanction and lingered like a teenager over the shot of the woman, twisting to unpeel her dirty overalls in the tight square of floorspace next to her bed. It was a long time since the spectacle had held any erotic thrill. She knew she was being watched and made no effort to cover her body. Her age was hard to call, crew cut, no underwear, angles where curves could have been. Must be a manual. Hunt hit her for another sanction. He was more interested in seeing the credit score hit the floor, than the overalls. She was on the bed now, on top of the covers like a corpse on mortician’s slab. Hunt cancelled the sanctions and turned her lights out.

Nine taps. The baby was asleep. The child was standing on its bed scrolling. The teenager was slumped forward over their crossed legs. Hunt had already sent a clothes icon to remind the teenager that they needed to get their overalls in the chute if they wanted fresh ones for the morning, but they had only got as far as removing their socks. They idly picked at their toes as they yawned at their screen. No sign of Biosalvage at the corpse’s pod.

Middle. Here was trouble. Hunt saw a man, overalls rolled down to his waist, kneeling on the bed. His cropped head was very close to the camera, knotted arms braced across the width of the pod. His phone was nowhere to be seen. Hunt tapped to locate it; it was not in the pod. Possibly a loss, but given then man’s tight-necked nodding and flexed shoulders, Hunt suspected an intentional discard. He sent a sanction and called for a security check.

Middle right. Lights out, slack jaw hooked over the covers illuminated by the phone screen. Hunt brought up the content feed. Porn, pretty hard, but the Citvore watermark was there. File said he was a decommissioned manual. No further action required.

Nine taps. Middle was staring at the camera. The panel blinked as he punched at the lens behind its graphglass shield. He was yelling soundlessly, teeth flashing under creased eyes. Hunt resent the security alert. The baby was asleep over an array of green numbers. The child was jumping on the bed, floppy blond hair wafting at the roof of the pod. Hunt sent a prompt for a head shave. The woman, pale night-vision-green, had her arms folded over her face.

Hunt reached for his coffee bottle. It had not been refilled. He grimaced and sent sanctions to the manuals.

Left bottom. An old man standing by his bed, overalls loose over a wasted frame. He was shuffling from foot to foot, bowing carefully as he spoke directly to the camera lens, hands clasped in front of him. His lips hardly moved but the creases around his mouth and eyes flexed and cramped in time with his mute pleas. Hunt located the old man’s device. Under his mattress. Sanction. Out of bed. Sanction. Suspicious behaviour. Sanction. Hunt killed the lights in the man’s pod and turned him into a shuffling green ghost.

Nine taps. Still no coffee. Hunt swatted his coffee bottle off the delivery plate in a fit of temper. His phone buzzed in its cradle on his tray console and the lights of his pod dimmed. He tapped all of his panels again, furious with himself for damaging his score. The corpse was still there. The baby had a couple of amber numbers that were brought back to green with a couple of taps. The child was curled up on its bed, face down, legs tucked under, butt in the air. The stiff on the slab was shaking, fistfuls of blanket in clawed hands. Sanction. The Decom. had fallen asleep, his phone still in his hand, the company approved porn playing point-blank to his fat cheek. The teenager had fallen asleep sitting up. Potential long term spine damage was indicated. Manual utility might be reduced. Hunt raised a job for the pod roof to be lowered so they wouldn’t be able to sleep in a sitting position in future.

Middle had not stopped his assault on the camera but Hunt’s feed reported that intervention was imminent. He tapped the panel and enlarged it to watch. The assault stopped, the cropped head spinning to look at the pod hatch. Security were breaching. The hatch opened and black overalled arms thrust the riot hose into the pod. Before Middle could react the hose discharged gripfoam into the pod, filling it in seconds and whiting out the camera lens. Hunt pinged security to wipe the lens shield. By the time they did, Middle was being strapped to the bed, smeared in gripfoam, limbs pinned by the kinetic glue, rods of muscle bursting in his neck as they strapped on a helmet to hold his recovered device inches from his face. Hunt sent him a full sanction and turned up the brightness on his device.

Show over, nine taps. Hunt strained against the cables of his suspension system to see his coffee bottle on the floor. He wouldn’t be able to get it until the end of curfew. All was clear, all panels sleeping except for Middle, the shuffling ghost and the woman, who’d given up on tearing at her sheet and had folded her arms over her face again. Her readout showed she was still awake. Hunt sent a sanction.

Bottom middle. An executive pod, double the floorspace, the camera set in a much higher ceiling. The bed was wide and where the waste chute should have been there was a shelf. Hunt looked at the aged figure under the thick, comfortable quilt. They were working on a tray console, like his own but with a drinks holder in which sat an open-topped cup of coffee. He stretched painfully to look once more at his empty plastic coffee bottle lying on the floor. Nine taps, nearly missed his target. He looked back at the shelf and its strange load. He knew the slim blocks from the days of clothes swelling in the breeze that touched his face. The one he cared for had given one to him in a time before the dangers were understood. They were books, a whole shelf of them, a coloured barcode of depravity. The pod was executive, the sanction function was not available. Hunt hovered over the security alarm but opened the identity file first. It was Ford.  

The alarm on Hunt’s tray console sounded. He had fallen behind, his credit score tumbled. Nine taps, the score stabilised but the taps took almost two distracted seconds. Red emoji. Flat mouth. The old green shuffling ghost smiled and nodded. Everyone else was still, except for Ford. One hand was in a suspension splint flicking across a 12 x 12 composite eye of panels on his large screen. Two other screens flanked his central one. The triptych was a terrace of dolls’ houses where the nightshift lived. Ford’s hand danced across the three screens like a cranefly, nimble and delicate, playing chords of summoning and sanction. Ford’s arm was sagging and emaciated, a jointed pipe leading to his bloated body. His other hand was cable assisted as he reached for his open topped, ceramic coffee cup and swung it toward his drawn, waxen face. Hunt now understood why the Execs had been granted approval for using avatars. Hunt looked back at the bookshelf. The spines were more colourful than anything he had seen since he signed on for nightshift. He’d only ever held one book and it was a slim, flexible thing full of pictures and text that sang. The one that he had cared for, that cared for him, had burned it when she was ordered to.

Hunt’s alarm was sounding. Nine taps. The old ghost had moved close to the camera and was nodding at him, creased cheeks tight under watery eyes. The woman was kneeling on the bed flashing her teeth in silent rage at the camera, one strong manual’s hand clawing at her breasts. The baby’s numbers were flashing red. The child was a thrashing jellyfish once more. 

Hunt accessed Ford’s content and scrolled through his panels, a flick book of near identical images of nightshifters poking at their screens, until there he was. The tell was the coffee bottle on the floor. Hunt flexed a stiff arm and watched the sepia-skinned pipe rise on the screen in front of him.

Middle was straining against the gripfoam and straps. He had worked his corded neck free and was banging the front of the helmet against the wall of his pod. Biosalvage had arrived at bottom right and were pumping solvent through the hatch. The teenager had one arm down the waste chute and was trying to prise the rubber lips of the opening apart with the other hand.

Hunt looked back at his own image on Ford’s panel. He saw the sharp ridges that his thin legs made in the sheet and the coiling wormcasts made by his catheters. The cropped hair on the back of his head was patchy, worn away where his oxygen line was taped in place.

The Decom was scrolling again, Hunt saw his fleshy arms cradling his phone, drumming and swiping with both thumbs. The old man was talking again, wiry eyebrows bouncing as he made his unheard points. He peered so closely at the camera that Hunt could see that his lower eyelids sagged away from his eyeballs.

Hunt’s alarm was sounding. Middle lay cackling on his bed, spitting out bloody fragments of phone and helmet. The woman stared at the camera, a single tear leaving a snail trail down her face in the green night vision glow. The child’s camera was obscured by gripfoam. All of the baby’s numbers were red. Hunt pushed away his tray console and twisted painfully to find the camera in the roof of his own pod. He dragged himself to his knees, pulling on the suspension cables like a suddenly sentient cetacean marionette. He found the small black lens behind its graphglass shield. He wanted his coffee, and the memory of breeze-swollen clothes on a line reminded him that he was entitled to it. He screamed at the lens, “Ford! Can you hear me, Ford? I resign.” Behind him the hatch cracked open and security thrust a riot hose into the pod.