Lawrence Watt-Evans - The Spartacus File

Mirim's cubby was in a corner where she could see the office entry, and if she turned the other way she could see Casper. She was sitting there, marveling at the sight of Casper Beech leaning back with his hands behind his head, not even pretending to work, when her phone beeped for attention.

She snatched up the headset and plugged it into her ear. “Anspack,” she said into the mike.

“Mirim, this is Mr. Quinones,” she heard. “I've got something I'd like you to do for me.”

“Yes, sir?” she replied, puzzled.

“I want you to tell me when Casper Beech leaves the office-even if it's just to use the men's room. Just give me a buzz.”

Mirim hesitated. “Uh… yes, sir,” she said at last. She fought down the impulse to ask why; she knew that Quinones didn't take kindly to questions from his subordinates.

“Good. You just call the minute he sets foot out the door, then.”

He hung up.

He hadn't even said thank you, Mirim thought, pulling off the headset and glaring at it. He hadn't given any reason.

He was probably mad at Casper about some stupid little infraction that poor Cas didn't even know he'd committed. Maybe he'd heard Cas's stillborn speech about self-respect.

But why would he want to know when Cas was out of the office?

So he could search his cubby, of course. He probably thought Cas was on uppers or something-a man like Quinones would never believe one of his underlings might simply be fed up, he'd insist there was some other factor, something affecting the man's thinking.

Mirim's mouth set in an angry frown.

And somewhere in the back of her mind, a guilty little thought appeared- was Casper on something? Drugs or wire?

Even if he was, though, what business was it of Quinones'? Or of hers? She hadn't been hired to spy on her co-workers. Quinones had a lot of nerve, involving her in his nasty little search-and-seizure-if that's what it was.

He hadn't bothered to explain; he had treated her as if she were a slave, or a robot, with no choice but to carry out his every order.

She was no robot.

Casper's question came back to her. Did she respect herself?

Yes, she did. She stood up and marched back to Casper's cubby.

Casper looked up at her approach, and quickly blanked his screen. He had given up on doing the job he was supposed to be doing, tracing through the mazes of interlocking directorates, shared subsidiaries, and stock options to determine just who owned what, so that companies would not unwittingly sue their own managers or stockholders in the ongoing torrent of liability litigation; instead, he had been doing some very simple, basic searches, seeing just what in the company network he could access easily and what was relatively secure.

Mirim probably wouldn't have noticed, but why risk it?

“Come to torment me further, wench?” he asked, smiling.

“Sort of,” Mirim said, not smiling back. “I wanted to warn you.”

His own expression collapsed into mild wariness. “Warn me of what?” he asked.

Mirim hesitated. It wasn't too late to throw it off with a joke, to keep from offending Quinones, to avoid risking her job.

Then she got a look at Casper's face-thin, long-jawed, pale, framed by brown hair in need of trimming, and watching her intently from deep-set brown eyes.

He didn't look drugged or wired. He looked sincere, attentive, and almost… almost noble.

“I think Quinones is on your case,” she said. “He wanted me to tell him the minute you stepped out of the office.”

Casper blinked once, slowly, coolly. Then he turned and looked over his cubby.

There was no way of knowing just what Quinones actually wanted. Perhaps he intended to check Casper's files-though he should be able to access those from his own computer. Perhaps he wanted to set up some little surprise.

Or…?

“I think he's decided you're a vicious drug fiend, and he wants to ferret out your stash before you can pollute the rest of us,” Mirim said, perching herself on the edge of Casper's desk.

Or that, Casper thought.

There weren't any drugs to find, of course, nor anything else suspicious; Casper's life was dreary and utterly innocent of any wrongdoing. Even his debts weren't his own, but inherited.

However, sooner or later, Quinones would discover that Casper wasn't working. Maybe he already had discovered it, and wanted to see if he could discover the reason. Quinones wouldn't believe that the imprinting had screwed up, and that instead of adding to Casper's liability-tracing skills it had apparently wiped them out.

Even if he did believe, it wouldn't do any good. Casper had signed that stupid waiver at NeuroTalents, and Data Tracers, Inc. wasn't about to waste their time and money fighting NeuroTalents on his behalf. A second imprint might not do any better; Casper's brain might have indetectable quirks. Much easier to just throw him out and find a replacement whose brain was still virgin and imprintable.

He was going to lose his job.

Well, screw that. He didn't want the lousy job anyway. He was sick of kowtowing to that fat fool, Quinones. A person had to stand on his own two feet.

Better to go out now, rather than waiting to be fired.

And there was no reason to go quietly.

While he ran through all this he had been gazing mildly up at Mirim. Now he smiled broadly, reached over and took her hand and squeezed it gently. He did this without knowing why; it went against all the habits he had always had, but it felt right. He had never touched Mirim before, and he felt her start slightly at the first contact.

“Thanks for telling me, Mirim,” he said. Then, to Mirim's utter astonishment, he stood, climbed up onto his desk, and shouted, “Listen, everybody!”

The normal hum of the office faded slightly as faces turned toward him. Most of the workers couldn't see him, because of the partitions, but they could hear him.

He looked across the partitions and saw that the door to Quinones’ office was closed. He wouldn't hear anything.

“Some of you know me, some of you don't,” Casper called out. “I'm Casper Beech; I've worked here for nine years now. Nine lousy, boring, painful years!”

A few voices tittered nervously.

“Well, that nine years is ending; I'm about to leave here for good. You know why?” He paused dramatically. No one replied; the decrease in office noise deepened as a genuine hush fell.

“Because last week they sent me for a neural imprint-they were too cheap to train me properly, or buy software a normal human being can run. They sent me for a neural imprint-they ordered me, a free-born American, to take it. They sent me to have my brain rewired. They sent me to be force-fed skills I'll never be able to use anywhere else. They sent me to be programmed like one of their infernal machines!”

Casper could feel the people listening. He heard a chair scrape as someone stood up for a better view.

“Well, I'm not a machine to be programmed. I've been living like one for nine years, but I'm not a machine! I've been taking their orders for nine years, but I'm not a machine! But I didn't rebel-after nine years, I think even I thought I was a machine! I did what they wanted, I took the imprint-but my brain rebelled! The imprint didn't take. I was sick as a dog for a week, my memory's fouled up, I can't work-but I didn't rebel. I came in here and tried to work anyway, like a good little machine…” He paused again, and then bellowed out, “And they fired me! Because their imprint screwed up, they fired me!”

A murmur of sympathy-probably more feigned than genuine-ran through the room.

It wasn't sympathy Casper wanted, though. It struck him suddenly that he had no idea what he did want, or why he was doing any of this, but he knew he had to do it, he knew he had to carry on, he knew what to say next.