Peter Prellwitz - Shards Book One

"Open, please.? It ignored me.? Hello? Jackson? This is Private Wyeth, reporting for detail. Hello??

Nothing. I knocked on the door, but the hollow thooms! went unanswered. I pictured my butt with a big boot print and knocked again. This was getting frustrating. Was I in the wrong place?

"Computer, please locate laundry relevant to my position."

"The laundry is located one meter directly in front of you."

"Computer, please allow me access."

"You are not allowed access.? Okay. Time to try another tact.

"Computer, please state duty for Private Abigail Wyeth."

"Private Abigail Wyeth has laundry detail from 0400 to 1000 each day."

"And who do I report to?"

"During laundry detail, Private Abigail Wyeth reports to Private William Jackson. All remaining hours, Private Abigail Wyeth reports to Corporal Susan Lendler."

"Computer, please locate Private William Jackson relevant to my position."

"Private William Jackson is located four meters directly in front of your current position."

"Computer, what is the privacy status for the laundry door?"

"The sight privacy for the laundry door is active. The sound privacy is not active.? That made Private Jackson, deaf, dead, or a jerk. I'd give it one more try.

"Private Jackson!? I yelled at the door.? This is Abigail! Could you let me in? Please?? Nothing. Well, enough of this.

I looked for the override and located it, as on other doors, about a meter above the floor. I hadn't had a chance to really study it before, but I did so now. I pressed the override switch, but it ignored me. I wondered why. Maybe he liked to play games. Or maybe he was hurt, I thought suddenly. I immediately felt terribly guilty for the things I had thought about him. Poor William! I hurriedly detached the faceplate and studied the guts of the thing. Six lengths of fiber optic cabling and a type of gravity switching that would probably allow for manual override at power loss. I took a quick look at the logic board and calculated the probabilities of function. Getting desperate to get in and help him, I took a chance. I grabbed the two outside cables, twisted them together and shoved them against the gravity switch.

Nothing for two seconds. Then I smelled a quick whiff of ozone, and there was a soft pop. I felt a tingle going up my arm, and I jerked it away quickly and stood up.

The door was now an opening, and there stood poor William Jackson, glaring at me. I'd have to keep my imagination in check from now on. He looked awful, but I guessed he had grown into that. Maybe regulations on shaving had relaxed over the years. He glared at me through piggy eyes. I felt like mud had been slopped on me.

"Time!? he snapped.

"0401!? the computer barked.

"You're late! You were supposed to have reported here at 0400!"

"I was outside the door on time, but it wouldn't open!? I protested.

"Uh-huh. So what did you do to the door?"

"Well, when you didn't open the door after I knocked and shouted, I thought that you were hurt.? I was getting a little ticked off myself.? Why didn't you open the door? In fact, why couldn't I have just walked in? I'm supposed to be here."

"That's right, you're supposed to be here!? he sneered nastily, ignoring my question.? But you weren't.

You're late. Give me fifty, Wyeth!"

"What!?? I couldn't have been more surprised if he'd suddenly turned into an ogre. Which he was starting to.

"You heard me! Give me fifty!? He pointed to the floor.

I didn't know what to say. That I was flustered was an understatement. I was completely dumbfounded. I didn't know what to do, so I did as he said. Maybe this was one of those initiation things. If so, I preferred the food trick.

I dropped to my hands and gave him fifty pushups. Or tried to. After fifteen, my arms and chest muscles were burning. By twenty, I couldn't go any further. My upper body strength was gone. Rather, it had never been there.

"Can't count, huh? I said fifty. That's twenty. And most of them were little girl pushups.? I didn't point out the obvious. Instead, I managed about five more before he shoved a foot under my stomach and flopped me over.

"Okay, you can do the rest later. Don't be late tomorrow. Now get to work."

By this time I was more than ready to unload on him. I'd been treated like a princess until now, when they weren't poking around in my head or beating me up, and although I didn't really expect that kind of treatment to continue, I was hoping to at least be treated with some respect. I opened my mouth to get really nasty, then closed it, and fought down my anger. Keep calm, Abby. You stick around long enough and you'll make corporal or better and then you can read him from the book. I'd give him the worst detail available.

Two hours later, I saw the flaw in my plan. He already had the worst detail available. Except mine. I was already aching from the pushups, but now I was really hurting. There were nearly two hundred people in this complex, and they got a lot of clothes dirty. Bundle after bundle of clothing was loaded, washed, dried, sorted, folded and rebagged. It was hot, smelly, steamy back-breaking work. If it hadn't been for the body sheath against my skin, I would have passed out. As it was, I was sweat soaked within twenty minutes and stayed that way.

Jackson didn't help much. It became pretty clear that those pushups and the locked door were no initiation. I'd had it pegged from the beginning; he was a jerk. I'd come across them my first time through the military. I'd had the ability to deal with the Jacksons of the past, but this one was my superior. So I shut up and tried to live through it.

It wasn't easy. He was sloppy, lazy and rude. He did a fraction of the work and gave no consideration for my far smaller size and strength. Claiming there was too much? paper work? to do-somehow that phrase had survived the ages-he fiddled on the computer terminal for several hours, keeping the field tight, so I couldn't see what he was viewing. When he did help, it was grudgingly and only on the heaviest loads, which I couldn't lift high enough to get into the huge front-loading washers. Dr. Barrett was right; washing clothes hadn't changed a great deal over the centuries. It had gotten much faster, which is how two people could do the work. Okay, one person and an animated bag of lard.

I'd pulled far worse details before, but only ones that involved killing people, which this one might yet still.

This was really, really bad. I wondered for a while if Dr. Barrett had put me in here as some sort of weird test. After thinking it through, though, I decided that nobody really knew how bad it was in here. More than likely Jackson was alone most the time; the job really could be done by one person, if he were big enough, which Jackson was and I wasn't.

I don't know how I kept sane during that first shift. He blocked off my computer access so I could not even ask for time. On top of that, he repaired and reactivated the door, blocking out both sight and sound. The laundry was Private Jackson's little kingdom, and I was his peasantry. I understood now the appeal of mixing royal heads and guillotines.

Finally, finally, finally, Jackson walked over and told me my duty was over. He wasn't too happy about it, either.

"Geez, you've still got a couple loads left! I'll have to stay and cover for you.? He paused to let me thank him, which I didn't. Instead I walked by him. He grabbed me by the shoulder. In a split second, I selected five ways to get that hand off my shoulder. One of them even left the hand unbroken and attached. I denied myself the pleasure and stood still and stiff.

"Hey, don't give me an attitude, Wyeth! You might be some special toy outside, but in here, you do as I say, got it?"

"Yes, I've got it, Jackson,? I said tiredly.? Can I go now?"