could return to work on Monday.
The streets were still a mess Monday morning, with masonry and broken glass strewn across the sidewalks and into the street, and the police were allowing only pedestrians into the area. Motorists stopped at the barrier honked and shouted constantly, but Casper had problems of his own which kept him from having any sympathy for those people.
Between the time he had taken off for the imprinting and the ensuing recovery, and the lost time due to the evacuation, Casper's workload had become nearly unmanageable. What's more, the new software had been installed, despite the disruptions, and Casper found it virtually incomprehensible. He felt a growing certainty that the imprinting had not worked, which meant he would probably be fired. He had gone through all that agony for nothing.
He stared at the screen on his desk for several minutes before he even tried to sort things out. He was tempted to just forget about the whole thing and spend his day staring out the window, but even if he could get away with it the windows were covered with black plastic sheeting, and probably would be for quite some time. That rather limited the view.
Finally, he began to sort through the job list, ordering it according to priority and skill requirements.
When he had everything in order, and it was time for him to begin work on a file, Casper quickly discovered that he was simply unable to perform his job. As he looked at the information available to him his mind seemed to be filled with half-remembered tricks and shortcuts, but all were for use with the old software, and none of them applied to the new package.
By mid-afternoon he had not completed a single trace job; he could not get the software to do anything he wanted it to. When he got what he thought must have been his thousandth error message he gave up and blanked the screen.
The imprinting had not worked.
He leaned back in his chair, trying to think what he could do. While he thought he picked up a handful of thumbtacks, and without paying any attention to what he was doing he tossed the tacks at his bulletin board, one by one. When he finished, a dozen tacks were all stuck into the surface of the bulletin board, forming a nearly straight line, each tack about the same distance from the next. None had taken more than a single casual toss.
It occurred to him in a vague sort of way that that was good throwing for someone as uncoordinated as himself.
He got through the rest of the day somehow without anyone else realizing anything was wrong, and somehow, despite the imminent and inevitable disaster he faced, he didn't feel particularly depressed. Unemployment loomed ahead, probably followed by bankruptcy, confiscation, and a life on the streets, begging for hand-outs or eating in soup kitchens, maybe minus an organ or two-but somehow it didn't bother him.
In fact, he felt full of energy. A nervous, uncomfortable sort of energy.
He needed more exercise, he decided.
After work he found himself walking the city streets for no particular reason, studying the people passing by, noting how they reacted to each other, to him, to the occasional cop car that prowled by.
He knew he should be worrying about his job, worrying what he could do about the faulty imprinting, but somehow it didn't seem as important as studying lines of sight through Rittenhouse Square.
Finally, around ten, he headed home-a bit uneasily. Travel at this time of night was not always a pleasant experience, even in the best neighborhoods.
Casper did not live in one of the best neighborhoods.
The worst part, he thought, was the wait at the station, staring at the spray-painted concrete walls layered with gray dirt. He waited on the platform, fidgeting nervously, looking in every direction constantly, until finally his train roared into the station and he allowed himself to relax.
Unfortunately, four street toughs, resplendent in chip-studded silver jumpsuits, stepped off the train right in front of him. Casper stepped back to let them pass, but they formed a semi-circle blocking his path.
Purple glowtubes on their suits spelled out SOULSUCKERS; Casper had heard of that gang. What he had heard was not encouraging.
“Hey, man, gimme fifty,” said the one just right of center, who might have been a pale black or a tanned white; he was tall, with black hair shaved bald at the top and worn long at the sides, and a laddered scar drawn on his cheek in purple glowpaint. Electrodes protruded from his scalp, but Casper was unsure whether they were connected to anything or were just for show.
“Sorry, friend,” Casper said nervously. “I haven't got it.”
“I'll take twenty,” the youth said, bantering, trying to sound reasonable.
“I haven't got anything to give you,” Casper insisted.
“I think he's lying,” one of the other gang members said belligerently. “What's he got on him? Don'cha think we oughta search him?”
“Yeah,” the spokesman agreed. He reached towards Casper while his three companions moved to more completely surround their intended victim.
Beech wasn't sure what to do, and afterwards he wasn't sure what he had done. He brushed his hand against the gang leader's arm, with an impact that seemed much harder than it should have been; the gang leader stumbled to the side, knocking into the shortest member of the gang, and they both fell to the platform. Casper ran past them and jumped aboard the train.
The doors started to close, but one of the toughs grabbed them and held them open. While the gang boarded the train Casper ran into the next car, slammed shut the door between cars, and braced himself against the door to keep it closed.
As he pressed up against the warm metal he realized for the first time that back on the platform he had somehow knocked down two of the hoods. He marvelled. He had absolutely no idea how he had done it.
The train started to move again. Above his head, Beech heard the door begin to fracture as the gang pounded on it.
There were several stops before Casper's destination, but station after station was empty. Fortunately, it didn't occur to any of his pursuers to get off the train and go around to the next car.
When the train finally reached Casper's stop, he abandoned the car and raced for the exit.
He could hear footsteps behind him as he pounded up the stairs. Emerging at street level, he turned in the direction of his apartment building and skidded to a halt. A police officer, his body armor and visored helmet gleaming dully in the lamplight, gazed curiously at him.
Beech had difficulty believing his eyes. A cop? In his neighborhood? But there he was, as big as life. “Am I glad to see you!” Casper gasped.
“Is there something wrong?” the officer asked suspiciously.
Casper gestured towards the entrance to the subway as the first of the gang members emerged. Seeing the officer, the gang turned and raced back the way they had come, their metal-heeled boots clattering on the steps.
“I'll take care of this.” Grinning wolfishly, the officer reached for his holstered shotgun as he started down into the subway.
Casper watched him go. He felt no inclination to follow, or to see what was going to happen-he wasn't interested in revenge, and his curiosity wasn't that morbid.
Or that reckless.
Party hacks on TV sometimes still talked about criminals being coddled, but Casper had never seen any evidence of it, not since the Crisis and the emergency decrees. Criminals weren't paroled when the jails got crowded any more; they were “shot while trying to escape.”
Sometimes the cops didn't bother with the intermediate steps of arrest, trial, and jail.
And sometimes witnesses got “caught in the crossfire” if they saw the wrong thing. Casper had no desire to see anything that might be wrong. Feeling shaky, he walked the rest of the way home without incident.
It was after eleven, but he was more keyed up than ever. After a few moments of uneasy pacing around his apartment he decided he needed still more exercise. Just running or walking wasn't enough, and he didn't want to risk damaging himself, so he sat down at his computer and pulled up a webfeed, entered a few search terms, and found a catalog of exercise videos. He chose a few almost at random, and downloaded them.
