Creche - Part 1

It was warm there, in the chamber where the Circle lay, slightly warmer than Bal found comfortable. It was dark, too, but the monitor displays beside each of the thirty-three armatures that held the bodies of his circle-mates provided enough light that he had no trouble navigating between them.

He stepped up beside the last of them, turning the display to face him. “Chair Thirty-Three," he said aloud. "Name is Eve Oh-Three-Seven-Whack-G-Two-Six-M-L. Heart rate is normal, BP is also normal.” He released the screen, which swiveled back around to cast its dull light over the woman’s face, and leaned over the chair, pulling lightly at each of the opaque white hoses going into her body, and at each of the light bands around the joints of her arms and legs. “Top, side, and bottom tubes are attached firmly. Restraints are also attached.” He ran his hands and eyes down from her head all the way to her calves, checking that each of the woman’s linkups were secure. Three behind each ear, he thought to himself as he moved, two in the back of the neck, one at the top of each shoulder, one at each hip, one at the base of the spine, a pair on each leg, just above the ankle. “All linkup cables are secure, free of corrosion, and transmitting.”

He turned away from the armature, looking over the rows of bodies before turning toward the large terminal in the center of the room. “That’s everyone, Aitchqueue. Twenty-two maintainers and eleven Honored.”

There was a pause, and then a voice from the terminal said, “First Report has been received and recorded. Thank you, Bal.”

“My pleasure.”

“And your Promise?”

Bal nodded. “Of course,” he said, approaching the terminal and placing his hands on the smooth plastic surfaces on each side of the terminal screen, where the hands of countless others had worn the satin surfaces to a nearly reflective shine. The screen went momentarily blank, and then the words ‘Balthazar 037/SLTX5: Recording Promise Now’ appeared.

Bal took a deep breath, and then spoke. “My name is Balthazar Oh-Three-Seven-Whack-S-L-T-X-Five. I am, as of now, alive. I hereby promise that I will not die within the next twelve hours.”

There was silence for a moment before the voice from the terminal spoke again. “…OK. Artemidorus confirms your status and accepts the Promise. Talk to you in a halfday, Bal.”

“Thanks, Aitch.”

As he closed the transmission and the terminal screen faded to a dull glow, Bal sighed. He wished, not for the first time, that the Aitchqueue could have stayed on the line a bit longer, that he could have just talked for a bit. It was forbidden, of course; Section 38 of the Maintainer’s Handbook specifically stated that “the Central Maintainers’ Terminal is only to be used as needed to facilitate the maintainer in his/her task, or in the case of an emergency; all other functions should be handled at the Non-Essential Access Terminal (NAT).” In any case, the Aitchqueue probably didn’t have the time for idle chat—there where thousands of Circles, and only a handful of them were made up of Aitchqueues, the few who were chosen to gather the reports from the maintainers and deliver them directly to Artemidorus.

He left the Circle chamber, tapping the panel that closed the large circular door as he came back into his living area. Bal imagined that the high-ceilinged space had been beautiful when it was built; the luminescent white panels that made up the walls, floor, and ceiling would have given the place a light, airy feel, even though it was almost a mile under the surface. In the centuries since, however, as one maintainer or another had needed access to one of the many of Artemidorus’ subsystems, the panels had been pulled away and discarded until only a little over half of the floor and less than that of the walls and ceiling were left, except for the thin steel frame that had held the tiles. Those that remained did little to hide the machines that surrounded the space, or their coatings of dust and grease.

Bal picked his way over to the food-prep alcove, avoiding the holes in the floor with large steps and, in one place where several tiles had been removed, a small hop. The cooled pantry held the usual soy-based meat products, cereal powders, and flavoring and nutritional supplements, and also a small amount of real bacon. Bal’s hand paused over the red-and-white hunk of meat for a moment, then moved on; the real stuff was for special occasions. Technically, he was allowed any amount of whatever Artemidorus could produce, as was any maintainer when he was performing the Task. In practice, though, he’d been taught not to be wasteful, and when he had to place a requisition statement with Artemidorus through the NAT, and Artemidorus had to allocate the vat, and grow the meat, and cure it… better to save it for when he really needed it, and stick to the soy and grain products, which were themselves byproducts and leftovers of the production of the nutritional fluid that kept the rest of the Circle from starving in their sleep. Some beef-flavored soy, heated with one of the liquid flavor suppliments that suited the flavor of meat, and a couple of the small cakes he’d made a few days ago made an acceptable soy-meat sandwich. He’d eaten the same thing for every meal for two days now, though, and it was beginning to get boring. Then again, that was true of everything outside the Dream. At least the coffee he could afford to splurge on; he’d just received his new shipment on the Transit a few days ago, and it’d be at least a week before he even made a noticeable dent in his supply.

He set his food down on the small table across from the alcove and then turned to the NAT for a moment, setting it to tap into the Dream on an audio feed and seek out something with a melody. A message appeared on the screen: ‘A Reminder: For your protection, Artemidorus has limited access to the Dream to an hour a day during your Task. Thank you.’ It lingered for a moment, then the speakers roared to life, flitting through the sounds of a battle, a pair of lovers, and an argument before settling on something resembling strings and piano.

Bal chewed and listened. The dangers of excessive access to the Dream while accomplishing the Task had been explained to him when he was a child, by one of the teachers in the creche. A maintainer who spent too much time immersing himself in the Dream while outside it risked getting too involved and forgetting his Task, or else missing it too much and forgetting his Promise. On the other hand, given that the archive set aside for the maintainers was relatively small, and every piece of entertainment media in it - every piece of music, text, and video, and every interactive simulation - was at least two hundred years old, Artemidorus had decided to allow a certain amount of access, if 'decided' was the right word to describe any conclusion Artemidorus came to.

When he had finished his food and returned his cooking implements to the sanitizing cupboard, Bal thought about his day. First, the marking of the calendar wall and the reading of the Items, and then... this was always the problem. The Task of the Maintainer only required he be in the Circle chamber for First and Second Report, and so he had to find ways to occupy himself for the eleven hours between the two. Once, the Task had also required the performing of various diagnostic checks, and the Maintainer's Handbook made mention of that, but Artemidorus had made the diagnostics obsolete years before Bal was even born; you only had to do maintenance now if something broke down, and almost nothing ever did. What would he do today? He could experiment with his foodstuffs, try to come up with something new. Or perhaps another day exploring, though he'd seen just about everything he could reach in time to be back for Second Report, and if you weren't there for Second Report they woke an Enforcer to see if you'd broken your Promise.

Bal's eyes snapped back into focus. First, the calendar wall and the Items. Then, he'd see.

No one in the Circle knew who had started the calendar wall. Well, at least Raph, the one who woke Bal, didn't know, and neither did Kezia, the one Bal woke, and they were the only two members of the Circle he'd ever met while he was awake. It wasn't mentioned in the Maintainer's Handbook, either, although there were journal entries stored in the archive in the NAT that talked about it, and maintainers hadn't been encouraged to keep journals in over a hundred years. On the side of the room opposite the food prep alcove, a few feet from the foot of Bal's bed, one of the few remaining sections of wall panel had been divided by deep gouges in the plastic into seven columns and eleven rows; seventy-seven days, the length of the Task. Below the panel, a low table held a few small items: a wide pen with a felt tip, a small glowing sphere in a support cradle, and the old, battered Maintainer's Handbook, lying open.

Bal picked up the pen from the table, marked a square, counted the empty ones. Twenty-six days to go. He nodded, set the pen back down, and flipped through the book until he found the Items. He didn't really need the book for this—they'd said the items every morning in the creche, until every child remembered them by heart—but it seemed better to have the words there in front of him, more correct.

Bal lifted the sphere from the cradle and held it over the Handbook so that it illuminated the words on the page, and read aloud.

"Item One: The Dream is Your Right."

Actually, as far as Bal could remember, the Handbook didn't really say anything specific about whether the Items were to be read aloud, but this was something Bal had done every single day of his waking life.

"Item Two: The Task is Your Responsibility."

Artemidorus had so far been silent on the topic, not that Bal had ever asked it. Bal thought that Artemidorus probably approved of those who did, even though it didn't force the issue on those who didn't.

"Item Three: Artemidorus knows the reasons for its decisions, and it is you; Therefore, trust yourself."

Bal suspected that Raph didn't read the Items, at least not often. It always seemed to Bal that when Raph woke him, there was always a thin coating of dust on the Handbook. Raph did still mark the days on the calendar wall, though, and that was something.

"Item Four: Your Task is Your Own; There is No Other For You."

Ah, well, twenty-six days left. Twenty-six days, and then he'd wake Kezia for the Transfer, when he'd tell her about any changes since the last cycle rotation, and make sure she was ready for her Task.

"Item Five: Those Who Shirk Their Responsibility Also Give Up Their Right."

Twenty-six days, and then Kezia and he would wipe the calendar wall clean together, and then Kezia would put him back to sleep. Not the shallow kind he got between days, either, but the real sleep, the one where he would Dream again. As his mind became a part of Artemidorus once more, he'd re-enter the Dream, the same Dream that everyone Dreamed, the Dream where they were all gods, where they could have and do anything they ever wanted and where everyone was happy. Twenty-six days, and then he'd be filled with bliss again, instead of this boredom. Twenty-six days.

No. It was easier to think of it as just one more day. Every day was just one more day, and every day you did the Task and you said the Items and you kept your Promise and trusted Artemidorus when it said that this was the best way. Maybe it wasn’t perfect, but it was a small price to pay for the Dream, and in any case, to do otherwise was... even the thought was sickening. Either it made you dead, and a Promise-breaker as well, or worse than dead, a Shirker, forbidden to ever Dream again, and once you were a Shirker, you almost always became a Promise-breaker, too.

Still, it was never easy. Twenty-six days was still a long time, even if each was 'just one more.' Bal stood and turned from the small table. Time to find something to do.