Office of Mercy (9781101606100) (6 page)

As Raj finished speaking, he rubbed his hand slowly over his mouth, a sad, serious gesture strikingly at odds with the mirthful crowd around him. Raj was a distinctive man, most people agreed, even outside his views on the Office of Mercy. He had a quiet, appraising way about him that made him seem too intelligent to laugh at, yet too reserved to merit much in the way of kindness or general cordiality.

“Try not to worry about them,” Jeffrey told Eric and Natasha, shaking his head. “There's always going to be dissent in a free society. But they'll get over their petty selfishness soon enough. A couple of nights looking over the Ethical Code wouldn't harm them either.
Be conscious of the universe and let it overwhelm the personal and the particular
,” he added, quoting from the final chapter.

The tide of people was moving toward the Dining Hall, and Natasha, Eric, and Jeffrey moved with it. The new team had converged at one of the tables, their trays of biscuits and gravy and coffee growing cold as they stood at their seats shaking hands all around. Natasha did not know Douglas Truman or Nolan Al-Rashid very well, but she liked them both immediately. Alejandra was an outspoken, gregarious woman and, true to her reputation, within minutes she was laughing loudly and cracking jokes with Eric.

“And what about our precocious Epsilons, eh?” Douglas said, giving Natasha's shoulder a hearty pat. “Makes me reevaluate the successes of my own youth, I'll tell you that. If I remember right, at age twenty-four, my greatest responsibility was tallying chicken-to-egg ratios in Agriculture at the end of each month.”

“Maybe Eric and Natasha work harder than you did,” Nolan suggested.

“Not like we have a choice,” said Eric good-naturedly, piping up from across the table, “working for Jeffrey.”

Jeffrey, who had been standing off to the side, gave a quick retort, though not before Natasha had noticed again the concern weighing down the lines of his face, and his hand rubbing the crisp sleeve of his opposite arm.

4

T
he training took place in the Pretends, in the third of the three great spaces that made up the Department of Living, just behind the Dining Hall and below the Archives, where Min-he worked. Developed by Alpha engineers in the first century after the Storm, the early Pretends had originally served to supplement the education of the Beta generation: to show them the world and grant them the experiences that reading and study alone could not re-create in so visceral a way. Soon, though, only a few years into their use, the young Betas had also found in the Pretends an alternate and much superior means of entertainment and exercise as compared with the Alpha-built baseball diamond, soccer field, and basketball court that shared the great room with the Pretends today. (Those games had long gone out of style, though the courts, synthetic grass fields, and equipment remained in pristine condition, ready for use.)

The basic experience that defined the Pretends, that of complete and artificial sensory immersion, had been present in the Pre-Storm times. However, the technology was very new then, and had never gotten past its early limitations before scientific work in such matters ceased. The America-Five engineers had managed to pick up where history had left off. They perfected and mastered the technique of using highly accurate nanomagnetic fields to alternately activate and suppress trigger regions in the brain, ultimately gaining control over the sensations of touch, sight, smell, sound, and taste to a degree never achieved before. What was more, the technology in the Pretends, like the technology in every field, was always advancing. The Betas had improved on the Alphas' model and, since then, younger generations had implemented their own new ideas. Just in the last decades, for instance, the engineers had discovered how, instead of allowing only for prewritten or prescripted experiences, the computer could essentially
read
the imagination of the player and, by working one nanosecond behind the player's thoughts and desires, simulate in “real life” the fantasies of the mind. This type of simulation was called “Free Play,” but it was only just emerging into general use.

Natasha herself, like every citizen, had spent countless hours in the small Pods where these experiences took place. It was no secret to anyone that the confined space of the settlement could not accommodate every human need. And the Epsilons had been encouraged all their lives to run and play and act out violently or in any way they felt inclined within the private world of the Pretends. The simulations served more straightforward, educational purposes as well. During school, for example, all their exams were held here. And Natasha could remember with crisp feeling acting out virtual lab experiments and very basic bioreplacement tasks, translating by sight Latin, Chinese, and Spanish from a scrolling screen, and pontificating on computer-selected passages of the Ethical Code before a simulated audience of her teachers and hooded Alpha elders.

Natasha and Eric passed together through the back doors of the Dining Hall promptly at 0754 on Monday morning and walked across the bare expanse of the soccer field, baseball diamond, and parquet basketball court. Five levels of identical white doors, accessible by a metal scaffold of stairs and wraparound balconies, rose up on all four walls. Beside each door was an occupancy light, so that the entire room was dotted with little pricks of green and red. The vast majority of Pods held only single players, but there was also a row of group training rooms on the ground level. The two Epsilons found Pod G11; the light at the door glowed green.

“You ready for this?” Eric asked.

“They wouldn't have picked us if we couldn't handle it,” answered Natasha.

He raised his eyebrows, no more convinced of her fearlessness than she was of his.

“Too late to turn back now,” he said. And with a last little pang of trepidation, Natasha followed Eric inside.

Jeffrey was already there, strapping himself into the center harness, and the others arrived within minutes. Jeffrey greeted them and directed each person to one of the stations. He was all business; there were no special glances for Natasha today—a relief to Natasha. She had enough pressure on her already.

Like the individual Pods, Pod G11 had an interior of gray-blue rug that rose up the walls and onto the ceiling, and a very sedate blue light that glowed upward from a panel near the floor. The team members strapped elaborate harnesses around their middles; the apparatus would keep them safely in place while their bodies acted out in whatever world they would soon find themselves. They pulled down their helmets, which also hung from the ceiling, and fastened them over their heads—the helmet flaps making them blind to the “actual” world around them.

“All right,” Jeffrey said, “as long as everyone's feeling good, I'm going to throw us right into our first simulation. In this one, we walk straight to the Crane sweep site. I want you to look for identifying landmarks as we go, start familiarizing yourself with the route.”

The effect came gradually, as the simulators touching Natasha's head began to warm. At first, Natasha saw only the black helmet flap. But then she allowed her eyes to flutter closed and, as she did, the sensation of the harness where it crossed her legs and torso disappeared; the weight of the helmet dissolved. She opened her eyes—whether she had opened her eyes in the real world as well as in the Pretend world, Natasha could not say. She sensed the presence of a cool, light, stretchy material just grazing her skin. She ran her hands down her thighs, touching through thin gloves the biosuit that covered her body. The air tasted cool and clean, and she became aware of the lightweight airfilter strapped to her back.

Darkness gave way to looming forms, and these forms steadily coalesced into a forest of thick trees, about thirty paces away. The other members of her team were standing beside her, in the same arrangement as they had stood in the Pod: Douglas, Nolan, and Jeffrey to her right, and Eric and Alejandra to her left. They too were testing the feel of their biosuits, stretching their limbs and feeling over their shoulders for their airfilters. The biosuits were light gray in color, with bright red stitching. Stiff, protective helmets covered their heads, and clear visors covered their faces.

Natasha turned in a circle and recognized their location immediately. They stood on the green, the large circle of lawn that surrounded America-Five. Two steel wings branched out on either side of them: each wing a series of massive rectangular structures sunk into the earth. The nearer one had the long, thin configuration of the Department of the Exterior. That would make the adjacent, shorter wing the Department of Government. Each of the steel structures connected back to the high Dome, its concrete base stained in yellowish ribbons from dampness and weather, and the honeycomb windows opaque in the noontime sun.

“Welcome to your first training session,” said Jeffrey's voice in her ear. “As I said, the purpose of this exercise is to familiarize yourself with the route to the Crane sweep site. Douglas has our navigation tools. I've kept the obstacles to a minimum for now.”

“What, no lion attacks?” Eric asked.

“Don't expect this kind of treatment to continue,” Jeffrey responded. The air shimmered once and then was still. “Douglas, we'll go on your word.”

•   •   •

When the Alphas had first announced the team, Natasha had only felt excited—the fear had not set in until that night. Then she had realized what she was up against: that, immersed in simulations of the Outside, her feelings of Misplaced Empathy might break through the Wall—as they had on the night of the Crane sweep—only this time, her lapse would be visible to more minds than her own. Natasha need not have worried at all, though. From the very first training session, Natasha surpassed herself in the Pretends. In an odd way, she actually found it
easier
to maintain the Wall, knowing that her efforts were all in service of getting to see the Outside. She had a goal—an end result strong enough to focus her thoughts. In fact, during some of the simulations, Natasha almost felt like she was seventeen again, training for the Office of Mercy entrance exams. She had a knack for mental geography and for orienting herself in the field. She was alert to her surroundings, the first to catch an animal sneaking up on them, especially when their tracking devices had failed. Douglas, the most senior member of the team except for Jeffrey, took to calling her “quick-draw” in deference to her speedy reflexes. Even Eric acknowledged Natasha's skill a few days into their training, if only with a grudging regard. And more—what was of a much higher importance to Natasha—she could not detect in Jeffrey any of the anxiety that he had tried to hide from her just after the Alphas' announcement. He complimented her only sparingly, but each compliment was sincere; he seemed genuinely impressed with her performance. Natasha was glad about that. The last thing she wanted was for Jeffrey to regret recommending her for the team.

The simulations in the Pretends got progressively harder as the days went on. They practiced traveling through violent weather systems and negotiating catastrophic equipment failures. They fought off wolves and mountain lions, occasionally losing limbs in the process and rushing each other back to the green for emergency bioreplacement. Their mapping systems failed a dozen times over, leaving them to navigate their way back to the settlement using the sun and the stars as their guide. In one Pretend, a forest fire spread through the trees in a mission already plagued by a communications breakdown. The team neglected to keep watch on their air quality meters and missed the spike in CO
₂
levels that would have clued them in to the danger. The last thing Natasha saw was black, billowing smoke lacing through the trees before Jeffrey (who controlled the sessions) abruptly ended the simulation and spent ten minutes upbraiding them for their inattention.

But they all feared the dirty sweeps the most—when, at the sweep site, they came across half-alive Tribespeople tossed into the trees or sand, their hearts still incomprehensibly beating and their skin open with sour and rot. Once a man rolled down from a pile of toppled trees and took hold of Alejandra around the neck, crying and begging through cracked lips for what could only be water, before Eric wrestled him to the ground and Natasha delivered the merciful shot to the head.

“What do you think of our progress?” Jeffrey asked Natasha one evening as the two of them followed the others out of the Pod. “Think we'd be ready to go Outside, if it wasn't for the Pines?”

It was the conclusion of the afternoonshift, and the team had just completed their fourth full week of training. Natasha's shirt radiated the heat and sweat of her body, and she was looking forward to a quick shower before the dinnerhour began.

“We're definitely close, I think,” Natasha said. “It feels good, it feels like you've had us work through every possible disaster.”

“That's the idea,” Jeffrey said. “Actually, for next week I was thinking of rotating responsibilities—”

But Jeffrey did not finish his thought. As the Pod door slid closed behind them, Jeffrey and Natasha found themselves standing on one side of a strange confrontation. Facing Douglas, Nolan, Eric, and Alejandra—and now Natasha and Jeffrey too—was Raj Radhakrishnan and the four others who had been talking with him on the morning the team was announced.

Raj stood at the edge of the deserted soccer field, his arms folded. Flanking him on one side, leaning against the netted goal, was Mercedes Laplace, her bright hair haloing her face in a frame of tight curls. Eduardo Castilla perched atop the rolled, never-used stretching mats, and beneath him, almost touching, stood Sarah O'Keefe and Ben Rook, both ashen-faced and scowling.

“Finally,” Raj said. His dark eyes swept over their sweaty, disheveled bodies. “We couldn't believe it when we realized you were still running a simulation. I have to say, as a settlement citizen, the idea of a last-minute cram session doesn't fill me with confidence.”

“What do you want?” asked Jeffrey, looking from one to the other. “Raj, what's the meaning of all this?”

“Do you really have to ask?” Raj said. He seemed genuinely surprised, but Natasha knew better than to take any performance of his at face value. She couldn't trust anyone so hateful of the Office of Mercy, no matter her own occasional uneasiness about the sweeps. “We came here,” Raj continued, “because we want to know your plans for the mission. We would have asked Arthur Roosevelt directly, but none of us have clearance for the Department of the Exterior.”

“You know our plans,” Jeffrey answered curtly. “It's a standard Recovery mission. We're going to fix the sensors, document the sweep site, and check for survivors. That's public information.”

“That's all?”

“Yes, that's all. And now I don't feel that I owe you any more of my time. Come on, everyone.”

But no one moved.

“You're telling me the plan from a month ago,” Raj said, glaring at them. “I want to know what the Office of Mercy is thinking
now
.”

Jeffrey repeated his previous answer, with even less of an effort for civility. “Anyway,” Jeffrey added, “why should it make any difference to you?”

Raj's eyes hardened; Ben and Sarah laughed disdainfully.

“I don't think you're being totally honest,” Raj said. “But that won't keep
me
from being honest with
you
. It makes a difference to me because I have spent most of my working life as an archivist, and I suspect that you are, at this present moment, acting in a way to repeat the wrongs of the past. I want to know, we all want to know, do you intend to enact a manual sweep on the Pines?”

Natasha relaxed a little at these last words and, beside her, Eric did too. So it was only a misunderstanding. Raj and the others did not realize that of course Arthur would not send them into the field until the Office of Mercy had swept the Pines in the usual way, with a nova, or else until the Pines had slipped across the perimeter. That was the plan since the beginning.