Severance (10 page)

Bruce rolled his eyes. “Yeah, boss. You go replace your
busted ’stat. Let me know if you get in over your head.”

§

When Stein arrived, she found that the thermostat was
perfectly fine. The office in question was freezing.

“Where the hell have you been?” a woman demanded when Stein
and her bright orange uniform entered the Logistics office. “We called you
hours ago!”

Stein blinked, surprised, half ready to pick a fight with
the woman with her fur on end. But after a deep breath, she slid into customer
relations mode and deployed a thin smile. She had handled angry customers
before — many days had handled nothing but. After the first few months on the
job and the near–fistfights from just such encounters, she’d learned to play
these a little more softly. In particular, people who had made a mistake when
filling in their service requests were always the touchiest. After long
practice, Stein had learned it was easiest to fix the problem first, and then
give them the tutorial on how to use the service request system. Starting a
conversation with “Here’s why you’re an idiot,” was Bruce’s manner.

“Sorry,” she said, feigning an exasperated expression. “It’s
been a hectic day. Let’s see if I can’t get it a bit warmer in here.”

Although still clearly annoyed, the woman didn’t say
anything else, which Stein took to be a good omen. Digging out her terminal,
she set to work.

In fairly short order, Stein found the problem. This office
was downstream of the air distribution network in one of the rooms Gabelman had
visited. Gabelman had messed up the settings on the dampers, directing the
majority of the hot air into a single office. A stupid mistake, and proof
enough that he was on drugs as far as Stein was concerned. “Rest in peace,
buddy,” she added quietly. After retrieving a ladder from a tool closet a half
block away, she opened the panel outside that gave her access to physically
manipulate the damper’s actuators and adjust the air balancing, carefully
setting it to correct the current problem without interfering with anyone else’s
comfort.

After replacing the panel, Stein returned the ladder to its
closet. As she was hanging the ladder up, an idea popped into her head. “While
I’m in the neighborhood…”

§

“Hi, is, uh…” Stein hesitated as she read the name from her terminal,
“Greg Watson here?”

The receptionist left the front desk, retreating into the
back of the office to fetch Greg. While she was gone, Stein looked at the terminal
again. Something about the name on this service request was funny. This was the
office that Gabelman had visited, with the mistaken too–hot service request. If
anyone asked, she would say this was to ensure Gabelman’s adjustment of the air
balancing hadn’t thrown anything else out of whack. The office was occupied by
the ship’s licensing department. “Licensing,” she said aloud, feeling a
headache coming on, unable to think of a single activity on the Argos which
required a license.

Greg Watson appeared from a smaller office at the back and
walked towards the reception desk with a gait that suggested he thought he was
important, and a look of dismay at the sight of Stein’s orange uniform. “Can I
help you?”

“Yes, I’m just following up on a service request that was
submitted the other day. You complained that it was too hot in here?”

Watson’s gaze narrowed. “I don’t know what you’re talking
about. It’s perfectly fine here.”

Stein frowned, biting the inside of her cheek. “Two days ago
we got a service request saying it was too hot here. We sent a technician
around to check on it.”

“Don’t know what to tell you. But I didn’t see any
technician.” He looked her up and down, his nose elevating fractionally. “It’s
actually been a little chilly around here lately to be honest. Better today,
though.”

“Huh,” Stein said. “Okay. Glad to hear it.” Smiling, she
backed out the door and returned down the hall to the Logistics office, to see
if things had improved there.

“Getting warmer in here?” she asked when she entered, not
needing a response. The sensors on her webbing told her as much, as did those
on the surface of her skin.

“Yes, thank you,” the woman replied, a lingering note of
annoyance still in her voice.

“How long was it cold like that?” Stein asked.

“It was bad yesterday, and worse this morning,” she replied.
“That’s when I put in the service request.”

Stein swallowed, as she prepared to gently explain to the
woman how she was mistaken. There was a simple approach to take when handling
cases like these. She forced a frown on her face. “Hmmm. Can you show me the
service request on your screen?”

“Sure.” The woman tapped at the screen on her desk. “Right
here. See?
‘It’s too cold! Please help!’
That’s me. Oh. That can’t be
right.” She pointed at the timestamp on the request, which said 5:15 p.m.

Stein frowned, genuinely this time. That was two hours in
the future. Which was probably why the request hadn’t shown up on the Big
Board. She checked her own terminal, looking at the queue of active service
requests. Not there either. “That’s weird,” she said to the woman.
You’re
not an idiot at all
.
Or you may be, but not because of this. At minimum
we’re lacking enough information to make a determination one way or another.
Stein carefully noted down the ID number of the request on her terminal,
offered another apology, and quickly left the office, her mind racing.

§

Hogg trudged down 8
^th
Avenue, avoiding eye
contact with everyone who crossed his path. He was chasing up the third and last
of Gabelman’s friends from the list Mrs. Gabelman had provided. The first two
interviews each followed an entirely predictable arc. No, they didn’t know
Gabelman used drugs. No, that didn’t sound like him at all. No, they didn’t
know if he had any enemies. They offered helpful suggestions for how the
investigation should proceed. The general thrust of these suggestions — “Stop
looking for dirt on the poor boy” — Hogg was beginning to agree with.

Hogg turned on to another side street, little more than a
hallway. He used to live near here himself, in a tiny little apartment on 7
^th
.
The south of the ship had long been the unfashionable end, populated by low–rent,
artistic types, as well as more than a few security officers, being close to
their headquarters. Some government workers, too — their offices were
predominantly in this part of the ship, on the second and third levels,
clustered around the Bridge.

Gabelman’s friend, a Tyson Enlopo, wasn’t any of those. He
was a Loafer, though that wasn’t very remarkable; close to a quarter of the
ship’s population avoided work for extended periods. The government had tried
mightily to curb this attitude for the last decade, in anticipation of landing
several thousand people on Tau Prius III only to watch them starve to death.
But the lessons hadn’t stuck, at least not yet. Might take a few practice
starvations first.

Hogg hit the buzzer of Enlopo’s apartment. From outside, it
looked like one of the doublewide units that were so coveted in this
neighborhood. There was no immediate answer, so he buzzed again. Finally, the
door opened to reveal a middle–aged man in a naval uniform. “Can I help you?”
he asked, confused.

“I’m looking for Tyson Enlopo.”

The man’s brow furrowed. “No one by that name here.”

Hogg blinked. “Well, I have him down as living at this
address.”

“Oh!” A flicker of comprehension crossed the man’s face. “No,
no. He moved. A couple weeks ago, I think. I don’t know where, I’m afraid. Guess
they haven’t updated his address in the system?”

Hogg exhaled heavily. “I guess not. Do you know why he
moved?”

The man swallowed. “No idea. This is a great apartment.”

Hogg thanked the officer and left him in the doorway. He had
a couple of different avenues for tracking down Enlopo, but couldn’t see much
point. He fully expected to get absolutely nothing out of an interview with the
man. He checked the time. Another half hour left in his shift, easily killable
with a meandering walk back to the office.

“Fuck it,” he said. Something bothered him about this Enlopo
and his sudden change of address. He opened up his terminal, and tapped out
some commands.

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE

WARRANT REQUEST — COMMUNICATION DEVICE TRACE

SUBJECT: Tyson Enlopo

REQUESTING OFFICER: Sergeant Sinclair Hogg

REASON FOR REQUEST: Subject has incorrect address listed
in both the ship’s public database and security database. Contact with subject
needed for investigation into murder of Ron Gabelman, deceased April 3
^rd
,
239 A.L. Subject was known to be an acquaintance of Gabelman’s.

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE

WARRANT REQUEST — COMMUNICATION DEVICE TRACE 903783343

SUBJECT: Tyson Enlopo

STATUS: APPROVED

JUSTICE OF PEACE NOTES: Attending officer is authorized
to seek communication device trace for subject TYSON ENLOPO. When contact with
subject is made, officer is permitted to collect current address for ship
records. Access to search private residences occupied by subject is explicitly
NOT granted by this warrant.

Turnaround for the warrant was less than five minutes, but
the terminal trace itself took almost half an hour.
Fucking IT
. He knew
very well it was a 10–second chore for them.

Consequently, it was well past the end of his shift when
Hogg finally tracked Enlopo down in his new and distinctly shabbier apartment.
As Hogg suspected, Enlopo didn’t know anything relevant to Gabelman’s death,
although the young man did have several impolite things to say about Hogg,
security officers in general, and the sexual proclivities of recent members of
his maternal lineage. Tired at the end of a long day, Hogg didn’t spend long
listening to the shrieking asshole, only vaguely gathering that Mr. Enlopo hadn’t
moved voluntarily. “Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy, dick,” Hogg said under his
breath as he walked away.

§

Stein sat, hands clasped behind her head, staring at the
wall. She had just confirmed that the surly woman’s service request was
actually in the system. Unusually, she could only access it by directly
referencing the request ID. The service request refused to show up using the
system’s search and filtering features, or on the Big Board.

There was only one place she could think of where the system
could be making this error. A pseudo–AI scanned each service request as it was
submitted, correcting mis–categorizations and deleting duplicates as necessary.
This pseudo–AI was pretty good — Stein hadn’t known it to make mistakes before.
Which wasn’t to say that it wasn’t
blamed
for making mistakes — blaming
the computer was a healthy part of being human. But in Stein’s opinion most of
that was unwarranted.

But she couldn’t think of any other explanation here. Users
couldn’t edit the timestamp on their service requests, which meant this one was
getting mangled somewhere else. She drummed her fingers on her desk, then
pulled up the IT service request page on her terminal.
Filing a service
request for a problem with the service requests
. This alone might cause the
system to explode. She began filling in the form, looking down at her desk
display, as she decided how to paraphrase this problem. “No Service Requests
Found!” her desk reported in a friendly orange font. Her eyes widened.

She had filtered the desk to search for heating and cooling
service requests reported from that specific room over the last week. She
expanded the location to include most of the Annex. Some service requests popped
up, including the two Gabelman had recently worked on. She expanded it to
include everything south of 14
^th
Street, which included the Annex
and the entire aft — over a quarter of the ship in fact. Almost a hundred
requests. She narrowed the search to the last day, which shortened the list to
seventeen.

Looking over the list, Stein was surprised to see that she
didn’t recognize most of them. She had by no means an encyclopedic knowledge of
the ship’s heating and cooling complaint registry, but as the nominal day shift
supervisor, she did see most of them. Most people on the ship worked from nine
to three, and consequently most service requests were submitted during those
hours. There were always a few submitted at night, which the skeleton and swing
shifts handled when they could. But looking at this list, Stein was surprised
to see the majority of these service requests were submitted in the evening,
after she had clocked off for the day. Which was why she didn’t recognize them.
Her team hadn’t handled them.

Thinking back, Stein realized she had seen very little work
in the aft in the last week, or even in the last month. There were the calls
Gabelman got sent on, but those were in the Annex, not the aft proper. She
adjusted the location range to include only locations aft of 10
^th
Street. The list of requests narrowed to thirteen. All of them submitted in the
evening or overnight. She checked over the last week. The same pattern. And
again over a month. Going back two months, the pattern returned to normal, with
the majority of service requests again being filed during the daylight hours.

“That is fucking strange.” She catalogued all the facts at
hand, rotating them around in her mind, trying to piece them together. For the
last month, it appeared that someone was manipulating service requests to keep
her shift away from the aft of the ship.

She cancelled her IT service request, feeling unsettled.
Something else was going on here, bigger than she understood. If someone had
tampered with the service request pseudo–AI, they’d have to have IT support for
that. Which meant the navy. A wave of paranoia washed over her; she suddenly
got the distinct impression that she should have been a lot more subtle over
the past few hours.