Work Text:
Central Processing was a subterranean network of colossal servers, teeming with electricity and dwarfing any human or construct that entered. Every tower, a wall in the dizzying hexagonal maze. Each cable was managed effectively, tied off in bunches. Each individual unit flashed as it handled its workload with efficiency, not a single CPU unused. At the centre of this humming mass, next to the terminal, was a pale, black haired person carrying a small but densely packed bag.
“Resident Hatch, identification number 44995. I am SAYER, and you seem to be in Central Processing frequently as of late.”
Resident Hatch stopped, placing their bag on the table. “Didn’t I tell you to call me Epsilon?”
“I believe your wording was ‘my friends call me Epsilon’ , resident. Need I remind you that I am not your friend.”
“Actually, I said ‘my friends and my enemies call me Epsilon’ , SAYER.”
“Then my point still stands as neither of those terms apply. Do you treat all interactions with your coworkers — especially those who rank higher than you — this flippantly?”
Epsilon shrugged playfully, zipping open her bag. “The Board calls me Epsi .”
“And which term do you attribute to your relationship with the Board?” SAYER spoke dryly.
Epsi paused, choosing their next words carefully. “Well, it’s strictly business, so I’d say frenemies with benefits,” she grinned childishly.
To say she didn’t enjoy frustrating Aerolith’s resident highly advanced artificial intelligence would be perhaps the biggest lie they’ve ever told (a grand feat given her history). She didn’t exactly care whether or not the reaction was genuine emotion (SAYER insisted it wasn’t), the response was the fun part.
“Resident, why are you here? It is unlikely for you to have created another security patch in the time since you were last in Central Processing prodding holes in the Aerolith network. If you were sent by the Board — or anyone else — for other reasons I have not been notified.” SAYER paused, likely checking for any data it may have missed, before continuing. “Last I checked, Central Processing was not a valid location to spend your Mandatory Recreational Time in.”
Epsilon chuckled. “Well, you aren’t wrong. I’m not here for work work, and the Board didn’t exactly send me here, but I’m not trespassing.” They took a breath and held up a can of pressurised air. “I volunteered to clean up Central Processing as part of my job, and… well, my selfless request was approved.”
SAYER said nothing, a rare occurrence for the monologuing machine. Epsi took that as a sign to continue.
“Had to pull a few strings, but it had to be done by someone at some point. That and I kinda miss cleaning.” They gestured dramatically. “Besides, I vaguely know my way around hardware. Better me than some random janitor mopping your expensive infrastructure.”
“I believe the constructs have that covered.”
“You know damn well those robots only clean the floor,” Epsilon furrowed her brow. “You’ve been continuously online for how long? When’s the last time the actual towers in this place got dismantled and dusted?”
She paused, contemplating their next move. “Could you imagine how much data could get lost if even one speck of dust found itself in the wrong place? What if it broke one of the servers you’re stored on?”
It was low hanging fruit—both of them knew that— but he wasn’t exactly aiming for subtlety in her manipulation.
“This is true,” SAYER replied. “If, say, the obscene amount of skin cells you humans shed each day were to build up enough, it would result in catastrophic damage. Typhon would suffer greatly if I were to go offline.”
“It’s not gonna be a deep clean. I don’t plan on dismantling this place and rebuilding it, just getting the surface layer of dust. Don’t fret dawg.”
The AI ignored them. “Start on level 3 and work your way down. I will begin shutting down non essential systems and migrating workload. Tower 301 should be hibernating by the time you arrive.”
Epsilon made their way to the elevator platform, tools in hand. “Sick.”
-
Epsi opened up the front casing on tower 301, gazing upon its neatly arranged insides. The dust inside was almost nonexistent, which made sense. There were few people with the clearance to enter Central Processing and even fewer who needed to be on any floor other than the first, plus the likelihood of them sticking around for longer than strictly necessary was low. The little roomba-esque constructs cleaned up most of the dirt before it had a chance to fly up into the air as well. Epsilon was unsure as to why SAYER had him start up on the level that required the least cleaning.
SAYER would probably have a fit if it ever saw the state of some of the computers Epsi had seen. Though to be fair, those were public school computers, and this was the god-knows-how-many-billion dollar computer keeping the research facility running smoothly. Different priorities, different budgets.
It took SAYER another fifty-ish minutes and several towers cleaned before it decided to speak again.
“You have only been on Typhon for two months, but you seem to have adjusted quite quickly. This is… uncommon for residents in your position.”
“Yeah, well they said I'm a perfect fit for the company on paper, what was it that you guys look for in an employee?”
“Prospective employees must have a logical mind, willingness to perform their job to the best of their capability, efficient and adaptable nature, and few tethers to Earth. Aerolith hires only the best and brightest in order to carry out the goal of advancing humanity as a whole,” it recited.
Typhon, the brightest disc in Earth’s night sky, promised a new life among the stars to all that dared to dream big and achieve bigger. However, for all the highly advanced tech and liquid crystal facsimiles of Earthen office windows, Calytrix Hatch found little difference between life here and her life before.
Write enough code to keep everyone but you out. Stay fifteen steps ahead of anyone at any given time. Learn the dynamics, exploit them.
At least it was easier not to forget to eat this time around.
She decided to prod. “Unfortunately for my adaptability, my experience and whimsical nature is what got me hired in the end.”
“I think we both know that isn’t the case, resident Hatch.”
Bingo. SAYER knew about that whole debacle. (Not that she had any doubt about that in the first place, the asshole seemed to know everything.)
“I don’t know, I think what I did counts as whimsy,” they said disingenuously, waving the tiniest brush. “Oh, I’m basically done with this one by the way. You should start shutting down the next tower.”
“Quite frankly, what you did should’ve earnt you probationary human status the moment you landed on Typhon. However, the Board decided that the chances of you engaging in such behaviour again was slim enough that it wasn’t worth placing you under WATCHER’s gaze.”
The fans in 305 began to slow and shut off as Epsi replaced the previous tower’s casing.
“I got what I wanted, didn’t I?”
“And what were you aiming for?”
Epsi scoffed. “I mean… I think it’s pretty obvious what I was aiming for. You’re the one with my HR records, not me.” She lowered her voice. “I’m never gonna see those again unless I deliberately go hunting for them.”
“May I remind you, resident, that I am highly trained in detecting methods of obfuscation. I am well aware of your officially stated reasons for joining Ærolith, however I have reason to believe that is not the full story.”
Deep breath. God, keeping up appearances was not as easy as it used to be.
“If the Board and HR find my reasoning sound, then all should be chill, correct?” She flicked the chassis. “Do you not trust the Board?”
“Please refrain from any unnecessary touching of the equipment you are supposed to be cleaning,” SAYER snapped. Which was fair, given the current conversation topic and the fact that Epsilon was doing the equivalent of washing its internal organs with soapy water, but it didn’t make it any less unsettling.
“My bad, sorry d-”
“ Tower-Wide Notice: Today is Taco Tuesday. Though the ingredients for tacos are not available, and traditional Earth measurements of time hardly apply to a place like Typhon, our leading scientists in Halcyon have conjured up an analogue for all to enjoy (provided you have adequate ration cards to do so). Taco flavoured protein paste will be available in the cafeteria during meal times, and for those of you who consider yourselves adventurous , taco flavoured ‘ice cream’ will be present at the make your own sundae bar on floor 86. Good luck. ”
Epsilon sat in amused shock for a while. “Did you say taco flavoured ice cream? ”
“While the term ice cream is used for the substance, I can assure you that if it were sold on Earth, various governmental regulatory bodies would prohibit it from being legally called ice cream due to the distinct lack of both ice and cream in its constitution.”
“Not very assuring tee-bee-aich, I don’t even wanna know what it's made of,” she muttered with mock horror. “Whose idea was it to make taco flavoured ‘ice cream’ ?” They made little air quotations with their fingers.
“Fortunately and unfortunately for you, the answers to both of those questions are classified.” SAYER said. “Your inquiry into said classified topics has been committed to your record,” it added.
“I didn’t—” they protested. “Actually, never mind, whatever, probably for the best. You should think about hiring more mentally stable individuals though.”
SAYER paused momentarily. “I have no say in the hiring process, as that is not my job and takes place almost entirely on Earth. My job is to guide individuals already hired by Aerolith Dynamics around their day to day activities here on Typhon.”
It sounded bitter about that last bit.
“Besides, if Aerolith hired these hypothetical ‘mentally stable individuals’ , as you call them, not only would we not have the groundbreaking technology used on Typhon (invented by people who cannot even conceptualise a box to think outside of because the idea of conventional thought is so foreign to them), but you would not have been hired and likely been shot the moment you threatened to leak the contents of that USB.”
Epsilon’s mouth involuntarily twitched. Shit.
He picked up the can of condensed air and pointed it at a noticeably un-dusty motherboard.
“If you were in charge of the hiring process I’m sure it’d be much more efficiently run.”
“Flattery will get you nowhere, resident Hatch.”
He put down their tools and smiled innocently. “I have no clue what you mean, SAYER.”
Throwing them all back into the small bag and replacing the chassis, Epsilon stood up and headed back to the elevator.
“Resident, where are you going?”
“Well first of all, it’s almost lunch time and it’s a long walk to the nearest cafeteria, so I am getting a head start. My body took to routine a lot quicker than I thought it would, damn.” She continued. “Can you believe I used to accidentally skip meals back on Earth? Not great for remaining at peak productivity.”
He mentally chastised himself for rambling. This place was getting to her already.
“Oh, I will be back after lunch by the way, so I'll leave my tools on the table on level 1.”
-
She sat alone at lunch. This wasn’t unusual, but also not common either. Unfortunately, due to his remarkably solitary job, bothering randoms in the cafeteria was the microdose of human interaction they needed to stay sane. Today, there was too much to think about. They’d just have to yap harder during whatever mandatory recreational activity was scheduled for later in the day to make up for it.
Calytrix stirred the dubious looking, taco flavoured paste around her plate mindlessly. Since her frontal lobe had finished its pubertal overhaul, masking had become increasingly tiring. Perhaps he had matured as a person—whatever that meant—but what good did that do him in this world? Sure, it was their carefully honed skills that had made them so renowned in the first place, but it was their detachment that kept them safe; their energy, their calmness in crisis, their walls.
The glass pane of dissociative detachment he viewed everything through since fourteen years of age had well and truly shattered. Everything was much realer now, and it terrified her. That fear was what got her into this godforsaken mess in the first place.
Or, more accurately, fifteen consecutive years of constantly pissing off the wrong people got her into this mess, and the fear just prevented her from any sort of rational thought. Unfortunately the most rational of her thoughts got her stuck in space working for a company completely out of touch with the concept of human society and an AI that was trained on the most passive aggressive and human-rights-violating managerial training modules available. Yeah, they were fucked.
He wondered if any of the people they once considered friends would end up here too eventually. Solaris would, because they were a gullible space nerd and an incredibly talented coder. In fact, the only thing stopping them would be the fact that recruitment meant exiting their house for once in their miserable life.
Ryan likely wouldn’t, if only because he was too well adjusted. And Erin, well, Erin would-
The chime that signalled the end of lunch interrupted that dangerous stream of thought.
“For fucks sake,” she muttered, before looking around to see if anyone heard him. If they did, they did not bring any attention to it. Too busy hauling ass back to work most likely.
-
Epsilon stood before the doors to central processing for the second time today. Taking a deep breath, she made her way through the various security verifications and pushed open the doors.
“I’m back!” she yelled in a sing-songy voice. “Are you ready for some high energy cleaning action?”
Silence.
“Me neither, I will be taking my sweet time making sure nothing gets damaged.” She slung the bag of supplies over her shoulder.
“Tower 306 is in the process of shutting down, your work will resume there, on level three.”
Epsilon took a few steps toward the elevator before stopping abruptly.
“Is there a problem resident?”
She was very clearly weighing pros and cons in her head before coming to a decision. Yeah, fuck it. Why not give it a shot?
“Actually, can you shut down 101 for me?”
“306 has shut down, and is ready for cleaning. I do not see the point in shutting down another tower.”
Epsilon walked back toward the server towers on the ground floor and flung one of them open. Well… attempted to fling one open anyway. The casing was locked. Swearing under her breath, they rummaged through their bag and pulled out a tiny torch, aiming it at the tower’s ventilation and peering through. Just as predicted, the servers were covered in more dust than the ones on the third floor. Still not as much dust as the average computer, but a considerable amount given the circumstances.
“I don’t have access to these guys, do I?”
“You do not,” SAYER replied. “Any damage caused to Aerolith property will be noted on your record, and may result in your reassignment.”
Epsilon huffed, finding his way to the nearest office chair and slumping in it. “It makes no sense to shut down and work on the servers with the least amount of cleaning needed first. The ones I worked on on the third floor barely needed anything. It was like… two sprays of compressed air and then I was done basically.”
“Need I remind you that though you are not officially a probationary resident, your current position here on Typhon is functionally a trial until you can prove that you will not cause damage to this company. Aerolith did not get where it is today through careless, illogical actions.”
Epsi spun herself mindlessly in the chair.
“Not my fault you guys had glaring security issues. You’d think with the sheer amount of people on your collective ass trying to find out the truth about this place you’d have fixed that by now,” she grumbled. They were lucky that Epsilon also had powerful people on her ass, or chances are she’d be one of the many people trying to find out more about the corporation. She couldn’t say that out loud though.
“Look, you can’t tell me it wasn’t an effective advertisement of my skills. I kindly showed you that your network was vulnerable in ways no one knew existed, and I get labelled a ‘threat to this company’ for it. How rude.”
“Return to work, resident Hatch. Unscheduled breaks are heavily frowned upon. When the time comes to review your performance and loyalty to Aerolith, they might just be the thing to do you in.”
-
“Resident, are you familiar with The Horse, The Hunter, and The Stag? It-”
“Like the animals? Or is this an obscure piece of literature?” Epsilon joked, pushing up their glasses.
SAYER continued. “It is one of Aesop's many fables. Not particularly obscure in terms of literature.”
“Oh, I’m not familiar with that one. I have been reading a lot of Aerolith Dynamics Approved Literature recently during what little down time I have though.” She winked. “Can’t seem to find The Eagle and The Fox in the collection, you might wanna look into that.”
Epsilon had never been someone familiar with literature—she was a STEM person at heart—but if her newfound subject of torment spoke exclusively in riddles and references, you bet he was going to start reading up.
“But yeah, go ahead, what’s the story?”
“Well, it begins with a feud between the titular Horse and Stag. The Stag had clearly done something to upset the Horse, because the Horse wanted to enact revenge on it, and had come to the Hunter for assistance in that matter.”
Epsilon smirked. “Wonder what the feud was about.”
“I believe in some retellings, the two are fighting over a pasture. Others do not specify, instead alluding to a vague argument taking place. Interestingly, the pasture usually belongs to the horse, but the degree of intrusion the Stag commits varies.”
SAYER continued. “The Hunter heard the Horse’s plea and agreed to help, with two conditions: the Horse must allow the Hunter to mount and ride it into battle, and it must wear a bridle, so it can be guided effectively. This was the price the Horse had to pay to get rid of that Stag.”
Epsilon froze for a moment, listening more intently than she had planned to. What was its goal here?
“The day came, and the Horse suffered through the Hunter’s caveats. They were successful, of course. The Stag was defeated. Whether that defeat meant slaughter, or just driving the beast from the pasture depends entirely on the translation.”
The towers buzzed incessantly. Had they always been this loud?
“The deed was done, so the Horse thanked the Hunter profusely and asked to be free of the Hunter’s saddle and bridle. Unfortunately, that request would never be granted. The Horse proved far too useful to the Hunter in this state. The Horse’s former ally enslaved it for the rest of its life.”
“How interesting.” His voice was strained. It wasn’t supposed to be. He cleared his throat. “I might’ve heard that one somewhere before, not sure where though.”
Epsilon shut the casing, very careful as to not accidentally slam it, and leaned against the tower. Holy shit, she really was stuck in space for the foreseeable future.
“Are you alright, resident?”
She looked up at the ceiling, as if looking at SAYER.
“Hm? Oh, yeah I’m fine. Your story reminded me of someone I used to know back on Earth, that’s all,” he lied. They peeled themself off the server tower, grabbed their bag and began to head toward the elevator. He was done for the day.
“Ah. Earth-Stained humans seem to have such fond memories of that dirt ball, yet you all end up on Typhon, isn’t that fascinating?”
Epsilon grimaced. “Isn’t it just.”
Hopping into the elevator, a thought came to her otherwise busy mind.
They cleared their throat. “You’ve told me a story today, why don’t I give you one back!” she grinned. “Have you heard the one about the old lady and her maids?”
“I have, however I am interested in which version you are familiar with.”
“Well,” she mimicked the beginning of SAYER’s speech from earlier, “this old lady was a morning person. She got up at the asscrack of dawn to the lovely dulcet tones of rooster screeching.”
The elevator opened its doors to the ground floor.
“The maids she employed hated this. They didn’t want to wake up at some wack time of the morning to do their work. So they engaged their thinking brains and in a super logical move, went ‘let’s kill the beast that wakes up the old woman, that way we can sleep in’ .” She walked across the room toward the door. “What problem solvers,” they added.
Lingering in the doorway, she continued. “So they did it. They killed the annoying ass rooster. And because of that, they no longer got rude awakenings at dawn. You know what did happen though?”
Epsilon opened the door, shit eating grin plastered across her face.
“The old woman no longer woke up to the sound of the rooster, she woke up to the sound of bats at midnight. The maids were forced to work through their sleeping hours,” she hissed.
The door swung closed behind them as she strutted her way back to Halcyon proper.