Re: The Show Must Go Off

[Herr D]

The Show Must Go Off–part nineteen
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MCL-BeltMiner#C485640624
Some people talk about how manual labor can clear your head. Super-taskers like me, however, don’t Zen out. We plan, we plot, we prepare, and, in my case, I pillage. Ten seconds after Jenko spoke to me I had liberated Enforcer data enough to fake an internal report, including internal memos, change schedules, generate soft copies of anything within the system. Ten minutes later I had skimmed enough to realize that the Enforcers weren’t even investigating the rubble. They’d blocked it off, welded shut Emergency Doors 22 and 25, shut off power and closed utility valves, and sent maintenance droids to check everything around the area. AROUND the area?
I spent an entire minute verifying the location of every cleaning, maintenance, utility bot and every other piece of equipment I had capacity to hack. There was ONE cleaning bot unaccounted for. This was a problem. I examined the StayNeur ethos algorithms for a new angle: would I be obligated to tell the truth if I DID discover a conspiracy? I was the only one with access to my own head, and my StayNeur was only safe because I wasn’t safe from it myself without proper planning. It took half the ride home with a constantly grumpy ‘just let me drive’ expression to find the right set of rationalizations. It took till we dropped off our junk ore and requested new coordinates to mine to plan how to make money off my new problem. It took silently walking back to Jenko’s to put it in motion–I needed an airtight alibi. Text pre-composed and delivery timing calculated, I told Jenko to shower first. He’d see it all soon enough. Crunch, looking confused, sat down on Jenko’s bed beside me, nearly catching his ear in my hammock. “What are you doing?” he said. I couldn’t have been better off with any other audience.