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Ch. 17
“South City, E.R.P., what is your emergency?” Sune, whose name means the sound of a heart beating with love, hates her job and feels very much like throwing her headset down and quitting, on a normal glimpse. Today though is far from that, every other call as someone screaming for help and for that, Sune couldn't be happier; Upu society is a disease one in which no amount of screaming will help.
“My father is having a heart attack! Please help!” the female is shrill and frantic and Sune is happy to tell her, with little emotion, “No help is coming,” and to, “not call back.”
She has been told to tell the truth, log the call, and move on to the next emergency. With this much volume, the line will probably be shut down soon and a state of emergency will be declared.
She has no certainty of what’s happening out in Majt, but doubts it’s anything short of a living nightmare, obviously, and it just so happens she has been anticipating such a thing for almost a decade now. Everyone has. Especially since Soya was killed. Sune, personally, is not on either side. As a single mother, all she cared about were the necessities that make life work, but while going about her life, she learned to listen.
Upu forced to live in the veins of Majt knows how to have disconnected conversations. Conversations that get whispered and passed along, that never make it onto the hive. All day the only thing anyone can talk about is the execution of Soya’s slave.
“We didn’t know it was him. We thought he died when the Yee University titerarium collapsed.” One of the elders. He was the photogenic one, the one most people liked. Then the mob attacked live on recorders, they disemboweled him first. Probably a blessing.
Then entered The Sanctuary.
Images and rumors leaked, the rumors were that nothing remained and the images supported that until they stopped coming.
The attack continued, and any part of Grotto’s government was destroyed by mob violence. The government tried to put up a resistance but the wave of Upu and Naht-do that came for them was nonstop.
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The battle cry was, reduce and protect.
“Soya’s people reduced Majt right down to smoldering ruins,” it’s a male voice spoken in a way that makes Sune think it was not meant to travel. She stops scratching notes into her log and tries to find who said it. She leans up to find the speaker but can't distinguish him from the collection of senior management huddled near a server all with clear plastic over their neat and tidy fashion choices underneath. In South City most of her life she could only have dreamed about going to Majt. Now, though, all those moments were wasted.
Nonetheless, she finds herself smiling. She could have been one of the dead, her son also, but there was something to be said for doing what's asked.
And she was asked to work.
Man emergency-lines. Offer a pleasing voice and a promise help was on the way. But the truth was the opposite, those that died did so for the better and bigger good. And in her son’s case, be ready to make Grotto and the Upu the best they possibly could be; for the future. We all have a role to play, she told him when he asked, why.
When your role is over you can rest forever.
She thinks about that place beyond. That's what comes with the thoughts of sacrifice. Of losing her son. Paradise.
Reduce and protect for perfection and be rewarded forever. And that’s what Soya’s army wants, to make a difference by trying; and trying is something that hasn't been allowed for decades. And trying felt like it was coming from deep inside her soul. Trying for Soya and her slave. Trying.
Then a huge explosion. She looks through the window and the gambling complex that makes the South City famous, is in ruin. Hundreds have to have just died, she decides. A chain reaction starts that will likely end up swamping an entire section of the city with radiated gas, which will result in countless more deaths eventually, maybe even everyone in the city over the next few decades.
Sune is not surprised. Reduce and protect meant deciding to go on with what matters. And maybe that’s why the call center is not pandemonium. One would have thought the noise levels and activity would be bedlam. But they are handling things. Just a muddle of voices telling Upu in danger of dying that they should go ahead and die because emergency response will not be coming. All resources have been shifted to the better good. And the good is not wasting resources on a pointless emergency response that would be unparalleled in terms of scope and achievement. She’s avoiding the news wanting to soak in all the imagery later when she gets off.
She finishes logging the “heart attack, please help” interaction and readies herself for the violence of the next call.
“ERP, what is the nature of your emergency?”
“Emergency? No dear. This is your end. Thank you for your service.”
And that’s it, which would have been fine if the voice on the other end of the line did not sound like a child’s toy. Eerily happy. Fake. Sune feels the hair along her spine stands on end. She goes on with her script as if the sentence makes sense, “Can you tell me your location?” And static pops and hisses with a soft chuckle underlying, playing over and over until a click and the communication cuts off. This lives with Sune until she dies. Every fraction of the next six small moments, she thinks about that voice and its message, never sure what it means until the South City Emergency Response panel explodes also, obviously having met its need and no longer needed in the grand scheme of Reduce and Protect.