Chapter Nine - Useless Crap

“People are impossibly fond of useless crap. Slap a number on it, call it collectible, and make it even moderately interesting, appealing, sexy, or cute, and you’ll trigger something real deep in that person’s mind.”

-- Clown ‘Red Nose’ McFace, CEO of GimmeUrCred, Non-fungible Physical and Digital Collectible Crap Publishing Inc.

***

The City of New Montreal Sewage and Maintenance Headquarters wasn’t a standalone building. It was relatively rare for a corp to have an entire building all on its own.

Well, no, the really big corps owned downtown, but even they rented out sections of the megabuildings they held.

What I was getting at, is that the NMSM Headquarters was located at the base of one of the older buildings in the centre of the city. It was a big, boxy thing, brutalist nouveau, with a few balconies sticking out of the side for old school AA emplacements. Basically, one of those first mega building projects that had gone up way back in the late 20s or so and which was probably showing its age in a million ways within.

The seventh floor had been converted into a parking garage for hover cars at some point, so I drove my bike in and felt myself naturally trying to make myself smaller. The ceiling was way lower than it should have been, and the space was a disorganised mess.

I parked on the curb next to an elevator and my augs flagged an incoming fine from the building’s automatic parking system for the violation.

I hopped into the elevator, then sighed. It had one of those shitty old touch-screen button panels, with the looping advertisements. I’d have to time it so that I pressed the right floor between ads. “Can you punch in the right floor?” I asked.

I actually can’t. The elevator isn’t networked at all. It’s floor 1, in any case.

I shook my head, then stabbed a thumb against the screen after an ad for Molly’s Miracle Mugs, which were just a collection of mugs with some dog’s face on them, but they were collectible and had little cards that came with them, and I was sure this was exactly the kind of shit that Lucy would be into.

The elevator rumbled down, bumping along a bit more than it should have, and I was already having some pretty serious doubts about the ‘Maintenance’ part of the New Montreal Sewage and Maintenance group.

The doors opened up onto a plain corridor. A guy in a button-up was cursing at a vending machine. I slipped past him, following ceiling-mounted signs towards reception.

There, I found a room filled to capacity with random people. Old men, old women, some small families speaking in something other than English, lots of random folk. Too many to fit the seats in the relatively small reception area.

Button-up guy came up behind me, muttering while holding a can of soda to his head. “Hey,” I said. “You work here?”

“Not for long,” he said. He almost brushed past me, but I grabbed onto his shoulder, giving him pause. “I’m sorry, please take a ticket and wait. We’re doing what we can here.”

“Yeah, I see that. Look, I’m here to talk to whoever’s in charge.”

He shook his head. “That won’t work, half the Karen’s in the room tried that one already.”

He tried to move again, but I held him back, a bit harder, this time. “Give me a sec,” I said. “Myalis, can you send a nice message to everyone here’s augs, the people waiting? Tell them that I’m on the scene and that I’ll have the sewage thing fixed as soon as I can, and if I can’t, those responsible will be thrown off the roof by this evening.”

Certainly. Message sent.

My new pal blinked dumbly and lowered his soda as people gasped, then there was a small flood as first one, then more of them started to leave the reception area. Unfortunately, my entirely unplanned actions had entirely predictable consequences as every granny saw me and put two and two together.

“Yup, yeah, I’m sure, that’s nice. Sorry, coming through. No, I don’t do handshakes, or autographs. I don’t need to know about your nephew. I’m gay. No, not the niece either. Excuse me,” I went through a small litany of excuses and gestured for people to keep moving. Fortunately, there was some momentum and those behind were pushing those ahead, and soon enough I’d slipped into the reception room itself.

“Greetings,” an android said. It was one of those torso-only models, fixed into place behind a plexiglass wall to give people something to look at when they came in. “Please take a number and wait. A representative of the New Montreal Sewage and Maintenance organisation will be with you shortly.”

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

“Uh-huh,” I said as I walked past it and to a side door. It had one of those biometric lock things. I barely glanced at it before Myalis had it open.

“Wait, wait,” button-up said. “You’re a samurai?”

“Yeah,” I said as I started through a carpeted corridor lined on both sides by offices. The place had an internal map, which I downloaded and opened in my augs. It was just a basic floorplan with the location of different member’s offices. And I realised that I had no idea how to deal with all of this. “Hey, didn’t I have an appointment here?” I asked.

“You did?” button-up asked.

You did.

“Can you tell your bosses that I’m here?” I asked him.

He blinked dumbly. “They’re not here.”

“Well, where are they?” I asked. “Which floor?”

“No, I mean... they left.”

“Before I arrived?”

He shook his head. “Last night. Just... up and fucked right off. Left middle-management to take care of everything. Which isn’t so bad, since we usually don’t need the C-suite for much.”

One moment, let me look into this some more. Ah. It seems as if the organisation’s entire C-suite has left New Montreal. Or nearly all of them. Two have spoofed some systems to make it seem as if they’ve gone, but they’re still within the city.

“Damnit,” I muttered. This didn’t bode well. “Button-up, what’s your job and what do you do?”

Button-up blinked, then stuttered out a quick reply. At least he wasn’t too slow on the uptake. “I’m an accountant. I do accounting,” he said.

“Been here long?”

“Seven years,” he said.

“Good enough. Round up everyone in this organisation with a lick of common sense and anyone who’s good at getting shit done. Is there a meeting room? Oh, there’s a control room on the map, what’s that?”

He shrugged. “The control room? It lets us see the state of the stuff we maintain. I’m in accounting, I don’t take care of that part.”

“Fine, tell everyone to meet me there in... call it fifteen minutes.” I spun on a heel and started down the corridor, only for button-up to run past me. He was sweating, and it didn’t look like he was enjoying this all that much.

Then again, more and more of the city was without water and without sewage, so a bit of sweat wasn’t a big loss.

I walked through the corridor, then started following the map, only slowing down to let some office drones move past. Most were human, but this office did employ a few literal drones that zipped around delivering papers and office... stuff.

I ran into security halfway to the command room. Two overweight guys, looking particularly nervous, blocked my path before a sort of security station. It was one of those booths where you’d need to present a card of something to be let in deeper.

“Uh, halt?” one of them said.

The other smacked him in the side. “Can we help you, samurai, sir?”

“Yeah,” I said. “People aren’t allowed on the other side?”

Smarter-guard shook his head. “No ma’am, samurai, ma’am. Command has sensitive information and systems, and not just anyone can be let in close to those.”

“Right,” I said. “Well, I’m going in. And so are a bunch of others. Special circumstances and all that. The city’s falling apart, and this place is supposed to prevent that and it’s not, so... yeah, are you two going to help or will we be having problems?” I casually rested my hand atop my laser pointer.

“We’ll help!” smarter said.

“How?” dumber asked.

“Just be real nice to folk,” I said. “Maybe stand at the back of the room and carry anyone too annoying out when I tell you to. Are you all there is for security?”

“There’s one more in the camera room,” Smarter said. “We’re all that’s here.”

Three people for three floors with some rather sensitive shit in them. Well, moderately sensitive. It was just the sewer controls, the worst that could happen probably was happening.

“Alright, fine,” I said as I continued. An alarm went off, probably detecting that I wasn’t authorised personnel and that I was packing, but I kept on moving through. There was a city’s worth of unshowered people to save!

***