418

Chapter 1: Exception!-2

The office was small room with little more than space for a desk, a largely empty file cabinet, a computer, and a bit of carpet. But the door had a lock and he could pull the blinds. The building was nice but rundown. They had coffee, and maybe that was why Brian stayed there, because he liked coffee. A nice cup of coffee while wedged behind his desk, where it was silent, where he could read the news on the computer and ignore the email and messages until he finally decided it might be a good time to see if there was anything interesting; which there never was. Bills were clockwork each month, but he did his best to ignore them and keep his mind clutter-free.

It was an indulgence of eccentricity that Brian kept an actual office. He could have made himself a cubby-hole in their apartment, and he could have worked there. But Brian explained, rationalized to himself, he liked to keep home and work separate.

The office is where he went to plan how to grow his business. A place to resolve how it was he going to get to that next level. Surely, as he sat at his desk, the how of it all would become clear to him.

Or, perhaps he just didn’t like what he did to be discussed with Imelda. It wasn’t glamorous, but it paid the bills, and there was tangible value in that. He tried to give it little thought.

He had inherited the staffing business from his father, William, and William had never told Brian how it was he had come into the business. Brian rented out programmable staff to whomever needed them, but one staff was like another staff. Labor was a commodity. With the perfectly competitive market for staff, the money that came in was less and less each month. Brian didn’t know how to fix that.

The staffing business had paid the bills for William, and Brian, being a good son, took it over when William passed. He figured he would have to run it and look after his two sisters, Minerva and Chantilly, who he never dreamed would ever get married. To his utter astonishment, though, they did get married, and moved away. He rarely heard from either of them these days.

10:36, always made him smile. He liked that the garbage collection staff always had to get off the truck and chase bits of trash around the lot. He imagined he could see their milky eyes. They didn’t even know what they were doing, they just did what they were programmed to do. Don’t misunderstand, Brian liked the staff, he even felt fond of them; because these were his staff. That’s how he had discovered this office: this was a trash route his father’s staff had worked for many years. Three times a week his staff came, he watched them from his office. They did their work, they headed on their way, and that’s how Brian got paid. He supplied labor to those who needed it.

Garbage was one of the things Brian had always known. He didn’t own the truck, but he did provide the staff, and the people who owned the trucks (who didn’t want to get into the staffing business) knew that he owned the staff. It was a good relationship.

Not to say Brian didn’t have others. There was factory work. Not as much as there used to be, but still quite a bit. Factory owners found that staffing solutions were cheaper and more flexible, considering the relative expense and inconvenience of having a machine break down. Automation came with high overhead and setup/tear down costs. Alternatively, staffing solutions did not.

Brian sipped on a coffee. It was a cappuccino, which he liked, but he didn’t remember going to make it. His head was in the clouds today, but it was a good day. He had been right.

He logged into his computer and started reading news articles. Nothing new, the world is coming to an end, the planet is dying, and the banks don’t know how to lend money without getting ripped off. There were forty-seven emails waiting for him, and he decided that reading yet another article on something pressing and urgent affecting the world that he couldn’t do anything about was preferable to sifting through (now forty-eight) emails about things in which he wasn’t interested.

In general, this is what Brian did all day. He sat at his desk, waited for emails, and made sure he had enough staff to pay for all the things that Imelda and Prince needed to live. It was called making a living.

The garbage truck came. There was a lot of paper and plastic swirling around the old parking lot, this would be a two staff job. Brian expected one staff to get out of either side of the cab. But only the staff from the cab appeared. That was odd, where was his other garbage collection staff? Brian stared incredulously. Had one of them decided that they didn’t want to help? Was that even possible? Brian looked at the clock on his computer. It wasn’t 10:36, but 11:42. His team was over an hour late. That was when Brian checked his messages.

Brian was at the car port when he realized he should have called for his car from the office. He had told it to make busy and park, which meant it had likely gone somewhere to park. Speaking to his mobile, “I need the car, ASAP.”

It responded, “It’s on its way.”

The car took twelve minutes to get to the office. Where had it decided to park itself? Was parking that bad downtown that the car had to drive itself twelve minutes away in order to shut itself off? Oh well, this was not a usual thing. In fact, it was almost exciting, an exception! That was fun.

The car arrived and pulled up, the door slid open, and Brian slipped inside. “Clinic 14,” he told the car.

The car’s dashboard flickered with a pattern of a map; his route plotted. “Pleased confirm the destination of Clinic 14,” the car responded gently.

Brian looked at the map briefly. “Confirmed,” he replied, and with that, the car gently yet forcefully pulled away from the curb.

After a short drive of efficiently planned right turns, the car slowed, pulled off the road into a circular driveway in front of the clinic. A voice interrupted Brian, who was still trying to get information out of the Popular’s website. In all, he did a lot of searching and got nothing. No worry, but odd—everything is online—and when he was at the clinic, it would soon be sorted.

Brian got out of his car, ordered it to, “make busy,” and stepped away. He heard the door close, snap shut, the sound of rubber on pavement. The car slid gently away from the curb to go circle until Brian was done.

Brian stepped into the clinic. The waiting room was empty, but there were rows of chairs lined up neatly against the walls. There were tables with magazines on them, all looked crisp and new (though Brian knew they could be years old) and neatly arranged in a carefully measured fan pattern. There was not a speck of dust, and Brian winced slightly at the brightness of everything.

The clinic was quiet except for some gentle instrumental music, not noticeable at first, but effective. Brian felt good, like he wouldn’t mind having a seat, relaxing, maybe a cup of coffee. He headed toward the desk where a milky-eyed reception staff sat upright, smiling. Its face started to follow him—though its eyes did not focus—as he approached.

“How can I help you?” it said in a pleasant, slightly mechanical tone.

Brian looked down at the little computer he held in his hand, “I have a staff here,” he said, looking for the number.

“Oh,” the reception staff said. “Do you know the number?”

“Yes.” Brian was stalling for time. “Let me see. I had it.” He flipped through pages on his device. “Oh, okay let me see. I think I found it.” He turned the display toward the gaze of the staff, it read: 686381KAA418.

The staff looked at the mobile. “Yes,” they started, “your staff is here. I have called for a medical technician to escort you.” It smiled, straightened, redirecting its gaze toward the door again as if Brian had disappeared.

“Thank you,” Brian said.

“You are welcome,” it replied, not shifting its gaze, Brian always found it amusing when he could get staff to talk to him without looking in his general direction.

A few seconds later, a large white-clad med-tech with milky brown eyes appeared through swinging double doors. “Mr. Brian Agarwal?”

Brian nodded. “King, please.”

“Please come with me.” The staff gazed in his general direction.

Brian and the med-tech walked through the double doors, and the brightness, cleanliness, and crispness ended abruptly. The walls went from white to gray, the lights were farther apart and did not cover everything in bright white cool fluorescent. There were areas with shadows. The ceiling did not have any sound tile, disappearing into the darkness above. It felt more like a warehouse than a clinic, an unfinished cement ceiling, power lines and pipes clung to a lattice work of rebar and angle iron; big blue bolts and straps of steel.

The med-tech was walking faster than Brian could, and he found he had to hurry to keep up. A maze of curtains hung from where the ceiling would have been and ended about three feet from the floor. Brian could see there were beds and stands of equipment behind each curtain. The curtains positioned in such a way to create little cubicles of meager privacy.

The staff turned left, and Brian had to almost run to keep up with him. Right, and over two more cubicles. He stopped and turned to face Brian.

“I have to warn you,” it said, looking through Brian. “This may be unpleasant. You may find what you are about to see is disturbing.” The med-tech paused briefly, as if it were giving Brian a half-second to think about some question, “Would you like to proceed?”

How bad could it be? Brian thought. And if I didn’t look, he quickly thought to himself, how would I be able to take this up with the insurance company? I’d have to take their word for it. No way.

“Yes,” Brian replied.

The med-tech turned and pulled back the curtain.

It wasn’t all that bad. There was a staff, evidently a male (not that gender mattered) lying on the bed and encased in restraint foam. Much of the staff could not be seen—the foam made them look as if it were floating in a pool of milk, but milk with an iron-clad grip. Brian could see a lot of bruising on the staff’s face, two black eyes and the left cheek didn’t look like the other one. There were dried brown crumbly bits leftover from some clean-up. The staff was clad, not in work clothes but a thin blue gown that was tucked into the restraint foam.

“This is, 686381KAA418, who I will now refer to as 418, for your convenience,” the med-tech began. “Would you like me to begin giving you the medical review now, or would you like a few more moments?”

Brian had seen what there was to see, “Please start,” he commanded.

“418 was involved in an exception involving a vehicle in which it was a passenger. The vehicle fell out of the traffic network and contacted, and was contacted by, other vehicles as it was no longer under control.” The med-tech took a breath but didn’t wait and continued, looking straight ahead, reading a chart only it could see. “The injuries that you see were caused by impacts as the vehicle, and surrounding vehicles came to rest.”

“There are fractures to the left side clavicle. A small, fracture on the left cheekbone. There is trauma to the cranium, manifested by contusions in the eye sockets.” The med-tech reached over and opened the left eye. “Please notice the eye is bloodshot.” The med-tech held the lid open long enough for Brian to see it was bloodshot, then let it snap shut. “The right eye is not, indicating the concussive force may be limited to a smaller section of the cranium. This can only be determined at a future point.” Another pause. “418 is expected to survive and will be re-evaluated over the next few days for insurance and rehabilitation purposes.”

Brian nodded. He needed to think what that meant. Evidently, 418 wasn’t going to die, but would it be functional?

The orderly suddenly continued to speak, causing Brian to jump. “A full report will be made to your insurance carrier, and you can work with them to find an acceptable outcome for this unfortunate situation.”

“Oh good,” Brian replied, more to himself. Well, there wasn’t much to see here. “I think I’m finished,” Brian told the med-tech. The staff and Brian stepped out of the cubicle, as the curtain fell closed behind Brian. “Car please.”

Somewhere, Brian’s car, circling the clinic, got the message he was done—woke itself from zombie mode—and headed toward the clinic.