Debriefing
‘As am I too, on the brink of extinction…’ mused Matt at the cipher before him. The Conduction file, as they tended to be, was maddeningly—for a man of Matt’s objective curiosity—brief:
Ted Pyreon
2041: Presumed Date Of Birth: Portland, Oregon
2055: Arrested and detained for Homicide, Banks, Oregon
2056: Apprenticed as a Conductor to David Billy, Salem, Oregon
2058: Chipped into APM as Deputy Conductor, Bend, Oregon
2061: Augmented to Lead Conductor, Pyreon Initiate, Boise, Idaho
2065: Cited for Conduction of Idaho.
2069: Cited for Conduction of Western Montana
2075: Disciplined for Failure to Conduct in Lovell, Wyoming in relation to death of Dave Billy
2075: Transferred to Nevada
2079: Cited for Conduction of Nevada
2080: Assigned to Conduction of Eastern Montana
2082: Assigned to Confirm Conduction of Nevada
2083: Cited for Final Conduction, Nevada
2084: Assigned and cited for Conduction of Laguna, New Mexico, Disciplined for exceeding jurisdiction in Pagosa Springs, CO
2085: Assigned as Lead Conductor to Utah
2093: Decorated for Conduction under Expanded Expectation, Wolf Creek, Utah
2094: Cited for Final Conduction, Utah
2095: Advised Final Conduction, Western Colorado, Cited for Advanced Humanitarian Needs Award
2096: January 27, reassigned to Confirm Final Conduction of Eastern, Colorado
Notes
Sleep psychosis, eats one mail daily, PM, extended fasting induces myopic mania, unsuitable for Uplift, recommended for feral population seed, or, on the advice of the Auditor, for drone redaction…
Reviewing these over and over on his watch screen and in his mind, Matt could only think, ‘This little man has cleared five of the once United States of its remaining transhuman population and its up to me, a desk jockey, to decide if he goes free or gets blown to bits? Something is not right about this.’
A deep, cold chill then struck him, ‘We are both Uplinked. Have they assigned him a similar option—are we supposed to kill each other? Are we doing the last dirtiest job of Western Civilization because we have been selected out of Uplift?’
Ted was not even looking at him, but out the window, at the furthest mountain peaks, as if at a gallery of deceased friends.
Matt: “So, you are from Portland?”
Ted: “Was. Mahs en me was moved out with the rest when the military did their thing—so I was told, would have been two. My first memory was seeing black smoke rising from a bunch of distant buildings the like I never seen again, en seeing Mount Hood in the distance, a nice snowy witness like these up here. You know their names?”
Matt: “I should, but don’t. My job—Commitment, I mean—is very specific and I tend to focus too much on collecting what is left—this is it, all of the usable technology known to Uplift, and the last of the Uplinked persons who stayed behind to initiate Fallow Earth…”
‘Christ, I am supposed to be doing the Audition—this guy is too easy to speak with.’
Ted: “Sorry. Mahs carried me out of town on her back and was loaded on an Ebus—so she said. Who knows. That memory, I could have been looking over a fireman’s shoulder, a soldier’s shoulder… Scrapped with kids, hid from step dads, played with squirrels and dogs. Got big fer my age at 11. Stopped growing, ironic, right at 13 or 14 when I got sewed up in her lies. So I don’t trust anything of babyhood other than that image of smoking Portland with Majestic Hood in the background, sawed off Saint Helen’s and Hunchback Adams off to the left side like those lookin’ off and away from something bad.”
Matt: “The homicide?”
Ted: “Sorry again—never seen my file, never privy to it. Must look bad. Mahs oways had a man. Some were cool to me—those didn’t put up with her long. Some was mean, from who I hid. Those bad ones stuck around. Then, there is this little Indian man who was smaller than me. Funny, the big mugs never beat her. But this little Injun did. I come home from skateboarding—we had to make our own way back when—manufacturing having become a crime against the Planet. So, there we were, low tech brats, skating about. I got my board—made from a cut of cedar plank and some police drone wheels left from when they droned Old Skyler Jones in his trailer for his meth lab. There was Mahs, up on her high porch, lookin’ guilty, with a black eye, from this Injun punching her—what Injun was shivering in fear over me up en come home.”
Matt: “None of that is in the report.”
Ted: “S’pose not, Boss.”
‘That hurt. I am technically the lead here, but ‘Boss,’ such an old, brutal term doesn’t sit well,’ Matt mused for a mere instant and Ted, who seemed to have a keen sense continued.
“Sorry, bossin’ is a rough trade. Dave en me both distasted it. I look at Mahs and aks, ‘He hit you?’ En she says, ‘Oh, no, you did. You better go—already called the cops!’
Matt: “No way!”
Ted: “Exactly what my dumbass thought, kid-dumb and man-big and on the run. There I go, down Route #26 on my skateboard. Cop One tries a clothesline and I duck. Cop two throws out a spike strip—no shit—and I kick hop it. Cop Three brings out the tazer—en just my luck, they been decommissioned cause how dey messed with Uplink chips—though I had none, Mahz bein’ a whore en all. Cop Four hits me with his whining shit fer motor ECar en knocks me off into the Wilson River Drainage. They was gettin’ my ass no way. Den they set the dogs out and I was treed sure enough. Judge said I killed my Mah.”
Matt felt his mouth hanging open and shut it and recovered loosely, “Wow, I’m so sorry. You want me to put that…”
Ted: “Oh, hells no! Can’t disagree with Management. First thing Dave Billy taught me.”
Matt: “About that?”
Ted: “Got set to workin’ on rail removal, stacking all those black betties for the train to back up to, eating its own track as it went to wherever with all that steel. We lived in tent sheds made with tarps stretched over a railroad tie frame we just stacked loose. As we cleared the day’s camp, we were ordered to push over our little roofless cabins. Played cards, dominoes mostly. Conductors were our bosses—train conductors. Then, it came to pass that they were people conductors too, those who ran the meat train rather than the steel train. Came the end of the line, at the outskirts of the weed and rubble that had been Portland—more blackberries than you would ever see. The flat cars and box cars was parked and filled with dirt with our last shovels, which was thrown in when we were done. While the engineers worked on the locomotives we were took off in small batches. The odd thing was, how sad those men seemed about the locomotives burning. Except, this tall man with white hair and a rotary optic implant, he looked on me and cut me out.”
Matt: “Why, he didn’t believe you killed your mother?”
Ted sighed and seemed of a sudden sad, “Oh, he, Dave Billy he was, thought I did, thought I was the critter for the job. We never talked of it. But I could tell what he thought of me by his face, a skill learned in step dad country. After sometime, he reckoned different, though he never spoke to me of it. He got sad then, in his one human eye, and recommended me out from under his wing.”
Matt: “No recollection of a last name?”
Ted, pouring himself another coffee, sighed again, an exhalation that sounded like the quitting of an ordeal, “She never told me a thing about my father. Never told me her last name either. She was Mahs. Would have liked to been like Dave and took his lead’s first name for last. But though my brain accepted the Uplink augment, the eye or maybe the brain, whatever, rejected the Optic. That was how Dave got Billy for a Sir name, from his Sponsor, his lead. So I’m just Ted, last name after my employer, Pyreon.”
Matt: “Thanks, Ted. I hope we can be friends. And I’m sorry for Dave, and, your trials—you seem the worse for wear.”
Draining the second cup of coffee with a short gasp, Ted groaned low and sighed, windy and at ease, “Worn is right—hope there’s enough nubs left to finish this week, our last round up, Boss.”
…
Note
-1. Ted’s half orphan arrest story was told to me by a man who had asked me to write his biography, but ultimately cared not to sit for formal interviews, telling these tails only when drunk, then growing nigh sad in the eyes and turning to some blues music for solace.
