The Ultimate Vampire Resource and Directory

20:50 Mar 17 2008
Times Read: 788


A Dead End Job





It had been raining on schedule all day, fifteen minutes per shower, two showers every hour. Evan hated working on wet days, he hated work at the best of times but wet days were especially miserable. But what he hated most was when the water would run down his neck and into the circuit path of his uniform. The slightest leak and his tag could read anything from Bc-144 to Bc-156. In the last week he had been addressed by his supervisor as William, Sebastian and Eve. He hadn’t even questioned the fact that the same face had been attached to three different registry codes within a few days of each other. As long as it was on the tag reader, it was his name. He probably wouldn’t have noticed if he had taken the tag reading off a dog, as long as it registered he could move on to the next black zone.



Evan hadn’t wanted this job, he had wanted to be a fiction technician. He had taken the job in the traffic corps out of desperation after the city had passed another unemployment decentralisation proposal on the day he had graduated. That was six years ago now, but he could still remember the frenzied rush to the cities public access points. He remembered the cool confidence he felt as he watched the masses line up outside the central systems building. He remembered the self-assurance he had displayed while waiting in line for the access point reserved for college graduates, the one that was guaranteed to offer him the position of fiction technician. He also remembered the sinking feeling in his chest when he had supplied his palm print and the only positions open to him were in traffic corps, central maintenance. He remembered the feeling of injustice as the panel ranked him as a class six. He had expected to rank as at least a class four, his IQ was close to one hundred seventy and he had graduated in under six months with a perfect score.



He remembered the condescending look on the face of the woman on the view screen as he had attempted to get verification of his results. He remembered the tinny voice assuring him that the central employment diagnostics were operating at 99.5% efficiency and that he, Evan Weston, was indeed a class six. A class six, in a city of two hundred and eighty million Evan only ranked in the top six hundred thousand. A class four would have had their choice of any appointment within the fiction division, after all it was the fiction department that produced the trillions of zines that kept the masses informed, entertained and subdued. It had been fifty years since the last cinematic was released, with the over population in the city no-one wanted to spend time with a hundred other people just to watch a cinematic. It was now a single audience market, people only wanted something they could do alone and the zines supplied every subject imaginable. Evan had grown up with the zines about the old days where every automobile was interactive, the days before central transportation. He had read the zines about the old race car drivers and the get away drivers.



It was almost ironic, he had grown up with dreams of creating his own zines set in the old automotive era and here he was, a member of the traffic corps, one of the only professions that still worked within transport. Evans nostalgia was interrupted as a thirty foot transport sped passed at close to three hundred miles per hour, spraying him with water and low level radiation. In the old days transports ran on fossil fuels, a much more ecologically friendly system, not like the ICF (Inertial confinement fusion) system the modern transports ran on. Every day Evan went home he could feel the greasy particles coating his skin, they told him that as long as he wore his uniform that his exposure was minimal, however the taste of copper in his mouth was a daily reminder of what was meant by acceptable levels of exposure.



Evan looked after the transport as it took the black zone turn, still moving at full speed. The black zone he was posted to had had a total of seven near collisions in the last two years, no accidents but this close to the rim of the dome the five percent probability of an accident was enough to warrant a traffic corps presence. Evan had thought about those five percent twenty times a day for the last two years. The only thing that occupied his thoughts more was a morbid curiosity about the person he was replacing at this posting. He had considered resigning but that would mean a one way ticket outside of city limits, it was less crowded then the city but there was a reason that the transports didn’t drop their speed once they were leaving the city. Anything moving less then a hundred miles an hour was guaranteed to invite an attempted high-jacking. Supplies outside the city were nil, those that were rounded up in the unemployment decentralisation programs were forced to survive on what they could scavenge from the city disposal lines.



The average lifespan of an unemployed outside the city was between eight months to a year. Quitting was essentially suicide. With every passing transport the idea was exactly five percent more appealing. Another transport passed by, Evan blinked, the plasma blue streaks fading into the distance were burned into his vision for a few seconds so where ever he looked the scene was outlined in a neon blue. Not that there was much to look at, this stretch of road saw regular transports, sometimes upwards of 200 a day, a city the size of number three required a lot of supplies. What little vegetation there was was stunted and grey from exposure to the transport exhausts. Evan looked to the small gathering of wasting fir trees, there wasn’t one tree that grew above six feet high, and there wasn’t a straight one in the bunch. That had been the fourth transport of the hour, he would wait until the next one, the five percentile possibility insured that every fifth transport of the hour was to be tested, five percent, was it really worth it? Central transport seemed to think so.



Evan slid the visor of his helmet closed, the next transport was due in five minutes. Evan watched the clock display on his visor, a minute left before the next transport check, suddenly the pointlessness of the last two years were all condensed into the one small readout. As he watched the small luminous numbers flash indicating the approach of the transport Evan walked out into the middle of the road. He stood facing the oncoming transport. As it drew closer it was haloed in a glowing red outline, basic information about the vehicle scrolled upwards across his vision. Transport code cf-205260360, cargo: Calcium, barley and composite plastics, Weight: one hundred and twenty tons. Evans eyes followed the last reading as it scrolled upwards. Speed: 329 MPH. Evan watched the transport bearing down on him, every test of the last two years running through his mind. He looked upwards as the transport rose over the final hill, it was less than five miles away now. He watched the droplets of rain water running down his visor, the readout creating a swirl of colour in the rivulets, a single word flashed rapidly over an approaching red triangle, impact. Maybe he should just quit. Evan closed his eyes.



The spray from the transport washed over him, the computer link to central transportation causing it to swerve at the last second. Evan turned and watched the neon blue exhausts realign themselves with the magnetic lines on the road. Evan walked back to the side of the road and raised his visor, he looked towards the city, he ran his tongue over his teeth, the taste of copper was always stronger after a test. At least it was another hour before he had to do another test, and it was only a five percent chance of impact.