New Post: Edge 4/?
“…when even the line of your existence is too painful, there's always one less dimension.”
-Jacob, Razor recap, Television Without Pity
Part A
I skulked along the edges of the Zeusuda’s lower market, eyes on the doors of the descending lift. Around me people sold clothes, decent food, and whatever other trinkets someone might find valuable. Most of it was legal, here in what had once been the Zeusuda’s steerage lobby. In the corridors and rooms that snaked away in various directions, things were more…interesting.
The lift doors creaked open and another group of passengers stepped out. I watched them move into the crowd, dismissing several for their shoddy haircuts and another for his taped- together shoes. They were returning to these decks, on their way through the market to cheap crowded cabins, with only a meager day’s wages on them. I was more interested in those who only visited. A greasy looking man in a nice pre-‘caust jacket was a possibility. Then I saw the guy sticking close behind him, hand in his coat pocket, wrapped around something. A gun? Not a risk I want to take.
Then I saw him-tall, thin, jittery, and too well-dressed to belong to this part of the ship. He was definitely a junkie, slumming down here to find his dealer and get a fix. I caught Simon’s eye across the way, loitering in front of a guy selling algae beer, and tipped my head at the mark. He nodded.
The junkie wasn’t even really paying attention. His eyes darted through the crowd, but rested briefly only on the other well-dressed visitors to be seen here and there. The only dangers he saw were the risk of being seen by someone who knew him or rounded up in a FleetSec bust. We were invisible. His mistake.
Simon walked obliquely towards the mark; I dodged people to follow behind him. The man’s hand kept darting to his right pocket, as if to reassure himself.
“Hey mister, you wanna buy a necklace?” Simon reached the mark, and flashed the gaudy bauble we had snatched earlier. I was only a few feet away.
“Leave me alone,” the man tried to push past him, but Simon had learned a lot in the past few days.
“It’s real gold, mister,” he grabbed the mark’s arm. My cue. “Surely there’s a lovely lady, wife, girlfriend, who’d just love to have this around her neck.”
He didn’t even notice me behind him as I slipped my fingers into his pocket and grabbed the wallet.
“I said leave me alone kid,” our mark pulled sharply away, and spun towards me. “Hey!”
Simon froze. This was bad. I didn’t have time to shove the wallet into my pocket and play innocent, so I needed a distraction
I grabbed the necklace from Simon’s hand. “That’s mine, you thief!” I shouted and took off running down the nearest row of stalls.
“Stop, bitch!” Simon followed my lead and took off after me. I risked a look behind to see that the mark was already heading off in the other direction. I wove through the crowd a little before slowing and blending into a group of kids clustered around a woman selling flatbread. Simon caught up to me a few minutes later.
“That was close.”
“Having a good plan is only half of it. If you can’t improvise, you’re dead.”
“Dead?” Simon raised an eyebrow. “They don’t execute kids for theft.”
“Well that’s how my mom used to say it.”
“Ah, did your mom teach you how to pick pockets?”
“No,” I said sharply. “My mom shot down raiders.”
“Until they got her,” Simon surmised.
I didn’t want to talk about that, so I opened the wallet.
“Looks like our junkie wasn’t just looking for a hit,” Simon said as I counted it. “There’s enough here for him to have been dealing to the neighbors.”
I turned on him. “So what exactly are we going to do with it? We’ve been here three days; my arm’s good as new and we’ve got plenty of cash. Time to fill me in.”
“You sure you don’t want to take your cut and just go? It’s a lot of money.”
“I want to find Kasey. If you’re going to go back on that…” I raised my fist.
“No.” Simon pushed my hand down. “I get it; you want to find your friend. But I have to find my brother and sister. Linus could trip and die from internal bleeding if no one pays attention. And I have to do some things that might get me in serious trouble.”
“Kasey might not be related to me, but she’s all I got left. I’m in. Whatever it takes.”
“We have to break into the office of the Department of Education.”
“Ok,” breaking and entering I could handle, “How are we going to do that?”
“Not here. Let’s go back.”
I nodded. We had a room here; renting it for the week had practically wiped out the cash I’d saved up. It wasn’t much, no head, no furniture even, but the deadbolt on the door worked and even came with a key. As we made our way back into the room, I looked through the rest of the wallet. There was an ID card and a list of names; probably the people the junkie had been dealing to. Then I saw the grainy photo.
“Damn. He has kids.”
Simon looked over at it. “Bastard. Spending all that money on ace instead of them.
“Almost wish I could give this back.” A picture like this was almost priceless, expensive to have taken, and worthless to me.
“If the guy really loved those kids, he wouldn’t be shooting up,” Simon said vehemently.
“Still seems wrong to keep it. Maybe the cabin number on his ID is accurate. I could mail it there.”
Simon just shrugged, “If you want to spend the money on the postage, whatever.”
I let the subject drop. It didn’t matter. Simon and I had managed to form some sort of working agreement over the past few days. I needed his help; he needed mine. No sense in risking that over a junkie’s photo.
We reached our room, made sure the bags were still there, and sat down on the cold floor. I grabbed one of the blankets we’d bought from our landlord.
“So, how does breaking into the Department of Education help us?”
“Well breaking into the Child Placement System offices would be useless. Their records are crap.”
“Right,” I nodded. “So?”
“So the Department of Education is better. They have to be cause that’s how they distribute stuff. Clothes, toys, school supplies, fresh food we raid from the Cylons. They try to make it fair, so they keep track of who’s going to school where.”
“And if we find out where Kasey and Linus and Lily are going to school, we know what ships and which decks to search for them.” It was a good plan. “You’ve got a way to break in?”
“I lived on the Rising Star a couple of months ago. The guy next door was the janitor for a bunch of those government offices so he had master keys.”
“You think he’ll do you a favor?”
“I think he can be bought.”
“Sounds like a good plan.”
“Well, I know you can improvise.” Simon grinned.
* * *
We locked our stuff inside the room, choked down lunch in the mess hall and made our way up to the Zeusuda’s upper market. The officers watching the entrance gave us a hard look as a warning; they knew our type, but we were honest customers today.
“Look for the typical upper decks school uniform.” Simon said. So we wandered around until we found a guy selling some of the standard blue slacks and white collared shirts.
“Your folks get better jobs?” The vendor asked. Everything got shook up during a Cylon attack. Some people lost everything they had evacuating while others caught a break.
“Yeah. My dad made supervisor on the mining ship.” I held up a shirt that looked like the right size.
“You can try that on in the back.” He offered. I almost refused, but that would look silly. And the plan wouldn’t work well if my pants didn’t fit. The back was a curtained off cubicle. I pulled of my coat, shirt and pants quickly and slipped into the uniform. It fit, at least as much as I could tell in the cracked mirror. I pulled it off, watching the crack in the curtains, and scrambled back into my own clothes. I was so frakking paranoid. When I was a kid half-dressed people in the head were normal. Kasey would visit for a weekend and her childish modesty had seemed weird, civilian. Well, I wasn’t a fleet brat anymore.
Simon used the cubicle after I did, switching the pants he’d initially grabbed for a longer pair. We paid the man and made our way down to the hangar level. Passenger fare to the Rising Star was 30 Colonials each. That left us with about 150 left.
“Will that be enough to bribe this janitor?”
“Should be. He had three kids. Wife was always harping on him that they were broke.”
* * *
It was just a few hours before ship’s night when we got to the Rising Star and changed into the uniforms in the nearest bathroom.
“Let’s take the lift up to deck 11.” Simon suggested. “The Department of Education office is right next to the school there. There’s a park nearby where the kids hung out after school. We can blend in; you keep an eye on the office and I’ll watch for Ernest.”
The park was just a big room with tall ceilings and a jungle gym for the little kids. The floors were painted green, the ceiling blue and the walls were supposed to look like landscapes from the Colonies. Some psychologist had alarmed everyone years ago by suggesting that living one’s entire life in an artificial environment would lead to a generation of psychopaths, so the Department of Education had built parks like this all over the fleet. Personally, I thought the terrible artwork was more likely to make me go on a killing spree.
Simon and I stuck to the fringes. The adults we’d seen hadn’t even questioned that we belonged here, not in these clothes. But the other kids would know we didn’t fit into their social pecking order.
I drifted away from Simon, wandering past the offices he’d pointed out. I glanced inside one door. The wastebasket was full. It looked like we hadn’t missed Ernest today.
“Major Agathon, so good to see you over here.”
I froze. O gods. Helo.
I turned, without even deciding to. There he was, a little older than I remembered. He walked right towards me.
And right past.
“Hello Gavril.” He stepped into the doorway of the man’s office. I stood, flat against the wall, listening.
“I suppose you being here on the Star means something big is afoot between the military and FleetSec.”
“Ah, you know I can’t say anything about that.”
“Well, how’s Hera doing then?”
“Good, all A’s in math…”
“Hey!” Simon pulled me away from eavesdropping. “What’s wrong?”
“That man, he knew my mother.” I tried to explain.
“Did he see you?”
“He didn’t even recognize me.”
“Well good.” Simon pulled me away, back to the park. For a second I resisted, but what did I want? To march in and demand that someone give a frack?
“Yeah,” I muttered to Simon as we slipped back. “Lucky break.”
-Jacob, Razor recap, Television Without Pity
Part A
I skulked along the edges of the Zeusuda’s lower market, eyes on the doors of the descending lift. Around me people sold clothes, decent food, and whatever other trinkets someone might find valuable. Most of it was legal, here in what had once been the Zeusuda’s steerage lobby. In the corridors and rooms that snaked away in various directions, things were more…interesting.
The lift doors creaked open and another group of passengers stepped out. I watched them move into the crowd, dismissing several for their shoddy haircuts and another for his taped- together shoes. They were returning to these decks, on their way through the market to cheap crowded cabins, with only a meager day’s wages on them. I was more interested in those who only visited. A greasy looking man in a nice pre-‘caust jacket was a possibility. Then I saw the guy sticking close behind him, hand in his coat pocket, wrapped around something. A gun? Not a risk I want to take.
Then I saw him-tall, thin, jittery, and too well-dressed to belong to this part of the ship. He was definitely a junkie, slumming down here to find his dealer and get a fix. I caught Simon’s eye across the way, loitering in front of a guy selling algae beer, and tipped my head at the mark. He nodded.
The junkie wasn’t even really paying attention. His eyes darted through the crowd, but rested briefly only on the other well-dressed visitors to be seen here and there. The only dangers he saw were the risk of being seen by someone who knew him or rounded up in a FleetSec bust. We were invisible. His mistake.
Simon walked obliquely towards the mark; I dodged people to follow behind him. The man’s hand kept darting to his right pocket, as if to reassure himself.
“Hey mister, you wanna buy a necklace?” Simon reached the mark, and flashed the gaudy bauble we had snatched earlier. I was only a few feet away.
“Leave me alone,” the man tried to push past him, but Simon had learned a lot in the past few days.
“It’s real gold, mister,” he grabbed the mark’s arm. My cue. “Surely there’s a lovely lady, wife, girlfriend, who’d just love to have this around her neck.”
He didn’t even notice me behind him as I slipped my fingers into his pocket and grabbed the wallet.
“I said leave me alone kid,” our mark pulled sharply away, and spun towards me. “Hey!”
Simon froze. This was bad. I didn’t have time to shove the wallet into my pocket and play innocent, so I needed a distraction
I grabbed the necklace from Simon’s hand. “That’s mine, you thief!” I shouted and took off running down the nearest row of stalls.
“Stop, bitch!” Simon followed my lead and took off after me. I risked a look behind to see that the mark was already heading off in the other direction. I wove through the crowd a little before slowing and blending into a group of kids clustered around a woman selling flatbread. Simon caught up to me a few minutes later.
“That was close.”
“Having a good plan is only half of it. If you can’t improvise, you’re dead.”
“Dead?” Simon raised an eyebrow. “They don’t execute kids for theft.”
“Well that’s how my mom used to say it.”
“Ah, did your mom teach you how to pick pockets?”
“No,” I said sharply. “My mom shot down raiders.”
“Until they got her,” Simon surmised.
I didn’t want to talk about that, so I opened the wallet.
“Looks like our junkie wasn’t just looking for a hit,” Simon said as I counted it. “There’s enough here for him to have been dealing to the neighbors.”
I turned on him. “So what exactly are we going to do with it? We’ve been here three days; my arm’s good as new and we’ve got plenty of cash. Time to fill me in.”
“You sure you don’t want to take your cut and just go? It’s a lot of money.”
“I want to find Kasey. If you’re going to go back on that…” I raised my fist.
“No.” Simon pushed my hand down. “I get it; you want to find your friend. But I have to find my brother and sister. Linus could trip and die from internal bleeding if no one pays attention. And I have to do some things that might get me in serious trouble.”
“Kasey might not be related to me, but she’s all I got left. I’m in. Whatever it takes.”
“We have to break into the office of the Department of Education.”
“Ok,” breaking and entering I could handle, “How are we going to do that?”
“Not here. Let’s go back.”
I nodded. We had a room here; renting it for the week had practically wiped out the cash I’d saved up. It wasn’t much, no head, no furniture even, but the deadbolt on the door worked and even came with a key. As we made our way back into the room, I looked through the rest of the wallet. There was an ID card and a list of names; probably the people the junkie had been dealing to. Then I saw the grainy photo.
“Damn. He has kids.”
Simon looked over at it. “Bastard. Spending all that money on ace instead of them.
“Almost wish I could give this back.” A picture like this was almost priceless, expensive to have taken, and worthless to me.
“If the guy really loved those kids, he wouldn’t be shooting up,” Simon said vehemently.
“Still seems wrong to keep it. Maybe the cabin number on his ID is accurate. I could mail it there.”
Simon just shrugged, “If you want to spend the money on the postage, whatever.”
I let the subject drop. It didn’t matter. Simon and I had managed to form some sort of working agreement over the past few days. I needed his help; he needed mine. No sense in risking that over a junkie’s photo.
We reached our room, made sure the bags were still there, and sat down on the cold floor. I grabbed one of the blankets we’d bought from our landlord.
“So, how does breaking into the Department of Education help us?”
“Well breaking into the Child Placement System offices would be useless. Their records are crap.”
“Right,” I nodded. “So?”
“So the Department of Education is better. They have to be cause that’s how they distribute stuff. Clothes, toys, school supplies, fresh food we raid from the Cylons. They try to make it fair, so they keep track of who’s going to school where.”
“And if we find out where Kasey and Linus and Lily are going to school, we know what ships and which decks to search for them.” It was a good plan. “You’ve got a way to break in?”
“I lived on the Rising Star a couple of months ago. The guy next door was the janitor for a bunch of those government offices so he had master keys.”
“You think he’ll do you a favor?”
“I think he can be bought.”
“Sounds like a good plan.”
“Well, I know you can improvise.” Simon grinned.
* * *
We locked our stuff inside the room, choked down lunch in the mess hall and made our way up to the Zeusuda’s upper market. The officers watching the entrance gave us a hard look as a warning; they knew our type, but we were honest customers today.
“Look for the typical upper decks school uniform.” Simon said. So we wandered around until we found a guy selling some of the standard blue slacks and white collared shirts.
“Your folks get better jobs?” The vendor asked. Everything got shook up during a Cylon attack. Some people lost everything they had evacuating while others caught a break.
“Yeah. My dad made supervisor on the mining ship.” I held up a shirt that looked like the right size.
“You can try that on in the back.” He offered. I almost refused, but that would look silly. And the plan wouldn’t work well if my pants didn’t fit. The back was a curtained off cubicle. I pulled of my coat, shirt and pants quickly and slipped into the uniform. It fit, at least as much as I could tell in the cracked mirror. I pulled it off, watching the crack in the curtains, and scrambled back into my own clothes. I was so frakking paranoid. When I was a kid half-dressed people in the head were normal. Kasey would visit for a weekend and her childish modesty had seemed weird, civilian. Well, I wasn’t a fleet brat anymore.
Simon used the cubicle after I did, switching the pants he’d initially grabbed for a longer pair. We paid the man and made our way down to the hangar level. Passenger fare to the Rising Star was 30 Colonials each. That left us with about 150 left.
“Will that be enough to bribe this janitor?”
“Should be. He had three kids. Wife was always harping on him that they were broke.”
* * *
It was just a few hours before ship’s night when we got to the Rising Star and changed into the uniforms in the nearest bathroom.
“Let’s take the lift up to deck 11.” Simon suggested. “The Department of Education office is right next to the school there. There’s a park nearby where the kids hung out after school. We can blend in; you keep an eye on the office and I’ll watch for Ernest.”
The park was just a big room with tall ceilings and a jungle gym for the little kids. The floors were painted green, the ceiling blue and the walls were supposed to look like landscapes from the Colonies. Some psychologist had alarmed everyone years ago by suggesting that living one’s entire life in an artificial environment would lead to a generation of psychopaths, so the Department of Education had built parks like this all over the fleet. Personally, I thought the terrible artwork was more likely to make me go on a killing spree.
Simon and I stuck to the fringes. The adults we’d seen hadn’t even questioned that we belonged here, not in these clothes. But the other kids would know we didn’t fit into their social pecking order.
I drifted away from Simon, wandering past the offices he’d pointed out. I glanced inside one door. The wastebasket was full. It looked like we hadn’t missed Ernest today.
“Major Agathon, so good to see you over here.”
I froze. O gods. Helo.
I turned, without even deciding to. There he was, a little older than I remembered. He walked right towards me.
And right past.
“Hello Gavril.” He stepped into the doorway of the man’s office. I stood, flat against the wall, listening.
“I suppose you being here on the Star means something big is afoot between the military and FleetSec.”
“Ah, you know I can’t say anything about that.”
“Well, how’s Hera doing then?”
“Good, all A’s in math…”
“Hey!” Simon pulled me away from eavesdropping. “What’s wrong?”
“That man, he knew my mother.” I tried to explain.
“Did he see you?”
“He didn’t even recognize me.”
“Well good.” Simon pulled me away, back to the park. For a second I resisted, but what did I want? To march in and demand that someone give a frack?
“Yeah,” I muttered to Simon as we slipped back. “Lucky break.”