Age of Ruin

The meeting Richard Maseuchy had requested with management wasn’t going nearly as well as he had imagined it would. What he intended to be a redressing of his grievances with his treatment at the company had turned into a conga line of middle managers and department heads berating him. All he could do was stand there impotently and answer “Yes, sir,” or “No, sir,” to questions they asked between verbally eviscerating him for his faults. He was desperately trying to maintain his composure until this ordeal ended and he could go back to his office, put the security cameras on a loop, and pop a pill that would make the rest of the day easier to get through.

Making things worse were the new owners getting involved. Maribo stood about a half a meter taller than most humans and strongly resembled featherless birds wearing voluminous robes, their heads hanging below their shoulders. They only ever spoke their own language, a rapid chattering, clicking thing, and they only spoke it while bringing their face uncomfortably close to the face of whoever they were addressing.

Two of them in long, fine robes circled Rich and stared at him, chattering. He had been told it was rude for a human to look a maribo in the eye, a rule which apparently didn’t go both ways, so he was stuck looking straight ahead at his immediate supervisor.

One of the creatures squawked loudly. “You’re on thin ice, Rich,” his supervisor translated. “Another one of your usual screw ups, and you’ll become a patient yourself.”

Rich’s blood went cold. He thought that only people at the end of their lives, or terminally ill had samples implanted. People who couldn’t contribute anymore and were a burden on society. Is that what they thought of him?

“Y-yes, sir, I’ll be more careful,” Rich said as he was waved out of his supervisor’s office and hurried back to his own.

Implantation failures and the total loss of a patient and sample were what management was upset about. That was Rich’s understanding, at any rate. He resolved to process as few samples as he could and found any excuse to not do his work for fear of failure. Stress gnawed at his nerves, and he found even the most trivial reason to pop a pill and get a mild high at work. He managed to finish the week without any more grief from management.

The taxi ride to the night club seemed to last an eternity. If work was a waking nightmare, then the night club was like a dream of pulsing sound, joyous dancing, and drunken euphoria that washed all his sorrows down the drain. And the best part of all was that the club was where Bryce was. Come to think of it, Rich had never learned Bryce’s last name, or where he was from.

Rich was surprised to see Bryce already seated at the usual booth. He smiled warmly as Rich forced his bulk between the bench and table. When Bryce asked how his week at work had gone, Rich couldn’t stop himself from unloading his pent up emotions. Bryce listened closely, ordering another drink for Rich whenever his ran dry.

“So anyone can be a ‘patient’ at your workplace? Not just old people like you said?” asked Bryce. “How does that whole process actually work?”

Rich struggled to find the words to explain what he did for a living, and laid out the process as he understood it, though very poorly. Several rounds of drinks had made him forget that what he was saying was classified information, and that revealing any of it could get him into serious trouble.

“I’ve got a better idea,” Bryce said. “How about you just take me to your work and show me?”

“Oh… I couldn’t do that. My part of the facility can’t have visitors unless they’re approved,” said Rich.

“That’ll make it more exciting. C’mon, I’m sure you can find a way to sneak me in. I’ll call us a taxi. Let’s go,” said Bryce, slinging his bag over his shoulder and getting out of the booth.

Rich nodded and hurriedly followed Bryce, too drunk to maintain any sort of decorum and too excited to care. When he caught up with Bryce at the waiting taxi, Bryce was leaning on the roof of the vehicle and having a hushed conversation with the driver. The driver noticed Rich waddling over to the vehicle and jerked his head at him. The conversation ceased. Bryce turned around, flashed Rich a big, winning smile, and held the door for him. They both boarded the taxi, and the two were off.

Rich flashed his I.D. badge at the security checkpoint from the back of the taxi and the vehicle was promptly waved through. The chaos caused by the change in ownership had made the company’s physical security as lax as their digital system security. After being dropped off at the entrance to Rich’s part of the company’s campus, the pair were able to simply walk in the door, no questions asked.

Few people would be at work at this time of night on a weekday. At the start of a weekend, it was as lively as a tomb.

Rich led Bryce through the facility to his office and held the door open for him. Bryce entered the office and looked around. He saw a security camera hanging from a corner of the ceiling, angled to see as much of the office as it could. He saw the desk and computer terminal where Rich worked, positioned as far out of view of the camera as was possible. At the far end, he saw a table made of medical alloy, adorned with various straps. Around the table coming up from the floor and hanging from the ceiling were robotic arms. Manipulator arms, a suture gun, and precision scalpels adorned the tips of the arms.

“So, uh, this is my office. What do you think?” Rich asked expectantly.

Bryce took a moment to examine the equipment closely. “This must be where you process patients. Seeing it in person really sheds a lot of light on what you do here.”

Rich didn’t really understand what Bryce meant by that, but he said it with a positive tone, and figured it couldn’t be bad.

“Gimme a minute to turn off the security in the office,” said Rich as he scooted past Bryce and sat at his terminal.

“You said you have access to the entire network?” asked Bryce, looking over Rich’s shoulder.

“Yeah,” replied Rich. “Here, I’ll show you. Here’s the feed of my office. Here’s the the reception desk of the main building. Our maintenance department. Here’s where the samples are assembled for implantation.” He proudly showed Bryce all the various security camera feeds he had access to. He accessed the company’s accounting data, shipping manifests, and research documents. “The network is such a mess, I can get wherever I want.

“Now I’ll just grab a small bit of footage from when nobody was in the office, set that on a loop, and now nobody will be able to see that we’re here,” Rich said with an awkward laugh.

“That’s pretty wild,” said Bryce. “Can you do that to the entire facility?”

“Blind the security system across the entire facility? I guess I could… But why if it’s just us and we’re here in my office? It would cause a lot of problems,” Rich said, clearly worried about getting found out.

“Screw them, that’s why,” Bryce said with a wry smile. “If they’re gonna treat you like garbage, then why not make life difficult for them?”

Rich liked the way that idea sounded. He was clearly still intoxicated, and not thinking through the actual consequences of what he was doing. The terrifying phrase “you’ll become a patient yourself” that had hovered over him like a dark storm cloud had totally left his mind for the moment. Nevertheless, he complied with Bryce’s request and set every security camera on a loop, and turned off every security measure he could find.

Rich leaned back in his chair and nodded to himself, satisfied with the chaos he had sewn. He knew it would be weeks until everything he had done would be discovered, and it may take even longer to fix it.

“The security system is down?” asked Bryce from behind Rich’s seat.

“Yup,” said Rich.

“The cameras can’t see what’s happening anywhere in the facility?”

“Yeah…” said Rich, as more of a question than a statement.

“And you’ve got all that documentation you showed me earlier pulled up on your terminal?”

“Yes. Why are you asking questions like that?” asked Rich.

“Just making sure,” said Bryce.

Before Rich could turn his seat around, Bryce had thrown a section of rope around his neck and was throttling him. He tried to kick in his chair, thrash about to get free, but the most he could manage was some lazy flopping around. Rich’s hands came up to impotently paw at the rope as his brain lost what precious little oxygen it had.

As the life drained from his body the last thing Richard Maseuchy thought was “What did I do to deserve being treated this way?“