Chapter Three

Alice leaned forward and strained against her safety restraint to look out the window as the aircar lifted away from the jump pad located on the roof of the Nile Security Bureau building. After she had pressed her thumb against the contract pad to show she accepted the offer from Nile, Subdirector Horton had handed her off to a hulking NSB officer named Smith, who had walked her to the small room that made up her small living quarters to pack. He wore the traditional red jumpsuit and gold class insignia of the Nile security force. Alice guessed that while Horton had done his job without being noticed, Smith's job was to deter bad behavior by being seen. His job certainly wasn’t answering questions or providing information. Every time that Alice had asked him a question he had answered with either a grunt or a monosyllable if he was feeling generous. Currently Smith's massive hands were clamped onto his seat's plastic arm rest. It looked like the big scary NSB officer was afraid of flying.

After she had packed her bag Alice was marched across the Nile campus to the Nile Security Building and into an elevator that took them straight to the roof. She had seen people march behind the red uniform before, she knew what all who saw it had thought, she knew what they had done. They had hunched their shoulders and looked at the ground, or at the sky, or into the face of their friend, as if their life had depended on pretending that Alice didn't exist. They had thought that she was guilty of some major violation and was on her way to disappear into a cell. Alice figured that made them something like 50% right.

Now the buildings below that constituted her whole world shrank into nothingness, and Alice's heart shrank away with them. Gloria was down there somewhere, probably trying to figure out what had happened to Alice. It had hit her while she was packing, that it was entirely possible that even with her best efforts she would never see Gloria again. Not that they had given her long to pack or to think, but it didn't matter much, she didn't have much that she needed to bring. She had thrown a few keepsakes like a picture of her parents and some art that Gloria had made into a duffel mindlessly and mechanically. Her brain was alternating wildly between being unable to accept that this was all real and trying to come up with a plan to fix all of this. She had expected for both of them to be hired by Nile, get through a few months of the early employee trainings, come up with a way to be seen together, 'start' dating, and live happily ever after. Now Nile had discarded Gloria because she might need a surgery in the decade and a half. Tossed her away like fruit that had gone rotten, instead of seeing her as a human and an asset.

Well, Alice wasn't going to stand for it. She was going to find a way to take care of Gloria, and she was going to find a way for them to be together. If she was going to be working in security, there was a good chance that she could just find a way to forge Gloria a contract nearby and maybe they could just go back to what they had sarcastically called their 'Happily Ever After' plan.

Even as Alice thought this, the aircar turned east and drifted over the impoverished shanty town of the day laborers. They weren't allowed onto the campus without a day pass for work, so they made sprawling camps just outside. Alice had never seen how big it was, it had to be ten or twenty times as many people as there were living on campus. She saw homes of cast-off metal, sheets of plastic, even some cardboard. In the trainings, the day laborers were shown as valuable assets to meet the flexible demands of Nile's business. They were always portrayed as being just like a contractor, but always a little jealous that they couldn't be one. Alice had never thought about where it was that they went after their job was done, but if she had she never would have imagined this.

"Rats," Smith said, also looking out a window of the aircar.

Alice jumped, she had been so deep in though that she had forgotten Smith was there.

"The day laborers?" Alice asked.

"Day laborers," Smith snickered, "No one in the company calls them anything but Rats. They feed on the crap work no one else wants to do and then go home to breed more useless Rats."

"Oh, that's just aw- I mean, I didn't know there was another name," Alice said lamely. Apparently Smith’s hatred for the day laborers made him positively chatty. Gloria might be out there, right now. She wasn't useless or a Rat. The aircar's main thrusters kicked in and Alice was pressed back into her seat. When she was able to lean forward again the shanty town was gone. Now it was all massive farms flashing past, one after the other, and all of them swarming with plows planting something or other.

Alice leaned back from the window and looked at the clock over Smith's head and tried to see if Smith’s chattiness would continue into other subjects, "Where are we going?"

"Nile Security Research," Smith said instantly.

Alice rolled her eyes, "Yeah, I know that, but where is Nile Security Research?"

"You're a security risk until your contract rider's terms are met," Smith said tonelessly without looking away from the window, "So as far as you're concerned, the Security Research facility is vaguely east of where you were trained and our trip will end after your bedtime."

Alice felt like something had clamped over her throat.

"Horton didn't say anything about a contract rider."

Smith finally met her eyes and said in the same bored tones, "First, as far as you are concerned, his name is Subdirector Horton. Secondly, I suggest you check your contract because it's there. One year, AI supervised probation, no privacy restrictions."

Alice went from shocked to outraged, "A year!? And what does 'no privacy restrictions' mean? Is there going to be a camera in my bedroom?"

"No privacy restrictions means there's going to be a camera in every room that you're in, including your work station, your bedroom, and your bathroom," Smith didn't even have the decency to sound apologetic.

"That's...I've never heard of anything like that! There's no way that's allowed," She felt claustrophobic just thinking about that level of surveillance, and for an entire year.

"It's allowed, and the AI will flag anything suspicious for the local security office to review," The NSB officer smirked then shrugged, "If you don’t like it then I will happily turn this ’car around and drop you in Rat Town. I’m sure you’ll fit right in."

Alice glared at Smith until he turned his eyes back to the window and then leaned back into her seat and pulled out her mobile. She tapped the icon for her account and then followed the options until she was reading her contract details. Smith was right, there was a contract rider, and the reason that she hadn’t seen it before was because it hadn’t been there before. From the timestamp, it had probably been added while she had been packing. She tapped the details icon and saw a note:

Contract Rider Addition: AI Supervised Probation

Privacy Restrictions: None

Authorized by: Subdirector Adam Horton

Note: Added without Contractor approval under Nile Security Provision 2050-3-21.12

Alice tapped the link and read the provision. It essentially said that anything Nile did for security reasons was allowed, regardless of her approval. She was screwed. As she read, her adrenaline wore away and her exhaustion made itself known. Finally she slid her mobile back into the thigh pocket of her jumpsuit and laid her head against the headrest. The last thing she remembered thinking before she drifted off was that she definitely preferred Smith when he didn’t talk.

Alice was jarred awake when the aircar door opened. Her eyes quickly took in Smith removing his safety restraints and the darkness outside the door. She had slept the entire flight away, which meant she had no idea where she was. Smith finished removing his restraints, grabbed the bag beside his seat, and climbed out. Alice moved to follow him and harshly reminded by her straps that they were still locked in place. It took her two tries to undo them, her fingers were still clumsy with sleep.

As she climbed out, she was hit with a blast of cool crisp air and she wondered how far North their trip had taken them. She took in her surroundings and saw that they were on the roof of a building and Smith was talking with someone else in the red jumpsuit of the NSB. She leaned back in and grabbed her bag before she made her way over to them. The door pulled itself closed before she was even two steps away.

"Campbell, this is Facility Director Taylor," Smith said with a jerk of his head towards the Director. Without another word he walked past the Director and pressed his thumb against the door pad to enter the facility.

The Director grimaced at Smith and his lack of a proper hand off and then turned to Alice.

Any other introductions were paused as the aircar's engines cut in and Alice watched it as it lifted away from the building. She started to wonder if it was going back home, but she caught herself. Home was wherever Gloria was, and until she found Gloria she was stuck with wherever Here was. As the aircar flew away, Alice turned to the Director and took in her short straight black hair, gaunt face, and impressive height. Her uniform was flawless despite the late hour. Alice felt like she had gone from one kind of intimidating babysitter to a new and much more terrifying one.

"Name and Nile ID please," she said tonelessly. She sounded just like an AI.

"Alice Campbell, 22, 974215390," Alice said, almost equally tonelessly.

"I didn’t ask your age, Researcher Campbell. If I’m being honest though, I also didn’t ask for you at all," the Director said glancing at her mobile with a scowl, "The Subdirector of your training campus seemed to think you were something special, but from what I’ve read you’re just a troublesome woman who broke the rules in a slightly novel way. Now I’m not only stuck with you, I have to allow in an AI supervisor because of your rule breaking."

"You don’t like AI?" Alice was shocked. AI handled a massive number of functions for Nile, hell, some departments were run entirely by AI without any human oversight at all.

"I have no problem with AI," Alice’s new boss said, still seeming more like a robot than human, "They just aren’t allowed in this facility due to the type of research we do. We don’t want our actions to be used as training data because it can reduce AI efficiency and reliability. You better be worth this, Campbell, allowing in even a limited AI increases the chances of a leak."

Alice winced, "I’ll do my best, and, um, sorry?"

"Oh, don’t worry, you have my promise that I am going to make sure you regret it at least as much as I do," The Director gestured towards the entrance to the facility with one hand, "Welcome to NSB Research, after you Researcher Campbell."