Hydrogen, Chapter 4

            The next day was a Sunday, the traditional day of rest. Mike decided to take it easy, despite the excitement he felt welling up from somewhere deep inside of him. For what seemed like forever he had felt like he was trying to pick up the pieces of his life, and then the last piece had fallen. Now he felt like he was building a new life for himself, one that held some glimmer of promise.

            Mike woke up early and went out for breakfast. In truth, he really hadn’t needed to work since his family had died. All three of them had carried life insurance, and after the costs of the funeral there had been several thousand dollars left over. Mike could never bring himself to spend it, though. A disturbing thought replayed itself in his mind when he though about using the remainder of the money, the thought that he was benefiting from their deaths. Though he knew it was irrational and that his parents, sensible people, would have wanted him to use the money did not matter. He had started an account at a local savings and loan the day after the funeral with the remainder of the life insurance money and at the time he planned to leave the money there forever.

            Mike went to the savings and loan after a nice quiet breakfast of sausage and eggs at the diner on the corner of his street. He was experiencing a lightheartedness that he hadn’t felt in ages. It felt ok that he should use some of the life insurance money now. ‘Hell,’ he thought, ‘I don’t really have a choice.’ His last paycheck from the movie theater had been spent on the gun he bought to kill himself with, and if he was going to uproot himself and move somewhere distant he would need some money to do it with. Not to mention living expenses until then.

            He walked into the small lobby of the building. It was empty, so Mike walked up to the head of the line, and smiled at the teller. She was young, and kind of cute.

            “Hi. I started an account here last year, and I guess I just need to know the balance.” She smiled back at him. Mike glanced at her nametag. It read “Janice”.

            “Alright, sir. Do you know your account number?” Janice asked. He shook his head in negation.

            “Ok. Can I get your name and social security number, then?” He gave her the information, which she typed into her computer terminal. His account came up on her screen. The computer system took six seconds longer than it normally took to access an account. Janice didn’t notice. Her eyes widened when she saw the balance, and she looked at the young man in front of her with more interest than before. “Can I see some ID, please?”

            “Sure,” he replied. Mike pulled out his driver license and placed it on the counter in front of them. The teller picked it up and examined it, matching it to the information on the terminal in front of her.

            “Alright sir, here is your balance.” She wrote it on a piece of paper and slid it across to him. He looked down at the scrap of paper, and his eyes widened. It read $136,913.26. This was easily three times as much as he thought was in there. He had thought the lawyer had said there was something like forty thousand after the funeral, but he must have misheard. Banks did not make errors this large.

Mike was still a little puzzled. He remembered bringing the check to the savings and loan and starting the account, but little else. He had been in a haze of shock and depression at the time. He had no way to check if there was an error or not. He had fallen out of touch with the lawyer, who had moved his offices to some other city, and he recalled throwing away all the paperwork he had received when he started the account in a fit of self-loathing.

He shrugged it off. If there were a problem the bank would correct it. He reminded himself that banks did not make errors this large, or they would go out of business. Mike thought that he must have misremembered how much money he had deposited. He looked back up at the pretty teller.

“I’d like to withdraw two-thousand dollars, please. And I would like to set up a checking account linked to my savings so that I can use a debit card if that’s possible.”

“Ok. Let me withdraw your cash, and then we can discuss the checking account.”

In under half of an hour his business at the savings and loan was concluded, and Mike left, feeling a bit overwhelmed. He owned over an eighth of a million dollars. If he wanted, he could buy a house, or a new car. Mike usually walked everywhere, or took the bus. He had had a driver license since he was sixteen, but had never had his own vehicle. It didn’t make sense to own a car when he was going to school and living on campus, and after that he couldn’t afford one. Mike didn’t really like the inefficiency of internal combustion engines, either. He smiled. If his research panned out, then maybe he could do something about that.

            Mike decided to hold onto his money for now, and see what developed after he called the University on Monday. After all, it wouldn’t make sense to buy a car or make any other large purchases until he knew what his plans would be. Having that much money at his disposal made him feel better, though. It was enough money to do almost anything he could imagine.

            Mind awhirl, Mike walked home, the morning air crisp in his lungs. He decided to work on his research for the rest of his day, and write up a formal proposal for his project so he would be ready to present it when he found a company to sponsor his work.

            Bloid-2021 finished his shift, and promptly left analysis hall number 2011021. As he was walking out through the wide, columned entranceway of the hall, the relief person for his position walked in and took Bloid’s vacated seat. His arrival was in almost perfect synchronization with Bloid’s exit.

Efficiency was the lifeblood of the station. Bloid believed this, as did nearly every inhabitant of Dark. It was ingrained into him from his childhood, nearly eighty-five centuries ago, and reinforced almost daily through propaganda presented in popular reading materials and programs on the Trid, Dark’s version of television. Bloid was relieved to be off-shift, and a little embarrassed to be relieved. This was normal on Dark, where the common, socially fostered attitude was that work was the place everyone desired to be, and that the time off-shift was supposed to be spent in preparation for the next work period.

Nobody really took it seriously, of course. Almost everyone enjoyed his or her time off-shift. Beyond the four hours the people of Dark were required to spend sleeping each day, they had eight hours to do as they wished, as long as they didn’t interrupt anyone’s work. There were a multitude of things to do off-shift, but at the moment all Bloid wanted to do was to visit the baths and then go to bed. It had been a long day, and he felt sweaty and tired.

Bloid mentally reviewed his day as he walked to the nearest baths. As an assistant director of his data hall, Bloid did the same job as most of the others people assigned to his hall:  analysis of observations made on specific humans and the generation of reports that outlined actions that should be taken regarding these individuals. The results of these actions were supposed to accomplish specific goals given to them by administrators. The workers stationed in the hall were not told the reasons behind these goals, merely to meet them.

Bloid also made data alterations. This was a new branch of analysis, introduced less than two hundred years before, shortly before humans developed electronics. Occasionally he would get an assignment to alter some data on a computer on earth, but the assignments were few and far between. Today he had received an assignment to do a very small data alteration, which was unusual. Normally data alterations were on a larger scale, affecting many people. All he had to do for this assignment was to change the balance of a personal bank account somewhere in North America, a boring job that took less than ten seconds.

Personally, Bloid could care less about the meaning behind his job. For him, work was an end to itself. He quickly took a bath, and then went to his compartment for some much needed sleep.

Elsewhere on Dark, Dran was bust with work of his own. He smiled as he looked over the reports displayed in front of him. Soon, he thought, he would have another assignment involving the human “Mike” who he had interacted with before. He was now officially a member of the Technologies division, and Mike was just about their top priority. ‘From humble beginnings…’ Dran thought, smiling.

Most of the people in the Technologies division of STAT were what Dran considered geeks; people who loved the stupid little machines humans made, and did nothing with their time off but read about new humans innovations, and talk to each other about them. Sure, Dran conceded, it was important that the beings from earth grow technologically, but he though spending personal time basking in it was irritating and uncalled for.

He had asked to be surrounded by it, though. He had surprised his supervisors by transferring divisions to technology, but his record was perfect, something most people couldn’t boast, and his intelligence index was more than high enough for him to be a member of Technologies. Division transfer requests were few, but the STAT supervisors rarely denied them; they liked to keep the STAT agents happy.

Dran figured he would be relatively happy here. His official job title was still “Intervention Agent, Class 1”, which meant his only responsibility was surface missions. These were rare in Technologies, but the schedule Dran had read at the bottom of the report on Mike indicated that there were to be several coming up, and Dran wanted them. He wasn’t sure what the purpose of all these missions was going to be quite yet, but he was determined to find out. Devoting all of these resources to just one person happened maybe once every hundred years, and Dran considered himself lucky to be a part of it. He was sure that the events he was helping to shape would do no less than change the course of the world.