Chapter Text
"Infinity Regressions?" Her father stared down at her notepad. Meg watched him re-read it for the fourth time. He set her notepad down and scratched at his head. "I won't discourage you if you really want to go but....Infinity Regressions?"
Meg linked up with her proxy and sent it over to her father. She snaked out one long spidery limb and picked up the notepad. She read it over again. She couldn't quite believe it either. She had read it hundreds of times since getting the message yesterday. Infinity Regressions had offered her the medical department head position for Branch 8.
Branch 8 wasn't exactly a huge station and she'd mostly be dealing with accidents and the occasional upgrade but this was it. This was her big break into full time medicine. It wasn't a short term contract, it wasn't an assistant to the assistant job. This was a full time position and they wanted her.
This was her chance to finally get out of environmental control.
"I know they're not a part of PEST but it's better than getting tied down in UN red tape." Meg said. She tossed the notepad back down on the table. "At least with Infinity anyone can buy information. The UN just hoards it to itself." She threw a limb up to wave dismissively. "And it's not as if I'll be doing research through them. I'll be treating patients. I can still share any independent research I do in my free time."
Her father wrinkled his nose. "Buy information." He muttered. "Buy it. What century do they think we live in?"
Meg kept quiet. The problem was they lived in this century. It was one of the few subjects that she didn't goad her father into arguments about. Everyone that was a part of PEST these days got themselves in a twist over buying and selling information. She agreed with her father that it was ridiculous but she could also see the writing on the wall. Whether or not they wanted to admit it nobody but PEST members shared information freely and there were fewer and fewer PEST members each year. Mariner Orbital was one of the last big PEST communities and they barely had six thousand people aboard.
The rattle of the front door opening distracted them both. The door pushed open. Her brother skulked inside trying to look upset but utterly and completely failing at wiping the smug grin off his face. He must have been listening in on the home network. She flicked her arms in a quadruple rude hand gesture. Tom gave her a look of mock hurt. Their father sighed.
Tom pushed the door closed. "Does this mean I get your job?"
"Means the position is open and you can dream about it while someone else gets it." Meg retorted. She had a special kind of relationship with her brother.
"Nothing's final." Her father said. He looked down at the notepad on the table then back to her proxy. "Nothing's final?"
"Nothing's final. I haven't responded yet." She hadn't done anything yet but read it over and over to make sure she wasn't dreaming. Was Infinity Regression really offering her, her own practice? She read the message again. It still hadn't changed. She focused all her cameras on her father. "But I think I really want to do this."
"Great. You should." Tom grinned. Their father cleared his throat. Tom's grin dissolved into a serious look. "You've worked at this for years, you'd be great at it."
"I know. I am great. Unlike what you'd be in environmental control." Meg said. In all honesty her baby brother would probably be just as good as her at it. Probably better because he actually wanted to do it. Well, that was the thing about environmental control, everyone started off wanting to do it because it paid well. Then you did it for fifty years and it was a nightmare of boredom and people bitching about the humidity in their homes. There was a reason why it paid well. She'd let Tom find that out the hard way.
She set three hands on her father's shoulders. "Even if I do decide to go. It's Branch Eight. It's practically in the same neighbourhood as us right now. I'll be close by for years."
If a two day communications delay was close.
Her father looked at her incredulously. He knew how long the delay was. So maybe a two day communications delay was far but it wasn't as if she hadn't been farther from home. It was just the delay that made it seem farther.
"They're a week and a half away from us if you had your own ship." Tom blabbed.
Meg flicked a hand in a rude gesture behind her back that hopefully their father hadn't caught and wished she hadn't gotten rid of the built in pellet gun on her proxy from when they were kids. She would have liked to peg Tom right between the eyes for that.
Tom gestured back at her.
Their father sighed again. He motioned to the notepad. "Please think about this carefully Meg. Don't accept them because you think they're your only option. There are other options out there."
She had thought about it carefully, long before she had got the offer. She had done consulting, she had done short contracts, Infinity Regressions wasn't her only option but it was her only option to do what she loved close to home full time.
"Don't worry." She said. She tucked the notepad into a compartment on her proxy and put it back into her room. She left the proxy there. She always seemed to give herself away with her proxy when she lied. "I'll think about it. Like you said, there's probably a ton of other options out there."
There wasn't. None as good as the offer Infinity Regressions had made but she knew it would calm her father down if he thought she was looking.
She spent the next two days writing up her response to the offer of employment and trying to coax her father into thinking it was a great opportunity. It was obvious he didn't fall for her still looking act and he responded by 'forgetting' to close his personal files and leaving open job postings for anything even remotely related to neuroprosthetics in PEST communities.
Tom thought it was funny. Every time a job posting was 'accidentally' left open he'd start talking about it with over exaggerated surprise with their father, pointing out how close it was or how short the communications delay was or how she could work from home and wasn't it such a wonderful coincidence that it just so happened to appear on the home network?
Tom could also fly into a star and die a thousand fiery deaths.
A day later she was linking up to her proxy and cutting herself off from the home network and Tom's latest look at how convenient this is! speech about a job cleaning up labs that was six weeks away but would only have a thirty minute delay if they paid for a temporary communications hub. As if she had worked her way through medical school for over two decades to clean up labs.
She grabbed her notepad off her desk and locked the door to her room behind her so Tom couldn't get into her room and make her listen when he got home. She headed next door to Ruby's place. She tapped out pi as fast as she could against the door.
The door ground open after thirty four digits. Her favourite frenemy answered the door with a look of supreme displeasure. Meg pushed past Ruby without saying hello.
"Thirty four digits? You busy or something? Or am I getting faster?" Meg said. She took a quick look around. Ruby wasn't working on anything as far as she could tell. She pinged Ruby's home network and got the usual get the hell out shock. She hadn't been allowed onto Ruby's home network since they were ten and Meg had programmed her family's home to play a musical interpretation of pi up to three hundred digits every time someone said Ruby's name.
"I was trying to ignore you." Ruby said. She closed the door. It scraped metal against metal.
"You should really get that fixed." Meg said absently. Ruby never took her advice but they had their script worked out after all these years. Ruby acted annoyed and she acted like they were the type of friends that didn't kind of hate each other.
"You should really mind your own business." Ruby retorted.
Meg took a look at what her heat sensors were saying and found the chair Ruby had been sitting in. She headed over to it and plunked down making sure to let all eight limbs of her proxy sprawl.
Ruby wrinkled her nose at the sprawl of limbs. Meg snickered. Half the reason her proxy looked like a darker-than-space octopus from someone's nightmare was because of Ruby's nose wrinkling disapproval when they were kids. It hadn't been fashionable then and it wasn't fashionable now.
But Ruby's nose wrinkling had only gotten better with age. Ruby reached over to a switch on the wall and flicked on the high frequency strobe light. The room flashed in a daze of colours. Meg quickly turned off all her visual feeds except what basic anthrogenic eyesight could see. The strobing stopped. Ruby smiled smugly at her. It was a part of their love-hate friendship.
Meg tossed her notepad over to Ruby. "What do you think?"
Ruby caught the notepad and dragged a chair over to sit beside Meg. She shoved Meg's limbs out of the way and sat down. Her eyes flicked over the notepad. She flinched. Meg hadn't told her yet that she was going.
Ruby's eyes flicked over Meg, her face carefully blank.
Meg waited nervously for Ruby to say something. Anything. She wouldn't admit it but she needed at least one person to say it was a good idea and mean it. She needed someone to tell her that working for a place like Infinity Regressions wasn't selling her soul to the devil.
Ruby looked back down to the notepad.
"Not that great, huh?" Meg said. She kept her limbs still and tried not to look like she was an eight-legged ball of nerves.
"You really want to go there?" Ruby asked seriously, which wasn't fair.
Ruby was deviating from their pre-approved banter. She was supposed to say something like, not as great as mine and then tear apart her response word by word and help her build it back up until Meg had something she could send in without looking like an overeager grovelling newbie. Then they'd argue about something dumb and Ruby would kick her out and she'd come back tomorrow and they'd do it again until she left.
Ruby passed her the notepad back. "You really want to work for Infinity?"
"No. I want to be a doctor." Meg said. She set the notepad down on the floor. "I want my two decades of medical school with twelve years specializing in BAN to actually mean something." She motioned in the vague direction Infinity Regression's Branch 8 would be floating. "It's them or the UN."
Ruby's face contorted in deep thought. She looked concerned— and sombre. It was like they were responsible adults or something. Then the serious expression dropped from Ruby's face and Ruby repeated the unofficial motto of PEST. "Fuck the UN." She stuck her hand out and wiggled her fingers until Meg dropped the notepad back into her hand. "Information hoarding assholes."
That twisting tension drained out of her. Ruby wasn't going to try and talk her out of it like everyone else. She might not say it in so many words but this was Ruby's way of saying go do what makes you happy.
"Oh, I dunno." Meg said. She flickered the lights on her proxy playfully. She had never bothered to make it look anthrogenic and she wasn't about to start trying to mimic expressions. "They aren't that bad."
Ruby made a noise of absolute disgust that she usually only reserved for Meg when she started tapping out pi. "Respect for the rights of others is peace." She snorted in derision. "As long as you're a part of them."
They went over her acceptance letter until she got a complaint call. The Mollies. Reduced air flow. Again. She checked all the parameters for their home. Nothing on the software end was broken, which meant one of their screaming hellions had probably shoved something into the ducts again. How five adults couldn't handle three kids she didn't know. Her father managed two kids on his own and they only got into half as much trouble.
She plucked her notepad from Ruby's fingers. "I gotta go find out what the Mollies's spawn have shoved into the ducts today." She mimed pulling a mangled toy from overhead and tossing it away. "If it's gross and slimy I'll bring it back for you."
"Ugh." Ruby wrinkled her nose. "Why would you do that?"
"Because I care." Meg said serenely. She held the notepad up and gave it a shake. "If you want to keep working on this you could always open up your home network and invite me in."
"Or I could just dig my own eyes out with a spoon." Ruby said. She started shooing Meg towards the door. "At least then I wouldn't have to look at you, you eight-legged freak."
"At least I'm not falling all over the place on two measly legs." Meg retorted as she opened the door.
Ruby huffed and rolled her eyes before shoving her out the door. Meg was going to miss her when she left home.
Meg took her time strolling over to 7 Philae Ulitsa and dreading whatever fresh hell the Mollies's children had cooked up. When she finally knocked at the door Genevieve and Janet Mollies answered looking red faced and angry.
"This is the third time in the last four weeks the air flow has been suddenly blocked." Janet grumbled.
"It wasn't suddenly blocked." Meg said. She wasn't about to let them bad mouth her job even if she hated it. "It was jammed full of toys."
Meg headed over to the problem vent, leaving Janet and Genevieve behind to grumble. She put a hand up to it and started measuring airflow. Sure enough there was none. She pulled the cover off the duct. Maybe she'd weld the damn thing on so the Mollies’s children couldn't get it off anymore....or maybe she'd leave it for Tom and let him discover the joys of children on his own.
The source of the block was obvious now that she had the cover off. Bright pink goo was plugging the vent up ten centimetres in. She gave it a cursory poke. She started to pull her arm back but only got so far before she felt a tug; her hand firmly stuck to the pink goo. She gave her arm a sharp yank down but only succeeded in pulling out about thirty centimetres of flexible duct from the wall. She grabbed the duct with another hand, careful not to touch the pink goo, and tried to pull it off herself. It wouldn't budge.
She moved her arm up and down and watched as the duct went with her, attached by the pink goo. What the hell was this stuff? And how had the Mollies's children gotten a-hold of it?
She waved one of her free hands at Janet and Genevieve. "You mind telling me what I'm stuck to?" Meg asked. She flailed the duct, goo, and her arm.
Janet and Genevieve both stared at her with wide eyes. Meg let her limbs slump. She could already tell this was going to be the sort of story that was funny in retrospect but a pain in the ass to live through.
"We don't have a name for it yet but...it would be better if you didn't touch it." Genevieve said taking a cautious step back.
"Already broke that rule." Meg said. She let the duct go and gave her stuck arm a shake. The duct rattled along with her proxy and stayed firmly attached.
"We've been trying to develop a safer multipurpose adhesive." Genevieve said.
"And let me guess, this isn't the safe one." Meg said. She held up the limb stuck to the duct and started checking through the data from that limb. As far as she could tell the pink goo wasn't dissolving the arm or making it into a disgusting gelatinous mass.
"Oh. No. It's perfectly safe. We think it'll work wonderfully as a medical adhesive." Genevieve said but she didn't come any closer. "We just can't figure out a safe solvent for it."
"So far only high concentrations of acids at pH one and extreme heat have worked." Janet said and added as an afterthought, "It's been a bit of a problem in the lab."
Meg looked over the duct and wondered how the Mollies's children weren't stuck with their arms in the duct. If she'd had lungs she would have done one of her father's signature sighs. But she didn't so she took out her cutter and turned it on. She grabbed the flexible duct and pulled until she had about fifty centimetres out of the wall. She sliced off the duct just after the pink goo then held the goo covered arm above herself so she wouldn't stick to anything else. She didn't want to leave part of her proxy with the Mollies.
She did a quick fix with the duct and the vent then shoved it back into the wall. She stuck her hand in the now empty duct and measured air flow. Everything looked good. Now she just had to deal with the Mollies.
She turned back to Janet and Genevieve Mollies. She shook the goo arm at them. They backed up. She stepped forward and pointed the duct and arm in their faces— careful not to let it touch them. "Next time you think about complaining to me about the airflow in your home why don't you check and see what wonderful new thing your kids have jammed in there first and warn me about it."
Janet and Genevieve nodded enthusiastically and let out explosive sighs of relief when Meg moved the arm stuck to the pink goo away from them. Meg figured the lesson would stick- no pun intended- for at least a week. They asked if she wanted to go to the lab and be their guinea pig for the latest batch of solvents they had cooked up. Meg declined. The Mollies had a reputation in the labs and it wasn't a good one. Instead she asked for the research they had already done. She'd figure something out on her own instead of leaving it up to the Mollies and their weird experiments.
She let them cut a piece of a safety blanket for her. At least she could wrap the duct up and make sure nothing else stuck to the pink goo. She was just about to wrap it up when she realized that the Mollies had provided her with the perfect parting gift for Ruby. She tossed the square of safety blanket aside and left the Mollies looking horrified. She assured them- gleefully flashing the lights on her proxy- she wasn't going to get stuck anywhere she didn't want to be.
She made her way home and found Tom waiting for her with the latest accidentally left open job posting. She had half a mind to take her arm off and stick it to him and send him to the Mollies's lab.
Instead she breezed past Tom and went to her room. She detached the arm stuck in the pink goo and put it in a storage bin, careful to not let the pink goo touch anything, then ditched her proxy in the corner. She'd keep that safe for later.
She opened herself back up to the home network and stretched out. Tom was waiting for her of course but she did her best to ignore him. She idly went over the Mollies's research, their pink goo really might work as a medical adhesive if they could figure out how to dissolve it. Right now they had to make it on whatever surface they wanted to stick together. She shot off a few messages to Ruby bugging her to let her onto Ruby's home network. She was told in no uncertain terms to fuck off. Meg cackled to herself. Ruby was going to love her staying behind present.
A day later she sent off her letter of acceptance. Three days after that Infinity Regressions sent a new employees package and instructions as to where to meet their HR representative responsible for escorting new employees to Branch 8. She had to get herself from Mariner Orbital to Port Hochelaga in Laurentia‒ a UN member. There was a brief note at the end saying she'd be reimbursed for her travel expenses.
She sent off her official resignation letter to the works department of Mariner Orbital and started getting herself ready for travel. If she was going to rely on her proxy to keep her brain safe then her proxy was going to be well armoured. It still gave her a serious case of the creeps how anthrogenics just walked around with their brains all exposed. She preferred thirty centimetres of pulse shielding and fire proof coatings. Sometimes she worried about her father, Tom, and Ruby. Not all humans were built as sturdy as she was.
She finished packing and tidying up loose ends at work in barely under two days making it just in time to catch the next ship into UN space‒ a rare thing for Mariner Orbital.
Her father, Tom, and Ruby all had it in their heads to go up to the docks with her. Halfway there she threw up a ruckus about having forgotten something. She raced back home. She made sure not to act suspiciously in case her father or Tom was watching on the home network. She went into her room and got some silicone patches and the storage box with her arm.
She took one last look around her family home. This was it. She was leaving. Not for good but she probably wouldn't be home for years, decades more likely. She hurried out the door before she lost her nerve.
She raced over to Ruby's door. She opened the storage container in the corridor and took out the arm. She picked it up and tugged at the duct and her detached arm. They were still firmly stuck together. She pressed the whole mess against Ruby's door. She covered any of the pink goo still showing with silicone patches then arranged the arm to wave in a friendly greeting. She smugly rippled the lights on her proxy. Ruby was going to be pissed.
Meg rushed back to the others, empty storage container tucked under one of her arms just so she wouldn't raise suspicion.
They did their sappy goodbye; Ruby called her a seven-legged freak. Then Meg boarded the ship and that was it. She was off to her future in medicine, so long environmental control....so long Mariner Orbital.
She got an angry message from Ruby half an hour into her flight. Meg asked her if she could hold onto her hand for her. Ruby didn't appreciate the humour if the series of pictures of Ruby flipping her arm off were anything to go by.
The two weeks she spent on the ship to Port Hochelaga as a passenger weren't terrible. It was full of other people from PEST communities. They swapped ideas, bounced problems off of each other, and badmouthed the UN. It was the usual sort of competitive problem solving and disgruntlement. A family from a tiny outpost station called Rival Revival even seemed to have the answer to the Mollies's goo problem. She gave the family the Mollies's address and asked them to send her any of the better results. She hoped her co-workers at Infinity were half as interesting.
It wasn't until the ship docked at Port Hochelaga that she started having second thoughts. No one from a PEST community would look twice at her. Intelligences didn't have to go around pretending to be anthrogenics and it didn't matter how different an anthrogenic looked from an agrestal human. Everyone knew it wasn't what you looked like that made you human, it was the brains that counted.
The employee from Infinity sent to escort her to Branch 8 took one look at her proxy and gulped in fear.
Infinity knew she was an intelligence. She'd had to tell them, she'd need a few things not every human needed, but it wasn't as if she had sent them a headshot. All this employee knew was that he was waiting for an intelligence off a ship coming from the mare liberum. It turned out he hadn't expected her to have an imagination when it came to her proxy.
She went over to him and tried to keep her limbs politely to herself. "Hello."
"'....are you Meg Mironova Mariner?" The man asked. He looked like he was hoping the answer was no.
"The one and only." She was about to put three hands out to shake- it was a joke most people on Mariner appreciated- but thought she had already scared the poor guy enough as it was. He was probably UN bred and born and wouldn't know what to do.
"And you?" Meg asked as she stuck one hand out to shake.
".....Wyler Smet." The man said. He took her hand carefully and shook it. Then yanked his hand back as if he had realized he was shaking hands with a live wire. He stared down at his hand afterwards as if he was surprised to still have one.
"So where's this luxury cruise to Branch Eight?" Meg asked.
That seemed to snap Wyler out of it. He straightened his jacket and motioned to a gate a short distance from them. "You said a standard passenger vehicle was fine?"
Meg nodded. "I don't go walking around naked." She tapped the body of her proxy where she was— actually was. A jolt of fear went through her as the knowledge of just how exposed she was reared its ugly head again. She stamped down on the feeling and waved one limb in dramatic confidence. "I'm thoroughly protected."
Wyler looked like he was curious about what thoroughly protected meant but was too afraid to ask. He showed her over to the gate instead and then took off to see about her luggage.
Meg boarded the ship to Branch 8. One quick look around and it was obvious they had been expecting her to look more anthrogenic. She pushed furniture out of the way and made space for her proxy. She took a few pictures and sent them to Ruby with the caption, at least it's not the UN. The communications delay was already a day. She probably wouldn't hear back from Ruby until she got to Branch 8.
An hour later Wyler came onboard and told the pilot they were ready to go. Now it was just a week back in the direction she had come from.
The one week from Port Hochelaga to Branch 8 felt like four. The pilot, the two gunners, and her best buddy Wyler barely talked to her and the communications delay between the ship and home was getting longer each passing day. She tried to take a philosophical look on it. Everyone was the descendant of someone who'd been stuck on a ship for years with even longer communications delays or no communication at all. She probably had an ancestor who had been stuck on a ship with people as reverting as Wyler for years. She could tough out one week.
Even the philosophical outlook was still painfully boring. She worked on the solvent that the Rival Revival family had suggested and kept to herself.
She was all too happy to be off the ship when it finally docked at Branch 8 of Infinity Regressions.
"Meg, I presume?"
Meg focused in on a man wearing far more layers than what anyone needed on a properly kept station. She wondered if the suit was how he tried to show off to all new employees or if that was just how he dressed, like a cartoon villain from a story.
She stuck her hand out. "Yep. And you are...?"
"Crowley." He said. He didn't hesitate to shake her hand but Meg could see the subtle flinch go through him.
"The head honcho came down to meet me himself, huh?" Meg said. She had done her research long before she had even been interviewed, if Branch 8 were a kingdom Crowley was king.
"I like to meet all the new employees personally." Crowley said like it was some in-joke that she wasn't a part of. "Welcome them to the family so to speak."
She fought back the urge to message Ruby right in front of Crowley. If Branch 8 of Infinity Regressions was one big family, Crowley was definitely the creepy uncle and her escort to Branch 8 was that cousin that was always trying to hang out with the popular crowd.
Did that make her the cool aunt? Or the black sheep of the family?
"Great." Meg said doing her best to keep the sarcasm from her voice.
Crowley motioned to something in front of him. "So, I see that you'd prefer to house yourself in your office?"
Meg took a quick look at the empty space in front of Crowley. There was nothing. Which meant he must have a visual implant and wasn't sharing. Meg took it in stride. Back on Mariner Orbital it was rude to talk about a visual projection you weren't sharing but she wasn't about to call her boss rude less than an hour after she had met him. Maybe it was normal on the Branch 8 station.
"Yep." Meg said. "I need to think fully when I'm working."
One of the downfalls of the job was limited wireless range. She couldn't keep the important parts of herself safely at home because apparently Infinity was paranoid about employees stealing information and kept the personal network separate from the work network. Making a partial and sending it in to work every day was out of the question and there was no chance in fiery hell that she was keeping her entire self in her proxy for as long as she worked at Branch 8. She'd rather live out of her office. It wasn't like she needed a bathroom and a bed.
Crowley made an understanding noise- Meg doubted he understood- then waved his hand, motioning for her to follow him. "Why don't I just show you to your office? We can have ourselves a little get to know you chat."
"What about my things?" Meg said. Having someone at a commercial dock load up her belongings was one thing, it felt strange to leave her stuff sitting at a company dock.
Crowley made a dismissive gesture. "I'll have it brought to your office."
"....okay." Meg said.
Crowley headed towards a blue hallway. "Your office isn't far from the dock. Better for emergencies; being close by."
Meg knew in a roundabout way that not everything Infinity Regressions did was legal in every political zone and accidents did happen but it made her wonder just how many accidents happened that the medical facilities was neighbours with the dock.
"I'm surprised you applied to us." Crowley said as they walked down the blue hallway. "We don't get many PEST members coming to us."
"It's hard to get into medicine in PEST, particularly BAN." Meg said. Most communities were small and sent one of their own out to be trained. Mariner Orbital already had ten doctors— and enough neuroprosthetics enthusiasts to keep them busy with botched do it yourself jobs. They didn't need anymore. "I'd rather work for someone who will at least equally sell information than someone that hoards it."
Crowley chuckled. "PEST is still enamoured with the UN I see."
"Best friends these days." Meg said sarcastically.
"And our methods don't bother you?" Crowley asked curiously. "PEST members are pacifists, are they not?"
Meg laughed. That had to be her favourite stereotype about PEST. "It's the Peaceful Exploration of Space Treaty. We don't believe in using space to build and test war machines." She threw two arms out in a mock punch. "There's nothing against getting into a fight or two."
Crowley nodded. "Well. We try to avoid that but accidents do happen." He stopped in front of a double wide door. B A N was painted on in a lighter blue. "Your office." He gave her a passkey. "And your key."
Meg took the key and tried not to look too reverent about it. "Thanks."
"Your things should arrive shortly." Crowley said. "And HR will contact you for basic workplace training later today."
"Great." Meg said. Crowley excused himself. Meg barely heard him. She held the passkey up. This was it. She was a doctor and she had her own practice. She was a neuroprosthetist with an office and a lab. Soon she'd have patients. It was like she was a responsible adult or something. How in fiery hell that that happened?
She pressed the card against the scanner. The doors slid open onto her new life.