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The Usage and Limits of Patience
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Yusef Brion
Big Yellow Pidgeon Inc.
#1 - 2015-10-08 03:35:03 UTC
Submitted for consideration in the YC 117 New Eden Capsuleer's Writing Contest
___________________________________________________________________
Essence:Crux:Couster IV

I used to think that what I do for a living had nothing to do with who I am. You know what I mean... I'm a good guy. It didn't matter if I was grinding steel ten hours a day, or coding an interface. I could clock out, walk out, and start being me again.

Yeah, I used to think that. Then I got this job.

The recruiting post was the craziest thing I'd ever seen listed. I only went in to the interview to see what kind of crazy idiot would pay to have it run.

Quote:
Have you been diagnosed with a terminal illness?
Are you clinically depressed?
Burdened with crippling debt?
There is a solution. BYPI is interviewing candidates for one day only.
Call ## for an appointment.


I ran a search, and it was being run on every vid channel and in every forum, planet-wide. No way it was anything other than a capsuleer. It doesn't make any sense does it? What possible use could he have for these people? I figured, maybe I’ll go meet him. Why not, between jobs right now anyway... What could it hurt?

Making the appointment was easy, but the girl on the phone couldn't tell me a damn thing about the job. So, I went out to the edge of town at the end of the week. You know that little white building with the mirror windows out by the old stadium? Yeah, I pulled up about 10 minutes early and the parking lot was empty. So I waited. Nobody else pulled into the lot.

It was so quiet out there that I had to say it out loud "**** it, I'm already here. May as well go in."

The doors opened with a stutter as I came near. Just a big empty lobby with a big white sign with a big black arrow.

"Ok, I'll bite..."

A voice answered me "That's not in the job description, but if that’s what turns your crank..."

She was a lot older than I'd expected from the sound of her voice. Said her name was Mertie, but I figured that was short for something else. She asked me a couple questions, the same ones from the ad, and her face twisted in disappointment.

"You aren't at all what I'm supposed to be looking for. Why are you even out here?"

"Well Mertie, the job posting was half a shade short of crazy. So I figured, how many times will you get a chance to meet a capsuleer? That's why I'm out here."

She looked like she was going to bust her spleen, and the blood rushed to my face. Who the hell was she to laugh at me like that?

"Oh god... sweetie... no. No, you ain't gonna meet a capsuleer. Why don't you go home and forget all about this?"

"I'm not good enough for your job? Seems like you're taking any kind of warm bodies, why not me?"

"Oh honey... you don't want this job. Trust me. Just go home."

I couldn't stop thinking about it for the whole weekend. I was even going to go back, but the ad said 'one day only'. That's when I got the call.

“DO YOU STILL NEED A JOB MR.PECHUR?”

The link came in with no video. Loud. No doubt it was some kind of sim. "Yeah. Who's this?"

“DETAILS WILL FOLLOW SHORTLY. IF YOU ARE INTERESTED, BE READY FOR TRANSPORT BY 0400 LOCAL.”

That was it. Call ended. What the hell was I getting myself into?


So, the job. Every day I went to that building. Check the status on the displays. Took me all of ten minutes. For that I got paid enough to send my niece and nephew to the best school in the sector, once they grow up anyway. Paid off my Mom and Dad's house. I got myself a nice place out by the coast. Oh, and a boat. I've only been out on her twice, want to see some pics?

Every day I went to that empty building, go down the stairs and through the checkpoints. Check the displays. Same as yesterday. Same as tomorrow. Ten minutes of work, check the boxes on the form, hit submit and go back home. Or wherever. As long as I am back at the same time tomorrow. Two and a half years of that.

Only one catch. Total secrecy. All the forms and officials are taken care of, so I don't file for income. Can't tell anyone where the money is coming from. Nobody ever goes to the building with me, and absolutely no one goes in.

How long could you do that job? I felt like I could do it forever. Every day I expected to show up to that building and have the doors locked on me. Eventually I started to wonder what the hell I was doing. Every word on those displays got burned into my memory, and I used that as a starting point. I started reading, researching.

Then I started spending. Contacts, investigators, bribes... It was a mess. Took me almost a year to run all the leads down to nothing. After all that time and money, I had nothing. Nothing but the job. My biggest lead was staring me in the face every day and all I could do was check the boxes, hit submit and go home. So last night, I didn't.

I still went out to the building. Down the stairs, through the checkpoints and into the room with the displays. I took a chair down with me this time, the first time. I put the chair down in front of the screens and sat there.

The more I read the forums over the years, the more I swear. To god. That the typos are intentional mistakes. Part o f the encryption.
Yusef Brion
Big Yellow Pidgeon Inc.
#2 - 2015-10-08 03:37:50 UTC  |  Edited by: Yusef Brion
YC117.09.19 11:50

There is a room in a building on a planet. The room has three screens which display coded information, and must be checked daily. The building has security and surveillance, but it is all for show. Backup systems provide power to a transmitter connected to the screens. This configuration is repeated in three locations on every planet in the local cluster.

In one room, on one night, the forms were not filled out. A timer sends a signal to the transmitter, which broadcasts into deep space.

Deep in space, a capsuleer's pod receives a signal, aligns to a space station and jumps to warp.
_______________________________________________________________________________

After diagnostics, but before I drop from warp, I log in to the local communications beacon. Remote login causes the screens to go black in the facility that tripped the trigger. A man in a chair jumps up, the color draining out of his face as he stares at the screens. I can see him, but he will not see me. I switch the feed to the center screen and launch the simulacrum I've made in my image.

“Mr. Pechur. You have failed your task.” My sim begins talking with the man while I open the mail server, market window and Corporate Assets ledger.

He is confused, scared. “What? Who is this? What do you mean?”

“I am your employer, Mr. Pechur. I set you a task 2 years 4 months and 14 days ago. You agreed to perform this task until I had deemed it unnecessary. You have failed.” Sim is still too formal. I tune some settings in the real time comms window.

“You're... you're the capsuleer?”

I hate this part. They react so predictably. I begin setting orders on the market until I hear Aura chime in with her familiar ‘docking request accepted’...

“Yes Mr. Pechur, I am your employer. Or rather I WAS your employer.”

“Wait, what?”

“You failed Mr. Pechur.”

“Ok hold on, cut the ****. What the hell have you had me doing here for two and a half years?”

There it is. Good. Always nice to see that there are still people who can stand up to one of us. My capsule enters the hangar bay and I see the small fleet I left behind. Lots of activity as they are being brought back to life.

“Do you remember when you interviewed for a job I had posted on your planet Mr. Pechur?”

“Quit calling me that. My name is Genjit, or don't you even care to give a **** anymore?”

Hm. That’s a bit much. I shut down the sim’s AI and close the other windows in my overview. Now it acts as my face, but my mind takes over the conversation.

“Ok, Genjit. I'm Yusef.”

He is stunned. Could he have seen the transition frame? He’s quiet. Maybe it’s a trick of my imagination. I don't think he was expecting that. We wait. Actually, I don't think he knows what to expect. Let me try that again...

“So, Genjit. Do you remember interviewing for that job?”

That’s got his brain engaged again. “What? It wasn't an interview really more like…”

I interrupt. “Yes. I didn't need you for that job. You see, I needed enough people to run a cruiser that I knew was doomed. I needed people who had nothing to live for, and I sent them to their deaths.”

He is silent. I can see the turmoil behind his eyes. I continue. “We always need people like that. Sometimes though, we need people like you.”

“What are you talking about?” He yells, confused.

Invisible behind the sim, I grin in my pod.

The more I read the forums over the years, the more I swear. To god. That the typos are intentional mistakes. Part o f the encryption.
Lunarisse Aspenstar
Societas Imperialis Sceptri Coronaeque
Khimi Harar
#3 - 2015-10-08 19:29:43 UTC
Thank you for your submission!

For those readers of Eve Fiction who don't read the IGS, the contest is referenced and explained here:

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=446183&find=unread