Station Six by S.J. Klapecki

Author:S.J. Klapecki
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: AK Press
Published: 2022-10-06T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

After the meeting, the PFs had to deal with conclusions and discuss with other sectors over those physical wires and connections that still functioned. The data streaming through them was fast and reached anywhere and everywhere in the station. It wasn’t a problem, at least not strictly, of communication. From the different terminals and computers where fiber optics ran, one could communicate damn near seamlessly with anyone else in the station. The only problem is that it could be tapped. Communications were brief, cryptic and encrypted on top of that. As long as everyone knew what was going on, it sufficed, and the channels were shut down as soon as possible.

After the meeting, Max decided that some more sleep would be a better idea than deliberation and doubt. They had said yes, they had wanted to help. This was the end result. They could manage that, right?

Sleep was uneasy and sporadic. When they finally got up, convinced themselves to come back to the waking world, they felt even more tired than before. A different tired—numbness, really. They looked at the clock. The meeting had ended at nearly midnight; it was now somewhere around 5 a.m. Victoria had told them to meet at the barricades at the monorail around ten the next day. With so much time and nothing to do, Max wandered aimlessly. They hadn’t asked if they could help or anything, it had just been a beeline back to sleep. They thought they should feel bad about that, but their brain decided anxiety and a cold, hollow feeling were suitable substitutions for guilt.

Max swallowed coffee from a small Styrofoam cup. They took a bite out of their burrito and sighed. Someone was playing music from their phone, distant and almost drowned out. Max didn’t recognize the singer or the song. Some pleasant, soft chords that sounded like they had been recorded live, electronic jitters that were too consistent to be audio glitches. Half syllables, repeated again and again in the chorus. Max felt their thoughts pause and repeat with those syllables. Nothing coherent enough to express formed, and they felt the minutes and hours tick by.

Closer to the hour, Max got up and got themselves some more coffee. From the coffee machines, free of charge and with a big sign that read “Expropriated” hanging from the front, they poured a slow, steady stream of espresso. Stored in a big tank at the back, it wasn’t the best in the world, but, Max reasoned, if you were drinking espresso for the flavor, then you were probably a lost cause culinarily.

The new jitters of caffeine joined the fray against exhaustion, bolstering nervous twitches and ticks. They felt their stomach rumble uncomfortably, but they bit into their burrito all the same.

They grabbed their equipment: laptop, all sorts of wires, different specialist tools of the trade, and some useful but strictly analog tools—a can of compressed air, a pocketknife (Were those still legal? They’d bought it years ago…) and a set of hex keys—all stored in their shoulder pack.

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