Time's Agent by Brenda Peynado

Author:Brenda Peynado
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tor Publishing Group

19

The next day, Alcantara showed up at my door. “You could make this easier if you were on dispatch and we wouldn’t have to come collect you.”

But how could I? Hear the recital of worlds upon worlds dying? Agents called to PW 3409, MPW 23, PW 987. Skeleton crew that we were, only thirty of us across the world, entire countries we no longer operated in. Calling in contractors to botch things up when we couldn’t. PWs that back when the world had been dazzling, when we had been so lush with plenty that I hadn’t even bothered to learn their names. Now, I would let whatever assigned partner drag me into the next engagement, but no further.

So Alcantara dragged me in. This time we were in a transport for a few seconds, long enough for him, goggle-eyed from the spherical distortion, to stare at my chest where my badge used to be, like he could see through my shirt to the PW I had hidden inside, and worse, like he could see some black heart of me.

“This one’s an easy one,” he said. “We’ve been hired to report on the feasibility of an agricultural PW’s ecosystem survival.”

He straightened my collar, swiping my neck with his fingertips, and a sharp prickle of alarm rang across my skin in every one of my pores. I couldn’t touch the exit doorpoint fast enough.

This time we arrived at a fruit distribution and packaging center, mangoes and apples and oranges painted on the external gates. Inside the courtyard, conveyor belts loaded and unloaded boxes from automated trucks and flying transports. Clouds of fly-sized shipping transports hovered above, mixing with the real flies feasting on fermented and rotted fruit.

I felt a ping at my temple as I waited for the Tiny Transport’s time dilation to spit Alcantara out. An updated engagement brief arrived over headlink. Though the original engagement—before we had entered the transport a few minutes ago relative, hours ago standard—had been to put together a report, a few months relative had passed in the PW and the political situation had changed. We were now back in closing mode, except this time it was over political turmoil—strikes, labor agitation, people burning the crops and threatening to do more. We were still to do our report, but off different parameters: the cost of sealing it for decades. If it would be profitable, we were supposed to seal the people inside.

Alcantara appeared next to me, an amused smile playing on his lips.

I yelled over the shouts of vendors in the market next to us. “Quarantining is one thing, but since when did the institute get involved in politics and strikes?”

“I thought you were supposed to be a genius,” Alcantara said. “The institute has always been involved in politics. What do you think the things you made were used for? But now even someone like you can see it. None of us are above it.”

“I won’t do it,” I said.

“That’s fine,” he said. That wolf grin. “You just write a little report.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.