Aijlan by Andy Graham

Author:Andy Graham [Graham, Andy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-03-30T22:00:00+00:00

XXII - The First GTC

Beth headed over to the file boxes on the shelves. Successive division heads in Sci-Corps had had different ideas of how things should be ordered. Keen to make a mark, each one had imposed fresh systems on the old. It had resulted in an organisational backlog of the archives that was as inconsistent as it was unnecessary, a backlog that stretched into thick layers of dust on the shelves.

Beth’s face was calm; the deep lines were gone. Some people drank, exercised, surfed drivel on the Internet, or bullied others in order to unwind. Beth systemised. She called it organising; he called it controlling. He guessed she was trying to decide whether the files looked better in alphabetical order or by height.

He considered helping her. It would make a change from his time buried with the sun-fans, but he wasn’t sure he trusted himself to be that close to her anymore, despite what she had said about his loyalty. That bothered him: a burr under his saddle, that he couldn’t reach, but wouldn’t scratch if he could. He twisted back to the computer, psyching himself up to wrestle with it for another day.

Beth blew a swathe of dust off a grey binder full of old computer discs, and placed it next to a red file marked with the same year. “Do you know why the First Great Trade Conflict, the last official war we took part in, was fought?” She blinked the dust out of her eyes.

Rick glanced over. Date. She had gone for time in the end. The dust on the far end of the shelves had already been disturbed, he noted. Someone must have been in here while he was off duty, looking for something amongst all the digital junk.

“A handful of Aijlan politicians and business people wanted to protect their own commercial interests, and government departments from interference from foreign companies. They rebelled against the president and chancellor of the time,” he said, digging the grime out of a groove on the keyboard. “Every school kid in my generation remembers learning that headline in school: the day decorum died, and our noble parliament was reduced to a bar-room brawl.” Rick chuckled. “They were whipping each other with wet ties, soaked in red wine of all things, by the time the police brought it under control. I remember acting it out with Stann in the Old Town playground. The footage of that scene is what got me into cameras in the first place.”

Beth stuck her fingers in her ears and grimaced. “Stop. I know, you told me that once or twice.”

Rick ignored the jibe. “Beyond that, I don’t really know what it was about. Except we’d have a lot more families in Aijlan if the soldiers sent to the First GTC had fought with wine-soaked ties rather than bullets and bombs. My family was lucky. My dad survived and celebrated the old-fashioned way. Nine months later I popped out.”

Beth finished sorting a series of old

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