Can I Be Of Some Assistance

By Adam Wasserman

Angolina Reeves is a simple Ward of the State. In a yearstretch's time, she expects to graduate and become a full-fledged citizen. She will work hard, stay loyal, and if she's lucky one daystretch make it all the way to Alpha clearance. But in the Bunker – a utopian dreamland – disaster is never far away. And when it strikes, she finds herself trapped out in the dark.

And so, together with an unhygienic smack addict by the name of Finian Flanagan and a mysterious stranger from the outside, she sets out to find her way back to civilization. Needled, cajoled, ramrodded, tormented, and bullied, Angolina is forced to contend with adults and in the process become one herself.

But time is running out. For it isn't just cold and hunger that threaten her fragile innocence. Branded a traitor by Control, the Bunker's vast and all-knowing overseer, she must somehow redeem herself before it's too late.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Adam Wasserman
• Release date: Sep 30, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370505470

Adam Wasserman

Adam Wasserman was - like all human beings - born on Earth. In the years since, he has proved himself to be an avid breather. He also eats regularly.Since all humans look alike, it is hard to differentiate him from the rest. He is, however, easiest to spot when lying on a beach, subjecting himself to a steady stream of dangerous rays from Sol. Such behavior is illogical, a common trait among his species.Eventually, his body will wear out and he will cease to function. In the meantime, he keeps busy by publishing falsehoods in book form, which somehow he imagines others will find entertaining and instructive.Humans are, of course, a strange and unfathomable species.

Book preview

For

Bryan and Mary-Ellen

Doran

your support has been

invaluable

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

The Grey Life

Ms. Wellington's Oak Tree

The Politics of Consumption

Bringing Down the House

Gyges the Terrible

THE BUNKER SERIES

Thank You For Your Cooperation

Your Call Is Important To Us

Today's Edition

Can I Be

Of Some

Assistance

the Bunker Series, #3

Adam Wasserman

First Edition, October 2016

Copyright 2016 by Adam Wasserman

All rights reserved

Smashwords Edition

Chapter 1

Even so far out in the silent depths of space, stranded alone on asteroid Liberty-B7, Antoine Ljubek was a happy man. The work was grueling, he was always cold, and there was no one to talk to. But Antoine endured these hardships nonetheless. He had endured them for seven long yearstretches, and he would endure them for thirteen more. That was the deal when he'd signed up to be a miner. No one had forced him into it.

There was a reason he was content to overlook the discomforts of life on asteroid Liberty-B7. After his contract expired – thirteen long yearstretches from now – the quibble would come for the last time and he'd start on the journey back to the Bunker. There, he would be welcomed as a hero and awarded a coveted Delta security clearance. Wherever he went, people would stop and gawk. He'd get to sip cocktails, go to bed with beautiful women, and be featured in Your Magazine. But more importantly, he'd have the esteemed privilege of doing nothing. And at a mere thirty-six yearstretches of age, there would be plenty of opportunity to enjoy his retirement.

This was, of course, the only reason anyone would sign up to be a miner in the first place. It certainly wasn't for the amenities.

Back in the Bunker, everyone is assigned a job by Control. But certain of the most challenging tasks are reserved exclusively for those who dare to volunteer.

He thought of all the loyal citizens he had left behind, struggling to distinguish themselves, slogging through their tedious, meaningless lives.

Suckers!

Not that his life was especially exciting. Mining planetary ices on Liberty-B7 – although incredibly dangerous – was as much a routine as stuffing filing cabinets or sorting screws back in the Bunker. In fact, the routine was a real threat on par with microgravity and the lack of oxygen. Out in space, when you stop paying attention and start operating on autopilot, that's when accidents happen.

He'd already made it through seven grueling yearstretches. Toxic concentrations of carbon monoxide in his barracks or a burned out transponder in the communications closet wasn't going to stop him now.

Antoine was climbing slowly down a steep cliff face. The brilliant, yellow orb of the sun beat upon his back. Even this far out in the solar system, a hundred million kilometers past the orbit of Mars, he could feel the heat through his ecopack. Bunched up under his chest, his gloved hands gripped a thick cable. Made of tightly interwoven cords of flextex fibers, it was fraying in several spots. But it was his only lifeline. If he were somehow to become detached from it – if it should happen to break or he were to let go – he would start to float away from the surface of the asteroid. It had happened once before. Fortunately, he had been able to get a handhold on a rocky outcropping. Otherwise he would have begun to helplessly orbit Liberty-B7 until his air ran out. And probably for a long time after that.

The asteroid did have its own minuscule field of gravity. He knew which way was up, for example. Unfortunately, small asteroids like this one were little more than irregularly shaped heaps of clay, ices, and hydrated minerals. You had to be nimble to get around on the surface. You had to be able to pull yourself up sheer rock faces at odd angles and avoid puncturing your ecopack. You had to be mentally fit, too. How else would anyone be able to endure monthstretches of boredom and isolation? Being a miner out in the asteroid belt wasn't for everyone.

At the top of this particular cliff was a smooth plain of rubble disturbed by a large impact crater. He had been pulling chunks of ammonia from it for the last three monthstretches. Nearby was a storage shed and next to it a call beacon. The shed was half-full. Which meant he still had some work to do before the quibble would come and shuttle him to Malkuth, the nearest vestige of civilization, for some much needed R&R. While they loaded up the cargo ships for the long haul back to the Bunker, he'd drink, fuck, and brawl, and then the cycle would start all over again.

Up ahead, he saw the pitted land rover parked just where he'd left it. God only knew how old it was or how many previous miners it had served. But it worked well enough. The solar panels sticking out like many-jointed, metallic arms were still good for as much as a three kilometer journey.

How long had he been up there at the mine? It was impossible to tell. Liberty-B7 spun too quickly to keep track. If he looked, he could see the backdrop of grainy stars sliding effortlessly into the horizon on the one side and gushing forth on the other. They shone insistently in their background of deep, velvety blackness except where the sun – a mad orb spewing fiery light – obscured them. The sharp, oblong shadows cast by tiny outcroppings of rock sticking up through the soil crept along the surface towards the horizon like skeletal fingers.

He took a few steps through the bleak landscape. His booted feet sank into the loose soil. To the left and right, the dull, obsidian blanket of pebbles and soot spread out in irregular dunes. Where Antoine walked, however, the ground was disturbed by countless footprints and the many wiggly, double trenches left by the land rover's wheels.

This was the life of a miner out in the asteroid belt. There was no time off. He slept, he shoveled powdered Vitamim into his mouth, swallowed a few mouthfuls of Indigo Drink. Then, he headed out the barracks onto the unforgiving surface of Liberty-B7. His only sense of accomplishment and the sole source of his anticipation was the slowly diminishing capacity of the storage shed.

It was because of the time he spent on Malkuth that he knew his body had changed. For one thing, his face had swollen into a round ball. His hair was falling out, too. But that wasn't the worst of it. Strange, hard lumps had developed on his neck and back. He occasionally saw flashes of white light. Spots, streaks and stars, he knew they weren't actually there. And sometimes he found it hard to remember things. On Malkuth there were other miners, and they all reported the same symptoms. There was nothing to worry about, he had been assured. His body would bounce back as soon as he returned to the Bunker.

Seven yearstretches. He'd been doing the job long enough that he'd even got to pass on the good news to someone else. Last time on Malkuth he ran into a fresh face, a young kid just over from Venus (or was it Mars?) and still in her first yearstretch on the job. No need to get all worked up, he had confidently assured her when she referred to her bloated face. It's just a temporary condition.

When the intense stream of X-rays and gamma radiation reached him, Antoine's skin instantly bubbled up and turned black. His eyeballs sank into his head. The moisture in his body heated up and started to boil.

His mouth opened to scream, but Antoine was already dead.

The problem with traveling through space, thought Citizen Commander Nirmalkumar Palanisamy, is that you never feel like you are actually going anywhere.

Calmly, pensively, he pulled at the oiled tips of his moustache and stared at an oblong tube suspended over the front of the bridge. It was the middle one of three. A few knobs and a stunted joystick on the armrest of his Chair operated it. Currently, the tube was showing a wide-angle view of the region in front of the ship. It contained absolutely nothing of interest.

Why he should be staring at the wide-angle view – or why the ship's controls provided it at all – was a vague mystery to Nirmalkumar. Spaceships travel at such fantastic speeds their human navigators could not possibly react to what they saw in time to be of any use to themselves. They had therefore come to rely on instruments, not to mention the big bot brain swimming in a tank of clear liquid buried somewhere in the engine room. The wide-angle view served no purpose whatsoever, not even an aesthetic one.

The poor, ignorant typhoids, he mused as he considered the ship's architects in Developmental Engineering. Obviously, they had never ventured out in one of their own creations before.

The Paragon class of spaceship – to which this vessel belonged – was equipped with enough air and power to make the trip from Mars to Venus when they are on opposite sides of the sun, easily a seven monthstretch journey. There were cramped quarters for a crew of ten, but the reservoirs only held enough water to reasonably sustain them for six of those monthstretches.

There were other curious design features, too.

Partly due to the shortage of water, crew members did not bathe in the usual way. Instead, they were issued moist towelettes. Once removed from the crinkly packaging, they were meant to be used a single time and then discarded.

Despite the operating instructions that came with the ship, it was not advisable to dispose of the unsanitary wipes with the rest of the trash. The recycling systems choked up on them and eventually ceased to function – a harrowing and deadly problem which the first crew to be issued the towelettes discovered too far out into the cold depths of space to regret for long.

One and a half monthstretches into the crossing from Earth to Venus, dirty, crumpled body wipes had been thrust into any available space. Piled up against the near wall of the engine room. Spilling over from the emptied portions of the storeroom onto dusty, unopened cans of powdered Vitamim and vacuum-packed meds. Under his Commander's Chair on the bridge.

Mold and mildew are a deadly threat on any space voyage. Filters worked ceaselessly to drain moisture from the air and feed it back into the ship's reservoirs. First-class machinery that was used in the Bunker itself, they were having trouble coping with the added strain caused by the vapor evaporating from the abandoned towelettes.

Then there was the fact that his bunk was a mere twenty centimeters from the ceiling.

Citizen Commander Nirmalkumar decided to think about something else. To dwell on the peculiarities of the present would inevitably lead to his arrest by the authorities for defeatism, sabotage, or simply scowling at the wrong person.

A positive mindset is essential to a happy, healthy lifestyle. This was a central tenet of the Citizen Commander's life. How else had he risen up through the ranks of Defense and been put in charge of his very own spaceship?

For a few monthstretches at least, he could live free of surveillance and the worry of informers. It was a luxury few others in the Bunker knew or enjoyed.

Not far away, down a few steps to his left, stood Alejandro. He was hunched over one of the consoles embedded in the hulking, semicircular bank of controls that ran along one side of the cramped bridge. A fell, blue glow bathed his face. Occasionally he chewed pensively on his lower lip.

Alejandro, his systems engineer, was an ugly man whose body seemed to have been assembled from the remains fished out of the trash bins near a medical clinic. Not only was he hideous to behold, but his nose was constantly dripping. Perhaps related to this unfortunate condition, he had the obnoxious and offensive habit of wheezing.

Even now, as he pored intently over the readouts, slimy fingertips sliding over the console leaving streaks, he was making unflattering noises.

Citizen Commander Nirmalkumar cringed and clenched his teeth. If only the little smack addict could be silenced forever! Going to another part of the ship didn't help. He could hear the wretched creature through the walls.

Yesterday, over a period of several hourstretches, we were bombarded by abnormally high levels of X-ray and gamma radiation, Alejandro announced, still hunched over his station.

Were we now? murmured Citizen Commander Nirmalkumar.

All indications are that the source of these intense beams was the sun.

I see. How interesting.

Alejandro twisted his bent frame and turned to face him. Bushy eyebrows and a few angry, stray hairs bristled at the Citizen Commander. Not interesting. It's a very dangerous situation, sir. The ship's armor shielded us from this potent burst of energy. But –

Excellent! Nirmalkumar clapped his hands, got up from his Chair and stretched. I have complete faith in your abilities.

A sneer seemed to want to take hold of Alejandro's face. Sir, I don't think you understand. What usually follows is –

Sparks sprayed from the controls. Alejandro yelped and leapt back. The glow panels flickered, dimmed, and were extinguished.

Citizen Commander Nirmalkumar coughed uncomfortably in the sudden and impenetrable darkness. How long until power is restored?

Alejandro's voice trembled slightly when he answered. I don't know, sir. Do we have any spare power cells?

Back on the orbiter circling high above the planet Earth, Nirmalkumar had secretly arranged for several useless crates to be offloaded and replaced with contraband. No one on board knew about the exchange. He was, after all, a member of the Coven, a secret organization often erroneously associated with the Underground. A benign, enlightened group of citizens devoid of violent intent, they sought to reestablish a link with humanity's obscure (and forbidden) past. Of particular interest to his brothers and sisters in the Coven were genuine artifacts originating from Earth. Which, as an added convenience, also happened to fetch quite a price on the black market back in the Bunker.

After putting down on the garden planet and settling into his quarters safely underground, he had gone through great pains to sneak unobserved into the outside. There, he braved both dry, stifling winds and radiation hot spots – those lingering clouds of invisible death that still raked the surface – trying to track down the half-buried remains of an ancient town. All he had to go on were rumors and a dubious map someone had sketched for him, but they were enough.

The ruins were delicate and treacherous. One misstep and he would fall into vast, hidden spaces where he would lie injured and trapped amongst the very relics he wished to recover. Carefully, then, he rummaged through the decay, collecting whatever he could from the blasted heaps of rusty metal and crumbling concrete structures.

As the Citizen Commander of his very own spaceship, he was in a unique position to help advance the Coven's agenda. This was not the first time he had risked his life for a few culturally enriching treasures. But this was by far the largest lode yet. He needed extra space to store what he had brought back.

He strained to remember. Those useless crates he had offloaded... hadn't the words Battery Packs been stamped on the top?

Spare power? Not that I recall.

The recycling systems are down, Citizen Commander. We've got perhaps an hourstretch of air at the most. Nervously, Alajandro let loose a fluid stream of gasps and snorts.

Well, Nirmalkumar thought to himself caustically as he groped for the door, he had certainly got what he wished for.

The data center in the Earl Lauer Butz main transfer hub gliding smoothly over the planet Mars – the fourth planet from the sun – was little more than a long, narrow bay tucked between the officer's mess hall and the orbiter's engine room. Technicians were in constant flux from one end to the other. They pushed rudely past the analysts' tightly packed chairs as they went, heedless and uncaring of the havoc they caused. Nor were the analysts in any position to complain. The technicians all had a Delta clearance, but the analysts were merely Epsilons, a step lower on Control's ladder of trustworthiness.

Everyone on the orbiter had a security clearance. After all, the hordes of anonymous, no-clearance peons stranded under the surface of the planet below – the teamsters, reactor core attendants, interim deputy assistant typesetters and their ilk – were blissfully ignorant of everything that existed beyond the tall, curving domes of their plazas. They had all been assured there was nothing out there aside from a hostile, black void punctuated by a few sterile gobs of deserted space rock. Only citizens with a security clearance knew about the other Bunkers, and so only citizens with a security clearance were allowed into space.

Far below the Earl Lauer Butz main transfer hub, buried safely underground on Mars, were five Bunkers: Hebes, Ganges, Appolinaris, Elysium, and Hecatus. Venus – the second planet from the sun – hosted Lakshmi, Tethus, Phoebe, and Niobe Bunkers. In addition, there was Malkuth, the roving way station far away that served the miners scattered throughout the asteroid belt.

A single, lonely viewport had been set into the stained strips of corrugated steel that lined the data center's walls, looking out over the dismal planet. A fiery, red light reflected on the faces of the citizens toiling within as they busily tapped consoles, turned knobs, and occasionally referred to the flashing circles and digits on the glowing tubes tucked into the corners by the ceiling.

The planet itself presented a hazardous environment to the pathfinders and other lowly recruits from Procurement who braved it daily. It was wracked by dust storms and plagued by dangerously low temperatures. But the surface conditions here were far more forgiving than those of Venus. Despite its thin, almost non-existent atmosphere and lack of water, there were familiar, recognizable features down there. Mountains, valleys, dried up lakes and river beds. There were four seasons, and the amount of time that passed between sunrises roughly corresponded to a daystretch back in the Bunker.

Even Darryl Konango knew about mountains, valleys, and lakes. He knew about the seasons back on Earth, too. He had never been, nor did he ever expect to go. Earth was a polluted wasteland, more perilous than Venus itself. Ships only passed through the vicinity on their way to some other destination, and their flight paths universally ensured they never got close.

To be sure, Darryl Konango wasn't thinking about Earth. He wasn't thinking about the surface conditions on Mars, either, nor did he pay any attention to the technician who rudely shoved his chair, suddenly (and painfully) squeezing him up against the edge of his desk. Darryl Konango was preoccupied by the sudden disappearance of two vessels he had been tracking that morning.

A thin film of sweat gleamed on his forehead. Hunched over, he discreetly tried to obscure it with a clammy hand.

He pored over the reams of coordinates and their corresponding timestamps. Then, obliquely, he stared up at one of the tubes and scoured it for some sign of the missing blips.

Nothing. There was a conspicuous swath of emptiness stretching out from Venus towards Mars and nothing more.

Granted, there weren't ever many ships traveling through space. The Bunker simply didn't have the resources to deploy more than a few at a time. Nor was there any need. Only citizens with a security clearance could travel throughout the solar system, which (according to the latest numbers from Human Resources) comprised approximately two percent of the entire population. And at any given time, most of them were staying put.

George Walker, Darryl mumbled despondently – and then glanced around to make sure no one had heard.

A short but penetrating whine pierced the strained quiet of the data center as the loudspeakers were activated. Paging sergeant Darryl Konango, came the alluring female voice that made most of the announcements on the Earl Lauer Butz main transfer hub. Darryl had never seen her, nor would he ever. Voicebots had no physical presence in the Bunker. This one had been carefully calibrated to sound like a beautiful, young woman completely immune to the ravages of time and the pitfalls of dating. Your presence is required in the officer's mess hall. Paging sergeant Darryl Konango. Report to the officer's mess hall at once.

It could only mean one thing: his supervisor, Citizen Major Ursula Minx, knew about the ships' disappearance, too.

Darryl Konango took a few steady breaths and stood up.

It was a terrible event whenever a spaceship was lost. In the nine yearstretches he had been assigned to the Flight Planning division of the Defense conglomerate, he could only remember a handful of such disasters. His thoughts went out to the pitiful souls on board. There was no doubt in his mind that they had all met lonely, terrible deaths.

He also couldn't help but think of the poor data analysts who had been responsible for tracking those ships and the punishment that had been meted out to them.

Grimly, he pushed his way through the data center towards the narrow hatchway at its end, groping for any likely explanation.

Had they been struck by an asteroid?

There are billions – perhaps trillions – of asteroids in the solar system, but most are confined to specific regions of space. Earth, Mars, and most notably Jupiter share orbits with clusters of them called trojans. Located in special places called Lagrange points where the local gravity of each planet and the sun balance each other out, these trojans travel at the same speed as the planets themselves and therefore pose no danger. Everyone knows where these Lagrange points are – sixty degrees ahead or behind a planet in its orbit – and spaceships are never piloted through them.

The most famous grouping of asteroids lies beyond the orbit of Mars and extends half way towards Jupiter. Aside from a few gaps where the Jovian planet's vast and influential gravity has swept space clean, their distribution is somewhat regular. But as many asteroids as there may be in this main belt, space is so incredibly vast that the chances of actually being struck by one is exceedingly small. Still, flight paths are usually plotted outside the plane of the ecliptic – the flat, two-dimensional surface where most objects in the solar system trace their paths around the sun – to avoid just such unexpected collisions.

Lastly, there are the Near-Earth objects. These are asteroids that have been bumped out of the main belt or whose orbits have deteriorated due to the constant, repetitive cycles of warming and cooling by the sun. Small and rare, they are dispersed at random throughout the inner solar system. As far as Darryl knew, there were no known cases of any accidents involving them.

A collision with an asteroid was therefore unlikely.

He could easily conjure up other explanations, each one more fantastic and improbable than the one before it. Faulty equipment, hull integrity failure, navigational error...

Darryl sighed.

God only knew how many times the crap made in the Bunker had failed to hold up under the stresses of regular use – not to mention being looked at the wrong way.

He was standing at the end of the bay, staring dejectedly at his boots.

Slowly, his hands reached out and took hold of the sturdy circular wheel mounted in front of the hatch.

Two ships at once. In his mind, he could picture them as they had last appeared on the tube, lining up perfectly with Venus, Mars, and the sun. A rare and remarkable event in itself, he had taken a stretch to observe it.

George Walker, that's it!

He jerked the wheel so hard he almost fell through the hatchway.

A torrent of noise and light hit him from the other side.

The officer's mess hall was a small, square room with dark-grey and white floor tiles, rectangular viewports providing expansive views of the cosmos, and walls painted in curving stripes of various shades of brown and orange. Seemingly tossed about in disorderly fashion were matching sets of red designer furniture, comfortable couches and the furry, rounded tables attached to their base. Running in a thin, sleek line just under the ceiling, glow panels flashed in quick patterns of mesmerizing light. The smell of perfume and stale alcoholic beverages hung heavily in the air.

Mounted securely into the ceiling at regular intervals and attentively surveying the crowd were six security cameras. A gleaming, red light burned brightly beneath each one. They were watching, and if there hadn't been so much noise, the low hum emanating from their battery blocks would have been difficult to ignore. These powered the laser cannon attached to either side of the mount, muzzles trained rigidly in the camera's line of sight.

For any of the Bunker's citizens – from the lowest reactor core attendant to the high programmers themselves – being the focus of a security camera outfitted with heavy weaponry was a uniquely moving experience.

Set in one corner was a little dais where a bleatbot had been stationed. Loud, pulsating music blasted from its speakers as its squat, stunted body spun about on a round pedestal.

Along the opposite wall, sullen attendants manned two serving stations, ladling slop into flimsy, plastex bowls held unenthusiastically by the officers standing in line. Darryl had never eaten here, but he had heard that the officers got better grub than was served in the yeoman's commissary at the other end of the orbiter.

The officer's mess hall was restricted to those with a Delta clearance and above. The dark grey and white tiles were forbidden to the likes of Darryl Konango.

Fortunately, a thin, red line the width of his booted feet snaked across the floor. It meandered towards a hatchway set inconspicuously to the right of the serving stations, tucked in-between a vending machine and a pill dispenser. This thin, red line was Epsilon clearance, and it was the only safe path through the room.

When Darryl reported for work each morning, the way was clear and easy to traverse. But by the end of his daystretch, the unruly officers had rearranged the furniture. A number of obstacles now awaited him.

Off to the left, occupying one of the couches, was his supervisor, Citizen Major Ursula Minx. She waved as soon as he caught her eye.

The first few steps were free from obstruction, but several officers nearby had already caught sight of him. Suddenly, they all had pressing business at the other end of the room. Before he knew it, Darryl was buffeted on all sides by thick, uniformed bodies. They pretended to take no notice as he fought to keep his balance. One tiny misstep – a sliver of a pinky toe outside the red line – and he'd be hauled off for treason.

But this was a familiar routine. He managed to keep his feet inside the safe zone. The blizzard of officers and their well-concealed pushing and shoving eventually subsided.

He had made it about a third of the way through the room. Ursula beckoned urgently.

Here, the Epsilon clearance path passed directly beneath one of the bright red couches. Fortunately, it was unoccupied. He raised a leg to climb onto its back, but before he could put his foot down, a thick, swollen hand got in the way. The couch jerked slightly as someone slid into it.

Greetings, citizen, came a deep, mocking voice.

Inwardly, Darryl groaned. Citizen Lieutenant Howie Knutz seemed to run into him far more often than chance would warrant.

Still, Howie Knutz had a higher military rank than Darryl. He had no choice but to snap