Smoke Break - III

Ray goes home. Part of the Blackwater Project.

Part I

Part II

You can find the rest of the Blackwater Files here.

---

Ray staggered through what felt like miles of cold, clinical, featureless white hallways lit by those damnable LEDs. She rode the monorail, alone. Not once did she see a single living sole between the courtyard and the entrance to Elysium’s Beaverton Campus. The Auto-Uber she’d requested was already waiting for her by the entrance to the entry facility, where all employees clocked in and out for their shifts and the human resources department did whatever they did. She liked to think they would have had a field day with what just occurred in the courtyard, but she knew on some level that even if she raised a case with them, it would go nowhere.

The butterfly door of the silver sedan opened, allowing her to slip into the backseat.

“Good evening, Ray,” said the automated driver, the voice that of a young English man and speaking as smoothly and naturally as any human might, if not more so. Ray could recall the more stilted, jarring, and unnatural cadence of the first automated driver program’s voice synthesizers - these days, speaking to the automated driver program was no different than speaking to a person. This one even had a name - Thomas. She couldn’t remember when she’d ever actually addressed one of the artificial intelligence drivers by their assigned name, though.

“Where will I be taking you tonight?”

“Home,” Ray said, her voice small, her eyes unfocused, her mind still back in the courtyard. The automated driver program would trace her home address through her account and take her there with only a word.

“Sounds good,” said Thomas the automated driver. The car shifted into drive and began to roll away, gently and smoothly navigating the long, narrow, but well-lit road towards the high-way. "Can I play any music to make your ride more enjoyable, Ray? Taylor Swift just released a new album - I Never Really Did Love You - if you haven’t heard. We’re also streaming the new Beatles album, Everyday Chemistry, free of charge through our partnership with Apple Music.”

Ray grit her teeth. She hated these automated car rides - there were ads plastered over every available surface in the trains, but at least you didn’t have voices trying to hawk crap you didn’t want or need to you the whole ride when you took them.

“Not interested.”

“Got it,” said Thomas the automated driver. “If you need anything, or if there’s anything I can do to make the ride more comfortable, just let me know.”

Ray leaned against the door, closed her eyes, and listened to the road pass beneath the tires. For no real reason, she took the box from her pocket. She turned it over in her hands, studying the neat, thin, angular design printed on the front of the orange box in the fleeting light of passing streetlamps. The cardstock itself was of a matte texture, while the flourishes printed on it raised and glossy against her fingers.

Ray flipped back the lid. Save for the two cigarettes she and Daria had smoked, the pack was full. There was a wad of paper stuck snugly between the remaining cigarettes and the wall of the box, barely visible. Easy to miss. With a bit of difficulty, Ray pulled it free and turned it over in her hands.

Ray unfolded the first thin slip of green paper paper, neatly folded with a sharp crease around the others. The smiling face of Barack Obama stared back at her. The number 1,000 was printed on the corners of the bill. Ray pulled it back one. There was another underneath it. And another underneath that, and another after that, and more still. At the heart of the bundle was a note, written in thin, neat letters - There’s more where this came from - with a large, lone letter D for punctuation.

Don’t spend it all in one place.

Money.

It was cash. Cold, hard cash. Most commerce had moved to digital, cashless means of currency, but cash could still be taken to a bank and used to pad one’s checking account as nicely as any digital money transfer.

“Okay, Ray. We’ve arrived at your destination.”

Ray tore her eyes away from the small bundle of cash and looked outside. The apartment complex she called home stood before her - a simple, five-story number, made from concrete walls, bits of painted corrugated tin for decoration, and not much else, all lit by the very same harsh, sterile and inescapable LEDs that illuminated the campus. A place that looked decent on the outside, but was masking a cheap interior slapped together by the lowest bidder, every time. Similar constructions were a common site anywhere in the United States where housing was in short supply. She opened the car door.

“Before you go, Ray,” said Thomas the automated driver. “Do you have any comment about the quality of your trip? Is there anything that I might need to kn-”

Ray shut the door. Hard. She knew that she’d get docked a point or two on her passenger score for refusing to answer the questionnaire, and generally being unreceptive to the marketing ploys the automated driver engaged in, but hers was probably already in the gutter and they still picked her up, anyways. If she got a bad enough rating that Auto-Uber would make her start listening to a sixty year old has-been of the 2020’s or the AI-generated crap slapped with the Beatles name that was being pumped out, she’d just switch to DiDi Chuxing’s auto-taxi services.

She’d sooner walk than sit in the backseat of a car and be forced to listen to some artificially generated facsimile of a band that was over a century old.

Then again… she wasn’t going to have a valid excuse to leave her house. Not anytime soon, at least.

Ray scanned her hand against the palm-reader. There was an electric chime, followed by a smooth, female voice - “Good evening, Ray.”

She remembered being a kid - when not everything talked to you, and not everything tried to sell you something. She walked off before the automated security system could try and ask if she wanted to order any food from Auto-Uber before she got to her room.

She hauled herself up four flights of stairs and entered a small apartment. It was spacious, but largely unfurnished save for a smattering of self-building furniture she’d bought on the cheap from Ikea. Scandinavian Union stuff - small, cheap, ergonomic, and space-efficient. Light-weight and easy to move when rent got too high and she was inevitably forced to move to some identical block of human rabbit hutches to get a better deal.

Ray shed the white coat that had been her uniform for eight years and change. It fell to the floor, but before it did, she took the box of Vesta cigarettes from the pocket. She sat down on the carpet cross-legged in front of the television she used to sparingly that she sometimes wondered why she still had it. She took the holiday bonus left behind by Daria and spread it out, one bill by one. In the end, twenty grinning Barack Obama’s stared at the ceiling.¹

Ray sat there for a long while, saying nothing, doing nothing but breathing, her eyes drifting from one end of the spread of cash to the other before settling on the box of cigarettes.

“Alexa,” she said in a hoarse voice. “Call Dad.”

The speakers in the ceiling overhead gave a chirp of acknowledgement, followed by the hum of a dial-tone. It droned once. Twice. Three times. Four. Ray felt her throat tighten. Her palms were clammy. She realized for the first time just how greasy she’d let her hair get. It needed to be washed. Thoroughly. It needed to be trimmed. Desperately. Nails, uneven from a life-time of gnawing, dug into the back of her hands.

“Rachel?”

Her name filled the entire apartment, spoken in a voice that was both familiar and alien all at once. God - her dad sounded older than he did the last time she’d spoken to him. There was a creak in his voice that hadn’t been there before. Ray bit down hard on her bottom lip.

“Hey. Hey, Dad.”

“Rachel,” her father said, clearly unable to believe what he was hearing. “Is - is everything alright? Are you okay?”

Ray nodded. “Yeah,” she said. Her voice cracked, betraying the truth. “Yeah. I’m - I’m fine.” She should probably ask how he was. “Um… how about you?”

“Good,” said her father. “As good as I can be, these days.”

Ray kept nodding. “That’s… that's good. I’m glad to hear it.” She kept nodding. She could see her father in her mind’s eye, nodding along with her, neither entirely sure what to say to the other.

She heard her father sigh. “Well… what’s the occasion?”

Ray swallowed. Her mouth still tasted like cigarettes, and she found herself violently wishing to renew the now stale flavor.

“Ah… well, I just -” She paused and screwed her eyes shut tight. “I haven't… I haven't used any of my carbon credit this year. I can still get a flight, so. I just… I - I, ah… I wanted to ask if, uh… do - do you guys have room for me? Around Christmas time?”

Her father was silent. Uncomfortably so.

“Rachel…”

Her heart raced as the sound of chastisement in his voice.

“There's always room for you here. Any time.”

Ray gave a single, hoarse laugh. Worried - worried over nothing.

“Ray? Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah, Dad. I'm fine,” she lied.

“Uh, well - alright,” her father said, again, clearly in disbelief. “You know, Ray, we… your mother and I, we'd be happy to have you. Absolutely. You're always welcome to come home, anytime, but… did something happen? Is there something going on?”

Ray shook her head. She smiled in spite of the thrumming pain behind her eyes as she took the piece of paper and ran her thumb over the text - There's more where this came from.

“Well… I - I just got offered some kind of promotion at work, actually. I'm not even really sure what the new position is yet, but… but I think I'm gonna take it.”

January 1st, 2049

“Well… would you look at that.”

Doctor Daria DiMassi smiled. She was smiling a lot these days, for a variety of reasons, but the one playing on her lips now was one both far larger and more genuine than the hollow facsimiles and thin masks of cordiality and perfunctory respect that she wore so often. Elbows resting on the table before her, fingers steepled, bathed in the cold electric glow of a panoply of monitors displaying a hundred different feeds from a hundred different cameras surreptitiously placed around campus, Daria’s eyes were fixed on the screen displaying the lobby of the facility’s entrance building.

“Enlarge stream A-10.”

Every monitor flickered at once, and when their pictures returned, they created a mosaic of stream A-10’s feeds, piecing together a large, detailed image of the entrance building’s lobby - and, more importantly, who was standing in it.

“Is that who I think it is?”

To her right, she heard a sigh. “I’ll be damned.”

She glanced at her compatriot out of her peripheral vision. “Pay up.”

Site Director Hector Borges sighed into his hands. “I don’t carry cash.”

“I’ll take a transfer.”

“I didn’t even think you were serious,” the older, graying man said as he wiped his palms across his face. In the light of the monitors, his tanned face appeared pale and sickly, with every pock-mark and pit and blemish exacerbated in unflattering detail.

“Well,” Daria hummed. “I was. And you owe me five hundred dollars.”

“Can I buy you a bottle of vino and call it even?”

Daria sat back in her seat, rapping the tips of her slender fingers together as she gave the proposition the consideration it was due. She clicked her tongue. “Tell you what. Pick up another one of those delightful Barolos you brought in the other night, and I’ll say your debt's been paid in full.”

The wine in question was less than the amount Hector had unwittingly agreed to paid, but not by enough that it wouldn’t satisfy her.

“Consider it something of a reward for a job well done,” she added.

With the way the light caught in Hector’s glasses, the lenses looked like two blocks of incandescent white in the darkness. He sighed as he picked up an enamel mug emblazoned with the watchful eye of Elysium’s logo and took a long sip before setting it back down.

“Maybe she just came to tell you to take a long walk off a short pier.”

“Doubtful,” said Daria. She leveled a finger towards the screen. “I mean, look. She even got a hair cut for the occasion. She must be serious.”

In the reflection of the screens against Hector’s lenses, Rachel Partrite - dressed as if she had just arrived for a shift - absently milled about the empty lobby, scanning her surroundings for any sign of life.

“I can’t believe she actually came back after the run-around you gave her,” he muttered.

Daria suppressed a laugh. “What can I say? You just have to know how to press the right buttons on certain people.”

“Is that what they call extortion these days?”

“Call it whatever you’d like,” said Daria. “It gets results.” She pushed away from the table, the wheels of her chair gliding over the smooth concrete floor. She stood. Stretched for a moment. She took the long, trailing dark trench coat draped over the back of the chair, each flap lined with black mink fur, and slid an arm into one of the sleeves.

“Notify the Subnautical Team that we’re on for tonight. Get Lab 440 prepped and have them on standby,” she said, her eyes still fixed on the screen. “I’m going to go down and say hello to our little lab rat.”

---

“Are you going to actually tell me what this is all about? Or are you just going to keep talking in circles?”

Daria didn't move so much as a muscle. She just stood there by the monorail, nearly nose to nose with her reflection in window, watching the extensive campus below the monorail track pass with quiet disinterest, arms folded neatly behind her back and dressed in an ostentatious, fur-lined flowing coat that probably cost a lower-level employee's entire yearly salary.

They'd been on the monorail for over three minutes and she'd done nothing but make idle small talk as inane as it was incessant. She'd gone so far as to say some sort of special code or phrase to lock-down the monorail and ensure they had no company, resulting in the train speeding through a station or two full of puzzled employees no doubt wondering why an almost almost empty monorail sailing right past them. Perhaps DiMassi just didn't want to waste time on the brief stops to let the little people on and off. Or maybe she just preferred to talk about the nuances between Barolo and Barbaresco and Bibimbap or whatever fancy Italian wine grapes that Ray neither knew or cared about.

“You'll have to forgive me,” Daria said, without turning away from the window. “The project that I've tapped you for… it's not exactly something that can be discussed frivolously, you see. Even now, I'm hesitant to disclose details to you before you've signed the necessary paperwork.”

“What paperwork?” said Ray. “I thought my contract was still valid.”

Daria shook her head. Below, the very courtyard she'd first confronted Ray in passed by. She wondered if the cigarette DiMassi flicked into the pond was still there, floating in the water with the artificial koi fish.

“It's got nothing to do with your contract. It’s just legal paperwork. Scope of work agreements. An NDA or two. That kind of paperwork. Liability waivers. Very standard. Nothing to worry about.”

“That doesn't really answer my question,” Ray said.

DiMissi offered no reply. She didn't even look at Ray.

“Look,” said Ray. “If you're, like - afraid I'm gonna back out now… I'm not. You told me not to show up unless I was gonna do this, so… here I am. I even got a haircut.” She gestured to her hair, which, while no less stylish or flattering, had at least lost the greasy sheen from before. “Do you know what it takes to get me to do that?”

Daria snickered, but remained infuriatingly silent.

“You could at least tell me what kind of project this is,” Ray said.

“A very important one,” DiMassi answered. She stressed and emphasized each syllable. “One that's under the direct supervision of Dr. Karasevdas and v-”

“Woah. Hey. H-hold on.”

Ray put up her hands.

“K-Karasevdas? Like… the Doctor Karasevdas?”

Daria nodded. “Is there another?”

The world seemed to tilt beneath Ray's feet - and not just because the monorail was taking a sharp turn. She leaned against one of the poles in the center of the train while DiMassi continued as if she hadn't stopped at all, and certainly not as if she'd just casually dropped that Ray was going to be on a project personally overseen by the head of Elysium itself.

“As I was saying,” Daria continued. “It's also one near and dear to my own heart. In fact, it's one that I've worked quite closesly with Dr. Karasevdas on to being about. You see, Miss Partrite…” Daria's hands stirred inside the pockets of her coat. “It’s inevitable, at this point, so - no use in hiding it.”

She finally turned to Ray, her expression sober.

“I'm dying.”

How that was supposed to be bad news for her, Ray was entirely sure. The gravitas about the proclamation made her uncomfortable. She shifted on her feet.

“I'm… I’m sorry.”

It sounded like the right thing to say.

“Oh. Don't be sorry for me.” Daria gave a dismissive wave. “I've got worse news for you. You're dying, too.”

Oh. So, it was one of those hippy-dippy We're all, like, born to die, man bits. Ray should have known.

“You, me, and everyone else alive right this moment - we're all dying. Some of quicker than others. Some more apparently than others. But, slowly, and certainly… it’s happening to us all.”

How very insightful.

“So, this is… what? Some kind of medical project?” Ray asked.

"Something along those lines,” DiMassi replied, infuriatingly vague as ever.

“Well… I'm not sure what good you think I'm gonna be for you. I'm not a doctor. Just a lab tech. I keep machines running, I - I d-”

“I know what you are, Miss Partrite,” Daria interrupted. “And I know what you’re capable of. Believe me, a full evaluation of your history, your skills, and your psychological profile was performed well before I ever approached you, and you were not selected for your… keen medical acumen. I believe I told you, what I need is not someone of your skills, but rather your disposition.”

She tapped a black nail against her temple. “Someone with an eye for deception.” Her smile peaked at the corners as she tapped the same nail against her nose. “Someone with a nose for bullshit. Someone who can discern the uncomfortable truth from a pleasant lie… even when they're the one telling it. A person who can't even lie to themselves.”

She leaned forward. In the clinical lights of the monorail cab, her skin looked sickly, almost deathly pale, even more so when set against her dark clothing, dark hair, dark eyes, dark nails. The closer she drew, the more Ray felt as if she looked as if she’d already died; everything about her so perfect, so manicured, so faultless that she had the look of a body that had been meticulously prepared for a viewing and come back to life.

“Tell me, Miss Partrite,” said Daria. “I know the first rumblings have been getting around with the lay people on campus, but… have you heard anything about the Blackwater Project?”

---

And, with this, the final piece of Ray’s bad day at work comes to an end. I apologize to anyone who was waiting with bated breath to see Doctor DiMassi get her just deserts, or perhaps be pushed in front of a moving train. It wouldn’t be unwarranted - by my estimation, she’s guilty of a lot more than just being a duplicitous corporate snake that speaks out of both sides of her mouth.

I always wanted this to feel like a primer for the Blackwater mythos as a whole rather than a three act narrative unto itself. Like, a prequel, of sorts, that focuses on characters that weren’t present in the original series, and a narrative that ends shortly before the events of said original series, or directly leads into them - that way, I wouldn’t be stepping on the toes of anyone else trying to flesh out their own pieces of lore.

There’s room for a follow-up - especially because I, too, would like to see Doctor DiMassi held accountable - but, for now, I want to see what others will do with the mythos and where it goes before I’d try to fit these characters back into it. These collaborative world-building efforts and inter-connected story telling between so many disparate writers with different ideas, strengths, and sensibilities is always fascinating to watch and participate, and challenging in a way that’s conducive to growth for everyone involved. For that, I once again have to thank

The Chronicler

for putting this together, and I look forward to seeing how the Blackwater Project continues to expand. And, for what it's

As always, thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed.

1. Introduced as a means of combating inflation by the Federal Reserve, 2031 saw the introduction of the introduction of the Thousand Dollar Bill, featuring former president Barack Obama on the front and the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on the back.