The Beam: Season Three (35 page)

Doc reluctantly stepped inside. With the doors closed, the thing felt like a tomb. Doc began to sweat. Maybe it was time to spring for that cooling system he’d sold to a client or two, toxic or not.
 

Green looked over.
 

“You’re claustrophobic.”
 

“I just don’t like you,” Doc answered.
 

Green glanced at his handheld. “Interesting. It’s rather acute. Does your business require you to travel in small vehicles?”
 

“Up yours.”
 

“Testing goes faster if you simply answer the questions, Mr. Stahl. Even if they’ve installed the best physiological modifiers, we’ve found that few DOR subjects are typically unable to lie with any success.”
 

“I have an endorphin reservoir. That and conditioning lessons that get me through most types of travel. It also does something to that monkey-brain organ.”
 

“An amygdala suppressor?”
 

Doc nodded. Now even his shirt felt tight. He needed to get out of this box, pronto.
 

“So why aren’t you using it now?”
 

“I’m not conditioned for elevators.”
 

“Your conditioning lessons didn’t include mnemonics for elevators, crawlspaces, closed boxes, coffins, things like that?”
 

“Who gets conditioned in case they’re stuffed into a coffin?”
 

“Those who think they might be buried alive, maybe. Just think: all that dirt piled atop your box while you’re in the dark, running out of air, unable to alert anyone. Even I might want to spare myself
that
horror.”
 

“Who even gets buried nowadays? Who — ”
 

Doc stopped when he saw the tester’s sideways grin. The asshole was repaying him for earlier insults. In Doc’s mind, knowing what the tester knew without needing to ask was tantamount to cheating. And it was no fucking business of Green’s why he didn’t have elevator mnemonics. Maybe he’d been so scared that even the idea of mnemonics had been horrifying. It didn’t have to make sense. Animal feelings seldom did.
 

The old, manual, pushbutton box dinged and shuddered to a halt. The tester led Doc out of the elevator, down a posh hallway, and into a room decorated in gaudy red and gold. Ironically, it’s exactly how Doc had pictured the apartment he’d be in today, trading fifteen minutes of repellant dick work for millions of an old woman’s credits.

“Have a seat,” said Green.
 

“I’d rather stand.”
 

“Suit yourself. Do you understand the purpose of testing?”
 

“You want to find out if I’m fit to handle the responsibility of Enterprise.”
 

“Quite.” Green tapped something on a desk’s top, illuminating the surface. “Many who choose Enterprise as their party are making a choice they’re not truly fit to make, not unlike signing a legal contract while under duress or intoxicated. These people inevitably fail to support themselves.”
 

“I thought there wasn’t supposed to be a safety net in Enterprise?” It was a variant on the indignant
Isn’t this the free land of the NAU?
argument Doc had made earlier, but he could tell before he finished that the tester wasn’t about to bite.
 

“Rest assured, Mr. Stahl — if you’re fit to choose and truly understand what you’re getting into by electing Enterprise as your party, the system will allow you to fail as spectacularly as you wish. Our process is meant to ensure that you’re making the choice with intention and a sound mind.”
 

“If The Beam can tell you when’s the ideal time for testing me, can’t it tell you, based on what I do and who I am, whether I’m fit?” Doc gave his own small smile. “Or does this process exist to make sure you have a job?”
 

“The law is the law.”
 

Doc shrugged, flopped into a chair, put his boots up on an expensive-looking coffee table, and began picking his teeth with a fingernail.
 

Green, still at the desk, waited until Doc looked over, then said, “Have you ever used an insight sensor?”
 

“What’s it do?”
 

“It’s just another data stream. My questions are only prompts. This room’s canvas will monitor your body language and biometrics, like pulse, skin temperature, and so on.”
 

“Lie detector,” Doc huffed.
 

“Only if you choose to lie. Honestly, it doesn’t matter if you do. The point of responsibility testing isn’t to determine the factual answers to questions, as in a trial. It’s to gauge your natural responses. That can be done whether you’re forthcoming or not.”
 

“So you can tell if I’m telling the truth or lying.”
 

“Exactly.”
 

“Let’s try it out. I think your shirt is fashionable and not at all repellant to women.”
 

Doc’s gaze stayed fixed to his fingernails, but from the corner of his eye, he saw Green frown.

“The insight sensor is another input component. Your answers to my questions are one, the canvas’s assessments are the second, and the insight sensor’s determinations are the third. Are you ready?”
 

“Ready for what?”
 

Green clicked the insight sensor without warning. Before his lips could fully reset from his question, Doc’s head became suddenly immobilized in a rigid holographic sphere, as if it were a real thing with physical substance. From where Doc was flopped on the chair, his head now immobilized at an uncomfortable angle, the thing looked like a mess of bluish readouts and blinking lights. But it was semitransparent, and the wall across from Doc featured a tacky gold-inlaid mirror, so he could see it from the outside, too. It looked like he’d grown a titanic blue afro.
 

“All right, Mr. Stahl. First question. Why did you choose Enterprise?”
 

A crick was already forming in Doc’s neck. The asshole had wedged him this way on purpose.
 

“Because your mother made me.”
 

Something in the web blinked. In Doc’s peripheral vision, he saw Green tap around on the desk, giving no indication that the answer was unhelpful.
 

“And how have you done, in terms of success, in ways both monetary and otherwise, in Enterprise?”
 

“Well enough to buy your mother for the night.”
 

“You’re so amusing, Mr. Stahl.”
 

“That’s what your mother said.”
 

Duly in control and with Doc trapped by the enormous insight sensor, Green seemed to have gone completely Zen. Doc supposed the tester could rotate this thing on his head around if he wanted, seeing how far the subject’s neck would twist before he popped his top. Insults meant nothing when it was your finger on the trigger, and without Green’s reactions, the jibes just weren’t that fun.

“Are you finished?” Green asked.
 

He’d decided to quit poking the man, but now he’d teed Doc up. He couldn’t resist.
 

“That’s what your mother kept asking.”
 

“So. Not finished.”
 

“Not with that fucking troll’s papery snatch under me.”
 

Green sighed. “So. No mature, genuine thoughts?”
 

“I gave you some earlier. I insighted that this process is pointless. You can tell I’m of sound mind.”
 

“Have it your way. No matter what your words say, I’m getting the data I need from…”
 

Green stopped. Doc tried turning to see the man better, but his head was gripped in the sphere. Something in its heart flashed. Lines, like circuits, lit and crawled around him like the tunnels of fast-burrowing worms.
 

At the desk, Green was tapping his controls as if trying to chase something down.
 

“Mr. Stahl? Are you all right over there?”
 

Lights inside the sensor flashed faster. More circuit lines were forming.
 

“Why wouldn’t I be fine?” But now that Green had asked, Doc didn’t feel fine at all. Because until whatever it was that had just started, he’d been watching the room through the big globe…but now that things seemed to be going amiss, he saw it only as confinement. It didn’t matter that he could see through the insight sensor; it was a small box and his head was trapped inside it.
 

“I’m sorry. Hold on.”
 

“What are you sorry for? What’s going on?”
 

“It’s…I’ve never seen these particular insights before. Stand by.”
 

“‘Stand by’?
I’m not Ground Control waiting for Major Tom!”
 

“Hang on. Just a minute.”
 

Lights slowed. Flashing stopped. Then there was a heave, and as the giant sphere vanished, Doc flopped back like a rag doll. He didn’t realize how hard he’d been breathing.
 

Green came in front of him, alternating his gaze between Doc and his rapidly streaming handheld.

“Mr. Stahl, have you ever worked for an NAU government agency?”
 

“No. Why?”
 

“Have you traveled to anywhere in Europe? Australia? Any of the Wild East at all?”
 

“No. What’s going on?”
 

“The insight sensor measures your aptitudes. It tells us, based on neural development, genetics, and flags associated with your ID, what you’re likely to be best at. Its insights are important to the assessment, but only above the line of responsibility. In other words, few Enterprise citizens are truly found unfit, and as you suggested, it’s obvious just from meeting you that you’re plenty fit. Insights comprise a kind of personality test, used in aggregate policy making, to determine the
temperature’
of Enterprise as a whole. Yours is a self-deterministic party, but Directorate is not. Both parties are insighted, both subtly and in overt tests like this. It’s important data. In your case, you seem…different.”

Doc sat up. Something was strange, beyond the recent malfunction.
 

“Why are you being polite to me?” Doc asked.
 

“What do you mean?”
 

“You’re being almost respectful.”
 

“I should hope so,” he said, flustered.
 

“But you weren’t before. Just another job. Just another old lady fucker, right?”
 

“I didn’t say that. I just misunderstood what — ”
 

Doc nodded along, but Green was covering his tracks. He had the look of a man who’d gone in to speak to a high-roller, but hadn’t realized who he was talking to until his grave was dug.
 

“Whatever.” Doc nodded toward the handheld. “So do I pass?”
 

“Of course.”
 

“What about my insights? What does your gizmo say I’m good at?”
 

Green glanced down then up. “I’m afraid I can’t share that, sir.”
 

Sir.

“Why not?”
 

“It’s confidential data.”

“But it’s
my
data. About
me
. How can that be confidential?”
 

“The law is the law, I’m afraid.”

But The Beam wasn’t the only one in the room that could tell lies from truth. Green was holding something back. Something that had put that big, stupid holo-afro on high alert.
 

The tester began stuffing objects into a bag as if preparing to leave. He hit something on the desk, and a small printer rose from its surface, creating a chip from resin. Ten seconds later, Green was planting the still-warm chip into Doc’s hand. The thing wasn’t flat; it looked a bit like a miniature puzzle. Probably designed to be printed that way for security, hard to counterfeit.
 

“When you get home, feed that into any Beam port. You won’t get it back. It will authenticate your system anew and keep us off your back for another twenty years, until your next test.”
 

Doc pocketed the chip. Then he looked up and saw it: what was different, what the tester was lying about.
 

“I won’t have another test, will I?”
 

“What? Oh, yes. Of course you will, in twenty years.”
 

“You don’t think I will. Something gave me a pass, didn’t it? That’s what you didn’t expect.”

“No, no, of course not.”
 

But Doc was still watching the man. Still trying to see what else he had to offer. Something in Doc’s guess wasn’t quite right, but it was close.