Chapter 5

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"That'll be 12.72."

Kate scowled at the man standing behind the counter. He was young, his beard was scraggly and weird, and she directly blamed him for the outrageous price of her salad.

"You guys are getting so expensive. Thirteen bucks for a pile of lettuce? Jesus."

She pulled her ID out of her pocket and tapped it.

"It's because all the stuff in it is grown hydroponically, on site."

"So shouldn't that make it, I don't know, cheaper? You don't have to pay to ship it, you just send someone upstairs to pick it!"

She swiped her salad off the countertop and hastily shoved it in her bag. The man at the counter rotated his tablet so she could sign and tip. She scribbled her signature and hit 0%.

"Thank you ma'am, have a good day."

She scoffed and walked toward the elevators.

"Boy, what a bitch."

"Most of the upstairs people are."

Her foot hesitated mid stride, she had half a mind to turn around and give the kid an earful. But as she paused the blender whirred to life, satisfying the next customer in line. She'd have to shout over it, and they probably wouldn't turn it off, just stand there stupidly while she yelled above the noise. Combined with the fact that her superiors were actively trying to fire her, she figured they'd rank it as harassment. She clenched her jaw, swallowed hard, and kept walking.

She rode alone to Human Resources, everyone else was either skipping lunch in anticipation of free company food, or enjoying the beautiful day out on the cafe patio. Reaching the top, she walked out into the buzzing hive of cubicles, and straight for main conference room. At least she'd have some time to eat her lunch in peace. Abbie Goodwin, the HR manager, opened the door the conference room.

"Hello Kate! We've been waiting, come on in, let's get this done and over with before the conference this afternoon. I heard they're having it catered!"

Kate smiled at Abbie. She was nice, probably not the best or brightest the company had to offer, but her parents had a lobster boat fleet in northern Maine and had subsequently been able to pay to implant the best and brightest, and give her any career she chose. Unlike a lot of the people working for her, Abbie liked being in HR. She liked solving problems, making sure the office culture stayed pleasant. Kate liked her, liked what she stood for, and though they hadn't interacted much, Kate really felt Abbie was genuine.

She smiled back as Abbie closed the door behind them.

"So Kate, this is Wren Mathis, she's going to be our Corporate legal liaison today, you know the drill, she's just here as a kind of neutral third party."

Kate snickered, if anyone here was any kind of neutral, it wouldn't be the company employed lawyer. But she stuck out her hand in a friendly gesture, locking eyes with Wren, who flushed with sudden realization.

"Oh, hello Mrs. Ward, it's nice to finally meet you."

Kate raised her eyebrow and smiled widely.

"Please, call me Kate. We actually met briefly this morning, I came to your office but you were busy with another client, so I figured we'd just meet down here instead."

Satisfaction rolled over her as Wren's jaw clenched and her eyes grew a bit wider.

"Oh yes, I was doing some consultations, legally with a gentleman from editing."

"I bet you were."

Abbie sat and picked her tablet from the table.

"Alright ladies, now that we're all acquainted, we can get started. I've just got to have you sign Kate."

She handed the tablet over and Kate signed in, smacked a few consent buttons, and slid it back across the wide table.

"Cool, and I've got all my ducks in a row."

She squinted and pushed at the screen a few times, the tip of her tongue sliding slightly out on the side of her mouth.

"Alright great! So the upload has started. Can you just look at this for me please Kate, and count to ten?"

Kate looked down at the tablet, a large "STOP" sign, decorated with various QR codes took up the screen, she counted slowly to ten, then looked blinked vigorously at Abbie for a few seconds.

"Great! So the upload has started, it will automatically stop when it hits the stop code."

She scowled at her tablet.
"Sorry guys, it looks like it's going to be at least a 4 hour upload."

Kate groaned.

"Four hours? Wait, it's already after lunch, how are we going to make it to the conference if this is going to take all afternoon?"

Abbie raised her eyebrows.

"Well, if someone would have been here this morning, like she was supposed to..."

Kate shot her a deadpan look.

"Listen, I know this thing is off the books 'mandatory', but you're only going to miss the first half hour, or forty five minutes. It's not that big of a deal. Just zip down there afterwards, and no one will know the difference."

Wren looked worriedly between the two of them.

"I feel like we're going to get in trouble for that."

"Well if someone wouldn't have been so busy with an 'IMPORTANT LEGAL MEETING OF LEGALITY' this morning, maybe we could have started a little sooner," Kate snapped back.

She regretted it immediately, Wren looked genuinely wounded, and silently rocked back in her chair.

"Listen ladies, if there's any issue with either of your management, send them to me, I've got half a dozen reasons we didn't start on time, it really isn't a big deal."

Kate glared at Wren, her act of submission making her unreasonably angry toward the younger woman.

"Alright, well I'm going to be honest, I've got a bunch of stuff to do, and once the upload is started there isn't much more for me to do. So if you need anything Kate, send Wren out. While the files are uploading you're not supposed to leave except for extreme, accompanied emergencies."

Kate laughed dryly.

"I guess it's a good thing I peed before I got up here then, huh?"

Abbie rolled her eyes good naturedly.

"Yep, it is. Alright, I'll check in after a little while, try not to kill each other, eh?"

She tapped the corner of her eye.

"There's no point in mediation if I can see who started it, is there? Alright, bye guys!"

The door clicked softly closed behind her and an uncomfortable silence settled on the room.

Kate stared around the room, desperately trying to find anything to occupy her attention. Her stomach growled, she had forgotten her salad. Hungrily, she cracked open the clam shell container.

"Well shit."

There was no ranch.

Wren looked up from her sulking.

"What?"

"Nothing, ugh. The punk downstairs that makes the salads forgot my ranch."

"Oh. I thought something was wrong, the way you yelled."

"Excuse me? Something is wrong. I have no ranch for my salad!"

She waved her arms in exasperation.

"You can't eat salad without ranch, then it's just lettuce and chicken and it's not a salad!"

Wren wrinkled her nose.

"Well isn't that what a salad is anyway? Just lettuce and chicken and tomatoes?"

Kate slowly lifted her eyes from her dejected pile of greenery. Was this degenerate, this mere girl seriously going to sit there, blank faced, and question the validity of the ranch?

"Sure, I guess it's just lettuce anyway. And a meeting is just a meeting, right?"

Wren's eyes flicked toward the door.

"Listen, I don't know what you think you know, but whatever it is - you're wrong. You saw me this morning in a perfectly normal legal consultation meeting with a good friend and co-worker. That's it."
Kate smiled sharply, jamming a plastic forkful of dry, bitter lettuce into her mouth. She chewed slowly.

"I don't think you need to worry about what I saw. I think maybe, you need to think about what you saw."

She chewed her salad like a cud, enjoying the show as first confusion, then realization, and finally panic set into Wren's face.

"Annnddd, there it is. Hope you had a fun time. You better hope you can afford some updates, because you know they're going to deny your unemployment."

Kate furrowed her brow and moved her fork, still full of lettuce to her lip in makeshift mustache.

"Unemployment rights denied? We'll get you the compensation you deserve!"

She laughed at her own joke and stared across the table at the young lawyer.

There were tears welling along the bottom of her eyes. Kate rolled her head back into a groan.

"Ugh, stop. Now I feel bad."

"Good, you should. It's no wonder no one here likes you. Honestly, what is your problem? Why are you such an asshole to everyone, all the time?!"

The last bit stung. The truth was, Kate didn't know why she went out of her way to be a jerk. Most of the people she interacted with were decent enough, she was the one striking out. She stuffed another forkful of the lettuce into her mouth, hating it.

"Listen. They aren't going to fire you. If you even get caught, all they're going to do is give you a disciplinary write up and put you on watch for 90 days. It's not that big a deal. If your little intern friend gets caught though, he's probably gone."

Wren wiped her eye with the back of her hand.

"It doesn't matter. He's been poached anyway. He was just waiting for the time to run out on his implant contract."

"Oh. I didn't realize he was one Intelletec owned. Good for him, how long does he have left?"

"Like, six weeks. He'll be gone by the beginning of summer."

"Huh. Well good for him. Where's he going?"

Wren's face flushed again, and she stared intently down at her hands, picking an invisible piece of dirt from her sleeve. She mumbled something Kate couldn't quite catch.

"I'm sorry, what'd you sa-"

"Memoratica. He's going to work in editing at Memoratica."

Kate couldn't contain herself, laughter burst forth, and tears sprang to her eyes. She heaved and couldn't catch her breath, finally doubling over as she tried to force air into her lungs. She swallowed and sniffed, wiping her tears, while letting out a low groan.

"Oh man. Seriously? What did they offer him? It's got to be decent if he's leaving here for work like... well like that."

Wren bristled a bit, then smiled at the absurdity of it.

"They actually offered him a decent package. Six figures starting, his own team, and a decent pension plan. More than what he would have made here."

Kate sniffed and laughed once more.

"Well damn then, good for him."

Silence settled over the room again. Kate chewed slowly, hyper aware of the click of plastic on plastic, the crunch of lettuce in her mouth. She watched Wren as the seconds stretched on. The tablet said 3%. It was going to be a very long afternoon. Absorbed in her own thoughts and lamenting her dry, tasteless chicken, Kate jumped when Wren blurted out,

"So where are you from?"

Her eyes were wild, she was clearly one of those people who couldn't stand being quiet with her thoughts. She looked equal parts giddy that she'd come up with something and horrified she's practically shouted it across the table.

"Here. I'm from here, I grew up in Manhattan, actually."

Kate knew she should ask the cursory follow up, 'And how 'bout you!' but she just didn't care. The conversation fell flat again.

"Cool. What, ah, what do you parents do?"

Boy, she was persistent.

"Nothing now. They're retired."

She scraped the bottom of the salad container, and sighed, staring to the ceiling.

"But my mom used to be a freelance book editor and my dad was a doctor."

Wren's face brightened and she straightened up.

"Oh, that's awesome. What kind of doctor?"

"Neurologist. He wasn't a brain surgeon or anything crazy, he mostly did research for tech companies. He worked a little bit on early neural mesh technologies, which is interesting I guess."

Wren looked at her blankly.

"Neural mesh is what they used in implants before nanites."

"Oh! I didn't know, I mean, I don't really know now even how it works."

She laughed uncomfortably.

"I just showed up, I didn't really look that much into it beforehand, it would have freaked me out, you know? I mean, no I guess you wouldn't."

She trailed off, painfully aware of her faux pas, but at a total loss at how to stop her mouth from careening down it's pre-chosen track.

"Not that there's anything wrong with that, I mean, lots of people don't have implants, it's not even a big deal."

Kate held up her hands, the awkwardness was just too much.

"Listen, Wren? It's totally fine. I don't have an implant, I'm aware of it, I've come to terms with it, it doesn't hinder my ability to do my job. It's okay."

Wren's brain screamed at her to nod in agreement, but her mouth called an 'ALL ABOARD' and tooted on ahead.

"But like, why don't you?"

And there it was, the elephant in the room. Kate had found there were two types of people, those who pretended there was nothing different about her, aggressively refusing to acknowledge she wasn't exactly like them, and there were people who were quietly judgmental, assuming she was some slag that happened to marry into money. They, of course, would never openly confront her about it, but it danced on their words, their looks, their very posture, the constant question of why she wasn't contributing. She got that from women most often, they'd look to Cal with admiration, he was already in the decade club for uploads, one of the youngest excelling in his field, before turning their cold eyes to her and asking loaded questions like, "So what exactly is it that you do?" But this was neither. It caught her off guard, there was no condescension, no mocking tone. Wren was uncomfortable sure, but it came from wanting to please Kate, not from pitting wits. Kate shook her head gently, and gave a quiet shrug.

"I'm allergic."

"What??"

"I'm allergic to the detergent. The detergent they use to rinse away the lipids and proteins to prep your nerves and stuff, before they inject the nanites. I'm allergic to it. I'd have an implant if I could, but I can't, so here I am."

Wren wrinkled her nose and half smiled at Kate.

"Wow, that sucks."

Laughter bubbled up out of Kate, she shook her head and shot Wren a well intentioned scowl.

"Yeah, it sucks. What is wrong with you? Why would you just ask me that?"

Wren laughed a little too.

"I don't know! I was curious! Everyone talks about it, but no one will talk about why you didn't have an implant. I thought maybe you were like, religiously against it or something. An allergy is a stupid reason to not be able to get one, and that sucks, what else was I supposed to say?!"

"I guess. But still, I can't believe you just went for it."

Wren shrugged.

"So how did you end up here if you don't have an implant?"

"Cal. He got promoted in the editing department, and was tired of waiting for paperwork to come through. A ton of stuff is still sent via paper mail, old patient records, collaborating documentation, things like that. At the time they were letting all this info come through and get sent to receptionists on each floor, then they had to sift through it, digitize it, and send it out to be destroyed. He figured streamlining it would save the company money in the long run, and they loved it. I don't know if it was a special favor to him that they hired me, or if I was just the only one who applied, but here I am."

"Is that what you wanted to do? Be a professional shredding secretary?"

Kate rolled her eyes and pushed her brows up into a cynical pose.

"Yes Wren, as I child I got out of bed every day, wishing and praying that someday I could shred paper for a living. Jesus, what is wrong with you?"

Wren chuckled in response.

"I don't know, people have weird dreams. So what were you going to do?"

Kate let out a heavy sigh and looked down at the tablet. Four percent.

"I was going to be a doctor. Like my dad. I had this weird thought that it'd be cool to get some of his memories and skill downloaded directly into my brain, that it'd give me an edge, having grown up with his insight and personality. I thought I'd be some kind of super doctor, a pioneer in my field, and everyone would stare with wonder at the incredible things I'd discover and do."

She caught herself brooding.

"But it was a dream, honestly I probably wasn't cut out for medicine or research, my bedside manner would have been shit."

"I'm sorry things didn't work out."

"God no, don't pity me. I work here, I make decent money doing almost nothing. I'm married to a dream man, I actually have time to work on myself, my family. I don't want pity, I've built a better life than I could have ever imagined."

Wren tilted her head to look Kate. While her face was sad, Kate didn't see the 'oh poor girl' look in her eyes that she had come to expect when she talked about her past.

"I didn't say I pitied you. I just said I was sorry you didn't get to follow your dream over something out of your control. That sucks. You're still lucky though, you're probably the .001% that actually gets to live decently without an implant. Even if you didn't get to do the things you hoped."

Kate cringed. You couldn't turn on the news, or read a paper, without headlines screaming at you, "PLIGHT OF THE NON-AUGS" or "THOUSANDS STARVE AS PROTESTS AGAINST WEALTH GAP RAGE ON". She was lucky, if she had been born a different place, to different parents, things wouldn't have worked out so nicely. But she lacked a great deal of pity for the dross, the non-augs, most of them could receive memory augmentation, if they'd quit smoking meth and popping out kids for two seconds and find a decent paying job. It wasn't her fault she had success where so many had failed. She rested her hand on her stomach and breathed deeply.

"I guess luck has something to do with it, but I've worked hard, and I continue to work hard for this place. Even if they show me no respect for it. There's nothing saying I can't have success because of an implant. Anyone can get one, no offense. They put them in gators for chrissake."

Wren offered her a slight head nod, then thought about what she said.

"Gators? That's not true."

"Yes it is. You've never seen those guys?"

Wren clicked her tongue.

"Come on now, the gator guys are just legends."

"No, they're not. It was like ten or fifteen years ago, the department of wildlife conservation took a few dozen gators and gave them memory augmentation, Intelletec provided the implants. It's on our website, look it up. It was a big deal."

Wren stared at Kate incredulously. She couldn't tell if she was pranking her, it sounded ludicrous, but so did a lot of things in this industry.

"Why would they put implants in gators?"

"To kill fish. There's some kind of poisonous fish that lives down there, a lionfish or tigerfish, something. But it's been ruining the ecosystem for the last 50 or 60 years because it doesn't have predators. So they got all these alligators, implanted memories of going into the saltwater and loving the taste of those specific fish and boom. They've got killing machines. They made a big deal about it because the memories were completely fabricated but still took in the gator's minds, and because it employed a few

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