Tannis Szocja of Ischarisla

Editor's Note: Underlined terms can be found in the LIMITED ONTOVERSE GLOSSARY.
Don't let our protagonist's Ischarislan name alarm you. Tannis is easy to say. Szocja is like 'Fuschia', but with a 'Zo' in the front of it. /ZO-schia/

I cleared the message and winced at my own reflection. I didn't really need sleep, but I also wouldn't look great on record if I headed straight into briefing. Don't get any ideas about my self-image, either...it's not that I had anything to prove to my boss, Ian. He was kind of a slob. What I really wanted was to create a contrast to prove to Director Bridgman that I wasn't the same kind of slob. I pressed my hand against my door panel, and it double beeped.

"Ms. Szocja, report to briefing immediately," A soft but masculine PrOGAD replies from the wall. This is Daniel, and he's been in the building since...whenever they built the hold, I guess. "The only entries currently unrestricted to you are the alternate screening room and all common lavatories. Report to briefing immediately or risk disciplinary action."

"I JUST GOT BACK FROM VACATION!" I yell at the progad, which I know is a bad idea, because the Candymaker progads here are rather intelligent. Especially Daniel.

"Correct, you have returned from vacation. As such, you are on-call upon your return to the this facility. Since you have checked-in and acknowledged your urgent message, your on-call status--"

"Is now elevated to on-duty," I say with the progad in unison, mimicking his digital inflection. "Yes, Daniel. Thank you, Daniel."

"Thank you, Ms. Szocja," The progad replies. I try my best to fix my hair and take a deep breath as I head down the hall. A door pops open on my way.

"Tannis!" Gerry pops out from his room, beaming at me. I give him a little smile back and keep walking.

"Hi Gerry, late for briefing. Can't talk." He's fully dressed, hair coiffed. He steps out of his room and follows as the door slides shut behind him.

"Open assignment? Maybe I can help!" He says. "How was your vacation?" I don't know whether this is an open assignment, but I do know that Gerry's five-star appearance isn't going to help my 'contrast' plan at all. I try not to seem annoyed. Gerry might be one of the most reliable Class 3 field agents in my group, so I don't immediately shoo him away. The trade off is that he is a TALKER, and just back from vacation, I wasn't really ready to be social beyond professional decorum.

"It was quiet," I say. Which, it was. I spent the first week home, helping my parents move out of the Temponis Incorporation Zone to my Grandparents old home in the country. I took the last of my things to my apartment a few blocks from here. I slept a lot, and scanned the teleontonic nets for good deals on modifications. I didn't find anything worth cutting myself open for. I don't tell Gerry any of this, because any given detail will start a conversation.

"Where'd you go?" He asks as we head to the central stair.

"I didn't even GATEOUT from Ischarisla," I say. "Had things to take care of at home." I see him shake his head as he finally catches me, and now we're walking side-by-side.

"I don't understand why you even maintain an apartment so close to here," Gerry says. "Isn't that expensive?" I shrug.

"It's nice to have a place of my own when I'm only on-call," I say. "It's also one of my parents' units, so I get it for cost."

"It so easy to forget that you were born here," He says. "No one in the hold is ever from Ischarisla." We're both headed down the central stair now, linking up with the next floor down where the alternate screening room is. "So what's the mission?"

"No idea," I tell him. "I was told it would be 'way more fun' than supervising standardized test deliveries for IDOX on the main hubs, though." I laugh, and he grits his teeth.

"Low bar," He winces.

"You can always back out," I tell him, pausing before I approach the screening room. "Last chance."

"Let me give you the out," He says, folding his arms and leaning against the wall. This is uncharacteristically cool for him, so I think he might be hitting on me this time. "Do you want company, or not?" I think about Ian's usual demeanor, and nod my head. Trade-off #2 is that my slob of a boss won't be nearly so informal if I have Gerry with me. Gerry isn't Ian's direct report, and being in the same room with a by-the-numbers guy he's not the boss of will put Ian on edge.

And I like that. I like that--and I like Gerry's newfound understanding of subtle social cues, which makes him SLIGHTLY cuter than any other time I've dealt with his chattyness.

"Here we go, Colaganot." I palm one of the screening room's double doors, and it slides open. As soon as we walk through, the room roster ticks us on the board above the main screen as the house progad announces us.

SZOCJA, TANNIS. 3-18.
MARKAU, GERALD. 3-27.

"When did you cross 25?" I ask him. Ian flashes in on the screen, and I can already tell from his face that he didn't expect Gerry. Ian is an obvious promotion from the tech division, because he'd be unbearably bad at field work. Gerry's a dorky, rule-following Valiant-Valedictor Junior Commander, but he doesn't know anything about a lack of confidence. He's an overachiever, but he's neither a paper-moth nor a brag. He's a little familiar more quickly than I liked, when I met him--but not in an inappropriate way. He's just FRIENDLY, and he makes it hard to avoid dealing with him.

There's something sneaky about that (and I could be totally wrong about the intention, I guess)...but THAT'S WHY Gerry is a field agent. Because I have no idea why his attitude works on me...why it worked this morning, but it did. TWENTY-SEVEN, though?

"Little tiny job," Gerry says, "But deep in transreality. Triple risk points for leaving the node block." I'm immediately jealous. Gerry was a Class 3 with 21 points before I left...within reach of me catching him with the right job. But now...

"Klaskara!" I swear, shoving him a little. "How far outside the node block for SIX damned points?"

"Have you heard of Cilave--" Ian cuts Gerry off.

"Agentsss. Good morning." Ian hisses the 's' in agents, clearly upset with Gerry's tag along. "I thought my urgency was understood, Ms. Szocja, but I see you found time to fraternize with colleagues before reporting in."

"Apologies for the interjection, counsellor, but that falls on me," Gerry tells him. "I have nothing scheduled, so I came along to see if I qualified to assist under open assignment." Ian gives us a short sniff as he rattles his keyboard offscreen.

"How did you learn about the assignment, Mr. Markau?" Ian narrows his eyes before looking down at his own screen again. If I had to guess, I'd say he was looking for a reason to say no to Gerry.

"I saw Tannis in the hall," Gerry tells him. Eventually Ian lets out a short sigh, relenting.

"This is an open assignment for any Class-3," he admits, "but an assist here is operations optional. Honestly? To assist here would be a fit for lukewarm Fivers, Caddies, and Probies. It's worth less than a point, and the assignment may run long. There's a good chance you'll do more work as support than Ms. Szocja will as executive."

"Experience is experience, counsellor," Gerry says. "Field agents need humility. It helps us blend." Ian hates this answer. I wonder if he's looking Gerry's records up in the background, because he's certainly fixed on something he sees on his screen.

"Then you also understand and accept that your ad-hoc supervisor on this assignment will be Ms. Szocja, who now ranks below you." This pig. I can't let that go. Now he's specifically doing it to bother me.

"Ian, we can all read numbers," I say, finally breaking decorum with a snap instead of the bending he's doing with it. "If this is as urgent as you say it is, open the docket." He swallows, cocking his head.

"We have a meeting when you return, Agent Szocja." He has me on record, and I've already pissed him off. Insubordination points are worth it. "In the meantime, the materials you need are being imported to the room now. Most of the material is eyes only, save what Daniel hands you on your way out...and anything you need from that dossier should be on wetware before you depart the hold. It all stays here. Make no copies."

"Sir." Gerry says evenly, giving this crybaby counsellor a respect he hasn't earned. I say it slightly after him, and with a lot less conviction.

"You have a 56 hour window to the outlined objective," Ian says. "Transit is your choice, though direct-to-destination from the Syntyche megabank and other widebanks are not recommended, due to the possibility of a XS clearance hold at your destination. Pay attention to the trusted path list. Bonne chance."

Ian blinks out. After a second, Gerry raises his eyebrows at me.

"Bonne chance?" Gerry asks. "How many S2U Canucks across the tear work in this place? Damn, what are the chances of that?" I can't help but laugh. I shake my head.

"No, idiot, he looked it up in your file!" I tell him. "Couldn't you SEE him looking it up? He was practically glaring at his upper left. He's not Quebecois, and I don't think he's S2U. He was just trying to intimidate you. Or impress you. I dunno."

"Impress me, you think? Blueboy was a Quebecois." I have to roll my eyes at him, as obnoxiously as possible.

No one would say his name. There was this stupid rumor that if you said his name aloud in the hold, he had Daniel programmed to watch you closely until he had something good to **** you with. It was a stupid party rumor, and the rumor PRETTY CLEARLY started at the 22nd Fivers' Induction ceremony. Ever since then, though, they had a host of nicknames for the legend of the hold. Blueboy. Pineshade. Neo*. Now there's this group of them that are all weird and culty about him. It's a little sick.

"No, he was Ontarian," I correct him. "And where he's from it was the NAS, not Canada." Gerry huffs. "Listen, I'm just saying he wasn't really a Canuck. Systemia didn't have a Canada."

"It's ALWAYS Canada," Gerry smiles. "It doesn't matter who ended up with it. Well, except here. You know, because there LITERALLY is no Canada and you guys got weird rocks." I think this is flirting when he talks dumb. I don't know. He's certainly trying some things today.

"And literally any other place that's not an S2 path with a Laurentia," I tell him, sneering. "Ekabra."

"Not even true," He says back. "A lot of M0-M3s have pretty much the same craton systems and continental breaks." Ah, here's the Gerry I know. Really annoying know-it-all who might not have been flirting. "S1s, S0s, S4-6 are pretty close minus--" I actually clasp my hand to his mouth, which is KINDA pushing it...but I can't believe what I'm seeing, and he doesn't really fight me.

"Gerry, shut up and look at the destination." My eyes light up. I look over at him with a smiling face, and I have to remember to close my mouth as I pull my hand away from his. "We're going to--"

*Yes, it's a fucking Matrix reference; yes, there are enough of you S2U idiots around that I found out that "The Matrix" was a damn thing across like 200 paths; yes, even the Hytypicans have it somehow. Can you imagine coming from a completely different cultural terrain, and have a bunch of people FROM DIFFERENT DIMENSIONS all tell you how much you have to watch a particular film series because you just HAVE to watch it? Can you imagine getting the same speech from each of these people because at first they all think "I SHOULD TELL TANNIS ABOUT THIS, BECAUSE NO ONE MADE THE MATRIX IN ANY OTHER DIMENSION BUT MINE." Yes, I watched it. I WATCHED IT, okay? IT'S PRETTY GOOD, but enough. ENOUGH ABOUT THE MATRIX. (Ed. Note: that is all Tannis. I love the Matrix. At least the first one. It's just well made. Fun. I still think it's aged w--)
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The editor is totally fine. He fell down some stairs.