Slumrat Rising

It was time to report in. There was just too much going on, and the window of time to act had shrunk from “about a year” to “about a month. Siphios Intelligence, or whatever shadowy bunch Merkovah was part of, had been playing spy games with Starbrite and Jeon intelligence for centuries. To say they knew each other’s go-to moves would be an understatement. Still, there are some methods that, by their very nature, are almost impossible to detect.

Truth went out and bought a postcard. This turned out to be an hour-long process, as Gwaju was a pretty boring little city, and nobody gave a damn about getting a postcard from there, let alone sending one. The card was a picture of a fish market. Seemed fitting. He might have found it funny, but all he could think of was, “Four weeks. Four Weeks. Four weeks.”

Four weeks. Seven days in a week, twenty-four hours in a day, meaning six hundred and seventy-two hours until the System started its massive powerup. Of course, that was just him estimating. He would bet anything you liked that certain high-net-worth individuals, as well as select “VVIP’s” were offered, as a special favor and at a very special price, early access to enrolment. Slightly less favored people would be added, for an only slightly smaller price, to the “VIP Advanced Enrolment Waiting List,” giving lucky duckies the chance to enroll privately and comfortably without waiting in line with the common folk.

One hour was three thousand, six hundred seconds. Drip, drip, drip. Falling away from the open vein. He sat on a bench that grew hundreds of six-centimeter-long spikes if you tried to lie down on it and got to writing. In rough, blocky letters, he wrote-

“Dear Mr. Vickrim,

I want you to know that the cream did not help. In fact, the rash is worse than ever. It is spreading further and further, centered on my groin. Can you imagine why that might be, Mr. Vickrim? I have a few ideas. Frankly, I am suspicious of our whole project at this point, let alone setting up shop here in Gwaju. I quit. For what I hope are obvious reasons. Deposit my final paycheck in my account, then never contact me again. However, in the spirit of not parting in anger, please enjoy this pornographic postcard.

Yours in Praeger,

Mortimer Snerd

Truth double-checked the date, confirmed that the code words were in the right locations, and then sniggered. The end of the world was a stressful business. You had to get your laughs in where you could.

He activated the spell built into the card, watching it fold up into a sort of swallow. “539 West 87th Street, apartment number 5-027, in Taean. Deliver to Mr. Hal Vickrim, or if no one is home, remain in the mailbox.”

The spell bird flapped away, its enchantments guiding it where it needed to go. Truth knew just enough about that kind of work to know he would leave it to the experts. That they could mass-produce those spells was a true wonder.

Job done. Someone would check that dead drop, then send a message to one of their dead drops. He sat back and tried to think of what he should do next. The reply would take a few days, after all, and he truly could not afford downtime. The sensible thing would be to continue the basic plan- drop in somewhere in Jeon, lose himself in the periphery, and try to cause enough chaos that it pulled resources out of Harban. The plan was still basically sound, but it needed some serious rethinking.

The campaign against the denizen overseers was still good. In fact, that needed to accelerate hard and get more widespread. Maybe this young prince of the One-Legged Bird Ring needed a promotion or two, spreading his good works. Still, he couldn’t devote as much time as he had intended to that project. The enrollment of citizens into the System was where the real danger was and the real opportunity to hurt Starbrite.

So… how does he do that, exactly? Truth didn’t have the faintest idea. He didn’t even know where the enrollments were being done. And when you don’t know something, you should ask an expert.

____________________________________________

“NEXT!”

“Thank you for seeing me.” Truth said humbly.

“Sigil.”

Truth extended his wrist, watching the job placement officer’s eyes go foggy.

“Alright, Mr. Meduti?”

“Yes, sir. Bluth Meduti.”

“Alright, your file says that you have passed your high school cert for Talisman Maintenance, as well as getting your Army Talisman Maintenance cert. No mention of your SAT result, however. Why is that?”

“Panicked, sir. I just had this feeling that I would screw it up. That I would flunk out, and my whole life would be over. I thought I would just spend my life in the Army, but… what with everything…”

The officer gave him a look that stated, very clearly, his contempt for Truth and all his life choices. “Well, it’s not a complete disaster, I suppose. You are a full citizen, so your options are decent. We have had a major surge in maintenance jobs offered.”

“What I really wanted to know is how this all ties into joining up with Starbrite? There weren’t any fliers in the lobby.”

“Coming tomorrow.” The officer frowned. “You are not joining Starbrite. The country is adopting it’s own System, built on the same architecture as the Starbrite system and modernizing our now antiquated class system. Young man, this is a massive change to the very constitution of our great nation! You must pay attention to this.”

“Built on the same architecture? Like a building?”

The officer rolled his eyes so hard, Truth was worried he would tear something. “No, not like a building. Since Starbrite already has a chained spirit that knows how to run the system, we are building our system on top of their system. Same spirit, same organization, different benefits and privileges.”

And that answered that question. Whelp. Nice knowing you Jeon.

“Ok, so… the brochures on this come in tomorrow.”

“Should have been in the same day as the announcement, but due to a shortage of talisman maintenance technicians, the printers are way behind.” The officer wasn’t even hinting, he was tapping firmly on a list of jobs. “So let’s get you moving, shall we?”

“Sure. Oh, when does enrollment in the new system start?”

“Rolling admission starts at one minute past midnight on the First of next month. To prevent the processing centers from getting overwhelmed, everyone is getting entered in a lottery based on their Citizen ID Number and then assigned a date and time. Don’t worry. By the end of next month, every single citizen and aristocrat will be enrolled. You won’t miss a thing.”

____________________________________________

Truth sat at a bus stop. Nowhere to go, nothing to do but watch the second drip past. It was the scale of the thing. He knew other people were out there, making moves, pulling strings. Fighting the System. His trainers had mentioned there being other resistance organizations out there, many of them. All useless, apparently. But how does one person, even one specially trained and equipped like Truth, jam a spoke in the wheels of progress?

Problem too big? Make it smaller. How does he massively fuck things up in Gwaju? Boring city that it was. Even that felt too big. How about one enrolment center? Start with that. Pick up the pace on the denizen overseer assassinations, see if he couldn’t set the stage for some riots, and while he is doing that, figure out just what the deal was with the enrollment centers. Did they have engram readers? Was there a big-ass formation under the floorboards?

Truth stretched. It was a plan. Truth got on the next bus out of mischief, then got off on the next stop. He had forgotten how much he hated buses in Jeon. Horrible little boxes, filled with stinking, miserable people. The end of the world couldn’t come soon enough.

Truth made his way back to the club De’Ponte was operating out of. Instead of recreating the persona he had before, Truth opted to keep himself unnoticable and try the venom of Incisive instead.

“Alright, that first hit was a qualified success, but clearly, this needs some fine tuning. Spread out the work, keep it from coming back to me. Pick up the pace too, so it’s all done before anyone can react.” Truth whispered. De’Ponte was nodding thoughtfully to himself, tapping his fingers on his table.

“There is another opportunity here too- those citizen enrollment centers. What kind of Starbrite tech are they sitting on in there? I bet the secrets to the System would be worth a fair bit overseas, and it’s never a bad idea to have an exit strategy. Yeah, let’s get eyes on these places. Find out what the security is like.”

“This could be it. Control the citizen enrollment. Control the denizens. Make the City want to work with me, not against me. This could be it. How my climb to the top starts. But I have to be fast. Very fast. After all… they are just waiting for a chance to knife me.”

Truth didn’t know who “they” were, but given the steady cocaine intake and precarious position of De’Ponte, he felt certain that “they” existed. Some rich heir put in charge of a tiny city where he couldn’t do too much damage? Oh yes. “They” were very real.

De’Ponte hadn’t seen The Slum. He didn’t realize he was a small rat. He was still trapped in the illusion that he could climb so high, he would be safe. But he couldn’t. You couldn't climb to the top of The Slum. You had to break out entirely.

Truth walked out, snagging a juice from behind the bar as he went. About as good as he remembered. It tasted a little weird to him now. Like he was picking up all kinds of other stuff that was added to the juice, things he had never noticed before. Strange, artificial flavors, chemical traces he didn’t understand and certainly didn’t enjoy.

He smiled a little. He was shaking off the poverty taste buds and confronting an unexpected problem. The path of the foodie was long and filled with trials. Ah well. Off for a little breaking and entering.

____________________________________________

> The System needled. >

Oh, fuck you. Truth looked up. And up. And up. The alumnae of the Gwaju Technical College of Agricultural and Maritime Sciences had dug deep when they sponsored the Athletics Center. Between the swimming pools, the full indoor track and field center, the multi-story cardio and weight training area, a three-story rock climbing wall, several courts for a variety of ball games, four boxing rings and a dozen multi-purpose function rooms, it was large. And for some reason, they made the exterior look like some kind of abstract frog.

It had big cement legs and two giant windows for the googly eyes. A row of smaller windows in a straight line made the mouth. Why? Why did they do this terrible thing?

“Excuse me, do you know why they made this building look like a frog?” He asked a passing student, who nodded.

“Sure. School mascot. Comfortable on land and water.”

“Of course. Say, do you happen to know exactly where in the center the enrollment is taking place?”

“No. Track and field center, maybe?”

“Thank you.”

“No problem.”

The student wandered off.

Do you think there is any chance that we go into there and see a door with a couple of F-Tier security guards standing outside a big double door with a “Warning! Do Not Enter!” sign on it?

>

Let me dream.

>

I think you have gotten more evil, not less.

>

Bickering with the System, Truth started exploring the Athletic Center. Not only was it huge, the layout had accelerated past insane and quickly reached the heights of surreal. Truth felt his sanity being harmed when he looked at the fire evacuation map. He then learned that the fire evacuation map was a joke, and the path indicated was actually the digestive tract of a bullfrog. There was no fire evacuation map. Each student should rely on their own initiative to combat any emergency. Running away was contemptible.

Truth instantly felt more at home. That was the Jeon he remembered.

It took him forty minutes to find the track and field area, a space large enough to fit an entire block of suburban homes. Somehow, he had walked past it no less than seven times. With a very necessary burst of force, he slammed the doors open and strode in. Green artificial turf, orange-brown oval-shaped track, bleachers, some kind of high jump bar… Truth started smiling, then collapsed into outright laughter.

Under the big scoreboard on the far side of the room was a big pair of doors, flanked by a couple of security guards and with a big “DO NOT ENTER, POLICE TAKE NOTICE” sign in front of it.

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