Pandion (Genera #1)

Chapter 5

T he empath profession was, if anything, very diverse. Ever since the discovery and development of the linking process some forty years ago, pairs of empaths and their unique sets of skills had been utilised to perform various tasks such as manning elaborate construction machinery, scientific research, investigative work, aiding medical and emergency services and even national security. It was possible to specialise in tasks that demanded great expertise and thus awarded a certain status.

Not everyone could become an empath. Out of the hundreds of applicants, only a handful were accepted to the few schools that offered the training. One-third of the students quit without graduating, and the job market could be highly competitive, though there was usually a lot to choose from if you were skilled enough.

Harumine was certainly skilled enough, so… why was he waist-deep in literal refuse?

Can you shut it off for me?

The complex waste management system of the mining colony 7a35: ‘Kabutomushi’ had malfunctioned. Because the only way to bypass the automated sorting system while it was being repaired was to hook up actual human brains to do the job, Kagesawa, Harumine and a few other empaths had been connected to the sorter to sort garbage before the backlog of it became a problem.

As this was one of the shittiest and most unexpected jobs out there, there was no tidy, climate-controlled control room from which to work. To connect to the sorter, one had to physically go where the sorter was, which in this case, was right in the middle of the sordid stench of the shit it was sorting.

The flow of refuse slowed and stopped so that Harumine could send some of the excess hazardous waste through one of the many sluices of the system before it would reach the sorter and clog it up. This was something he needed to do every twenty or so minutes because the initial influx caused by the malfunction was still too much for the machine to handle. Even at full capacity, some of it had to be diverted back into the system from time to time.

Go ahead and restart, Harumine instructed Kagesawa.

Kagesawa was also waist-deep in the refuse but at the other side of the sorter with a rudimentary set of manual controls. Since Harumine was the more skilled of the pair, he was the one doing most of the sorting. Kagesawa’s job was to stand at the controls to assist when the sorter needed to be stopped.

After eight hours of sorting a day, with only a few short breaks, Harumine was starting to feel like the contents of his skull were about to deliquesce and trickle from any available orifices. He was understandably not in a particularly great headspace by the end of the week, even if he’d never been more glad of a weekend in his life.

Stop the thing . Harumine was drifting in and out of sleep, sitting on the sofa, waiting for Kagesawa to finish making whatever he was attempting for supper.

“We’re not at work,” Kagesawa reminded him.

“Huh?” Harumine turned to look, a little startled. Yes, he’d been tired before. The biannual exam seasons and the extensive link simulations had been rough, just not quite as intense as the real thing.

“You were projecting again. The food is almost ready. A couple more minutes. Try not to fall asleep.”

“Hmm.” Harumine reset his cheek on the backrest and tried to stay awake. Another week of this and he would have surely burnt out. Thankfully, the automated sorting system had finally been repaired, and it had been a slightly shorter day than the ones before it. Restart it again. Harumine jolted back awake. He’d been sleep-projecting these two sentences most of the week from having had to repeat them so many times.

“Ooh, sorry.” As soon as he closed his eyes, he could see the sickening flow of refuse that he’d been watching all week. “I’m never doing that again.”

“Can’t say it was one of my favourite gigs either,” Kagesawa commented. The doorbell rang. “Can you check who that is? I’m a bit tied up here.” He was referring to whatever he was frying in the pan.

Harumine got up and shambled to the door. When he opened it, the person on the other side shoved him in the chest and issued forth an immediate tirade of some rather ear-burning insults and threats.

“Wait, what? Excuse me?” Harumine struggled to stay on his feet.

“You’re not him, where is he? Kagesawa!” The stocky, bearded man pushed past Harumine and into the apartment. “Rent! YOU OWE ME TWO MONTHS’ WORTH!”

“Oh?” Kagesawa didn’t seem surprised or bothered. In fact, he continued what he was doing in his usual leisurely manner.

Harumine was appalled. Never mind the tendency to throw this apartment into a state of chaos unless Harumine constantly kept track of things and picked up after him, but the man had not bothered to pay the rent? Was his financial situation that bad?!

The fuming landlord didn’t look like the sort to cross, so, to keep the situation from escalating, Harumine searched for a way to resolve it as soon as humanly possible.

“I’m sure we can work something out.” But how? They’d received their pay for this week’s work, but he hadn’t had the time to hand in his credit chip yet, so there wasn’t much money in his account. He had some savings but couldn’t access them at such short notice—

“Ah, Satoru-kun.” Kagesawa pulled him aside. Speaking in a slightly lower voice, he continued, “Can you check the closet for me?”

Without waiting for the rest of that instruction, Harumine hurried to check said closet.

“Two months. That’s about 700, right? We’ll make it eight since it’s late. Is that all right?” Kagesawa appeased the landlord while flipping the contents of his frying pan a few more times and plating the mess next to heaps of rice.

Harumine stared into the dim closet. He looked back out and at Kagesawa, who merely nudged his shoulder to urge Harumine to hurry up. There weren’t enough expletives in the world to express accurately the complex onslaught of feelings brought on by what was in the closet. Harumine could easily spot dozens of credit chips lying in the back corner amidst a pile of assorted rubbish, clothes and other crap.

“Is there a problem?” Kagesawa asked, now right behind Harumine’s back. He reached past Harumine, poked around a bit, checked a few of the chips for a suitable one and, to Harumine’s ever-accumulating horror, handed it over to the landlord.

Now considerably calmer, the landlord patted Kagesawa’s back as if he hadn’t threatened to take the man’s life in several painful ways when he’d burst in through the door moments earlier.

“Pay it on time next time. Game night next Wednesday, are you still on?” the man asked as Kagesawa escorted him to the door.

“I don’t know yet; I’ll let you know.”

“Fine. But I’m making a flip-and-dip cheese plate, and there will be plenty of beer. It’s your loss if you don’t turn up. It’s for Nishimura since I can’t make it for his birthday.”

“Ah, right. I’ll see what I can do.”

Harumine watched Kagesawa wave the landlord goodbye and close the door. Then he took one more look at the closet to ensure he hadn’t hallucinated the scene that had unfolded before him.

At a glance, he counted twenty-six chips, and those were just the ones visible.

“The food’s ready.” Kagesawa offered a plate to Harumine, who stared at the plate of mostly unidentifiable something. What was this? What was it even made of?

Kagesawa sat down cross-legged on the sofa. He was about to open a can of beer but stopped and glanced at Harumine.

“No, go on right ahead.” Harumine was in shock. He sat next to Kagesawa and took a bite of what he’d been offered. It was palatable, which only made things seem even more unreal.

Where to even begin with this?

“You do realise— No.” Harumine frowned. “It’s one thing to— But you see, if you— Um.” He was stumped.

“Are you still worried about the landlord? He’s always like that. That’s just how he is.” Kagesawa smiled and took another bite.

“No, that’s not it, I… or well, yes sure, but more importantly, how do I put this…” Harumine rubbed his forehead. He was exhausted, and this whole thing was throwing him off in the worst possible way. “Are you sure you don’t need professional help ?”

“What do you mean?” Kagesawa was casually enjoying his meal as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

“You’re… how can you—? Don’t you—? Isn’t it—?”

“Are you having a seizure? Should I do something?”

“You’re storing credit chips on the floor, in a closet.” It was painful to even say it out loud. “Instead of handing them in. You know, to have the money deposited into your EA account and the credit added to your record.” Harumine was starting to feel like he might be getting a headache from trying to understand what this unfathomable idiocy could mean. “And you’re using your credit chips as currency to pay for the rent. Am I understanding this correctly?”

“Yes.”

“You’re aware that your record is essentially your only CV, and it affects the sort of work you’re offered, right?”

“Yes.”

“And you might have other perks stored on those chips besides just the pay?”

“Sure, but that stuff’s mostly useless to me—”

“You understand all this, so, the question I’m afraid to ask is… why ?”

“Hmm.” Kagesawa paused to chew and think. “Well, I haven’t gotten around to it; it’s such a pain in the ass.” As he said this, he did look a tiny bit embarrassed and apologetic.

Harumine had lost his appetite but tried to force something down. Slowly, very slowly, he formed his next question, “How do you pay for groceries?”

The pile of chips in the closet hadn’t happened overnight, so, could there be anything left in Kagesawa’s bank account?

“I use my card.” Kagesawa only elaborated further after Harumine glared at him. “I do get occasional transfers from unofficial commissions. Sales or the odd jobs from people who don’t bother filling chips.” He shrugged.

“How long has it been like this?” Harumine asked. He was frustrated, but some of his dismay was replaced by worry.

“As long as I can remember… Ah, I know it’s stupid. I don’t know what to tell you.”

“We’ll go hand them in together on Monday,” Harumine said, purposely making an effort to let go of the remnants of his self-righteous indignation. He could blame Kagesawa for everything, live in misery for the rest of this sentence or try to work on himself and his own attitude. But it was, oh, so tempting to give the man a verbal beating.

“I can’t believe I sorted all that crap when we could have afforded to wait for something better. Wouldn’t have had to wait for long either, had you handed in all your credits.” Having voiced this, Harumine felt a strange sense of relief and resignation.

Kagesawa took a bite, stared into thin air until he swallowed and then looked at his can of beer. “It’s not as if I don’t know this stuff, but I just wasn’t thinking. I’m sorry,” he said.

“I guess it’s fine. I’ll survive.”

“In case I forget, there are more chips in my desk drawers.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“And probably in the bathroom. I should check the laundry hamper. There are usually some at the bottom.”

“Where else?”

“Might have a few lying around here and there… Are you sure the beer is fine?”

“Yes, yes. I know what to expect this time.” After today, he felt like maybe a beer was in order.

“All right. If you’re sure.” Kagesawa opened the can and sipped it in silence.

Go ahead and resta— Harumine set his plate down on the coffee table so as not to drop it or dive into it if he fell asleep where he sat. “Thanks for the food, by the way. ”

“You’re welcome.” Kagesawa took the plates away and returned to the sofa with another beer.

“You’re having another?” Harumine was too tired to calculate whether that would make a difference.

“I thought I might. Do you mind?”

“I don’t care anymore. It’s up to you.” The first one hadn’t done much since he’d known to dampen the link in time. Even if his concentration faltered, he found himself thinking that the worst-case scenario wasn’t even all that bad. “I’d advise against a third though,” he added to not seem too eager. Kagesawa chuckled.

Stop the, uh. Harumine shook himself.

“Maybe you should go to sleep?”

“I probably should.” It didn’t seem as appealing when he was forced to sort trash as soon as he closed his eyes. He glanced at Kagesawa, grabbed the fresh can of beer, cracked it open and took a tentative swig. Blech . He’d had an idea of how it tasted, but tasting it for himself was slightly different.

“That was for me,” Kagesawa commented but didn’t seem upset.

“I just wanted to try it for myself for once. Out of curiosity.” Harumine tasted it again, but a second try made it taste no better.

“You can have it. Maybe one was enough for me after all.”