Off Topic
July 8, 2063 – It’s late. After midnight, so technically it’s still yesterday. Bikini Krill GM Ron Collins is sitting quietly in his Forever Land office while outside a hot, steady rain pelts down on the thatched roof. It’s one of those classic showers. Not a storm. Just another in the endless cycle of summer rains that the islands drop about every 18 hours. The ice tea he’s been sipping on for the past two hours is almost gone. The holo-screen across the way is still glowing in the iridescent shadows that the technology leaves behind after being powered down.
He liked being in the office at this time of night when he could be alone and outside the bustle of the staff. He liked hearing the wind rustle the thatch outside, and he liked the quality of light that came this late in the night. Even in the overcast, it wasn’t full darkness. The light of the night radiated in from the big bay window that overlooked the Krill’s executive lagoon, giving everything in the office the faintest of outlines.
In the fading glow from the holo-screen, Collins noticed the glistening of another trickle of water winding its way down the far wall.
Another leak.
Keeping the offices watertight is a never-ending job in Forever Land.
Otherwise Collins stews in the room’s quietness, thinking back on the All-Star game he’s just watched again—a game for whom an amazing five of his players were selected, and that the Frick won by a tight margin, 2-1. Mostly, though, he thought about pitch counts, and in specific Paul Worboys (17) and Arturo Meza’s (15) pitch counts—both of whom through full innings in the game, and both of whom were slated to throw at the top of the rotation as his suddenly Division leading team headed into Twin Cities. Now, though…he’d been on the phone with manager Kate Fiscus and pitching coach Fernando Alaniz earlier. They were going to have to…
Suddenly Collins’s heart clenched. A motion. Gentle. In the corner of the room. He sat forward, fear pushing a clotted wad of gauze into his throat.
“What do you want?”
The figure was sitting in the recliner in the corner. “Nothing,” a man’s voice said. He stood up. The shape is thin and tall in the shadows. “I just want to give you some information.”
Despite such assurances, Collins’ stomach knots further as the man steps close enough to the desk that soft light from the bay window reveals the man’s face.
“I’ve seen you before?” Collins says.
“Dag Johnson?” Collins replied with aplomb.
The man waited the right amount of time, and eventually the moment snapped into Collins’s mind. “The Krill Karavan,” Collins said. “You were one of the player ambassadors.”
“Right. And afterward we were left in place.”
“Heidi’s spies,” Collins said, recalling Heidi “Hellscape” Hickman’s plans to explore a water controversy in Long Beach and Sacramento tht some thought has spread throughout the league..
“We report to Ms. Manning,” Johnson said in a tone that Collins thought might be derisive.
“I see.” But he didn’t, though the fact that Johnson reported to Marie Manning, the Director of the Public Propaganda Team, made him even more unsettled. Manning reported to his assistant GM, Monica Green, and at this point Collins was pretty sure that Green was a live wire who reported to him on paper, but reported to P. Moreau Westmoreland, the Bikini owner during their nightly dinners and whatever other goings on were going on.
“Ms. Manning decided to leave us in the field after the Karavan,” Johnson said. “The thought we might be able to dig up interesting information at times.”
A sip of watered down tea later, taken while giving Dag Johnson an appraising stare that served mostly for time to think, Collins replied. Settling, he realized that Johnson was more than met the eye. Not quite a robot, but a kind of cybernetic intelligence gathering machine—mostly human, but wired with enough technology to give a science fiction script writer a wet dream. “And I take it you’ve found something interesting.”
The man’s smile was jaunty, but tight lipped. A light flared at one corner of his shades, and the holo-projector flipped back on.
Collins examined two documents that appeared.
Plans.
Operation Wind-up, the pages were labelled, and they described a collection of actions taken to ensure that at least two Krill starters would be selected to the All-Star team, and how efforts to burn up their pitch counts would be taken. There was more, too. Diagrams of the rooms that the two Krill starters would be assigned in Des Moines, where the game would be hosted, diagrams of how gaseous materials would be released into those rooms such that their sleep would be disrupted—and another addendum to add in the rooms of relievers Winston Morris and Enrique Villarreal—perhaps the best 1-2 punch in a bullpen that exists around the league.
“Throw as many pitches as possible. Disrupt sleep. There’s even a thing here injecting foreign molecules into their room service,” Collins muttered. “Is this saying what I think it’s saying?”
“It is. At least it is if what you think it’s saying is that there is a conspiracy around the league to hamstring Bikini pitchers.”
“Who?”
“It’s deep,” Johnson said. “Kernel leadership is involved somewhere.”
“How do you know that?”
“Someone left a new recipe for gourmet popcorn in the documents we scanned. There was apparently grease left on the original. Probably butter and oil. We’re doing a full scan of the digital remains now. I suspect we’ll have a fingerprint and ID in the next 24 hours.”
Collins gritted his teeth. “Damned Kernels.”
“It goes deeper, though.”
“How deep?”
“I have data that shows Nashville, Twin Cities, and Chicago are all at least tangentially in the deal. I’m following up leads in Yellow Springs and Louisville, too.”
“That’s almost the whole Heartland.”
“Everyone who might still be on your schedule,” Johnson agreed. “And then there’s the Pacific.”
“The Pacific is in on this, too? I should have figured. Who in the Pacific? Probably Portland. Those guys are falling as fast as Sandy Mounds’s IQ.”
“I said the Pacific on purpose.”
Collins furrowed up his brow. “The Pacific? You mean the whole Pacific division is trying to murder our pitchers?”
“Not murder, but, yes, the whole Pacific division.”
“Even fucking Valencia?”
“I think it was their idea, sir.”
“But-”
“Seems like no one wants to face your staff. You’ll find more information in the data package I’m wiring to your personal file system.”
Collins sat back, rubbing his eyes with the migraine that might or might not be coming on. “Why are you telling me this,” he said, thinking harder now. “You said you report to Marie, why not go to her first?”
Johnson took in a breath, then removed his shades. For a moment, he gazed at Collins, and in that moment, Collins suddenly understood what he was going to say.
“I said the whole Pacific for a reason,” Johnson intoned.
“It’s an inside job.”
The cybernetic agent’s face curled into something that might have been a grimace but might also have been a bemused smile. “You’ve got a problem, Ron. I figured you should be the first to know.” A light flickered from a small node that was embedded at the hairline of his left temple. At the same moment another set of documents rang into Collins’s personal files. “There’s someone in your organization that doesn’t want the team to win, and I need your help to find out who it is.”
