Slumrat Rising

Reliable

AHHAHAHAAAHAA!!! WHAT THE FUCK, WHAT THE FUCK! How! What? SSSSHHHHNIIIAAAAUGHRRAAAA!^&%$%%%!

Truth woke, thinking he heard someone screaming. But there was nothing, the apartment was quiet and still. He must have been dreaming. Though he never seemed to remember his dreams. Oh well. It was five in the morning. Good time to be up.

He took a quick shower, dressed in his uniform, and started laying out breakfast. The sibs would be up soon, and he liked to have everything ready to go. No more leftover rice, or garbage sugar things from the convenience store. No more giving Vig the last slice of bread because “I already ate.” Truth put the instant eggs in the hot box and let them cook. Thick slices of toast cooked in the toaster. Fresh tomatoes, slices of apple, all down on the plate. The Sibs would go to school with full bellies.

Truth looked at the breakfast. It didn’t look fancy, he would be the first to admit. The wood veneered table was one of the cheapest in the System store when he went and checked. It was… odd to him. This was supposed to be poverty. This was supposed to be struggling at the bottom, by the standards of the nice parts of Harban City. And yet, for him, this table and this breakfast was the truest wealth. He struggled to imagine wanting more.

Yawning and dragging, the sibs stumbled out of their room. Harmony was hitting the same protein inspired growth spurt that Truth had caught in the Army. It suited him. He was lean, strong, and with a quiet look to him. If you watched him long enough, you realized that the quiet outside was not matched by the racing thoughts inside of him. Truth had brought Har up to be his Number 2 in his “Keep The Sibs Alive” organization, and it showed. Steady, reliable, firm. And kind, in his way.

Sophia looked good too, but then, she always had. What made Truth happy, though, was that she was half asleep and still reading her Bio textbook. He had taken a peek at it. Five different colors of highlighters had been used, and margin notes filled the borders of every page. It was a pity that Truth didn’t know what an illuminated manuscript was, or he would have found the comparison really on point.

Vigor and Harmony had really struggled academically. Sophie hadn’t. She caught up in two months, and was now routinely acing her tests. Every boring shift, every prick Truth had to smile at, they were all fine. Because BY GOD he was sending her to college, so none of that shit mattered.

Then there was Vigor, dark eyed and sulky mouth, hiding the fact that his grades, while nothing special, had improved from “failing utterly” to “middle of his class” in a year. And he was still climbing. Vigor dressed the best out of all of them. That was a neat trick, since everyone was in either a work or school uniform. Vigor just seemed to wear it better, making the clothes look sharper because he was in them. The little bastard. Truth would cheerfully give a lot to know how he managed it.

“Morning all.” Truth smiled at them. “What’s the day look like?”

“Morning. Normal.” Harmony smiled, loading up a plate. “Got a track meet coming up, so I’m off for a run before school.”

“Oh cool, want me to come and cheer?” Truth asked.

“At a track meet? Nah. Maybe if we get to a championship or something.” Harmony waved him off.

“You always say that.” Truth grumbled.

“Bro, I’m running fast in a straight line. You want to watch me run fast in a straight line, I can do it in the hall. Save yourself a trip.” Har laughed quietly.

“How’s the schoolwork?” Truth asked.

“A struggle, but I’m actually enjoying science. Bio was ok, but I am really enjoying the chemistry lab work.” Harmony sounded pretty chipper about it. A long way from someone excited to be mopping floors for food money, Truth felt. He was damn proud of Harmony.

“I hate bio. I hate it.” Sophie grumbled. She poked angrily at the book. “It’s all wrong.”

“It.. is?” Truth hazarded.

“It IS! Look, math- two plus two is four, right?”

“Yes.” Truth nodded firmly. This much he was sure of.

“Well not in bio. In bio, two plus two is a potato, or hair. It depends. It all depends. Everything is a firm rule, except for all the exceptions which are also firm rules. It drives me crazy.” She gave the textbook another vindictive poke.

“So why did you sign up for an afterschool bio club?” Truth asked.

“Because I wanted the extra-curriculars on my record, it's a competition team which also looks good, and…” She looked sulky.

“She loves bio. Ignore the whining.” Vigor said, from the depths of his plate. He was also shooting up like a weed.

“I DON'T. Bio sucks!”

“Do. I saw you sketching critters the other day. Then planning how you would make them in a lab.”

“VIG! That was private!” Sophie yelled.

“Can’t be that private, you asked Mr. Gasley if you could borrow the bio-lab on the weekend.”

“You snooping little shit! Why are you such a stalker?” She hissed. Vigor shrugged innocently.

“Wasn’t stalking you, I was stuck in the closet in the classroom. Becky Shien was feeling impatient, and then you walked in with the teacher.”

That brought the table conversation to a halt. Truth rotated in place, seemingly without moving his feet and gave Vigor a gimlet look.

“Vig. Are you…”

“Whoops, look at that time. Got to run. Love you bro!” Vigor was out the door with his backpack before the words finished echoing in the apartment.

Truth was coming up on his eight month mark at Starbrite, and so far, things seemed to be going well. Hints were dropped, loudly, that he could soon find himself a Corporal, and on a steady path to Sergeant. Assuming that he remained a “good fit.” A team player. An NCO has to understand the importance of teamwork, obviously. They have to be reliable. And in a corporate environment, they had to understand discretion.

One of the more boring routine jobs they got was scanning shipments from overseas for contraband. Another customs station, Truth realized. It was a dockside post, where the smells of salt water and rust mixed with the greasy ionization of poorly maintained, overused talismans. He could never get over the sheer size of the ships. How they just… towered over everything, but only needed a handful of people to run. Amazing. Just. Amazing. And none of the stuff on them got lost either. Which was even more amazing.

Generally this was a routine gig handled by government inspectors with all the drama of paint drying. However, some of the imports were in the form of dangerous animals, or had active spell effects, or were just plain weird and nasty to the point where having an actual soldier on hand made sense.

The job was still mostly standing around and looking dangerous, but sometimes the government inspectors had to go on break. Then the Starbrite PMC soldiers would step in and scan things for them. Just to keep things moving. The docks ran on strict time tables, and a small delay could turn into a huge loss for everyone.

Once everything was scanned for contraband, they would be passed on to the longshoremen for whatever came next. Truth was kind of vague on how logistics worked. You ran the scanner wand over the crate. It took a few minutes, but eventually the wand went *Ding* and turned green for a second. Then the crate was stamped, and you sent it on. That’s it. He just waved the wand when they told him to, crate after crate.

Except, of course, when he didn’t. Sometimes, a crate came in that had a “Urgent” or “Expedite” tag on it in their system. It was explained to Truth that, occasionally, some very senior, very powerful, figures in the company had to bring things in from overseas. Things they urgently needed. And he worked for Starbrite, not the government. His job was to make things go right for the Company, not fit perfectly on a checklist. So long as the inspection stamp went on the crate, everything was legal.

There was a 100% coincidence rate between when the government inspector went for a smoke and when the “Urgent” crates came in. Generally Sergeant Murthey handled them. Just stamp and go, nice and easy. One day the inspector went for a smoke, and Murthey joined him. A crate came into the inspection station, and when Truth scanned the marker (using his handy, System-provided spell) it came up “Most Urgent.”

He had wondered when they would try this. It’s not like he didn’t understand the game months ago. He certainly didn’t mind it. He was a Starbrite Man, not a cop. Truth picked up the stamp, stamped the container, and sent it to the longshoremen. A little bit later, Murthey came back and the shift continued as usual.

As they were changing in the locker room after their shift, the Sergeant came up to him.

“Hey Truth, I think you dropped this. Got to be more careful, son. These things are valuable.”

Murthey held out a cultivation crystal. Roughly a thousand credits in the Treasure Pavilion for a little one like this. The sergeant looked him dead in the eye. Truth looked straight back at him.

“Thanks Sarge. I had wondered where that got to.” Truth reached out and closed his hand over the crystal.

Two weeks later, he was made a Corporal and told that some much, much higher paid missions were now available to him. It seems that he was considered reliable.

That night, as Truth lay sleeping-

Truth loathed the philosopher, but he had to admit, the little coward had a brain on him. It seemed to be bulging out of the top of his head. In fact, his whole head looked like an alchemical symbol. A straight, narrow, perfectly centered and perfectly vertical line of hair on his chin that ran up to a perfectly horizontal mustache above the lip. Then a perfectly straight aquiline nose, topped by a perfectly round, bulging bald pate, surrounded by a corona of radiating hair.

“So because such-and-such a thing must have happened, it did happen, and since it did happen, it is a matter of logic that everything else has happened as a consequence? If A=B and B=C then C=A, that kind of thing, but with entire kingdoms?” Truth asked.

“In the very simplest terms, yes. By observing the world closely, we can determine what is, and from that, we may work both backwards and forwards to deduce what was, and what must be. From the tiniest speck of dust, to the mind of God Almighty.” The Philosopher nodded.

Truth mulled it over. “Two obvious problems appear. The first is that this just sounds like divine providence with extra steps. Not a whole lot of room between “It’s just logic,” and “Because it’s God’s will,” no? And second, how sure are you about your observations? Because if you have incorrectly observed the world, the whole chain of logic falls apart.”

The philosopher sputtered. “I have written hundreds of pages, debated with bishops and the best minds of the continent, and spent decades on this study! I can assure you, the logic is impeccable. The first problem is no problem at all. Why must they be two different things?” He started waving violently as he picked up speed.

“Our faith tells us that the entirety of creation, from beginning to end, was foreordained before the first day. I have simply proved by logic that it must be so, not simply a demand of orthodoxy. And, second, do you really think that both I and all those worthies would somehow err in our appreciation of the world around us?!”

Truth looked over the ruined village. The church was looted, the stained glass windows shot out and the faces smashed off the statues. The priest had been nailed to the big front door. “I think that if logic leads us here, then I am prepared to embrace madness. And yes, I think you have badly misjudged the world, all of you.”