Poiesic Systems

The first thing Eddie Reyes lost was his voice. Then his eyes, then his mind and everything that made him a person. The heat started bone-deep, searing him from marrow to skin all over his body. In his final seconds Eddie understood his mistake. He should’ve never left the truck.

Two hours earlier, he’d been thinking about a dog.

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Eddie Reyes shifted in his seat and checked the clock on his dash. Quarter to eleven. Watsonville to San Jose, ninety minutes if the fog held off on the 1. He’d driven this route so many times he could probably do it with his eyes closed.

...

The conference room on the fourth floor of the E Ring had no windows. That was the first thing Sam Hillis noticed and it bothered him more than he wanted to admit. He’d expected something grander. Wood paneling, maybe. A view. Instead he got flat overhead lighting, a laminate table, and six chairs that belonged in a community college.

Hillis sat on one side with his co-founder Bill Sandoval. Across the table sat Brigadier General Lewis Prentiss and a woman in civilian clothes who hadn’t been introduced. She had a legal pad and hadn’t looked up from it.

...

Board Presentation – October 18, 2023
BOARD CONFIDENTIAL
Excerpts: Slides 8, 9, 10, and 22 of 22

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...

The security checkpoint at the entrance to Diamond Valley Campus looked like something out of a movie about a military base. Lance Thurgood pulled his beat-up Civic to a stop behind a white pickup truck and watched the guard lean into the driver’s window, clipboard in hand. A second guard walked slowly around the truck with a mirror on a stick, checking the undercarriage.

A mirror on a stick. In the middle of nowhere Nevada. Lance shook his head and popped open his glovebox to fish out the folder of paperwork HR had sent him. Badge request form. Background check authorization. Emergency contact sheet. Tax forms. More forms he didn’t remember filling out. The stack was almost half an inch thick.

...

The library at Diamond Valley Elementary smelled like new carpet. No old books, no dust, no cracked spines. Every volume on the shelves looked brand spanking new.

Ella was sorting a donation box–picture books and chapter books that parents had dropped off, presumably to make the place feel more like an elementary school and less like a corporate-run education facility. She checked each spine for damage, sorted by reading level, and set aside anything that looked like it had actually been loved. A few of the picture books had torn pages or pages marked up with large strokes of crayons. She put those in the discard pile.

...

Lance lay on top of the covers in his boxers and stared at the ceiling. The institutional quiet of the residential building after dark was starkly different from the ambient noise he’d grown used to in Seattle and unsettling, like the building was holding its breath.

He’d been awake for two hours. Maybe three. His phone was face down on the nightstand because looking at the time made it worse. The window blinds were closed but a thin line of light from the parking lot cut across the ceiling at an angle, pale and steady.

...

Jennifer Walsh’s office was neat in a way that suggested military discipline and/or deep OCD. Nothing on the desk except a laptop, a phone, and a single framed photograph facing away from visitors. No plants. No clutter. The blinds were adjusted to let in exactly enough light to work by and not a lumen more.

The two men standing in front of her desk were trying very hard not to look nervous. They were failing.

...

Mark Thompson stood at the window of his office and watched the morning light crawl across Diamond Valley, his kingdom. From the fourth floor he could see most of the campus–the housing clusters, the warehouse parks, the network of roads connecting one climate-controlled box to another.

He checked his watch. Eight forty-five. Fifteen minutes until the staff meeting. Fifteen minutes to get his head right.

And then afterward, Sogusmithr.

The thought landed in his stomach like a stone. He’d been dreading this meeting for three days, ever since Walsh’s preliminary report had crossed his desk. Two more guards dead on the back perimeter, near Building 153. Again. And the description of the incident–encountering a civilian and the state of the guards’ remains–pointed in only one direction.

...

Dara Richardson had a system.

Radio tuned to KXNT out of Las Vegas before she even started the van. Seat adjusted, mirrors set, clipboard on the passenger seat face-down. Coffee in the cupholder but she wouldn’t drink it until after. That was the rule. Coffee was for the drive back. Something to look forward to.

She pulled the shuttle van around to the side entrance of the clinic and left the engine running. It looked like every other shuttle on campus–white, twelve-passenger, the Aegis logo on the door and EMPLOYEE TRANSIT stenciled along the side. That was the point. Nobody looked twice at a shuttle van. The air conditioning needed a minute to get the back compartment down to temperature. Not for their comfort–they didn’t seem to care about temperature anymore–but because the paperwork said climate-controlled transport and Dara did things by the book.

...

Gabriela was inspecting her Cheerios. One at a time, held between thumb and forefinger, turned, examined, approved or rejected according to criteria only she understood. The approved ones went in her mouth. The rejected ones formed a small pile on the table that was growing faster than the ones she ate.

“We don’t sort our cereal, baby. We eat it.”

“I am eating it.”

“You’re eating some. There’s a difference.”

...

Ella parked in the school’s parking lot and checked her phone. Twelve minutes early. She could have waited in the car, but the silence of the empty lot felt oppressive, so she walked to the front office instead.

The wind hit her the moment she stepped outside. It came from the north, steady and dry, pulling the moisture off her skin before she’d taken three steps. The temperature had been in the low fifties when she’d left the house that morning; now it was pushing ninety, the sun bleaching the sky to a pale, hostile white. By tonight it would be back in the forties. Her skin couldn’t decide whether to sweat or crack.

...

Friday. The ticket queue was light for once, and Bo had spent the afternoon alternating between actual work and something on his phone that made him snort every few minutes.

“You gonna share?” Lance asked.

“AegisBook drama. Somebody in Building 2 posted a review of the potato salad at the company picnic and it turned into a forty-comment war.” Bo angled his phone toward Lance. “This woman Carol made the potato salad. It’s gettin’ personal.”

...

The weekend urgent care log had fourteen entries. Ashley worked through them top to bottom, checking vitals against baselines, noting follow-ups. Sprained ankle from the rec center. Toddler with croup. A woman from Building 2 who came in at midnight certain she was having a heart attack–anxiety, discharged with a counseling referral. The ordinary injuries of a small town of fifteen hundred people.

Entry eleven stopped her.

Dupuis, Beauregard. Male, 28. IT Support, Building 7. Residential Building C. Presented Sunday 21:32 with sustained posterior epistaxis, approximately twenty-five minutes prior to arrival. Anterior packing unsuccessful. Silver nitrate cauterization performed. Patient reported recurring episodes over previous seven days with increasing duration. BP 142/91, HR 88, temp 99.1. Discharged stable, follow-up forty-eight hours.

...

Paul was at work. Again. Saturday, at his desk in whatever building it was they wouldn’t let her visit, doing whatever it was he couldn’t talk about, while his children climbed the walls of a three-bedroom apartment that smelled like recycled air and carpet adhesive.

Ella gathered the kids’ jackets–desert spring mornings were crisp at five thousand feet–and called down the hall. “We’re going to the park.”

Sophie appeared immediately, book under her arm, ready. Tommy did not.

...

Bo’s second follow-up was on a Wednesday. Lance drove because Bo’s hands had developed a tremor that made driving a challenge, though Bo insisted it was just the coffee.

“I don’t even drink that much coffee,” Bo said from the passenger seat, staring at his fingers resting on his thigh. They vibrated faintly, a constant low hum like a phone on silent. “Two cups. Maybe three.”

“You drink four.”

“Three and a half. The last one’s mostly creamer.” Bo flexed his fingers, watching them vibrate. He sighed. “Pradeep’s got me reviewin’ the ticket backlog. Prioritizin’, sortin’ the old ones, flaggin’ duplicates. I’m losin’ my mind, cher. There’s only so many times you can read ‘printer not responding’ before you start rootin’ for the printer.”

...

Thompson settled into his chair and surveyed the table. Thursday afternoon executive leadership team. Smaller group compared to the general admission circus of his weekly staff meeting.

“Good afternoon, everyone. Let’s keep it tight today. I know we’re all busy.”

The usual lineup. Walsh to his right, folder closed, posture parade-ground straight. Oyelaran two seats down with her tablet and her untouched tea. Davis smiling like she’d been plugged into a wall socket. Kedrov next to her, looking imperturbable and detached, reviewing something on his laptop. Krol at the far end, nothing in front of him. Hands folded. Watching.

...

Bo was waiting outside Building C with his hands in his jacket pockets. The tremor was bad enough now that you could see it from across the parking lot–a steady vibration running through his arms and into his shoulders, like an engine idling rough.

“Mornin’, cher.” He climbed into the passenger seat and pulled the door shut. The water bottle was already in his hand. He took a long drink before his seatbelt was on.

...

The call came at eight-fifteen. Bo was at his desk pretending to work–same as every morning, same cup of coffee, same ticket queue he hadn’t touched in three days because his hands couldn’t reliably hit the right keys anymore. His phone buzzed and the screen said WELLNESS CENTER and his stomach went small and hard.

“Mr. Dupuis, this is Jackie at the Wellness Center. Dr. Oyelaran has your imaging results and would like you to come in this morning.”

...

Walsh had been in the room since oh-nine-forty. Standing along the east wall which gave her clear sightlines to the podium and both main entrances. Just like she’d done in every room she’d entered for the past twenty years.

The community center filled around her. Folding chairs in rows, a portable stage, a podium flanked by two screens with the Aegis logo rotating in slow blue and silver. She counted heads as they filed in. Four hundred, maybe more. Families too–mothers with strollers, kids pulled from school. The email had said Campus Safety Update. Mandatory for staff, encouraged for dependents. Walsh still thought encouraging dependents to attend unhelpfully increased the profile of the meeting.

...

The tooth had been bothering him for days. Weeks, maybe. Thompson stood at the bathroom mirror in his boxers and undershirt, jaw clenched, tongue working the spot where the second molar–the new one–had grown long enough to catch the inside of his cheek every time he closed his mouth. He couldn’t chew gum anymore. Couldn’t eat without biting down wrong and tasting copper. The thing was pressing into soft tissue hard enough to cut, and this morning he’d woken with blood on his pillow.

...

Ashley drew Tommy Mazur’s blood on a Thursday morning, two days after the all-hands. He squirmed on the exam table, legs kicking, and Ella had to hold his arm while Ashley found the vein. “Almost done, buddy.” He was crying before the needle was in. Normal. Seven-year-olds cried when you stuck them. What wasn’t normal was the color of the blood filling the tube–darker than it should have been, almost brown.

...

The kids’ voices carried from the tortoise exhibit, thin and strange. It took Ashley a moment to realize why. No echoes. On campus everything bounced off walls and ceilings. Out here the sound just kept going.

Oyelaran pulled a stack of handwritten notes from the tote bag, held together with a huge paperclip, and four sheets of binder paper taped together, rolled up, and fastened with a rubber band. She spread it out on the table, smoothing out wrinkles, and weighted the corners with rocks. A hand-drawn map of the Diamond Valley campus.

...

Walsh was waiting for Thompson outside his office when he arrived Monday morning.

“We need to talk. There’s a problem”, she said. The corner of a manila folder peeked out from her crossed arms.

He suppressed a sigh as he unlocked and opened his office. He could still smell the peanut sauce from Friday’s late lunch, Thai from Aegis Foods’ hot bar. He walked in and dropped his laptop bag on the floor behind his granite slab desk. “Come in, come in”, he said and leaned on the desk’s edge facing Walsh. He managed a lopsided smile. The bottom half of his face throbbed. There was already another tooth growing into the gap from the one he’d pulled last week. Thompson tried to not think about what that meant. “You have my undivided attention, Jennifer. What’s up?”

...

Lance rolled over and looked at his clock. One thirty-seven AM. Exactly four minutes since the last time he’d checked. He closed his eyes and tried to relax. Again. Instead his mind decided to play back Bo’s greatest hits followed by select excerpts from the meeting. He sighed heavily and kicked the sheet and light blanket off.

He walked to the kitchen in his underwear and a threadbare t-shirt, grabbed a beer from the fridge, and sat on the couch in his small living room. The building was quiet. Monday would be here soon. He sighed and took a long drink of his beer. Sleep just wasn’t in the cards tonight.

...

Thompson suppressed the urge to scream. Fat drops of blood oozed from his mouth and landed on his desk and right hand. He’d fallen asleep. Well, not really sleep, more like a stupor. The constant pain in his jaws made it impossible to sleep. The jaw pain and the burning cramps in his stomach, a recent addition thanks to the handfuls of ibuprofen he took every couple of hours, were his constant companions.

...

Bill Sandoval sat in front of his laptop and adjusted the screen until he was satisfied with the camera angle. It was critical the all-hands go well. And not just for the people in Diamond Valley. The last thing he wanted was another interaction with one of those freaks. The further away they stayed, the better.

He inspected the mirror image of his face on the screen, looking for any remnants of his breakfast bagel, misbuttoned shirt, or anything else that could distract the employees viewing him. Once he was satisfied, he joined the meeting.

...

Two rapid knocks at the door. Sandoval looked up from his laptop. “Enter.”

Jennifer Walsh stepped into the small conference room that had become his impromptu office. “You wanted to see me?”

She looked pale, her forehead slick with sweat. Her left arm was wrapped in a thick gauze dressing and tucked into a sling hanging around her neck. Her fingertips peeked out from the dressing, bruised and swollen. Sandoval winced.

...

Victor kissed the top of Gabriela’s head, then Ashley’s mouth. Quick, distracted, already at work in his mind. “I’ll try to get off early. Maybe we can take her to the playground after daycare.”

“That would be nice.”

“Love you.”

“Love you too. Go.”

The door closed. The badge reader beeped. His work boots faded down the corridor.

Ashley sat back and watched Gabriela eat. A bowl of Cheerios consumed with the focused intensity of someone defusing a bomb–one at a time, each inspected before committing. Her stuffed rabbit sat in the chair beside her, positioned to observe.

...

“Is it safe to enter?” Sandoval asked the man standing guard outside Thompson’s apartment door.

“Yes, sir. He was sedated about forty-five minutes ago.”

Sandoval opened the door and entered. The apartment had been stripped bare of all furnishings save a large hospital bed sitting in the center of what used to be the living room. Thompson was almost unrecognizable. Sturdy leather cuffs secured his arms and legs to the bed. Each of his arms had two IVs in them secured with multiple layers of medical tape. A hockey goalie’s mask covered his face.

...