Down Under Crater Billy

My office is up on one side of Level 2. Testing Operations is down on the other side of Level 4. The most direct route was to cross my level by the Twomain tunnel, then take the ramps down to 4. There are elevators, but few of us ever risk using them.

I hadn’t gone more than fifty meters down wide, high-ceilinged Twomain, smiling and nodding at neighbors who were out and about when Sorry, the AI face of Crater Billy’s main computer system, spoke up through my wristlet.

“We’ve got a Code C in the kitchen of the communal dining area, Dove,” he said.

“Dave,” I corrected automatically, watching Lucinda Weems and Arturo Genovese prying Community Room 2F’s self-opening doors apart with crowbars as I passed by. We waved at each other.

“Sorry.” This was an apology, not an introduction. We were old friends.

“Forget it.”

He sighed. “I always seem to.”

He did, too. Several times a day. In Jameson Jargon this was an RITG, or Recurring Ineradicable Training Glitch. For my whole life, starting with my birth certificate, most machines handling my name print or speak it as Dove Murphy.

“It’s not your fault, old buddy. So what’s up?” Code C meant that it posed no danger to life, limb, or Crater Billy’s critical systems, and could therefore be considered minor. But as CSO it was my job to know about it. After all, there would be paperwork. There was no actual paper involved, but forms are forever.

“The Kentford ‘Kitchen Magician’ brand NT-based Commercial Duty Food Transformer being tested in the main kitchen turned flaky again. Would you like the gory details?”

I shrugged. “Why not? I’m already having a rotten morning.” In a side tunnel three kids were being stalked by a Sgt. Slaughter action figure gone renegade. They had nets, ropes, and apparently everything in hand. “Don’t forget to report, kids!” I called. They gave me the thumbs up.

“Not as rotten as Vangy Spencer, I think,” Sorry said. “It appears that her wristlet tumbled the enties’ progging. She was talking to her son while setting the transformer to produce a fifteen kilo block of synthetic tofu which she planned to use in one of tonight’s entrees.”

“I assume that’s not what they made.” It was hard to imagine it making something worse than tofu, but put Vangy and enties together and anything could happen.

“You got it. The device produced a fifteen kilo block of syncheese instead. One which combined certain identifying aspects of both Swiss and Limburger.”

I wrinkled my nose. “Ugh.”

“And a fine ugh to you too, white man,” said Jim Tallfeather, who had just come from that general direction. Then he laughed and clapped me on the shoulder. “Don’t go near the kitchen, Dave. It’s a feta worse than death.” He went on, laughing.

“Thanks, Jim, I needed that,” I called after him.

“Jim’s report is quite accurate,” Sorry continued. “The smell flugged all the air sniffers in the area. Furthermore there was a subsidiary bug in the abnaddled progging. It had to do with the Swiss-like gas bubbling the enties put in the product.”

Expect the worst. That’s my motto, my job, and my personal view of an essentially hostile universe. Already I could see what was coming next.

“Let me guess,” I said as I headed down the ramp to level 3. “Since the stuff was made inside the hermetically sealed transformation chamber, the gas bubbles were at a higher pressure than Billy Ambient.”

“An estimated ten times ambient,” Sorry agreed. “So when Vangy opened the chamber the gas inside the cheese expanded almost instantaneously, and it—”

“Went up like a bomb.” I shook my head in glum amazement. Exploding cheese. What a way to make a living. “Since it’s a Code C, I take it Vangy wasn’t hurt.”

“A bit dazed, but essentially unharmed. Jeff and Bob were out in the main dining room having coffee when it happened, so they were onsite in seconds. They handled it.”

“Great. Tell them thanks.” Jeff Handel is my Deputy Safety Officer; a bearded, balding guy in his mid-thirties. No ulcer for him, he’s so cheerful and easygoing that,if I didn’t know better I might suspect he didn’t take his job seriously. Bob is Dr. Bob Ross MD; a wiry, dark-haired, very gentle guy who happens to be Jeffs spouse and our Chief of Medical Services. Together they could handle just about anything short of the Apocalypse.

“So what’s happening now?” I asked.

“Bob and one of his nurses are helping Vangy get uncheesed. Jeff is directing a clean-up crew. He and Gabe Delaney from Testing are starting a report.” Sorry paused a moment while the conversations he was having with Jeff and myself converged. “Jeff says to tell you the worst fallout—his word, not mine—is that it may be a few days before the smell completely dissipates.”

I shuddered. “Great.” My father loved limburger, and tried to get me to like it as well, but achieved the exact bilious opposite. It looked like I was going to be eating in my cubby for a few days, falling back on some of the stuff I had socked away in case of something like this.