Crossing the Line

Part One: Before.

There are days when you just know it’s all fucked. You wake up all wrong, your phone didn’t charge overnight, you spill your coffee on the way to work, and it only gets worse from there.

I could tell that something was wrong the moment I arrived on the floor. The atmosphere was terminally tense. Gritted teeth, stares into the middle distance, the works.

“Audit at 9. Be ready,” said my shift supervisor Kilian, his usually affable nature entirely beaten into a nervous and affectless state of non-being. I could see his gears churning, already going over every way we (and by extension, he) could fuck this up.

“Fuck,” I said, which was the only appropriate response. “Better make sure the Line runs smoothly then.”

“Yes,” he said in a way that made clear that he hadn’t been listening at all. He was already turning away to move on to the next thing he had to straighten out.

I didn’t lose any time, and got to work.

On most days you couldn’t say that working for the Capital-G Government is a bad gig. Endless funds, sweeping operational discretion, and nuclear-grade job security all make it rather appealing to sign up for. The Housing Credits and Social Mobility Allowances are nothing to sneeze at either. Basic Class 2 citizen status comes included as well, which is a privilege that is often forgotten.

The only downside: Working for the Big G means voluntarily stepping into the scrutiny of the State and risking the consequences of unsatisfactory performance. That nuclear-grade job security could blow right up in your face if you ever slipped up. 

Not me, though, I thought. Alex would be first, or maybe Gabby. It was an uncharitable thing to think, but it was true. If it was going to hit anyone, it wouldn't be me. I might not have been an exceptional worker or even citizen, but I was well within norm. I was safe. 

And even if I wasn’t, I still wouldn’t end up on the Line.

Speaking of the Line: Intake was bursting as always, so no risk of being assessed as overstaffed. I checked the manifest: A bunch of anti-gov rebels, snatched-up Districtless, a hackerboy that had decided to rip out his control chip, a handful of freshly demoted Class 2s waiting to get reactivated, and more faulty flash formats than you could count. Faces, names, citizen IDs or lack thereof, all supplied by secret police or other central institutions of the Government, ready to be rendered irrelevant at the end of the business day. When we were done with them, the Government would have nothing but a batch of obedient drones. 

Usually it wouldn’t take skilled laborers like myself to do this, but we were tasked with dealing with all the special cases. Anything that couldn’t be put to work with a simple override or handheld diagnostic tool ended up here, on the Line, to have their wetware fixed, major program directive adjustments made, or new even chips implanted. 

I decided to start with a simple case. I had almost an hour before the Auditor arrived, and it was probably best to begin with something easy to get into the groove. Thank Fate that the Government had stopped doing no-warning audits a couple of years ago after sky-high failure rates had led to worker shortages. The current credo was to give people enough time to prepare themselves – but not enough time to turn around an entirely unacceptable operation. Honestly, it tasted of surrendering to the status quo, but I wasn’t going to complain. Not that I had anything to fear either way. I was safe.

I finished the lukewarm remains of my coffee and went to work. 

I opened the holding cell and motioned the naked and cuffed woman to follow me. She protested of course, as most of them did. I actually preferred it that way. The ones that had already given up just made me sad. I knew that it was heartless, but you had to find a way to deal with it to do this job. Ask any nurse or EMT how emotionally available they are to the fates of their clients, and come back to me after that. Besides – if it wasn’t me doing it, someone else would.

“I don’t understand, demoting me to a class 3 shouldn’t put me on the line! It’s not a criminal offense to be demoted!”

I had a lot of cases like this and I chose my words carefully like always. There were microphones everywhere, and everything was being protocolled. 

“Citizen Andrews. As a Class 2 your actions wouldn’t have been criminal, but since you are now Class 3, you are judged under different laws. Sit down, and don’t resist. Your handcuffs will automatically deliver a painful shock otherwise.”

“But I–”

“-sit down, Citizen Andrews.”

She did as she was told, and the magnetic cuffs around her wrists and ankles automatically locked themselves into the sides of the chair. This, quite understandably, caused her to panic even more than she already had. 

“But it was only trespassing!” She yelled. “And I did it while I was Class 2, not while I was Class 3!”

I didn’t blame her for protesting, even if I was never going to express such sympathies of course. “Your judgment only ends after all punishments have been carried out,” I said when I finally got the chance to get a word in edgewise. “And class demotions precede criminality evaluations.”

“But… that’s unfair!” she screamed in disbelief.

I nodded. “Your complaint has been recorded in the protocol, and will be reviewed by authorized officials. I will now carry out the will of the State.”

The woman kept screaming, but I was busy looking at my screen. At some point she tried to wrest herself out of the chair with enough force to trigger the electric pain response in her shackles. She howled and twitched, and I had to start over with step four of the checklist. 

Still, despite that setback, it wasn’t long before I had remote access to the chip in her skull. I set it to Class 3 and activated the standard Gov-issue drone template. It took only a couple of seconds.

“Citizen Andrews, can you hear me?” I asked, following protocol.

There was no response.

“Drone Kappa-5991?”

She turned her head and looked at me with a look of detached curiosity. Her naked skin was still glistening with cold sweat.

“Yes, Controller?” she asked calmly.

I nodded, and ticked off a couple of points in my checklist. Voice flat, recognizes controller, no signs of struggle or distress, chip readback indicates >95% volition alignment.

“State your programming parameters.”

“I am a medium-cognition Government drone, slave class Zero, pending assignment. My control chip is set to simple pleasure and obedience protocol. Thought suppression in full standby mode, ready to be customized. I will obey now. Thank you for enslaving me, Controller.”

I checked off the rest of the boxes, ran her through a set of calibration triggers, tested her orgasmic response, and assigned Gabby as her Interim Handler when all of that was done. Gabby was going to process the drone further and find her an assignment or a buyer, then hand her over to Alex, who was going to prepare her for shipping or autonomous transport.

The drone left as instructed. I filed her final citizen processing protocol, cleaned up the stain she’d left, and moved on to the next piece of material in Intake.

This one was a bit harder to handle.

The man shouted at me the moment I opened the cell door. “What the fuck is going on?! Why am I here?! It’s not a crime to be demoted!”

I sighed quietly through my nose. “Citizen Kobayashi. As a Class 2 your actions wouldn’t have been criminal, but since you are now Class 3, you are judged under different laws. Follow me, and don’t resist. Your handcuffs will automatically deliver a painful shock otherwise.”

Despite his verbal protests he came with me, and thanked me for enslaving him ten minutes later. I sent him to Kamal for interim handling, processed his report, cleaned up, and returned to Intake afterwards.

I was feeling myself relax a bit. Today had started off entirely on the wrong foot, and I still felt like I needed another coffee, but doing familiar work had actually made me feel better about what the rest of the day was going to be like. We might even be able to end it backlog-free.

No such luck, however. I arrived at the material inventory terminal and immediately noticed that five new names had been added to the list in the time I had been gone. We were going to be drowning in work.

“Work never ends, does it?” came a voice from behind me, and I turned to see Julie approach me. She was one of my half-dozen colleagues in Intake, a few months my junior. She was wearing her blonde hair in a tight bun today, and looked very professional and presentable. She nodded towards the screen I was occupying. “I saw you’re doing former Class 2s?” 

“Yep, thought I might warm up for the Audit with some easy work. Just gotta link up, demote, and follow protocol.”

“Wait, there’s an Audit?!” Julie gasped, then laughed when I looked at her with wide eyes. “Just messing with ya,” she said and nudged me. “Are you worried?”

“No,” I said. “Not for myself at least.”

She scoffed. “No one’s worried about themselves,” she said with a shrug. “After all, no one's got anything to hide, and everyone’s doing their best! ” 

She was louder than she needed to be. The surveillance would have picked up anything but the lowest whisper. Not that anyone in the secret police or the Labor Office cared that much about microexpressions of individual thought. If the Government wanted everyone to be nothing but servile all the time, they would just drone everyone. And that wasn’t happening.

“So who do you think is gonna get the boot?” Julie asked.

“No one,” I lied. “We’re all gonna make it.” Just because I had my private candidates didn’t mean it was a nice thing to think, much less speak out loud.

“Fair,” said Julie. “I hope so too. But Auditors gotta justify their existence sometimes, and flagging someone down shows that they’re being thorough and critical – not that State reps would ever make unjustified calls,” she hastily added at the end.

I looked at her. I was just noticing at that moment how unnaturally broad her smile was.

“You’re worried, aren’t you?” I guessed, and clicked my tongue. I sighed. “It’s gonna be fine. We’re in the 94th percentile of Volition Management facilities in the State.”

I leaned in closer. “And if it’s gonna be anyone, it’s not gonna be you or me.”

She took a deep breath. “I know, but… I’m still scared. What if I fuck up in front of the Auditor? Bad enough to be demoted? Hell, what if I fuck up enough to overshoot into criminal negligence post-demotion?! They’ll put me right on the Line!”

“Calm down,” I said. “That’s not going to happen, Julie! You’d have to fuck up, like… unimaginably bad for that to happen. Worst case, you get dropped to high-tier Class 3 and relocated. That would really fucking suck, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world. And that’s even if you mess up – which you won’t. That won’t happen to us.”

She nodded, her lips tight. “You’re right. You’re right. I know you’re right. That won’t happen.”

She pointedly raised her voice. “But if it did, I’d deserve it.”

I rolled my eyes. Always had to make sure that the big G heard you agree with the state of things. “Of course you would, as would I. The Government and its representatives are beyond reproach, after all.”

It wasn’t true of course. The Government was run by people, and people made mistakes. No system was perfect either, not even the most well-intentioned ones – which this one obviously wasn’t. Everyone knew that. But everyone also knew to play along with the system – if they didn’t want to end up on the Line; so that’s what you did: You played along, and did your part, and managed to buy yourself the freedoms and privileges you were willing to pay for. All it cost was part of your soul.

I knew it sucked, and I knew I was being complicit in it. But it wasn’t like anyone could change anything anyway. If it wasn’t me turning people into drones, someone else would be doing the job.

“We should go back to work,” Julie said. “We can fit in one more easy-to-process material before the Auditor arrives.”

I nodded in agreement. “Yep. Let’s go. Do you want to do the last Class 2? I can do one of the botched flash-formats instead.”

“You sure?”

“Sure.”

“Thank you.” She tapped the terminal and assigned herself to Citizen Prescott, who I had been planning on enslaving for the Government. She nodded another silent thank-you my way, then made her way to an Intake cell five levels downstairs.

I scrolled through the list and found a material I had earmarked for myself earlier; a run-of-the-mill chip malfunction during a sweep of substance abusers and vagrants. Not worth the effort to deal with in the field, but easy to fix with the hardware we had at the Volition Management facility. Protocol was to ship those cases to be handled by us without further diagnostics, but this one seemed like a well-documented error case I had handled at least two dozen times before. 

Twenty-six minutes left. At the top of the hour, we were expected in the main lobby, in a neat lineup for inspection and our briefing.

More than enough time.

“What is going on?” said the woman in the material holding cell. “I don’t want to be naked! I’m scared, and I want to hurt you and run away. The Government is a fucking joke, and I hate what it does to everyone! I–”

“-come with me, Citizen DeVere. Do not resist. Your handcuffs will automatically deliver a painful shock otherwise.”

“I’d like to use them on you somehow, to hurt you or kill you, but I’m scared it won’t work.”

I nodded. Just like it said in the file, the control chip in the woman’s skull had both failed to suppress her volition and to overwrite her persona with the default pleasure and obedience protocol. Her ability to keep secrets, however, had been terminated as intended – but that was more or less the only thing that had worked successfully. It was the most basic fallback protocol, designed to take hold if for any reason a drone’s programming deteriorated and disobedient thoughts managed to take hold. A failing drone would always self-report.

“It won’t work,” I said. Protocol for malfunctioning hardware was much less stringent, and I was allowed a certain amount of improvisation. “You’d be on the floor before you reached me, and the pain would be considerable. Come with me.”

She did as she was told. Still, I kept an extra step of distance between myself and her.

Twenty-three minutes. Plenty of time. This was stressful though. She was constantly bickering and cursing.

“Sit down. Don’t resist.”

“You’re such a fucking whore for doing this to me,” she growled, even as she obeyed. “Government pig! Selling your fucking soul. This is evil, and you’re even worse, you fucking class traitor! They’ll do the same thing to you, first chance they get! Any reason they can get, they’ll take, the fucking fascist assholes! Also I’m gonna try to break this fucking chair! I’ve got nothing to lose! I’m gonna die anyway if I don’t try! I’ll do it! I’ll fucking kill you!”

I tapped the manual suppression button, and her screams filled the room. I felt suddenly startled. I hadn’t really meant to do that. It had just happened. I mean, she had threatened my life, but – the cuffs would have activated automatically if she had actually tried anything.

She lay limp for a moment as the cuffs split into and snapped into the sides of the chair. She was pinned down now, groaning and quietly whimpering. Men three times her size hadn’t managed to break out of the restraints. There was barely anything to her but bones and skin. I was safe. I would have been safe.

Twenty minutes.

I started diagnostics, and readouts and logs appeared on my screen. I flagged the error messages and made sure that the field agent’s initial report hadn’t missed anything. When that was done, I cross-checked against the manual to see if my initial diagnosis held up. Everything looked fine –

– until I stumbled across one out-of-place item in the malfunction log.

Damn. I checked the time: Eleven minutes. 

I sighed. Work had been slow. Citizen DeVere had been screaming profanities and threats the entire time. I had to admit she was being very creative in the ways she thought of freeing herself and hurting me. 

I had to focus. How should I proceed? I could simply go with the initial diagnosis; a simple hard reset would do the job, and I’d be out of here in less than a minute. Once the material was enslaved, there was no issue leaving her here unattended. She would happily wait for further processing until she literally died of thirst.

No. I wasn’t going to risk rushing things. Not with an Auditor knocking at the door. Today, I was going to cross every t and dot every i.

I loaded up the complete manual, and started digging. My heart was beating more quickly now, even if I knew that I could just pause the process and keep going after the Auditor arrived. That would cast a bad light on my time management and material assessment skills, though, and I was sure as hell going to do everything to avoid that.

Ten minutes.

Fuck. It wasn’t just that one error code. It was that error code in conjunction with all the others! It was an entire rat’s nest! Diagnostically speaking, an absolute worst case. Anything from quick reset to full re-implant. Fuck!

I ran two diagnostics to weed out possibilities. There was a chance I could get lucky – but It wasn’t good enough. There were still multiple possible diagnoses, and the material was still screaming at the top of its lungs. I wanted to push the manual suppression button again, but managed to keep myself under control. I couldn’t afford to be impulsive twice in a single session. Everything was being recorded and protocolled.

Seven minutes. Come on, one more diagnostic! 

The code ran itself, and Citizen DeVere’s eyelids twitched, until, finally – an entirely new error code appeared in the logs. 

I gave up. It was no use. I was going to have to do this thoroughly… after I got back.

I let out a deep sigh. “Protocol note: Operator has encountered unforeseeable complications and could not finish her task in time before-”

The material cut me off. There had hardly been any moments when she hadn’t been screaming death and murder, and now she was back at it. “Fuck you, you Government slut! I’m not a complication! I’m–”

“Before duty demanded that she leave her post to receive an Audit!” I yelled over her. 

“Class traitor whore! Evil piece of–”

“-material will be sedated, and processing will–”

“FUCK YOU! I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU!”

“Processing will–”

“DIE, YOU PIECE OF SHIT!”

“-PROCESSING WILL CONTINUE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!”

“YOU FUCKING CUNT! YOU BRAINWASHED FUCKING–”

Enough.

I grabbed an airhypo from my workstation and forcefully pushed it into her neck. It hissed, and she struggled against it, but it took only a few seconds before she was out cold. The sudden silence felt like an impossible relief. My hands were shaking. 

Something suddenly occurred to me. “Citizen, are you pretending to be unconscious?” I asked. She was clever, but I knew that she wouldn’t be able to lie if she was faking it.

No response.

I let out a deep sigh. Okay. Calm down. This had been far from ideal, but any honest review of the affair would have to conclude that I had done everything that could be done. No one could hold any of this against me. She had been threatening, and hard to control. I did good. I did the responsible thing – the right thing!

Four minutes. 

Fuck. I had to hurry now. I checked my reflection in the one-way-mirror of my office, and fixed a loose strand of hair. I was sweating, but there was no more time to fix it. Fuck. If I had aborted at the first sign of trouble I would have had so much more time to be presentable.

Nothing that could be done about that now. I took the elevator upstairs, and joined the already-assembling throng of Volition Management employees, all of them looking tense and nervous as they took their positions in two neat lines flanking the main space in the center of the lobby. It was a well-practiced dance. Many visits from high-ranking Government officials demanded an all-hands rapport, and there was some comfort in going through something so thoroughly rehearsed. This, at the very least, was going to go well.

And so we stood, business-clad peas in a pod, waiting to be judged and ascertained.

The clock struck nine, and the front door swung open.

“Hail the Government!” called Kilian. I noticed that he had changed shirts.

“Hail the Government!” all of us echoed as a small entourage of State Servants filed in and fanned out. Armed guards, two men with briefcases, and a slim young woman with a stylish haircut who seemed very busy with a pen tablet.

But everyone’s attention was on the man leading the throng: A tall, smiling man with dark eyes and hair, wearing a sharply trimmed beard and a State Servant uniform with five stripes. As the group of new arrivals stopped, he continued until he was in the center of the lobby, and stopped in our midst with a sharp clack of his heels. 

Not everyone managed to contain their gasps, but even those that let themselves lapse still remained at attention, arms firmly by their sides as the man that had come to judge us stood there, his gaze carefully sweeping across all of us, his smile never wavering.

When he met my eyes, I could swear he lingered for a second. I was painfully aware of the sweat on my brow.

“At ease, servants,” he finally said, and immediately everyone was exchanging wide-eyed looks. “May the Shift Manager please introduce themselves?”

Kilian stepped forward. “Minister Petrescou! Such an honor! Kilian Gonzales, at your service! Had we known, we would have presented a more fitting welcome!”

The Minister of Citizen Volition waved his hand dismissively. “Nonsense!” he said, then stepped forward and shook Kilians hands with both of his own. “I do this once every quarter, to stay in touch with the citizens that do so well to carry out the State’s will.”

With that, he let his smiling gaze sweep across the floor once again. “You’re the ones who keep the great tapestry of the Government’s plan from fraying at the edges.”

He let go of Kilians hand, and took a few steps back. “This is still an audit, though,” he said jovially. “Sorry about that.”

A few nervous laughs. He nodded thoughtfully.

“I know you’re nervous. Of course you are. How couldn’t you be? This work that you are doing is essential, and thus you are going to be judged by the highest standards – and failing the highest standards is easy! Of course it is! You can’t be blamed for trembling in your pants facing that fact – but consider the flipside! Failing at only the highest standards means that you have already been deemed worthy of a task that most citizens would never even be considered for. Failing only at the highest standards means that you are still highly competent and highly valuable servants of the Government! Failing at only the highest of standards is not a condemnation of you, but a reassertion of the sacred nature of the system we chose to live in: It is every citizen’s duty to serve in their most useful capacity, and there is no dishonor or disloyalty in trying and failing.” 

I swear he was eyeing Alex and Gabby as he continued. 

“But it is also my duty to weed out anyone unfit, be it a matter of competence or conviction. Such is the nature of things. But please, think of it this way: Should my audit find you unsuitable for your continued employment in this institution, see it not as a loss, but instead as a win for the system that we all serve. No one here today will find themselves feeling as if they have been punished or their worth diminished. I promise you that. Now…”

He turned his attention back to Kilian. “I believe you have an itinerary for me?”

Kilian nodded.

“Very well, I won’t hold up the rest of you any longer. It’s going to be a long day for all of us, and I’m looking forward to meeting every one of you. You may return to your work.”

Two orderly lines of people dissolved into various shades of hurried movement. Julie and I met at the elevator to Intake Sector 4, along with Gabby and Alex.

Alex was the first to speak after a moment of awkward silence. “Was it just me or was he looking my way when he was talking about trying and failing? My numbers aren’t that bad, are they?”

“Relax,” said Julie, her smile once again way too wide. “You’ll do fine. Everyone fries an implant once in a while, right guys?”

I managed a smile of my own somehow. “Sure.” If you work in on the actual Line, not if you work in distribution. You should have just put that drone in next day’s bulk shipment instead of overriding her volition levels to accommodate self-delivery. Or at least send her back on the Line to let us do it properly if you really have to get her out the door the same day.

I didn’t say any of that, of course. Odds were that Alex was already thinking the same thing. He knew that he’d fucked up. No need to rub it in.

The elevator arrived, and we got in.

“Do you think that–” Julie began, then cut herself off.

“...nope,” Gabby said with a sardonic grin. “Don’t get paid to think.”

Julie gave her a pained smile, and bit her lip. When her silence stretched out even more than it already had, Gabby sighed. “Do you think… what? What did you want to ask?”

“Nothing. I mean, uhm… do you think that some of us will have to stay late? The Minister has got to audit a lot of us, after all.”

“Anything to serve the Government,” said Gabby with a roll of her eyes. “Besides, any extra hours would count as overtime. Trust me, I checked the laws. Might even get a late-shift comp if we’re lucky.”

Julie nodded, her lips still tight. 

A few moments later, the elevator chime dinged, and Gabby and Alex got out with a few half-hearted see-you-laters, leaving only Julie and myself.

After a moment, I said what was on my mind. “So what were you going to ask originally? You know, before you made up something harmless? I know it wasn’t criminal thought..”

Julie looked at me with wide eyes. “I…” she started, then once again hesitated to go on. I raised my eyebrows, and she took a deep breath. 

“Do you think he’ll drone us all?” she finally asked.

My mouth literally fell open. For a moment I wasn’t even sure that I’d heard her right. 

“What?!” I said, vigorously shaking my head. “No! He wouldn’t do that! Why would you even think that?!”

She looked scared. “The way he worded the end of his speech. He… he said that none of us would feel diminished or punished at the end of today. That’s…”

“Really? Do you really think that–”

“-‘Thank you for enslaving me!’” she said pointedly. “Does that sound familiar? You know that drones are programmed to feel satisfaction and pleasure, and they can’t even think about wanting anything else. That’s, like, the definition of not feeling punished.”

I shook my head. “No. That’s something a villain in a story for young adults would say to make the reader feel clever for catching on to. No one’s that ominous in real life.”

Julie was looking at the wall of the elevator cabin, her arms crossed tightly.

“Besides,” I said. “Why would he do that? We’re skilled labor. Droning us would mean that he would have to replace the entire department.”

“High-volition drones, then! High-volition at full cognition!”

I grimaced. “But what would be the point in that? High volition mode is for high-value dissidents and prestige companion drones, not for people that already do what they’re told to do. We’re already compliant and complicit, aren’t we? Droning us would do nothing! It would be control for control’s sake, and that’s not how the Government operates. If it did, we’d all be droned at birth, the very moment we get our implants.” 

Julie took a deep breath, then another. “You’re right. You’re right. I know you’re right.”

I laid my hand on her shoulder. “We’ll get through this day, Julie. All we have to do is the same work we do every day. Same thing. We’re good at what we do. Like the Minister said. If we weren’t worthy, we wouldn’t even be allowed to try. All we got to do is not completely fuck up.”

The elevator chimed, and the door opened. It was time to get back to work, and I hoped that our audit slots would come up sooner rather than later. I didn’t know how well my nerves would hold up if I had to wait all day for the Minister to come around, and I couldn’t imagine that Julie’s nerves would fare much better. The opposite, rather.

We wished each other good luck for now and went to our respective stations. The hallways in Processing were long and winding, and many rooms sat unused or converted into storage. Capacity intended for times of crisis, when large quantities of material needed to be enslaved. Similarly, we only used the upper four floors of Intake. There were six more that remained on standby for the time being. The last time all of Processing and Intake had been at full capacity was well before my time, during the Great Establishment, when many citizens had still been born without implants. They were chipping and droning tens of thousands of people a day back then, twenty-four hours a day. Kilian liked to joke that that was when the Line had been drawn.

Thankfully those tumultuous times were in the distant past. Whatever you thought of the new order, you couldn’t deny that it was stable and that it worked. The only arguing that could be done was over the price of stability – and I was in no position to argue. 

I turned another corner, and saw the door to my station at the end of the hallway. My mind was already back on the task ahead, thinking about diagnostics and possible troubleshooting methods, and it took me entirely too long to notice the fact that the door in front of me was already open.

It hadn’t been open when I had left it.

And then I noticed the blood.