The Angels 2200 Forum Role Playing Game

A Day at Work

Anatolja stared at the robot in utter despair, meeting the lifeless gaze of it’s mechanical eyes: little cold blue lights glowing dimly deep behind shiny acrylic lenses. Slowly the lumbering machine closed in on her, it’s heavy tracks making grinding and squeaking noises on the clean hangar floor. When the robot raised it’s strong hydraulic arms, a faint clicking noise could be noticed below the powerful humming of compressors and aggregates, it almost sounded like a mocking snicker - which as Anatolja knew perfectly well was impossible. This robot was not capable of any emotions, not even simulated ones, it was a simple and straightforward machine, built only to serve it’s purpose. Nonetheless Anatolja felt anger rising in her chest, anger about why in all the world she had to run into this stupid piece of metal. She suppressed the urge to hit the robot with the wrench that was resting heavily in her hand, knowing it would do no good. Instead she backed away towards a service terminal that was mounted into the corner of the wall behind her, the robot following slowly but consistently. When the heel of her boot hit the casing of the terminal there was nowhere left to go. "Stop!", she commanded, but the robot kept coming. She let slip a curse: "Pizda!", and ducked below the grippers of the robot, knowing each of it had enough power to crush her skull to jelly. Quickly she reached forward and pushed the big red button labeled "Emergency Off" on the robot’s front. Immediately the robot stopped as if he had run into a wall and the machine’s powerful humming was replaced by a dying whine.

Service hangar number three was almost deserted. The only craft that was currently serviced in the vast hall was a relatively small orbital shuttle with the license number ES-D568. The bulky, grey and battered spaceship had been parked in the far left corner to leave space for any larger vessel that might come in. But of course there wasn’t very much traffic going on at these times, so the probability the shuttle would get any company was not too high. In fact this was the only spacecraft that had entered this hangar in quite some time as the thin layer of dust proved, which covered the hangar floor and where the ES-D568 and a tow vehicle had left it’s tracks. Besides that the hangar was clean and tidy. Empty shelves covered the walls, only interrupted by doors which led to different workshops, service terminals and of course the occasional fire extinguisher. Above the shelves the walls opened into huge windows of tinted glass through which the setting sun bathed the opposite wall in golden light.

Four women were working at the shuttle. Khoumis was a tall and strong woman of Arabian descent. She was 30 or maybe 35 years old but the dogged facial expression she always displayed made her look like 40. To make it even worse she kept her black hair in a tight bun at the back of the head. This grim person whose only joy in life seemed to be to yell at people happened to be the women’s foreman. Anatolja was the blatant antipode to Khoumis: She was very slender, almost skinny and not very tall, which made her look even younger than the 17 years she actually was. Her bright blonde hair was short and looked as if it had never been touched by a comb in her whole life. If one had to describe her with only one word, the word most people would certainly think of first was "cute", although she wasn’t actually pretty. The other two women were Sabine and Claudia who were identical twins of similar build to Khoumis, although younger and not as tall as her. It was quite warm in the hanger, much too warm for September, so the women had rolled up their sleeves and opened the zipper of their blue jumpsuits a little further than usual. But they were sweating nevertheless.

Meanwhile Anatolja had climbed out of the corner from behind the robot and approached the group of her co-workers who where gathered around the shuttle’s main landing gear.

"Hey, Khoumis,", Anatolja asked, "are you trying to kill me with this thing?!" She pointed at the now completely motionless robot behind her back.

"What’s your problem?", came a curt answer.

"This piece of scrap metal has broken bearings, loose fittings and it’s leaking hydraulic oil all over the place. It doesn’t even respond to basic vocal commands and whoever programmed it for sure didn’t bother to burden himself with Asimov’s Law. Oh, and by the way, the user interface is set to Japanese. That’s my fucking problem."

Khoumis took a deep breath, cocked her head and wiped her oily hands at the sides of her jumpsuit. "Damn, missy, we already had this conversation. You know this’ the only ’bot we’ve got. If you don’t like it feel free to dismantle that thruster manually, but I suggest then you’d better shut up and get moving, ’cos you know what’s up if you’re not finished by tomorrow evening!"

Anatolja knew. Tomorrow evening was their deadline. By then the shuttle had to be equipped with a new heat shield. The old one was scorched from a too steep re-entry (the woman who had piloted the shuttle on it’s latest re-entry had probably been new to the job, but then most people were new to their jobs nowadays). And both the landing gear and the starboard vernier engine had to be repaired.

While Khoumis and the two other women where already half finished with the landing gear Anatolja hadn’t even started with the engine, which was entirely her business. But first she had to get the robot working. The vernier engine weighed about one and a half metric tons so of course it was impossible to be dismantled manually.

"Yea, yea, all right." Anatolja looked at her watch. It was half past seven and her shift was supposed to end in half an hour. With a sigh she turned back to the robot: "Looks like overtime for the both of us. Now let’s see if we can get you rollin’". This was going to be a very long night. She had no idea how long.

By the time Anatolja had found the user’s manual of the robot and downloaded it into the computer terminal the hangar’s windows had changed from dull grey to jet black. The robot turned out to be an even older model than she had expected, from way before the plague. It was build from men, for men - with a manual written by men, for men. She found it extremely intricate and not ergonomic at all. But finally she managed to switch the user interface from Japanese to English (she had to use an uplink cable to connect the robot to the terminal because that blasted thing didn’t even have a wireless interface!) so she was able to program a few basic instructions.
From now on - it was well past ten o’clock by now and Anatolja’s co-workers had already gone home, except for Khoumis who was working at the heat shield - everything should be a piece of cake. Anatolja maneuvered the robot below the starboard wing of the shuttle, where the defective engine was located and used the robot’s lifting gear to access the engine. She removed the cowling, disconnected the fuel pipes (don’t forget to close the valves before you do that!), cooling vents and a multitude of electronic wires. After that she had the robot take hold of the engine at the two designated retention points and began loosening the long bolts that secured the engine in it’s place. When the last bolt yielded with a sharp "Bang!" the robot’s hydraulic system kicked in with a hum, the whole weight of the engine now resting on it’s grippers.

That was when it happened. Anatolja knew instantly something was wrong when the lift platform she was standing on started to tremble. There was the sound of tearing tissue and suddenly the hum of the robot’s compressors became a furious howl when the control unit desperately tried to maintain pressure. Out of the side of one of the hydraulic cylinders which provided the enormous power to the robot’s arms shot a thin stream of hydraulic oil. Anatolja wanted to scream a warning, but it was already too late. The highly pressurized liquid hit the engine’s cowling which was standing on the hanger floor next to the robot and punched a clean hole right through the curved sheet metal. The lift platform started to sag and the engine above her head dangerously tilted sideward. Anatolja quickly jumped off the platform, just before the engine toppled and crashed into the robot, right at where she had stood a second ago.

Khoumis turned around at the sound of something breaking, only to be hit by something hard and hot at her right wrist. Her right arm was thrown backwards with such a force, she almost feared it would be dislocated. After a moment of confusion she realized she had been hit by a jet of hydraulic oil which had torn away some skin and cut quite deep into her arm. Red drops of blood started to drip into a puddle of amber-colored oil. Then came the pain. Fortunately her neither very gentle nor ladylike exclamation was drowned by the sound of the engine crashing into the robot. Anatolja jumped into her field of vision from behind the engine’s cowling, her face red from excitement and embarrassment.

"Damn, Mirunova, what are you doing!?", Khoumis snarled at the younger woman, calling her by her last name, like she always did when she was angry. She clutched her wrist in the attempt to stop the bleeding. "What the hell was that?!"

"It’s not my fault!", Anatolja tried to excuse herself. "I told you the robot wasn’t safe!"

"Not your fault my ass!" Khoumis paced furiously around the wrecked robot, surveying the damage. She left a trail of red drops where she went. When she turned back to Anatolja for another yelling the young woman’s face had turned white as a sheet, staring at her saucer-eyed. "...", she said and collapsed. Khoumis sighed heavily when her anger blew over at the sight of her unconscious victim. She knew she could be quite intimidating, but something like this hadn’t happened before.

Anatolja was back at home. The green wallpaper of the small, dark apartment corridor was still as grubby as it had been four years ago. She turned around the corner and opened the kitchen door, the soaked carpet making smacking noises under her footsteps. Her mother was still sitting motionless at the inornate wooden kitchen table, as she had four years ago. Blood was still spilling out of her open wrists, flowing in winding streams over the table, dripping to the floor all around the edges. Everything was just like it had been on that wretched day, four years ago, after her mother had slit her wrists with a kitchen knife. Again, the same as four years ago, Anatolja just stood there, unable to move or even say a word, watching her mother bleed to death. She wanted to help her, wanted to scream, call the paramedics, but she just couldn’t move. Suddenly her mother raised her head and said: "I can’t take it anymore. I’ll go now, I’ll visit Papa. You stay here!" She stood up from the chair, turned around and walked out of the room, right through the wall. She hadn’t done that four years ago. Anatolja finally broke out of her stasis and jumped after her mother, slamming into the wall. She hit it and kicked it, screaming: "No, don’t leave me!"

"What you say?"

This wasn’t her mother speaking. She knew that voice. Oh, right: Khoumis. When Anatolja came to she was laying on a pallet in the engines shop. She vaguely noticed someone had covered her with a blanket. She felt sick. From the taste in her mouth she gathered she must have been throwing up. Khoumis was standing in the door. Her wrist was wrapped in a tight bandage.

"Finally awake, are we?" This was a rhetorical question. "I already thought I had to worry about you.", she said with a smirk. "It’s about time. The morning shift will arrive soon. You’d better not be here anymore when they find the mess you made."

"Oh shit!" Anatolja jumped up and immediately regretted it. She leaned against the pallet waiting for the giddiness to go away.

"Take your time", Khoumis said, now looking really worried.

"The engine, how bad is it?", Anatolja wanted to know.

"Not that bad as one would imagine. A few broken pipes and the nozzle is bent, the robot ’s fucked up beyond recognition tho. But that’s no longer your problem." Khoumis uneasily shifted her weight from one leg to the other. "You know, I had to call the nurse and she called the boss. You’re fired.", she said, trying to be as cold as always, but the slight twitching of the corner of her eyes betrayed her. "Get your stuff and then get outta here." With this words she turned around and left towards the hangar.

A few minutes later Anatolja sat on the curbstone in front of the airfield’s main building. Together with her job she had lost her room in the company’s apartment block. She was both hungry and thirsty and despite (or maybe because?) of having been unconscious for about eight hours she felt totally exhausted. Wearily she looked around. Earlier this street had always been busy, but there were not even public-transit busses en-route nowadays. On the wall of an old warehouse on the opposite side of the street someone had posted a bill. It showed an elderly woman with a funny hat, pointing her finger towards the observer, with the words "I want you for the Terran Navy!" below. Groaning Anatolja got up, shouldered her bag and went off towards the town. She knew the Navy had a registration office somewhere there.