The Forever Watch Read Online Free PDF Page B

make them look larger, softer. Being with him is the only bright moment in each day.
    The warm euphoria slips a moment, to grays and gloom, but his tail thumps against the carpet demandingly, and as I resume my attentions, the world is a little less dark, and I immerse myself in pleasure.
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    I buy a dozen scenes from that vendor.
    Behavioralists make the best memories. They have this different way of looking at the world. Their reading talents are so attuned that they work not to use them except when needed. This tight rein on one’s thoughts changes the sensorium of experience. They dive into their own sense feedback and live from moment to moment, minds empty, to stop themselves from being tainted by the stray thoughts of others around them. This woman’s memories of her cat are, except for the emotional content, more potent than any of my own true ones.
    I think about whether it would be worth it to blow the entire twenty thousand cred from the Duty compensation on a cat.
    Time doesn’t stop for anyone.
    Before I know it, it is Friday and it is as if I were never gone from the office.
    Behind the tall tombstone walls at City Planning, the hours pass slowly, as if the mass of them drags at the fabric of space-time. Or maybe all workplaces are like this.
    My head aches from the tedium of another report about water-reclamation efficiency. My team has been arguing with our superiors all morning about whether a newly developed purification protocol can justify the resources it will take to change the old one. The discussion is loaded with jargon and numbers and the occasional dramatic exaggeration.
    Hennessy flails about as he exclaims, “Come on! Look at this graph!” The poor dear’s voice gets shrill when he’s excited. It makes him seem less competent than he actually is. “I mean, just look at it! If we do this, it’s projected that we can support a thousand more people than we would be able to without it in a hundred years! That’s a big difference, isn’t it? It’s huge! That’s a, that’s a—”
    â€œThat’s an inflated figure that does not take into account all the added resource needs,” Hester drones in response. She adds more data to the model, and the analysis shows that the net benefit is perhaps just a dozen humans more. “Is that worth risking the existing homeostasis figures?”
    Homeostasis. That word enters these arguments all the time. Hester is good at her job. The old battle-ax is extremely risk averse, which is the way she should be.
    â€œBut it’s these incremental improvements that—”
    â€œAll right, all right. It’s time for a break. Let’s reconvene in an hour. Getting testy in here. We are all on the same side.”
    I close my eyes and press my temples with my fingers, sliding them in slow circles.
    â€œYou all right, Dempsey?”
    â€œI’m fine,” I lie. I’m not reacting well to the medication. There is no nausea, no headache, no palpitations, but I feel dull, drained, as asleep as I am awake. “I’ll just be at the rooftop garden, okay?”
    I climb in a daze.
    The breeze is better on the roof than at street level.
    The bench is solid granite. It is reassuringly rough, and its structure is chaotic and imperfect and hand carved and lovely. The fountain in front of me sprays a fine, cool mist. The simulated sun warms my face. The wing-beats of a bee hovering in front of a flower steal me away, but not for long enough. Up in the garden’s air, I force myself to recall my passion for what I do, to reach through the haze of imposed chemical calm.
    I need to refocus. Remind myself that what I’m doing means something. That I’m not just a tiny cog in a machine.
    Well, I am a tiny cog. But it is important just the same, being a little gear of the right mass with teeth of just the right size and shape.
    Humanity does happen to be on the brink of