Decisions

Gallus' alarms blared violently throughout his home. He usually woke up before the alarms could go off, and disabled them himself. But this time, he was fast asleep when the cacophony of digital noise rocked him to his bones. He groaned in pain, rising out of bed with a start and disabling the alarms. He moped over to his medicine cabinet and choked down a handful of anti-nausea and anti-pain pills. The pills worked quickly, and he felt like a human after just a minute or two.

Medicine had never managed to "cure" a hangover, but it could sure as hell tame it. He checked his wrist screen and noticed a bunch of missed messages from Rachel, along with a few unread emails. He groggily slid through the messages. Rachel had sent him a lot of messages last night, messages he had been way to hammered to notice, let alone answer. He began to swipe back apologetic replies as he left for work.

Sitting inside his pod, Gallus tried to remember the events of the prior day. His head was still swimming and his memory was foggy. He recalled going to a bar on the rougher side of town. He remembered the chrome interior, and the neon light outside. Past that though, he was struggling. His hand slipped into his pocket and he felt a small scrap of paper. He pulled it out and read Donald's contact info. It wasn't a Q-NET username. Instead, it was a multi digit number.

It was a phone number, as in, a telephone number. Gallus laughed at the archaic technology, but as he did, his memories began to surge back to him. He had met the man from Pons, and the man from Pons wanted him to spy on his own agency. The entire idea was ludicrous. Gallus lived his life simply. He did what good he could, when he could, and he kept his head down.

Prying into the agency's files was the exact polar opposite of keeping his head down, and he knew it was a foul idea. But for some reason, the idea just wouldn't leave him. He wrestled with the thought as the pod raced through the city. If he did find there was some kind of corruption, what could he even do about it? Report it? Slip it to Donald and hope for the best?

Gallus couldn't see any potential outcome that ended well for anyone involved. He pushed the thought away as best he could and began his workday. Things around the office were relatively muted, as most were busy trying to manage their new resource budgets. He kept his head down and did the same. He took a quick break to text Rachel and set up dinner at his house later that evening. He still felt bad about leaving her in the dark the night before, and they hadn't been able to see each other very much lately.

Rachel was the one good thing Gallus had in his life. She was the little spark of light that kept the hungry and encroaching darkness of the world at bay. In an instant, Gallus realized that he really hadn't set aside time to appreciate their relationship in a while, and resolved to do so soon. He went back to work with renewed vigor, hoping to get ahead of schedule and prevent any overtime that might eat away his evening hours.

Eventually though, he began to feel the usual midday burnout. Resigned to his caffeine addiction, he stood and walked towards the breakroom a few doors down the hall. As he passed Grotto's office, he heard the sounds of jovial laughter leaking out from the soundproof door. He paused outside briefly to try and make out their words, but the office was intentionally designed to keep conversations within it from spilling out into the hallway.

But despite this, Gallus could make out the faint but sure sounds of laughter. Happy, carefree laughter. Gallus felt his jaw clench involuntarily, and his hands balled up into tight fists. Anger flooded his brain, and his usual cautiousness seemed to fade by the wayside. He walked right back to his desk and began his dive into the office's protected network.

Being in resource administration, he had access to a lot of the network, but never ventured out past his own portion, except to fetch some piece of vital data. Grotto was laughing. He was laughing as the city around him slowly choked. Even if he was innocent of corruption, something about his demeanor and mindset drove Gallus insane. If there was some kind of scheme going on, he was determined to uncover it.

He tried to access the production records, but lacked network permission. There were oxygen production centers littered across Mars. They either split water to create oxygen or baked it out of the martian soil. Both were highly energy intensive processes. If he could see what production centers were being shut down, it might give him some clue as to where to look next. After trying to circumvent the security system for a few minutes, Gallus was struck with a better idea.

He had access to the oxygen consumption logs. They didn't always have detailed information on where the gas was going, but it showed how much was being allocated to each district every day. If any of the oxygen was being siphoned off for side projects, the numbers on the consumption log wouldn't add up, and he would finally have a lead.

He spent an hour pouring through the files, and found that the oxygen supply was mostly reduced by the promised 10%. One district, however, did not seem to follow this trend. This resource district consisted only of a small area on the northern outskirts of New Brooklyn. It had 10 or 20 thousand inhabitants, at most. However, it was receiving enough air to happily fill the spaces and lungs of almost a hundred thousand people. Something was off.

He took a picture of the data with his watch, and hoped that there were no administrators monitoring his online snooping. With this information in hand, Gallus had a call to make; but first, he had to find an actual, working telephone. He searched online for information on old school cell phones and found a few niche places in New Brooklyn where you could rent one out for a couple of minutes. Gallus couldn't see the appeal in using something so outdated, but it was his only way of communicating with Donald, so he didn't have much of a choice.