Brand Loyalty

Spoken words in "Invasion":

It was late.  It was early.  Unable to sleep, I'd been staring at the ceiling for hours in the dim but flickering light of the various systems and devices that were powered by my room.  Light pollution, unavoidable because I couldn't have disconnected everything even if I'd wanted to.  Maintenance, security, and any other number of persons of concerned and important posturing would have arrived in moments, wondering what my problem was.  So I watched the reflections on the glossy and sterile ceiling, pretending it to be a sky unusually absent of stars.

I remembered one of my first missions of invasion; they'd dropped us off on an island somewhere out in the middle of a place even God had forgotten, given us a week's worth of rations and a case of malfunctioning, outdated equipment, and told us they'd see us in around two months.  It ended up being eighty six days.  I met her, along with an entire crew of new recruits who've since been scattered to the edges of known space and back.  My mind wandered and I wondered how many of them were still alive and if they were able to sleep, most nights.

We'd found some cover in a system of shallow caves near the shoreline and had managed a fire.  Various groups had teamed up, three here, five there, a couple combing the beach, looking for clues about the goal of the mission. 

I was helping sort out the bad rifles from the worse, and was coming up with a pretty disparaging stack of nonfunctionals.  She walked up to me, then, leaning over to meet me at eye level, staring at me, unblinking, while what seemed like hours passed.  I didn't back down, though, and I didn't blink.  I was determined, back in the days before I was truly born.

She winked at me, and broke the silence, whispering.  "None of 'em are ever gonna work, you know.  The academy's just trying to keep you busy and distracted."  A big emphasis on 'ever', and the way she said it, her intonation, it implied that she knew something I didn't know.

I considered that for a moment, and since, at the time, I believed everyone on the mission was a new recruit, I ignored her.  I went back to sorting out the rifles while she laughed, resuming her upright position and putting her hands on her hips condescendingly. 

I wondered what we'd have to kill so we'd all be able to eat after a day or so, since I could already see that she was right about the status of the rifles.  I kept sorting them, though, just in case.


Spoken words in "Not Really Much Of Anything":

I didn't know any verification numbers, of course, or even where to begin guessing at what they might be.  The irony of the situation crossed my mind for a moment when I realized that I was once again to a point of randomly guessing number sequences with the hopes of accomplishing something productive.

I hesitated.

"Verification number," the man repeated.

"Listen," I said.  He didn't hang up, but he didn't respond, either.  I assumed that he was listening.

"I'm trying to find someone who works for Synchro Systems - specifically someone who can tell me about some initial patient testing that might have gone wrong and the patients that might have been involved with such testing," I continued.  He was still on the line, as far as I could tell.  "I think something bad has happened to my girlfriend and I'm trying to find out if it could be as a result of something that happened to her when she was possibly a volunteer patient during testing of a product or treatment called the Synchronicity Drive."

"The main line for news queries is clearly posted in multiple places online," the man responded.  "You have the wrong extension."

"Wait!"  I exclaimed.  Once again, he didn't hang up.

"I'm not a reporter.  I'm not really much of anything, just a guy trying to figure things out.