Lets try this again…
Felix worked hard. Harder than anyone he had ever known. When a scholarship opened up that would provide him a Neural Link, he didn’t just jump at it. He hurled himself screaming. Anything to get out of the hell of grunt work and constant injury the lowest class of his society was relegated to. It wasn’t a matter of prejudice. It was just the reality the Neural Link created. The small machine, placed at the base of the neck, was one of the most powerful machines ever invented. It’s ability to transmit and receive information, then encode it directly into memory was revolutionary. Making years of schooling happen in mere moments. Of course the rapid learning and total recall the Neural Link provided quickly eliminated anyone who didn’t have one from their area of expertise. Most Doctors can only truly diagnose a handful of common diseases and sickness successfully. But one with a Neural Link has constant and perfect recall of all documented illnesses. It was no contest really.
Unfortunately one of the Links was easily the price of a small house, more when accounting for how each persons had to be tuned. Anyone not already vastly wealthy soon found themselves relegated to work that required little to no expertise. Essentially, driving and lifting things.
It wasn’t a terrible life. All the citizens of the Central American Union were ensured basic quality of life. But nutrient paste for every meal, and government issue clothing and homes was no way to live – even if it was free.
So Felix fought and clawed his way to the top of his relatively advanced government mandated education. He did whatever he had to for his name to show up at the top in the top percentile. He spent so much time petitioning Major Corps and Families for a sponsorship that the private security even gave up on beating him. He fought for years.
And some stuck up rich kid changed his whole life with a single off hand comment. Richard Tukson had zero interest in actually achieving anything. His family owned most of the eastern sea board. His eventual job as the Tukson heir was simply to maintain the status quo. And their simply wasn’t a school to go to for back door deals and cut throat politics. But his father wanted him to be educated. One off hand comment about ‘studying those old viking guys or something should be easy with an assistant’ and he was off to Montreal for a full year History course with his new assistant – ostensibly a student – Felix.
Which was how Felix, the 5 foot 4, brown haired, freckled nobody, found himself sitting in a limbo across from the most imposing man he’d ever met. Richard wasn’t just the most perfectly sculpted twenty something year old gene therapy could buy. He wasn’t just trained and tailored to be attractive and charming to everyone he met. He was Felix’s boss. And that was infinitely more important than anything else. Because while he’d never heard of a process to safely remove the freshly implanted hub of information at the base of his neck – he wasn’t sure it’d stop anyone that mattered from repossessing the thing if he screwed up.
“Relax, classes are mostly just going to be a bunch of geezers making sure we encoded everything properly. Half the reason schools are even still around is so us young heirs can practice our politicking amongst each other. Make connections and the like.” Richard quipped from his relaxed position sprawled out across his seat. Felix resisted the urge to point out that schools existed for more than just the rich people who could afford a link. Only just barely though. He idley wondered if he counted as a lacky now. Or a hireling. His entire future pretty much hinged on keeping Richard happy so he supposed that was the case.
“I’ll try my best not to embarass you by my prescence sir.” He offered, doing his best impression of a butler or other similarly servile proffession. It galled him to know that even what many would consider a ‘servant’ held a higher position in society than him. Well, used to anyway.
It took him a few moments to realize that Richard was laughing at him. More than just laughing really, howling would be the word he’d use. He blinked in confusion for a few moments before, face carefully kept neutral he said “Sir?”.
“Oh man, it’s just – just you are nothing like the tenacious little punk I watched security beat up twice a week for a month. I kind of expected, I dunno, some hostility?” Richard got out between fits of laughter.
“Your acting like I own you or something.”He said quirking an amused eyebrow and pointing at him as though saying something Felix hadn’t already realized.
“Don’t you?” Felix’s tried to keep his reaction down to confusion instead of the sarcastic correction it was meant to be. He was under no illusion as to his position in life. Richard was the barrier that stood between him and lifting rocks for a living – and he knew it.
He was surprised when Richards rauceous laughter rapidly turned into a vicious scowl. “Listen, I know how you see us. And I freely admit alot of the families treat people like you essentially as slaves – but Tukson’s don’t own, or condone slaves. You owe me but I don’t own you” and as quickly as that the jovial laugh was back, if somewhat more subdued than before. “Seriously though, don’t even imply that where anyone can hear you, whatever you might think. It looks bad.”
Felix spent the rest of that drive up the enourmous hill trying to decide if he could take any of that at face value, or if it was just a long winded way of telling him to keep his mouth shut and not make the family look bad. The Tukson’s it should be noted, were a major shipping concern. Just about everything coming or going from the continent went through them. They made a point of keeping as far from anything seedy as possible and expected everyone related to the family to do the same. The families enemies would take any excuse to levy accusations of smuggling at them – and only an excessive dedication to rules and regulations kept many of those accusations at bay.
He spent a majority of the time making use of his new neural link to check for self help information hubs. He’d been parsing through various answers to the question ‘How to tell when my boss is lying to me’ for close to 20 minutes before he realized Richard was howling with laughter again.
“Did I do something. . .Sir. . .?” He opted to try for forwardness this time – better to test it now than in public.
“Your my assistant, your Link is slaved to mine – I can look at what your doing pretty much whenever I want.” the brown haired ubermensch cackled so loudly that the vehicles driver slowed to peer through a slot in the dividing wall between the front and back ends of the limo.
Felix’s facial expression remained neutral but a slight blush began to creep up his cheeks. “I just. . . I have no idea what I’m doing. It’s not much to you but this my whole life here. There are more ‘do nots’ than ‘do’ and I don’t know any of them!”The facade of a cold and subservient assistant began to rapidly crumble as panic crept into his tone.
Felix, as a rule, didn’t panic easily. He came as far as he had by being dedicated to planning out all his options and countermeasures and following through on them regardless of who he had to backstab, lie to, or cheat to get what he wanted. He wasn’t innately a liar, or a cheat. He simply accepted when those were the only ways to get ahead. Simply put, he was a pragmatist. A ruthless one for certain. But a pragmatist none the lest.
His laughter dieing down to only the tone of a low chuckle, Richard took out a fine tooth comb and started tidying his light brown hair as they approached the school, saying amiably “Tell you what, I’m not really as serious about this type of thing as I probably should be so you only have to do two things for me”. He lowered himself to look Felix in the eye as he continued “Don’t do anything disreputable, and cover my back. You look out for me, and I swear I’ll look out for you.” letting the brief moment of seriousness pass he added “Besides, once I take over part of the business I’m gonna need an assistant who I can trust. Just pretend were on a trial run now.”
Felix’s eyes lit up, and he carefully forced his face back into a neutral stare, though a small smile kept creeping onto his lips. His loyalty was pretty cheap in this case. Richard already had him mostly in his pocket, but the potential for a career after graduation was more than enough to set Felix’s heart to thumping. He knew that even a cursory background search would show him as being what many would politely refer to as a charity case, and that such would hinder his ability to find employment among the upper class significantly.
His slightly jubilant ‘Yes Sir’ was met with an incredulous sigh and a stare from the much larger man. “Do they not have fun where your from Faukner? Women? Alchohol?” Richard said, halfway between serious and joking.
Felix neglected to answer. None of the things Richard had just mentioned were conducive with avoiding a life of lifting things and eating grey paste till he died – and so he had never shown an interest in them. He had a feeling Richard would not be pleased with that answer though, and so he just allowed a serene smile to spread across his face in response.
He was after all, a pragmatist.
abradolflinkler 