Scaling

Four in the morning, Frank awoke with his alarm. He made his bed and set on top of it the suit and tie he would wear today. Then pulling on his workout attire, he set about on his morning jog. It’s odder in the freeport, things are more cluttered and people are always awake, but no one cares nearly as much.

He missed the simplicity of life in a normal city on a planet’s surface. But after the company he was coding for went bankrupt, there was little he could do. Everyone knew about him, and despite it having nothing to do with him, most blamed him for the attack. So the only people in the compound that would hire him wanted him to return to his old, pre-compound style of living. His old boss, for her part, understood, and after she accepted a position in a freeport conglomerate production line, she gave job offers to the best of his employees. Which meant he moved to this odd production facility turned Freeport.

The thirty minute jog was not the most wakeful. It had the distinct issue that the air of Custodum tended to be in the low eighties all day round. Not necessarily bad at all for a run, but when one runs at a quarter past four in the morning to help wake up, it is less than helpful. He returns to his small townhouse and goes straight for the shower. In the bathroom, he strips off his workout clothes in the main bathroom and turns on his shower. As the water heats, he takes a moment and walks the clothes over to his laundering unit, leaving them on top. Returning to the shower, he gets into the scalding water.

It feels nice, running over his skin. He scrubs himself clean in the shower, but quickly. He has work, after all. Pressing the end shower button, the shower abruptly shifts to cold water for a minute before shutting off. It’s one of the default settings in shower systems, and the one he prefers. The setting exists for hygiene purposes, of course, to close off the open pores from a hot shower. He also likes the shock of it. Another aspect of his morning routine that helps move him from awake to functional. Turning on the dehumidifier, he exits the shower and waits for the room to dry.

As he dripped the excess water onto the bathroom floor, he stared at himself in the fogged mirror. He doesn’t need to actually see himself to look. Even though they’re almost entirely gone from his body, he can still feel the scars. He instinctively traces his fingers along invisible lines in his hairless skin. In the foggy mirror, they are more evident than anything. As the mirror clears up and he dries off, they fade, and his vision of himself returns to reality. His hairless, featureless, perfect skin. No sign of any blemishes, save some lengths of minor discoloration in small sections of his skin. Dry, he turns off the humidifier and returns to his bedroom.

Dressing for the day, he goes to the cleaning unit and puts his workout clothes into it. He starts the machine up before heading out to work. Because he can afford it, and his routine is more important than petty things like long-term security or conservation of station resources. He walks across the freeport, to his office building.

In the compound, his office had been an engineering marvel. After all, he worked for the company that ran the compound, in its office, so they could afford to splurge on design. Now, his office building is four glass walls and six stories. Nothing special, or unique about its construction, and its top floor is only there to connect it to the spindles that make up the shipyard superstructure. The shipyard that Portus Custodum is built around, that is a beautiful thing to get to look at every day, but he doesn’t work there. Not directly, in any case. Frank takes a moment to admire the strange scaffolding-like superstructure before going into the office building.

He presses the elevator call button as his boss, Prita, arrives. She smiles, and says, “Morning Frank.”

An intrusive thought from a part of him he keeps in check pops into his mind: Twenty-two seconds. He ignores it, moving those thoughts to the side, and instead gives her a polite nod. “Good morning. Anything vital go wrong last night?”

Prita shakes her head. “No, but I got a message from the head of station saying production is temporarily scaling up by several factors across the board, so we are going to need to compensate for that.”

Frank smiles and shakes his head. “Which means, yes something did go wrong, we’re just not qualified to know about it,” he half jokes. The elevator arrives.

They both get in. Prita replies, “That would be my guess, but it could also just be a deal going through unexpectedly. Either way, we need to make sure everything still works with all that extra power draw, resource usage, and waste production up there.”

Frank, realizing what that means, sighs. “Please give someone else the garbage-duty,” he says.

She chuckles. “But you wrote most of that code,” she counters, “Who else could manage it as efficiently.”

“Ish knows it all,” Frank offers, “Just give it to him.”

Prita shakes her head. “Ismael isn’t supposed to get back from his Madidorum trip until tonight.” Right, Frank remembers, Ismael was taking his yearly vacation last week. Two weeks of debauchery and ill intent. He’d invited Frank along, but Frank knows better than to break routine. Letting loose for most people means a bad hangover, some regrets, maybe a disease or two. For Frank, letting loose generally means dead bodies and Service interest. Neither are things he particularly wants any more of in his life.

“Fine, but I’m going to be extra thorough in my examination and testing because this all-hands, across the board ramp up means the station will fund overtime pay,” he insists.

Prita continues to chuckle and shake her head as the doors open up to the fourth floor. He exits the elevator. Her office is on the fifth floor, so she remains inside. He heads over to his cubicle and gets everything in its proper place. Turning on his computer, he clocks in and opens up his email. No requests yet, nothing is broken. While he waits to get his formal instruction, he starts to think about why they would be ramping up construction so drastically. That could only mean a war is coming, but how? And with whom?

No, he pushes those questions down, away from mind. Such are not proper thoughts. Those sorts of thoughts lead only to trouble. To systems long in standby coming back to life. Frank knows better than to test that. Because that is a test he would undoubtedly fail. Instead, he pulls out a pad and begins to write out questions that he can handle. Like the question of scale. Using the data of standard production fluctuation to waste elements expelled by the facility, he calculates the factor at which each factory produces waste per unit-day, and the ratios between them. That way, using that factor with the ramp up, he can more easily model the specifics of the scenario for the testing rig, then the test should prove more accurate.

By the time he finished with the math, there was indeed a message in his mailbox. A request for a scale test and confirmation for a sixfold production increase across the board. That number is odd. Likely, it’s meant to be a fivefold increase and they’re concerned that the bare minimum won’t take into account the compounding usage of all the production facilities doing such an increase straining the systems. But his job isn’t to worry about the excessive concerns of his boss’s bosses’ boss. He just gets to work building a series of inputs indicative of the calculations at sixfold increases in a separate, closed system to test the current waste recycling and management programs’ work at scale.

As he is working, before he implements the test, his watch vibrates. Noon. Lunchtime. He locks his screen, gets up, and heads over to the elevator. Taking it to the ground floor, he heads out of the building and across the street, to Selene’s Diner. With a wave of acknowledgement to the waiter and the owner, he sits down at a booth. They know him, after all, he’s two and a third meters tall and fairly well built, and he comes here every lunch he works in the office for the last year. Hector walks over with the menu that they both know Frank doesn’t need. “Baked sub as usual?” the waiter asks as he sets it on the table.

“And a coffee,” Frank replies with a smile.

“Friend’s still off galavanting without you?” Hector asks politely, taking note of Ismael’s absence. Normally Ish shows up with him on Tuesdays.

Frank chuckles. “He invited me along, but I don’t really find that relaxing, you know? Much prefer a nice spa day. Or a month-long nap.”

“I hear you on that second one,” Hector says, “Though I’m not sure about a spa.”

Frank smiles and shakes his head as Hector walks off to give his order to the kitchen. Selene finishes with the customers paying at the front, then comes over. “What’s wrong, Frankie?”

“Nothing,” Frank shoots back, too quickly.

Selene shakes her head. “See, if nothing was wrong, you’d’ve had some quip about me calling you Frankie. So, are you going to tell me?”

“It’s just, new hit. There’s a production ramp up. It’s got my mind trying to do much, you know?”

She laughs. “Never. My mind always does the exact right amount. Why does this production ramp up have you worried? Too much shit spilling through the pipeworks now or something?”

“It’s waste, not shit. It’s mostly toxic runoff from the alloying of the hull materials nowadays,” Frank says, frustrated, “Why does everyone always assume it’s shit?”

Selene shrugs. “Because it’s a heck of a lot funnier than toxic spills.”

The massive man chuckles. “Fair point. And no, it’s just, I’m not a huge fan of the implications of a ramp up, you know?”

Selene nods. She understands somewhat. “War worries you. Don’t be too concerned, President Bellardino isn’t going to do any kind of conscription, and she cares too much about the Portus to put us in any real danger. Unless you plan on hopping into one of those badboys and flying it at the enemy.”

Frank shrugs. “Pretty sure if I wanted to do that, I’d have to get one special built,” he jokes.

Selene laughs, nodding. “So stop your worrying, it’s scaring the customers,” she lies. She’s the one that’s worried by it. But she can’t seem too invested.

“Fine,” Frank replies, “I’ll do my best.”

Hector shows back up with Frank’s coffee and sub. “You do realize this is my table, Selene. His tip’s mine,” he jokingly says to his boss.

“I can’t be concerned about my good friend Frankie?” she jokes.

Frank sighs. “If you were concerned about me, or my good friend, you really wouldn’t be calling me Frankie, would you?” he counters.

“There he is,” Selene says with a smile as she returns to the front.

Hector looks me over. “What’s up?”

“The usual,” Frank says. “You?”

“Nothing much, just working the bare minimum,” the waiter replies, “By the way, are you coming to karaoke tonight?”

The former monster shakes his head. “Can’t make it tonight, the Freeport’s paying for overtime to get this project done as soon as possible.”

“Nice,” Hector says, “See you later, then.”

“See you tomorrow,” Frank says as he finishes his sandwich and leaves a tip, heading to the front counter to pay for the meal. Crossing the street once more, he heads back up to his cubicle. And he does one more onceover of the numbers before he runs the first test. First of however many it takes for him to stay until ten at night.