Free Office of Mercy (9781101606100) by Ariel Djanikian Page A

month.”
    â€œMaybe Eric and Natasha work harder than you did,” Nolan suggested.
    â€œNot like we have a choice,” said Eric good-naturedly, piping up from across the table, “working for Jeffrey.”
    Jeffrey, who had been standing off to the side, gave a quick retort, though not before Natasha had noticed again the concern weighing down the lines of his face, and his hand rubbing the crisp sleeve of his opposite arm.

4
    T he training took place in the Pretends, in the third of the three great spaces that made up the Department of Living, just behind the Dining Hall and below the Archives, where Min-he worked. Developed by Alpha engineers in the first century after the Storm, the early Pretends had originally served to supplement the education of the Beta generation: to show them the world and grant them the experiences that reading and study alone could not re-create in so visceral a way. Soon, though, only a few years into their use, the young Betas had also found in the Pretends an alternate and much superior means of entertainment and exercise as compared with the Alpha-built baseball diamond, soccer field, and basketball court that shared the great room with the Pretends today. (Those games had long gone out of style, though the courts, synthetic grass fields, and equipment remained in pristine condition, ready for use.)
    The basic experience that defined the Pretends, that of complete and artificial sensory immersion, had been present in the Pre-Storm times. However, the technology was very new then, and had never gotten past its early limitations before scientific work in such matters ceased. The America-Five engineers had managed to pick up where history had left off. They perfected and mastered the technique of using highly accurate nanomagnetic fields to alternately activate and suppress trigger regions in the brain, ultimately gaining control over the sensations of touch, sight, smell, sound, and taste to a degree never achieved before. What was more, the technology in the Pretends, like the technology in every field, was always advancing. The Betas had improved on the Alphas’ model and, since then, younger generations had implemented their own new ideas. Just in the last decades, for instance, the engineers had discovered how, instead of allowing only for prewritten or prescripted experiences, the computer could essentially
read
the imagination of the player and, by working one nanosecond behind the player’s thoughts and desires, simulate in “real life” the fantasies of the mind. This type of simulation was called “Free Play,” but it was only just emerging into general use.
    Natasha herself, like every citizen, had spent countless hours in the small Pods where these experiences took place. It was no secret to anyone that the confined space of the settlement could not accommodate every human need. And the Epsilons had been encouraged all their lives to run and play and act out violently or in any way they felt inclined within the private world of the Pretends. The simulations served more straightforward, educational purposes as well. During school, for example, all their exams were held here. And Natasha could remember with crisp feeling acting out virtual lab experiments and very basic bioreplacement tasks, translating by sight Latin, Chinese, and Spanish from a scrolling screen, and pontificating on computer-selected passages of the Ethical Code before a simulated audience of her teachers and hooded Alpha elders.
    Natasha and Eric passed together through the back doors of the Dining Hall promptly at 0754 on Monday morning and walked across the bare expanse of the soccer field, baseball diamond, and parquet basketball court. Five levels of identical white doors, accessible by a metal scaffold of stairs and wraparound balconies, rose up on all four walls. Beside each door was an occupancy light, so that the entire room was dotted with little pricks of green and