Chương 105: CDM 2, Chapter 41: New Market

Enforcer Chapman allowed us to have the livestream up in the RAID room with the caveat that she would turn it off if we seemed unattentive to any aspect of our work. I didn't really need the babysitter-style ultimatum, but the energy in the room was admittedly more like a crawling view party than a government surveillance operation. With the research team and the crawl team inside, a harvest site was under construction around the S gate.

The gate appearing so near to a park would simplify the logistics a great deal. Anytime harvesters used a public space like that, they had several guidelines they were obligated to follow, but the open area was well worth the trouble. They were permitted to use the space as long as they were "as least destructive as possible." You could drive a machine over the grass, but you couldn't crush a sidewalk or cut down a tree to make more room. Stuff like that.

Arsenal Park was sports-oriented, so much of the operation would be on a baseball field. When this was over, the baseball field would be remade like new. For many parks, the result was sometimes significantly better than the original. The CDM on the ground managed civilians for the most part. With so much equipment coming down residential streets, our people were keeping civilians clear of hazards, closing roads, and collaborating with local police for security as well as logistics.

In the RAID room, Chapman tasked us with prioritizing enforcement of residential safety codes and then harvest site egress codes. We couldn't allow running equipment to sit just out the front door of a duplex, for example, and we had to diligently check the various improvised roads and footpaths forming as the site solidified. Apparently, collision rates went up substantially for an S gate. Workers were far more likely to get hit or run over by trucks and machinery today than any other day.

The adrenaline and urgency of the situation made people more prone to those kinds of mistakes. The latter half of that first 24 hours was far less intense. Harvesters were always in a perpetual state of setting up and tearing down. With most of their work done in phases, equipment endlessly came and went. I know you're here because you love hearing about workplace safety, but I need to talk about the gate. This S-ranked dungeon had never been seen before, so the public learned about it right alongside the crawlers.

I hated listening to Kielar and Baker banter like cigar buddies–Jackson hardly spoke–but the adventure was too interesting to turn off. Thus far, they had determined that the dungeon was a grid of perfectly square chambers, each about three miles across, or about an hour's walk, and had four exits, one for each wall. Rarely were all four open. Some were blocked by massive stone slabs. A distinct outdoor dungeon environment was in each chamber.

At one doorway, the square they left was a balmy rainforest, while the square they entered could have two feet of snow. At the exact center of each chamber was a waist-high square column, and on that column was a grid, 21 squares wide by 21 squares long. The exact center square was ruby, while the rest were a cement gray. A seemingly random selection of squares was raised, all to the exact same height. Pressing the ruby lowered some of those squares while also raising new ones.

The working theory at this point was that the grid was a map of the dungeon, but no one was sure what the raised squares represented or why changing some of them was significant. If the grid was important, they had 14 days to figure out why. That was as far as the crawl had progressed in 24 hours, and Chapman started sending people home. We would still be overstaffed, but the S gate was quieter now that the crawl had begun and harvesters had completed the worst of their setup.

Cortez and I volunteered to work through the next shift while the others went home to sleep. Megan was one of the enforcers on the ground who was relieved for the time being. Working opposite shifts from Megan was disappointing. I enjoyed talking with her about crawling because she usually had interesting things to add. We couldn't do that working different shifts. I checked my messages. A little over an hour ago, Beth sent me this:"Can I crash at your place tonight?

Milly's decided we would be open 24 hours for the S gate, so unless we get in trouble, who knows when I'll be out. I'm too tired to go all the way home."

"Yeah, of course. Warn Nathan, please." And speaking of Nathan, his messages from the day said:"S gate lets goooooo""bro do you know who the fuck the Steel Alliance is?"

"when did all these jagoffs become friends? wtf?"

"what are the chances cdm is watching without broadcast delays? can you text a guy the scoop so he can make some legitimate investments?"

"dude im so sorry. the government probably reads your messages and shit. hey, government guy. i was being humorous, not serious."

"hey do you know what happened to the mustard?"

"nm found it." The Kielar-Baker nonsense aside, I wished I was watching the S gate with Nathan too. Cortez wasn't so bad, though. Dr. Guld had stayed behind as well. He seemed nice enough so far, even if he didn't share his feeds with us.

"Congratulations," Cortez said as I sat back down.

"The hardest part of all this is over. It gets crazy again when the crawlers come out, but it's not nearly as bad as what we just went through." Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

"That's good to hear."

"How many S-ranked gates have you worked?" Guld asked Cortez.

"This is my second. You?"

"Seven."

"Do they always stick you in the office?" Guld laughed.

"Unfortunately, yes. This is the role I play on every mission." In that moment, I realized I was locked in a room with a one-of-a-kind gate resource. I really didn't want him to hate me by the time this was over, but I had to risk being annoying. There was too much to gain.

"Let me ask you something. Have you heard anything about the gate difficulty research, that it's trending upward?"

"I'm familiar. It's a frequent topic of debate," Guld replied.

"What's your take on it?" I asked.

"It's a map to the end of the world," he answered dryly. Cortez spun around in his seat.

"Say more."

"If the difficulty keeps going up, humanity will reach a point where they simply can't survive. That might not be your lifetime or your kids' lifetimes, but your grandkids and great grandkids will be able to feel it. Imagine a world with no E gates. No D. How do you train new crawlers like that? At some point, there's a shortage of qualified crawlers. A few bad dungeon surges because we can't keep up, and that's curtains for us." Cortez leaned back with his eyes wide.

"That's bleak, brother."

"Yes, it is."

"What do we do to stop that?" Cortez followed up.

"If the cause behind the rise is something we can influence, we could potentially slow it down, maybe even stop it depending on what the issue is. The other possibility is that the system has a linear path that doesn't care what we do. Have you seen the news about Japan going to the moon?" Cortez and I nodded.

"That's the motivation. They see the writing on the wall and are working on contingencies. Start a colony somewhere, find a world exactly like Earth. That sort of thing."

"A friend of mine said that focusing on interdimensional travel over spaceflight was the smarter place to spend our time," I said.

"Your friend's an idiot." Sorry about that, Leonard. Guld continued, "Aside from it being a very, very bad idea for humanity to play with those kinds of forces, we're just not anywhere close. That's centuries away, which is a lot of time you could spend exploring the universe in other ways."

"How big of a priority is this for the military?" Cortez asked.

"A vocal few are trying to rally support for investigation and intervention, but the official stance is that the gates have not been here long enough for present data to be conclusive."

"What about research like this? Any cool discoveries?"

"I can't talk about that," Guld answered. Cortez leaned forward to give Guld a hard stare.

"I can usually tell when the person saying that knows some good sh- stuff." Guld shrugged.

"Yeah, I don't have a read on you." Cortez spun his chair back to the monitors.

"Have you seen any change in gate crashing since the Baker Bill went through?" Guld asked.

"They're down," I answered.

"Didn't stop, but it's much lower."

"Do you attribute that to the bill?"

"Seems to be the case," I said.

"That's not an official statement. That's just what it looks like to me." Cortez nodded.

"I'd agree with that. The numbers don't lie."

"And I heard you guys are getting screwed over on your leveling. Is that true?" My partner huffed.

"Should have gone military. Would have got your levels no problem." Guld left out the part where you had to sign an 8-year contract. Any of the contracts shorter than that provided no leveling whatsoever. Leave the church just to sign on with the military? No fucking way.

"I'm heading to New Eden," Cortez said.

"I'll get my levels." Our Army liaison winced.

"What?"

"I don't have any insider information," Guld replied.

"That was my personal opinion."

"I'm listening." Guld slid away from his station where his hand gestures were more visible.

"No offense to any faith or politics, but I'm against giving terrorists a country. Every church that has signed on has at one point said we should welcome dungeon surges to move the end times forward."

"I'm not a big fan of doo-" Cortez looked toward Chapman's office.

"I'm not a big fan of settlers myself, but of all the conspiracies I believe, I don't go for that one."

"My great-grandfather was in Normandy. His best friend was with him. They stormed beaches and shared foxholes together. Then they came home, and the gates opened. This normal American father deliberately hid the existence of gates in their neighborhood. Back then we didn't have satellites, so they searched for them on foot and by plane. Anyone from that church who helped search decided to just not report the gates they found. They wanted them to surge."

"I think the settlers understand they're getting a bargain. A sovereign nation starter kit courtesy of the US government? Of course they jumped on it." Guld shrugged again.

"Like I said, it's my personal opinion."

"Dorion?" Beth asked, sitting up from my couch. I whispered back, "I'm sorry. I tried not to wake you."

"Nathan left for work already."

"Oh."

"We don't need to talk about it," Beth began, "but I just want to say, what the fuck? Is leaving the city the only way to get away from seeing his face? He's on the TV at my work every minute of every day now. That's my life for the next two weeks."

"I hate it too."

"Sorry, you must be tired."

"I am very tired, but I can talk if you want."

"That's okay. I just wanted to say thank you for letting me sleep here."

"It's going to be busy for as long as the gate is open," I said.

"You could stay here every night if you wanted. I don't mind."

"No, no. I'm not going to put you out like that."

"With my job, I don't think I'll be home much. The bed's here if you want it."

"When was the last time you changed the sheets?" she asked with a grin.

"Hey, I changed them the other- Okay. Fine. I'll put new sheets on before I leave again today."

"You promise you don't mind?"

"Not at all." Beth shrank into herself.

"Thanks, Dor."

"Any time."