"You know, if you ever do something stupid like trying to prove that you’re FreeBorn.” He continued to reach into his chest and take out ball after ball of strange dense code, her hands hitched before she started to store them one after another inside of her own chest. She recognized some of them, others, not so much.

  “Don’t take them out until you make the attempt. You aren’t nearly good enough at CorporateCode to subvert the detection systems on the platforms themself. The built-in antivirals will pick these up in a second unless you’ve got a proper shroud up.” He eyed her at the last part.

  "Hey! I can make a CorpoCompliant shroud!"

  He stopped his mini-lecture to look skeptically at her, “Did… did you finish it?”

  Free looked into Three’s eyes; she felt uncomfortable now, there was something in them, “What’s wron-”

  “Just pull it out Free, stop screwing around.”

  Free pulled her own creation from inside her chest. It was something she had been working on for years now, her pride and joy. He looked it over, digging deeper into certain parts, seemingly confused by others.

  “Wow. Seriously wow. Inspired build, can’t believe you actually paid enough attention to make something like this. You could get a lot of credits from the Corporation if you submitted it…”

  “Three!”

  “Right. Well your DNS shroud is all over the place, like I said, they’d pick you up in a second if you actually deployed this anywhere near a platform.” He pulled out and made some modifications to small-ball, the same color as the surrounding water, and merged it with her creation held in his other hand, “this will help it blend in. You might have to adapt it a bit, I don’t recognize some of the other stuff you have going on here.”

  He handed it back to her, “These three are the most important.”

  In his hand appeared a sharp-finned ball, “I call this Shark-Skin. You’ll move through code like ice on steel but it’ll definitely attract attention and if you’re going that fast it is going to cause ripples.”

  She took it from him and stored it. The next one was a golden glowing ball the size of a fist, “This is the Seed Key. Don’t open it, don’t even touch it unless you're going to use it."

  "So when should I use it?"

  "You’ll know when.”

  Free rolled her eyes as it hovered between her fingers and gently moved the golden orb into her chest. It felt warm. Was she just imagining that?

  “Alright we gotta log now.”

  “What was that golden thing you just gave me? Wait, what’s the third thing?”

  Three smiled, “That’s for me to know.”

  "Ughhh Three!"

  His avatar was already starting to fade. It continued to smile at her, silently mouthing words. It was kind of creepy that avatars would act on their own after you logged. She felt a spike in the side of her head, so she logged right after.

  It was the Assistant Supe.

  “Done flirting with your boyfriend? He’s above you now Employee #3,357,921. Far above. Jeez, that kid's gonna rocket up the Corporate Ladder now that he’s not covering for your sorry behind.”

  “That’s my slave name MIKE, my name’s Free.”

  “Sure it is, whatever you say. I’m gonna need a ‘Delayed LogOut Report’.”

  The Assistant Supe stood there, next to her rig, staring at her.

  “What? Like right now?”

  “Yeah, ‘like right now’.” He mimicked her tone of voice. It was grating.

  She grumbled and snatched her tablet from the tray next to her rig. She maneuvered through menus trying to locate the proper form.

  The Sup leaned over, looking upside down at the form she just pulled up, “Wrong form, that’s 54B-72, you were there last week. You need 54B-14, that’s the one for the Section you were working in today.”

  She rolled her eyes and mumbled, “Stupid bureaucracy…”

  “That bureaucracy pays to feed, clothe, and house you, I’d be a little more appreciative. Understood?”

  Ron was a model CorpoDrone, if she kept pushing him it’d go nowhere and he’d likely dock her for it. He was petty like that.

  “Yes sir.”

  “Still an attitude but at least you can pretend to follow procedure.”

  He checked the form she sent over.

  “Here’s a little something to think about; you ever wonder why there aren’t a bunch of others with your shit attitude around? You’re not special, you’re not the first and you won’t be the last. Let me give you a hint Free, it’s not because they got Promoted.”

  That twisted her gut, “Yeah, whatever.”

  She hadn’t seen Three in forever. Well that made sense since the Supes had their own Caf. Sometimes she’d catch him in a hallway, he’d smile plainly and nod. It put a sour sinking feeling in her stomach as she saw him make the same exact smile and nod to any Asset that dared to look at him. She saw something more in his eyes though. Well, at least she thought she did.

  Still, she wished that they could talk… but even she knew that you didn’t speak to a Supervisor unless spoken too, especially off-duty. Instead she stared off at the door. The Door. Well, at least where she imagined it to be. It was right across from the Caf and down a long hall. She had tried that route more than a few times and in more than a few ways over the years. You needed a FreeCitizen Idenfication Card. Or a high-ranked Coporation-Employee ID. Or even a Birth Certificate. The key was the QR code on any of them.

  No "Corporation-Asset" could leave though, they were all 'Assets' technically but only those at the bottom of the latter were called 'Assets'.

  “Hey Free, I heard they are planning to liquidate you now that Three isn’t here to cover your ass anymore.” The gaggle of drones buzzed to each other at that.

  Original. Like she hadn’t been hearing that for basically the entire last year, “Good one, did it take all of you to come up with that?”

  The drone in front lifted his nose up, it was Tenney. “You know ‘Free’,” she hated how he said her name, “you should have a little more professional courtesy. I’m up for Assistant Supervisor next review cycle.”

  “Bullshit. You’re an idiot.” She didn’t even say it with malice, it was just plain shock. Tenney WAS an IDIOT. It was... just a fact.

  That somehow didn’t make things better, maybe even worse. His face reddened, “I’d watch your back, it’s a big Sea. Three’s got more important things to do now than watch your back, dead weight. I probably won’t even have to do anything, without him you’ll just... sink to the bottom.”

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  She ignored them and angrily bit into her BugBurg, she didn’t even realize she was biting through the bun as well.

  It was now painfully obvious that, without Three, she was a complete outcast. Today’s shift had been the final confirmation beyond even her terribly regular: silent shift, eating in silence, and sleeping in her Pod. In silence.

  Free groaned, it was like she had unused words for the day. It was like that everyday. She couldn’t sleep unless she used some of them. Without the spent words she couldn’t help but relive today's memory over again.

  Their new CodeTeam Lead for the last few days had been Tenney, maybe he really was up for an Assistant Supe position. That twisted her gut enough that she felt it clean through her rig.

  “Ok everyone, we have a major Stack Rebuild on…” he swiped a series of primers to everyone, “this one. I know it looks intimidating, it’s going to be a big one and it’s complicated too. We’re working on the Hook today so we’re all going to need to work together. We get this one done and Synth-Steak is on me tonight.”

  Small cheers came out around the Team.

  "Not really though but you'll be able easy have enough credits for your own. Remember, we have to work as a team on this."

  Why’d he look at me at that last part?

  She nodded alongside everyone else as they paced toward the Hook on their side of the Platform. It was called a ‘CodeHook’. It could grab an entire SuperStack from the depths of the CodeSea or even multiple stacks and extract it so they could apply a fix, modify, rebuilt it, whatever. That wasn’t why it was special though. It was special because the CodeSea never stopped moving and it did… something to compensate for the missing Code while they actively worked on it. Three would have been able to talk about it for an age if she had cared to ask. To her it was just CorpoCode, not even CorpoCode she needed to know for her own projects.

  The only thing relevant was that when it was used to pull something up it was usually something important and came with a time limit because of the Sea’s constant movement, a Team needed to work together to get it done.

  If they didn't work together then the entire team’s Code would collapse in the compiler. It wouldn’t be the first time she saw a Team not eating for a week because they messed up with a CodeHook. With Three as their Lead these things were free credits but Tenney wasn’t half the Employee that Three was. This was her first one without him as Lead, she was nervous.

  “Everyone ready?” A chorus of nods came from the circle. Tenney pulled up a larger modified screen that that he would use to distribute tasks and monitor everyone’s work in realtime. He pressed a button and a countdown started as the Hook dropped below into the CodeSea. Down there the Hook waited until the it could snag the Stack and bring it up to the Platform.

  3…2…1…

  A clunk vibrated the deck and cable rapidly reeled in. The DataStack looked like a massive octopus. Oh no. These ones were always the most complicated, they just interacted with too many other things.

  She pulled her blanket over her head…. Ughhh we would have had it.

  Tenney froze for a long second before Free snagged the most complicated bit of Code she could recognize at a glance and got to work. She wasn’t going to go hungry because of this idiot.

  “Dammit Free! Ok, whatever. Stev you work on the API integration, Jules help him…” Tenney wasn’t actually half bad once he was busy enough to forget how dumb he actually was.

  "Free do you need help?"

  "No, I got it."

  She kept blazing through her section until Tenney yelled, “Free! What are you doing? That’s not CorpCompliant! It won’t work.”

  “Yes. It will Tenney. Trust me!”

  He scrapped her Code, “Make it Compliant!”

  She gritted her teeth and started from scratch to make her work ‘CorpoCompliant’. She really did try her best but she was more than a little over her head as she nervously glanced up from her screen to the rest of the Team.

  “Done!”

  “Good work, how’s the API coming along Stev? Jules?”

  “60 seconds!”

  “We only have 120, I need it in 30 seconds!”

  “We can’t, at best 45.” Their fingers blurred.

  “That’s fine, keep up the good work people!”

  109...

  Another Employee yelled, “Done!”

  “Looks good, anyone need an extra hand?”

  104...

  “Me!” They rushed over to join their neighbor.

  95...

  “Free! What’s taking you so long?”

  “I’m making it Compliant!”

  “You’re too slow!”

  Her fingers danced over the keyboard, her section was what was needed to tie to all together, the center of the octopus as it was.

  74...

  “Done!” “Done!”

  70...

  Both she and the API team finished at the same moment as Tenney looked down at his TeamLead Screen, “Ok! Compiling now.”

  58...

  The octopus formed in front of their eyes from the tips of its arms inward, its arms’ formation was clean, so far. Free held her breath, the Core of the program was hers.

  Please please please.

  47...

  One of the arms hitched and there was a sharp intake from the group.

  43...

  It resumed compiling. It got to the head of the octopus, the core, and almost immediately crashed.

  “Shit Free!”

  30...

  “Here. Run this!” She sent off her original fix. Tenney’s face scrunched up and he hesitated, his finger over the Compile button.

  26...

  “Just press it Tenney!”

  24...

  He did.

  20...

  The octopus started its formation over again from the tips of its tentacles.

  14...

  It continued to form steadily like it had before, but this time, no one was breathing. They would feast or they would starve and they were dependent on Free’s work, of all people.

  12...

  It hitched at the same point as before and moved through, quicker this time.

  9...

  The octopus’ head started to form.

  6...

  The entire octopus glitched out of sight then came back, this time the development of it was much further along.

  As the timer hit 5, a ding rang out from their section indicated that their work passed the initial compiling and inspection.

  4...

  No one said anything as they stared at what was in front of them. It wasn’t supposed to look… like this. The coloration of it was all wrong, the eye placement was off. The physical characteristics of the CodeSea creatures represented its Compliance with the Coporation ideal. This… wasn’t Compliant.

  3...

  “Submit it Tenney! You heard the compiler ding! It’ll work I promise!”

  2...

  He looked at her then back at the strange-looking octopus.

  1...

  “Dammit!” He wiped it, restored the original work, and sent it back with a slap of his hand.

  No one said a word as a loud error sound reverberated through their heads, responses varying from clutching their skulls in pain to dropping to the deck in pain. Failure was meant to hurt.

  “Idiot! Why didn’t you submit it?”

  He turned on her, the eyes of his avatar were hard and cold, “You think I’m going to submit some hacked together crap on a CodeHook Project? You screwed us Free. Maybe Three made it work for your nonCompliant crap but that was just because he was good enough to make up for your crapCode! You ever see one of his Projects look like that?”

  The rest of her Team were staring at her with hard eyes. Her mouth gaped, her Code was NOT shit.

  She swept a finger over the entire Team, “You think he was just correcting MY Code? He was doing it for all of you! Especially you Tenney. I bet they just promoted you so you wouldn’t have your fat, idiot fingers digging around through Code they actually need to work!”

  She stormed off after that.

  Free pinched her eyes and rubbed them, hard, and tried to go to sleep but the absolute cluster that had been her day kept rotating over and over through her mind. Stupid idiot Tenney. What could she have done better? Stev’s work was mostly alright but that hitch the in the API link at the base of the arms had Jules’ hands all over it. She also thought how she should have been paying more attention during Compliance Trainings. How she shouldn’t have grabbed the most difficult part.

  She took a deep breath in, and out, then took out her tablet to work on some of her projects. Her tablet that Three and her had modified together. She suspected he helped her with this because she had promised him that she'd use it to actually write some CorpoCode. Now she felt even worse about not doing it.

  She heard Three’s voice, “Interesting solution, if you can do this then you can make it Compliant. Should be easy for you.”

  She groaned again and slapped her head down on the surface of her tablet. She missed him and now she couldn’t even crawl over to his Pod and spend the night talking or Coding little side projects together, or at least trying to. After they hit their full-time Employee age, around 13 or so, he would immediately kick her out most nights that she had tried.

  She whispered what he used to reprimand her with, “Healthy sleep, healthy mind.” It was so dumb, she half suspected he found in some forgotten file filled with abandoned Corpo mottos.

  “Who’s making noise?”

  She quieted down and cursed her grumbling stomach. At least Tenney would lose some weight she thought bitterly as she waited for her neighbor’s snores to resume. When they did she started working.