Read Online Light Shaper by Albert Nothlit - Free Book Online Page A

ceiling-to-floor windows gave a stunning view of the outskirts of Aurora at night. There were a few people here and there, some drinking coffee or cooking, others reading, and a few others typing away on various types of computers. Even in the middle of the night, it appeared activity never stopped inside CradleCorp.
    “Coffee?” Miranda asked him.
    “Mocha, if they have it.”
    She nodded and headed to the nearest coffee machine. She punched in a couple buttons, and a few seconds later picked up two small Styrofoam cups filled with steaming liquid. She nodded toward the big windows and the comfortable-looking couches facing them.
    “Come on.”
    Barrow followed her. She handed him his cup, and he sipped it in silence. The welcoming warmth of the drink revived him. He had not realized he was so tired.
    Miranda smiled knowingly, holding her own cup delicately in her hands. “First night working graveyard shift, huh?”
    Barrow nodded. “Yeah. What time is it?”
    Miranda glanced at her watch. “A little after 3:00 a.m.”
    “I feel more tired than 3:00 a.m.”
    “It’s your first time connecting to Otherlife,” she said with dawning understanding in her eyes.
    “Yes.”
    “Well, I’m starting to see why you impressed Scholl so much.”
    “What do you mean?” Barrow asked her. The mocha was great quality. He couldn’t believe it had come out of a dispenser machine.
    “Well, Barrow, to begin with most of the people who connect for the first time can’t even manage a full shift. Those who do are exhausted afterwards, barely coherent in some cases. I’ve seen a few people who flat out gave up on carrying out their assignments and plenty more who were unable to do it. But you completed yours, and in a very effective way from what I see.”
    Barrow raised an eyebrow. “Were you spying on me? Monitoring me somehow?”
    Miranda laughed. “Not at all. But I know Scholl. If he wasn’t yelling at you, that means you passed with flying colors.”
    “I body-slammed a group of users by jumping out of one of the fighting arenas,” Barrow confessed. “I was breaking up a flash mob.”
    Miranda’s eyes sparkled with amusement. “That sounds like fun.”
    “It was,” Barrow said, and felt himself grinning. “The users were being assholes.”
    “Most of the people in the fight sector are like that,” Miranda said. “I’m actually surprised that Scholl sent you there on your first night. He must have wanted to get rid of you. Did you do anything to irritate him?”
    “He found out I lied about my previous work experience,” Barrow said. “I have worked security before, on the trading airships, but never here.”
    “I knew it. You have that look about you.”
    “What look?”
    “I don’t know. Efficient. Confident, maybe. Haven’t seen you in action, but I bet you would have been a great addition to my old department.”
    “You already work here,” Barrow said slowly. “In Otherlife. You know Scholl from before.”
    She nodded. “Close enough. I was division supervisor for CradleCorp security until last month.”
    “What’s the difference between CradleCorp and Otherlife?”
    “Otherlife is a product of CradleCorp. Its only product, actually. That doesn’t mean that the executives, researchers, and everybody else working here are assigned exclusively to Otherlife operations. In my last job, my assignments were basically to babysit CradleCorp executives during their business trips around the city. I requested this transfer to see how this part of the machine works.”
    “And what do you think?” Barrow asked.
    “Still too early to say,” Miranda told him. “There is a certain satisfaction to knowing that you can treat users with as much harshness as you want to without having to worry about a lawsuit. Thanks to the user agreement they all signed to get in.”
    Her comment made Barrow think about his own connection experience, and it triggered a recall of the very strange conversation he had had