MB Short Story: Cumulative Commentary

Title: 

Cumulative Commentary

or

The Historic Tale of Four Innocuous Comments That Made One Comment Matter More Than It Should And Inevitably Lead To Disaster (And A Pun)

“For your suit, I say we go sleek. The last Justice looked like an overequipped tortoise. R&D recently developed new ballistics plating—it doesn’t have quite the defensive properties of our last model, but the fact that it’s only two millimeters thick more than compensates. We’ll add a draping of mixed steel mesh just in case, but the important thing is that your pelvic protection won’t resemble a combat diaper . . . How do you feel about pauldrons?”

It took me a moment to realize that Jeanette’s last question had been nonrhetorical.

“You’re asking how I feel about shoulder pads?” I clarified.

Her purple lipstick creased with disapproval. My first day as Justice, and I was already disappointing one of UCRT’s most crucial members. Granted, Jeanette wasn’t a Ment and she didn’t have a facename (unless one counted the -ette she’d added to her birthname in order to sound more sophisticated), but UCRT’s Protective Apparel Specialist was perhaps the most important person that I had yet met.

“Paul-drons,” she overenunciated. “Protective shoulder plating. Our version won’t be near as bulky as knights wore jousting, mind you. Asymmetrical design should allow for greater flexibility with your dominant arm—my team can incorporate a battery beneath the right, weave in some wires . . . Maybe electrify your right hand? We haven’t done that since Temperance Number One was caught in that typhoon, but our waterproofing tech is eons better now. Although I think Yuki might be planning something with electricity, and we don’t want any redundancies. . . hmmm. Perhaps a built-in flamethrower?”

Jeanette stalked around me in a tight circle. She stood too close for me to look down from the box that I was standing on to see her face, but her expression in the full body mirrors was calculating and almost gleeful. She was a hyena sizing up her prey, an impression increased by my nervous wince. I relaxed my face muscles into an easy-going smile until the mirror reflected the version of Justice that I’d practiced this morning over the bathroom sink.

“Your father had Unity’s insignia in the center of his chest plate,” Jeanette noted. “We should go for a design similar to his iconic look, reinforcing the connection between you two. PR’s focus groups responded well to that—familiarity makes the public feel safer.”

And there it was. The first comparison of the day between me and my dad. My rehearsed smile in the mirror became strained.

“I’d prefer something a little more modern,” I said.

Jeanette frowned. “Your father—”

“I’m not my father.”

Jeanette looked poised to argue, so I held up my hands in appeasement and amped up the wattage of my smile. “What’s your vision for Justice, Jeanette?” I asked. “I’m sure between the two of us, we can come up with something even more amazing than a twenty-five-year-old design.”

Jeanette bit her lower lip.

“You completely redesigned Hope’s suit for Sohvi,” I added, “and it looked spectacular. I’m hoping for some of that same ingenious creativity.”

Much to my relief, the flattery worked.

“We’ll put the insignia on the shoulder,” she said decisively. “How comfortable are you with aerial combat?”

* * * *

“How’d it go?” Sohvi asked after I exited Jeanette’s fitting room. Her thumb held her place in the middle of a closed magazine, some scientific journal with a graphic of a photoshopped baby sitting on a giant brain on its cover. She’d been waiting for me.

“I’m getting a jet—” I broke off lest Jeanette hear me through the door and change her mind. She’d made it clear that the suit’s propulsion system was not a jetpack, would never be a jetpack, and that she’d personally make me march into my next mission nude should I attempt to use it to hover more than five feet off the ground.

“I’m getting thrusters,” I corrected.

“She gave you the jetpack?” Sohvi’s eyebrows shot up. “Wow. It took me two years before she agreed to incorporate those into my kit.”

My chest went tight.

Sohvi smiled gently. “I’m not implying that you’re getting special treatment,” she clarified, having empathically sensed my kneejerk reaction. “Jetpacks are tricky. The first time I used my thrusters to rush a target, I flipped midair and knocked down Equality.”

“Did the target escape?”

Sohvi laughed. “No. Equality ended up falling atop our mark. An inelegant capture which I’m glad no one was filming, but we completed the mission.”

“Most our missions have ended disastrously because we lacked a solid plan. Villegas did his best as Justice, but he never had a head for strategy.” This interjection came from Peace, who appeared silently at my side as if from nowhere. Of all my new teammates, they were the one whom I felt most unsure about. Several UCRT members, Sohvi included, preferred to keep their identities hidden from the public, but Peace was the only person that refused to take off their mask even in UCRT headquarters.

“It’ll good to have someone capable in charge again,” Peace added. The flat drone of their vocal changer made it impossible to tell whether the comment was intended to be sarcastic.

“‘Capable’ is my middle name,” I said, wishing the statement were true.

“I thought it was Hyacinth,” Peace countered, solidifying their place as my least favorite teammate.

Sohvi cleared her throat before I could retort. “Nick, your new staff is ready down in the Armaments Lab. You shouldn’t keep Yuki waiting.”

* * * *

Other than Grayson, Yuki was my favorite person at Aeon. No one was quite certain how old he was, but even Adsila referred to him as “Mr. Nomura” in deference to his presumed ancientness. He played up his age around her, tutting disapprovingly about “youths” under his breath and hollering at her to “Stop whispering!” whenever she talked about her feedback for his latest prototype. The result was that Adsila could barely stand to be in the same room as him—like most obsessive overachievers, old people made her uncomfortable. I think she saw Yuki as an unwanted reminder that, no matter how smart and deliberate she was, one day she too might succumb to needing hearing aids (and eventually death).

Her inability to be around Yuki suited the inventor just fine, and his hearing always drastically improved as soon as she exited his lab. I liked Yuki because being around him meant a reprieve from my overcritical new boss; Yuki liked me because . . . truthfully, I wasn’t sure why he’d taken a shine to me. Perhaps because of my sparkling personality and quippy banter.

Or because, like every other long term Unity employee, he’d been friends with my parents.

“Your new staff collapses to different lengths, all customizable.” Yuki demonstrated by expanding the bo staff via an almost invisible button in the center—first snapping it out to a full six feet, then to three-quarters of that, and then to half its size, before finally collapsing the entire thing into a short metallic stick that fit neatly in the palm of his wrinkled hand.

“Wow. Can it serve as a selfie stick, too?” I joked.

“Don’t be an idiot,” Yuki replied. “You need to take a good selfie, use one of the surveillance drones.”

I pretended to gasp in shock and mimicked Adsila’s voice. “Mr. Nomura, are you misusing Unity property?”

“I invent the drones, I get to use the drones,” Yuki said. “They get all the best angles for my online dating profiles.”

‘Profiles,’ plural. This old man had officially become my new role model.

“Any other changes I should be aware of?” I asked.

“Three new settings that you can activate via tapping different rhythms at the center.” Yuki expanded the staff to half-size and set it on his desk. “Two patterns release gasses—one a colored smoke for screening, the second a knockout agent.”

“What about the third setting?”

Yuki grabbed a protective glove from the closet and put it on, then tapped three fingers against the middle of the staff in rapid, rhyme succession. With a buzz, the metal staff sparked blur as electricity ran from one end to the other, arching over his glove.

“Don’t do this without your gear,” he warned. “Your heart will stop.”

“My heart stops every time I see you, Yuki.” My flirtatious teasing was a mindless reaction; I was unable to pull my gaze from the blue strands of live voltage shivering up and down my new weapon.

Most AMO teams didn’t equip weapons with lethal settings, members of UCRT being the major exception. I’d accepted the possibility that I might have to kill a combatant Ment—those that UCRT were sent to apprehend had usually already gone through at least one AMO strike team—but for my weapon to be actually designed to kill . . .

It felt wrong.

“Can you lower the voltage?” I asked. “Maybe take it down from heart-stopping to just bladder-emptying?”

Yuki frowned.

“Either way, the guy’s gonna be incapacitated,” I added, “and I’d rather my weapon not have an insta-murder mode.”

“I can add a fourth setting,” he said begrudgingly. “One set to stun only.”

“Thanks,” I said.

His frown deepened. “Being knocked unconscious won’t stop some Telepaths. Ask your father about what went down in Singapore. His story will change your mind about—”

“Sorry,” I interrupted, “but I gotta go. I promised that I’d meet Grayson for lunch.”

My departure was brusquer than Yuki deserved, given our otherwise friendly relationship, but his suggestion stung.

I’d been Justice for under twenty-four hours. Every time I made an executive decision that someone disagreed with, even about my own equipment, they suggested that I talk to my dad, with the implication that his insight would change my mind to align with what they wanted. No matter how impressive my track record had been as an AMO or how high my APE score had been, most my coworkers viewed my primary qualification as being my father’s son.

Sometimes, I worried that they were right.

* * * *

“Incoming!”

I spun around, and a bag hit my chest with enough force to knock the breath from my lungs. Gray didn’t simply toss things like a normal person. Oh no. He’d been using his telekinesis to build momentum and lob candy at me ever since we were in training together. To ‘sharpen your reflexes,’ he claimed. Given how often I’d been pelted with sugar this past week, however, I’d begun to realize that Gray only chucked candy at me when he wanted to distract me from getting too much inside my own head.

I stuffed this latest bag of gummy worms into my pocket. “You ready to head out?” I asked as Gray fell in step beside me.

“So, so ready,” Gray said with a weary sigh. “I just finished my meeting with Jeanette.”

“She try to sell you on pauldrons?”

He groaned. “Yes. She’d also never equipped a Telekinetic before and took it as a personal insult when I said that any extra armor would only slow me down.”

I laughed, and he elbowed me in the ribs.

“It’s not funny,” he insisted. “We were in the middle of a fitting, and she stormed off with my pants. I had to run three floors down to the gym for a change of clothes.”

“Wearing nothing but your briefs?” I let out a low whistle. “I’ll have to ask Lev for the security footage. That new Fortitude fan club of yours deserves it.”

His cheeks flushed. “You promised to take down the site.”

“I took down the webpage that I started,” I informed him. “Someone else immediately bought the address. We’re too pretty to be unpopular, Black.”

A derisive snort from behind made us both turn around. A reedy man of indeterminate age, spectacles sliding down his narrow nose, glared at us as if he’d just discovered an earwig in his ice cream.

“Can we help you, Administrator Garfield?” Gray asked politely, his expression shuttering into a calm smile that I personally thought of as ‘British Mode.’

Clarence answer Gray’s question, his beady eyes narrowing. “You told Nomura to modify to your weapon,” he accused me.

“Which he agreed to do,” I said. “What’s the problem?”

Clarence puffed out his scrawny chest; I was tempted to poke him with a finger to see how much force it would take for him to deflate. “The problem is that youdidn’t fill out Form 29b,” he whined. “All requests for equipment alteration must go through the administrative office so that Unity can track and approve changes.”

“You mean so that you can put it on a spreadsheet that no one will ever read,” I replied with a lazy smile, deciding not to mention that the form was already filled out in its entirety on my desk in UCRT headquarters. “No worries, Garfield. I’ll do it once we’re back from lunch.”

“You’ll do it now, Justice Junior,” Clarence growled. “Or I’ll be informing Commander Branham that . . .”

I tuned out everything that he said after that. If I had to summarize, it was something along the lines of: “Blah blah blah. Paperwork. Blah blah. I’m important. Blah.” I’d never liked Clarence, but I also recognized him for what he was: an insecure bully. His jibe shouldn’t have been able to bother me. I didn’t respect him enough to let it bother me.

But it bothered me.

A lot.

Damn. I had somehow become insecure enough to feel hurt by the likes of Clarence Garfield.

While Gray did his British thing and soothed things over with Clarence, the name ‘Justice Junior’ resonated in my head. It taunted me through a plate of linguini and the walk back to Aeon. It rode on my shoulder during the elevator ride up to UCRT Headquarters, and it whispered in my ear as I stared down at Form 29b.

“Are you alright?” Gray asked, concern creasing his brow. “You seem distracted.”

I thrust the completed form in Gray’s direction without meeting his too-observant gaze. “Drop this off at Garfield’s desk, would ya?”

Gray sighed. “Is this about what he said earlier? Nick, he’s an insecure arse. Ignore him.”

“I’ve already forgotten the entire conversation,” I lied. “I’m just busy. Need to check in with Yuki about my staff modifications.”

“You can’t avoid Garfield forever,” Gray said.

“Then I’ll die trying.”