1
2034. Lisbon, Province of New Italy, Holy Christian Empire.
Noah Araya hit save and leaned back in his chair just as the screen flickered again. Two seconds later, the computer restarted.
Next to him, Bernard groaned. “Shit,again?”
Noah didn’t grace that with an answer, he didn’t need to. The power grid had been malfunctioning all week. Both he and Bernard were used to working around that by now, incorporating constant saving, back-ups… well, things that they did anyway. But they’d taken it a step further as soon as the preparations for the fourth anniversary of the end of World War III had commenced short of a month ago. If Noah was being honest, he was impressed that it had taken this long for the massive celebration to take a toll on the network grid.
While his computer finished rebooting, Noah let his attention bounce from the monitor to the open-plan modern interior of the office at large. Chatter and the smell of sweat assaulted him immediately, and he wasn’t surprised. Currently, they characterized every floor of Lisbon’s tallest skyscraper thanks to that same grid issue thatwas making his job a lot more irritating than usual. The scorching July sun was at fault too, though unlike most of the employees—a good chunk of whom were at least twice as old as Noah’s twenty-five—he didn’t mind it. Yes, it made things a little stuffy, and yes, it caused headaches, but he enjoyed the heat regardless.
“Ugh, two more days and we get a long weekend,” Bernard sighed, his blond eyebrows furrowed as his fingers flew across the keyboard relaunching various systems. “I’m so glad I wasn’t deemed competent enough for the broadcasting crew.”
Noah snorted at that. He hadn’t been either, and he shared Bernard’s feelings about it, too. “Do you have any plans?” he asked, scooting his chair forward so he could hunch over the desk and pretend he was doing work.
Bernard hummed, sparing him a glance. “I mean... I’ll check out the festivities and then just laze around and, you know… just likeyou, make sure our systems can take the load even if we aren’t getting paid overtime for it.”
Ah, yes. Technically, the two of them were on call in case some system failure occurred, but they weren’t receiving any compensation for it. They could’ve demanded to be taken off the roster, but it looked terrible on paper and would’ve hurt their future career prospects. So they’d smiled at their manager Rosetta and told her they would be more than happy to be available. The Holy Christian Empire expected, after all, for those it had deemed suitable for tech jobs to be one hundred percent dedicated to using modern means for spreading God’s word beyond the limits of its ‘sacred’ lands.
Noah hated that and not only because he was being underpaid for keeping this whole thing running.
“How about you? Got anything fun planned?” Bernard’s blue eyes sparkled with humor, betraying the rhetorical nature of the question.
Noah shook his head. “Same as you, I guess.” He had a snarky remark on the tip of his tongue, but he withheld it, because he had to be careful about what he said in public. What heactuallyintended to do over the long weekend, he couldn’t share either, what with practicing unsanctioned content creation of any type being highly illegal.
“Noah!” Rosetta yelled from across the room, her high-pitched voice grating on his eardrums. Her dull brown gaze landed on him a moment later. “Have you finished with the back-up server connection?”
Noah exerted an impressive amount of self-control not to roll his eyes at her. Of course he hadn’t, when the configuration of the systems had to be approved by Securityfirstbefore he could launch it.
“I’m still waiting on the approvals…” he told his manager, hoping she’d take that answer.
Which, unsurprisingly, she didn’t. “Well”—she planted her hands on her hips and cocked a thin eyebrow at him—“go up to thirty-eight and get them then. What are you waiting for?”
Going up to floor thirty-eight was exactly what Noah didn’t want to do. “I’m sure they will have them sent over by tomorrow,” he argued, smiling his most confidently professional smile.
“Or you can go and get them now,” she clipped, clenching her jaw.
“What’s the point?” Noah countered exasperatedly, his smile dropping. “I can’t even deploy the server unless the platform is up, which won’t happen until eleven tomorrow morning, Rosetta. And…” He worried his lips, thehairs on his back rising. “You know how the ladies from the thirty-eighth are…”
Rosetta’s frown deepened and Noah knew he’d lost the argument even before the words left her mouth. “Stop with the excuses and get moving.”
With a sigh, he locked his computer and grabbed his lanyard with his company ID, placing it around his neck.Why was everyone so on edge whenever it was Peace week?At his previous job, too. But more importantly, why did they even need a second back-up server when one was enough?
The elevator chimed its arrival at Noah’s sixth floor and he stepped into the glass enclosure. The four people inside got off three floors later, leaving him alone on his ride up to Security as his stomach danced with nerves. He really did hate that floor. It had been fine at first, tolerable, but when the Head of the PR Department had started hanging out with the ladies Noah interacted with mostly, things had gotten too uncomfortable for him which was why he avoided dealing with Security in person as much as he could.
An aerial view of Lisbon’s metropolitan area opened before Noah, the tall skyscrapers on the other side of the glass interspersed with greenery and gilded statues. He gazed at them and let his thoughts shift their focus from his impending unpleasant encounter to what he was planning to do during the extra days off work.
Draw.
Just thinking about it and the subject of his paintings had Noah’s fingers tingling with anticipation and his stomach fluttering with the best kind of excitement. Art was his passion, his calling, the one thing that fed his soul and made him feel alive. He didn’t mind tech, and he was decent at it too, but he didn’t love it in the way heloved bringing a canvas to life from nothing. Yes, he wrote programs, yet it wasn’t the same somehow, the result not providing the same amount of satisfaction as painting the things that lived inside his head did.
Noah glanced at the changing numbers on the elevator’s display. As much as he loved art, art was complicated and the materials were hard to source. It was a highly regulated field, forced to conform to the Church’s guidelines, which, more often than not, only served to ensure any content created by any individual could in some way be used as yet another method of indoctrination. Noah would go as far as to say that it didn’t matter what you did or what your job was, because everything from media to art and even the packaging of foods was about proclaiming God and the Church’s grace.
Which, along with his inability to be himself outside the confines of his two-room apartment, was why Noah had to leave the Holy Empire. Why hewasgoing to leave it, one day. His only way of following his dreams was to make it to the American Federation, the Asian Federation, one of the Island States or the African Union once he had saved up enough money. To do that, he needed to be good at his job and get promoted fast, all the while safekeeping his two secrets so he wouldn’t get thrown into a correctional facility.
As the number on the display reached thirty-eight, Noah took a deep inhale, then exhaled slowly, centering himself and channeling theenthusiastic tech trainee Noahversion of himself to the surface. Plastering on a professional smile, he ran a hand through his dark brown hair, slicking the longer top part to one side, and braced himself.
Four pairs of eyes zeroed in on him the second he stepped out, their intensity shifting from non-present to stomach-roiling.
