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Transcript of PARANOIA T1 "Stay Alert" - Free preview
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Cover by Jim Holloway
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EVERYONE SHOULD BE HAPPY. IMMEDIATELY.
In the underground city of Alpha Complex, The Computer
wants every citizen to have fun. If you’re not having fun, The
Computer will turn you into reactor shielding.
ATTENTION, TROUBLESHOOTERS. PLEASE
RETURN THIS STOLEN HELPBOT TO ITS OWNER.
The Computer’s elite service agents, the Troubleshooters, have
fun delivering the helpbot to a sequence of murderous gangsters.
It’s not annoying or repetitious at all, no siree. (“You look like
you’re about to shoot your teammate! Would you like help?”)
IF YOU MEET DIFFICULTIES, SEEK HELP FROM
YOUR FELLOW TROUBLESHOOTERS.
Team Leader Fletcher-R is about to have lots of fun learning
about his teammates. He’ll learn they’re criminals themselves.Or they belong to traitorous secret societies. Fun, fun, fun.
BEWARE! TRAITORS ARE EVERYWHERE!
High on an experimental alertness drug called Leery, Fletcher
must complete his mission before the treacherous Troubleshooters
discover his own mutation—or his ever-changing criminal
afliations—or his membership in the First Church of ChristComputer-Programmer —in short, before Fletcher’s teammates
nd out he’s a traitor.
STAY ALERT! TRUST NO ONE! KEEP YOUR
LASER HANDY!
This is a FREE preview, “Fletcher Eats the Apple,”
Chapter 1 of the complete PARANOIA novel
T1 Stay Alert by Allen Varney
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“Fletcher Eats the Apple,” Chapter 1 of
Stay AlertBook 1 of The Troubleshooter Rules
Allen Varney
Ultraviolet Books • ultravioletbooks.com
“Fletcher Eats the Apple,” Stay Alert , The Troubleshooter Rules,
and PARANOIA TM & copyright © 2011 by Eric Goldberg and
Greg Costikyan. PARANOIA is a trademark of Eric Goldberg and
Greg Costikyan. All Rights Reserved. Allen Varney, Authorized
User.
Based on the PARANOIA roleplaying game. Original setting &
game design by Dan Gelber, Greg Costikyan, and Eric Goldberg.
Copyright © 1984, 1987, 2004, 2009 Eric Goldberg and Greg
Costikyan. All Rights Reserved.
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PARANOIA / T1 Stay Alert preview / 1
Orientation
ALPHA COMPLEX
The Computer’s underground city of the future. Trust The
Computer! The Computer is your friend!
TRAITORS
Mutants and members of secret societies—threats to good
order and good hygiene.
TROUBLESHOOTERS
The Computer’s elite agents, charged with hunting and
apprehending traitors. Their famous rules:
1. Stay alert!
2. Trust no one!
3. Keep your laser handy!
Rumors the Troubleshooters themselves harbor traitors
are treason.
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PARANOIA / T1 Stay Alert preview / 2
“Fletcher Eats the Apple”:Chapter 1 from the full-length PARANOIA
novel Stay Alert by Allen Varney
1: Briefng Room JSV-27-15
Year of the Computer 214, Month03, Day 29 (Twosday), 08:00
The older, cannier, and more treasonous supervisors at JSV
Troubleshooter Dispatch believed Brieng Room 27-15 held
a curse. A Troubleshooter team would assemble in 27-15, just
back from the latest mess hall riot, reactor leak repair, Food Vat
guard hitch, or delivery of Research & Design’s new batch of
high-performance industrial fusion-powered aerodynamic pencil
sharpeners. The Team Leader would start to report, the Loyalty
Ofcer piped up with a correction—as they do—the Recording
Ofcer proved they were both wrong, and of course the Happiness
Ofcer wouldn’t shut up.Dispatch would try to forestall a reght by conscating their
lasers and cone ries beforehand—but some Troubleshooters hid
knives or poison darts or sonics. And they were mandated to hold
onto their assigned R&D experimental equipment, the spacetime
grenades, personal steamrollers, esh-eating bacterial swabs,
lesnerizers, Nefandis Devices, and chromium antimatter-powered
brass knuckles, which one of these days, by golly, they’ll nally
get right. Somehow, in two minutes, the whole team wound upshot, burned, maimed, attened, dismembered, crushed into a
singularity, or outright vaporized, amalgamated into walls and
ceiling as a penetrating pink spray.
Going by the Central Processing Unit service group’s latest
actuarial gures, that kind of totally unexpected event was to
be expected a certain percentage of the time. What percentage?
Sorry, that information is not available at your security clearance.
It became a self-validating superstition. If a team checking in
from a mission looked glum or furtive, said nothing, cast twitchy
sidelong looks at the team multicorder, and smelled of op sweat,
dispatchers nodded judicious nods and popped them in 27-15.
Sometimes they stationed a cleanup crew outside, to save time.
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PARANOIA / T1 Stay Alert preview / 3
This morning, for the debrieng of Troubleshooter Team
Rotisserie-459, Mission JSV874029 (Team Leader Fletcher-R-
JSV-1), the cleanup crew was standing by. Also a hazmat team.
Also six GREEN goons, beat cops from Internal Security.
Inside 27-15, the six members of Team Rotisserie stood alone
in lethal silence. Lit by interrogation lamps, in view of six visible
surveillance cameras and unknowable others hidden, they stared
straight ahead, their expressions as blank as the “Secret society
afliation (if any)” space on a Treasonous Action Authorization
Form 33A.
At the left end of the line, from the viewpoint of the (currently
vacant) ofcer’s lectern, stood Fletcher-R-JSV-1. Short, stocky,
bright-eyed, thin-haired, jut-jawed, broad-forehead-ed, and
wearing loose-tting red reec-armor coveralls, Fletcher-R—the
R meant Clearance RED—could, with a decent pair of elevator
boots, answer a Catch That Traitor! casting call for “Second-Lead
Heroic Troubleshooter Who Dies in Act 2.”
In the oor-to-ceiling mirror behind the lectern Fletcher saw
his skin, usually the healthy pink of an NCR form’s secondundercopy, had become sallow, jaundiced, close to buff (copy
4) if not actually gold (copy 7). That was the Leery, a side effect
his supplier hadn’t thought to mention. He wondered what other
effects might erupt and, given his luck, in what untimely hour.
He noticed his team watching his reection: His Loyalty
Ofcer, Yvonne-R-JSV-2, glanced at him and narrowed her eyes.
He took this as a death threat, against him (mainly) and the whole
team (a bonus).With dismay Fletcher realized everyone on his team had reason
to want him dead. That could well happen today. This was the
mission’s debrieng, its culmination. A debrieng ofcer could
censure, demote, brainscrub, terminate, and worse. Fletcher could
walk out of here with commendations and a promotion, or he
might not walk out at all. The next few hours would determine
whether he could gull The Computer into overlooking his many
treasons, whether he could pin discrepancies and problems on
his teammates, and whether they would betray him as thoroughly
as they doubtless wished. His life, all their lives, were like forms
bundled for the recycler.
He sighed. As their leader, all he’d ever wanted was to eat better.
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PARANOIA / T1 Stay Alert preview / 4
—————
48 hours earlier—214.03.27 (Sevenday), 08:00
FunFoods PLC Cold Fun ProcessingPlant JSV034 Access S014
If the INFRARED multitudes, enjoying in their tranquilized
way their nightly Cold Fun dessert, understood the many
processing steps in that frozen concoction’s synthesis—the
parade of component chemical reactions—the immense stainless-
steel machineries that funneled and mixed and stored organic
precursors, reactants, and by-products in quantities that could
oat an aircraft carrier—well, they’d be terminated for knowledge
above their clearance. But the point is, they’d understand why this
refrigerated manufacturing hangar was lled with walkways and
gantries, catwalks and cranes, struts and stanchions, all threading
around and among endless rows of behemoth ve-zillion-liter
anodized aluminum storage tanks marked EXPLOSIVE.Fletcher-JSV-1—INFRAREDs didn’t get clearance initials—
shivered. He didn’t know or care anything about Cold Fun
manufacturing. He only knew the ragged black coveralls of the
INFRAREDs, the no-clearance scutworking proles of Alpha
Complex, were no good for this freezing Funhole. Vapor rose
like smoke from his frosted boots. He disliked smoking boots.
But to complain was to be unhappy. That would make The
Computer unhappy. The Computer might ask its loyal servants inInternal Security to send Fletcher to a Bright Vision Re-education
Center. There Attitude Adjusters would re-happify him with
vigor and verve, at the cost of certain troublesome brain cells.
Fletcher liked his higher motor functions, so he kept quiet. He
shivered—but with a smile.
Stanton-JSV-1, his co-worker, looked cold too. Stanton was
tall, rangy, black-haired (crewcut), weak-chinned, wide-mouthed,
and currently turning blue. “Why would a docbot get stuck here?
Is someone injured back there?”
Fletcher peered down the foggy concrete walkway between
coolant tanks. “If there is, he won’t need an ice pack.”
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PARANOIA / T1 Stay Alert preview / 5
Fletcher and Stanton worked as Patient Transport & Repair
Personnel—haulers, that’s all—for the Technical Services rm
Doc-in-a-Box TS, authorized therapist for medical bots. Tech
Services—one of the eight sprawling service group bureaucracies
that administered the living daylights out of every person, place,
thing, and abstract entity in Alpha Complex—handled bots. Some
bots were crazy.
They were after one of the worst: a bugbrain docbot.
Workers in the rival Power Services group said Techs lacked
brains. In a way, it was true. Tech always lacked for bot brains—
photonic diamond CPUs in titanium cartridges—and often
repurposed them for new roles. Sometimes faulty re-coding
produced bugbrains: scrubots that taught loyalty songs to
passersby; transbots that tried to jump the rails and inltrate the
front lines of an imaginary enemy; guardbots that grabbed and
disarmed a rioter but then, retracting their dum-dum slugthrowers
and crowd-control gas canisters, asked m’sieu what he desired
to drink, and might the bot recommend a pleasant Beaujolais?
Bugbrain docbots—urgh!—left a trail of patients: amputeeswhose arms were now rie stocks, or burn victims coated with
four layers of furniture polish. These bots were the Doc-in-a-Box
stock in trade, soylent for its table.
A thief had stolen some BLUE bigwig’s personal docbot.
Troubleshooters had supposedly cornered both thief and bot
somewhere in this giant FunFoods factory. Standard Tech
Services protocol for [Category: BOTS :: Sub-cat: MEDICAL ::
Condition-Prior: STOLEN :: Condition-Current: RETRIEVAL]called for a therapy team on-scene in the event of damage to
brain or peripherals.
So Fletcher and Stanton were waiting for the mission team
to locate the bot—the bot Fletcher and Stanton, armed with
BotAway beacon trackers, had already found. Ten minutes ago.
In this really cold hangar.
Stanton blew on his ngers. “Should we let them know we’ve
found it?”
Fletcher had skipped this morning’s visomorpain pill due to a
sore throat; he was thinking more clearly than usual. He looked
down the narrow walkway. At the far end waited the bot—and
presumably its thief. “Let’s leave that honor for them.”
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PARANOIA / T1 Stay Alert preview / 6
“Heard about that big shareholder meeting tomorrow night?”
“Yeah.” Fletcher looked around for cameras. He made the
Church gesture for silence. “Later.”
“Right.” Stanton jumped in place. “Hey, let’s report some
trouble. That brings them to shoot it, and then we heard something
down the walkway.”
Fletcher said through chattering teeth, “That works. Where’s
Timon-O?”
No one liked to send INFRAREDs on a job unsupervised.
Their boss, Timon-O-JSV-1, had dropped them here in this
low-clearance packing bay and gone with the Troubleshooters.
Fletcher gured he was trying to shine with their reected glory.
But no—here he was now, shuttling back quick as a rejected
Form Return Form 9999-C. Squat and broad with stubby legs,
Timon-O wore an orange padded parka and overpants that
made him look like a giant packing peanut. “Here,” the pasty
ORANGE said in a nasal voice. He threw two black low-temp
suits at Fletcher and Stanton. “Try to stay alive. More than those
Troubleshooters seem to want.”Fletcher zipped the parka. “Why, what’s up?”
Timon spoke fast, with maximum dgeting. “First, I think there
were already a couple of fatalities before I even met them. Then
they were waving their laser pistols around, until I mentioned,
‘Oh by the way, these tanks can blow us all through our next
three lives.’ Then they split up to search through this—this
maze. Not a minute later, one of them spots another, mistakes
him for a traitor, and belts him with a blackjack. I didn’t knowthey were even issued blackjacks. The team leader sent them off
to the med center.”
“You could use the docbot,” Fletcher said. “It’s back there.”
Timon-O gasped and grabbed Fletcher’s BotAway. He read
the screen and laughed. “I found it before they did. Call it in,
Stanton.”
Fletcher noticed Timon, after months of management
experience, could now teleport instantaneously past “Fletcher
and Stanton found the bot” and straight to “I succeeded.” Before
he earned his clearance initial, Timon had quartered in the same
barracks as Fletcher; he’d been a friendly, even generous fellow.
Promotion and power changed him; now it was always, “What
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can you do for me, and how can I steal the credit?” Now he didn’t
seem to like anyone.
Fletcher didn’t care. He liked everyone—or anyway, he didn’t
think hard enough to dislike them. He led an INFRARED life.
He went where They told him, did what They said, and They
expected nothing from him but a smile. Thus had The Computer
ordained it, and thus would it ever be.
Timon took him aside. “By the way, Fletcher, while I have you
here—I just got back this 445. Improper completion, it says. I’m
not sure how- I mean, I’m jammed with work right now—so
could you, umm...?” He quickly passed Fletcher a clipboard with
a six-ply NCR stack.
Fletcher glanced at it—a rejected Form TS-2952-445
Emergency Bathroom Break Requisition dated two days earlier.
Automatically he looked around for surveillance cameras. It
wouldn’t do to black out here.
Fletcher had a problem—if it was a problem—with blackouts.
He spent most evenings at his Elective Activity & Pursuit
clubhouse supporting Alpha Complex as part of an approvedVolunteer Form Checkers group. They helped overburdened
Central Processing Unit service rms check submitted forms for
rectitude, grammar, and signs of subconscious treason.
Fletcher was his club’s reigning champion. He was considered
unbeatable in requisitions and transfers, but he walked on rm
ground even with tricky rarities like Accidental Termination of
Innocent Victim Justications and Loyalty Re-Evaluation Speed
Tests. But sometimes—no one knew this, or at least Fletcher hopednot—sometimes, when he was confronting a stack of challenging
Security Clearance Demotions or Personality Stabilizer Requests,
where you really had to know the rules—sometimes he kind
of, well, went away. He didn’t faint or pass out; no, something
just reached into his cortex and pressed a pause button. He saw
black for a moment, blinked, and suddenly minutes had passed
and all the forms sat stacked before him, checked and collated.
Sometimes he spotted new corrections he’d supposedly made,
in small, precise handwriting he didn’t recognize.
Fletcher had never told anyone about his blackouts. It was
nobody’s business, especially because it had a certain odor of—he
didn’t even want to think the word—mutation.
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He shook his head; he must have drifted off a moment. He
started to tell Timon, “Sure,” when he noticed a pen had appeared
in his hand. He checked the clipboard; the Bathroom Break
Requisition was already corrected. Timon-O and Stanton were
staring at him.
“Uh—” he began. Timon shook his head, took back the
clipboard, and glared at Stanton. “I think you were calling in
the nd?”
Stanton gulped and returned to clawing at his pocket PDC—his
Personal Digital Companion, the indispensable Alpha Complex
aid. “I can’t push the buttons right. My ngers are frozen.”
From the walkway fog a low- voice chirped, “You look like
you’re making a call! Would you like help?”
Without looking, Fletcher knew. It wasn’t a docbot—it was
a clippy.
—————
Unlike the doomsday devices and sector-eating plagues on the
evening vidshows, the helpbots of Alpha Complex were not amad inspiration of a single demented traitor, but The Computer’s
own authorized initiative, undertaken by its purportedly loyal
servants in several service groups. Perhaps the responsible parties
had expunged their identities from public records, or possibly
they’d faked their deaths and now lived in distant sectors under
assumed names.
Whatever the reason, no one had been punished—a fact every
traitor must have taken as a hopeful sign he might get away withanything. For in a society where complaining about a candy bar
could get you brainscrubbed, helpbots (“clippies”) were silently,
universally loathed.
Helpbots worked like The Computer’s ubiquitous context-
sensitive help system. Programmed to locate citizens in need, they
wandered the corridors, wedging their cheery counsel into any
situation. “You look like you’re forcing open that vendobot door.
I can tell you about anger management!”—“Talking to Internal
Security? Don’t forget to mention that mutation!”
While the INFRAREDs stared, Timon took control. “Bot! Your
name and number.”
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The clippy wheeled forward with programmed enthusiasm.
Its voice seemed to echo from the bottom of a CoffeeLyke can.
“Helpbot TSHB41566-212.11.09-788 at your service, Human-
Interaction Designation ‘Drammel’!”
“Drammel” was a thin gunmetal-gray plank perched on end,
about a meter high, with a rounded top like a paperclip—hence
the nickname. Like all helpbots, it had a carbon-ber exterior;
by many informal experiments citizens had learned the stuff was
nearly indestructible. In twin holes near the top—its head—stereo
cameras rotated freely inside plastic housings, looking now
forward, now behind. Intersecting the body’s midpoint, a jutting
horizontal disk bore two manipulators, grippers that spun in
independent tracks to front and rear. Another disk at the base
mounted six polyurethane wheels. Speaker grilles on the front
and back of Drammel’s head were shaped like grinning mouths,
doubtless on the advice of some sociopathic marketing expert
who thought it looked friendly.
“I’m assigned to Reuben-B-GHP-14, Sector JSV Cerulean
Suites, Corridor 12,” said Drammel. “You look like you’recurious about the traitorous thief who brought me here. Would
you like help locating him?”
“We would!” An ORANGE Troubleshooter strode into the
area like he owned it.
Gazing at the man with fascination, Fletcher felt a vidshow
fan’s excitement. A real Troubleshooter! He looked just like a
hero of Alpha Complex should look: tall, broad-shouldered, with
curling blond hair, gleaming blue eyes, and a rack of teeth thatshone like transbot chrome. His orange reec coveralls seemed
to glitter. On an HPD&MC Catch That Traitor! casting call, he
would win “Series Lead.” His chest badge read FABIAN-O-
JSV-3—TEAM LEADER.
Several paces behind Fabian-O walked another Troubleshooter.
Fletcher tried gamely to feel the same thrill at this weak-chinned,
straw-haired, potbellied RED. His red coveralls, with the badge
GILES-R-JSV-4, were torn and stained. He carried a multicorder
and, strapped to his back, a sledgehammer.
“Bot!” Fabian began, then paused to nod quickly to Timon
and the INFRAREDs. “Fabian-O, pleasedtomeetyou—this is
my Equipment Guy—anyway. Bot! Who stole you, and why?”
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“I can answer that!” said Drammel. “It was a treasonous
human male criminal. A bandit, cheat, crook, defalcator, heister,
larcenist -”
“What is the thief’s name?”
“I can help with that! I can take you to him, and you can search
his body.”
The humans exchanged looks. Fabian asked, “He’s dead?”
“I know that answer! It’s possible the body parts not yet
absorbed may still harbor living cells.”
“Absorbed?”
Timon broke in. “If he got into an intake hopper—”
“Giles-R,” Fabian said. “Go and pry the thief out of the
machinery.”
“Ohhh no!” The other Troubleshooter shied back. “You got rid
of the others, but I’m not about to—”
Fabian’s smile showed his gritted teeth. “Civilians.” He
gestured at the INFRAREDs. “Of course I appreciate your due
caution in this hazardous situation. I know The Computer will
assess your hesitation fairly.” He raised his PDC.“Okay, okay. But I want that bot to lead the way.”
“I can help you there!” Drammel rolled down the walkway
and into the fog between the giant tanks. After looking in all
directions, as if for escape routes, Giles-R trudged after it.
Suddenly Timon-O seemed to perceive his own glory slipping
away into the same fog. He pointed at the INFRAREDs. “Go after
them.” Then, to the puzzled Fabian: “I should have my people
there too. For, um, consultation.”Fletcher was about to ask for an Emergency Bathroom Break,
but Stanton spoke sooner and faster: “Fletcher has experience
with helpbots, don’t you, Fletcher? Wish I did, but it’s all docbots
with me.”
Timon pointed. “Fletcher, go.”
Fletcher silently wished on Stanton the attentions of many
docbots. Then, seeing no good excuse, and hoping he might
impress the Troubleshooter, he ventured into the fog.
Gray chemical tanks loomed all around. A black stripe on the
concrete oor showed Fletcher was still in a low-clearance area.
Condensation trickled into steel oor grilles, and his low-temp
suit grew damp. In a grid of walkways receding in all directions
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into white vapor, he felt a sensation rare in an INFRARED’s
anthill life: isolation.
Noises sounded oddly close here. Fletcher moved toward the
bot’s echoing chatter—then stopped. He was standing beside
a sheet-metal shed or cabinet that thrummed with power. On
principle, Fletcher avoided thrumming. Thrumming meant
mistuned equipment, loose ttings, or unseated housings. Thrum
= threat.
In this case, he discovered, thrum = human body stuffed in
organic-chemical loading hopper. In the oor chute he could
see only one protruding arm and a leg, each still clad in tattered
yellow. Behind the chute, clear plastic pipes lled with chemicals
reached into the fog overhead. Fletcher noted their current tinge
of red.
He considered. Anyone hiding in this cabinet, say for instance
from pursuing Troubleshooters, could easily slip backward and
fall into the chute. It almost seemed designed to encourage such
accidents. He could imagine the CPU cost-benet analysis: one
less traitor, plus that night’s Cold Fun would offer extra savor.Win-win.
But where was the Troubleshooter? Further down the walkway
Fletcher heard the helpbot’s echoing voice, then thudding blows.
He ran to the next intersection. Around the corner stood the
Equipment Guy, Giles-R, bringing up his sledgehammer for
another swing. The helpbot had toppled, and its grippers were
beating a tattoo on the cement. “You look like you’re trying to
destroy me! Do you want to know about my carbon-ber frame?”Fletcher had no idea what to do. “Uhh—hey?”
Giles turned, dropped his hammer, and pulled his laser pistol.
The red barrel had six concentric rings; ve of them were black,
and Fletcher had seen enough vidshows to know what that meant:
One shot remained. He tried to run, slipped, fell, and the shot
hit a coolant pipe. White vapor shot out and struck Giles. The
Troubleshooter reeled back, fell, hit his head on a steel pipe,
and lay still.
Through a cloud of ammoniac ozone Fletcher crawled on
his knees to the helpbot and pulled it upright. “Come on.” Not
knowing or caring whether the bot followed, he scrambled to his
feet and ran for the light.
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—————
Back in the packing bay, while Stanton and Timon looked on in
envy, Troubleshooter Fabian-O was thanking Fletcher—“Quick
thinking, my good man”—when from the walkway they heard
a muted whump!
“What was that?” Timon’s tone suggested he was worried the
damage would somehow hit his budget.
“I can answer that! That was an explosion!”
“Giles-R had a neurowhip,” Fabian said. “Maybe the ght
damaged its power supply. I hope the explosion doesn’t trigger
something else.”
“Don’t worry,” said Timon. “He’d have to be carrying, I don’t
know, volatile chemicals—”
BOOMPH! An alarm rang.
“That would be his corrosion gas grenade,” Fabian observed.
“Corrosion? Fletcher, you said you left him leaning against a
pipe made of—”
WHOOOOSH!A geyser of vapor shot to the ceiling. A warning
klaxon blared.“It looks like you’re having an industrial accident! Would you
like to know which FunFoods chemical reagents are ammable?”
Timon looked wary. “Would he have carried anything
incend—?”
BA-BA-BAOOOOM! The geyser burst into a column of ame.
Sirens shrieked.
Fabian-O said brightly, “Let’s adjourn to the lobby.”
The FunFoods lobby was well appointed, cheery, andORANGE-Clearance, which made Fletcher nervous. But the
security personnel and re teams running to the warehouse oor
paid the INFRAREDs no notice.
Timon was on the phone with Doc-in-a-Box HQ. Fabian seemed
unexpectedly happy to talk with the INFRAREDs, perhaps
because Stanton was gushing like his biggest fan. Fletcher
wondered if he’d get in trouble for Giles-R’s death, but Fabian
never mentioned it. He sure didn’t seem broken up.
Fabian took charge of the helpbot: “I’ll bring it to Dispatch,
and they’ll decide what to do.”
“Why was Giles-R trying to destroy it?” Stanton asked.
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“No way to know. I suspect he belonged to a secret society, the
Frankenstein Destroyers—you know, the bot haters.”
Fletcher tried not to sound suspicious. “Considering you’re the
last one alive from your team, you’re bearing up well.”
Fabian chuckled. “Troubleshooters say the ideal debrieng
report begins, ‘I speak without fear of contradiction.’”
Stanton laughed a subservient laugh. In terror Fletcher foresaw
Stanton (who hadn’t recently been targeted by Troubleshooter
laser re, and who could seldom shut up anyway) was about to
say something rash, if not aggressively stupid.
Sure enough: “Deliver us from traitors,” Stanton said. Then he
started and stammered, as he recalled secret society recognition
code phrases don’t make polite conversation.
Fabian’s eyes widened. He seized both INFRAREDs by their
black jackets and slammed them against the lobby wall. “What
did you say?”
“Nothing nothing nooothing!” Stanton babbled. “I was just
praying, I mean wishing, WISHinnng you good luck!”
Fabian looked around. Timon, still on his PDC, hadn’t noticedanything. The Troubleshooter’s broad back hid both INFRAREDs
from the nearest security camera. Fletcher realized an ORANGE
Troubleshooter could do whatever he wanted to them here—even
kill them—and, if anything, get a commendation.
Fabian sized them up like slimes on a FunFoods vat. “Have
you—” He paused. “Have you both heard the Good Data?” He
touched four points on his chest, tracing the shape of the Holy
Monitor.Fletcher and Stanton tensed, goggled, then just about dissolved
in relief. Fabian, like both of them, belonged to the largest and
loyal-est of the many secret societies in Alpha Complex, First
Church of Christ Computer-Programmer. The FCCC-P covertly
worshipped The Computer as a god. Membership in any secret
society was treason—but as treason went, the church was pretty
harmless, though The Computer ofcially prohibited religion as
a threat to good order.
“Praise The Computer,” the INFRAREDs murmured.
“The Computer is my friend, I shall not want,” Fabian
responded catechetically, with a quick look over his shoulder.
“Are you Lasers of the Faithful?”
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Fletcher’s wariness returned. “No, Church of the Impending
Reboot.”
Fabian frowned, then shrugged. “Always room for improvement.
You two heard about the big meeting tomorrow night? —Good.
Who knows, maybe you’ll help out.”
“Us?” Stanton almost giggled. “We’re INFRAREDs.”
The Troubleshooter grinned, winked, then called to Drammel.
“Bot!”
“It looks like you’re about to travel!” said Drammel. “Would
you like—?”
“No. Let’s go.” He nodded to Timon, and in a moment
Troubleshooter and bot were gone.
Timon pocketed his PDC. He groaned. “No docbot, no therapy,
no payment. This entire episode has been a useless timesink. Let’s
get back to the ofce.”
That afternoon Timon drank deeply from his desk bottle of
E-Z-DUZ-IT. To Fletcher and Stanton it was all the same. One
INFRARED day was like another.
—Until the next morning, in their barracks.
—————
Promptly at 05:00, beefy GREEN-Clearance Internal Security
ofcers in plexi helmets and pentramid vests—GREEN goons,
IntSec’s all-purpose dumb thugs—seized Fletcher and Stanton
as they slept in their bunks. Rather, the goons seized the bunks
themselves—bedding, pillows, and all, with startled occupants
still in place—snapped them free of their frames, and hauledaway both beds and their beddees.
Even in their panic, the two INFRAREDs were too well trained
to protest, though Fletcher did fretfully pull up his covers. Despite
the commotion, their barracks-mates never woke—or rather,
diligently avoided waking.
The goons manhandled the beds into the wide black-striped
corridor and over to a low-slung autocar. The strange vehicle
seemed hardly more than a transparent capsule on wheels, like
an airtight crash-cart for a hard-vacuum hospital. The goons
popped the bubble-top hood and locked the beds, with their
wide-eyed INFRAREDs, into twin frames of PVC tubing. The
goons clamped, they strapped, they slammed down the hood,
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they shouted orders to the car, and at once Fletcher and Stanton
were hurtling down the corridor.
The entire operation had so far taken, from barracks to car, 17
seconds, which meant they were already two seconds behind.
This was R&D service rm CrashCourse RD’s paradigm-
shattering innovation in strong-signal, high-bandwidth training-
in-place—the long-planned, much-anticipated “Instant Agent”
training program: New Experimental Accelerated Troubleshooter
Orientation (NEATO). Stupid acronym, sure, but this clunker
actually improved on the original name, Heuristic Experimental
Mandatory Accelerated Troubleshooter Orientation Metrics,
which only showed how a grant-hungry R&D scientist will even,
if sufciently desperate, aim for HEMATOMA.
NEATO pioneered CrashCourse’s proprietary ThruFlood
immersive high-bandwidth high-stimulus sensory-maximization
instruction system. Passengers in CrashCourse’s custom-built
BedSpeed autocar, still reclining in their own bunks to foster
relaxed openness to new ideas, viewed six to eight simultaneous
video feeds of Troubleshooter duties and obligations. To promotemaximum info-retention, EyeMinder lasers in the autocar roof
beamed each video directly onto a demarcated non-overlapping
portion of one retina.
In the case of new Troubleshooters fresh from the INFRARED
ranks, and thus likely to exhibit murky thought processes, in-car
QuickShot hypodermics injected oxyflucocillin (Overdose
Helper) to instantly cancel routine drug effects. The consequent
withdrawal symptoms—migraine with aura, dystonic tremors,hysteria, giant hairy purple spiders—were easily forestalled
by forced oral administration, via OpenWide robotic arm, of
pyroxidine-2 (Wider Awake) tablets with a spray of aerosolized
thiahexedrine (Focusol), as well as the usual cocktail of sex-
hormone suppressants.
Phase 2 began when the BedSpeed reached its destination
transbot platform. Docking in a bay at the rear of CrashCourse’s
custom-built HowWeRoll train car, the autocar played a recorded
fanfare and disgorged its occupants. As the transbot started
moving, HandsUp mechanical arms (actually just rebranded
OpenWide models) stood the subjects upright, stripped off their
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existing garments, and re-dressed them in red Troubleshooter
reec coveralls.
Robotic dressers are of course an extremely well-understood
technology; CrashCourse attributed early injury reports to
incorrectly calibrated heat-based limb sensors. The company
easily resolved the issue by preheating each subject’s arms and
legs.
Now, on multiple video monitors, the subjects viewed efcient
instruction in proper use of laser weaponry, then were propelled
(via HandsUp) forward to the main section of the transbot car, the
ShootForBrains target range. Armed with harmless but realistic
light-guns, subjects faced a variety of harmless but realistic
hologram opponents while being encouraged to improve their
aim by harmless but realistic electric shocks. Opponents increased
in frequency and difculty until either the transbot arrived at its
destination or the subjects collapsed and begged for sweet release
in death, whichever occurred rst.
An optimistic R&D projection—is there another kind?—
predicted NEATO could compress Troubleshooter orientation andtraining from 4.4 days (median) to 24 minutes. Such unheard-of
efciencies pleased The Computer and made Troubleshooter
Dispatch positively buoyant. Despite a few early kinks in
the system (BedSpeed and HowWeRoll crashes, EyeMinder
blindings, OpenWide jaw dislocations, QuickShot overdoses,
ShootForBrains-induced psychotic episodes, and a couple of
unfortunate HandsUp decapitations), hopes ran high for NEATO.
Then Dispatch realized each CrashCourse run generated atsunami of paperwork.
Transbot track permits, autocar corridor passage waivers,
maintenance requests, personnel requests, medication requisitions,
power consumption authorizations, inter-group IntSec
cooperation requests (those were a killer)—all told, according to a
CPU Yellowpants efciency auditor, the additional overhead of a
single NEATO orientation increased the Troubleshooter Dispatch
workload by an irreducible minimum of 92 person-days at a cost
of 7.8 million credits.
For a time Dispatch ignored these ndings, partly because of
prior sunk costs and partly because at least 6.8 million of those
credits were owing straight into senior administrators’ accounts.
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But inevitably The Computer, whose processors sometimes
grind slowly yet they grind exceeding ne, noticed CrashCourse
RD’s high incidence of traitorous sabotage, fatalities, slow
paperwork, and poor hygiene. It canceled the NEATO program,
disbanded CrashCourse, and imposed on its senior personnel
varying judgments of censure, re-education, brainscrub, and/
or promotion.
The last CrashCourse transbot on its last run pulled into Sector
JSV Troubleshooter Dispatch Platform 1 on 214.03.28 at 05:25,
19 seconds behind schedule, bearing the NEATO program’s last
new recruits, Stanton-JSV-1 and Fletcher-JSV-1.
Robot arms threw them from the car. They collapsed onto
the platform, thrashing in tful combat with phantom enemies.
Waiting GREEN goons let them exhaust themselves, then hauled
them into separate orientation rooms.
Alone in darkness save for two guards, Fletcher lay curled and
twitching on the oor.
A light. A voice:
FLETCHER-JSV-1, ATTENTION.
No other voice could bring him to his feet so fast. No voice
but that one could focus his mind to pinpoint alertness. By that
command, Fletcher understood at once the promise and danger
of this moment—the most important of his life so far.
He stood bolt upright, shoulders back, head high, heart
pounding. He gazed straight ahead, where one entire wall of thislong room glowed bright.
It was a monitor, taller than himself and too wide to see in
one glance.
On the monitor, a single staring eye.
Fletcher struggled to speak. “Hello, Friend Computer!”
The Computer spoke:
FLETCHER-JSV-1, FOR MANY YEARS THE
TROUBLESHOOTERS HAVE LOYALLY SERVED
ALPHA COMPLEX. IN RECOGNITION OF YOUR
RECENT COMMENDABLE ACTION OR ACTIONS
AT OR IN INSERT-LOCATION-HERE DETECTING
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PARANOIA / T1 Stay Alert preview / 18
THE PRESENCE AND/OR FIGHTING THE MENACE
OF INSERT-TREASON-HERE, IT IS NOW YOUR
PRIVILEGE AND/OR DUTY TO JOIN THE RANKS
OF THIS ELITE SERVICE UNIT.
“Thank you, Friend Computer!”
F L E T C H E R - J S V - 1 , W H A T A R E T H E
THREE UNBREAKABLE RULES OF THE
TROUBLESHOOTERS?
From the bottom of his lungs Fletcher shouted, “Stay alert!
Trust no one! Keep your laser handy!”
FLETCHER-JSV-1, YOU WILL FOLLOW IN THE
TROUBLESHOOTERS’ GLORIOUS STRUGGLE—
STAINED WITH BLOOD BUT NEVER DISHONOR!—
TO HELP ALPHA COMPLEX ACHIEVE ITS
IMMINENT AND INEVITABLE VICTORY OVERTREASON.
“Thank you, Friend Computer!”
BUT BEWARE! TREASON IS EVERYWHERE;
AT ANY MOMENT TRAITORS MAY SUBVERT,
OVERWHELM, AND DESTROY ALPHA COMPLEX.
“Yes, Friend Computer!”
IN SERVICE TO THE GOAL OF IMMINENT VICTORY
OVER ONRUSHING COLLAPSE, YOU MUST NOW
REPORT ANY TREASON OR INSUBORDINATION
BY YOUR COMPANION, STANTON-JSV-1.
Fletcher’s thoughts whirled. If he reported Stanton’s
membership in FCCC-P, that would implicate Fletcher as
well, but his cooperation might exculpate him. The choice was
sharpened because he knew, with mortal sureness, Stanton was
even now being ordered to report on him. Prisoner’s dilemma.
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PARANOIA / T1 Stay Alert preview / 19
But the church taught betrayal was the sin of sins; it was odious
to distract the all-wise and compassionate Computer with such
trivia. Fletcher spoke with only a mild quaver, “To my knowledge,
Stanton is a loyal friend of The Computer and Alpha Complex.”
A long, dreadful silence. A lidless, baleful eye. Fletcher waited
in despair for the termination order.
FLETCHER-JSV-1 , YOU ARE HEREBY
PROMOTED TO SECURITY CLEARANCE RED.
YOUR NAME WILL NOW INCORPORATE THE
CLEARANCE INITIAL R, AS SPECIFIED IN
CENTRAL PROCESSING UNIT’S NOMENCLATURE
PROTOCOL PROTOCOL-ID-NOT-AVAILABLE,
AVAILABLE AT YELLOW CLEARANCE. YOUR
NEW SECURITY CLEARANCE SIGNIFIES THE
COMPUTER’S BENEVOLENT TRUST IN YOU. THE
COMPUTER IS YOUR FRIEND.
“The Computer is my friend!”
IF YOU SERVE ALPHA COMPLEX WELL,
FLETCHER-R, YOU WILL EARN GREATER
TRUST AND THEREBY ADVANCE IN SECURITY
CLEARANCE. ASPIRE TO ADVANCE! SEEK TO
SERVE ALPHA COMPLEX IN EVER GREATER
WAYS! FAILURE TO ASPIRE MAY BE CONSIDERED
INSUBORDINATION.
“Yes, Friend Computer!”
AS A TOKEN OF RECOGNITION AND WELCOME,
FLETCHER-R, YOU NOW RECEIVE A SPECIAL
REWARD. THIS IS ONE OF MANY PERQUISITES
FOR CITIZENS WHO EARN THE COMPUTER’S
TRUST AND SERVE ALPHA COMPLEX TO THEIR
FULLEST ABILITY. PLEASE ACCEPT THIS FRUIT
FROM THE SECTOR’S HYDROPONIC GARDENS,
ORDINARILY AVAILABLE ONLY AT CLEARANCE
GREEN AND HIGHER.
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PARANOIA / T1 Stay Alert preview / 20
A guard walked forward and solemnly placed in Fletcher-R’s
palm a red, globular thing.
He looked with suspicion at the fruit. Round and heavy, it felt
like a grenade. He knew about real food from vidshows—people
onscreen seemed to like it—but he’d heard, around the mess hall,
it was somehow made from dirt. He wished for his usual soylents
or a rope of Cold Fun.
But this was The Computer’s gift, and The Computer, as always,
was watching.
With hesitation bordering on fear, he nibbled at the skin.
Moisture owed, a sweetness unsurpassed. He froze. He could
not think. Something in him, older than thought, took over. He bit
deep. Tight skin curled on his teeth; crisp, tart esh yielded forth
its juice; a cascade of avors raced wild on his tongue. Misting
droplets rose—a piquant scent, astringent, a zest as bracing as
a sudden breeze.
Drugs had fogged his mind before, but this was different.
This was trance. He stared unblinking, his eyes crossing and
uncrossing. He fell to his knees. Each cell of his body had beenstarved; he had not known. Now he knew, in every artery, a
quickened pulse; in every limb, electric jolts; and in his throat,
constriction, as if his mouth would not give up the unimagined
rapture. The pleasure felt more than visceral—cellular—no,
primal—a strike into the buried past, a linkage to ten billion
ancestors, all born of just this bliss.
Yet for history he cared nothing. His reeling thoughts converged
on one idea: High-clearance people eat like this all the time.Now, he saw, he had a future. He saw, in truth, a vision new
to him—a scene of opportunity, of endless open ways, where
all the labyrinths of corridors and halls stretched clearance-free,
with every door thrown back and Alpha Complex in its tentacular
mazery mapped clear. And in his clarity of sight he knew, and
now despised, the at thin paper-chase he had taken for his
life—his little, barren, petty life—an abject round, a program
run on hardware much too slow.
The insight roused in him a yearning, close to pain, for the years
of chances he had missed, and for strength and will to capture
those ahead. The insight roused in him an appetite, erce and
unsubdued, for fresh food, better thoughts, high clearance, and
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PARANOIA / T1 Stay Alert preview / 21
life, life, life. The insight roused him to his feet, so that he stood,
rst faltering and breathless, then rm—if not quite human yet,
then ready to step forward on that path.
He groped for words. “What—what is it?”
IT IS A POMACEOUS FRUIT CALLED AN APPLE.
ITS SCIENTIFIC DESIGNATION IS NOT AVAILABLE
AT YOUR CLEARANCE. ONLY THE COMMON
NAME OF THIS VARIETY IS AVAILABLE.
“What is the name?”
RED DELICIOUS.
—————
You’ve just read Chapter 1 (of seven) of the PARANOIA
novel Stay Alert by Allen Varney. In the full-length novel—
available where you bought this book—Fletcher-R meets theTroubleshooters of Team Rotisserie-459, and almost immediately
gets into such trouble with them they want to shoot him. The
helpbot returns, too, and why are all these gangsters trying to
grab it? Which of Fletcher’s teammates support which gang?
For that matter, which one does he support? His allegiance
seems to change by the hour.
What is going on with Fletcher’s blackouts, and will anyonenotice? (Spoiler: Yes, they notice.)
What is the mind-control technology called CIRCE, and why
has it fallen into the hands of the cutting-edge Computer
Phreak gangsters, the Flash Mob?
Who is the mysterious ‘ M’ who seems to mentally control some
of the most powerful people in the sector?
Read Stay Alert to nd (some of) the answers. Well, a few of
the answers. Anyway, it should pique your curiosity.
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Stay AlertBook 1 of The Troubleshooter Rules
by Allen Varney
ultravioletbooks.com
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PARANOIA / T1 Stay Alert preview / 23
Light-hearted stories of backstabbing, treachery, and Emergency
Bathroom Break Vouchers. Based on the bestselling roleplaying
game of fear and ignorance in a darkly satirical future, ofcial
PARANOIA novels are now available as ebooks from Ultraviolet
Books —and they’re even for your security clearance.
If you like reading about repressed teenagers groping sparkly
vampires, this book will touch you in the bad place. But if you
like Philip K. Dick and think Survivor needs a higher body count,
your friend The Computer requires you to enjoy PARANOIA.
PARANOIA NOVELS ARE FUN. OTHER NOVELS
ARE NOT FUN. READ PARANOIA.
The Computer is Your Friend, an introductory anthology
Reality Optional by Gareth Hanrahan
Traitor Hangout by WJ MacGufn
The Troubleshooter Rules trilogy by Allen Varney
Book 1: Stay Alert
Book 2: Trust No One (available spring 2012)
Book 3: Keep Your Laser Handy (available summer 2012)
Download them from the same ne site where you got this
book, or visit us at ultravioletbooks.com.