Page 18 of Pandion

“I’m sure as hell not going to work at another garbage facility. It’s time to build you a CV.” Harumine picked up a snack bowl that had once, in a very distant past, held something other than its current composition of dust and crumbs. Judging by the residue and Kagesawa’s taste, the likelihood of it having been togarashi- or wasabi-flavoured rice crackers or crisps was high. After tapping out the contents, Harumine used the bowl to gather the chips. “Where else did you say you have them?”

Without a word, Kagesawa pulled open two more drawers for Harumine to check and rummaged through a couple of boxes of random tech crap. Then he went into the bathroom, returned with at least a dozen more chips and deposited them all into the bowl in Harumine’s hands.

“Is that all excluding the closet?”

“Probably not.”

“All right, well, I’ll deal with the closet, and we’ll search for the rest later. This is already enough to annoy the other people in line behind us.” Harumine’s words made Kagesawa cringe.

“Did you want the T-60…?” he asked after a moment of trying to figure out why he was walking around with the thing in his hand.

“Sure.” Harumine had a rundown model from the year before. These things required a lot of maintenance or replacing every other year, and they didn’t come cheap. “I usually hack this piece off for a better fit.” Harumine pointed at the edge that wasprobably causing the chafing issue. Most people preferred the added stability, but it could get uncomfortable in prolonged use.

“You can do whatever you want with it, it’s yours. The static makes me grind my teeth,” Kagesawa explained. “I’ll fix us something for breakfast.”

“The static? What static?” Harumine had never noticed static with the earlier EI T-series models.

“I guess it only does that with the amp.” Kagesawa rubbed his stubble. “Breakfast, how about it?”

Harumine had been ignoring his hunger, but it had to be getting bad for Kagesawa to notice. He wanted to ask about ‘the amp’, but food was more of a priority for now.

“The closet.” He took the bowl of chips and got to work while Kagesawa prepared the breakfast.

Twenty thousand three hundred and sixty… no, seventy… and some change. Some of the chips were from one-day assignments, but there were also a few with a full month’s salary attached. The whole of it added up to more than four years’ rent.Four years!

“What?” Kagesawa looked up from his breakfast of steamed broccoli, eggs, bacon and miso soup.

“It’s quite a lot of money. You could have easily taken a year or two off if you’d wanted to.” Harumine had sorted through the chips and confirmed some of them were indeed very old. “This one’s from twelve years ago.”

“Oh? Let me see.” Kagesawa acted nonchalant, but something was off. “I think I’ll save this,” he said, as if on a whim.

“If it’s that important, I think you should.” Harumine poked the ice with a stick.

Kagesawa turned to look, startled. It was mind-blowing how clear this stuff was getting through the link. Harumine knew links improved with time, but after such a short time?Sometimes it was difficult to discern Kagesawa’s feelings from his own. Maybe they were already mixing more than he cared to admit.

“What the hell is with this link.” Kagesawa frowned, visibly irate.

“You said something about an amp. Could that be it?”

“Yeah, nah, I added a custom amplifier to my port years back. The standard ones don’t do jack shit. This one’s a bit more refined, but doesn’t perform miracles… also, there’s an off-switch.” Kagesawa scratched the back of his head and the port nestled somewhere under his hair. It didn’t itch, but when it brushed against hair, tugged and got caught on it occasionally, Harumine could tell it felt nice to shuffle it loose.

Kagesawa turned so Harumine could see. There was a subtle addition of a ring dial around the port itself. Kagesawa turned it gently. After the initial snap, the effect was immediate and scalable by turning the dial.

This is as loud as it gets, Kagesawa demonstrated. It did help make his projection clearer, but there was a slight distortion to it.

“It works both ways?”

“Yes, but not at the same time. I need to turn it the other way. I’ve also got some other filtering options on it like a manual dampening mode, but that causes A LOT of static.”

“You’re pretty good at this tech stuff.” Harumine hadn’t expected to be impressed, but it was a nice surprise.

“It’s not what’s causing this freakish link. Whatever it is, I feel like I should be dampening continuously to save you from all my crap. I haven’t had to do that with anyone else before.” Kagesawa made a point to laugh to indicate it was a joke, but Harumine could tell he was worried. “I should be happy that it’s working so well, right? My port’s connection has been so degraded for thepast five years, I haven’t been able to project anything through it.”

“Nothing at all?”

“Not intentionally. Stuff seeps through randomly, though. It’s been a pain. That’s why I added the filters, to help reduce the load. After Shimizu, my next link failed completely in a matter of days. I thought things were going fine with the one after, but she suddenly requested an emergency transfer. They never explained why, but it was approved, so I guess she must have had a valid reason.” Kagesawa shrugged.

Since the subject was on the table and it would never become less rude, this seemed the time to ask. “What about all the rest of them?”

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