Page 26 of Pandion

With most of the credit chips processed, Kagesawa’s CV was starting to look almost normal. This was an achievement considering how long he’d been paying his rent and other things with those chips. Who could even say how much of it was lost forever.

Harumine felt a pang of guilt, having assumed the worst when he’d seen the CV so empty before. Thinking back to it now, how had he thought Kagesawa had afforded an apartment had he not worked at all? Alarm bells should have already rung then.

But it was sorted now, and while their score was still under 80%—at least until the next calibration check a year from now—Harumine didn’t feel half bad about the selection of work offered to them. Sure, this wasn’t the life he’d expected, but it was getting significantly better than sorting trash.

Their next job was three days a week Monday to Wednesday at a research institute. Although some of it was data management and admittedly not that far from sorting trash, it was a clean indoor job with occasional other assignments within the same project.

By lunchtime the first day, Kagesawa had picked up the necessary skills to be on par with Harumine. It affirmed the fact he was a quick learner so long as he could stay motivated and focused on the task at hand.

The only thing that consistently gave him trouble was receiving file transfers through the link, but even those were manageable with frequent breaks. Because of the high cognitive load, sending files through the link for longer than fifteen minutes at a time was not recommended anyway, so Kagesawa never had to put up with the boredom for long.

“You were right. It wasn’t as bad as I feared,” Kagesawa noted while deciding what to have from the canteen.

“I think I’ll have the salad,” Harumine decided.

“I hate bell peppers.”

“I’ll dampen the link while I eat them. Anything else I should know? Is orange juice fine?”

“Yeah.” Kagesawa looked troubled. “How do we feel about the chilli soup with garlic bread? Too much?”

“Um.” Harumine couldn’t handle hot or spicy foods, and it wasn’t for the taste. “You’re OK eating something like that?”

“Yes? Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Well, knock yourself out then.” This could be an unexpected perk if he could skip the consequences.

“What about coffee?” Kagesawa was already at the cups, barely waiting for permission. It wasn’t as if he needed to, but since he had a bit of an excessive streak when it came to coffee—to a degree it would easily affect both of their days—he’d voluntarily taken the habit to ask.

“Sure.” A lunchtime cup was a requirement if one expected Kagesawa to be semi-alert in the afternoon. Usually, the jitters were worth it.

“Hey.” Kagesawa abruptly turned around to face Harumine. “Did you want us to get another job for Thursdays and Fridays?”

“Why? Do you have something in mind?”

“No, I was thinking I might work on something from home if that’s fine by you. I’ve got some stuff lined up.”

Since Harumine was no longer in a hurry to find his own place, he wondered if this gentle three-day work week would be good for his mental health after all the stress from his final year of school.Will four days off per week make me lazy?

“You could help me with it if you want. Who knows, maybe you’ll like it.” Kagesawa didn’t feel too optimistic through the link, but at least he was offering.

“I guess, if there’s something you think I can help you with.”

“Aren’t you good at everything?”

“That’s not necessarily a given.”

“I still feel like it’s probably going to be more a case of whether you’re going to like it or not.”

“I appreciate your confidence.”

Compared to Kagesawa, Harumine downright sucked. He wasn’t used to being made to look this bad, but since he rarely experienced any decent competition, trying to keep up with Kagesawa presented an invigorating, if somewhat masochistic, thrill.

Because of the insanely vast complexity of the task, half the time Harumine had no idea what they were even doing.

To call it hacking would have been incorrect: Kagesawa would gain access by some unorthodox, not-entirely-ethical means, but he seemed particular about not breaking any laws while doing so. He picked up a crapton of crumbs from seemingly unrelated sources and made them make sense together. How he calculated those relationships without losing track of the whole was beyond Harumine, especially when he was busy with trying to keep up with the multitude of pickup procedures. He was used to juggling heavy cognitive loads while operating the BCI at school, and it was commendable that the usually quite careless Kagesawa was taking such extensive precautions, but this seemed excessive even to him.

“It’s turning out to be a nasty-big jigsaw puzzle, but it looks like it’s coming together,” Kagesawa commented. He didn’t speak much while he was in the middle of something, and he’d only taken a break because something on his screen was loading and the BCI was kept busy with a temporary automated process.

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