The Planet of Relaxation--Chapter Two

Chapter Two,

 in which more things happen, and dreams take form.
** by Jeff Gilson **

 "And we can assure you, they will be very happy with our work. And you'll be happy too. There'll be nothing in your minds to make you in the slightest bit un-happy. Isn't that good news?"

 

Hadyn Neville sank back into the sleeper in his cubicle. He was always tired after an unloading, something he'd come to understand as normal. He quickly fell into dreaming, which, had he been conscious, would have alarmed him. The implants and conditioning were supposed to remove the dream ability.

 A man walked towards him, tall, blue eyes, and big teeth. /Hadyn,/ he said, /let me go./ The man transformed into that afternoon's client.

 /Kill the bitch, she'll never care for you./ Another transformation and another voice, Carmen this time.

 /We all do it. We all do it. We all do it./

 Then Hadyn walked forward and twisted her neck.

 And then Hadyn woke up screaming.

 

Dave Sangstom approached his office door, a maneuver made fifteen times a day. Which made missing the handle more bothersome than it should have been.

 He turned to look behind him, see if anyone noticed, but the coast was clear. He didn't have to worry about looking like an idiot, just about being one. He was even starting to think he should make use of the company's services. But then, he knew what would happen if he allowed that.

 He tried the door again, this time finding the handle and turning it. The door didn't even need a handle with the technology available, but he, like several billion others, was a fan of the twentieth century and as soon as he had the power to do so, he had his office decked out like that of a mid-1980s stock broker.

 His connection to ORG was the only thing in his office that didn't exactly match the decor. It was bulky, despite itself, and a dull shade of yellow that had once been white plastic. ORG was well over two hundred years old and had run the Relaxation Center for all that time.

 Of course, ORG didn't run it on paper, the Corporation would never get away with that. After all, ORG wasn't human, and around here that was enough to make it less, even if it was an intelligent being. Especially if it was. No, Sangstom was the director as far as all the information about the place was concerned, but he didn't actually run a damn thing.

 Except for the one thing that ORG couldn't know about.

 

The Doctor was walking peacefully, as much due to the gag in his mouth as was due to his ability to be calm in almost any situation. Sarah, on the other hand, was much less peaceful, trying to get out of her bonds, spit out the dummy, something. She'd even considered kicking her captor, but knew without the Doctor's help, she wouldn't get anywhere.

 The two guards were still chattering at each other. "This is more excitement than we've had in a while," the man said. His name, apparently, was Grant. "Almost no one breaks in here, you see," he said, inclining toward Sarah in a way that made her even more uncomfortable.

 "We don't know that they broke in," said the woman, whose name Sarah hadn't got. "They could just be exceedingly stupid. ORG will sort them out, though. He always does."

 "Who is this ORG, anyway?" asked the Doctor. The two guards did a double-take and the woman walked in front of the taller Time Lord. Sure enough, his dummy was nowhere to be seen.

 "Where--?"

 "I ate it," he said, and brought her down with a knock between their heads. Before Grant could react, Sarah had turned and kicked the front of his knee before putting her own knee in his groin.

 "Sarah, get my sonic screwdriver." She reached into his coat pocket and drew forth the tool, which the Doctor used on his bonds, and then hers. He then extracted the gag from her mouth.

 "Doctor, how did you--"

 "Shh. Get Grant, I'll take care of her." Sarah put the hand cuffs on the young man, who was still reeling in agony, and stuck the gag in his mouth. She then pulled him over to where the Doctor was tending to the woman. The Doctor put the cuffs on her arms, behind her back, looped between his arms. He then used the sonic screwdriver again to, apparently, fuse the locks. "That should keep them for a while," the Doctor said.

 "How did you get the gag out of your mouth?"

 "Let's walk and talk," he said, pulling her along with him down the corridor in the same direction that they had been heading. "I used its design against itself. It was designed to suck, I just let it continue all the way inside." He produced it from his inside jacket pocket. "It wasn't much to spit it out unseen."

 "Where to now?"

 "Well, I think we deserve to visit ORG, don't you?"

 

There was no day or night on Alta Regina, except that every twenty-three days it changed from dark to light or from light to dark. Sunset alone lasted forty-eight standard hours. Therefore, circadian rhythms were unbearably hard to maintain. This worked in the favor of those who made money off of the regular inhabitants of this moon, but it was hard for novitiate handers, for that's what Hadyn had learned they were unofficially called. They did their stuff by touch.

 Hadyn's being awake now, though, had nothing to do with having no sense of what time it really is. He had left his cubicle to go to the Downtime room, but found himself wandering though the living section instead. He hoped he could find some sort of solace for the nightmare he'd had. It had to be a matter of a bad unloading, but there was nothing that could have caused that except--

 And that was a thought that scared him more than the dream had. That ORG could be faulty? It was unthinkable. Another more disturbing thought occurred to Hadyn, and somehow it was less unthinkable. The thought actually cheered him up a little, though heavens knew why.

 What if ORG left thoughts in his head on purpose?

 

The Doctor tried another door. He had tried almost every door in this wing, and Sarah was starting to get restless. "Doctor, there's nothing down here. As much as I love the idea of snooping around, when there's nothing to snoop, you move on."

 "Ah, yes, but when there is?" The Doctor backed up and showed her what was in the room he'd just opened. The room was filled with computer banks.

 "One might think they'd lock the door if it was important," Sarah said, still skeptical.

 "They did. I undid." The Doctor smiled a toothy grin and ushered Sarah into the room, following on her heels. Immediately, alarms sounded. "Hmm, should have thought of that," the Doctor muttered under his breath. The two turned to leave the room and were faced with two green-clad guards. These carried rather lethal looking guns, as opposed to the two previous captors.

 "Do we surrender?" Sarah asked.

 "We surrender," the Doctor confirmed.

 "And just when I was getting used to speaking again."

 

Dave Sangstom tossed and turned in his attempt to sleep. He was not enhanced like the handers under his control, and therefore dreams came naturally to him. His dreams, though, included horrible things like dragons named ORG, and if he allowed his dreams to follow him into his waking self, he would never be able to face ORG as he did every day. He needed a vacation.

 He had to laugh at that thought. He needed a vacation from paradise. Of course, paradise had a few too many snakes for his taste. Or large serpents, at the very least.

 Could he run the Center without ORG? No, he had to conclude. And he would never be allowed to quit. While he didn't have the actual enhancements, he knew those enhancement in detail. I could never quit or retire. If he did, he would be liquidated, which wasn't far off from actually describing the method used for termination. It was a nasty business, and the few he'd been forced to witness (as all employees of the Corporation had, as a warning) were the stuff of nightmares themselves.

 Of course, he often had dreams where he slew the dragon, but as often he was melted by the fiery maw of the beast. He could never allow himself to be Relaxed because if ORG knew he thought of rebellion, he would be a black river of his constituent elements before one could say Fliss Indie.

 Fliss was a beautiful girl, but that's all she was. She was only fourteen standard years, and already enhanced and slaved to the Corporation. Not that they didn't pay well, but it was the sort of work that ate at the soul. Every time she was unloaded, a bit of her went, too. That was the great secret. Well, one of the great secrets. There were so many, how one could be determined to be the greatest was beyond him.

 Sangstom finally gave up pretending to sleep after a couple hours and got dressed. If he wasn't sleeping, he might as well be working. He and ORG had to put together some reports for the Corporation. They were tabbed "Highest Urgency," which was why he had procrastinated on them. He caught the first monotram down to the Center, again ready to make deals with the beast instead of slaying it.

 

The cell that Sarah and the Doctor had been taken to looked much like all the other cells they'd been in during their time together. Except that the walls were pink.

 "You know," Sarah said, looking up at the pink ceiling and back down to the pink floor, "I'm getting rather sick of pastels."

 "They're supposed to be relaxing, at least to the human eye. The insectoid Hxthschrg find them to be a source of great pain."

 "Doctor, were there any vowels in--"

 The question was interrupted by the opening of the door. The man who entered wore a grey uniform. He was older than most of the guards they'd seen, and most everyone else they'd seen, actually. He was smiling and appeared about ready to whistle a jaunty tune when he noticed the two in the cell.

 "Oh," he said, without a trace of embarrassment, "they didn't tell me this room was occupied. I'll let you get back to it."

 "Back to it?" Sarah asked.

 "Yes," the Doctor said over her question, "we'll get right to it. Thank you." He was smiling again, a smile like he got the joke when Sarah wasn't even sure there was a joke to get. Then he batted his eyelashes at the man, who just smiled and turned around.

 "Doctor, do I want to know?" Sarah asked under her breath.

 "Not likely," he responded in kind. "Ta, ta."

 

Hadyn was coming back to his cubicle from the Downtime area. He was ready to sleep now, he was sure. He'd thought of nothing but his new notion, knowing that he could only think of it for just so long before he was in danger of ORG discovering that he was onto the computer's game.

 He passed by Carmen's cubicle and looked inside. She was in her sleeper, perfectly peaceful. She really was a lovely girl, if a bit simple at times. But she did have that history of negative reactions to the handing. And Kim and Oval, the two she would never forgive herself for.

 She had just processed a proli who had saved up money his whole life to get a trip to Alta Regina. He was fifty standard years if he was a day. He had been in one of the Empire's wars as a youth, infantry. Actually hand-to-hand on alien worlds. After that, he had emigrated to the HOP system on his military pension and gotten a job as a terraformer. That was all public record.

 The proli had a dark side, though, which was why he (why everyone) wanted to visit the Center. He wanted his dark side cleansed. He had a horrible temper, and had killed several humans when he was younger, some in his own platoon. This is what Carmen had shared with Hadyn when she first told him about Kim and Oval. She had gone to the Downtime area after the processing to unwind before unloading. One of the young handers looked like one of the men this proli had killed, and she flew into a rage and ran at him. He moved out of the way and her momentum caught Kim full in the torso. Her momentum sent her crashing into Oval, and they both fell over the railing down five stories to the open reception area below.

 Oval had died immediately, but Kim lived longer. Or would have, but she was considered a liability in her comatose state and was liquidated.

 Carmen squirmed in her sleep and a green light over her head indicated that her sleep cycle was over. Her eyes opened and she saw Hadyn. "Hi, Hadyn."

 Hadyn thought one of them should have been embarrassed, though they'd seen each other naked often enough. To Hadyn, something in watching her sleep had made it as though a line had been transgressed. Carmen obviously didn't agree, as she wasn't troubled in the least.

 "I'm going to sleep," he said, as though it was the natural thing to say.

 "Did you stay up all night watching me?" she asked, smiling.

 "No. Just my rhythms bothering me."

 

Sangstom arrived at his office a few minutes after he'd left the domicile, and sat down behind his desk.

 'GOOD MORNING, DAVE. TROUBLE SLEEPING?'

 "Some. Also, we have those reports to get done."

 'HMM, YES. THERE'S SOMETHING YOU NEED TO DO FIRST. WE CAUGHT TWO PRISONERS WHO MANAGED TO ESCAPE BEFORE WE RECAPTURED THEM. THEY WERE HEADING STRAIGHT FOR THE CONTROL CENTER.'

 "Human?"

 'THEY LOOK HUMAN. HOWEVER, THERE IS EVIDENCE THAT AT LEAST ONE MIGHT NOT BE. THEY ARE BEING HELD IN THE MATING WING UNTIL YOU DETERMINE WHETHER THEY SHOULD BE PROCESSED BY OUR EMPLOYEES, OR BY ME PERSONALLY.'

 "Personally? When is the last time you processed a non-employee personally?"

 'SEVENTY-FIVE STANDARD YEARS, DAVE. DO NOT WORRY, I AM VERY EFFICIENT IN MY PROCESSING.'

 "Somehow, ORG, I'm not surprised about that. How long have they been waiting?"

 'TWO HOURS.'

 "They can wait a little longer. I want some coffee first."

 

After what seemed like an impossibly long wait, the door to the room opened again, and a younger man in a smart charcoal uniform marched in. If Sarah had to guess, she'd say he was about her age, physically, but his eyes spoke of a much longer and/or harder life. If nothing else, there was a great weight of responsibility.

 "Hello. Sorry to keep you waiting. I'm Dr. Dave Sangstom. What are your names?"

 "I'm Sarah Jane Smith, and this is the Doctor," the Doctor said.

 "Um, I think you got that backwards," Sarah said.

 "Did I? Oh, dear, I did. I'm the Doctor, it seems, and this is Sarah."

 "'The Doctor?'" Sangstom repeated with a smile. "No surname?"

 "Never needed one before. Well, that's not true, but I just usually take hers."

 "And he usually forgets to put it back," Sarah deadpanned.

 "Well, you two are certainly interesting. Have you met ORG yet? No, of course you haven't. Micah," he called into the corridor, "wheel it in, please."

 A computer terminal was brought in on a cart with wobbly wheels. "Hmm," Sarah mused. "Nine centuries, you'd think they could create a better cart."

 "That was a low priority," the Doctor responded.

 "Sarah, Doctor, let me introduce you to ORG."

 'HELLO.'

 The computer's voice seemed to come from all around them, but was not unbearably loud. In fact, it was a quite pleasant voice. Of course, Sarah had had about enough of pleasant.

 "ORG, it's a pleasure," the Doctor said, extending a hand to shake, then appearing to think better of it. "So, what manner of AI are you? From the looks, you're a mid-twenty-ninth century update of a twenty-seventh century architecture."

 'VERY PERCEPTIVE, DOCTOR. APPARENTLY YOU KNOW A BIT ABOUT ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE?'

 "Oh, I've dabbled here and there. I think I've dabbled in just about everything, actually."

 'FROM HERE FORWARD, YOU SHOULD THINK OF ME AS YOUR FRIEND. WE WANT TO HELP YOU, BUT WE CAN'T HAVE YOU JUST WANDERING AROUND THE CENTER UNATTENDED. YOU UNDERSTAND, I'M SURE.'

 "I understand at least," Sarah said.

 'YOUR CLOTHES ARE ANACHRONISTIC. SARAH APPEARS TO BE A TWENTIETH CENTURY FETISHIST LIKE DAVE. YOUR CLOTHING, DOCTOR, DOES NOT SEEM TO FIT ANY KNOWN FASHION PERIOD.'

 "You're a fashion critic, too?" The Doctor smiled even broader now, trying to out-pleasant the computer. "How very interesting."

 'I HAVE DECIDED THAT YOU SHALL BE TREATED TO THE RELAXATION BY OUR STAFF. AFTER YOUR...RELAXATION, YOU WILL BE FREE TO LEAVE, IF YOU WISH.'

 "And if we don't wish?" Sarah asked.

 'IN THE LIKELY EVENT THAT YOU NEVER WANT TO LEAVE, YOU WILL BE CARED FOR.'

 "What ORG means," Sangstom said, "is that you will have no ill feelings toward him, or us, or anything at all. Nothing at all will matter to you." Though it was pleasantly said, no one in the room missed the ominousness of the director's words.

 

Hadyn awoke in a sweat. He jumped from the sleeper. He had to get rid of the dream. He had to. He'd seen the toothy man again. He saw Dave. He saw the man from the earlier afternoon. And he saw Carmen again.

 He started pacing down the corridor between the cubicles, unmindful of where he was going, and ending up at Carmen's cubicle again. She was still there getting ready for her day (Hadyn hadn't been asleep long). When he saw her this time, he felt no embarrassment. He felt only one thing. Anger.

 He marched towards her. "Back again, Hadyn? Hadyn? Come in, you're not feeling well. Get away, Hadyn. Get back." Hadyn saw his hands raise up and clasp around Carmen's neck. She screamed. He squeezed.

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