PARANOIA T1 "Stay Alert" - Free preview

8/3/2019 PARANOIA T1 "Stay Alert" - Free preview

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Cover by Jim Holloway



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



“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.



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.




“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.




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.




—————

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.”




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.”




“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




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.




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.”




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?”




“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




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.




—————

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.




“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?”




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,




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




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.




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




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.




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.




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




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.




Stay AlertBook 1 of The Troubleshooter Rules

by Allen Varney

ultravioletbooks.com




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.

PARANOIA T1 "Stay Alert" - Free preview

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Transcript of PARANOIA T1 "Stay Alert" - Free preview