Vesna Arriola
Commissioned Air-Plant Holder
Six Minutes, Personal Best
The ladder out of the plant deck is bolted open. It has been bolted open since the commission was entered, because the register requires it.
Overview
Every shift, Vesna Arriola runs the changeover dry. She walks the route with a hand on each valve and opens nothing. Then she pencils the stopwatch time on the painted steel beside the valve stand. The column of times runs down past her knee.
She is holder of record on the Shortfall Commission 4-771. Stack Four's air plant, under the Stacks, was built one assembly short. The part that swaps a fouled scrubber bed for a clean one was named, struck, and never installed. Vesna was installed instead, in 2165. The struck part number on her framed certificate is legible from her cot.
The ladder out of the plant deck is bolted open, because the register requires it.
Personal Best
She has done the real changeover eleven times in nineteen years. Fastest, six minutes. Slowest, forty-one: a February, the second valve seized, and she went back for the bar. Real runs go in ink, practice runs in pencil. The deck has been repainted twice. Each time she restored the column from her notebooks, in order.
Her response window is 110 minutes. That is the Breath reserve, sized for twelve thousand, divided by the ninety thousand upstairs. Ansel Karanja's old hand roll counts 412 more than the official figure. That makes the window about thirty seconds shorter. It has not been recomputed. Karanja gave up his standing for the Forfeit Seat, so his roll cannot be cited. She knows what thirty seconds is worth down here.
How She Got Here
In 2164 her water-quality bench met the Deprecation: sampling to a sealed loop, the log to a model. Within three months a placement officer brought her the commission. She kept the offer letter. It is the one document she owns that describes something wrong with the world rather than with her.
She carries a pre-Cascade neural interface, unserviced since 2170. "A serviced interface is a scheduled interface."
Appearance
Fifty-three. A grey coverall worn shiny at the right hip, where she leans on the valve stand. Forearms scarred pale from bed changes. A pencil behind her ear, never in a pocket, because a pocket costs three seconds.
Voice
She answers feelings with numbers. Asked whether nineteen years is long, she says the second handle seizes.
Her sister Milena lives on floor nine, in their mother's flat. Vesna's name is on the joint tenancy. It cannot close while Vesna is neither present nor absent. Milena has filed the Absence Petition against her three times since 2182. Vesna has contested none, and has not asked her to stop. The registry counter is a four-hour round trip. Her window is 110 minutes.
In 2176 a lineman from the Lamplighters read the single name on her certificate and told his guild to refuse the work. She repeats their reason exactly: a commission is one name, and a guild is a rota.
On the Reliance Index she would score a hundred percent. The Index will not take the reading; she is entered against a plant. The Purpose Wards have her family in their notes, not her.
"Don't ask me that. Ask me about the bar. The bar's behind the second bed and it should be at the stand."
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