I don’t like Jackson’s cyberspace office. It’s severely formal, a place that conceals more than reveals. I don’t like Jackson, either. His image is bland: A bald man sitting behind a large desk positioned in front of his diplomas. The side walls are bookshelves filled with scholarly works, all by dead authors long beyond controversy. Around the reality room are potted plants, no endangered species, and pictures of colorful birds and butterflies—only still pictures, Christ! The desk is the nearest brush with controversy. It’s a lushly finished rosewood, and rosewood is extinct, but it’s been extinct for so long that no pressure group has figured out how to blame the living for its demise.
Yet this person with the blandest of cyber offices is heading up the Methuselah Project. There must be strength in those hands flipping over the dossier and cunning under that chrome-dome cranium cover, but what sort of strength is it?
I know my strength. I’m here now because I know how to make people happy to see me, women mostly. As a matter of fact, I’m a bit tuckered out from all the Thank You’s I was delivering last night to those who helped me get this plum assignment.
Jackson looks up from the dossier. “Stevens, thanks for coming by. The committee has been dividing up the Methuselah treasures. How would you enjoy working on the disk team?”
“That would be excellent,” I say. The disks are the heart of the Methuselah find. There are over a thousand and first analysis indicates each is filled with terabytes of binary code. Interpreting all that information will be a long cushy job and no one can look over my shoulder while I do it. Just the kind of job I want to keep up my lifestyle.
“Good,” Jackson stares down at the dossier again as he says, “We are dividing the disks among the researchers. I’ll be sending you the binary code as soon as it’s been read. I’ll put you on the private project databank and on your own specific disk databank. Use these to keep up on what others are doing and to add your findings. Don’t put anything on the public databank. The PR people will look at what you’ve put on the private banks and disseminate what’s appropriate.”
“Got it,” I say.
It’s the same old organizational boilerplate. These administrator types must live and die just to say this stuff because I hear it from every one of them. I guess it’s so I can be real sure of what I’m ignoring when I find it expedient to leak some information.
Jackson is leafing through the dossier. God, he’s slow. Lightning fast net operation isn’t what got him this far.
“Your disk is … excuse me.” An image is wavering in the corner of his office. Odd that a person this formal would let such an interrupt happen. Do I recognize that image? I don’t think so, it’s male. Jackson blinks out to service the image and leaves me to wander his virtual office.
I look for the project dossier he’s been handling, but it’s disappeared with him—careful man—so I poke around the rest of his office. Jackson has allocated a good chunk of somebody’s budget to this display. Bland but extravagantly complete. The bottom of the desk isn’t an undescribed gray area, but a rough-hewn unwaxed version of the rosewood top. I pull a couple books from the shelf, open them, and find readable text. One of the pages even has a coffee stain. There is a “coffee table”-quality book describing Project Methuselah sitting on the credenza and a copy of Jackson’s resume in the top desk drawer. He likes antiques: There’s some writing paper and a steel-tipped fountain pen in one side drawer and a telephone in the other.
I pick up the most colorful thing in the room, the Project Methuselah book, and start through it. As soon as I open it I realize I’m dealing with a Jackson creation—a strength of his. It’s a lush hybrid of antique and state-of-the-art. The pages are simply indexes to beautiful animated presentations.
On the opening page the narrator’s voice intones: “Project Methuselah
“In October 2498 rabbit hunters discovered in the East Antarctic tundra a stainless steel time capsule disgorged by the retreating Rhapsody Glacier. The capsule could be a tomb prepared by Earth’s first tool-users, Homo sapiens, the species from which all subsequent intelligent species radiated. If so the find will be invaluable. It contains chunks of radioactive material that can be accurately dated and a library of information, truly a library. There are thousands of inscribed metal plates, plastic disks, and bound fibrous pages. This information will end much speculation on what Homo sapiens really knew and accomplished in that long ago era.…”
What’s taking Jackson so long? I think again about that face wavering in the corner of the office. It was no one I’d met but … many of my friends had other male friends, and … yes, that was Professor Ferguson, Alice’s “priority interrupt.” Hmm … she told me Ferguson wasn’t the jealous type, but then how many woman have the faintest idea what any man is thinking?
“You’d better get your dancing shoes on, ol’ Stevie boy,” I mutter to myself. “I sense some fancy footwork will be called for momentarily.” I pull some cyberstrings and call up the list of applicants Jackson is considering for Project Methuselah. It takes only a moment to find what I need.
Jackson reappears looking serious, official. He doesn’t look at me but stares intently at the dossier. “Mr. Stevens, I apologize. I wasn’t informed that there’d been an update to the qualifications required for this position—”
“Mr. Jackson. I’m a white, male, vaginal-issue Earthperson. I took a moment to go look through your project report. Could it be I saw a preponderance of large-headed women with skinny limbs in the project lineup? Rumors of discrimination start so easily in high-profile affairs such as these.”
Jackson stops and looks up. I smile brightly.
“You’ve been through this before?”
“I keep an eye out for these things, and I do what I can to help.”
It’s hard for a cyberimage to look twitchy but Jackson’s does. He’s clearly between a rock and a hard place. Then his image clears.
“Mr. Stevens, you no longer qualify for disk researcher.”
“What?”
This Ferguson must be a real heavy-hitter if he can push Jackson this far. Discrimination suits aren’t cheap to pursue, but they can be very lucrative for those that go the distance. If Jackson keeps playing into my hand, I won’t even have to nominally work to collect my cushy monthly check.
“Let me get this straight: You’re saying I’m not qualified?”
“Mr. Stevens, I’m late for my next appointment. May I ask where your physical body is located?”
“You said, ‘I’m not qualified.’”
“Please, Mr. Stevens,” Jackson is squirming like a live beetle pinned to a display case, “As project head, I have some latitude in these matters. I can make a choice. You can, of course, appeal my decision. But I’d rather work out an alternative accommodation. Your resume indicates you have a body. Is your body on Earth?”
“ … Yes, it is.”
Jackson switches to pure bureaucrat mode and recites, “This next question is a personal question. I ask it only because the factors I am inquiring about are germane to the position I propose to offer you. You have the right not to answer and should you decline to answer it will not affect your prospects for employment with this organization—except to the extent that the factors being inquired about are germane to the position in question. Do you understand?”
Boilerplate bullshit. “Yes,” I say calmly.
“May I ask this personal question?”
“Yes.”
“Is your body motile? Can it manipulate objects? Are you willing to use it in pursuit of your professional aspirations?”
“You’re asking: Am I a ‘slug’?”
The term annoys him, but he swallows his instinct to correct me and says, “That’s correct.”
“No, I’m not. I use my body for pleasure and I use it professionally, too.”
“Fine.” Jackson looks as relieved as I’ve ever seen a bureaucrat look. “I can’t offer you a position as disk researcher but I can offer you a position as miscellaneous researcher. The Methuselah library was discovered on your Antarctic continent. The fact that you are on Earth means you can make contact with these objects physically—that’s an important factor for dealing with some of the library’s components.”
Jackson looks at his dossier again. “The position is temporary and with per diem expenses included the pay is twice that of disk researcher.”
He’s tossing me a bone. The pay is fat and juicy but it won’t last long. I could fight, but what the hell. I’m young and there are lots more interesting things to do than pursue a discrimination case. I’ll fight one when I feel like settling down.
“The miscellaneous researcher position sounds just fine,” I say.
Jackson looks even more relieved. “I’ll set up your databases and you can get started right away. Your project is to analyze and report on object #314 and its contents. Here’s a picture of it. The rest of the data will be sent to your databank. Now, Mr. Stevens, if you will excuse me, I’ve got to see if I can catch up with my schedule.”
I look at the image. … This is bullshit!
“It’s just a small bag!” I yell at Jackson, but he’s gone on to another appointment. I look again at the picture. Christ, I could finish describing this in an afternoon! I guess I’ve got my job cut out for me making this bag into a job.