NOVEL NEXT Chapter 42: Verification
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Hiram: Options can be limited by circumstances, but will be limited to your understanding of them.
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Wednesday, November 13th, 2090, about 9:11 am MST, Montana City
Gordon woke late and poorly. His room—second floor, east wing of what had once been a mansion—smelled faintly of ozone and the varnish off ancient hardwood. A split-pane window let in dull morning light, filtered through the hedgerows Hiram had ordered planted in his later, quieter years. His watch said 09:11. Technically within compliance. After all, he set the schedule.
He rolled out of bed, bare feet cold on marble. The morning admin map lit up as he passed through the hall toward the kitchenette. Twelve facilities—eleven automated, one semi-manual—hovered in neat rows, outlined in corporate blue. Everything scrolled crisp: output percentages, safety clears, staff attendance, quality control deltas. One supplier four hours late. He didn't blink. With just-in-time inventory, it was practically on time.
Except.
One usage metric blinked wrong.
Unit OH-23. Down 31% versus the weekly average.
Gordon frowned, leaned in. The data drill-down pulled fast—normal wear cycle, normal input. No anomalies in feedstock. But that usage gap meant either a sensor error or a falsified shift log. Either way, it was his problem. He didn't need the foreman's take.
He called anyway. The portable dialed.
One ring.
"Malik," came the voice—old, rough, unimpressed.
"Machine OH-23 is reading low. You seeing what I'm seeing?"
Malik didn't pause. "Yeah, probably those sensors again. They lag every third cycle. They get hot, they ghost. I wouldn't worry about it."
"Okay," Gordon said flatly. "I'm coming down anyway."
Malik grunted. "I'll be here."
The line went dead.
He walked to the wardrobe alcove and said, "Pull outfit."
The AI purred to life: "Best fit for oversight today: monochrome paneled button-up, mock-denim metallic slacks, square-buckle cinch. Multi-belted waist-length jacket. Four sets remain this cycle."
The outfit projected in a soft glow. Gordon pulled it on. Sharp collars, slanted seams, an iridescent shine like oil on water. And Freddie Mercury's jacket. Gordon pictured it with his holster just beneath it. Very wild west meets disco-nuevo.
"Any alternates?"
"There are four outfits left in the week and four days remaining," the assistant replied cheerfully. "Alternate draws not recommended."
"Fine." He shrugged into it. No coat.
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The walk across the compound was longer than it used to be. The old stables were now a calibration lab. The gardens housed filter drones. The outbuildings were cinderblock, prefab, corrugated steel. Nothing matched. The hedgerows were the only buffer—the only thing keeping the place from admitting what it had become. Gordon liked them for that.
The morning was quiet. The wind gusted, but the jacket—belted now—was surprisingly good at holding in the chill. His legs weren't thrilled about the pants, but the walk wasn't long, and the boots helped. He liked this time of day. Few people out. Just the faint hum of power cycling up and the scent of cold metal and dry hedgerow.
The outfit, at least, was dignified. A little theatrical, maybe—corporate enforcer with flair—but it projected confidence. The holster didn't hurt. Hiram had offered him guards. Gordon had refused. It wasn't about pride—it was about privacy. If people knew he was armed, they gave him space. That was usually enough.
He remembered how hard he used to geek out about this stuff before he had to help build it. Now, looking at the long, low shed storing their deliverables - just a shed, not temperature controlled or anything, though made waterproof using plastic sheeting - stored all the finished goods on inventory. He wished he didn't know that. Or how it worked.
It had all lost the magic when he started helping make it.
The assembly manufactory loomed ahead, low and wide. Inside, it was a wall of sound: hydraulic punches, venting coolant, the steady whump of power cycles. A worker on a smoke break nodded respectfully to him, and he returned the gesture as he ducked inside.
He slipped on a hard hat. Skipped ear protection. Walked straight toward the line. A few workers saw him, clocked the outfit, and cut the presses with a series of hand signs. Gordon made a slicing motion and pointed at the last row of machines, out of line of sight. A man hurried over and that too was shut down. One of them stepped over.
"I'm here to check on something with Malik."
"Office," the man said briefly, the sudden silence spreading the word further than it felt like it ought to.
"Don't mind me about the little stuff, but I need the presses down for … an hour. Sorry, I'll be out of your hair when I can manage it."
He nodded. Gordon wasn't being unreasonable.
A moment later, Malik appeared, grease-smeared jumpsuit and perpetual scowl intact. His hands were too large for his body, fingers like steel cables.
The factory foreman's eyes flicked to Gordon's hip as he approached, the polished sidearm clearly not standard executive fare in his book.
"Everything in order?" Gordon asked, tone neutral.
"Yessir," the man replied, just a little too quickly. He didn't mention the gun, but his gaze kept drifting back to it—uncertain whether it meant danger, paranoia, or just theater.
Gordon didn't offer an explanation, jumping straight to the point.
"All right, I'm here," Gordon said. "Where's 23?"
Malik motioned past two lines of stacked blanks. "Back left. Tank housing punch. It's probably fine."
Gordon nodded. "Probably."
And he started walking.
The machine loomed in the back-left corner of the manufactory, nestled tight against the wall like a stubborn relic. A die press, Welsh-made, pneumatic—older than Gordon, probably, and carrying the scars to prove it. Half the casing was flaked and matte where oil had eaten through the paint over time. The sensor, a later addition, was adhesive-mounted—no ports on the housing. Just glued on, like an afterthought.
Gordon crouched beside it, eyeing the green-blinking light. He tapped his portable. It connected via Bluetooth without protest. Readings streamed in—clear, aligned, no errors. The sensor wasn't lying.
"If this says it hasn't been punching," Gordon said, not raising his voice, "then it hasn't been punching."
Malik, standing behind him with arms crossed, didn't answer.
Gordon stood, dusted a pinch of glittering shavings from his knees, then knelt again. Just for thoroughness. Just to shut the loop. He pulled the USB cable from his coat pocket—USB 2 on one end, magnetized on the other, made to click into the side of a portable with no actual ports. Old style. Dumb cable for a dumb machine.
He found the interface port, wedged awkwardly into the machine's back panel. Gordon had to angle his arm between the press frame and the wall, wrist torqued sideways. The first try didn't take. He flipped it. Didn't take. Flipped it again. Classic USB. On the third try, it slid in.
The internal data came to life on his screen. The machine's onboard counter was still running—barely. No automation smoothing, no predictive interpolation. Just raw, ugly numbers. But they matched the sensor's report. The thing simply hadn't run enough.
His portable buzzed. Gordon instinctively gave a slight shake, expecting a text he could glance at.
A projection blinked to life above his left forearm, slightly grainy from projection. It was a looping gif of Marie with her hair in a towel, a towel wrapped around her person—and of her dipping the top of the towel a fraction of an inch and raising her eyebrow at the camera before the loop started again.
He froze, halfway under the press, right arm deep behind the casing, USB cable half-seated in the port.
His left arm was pinned at a crooked angle. He couldn't give it a proper shake to cancel—his forearm was locked between the frame and the wall. All he managed was a twitch that made the loop restart.
"Shit."
He yanked his arm free—bashing his knuckles—just in time to reach over with his right hand and slam the projection off. Then, fumbling a reply one-handed:
[7:55] Gordon: I'm touring a factory and checked with my portable set to holo by accident.
He hoped the foreman hadn't seen it. He probably had.
"It's not a sensor problem," he said quickly, rising. "This machine hasn't been used as often as it's supposed to." His face was red. His ears burned.
Malik was watching him, big hands curling and uncurling at his waist. He worked a thumb into a loop of his blue belt, eyes unreadable under the overhead fluorescents. He didn't comment on the hologram—from kindness, or because he had bigger problems.
"Maybe your system's not accounting for our labor rotation," Malik said, slow and apparently distracted. "Maybe it's calling for the wrong number of punches per shift. I'm telling you—it's fine."
Gordon looked past him, down the line of machines, each one indistinct behind columns and noise and motion. He didn't reply right away—just watched the old die press breathe: each few seconds bringing up a huff of pressure from the pneumatic belly, like a living thing.
"Maybe," Gordon said at last.
He coiled the USB cord with practiced fingers and dropped it back in his pocket.
"I'm going to need the bill of work," Gordon said, brushing metal grit from his sleeve. "Where's the IT closet?"
He knew, of course. It hadn't moved in the five years since they'd standardized the outbuildings. Tucked behind the break room, half a stairwell up, badge-locked and undercooled. But he didn't keep keys—security risk—and Malik would open it faster than authorization protocols.
Malik grunted and turned without a word. Gordon followed, trying to walk like he hadn't just smacked his head on the decades-old press. Spirals of metal from the lathe sprinkled from the creases in his jacket's belts and pinged off the floor, barely audible now that the CNC's were going again. The die press—being central to the problem and loud enough to kill a conversation—remained silent.
Buzz. Flick.
[8:00] Marie: OMG how red is your face right now?!
He ignored it.
His mind started trying to compose responses anyway—'you're in fine form today…'—no. Just no. There would be time later.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
The hallway behind the floor narrowed. Noise thinned. A vending machine whined low in the dark. The IT closet door was labeled in marker—CLOSET - NO FOOD STORAGE - CAM ACTIVE - with poorly secured hinges, sagging, and the door leaning heavily in its frame. Malik scanned in. The lock clicked. The door did not open.
Malik smirked and walked off, voice raised in some sort of instruction. Gordon hauled the aged door open, paint from the door's top falling like snow.
Inside, the air was sharp with ozone and the battery hum of idle gear. Two shelves. One metal stool. Wall charger. A crate of poorly coiled cables and three pieces of equipment tagged in red: management tablet, dev terminal, and a debugging laptop thick enough to pass for retro.
Gordon took the laptop. His portable could pull the files off it, but typing on a floating holo with half-frozen fingers wasn't going to cut it. The laptop would be faster. The debug laptop ran hot and loud, but it had one thing going for it: real keys.
It booted with a rush of heat from the battery pack. He'd have to replace it. He made a note for himself, which, in theory, would go from his portable to his mainframe and be in his calendar when he got home. He sat on the stool and pulled the bill of work from the network cache—a document that looked plain to anyone who wasn't supposed to understand it. Line items like:
OE3F - Count: 800 (Includes: H003, H012, PL-S14)
Itemized to hell, stripped of context, designed to balance accountability with opacity. The parts themselves were real. The counts mattered. But nothing about the doc explained what H003 was, or why PL-S14 needed to be laminated before stacking. That was intentional. Engineers needed lookup tables. Everyone else needed sufficient abstraction to avoid learning how the whole system worked.
Gordon sighed and pulled the manufactory-specific map—Table A-12 for Assembly Shed One. That gave him machine-to-code alignment. Then he found the naming schema conversion: table-to-doc, doc-to-process, process-to-output. It was stored as a pdf. Not searchable.
And there was no internet access out here.
This was the second reason he'd chosen the debug laptop. He booted a converter. He'd delete the file afterward. Management would kill for this sort of convenience.
Which was the entire point.
He needed three variables:
Machine number (OH-23)
Batch ID (sourced from the internal press log—still cached)
Parts mapping from die code to document string
In a better system, all of this would live in a centralized lookup sheet, something dynamic, versioned, and shared. But Hiram hated centralization. Binary Systems made fusion engines. The Fed would look dimly on poor operational security. So Gordon had four static PDFs, a cursed reference index, and a double handful of fields to cross-check by hand. Or with a script.
He typed for a while. It was barely even coding—for single use things like this he could ignore making it pretty or commenting what parts did what, as long as they worked for him this one time. Scripting.
The script would spit out what part corresponded to what designation, what quantity had been expected, and—once cross-checked—what hadn't shown up. That, in turn, would tell him whether Malik had a point or was himself a liability.
Gordon watched the progress bar crawl forward, the fan humming in the laptop like a smoker's last breaths. A few more seconds, and he'd know whether this was a paperwork error or an actual operational issue.
He hoped, absently, that it was paperwork. But he was already pretty sure it wasn't.
"The way I figure it," Gordon told the antique, tone still flat but hands now held over its vents like over a campfire, "there's not a mechanical issue here—which means this is an HR problem."
He got a result.
Predictably, the printer in the IT closet wheezed once, flashed LOW TONER – REPLACE CARTRIDGE, and refused to oblige. Gordon didn't bother trying again. He closed the lid of the ancient debugging laptop with two fingers and carried it back across the floor.
The press line was running again, metal groaning under pressure. Malik stood at the edge of it, arms crossed, chin tilted like he'd been waiting for judgment. Gordon approached slowly, held the laptop up—face blank, voice flat.
"I suppose it must be a scheduling snafu."
Malik nodded like a man playing along. "I'm doing the best I can with what you've given me."
Gordon handed over the laptop. "Do you want to check my work?"
Malik didn't take it. His frown deepened, lines sharpening across his brow. "Look, I've been nice to you. But I don't have anything I need to prove to you. You looked into it—you'll write that. You did your part. Now let me do mine. I'll get the parts on the trucks. Why does it have to be difficult? Why do we have to play this farce out?"
Gordon didn't answer right away. Just let the weight of the laptop shift a little in his hand, his fingers curling under its scratched edge. The buzz of the press behind them filled the silence, the air tense with an argument neither one wanted to have out loud.
Finally, Gordon sighed. A low, dull sound.
"Because the CEO—that's my father, Hiram, remember him?—comes poking around here every couple of weeks. Golf cart, clipboard, cold, dead eyes? Just to make sure everyone's on their toes."
Malik grimaced. He remembered.
"He's going to catch the discrepancy in the punches on his own weekly audit," Gordon went on, "because he makes me give him my numbers. And then he's going to ask me why I didn't fix the problem, and I'm going to have to tell him that Malik told me it wasn't any of my business."
He tilted his head, just slightly.
"And then he's going to hop in that little cart of his and vreeeeee down here, and neither of us wants that to happen. Because that means I have to talk to him. And that you then have to talk to him."
Malik's brow furrowed, but he didn't speak.
"I'm not looking to cause a full-scale internal audit," Gordon went on. "Which means you're gonna give me your documents, and I'm going to figure out this problem. And only that problem. After that, I'll bring it to HR."
Malik handed him the key without a word and turned back to the floor, shoulders already squared to the machinery like Gordon had vanished. No escort. No direction. Just the battered four-drawer cabinet in the corner of the foreman's office, its front graffitied with fading inventory stickers and its top with the rusting ghosts of coffee rings.
Gordon sighed and stepped inside, pulling the door shut behind him.
The cabinet, predictably, was a graveyard of misfiled bureaucracy. Hundreds of folders, none organized by week, line, or shift in any discernible logic. No digital index. No color-coding. Just the compressed outputs of weeks and months and years of shift paperwork, all scribbled in that particular engineer's hand—tight, squared capital letters, almost legible at a glance, but inscribed in pencil.
Pencil fades. Especially when rubbed against plastic sleeves in a humid cabinet.
Gordon dropped to a crouch and started scanning file spines, knuckles brushing metal. After twenty minutes, he pulled a folding chair over. After forty-five, he gave up on patterns and just started pulling anything marked "23" or "Week 19" or anything within two lines of that. Eventually, he opened his portable, turned on the small speaker, and let it shuffle low-volume synth across the stale air. The room smelled like graphite dust and burnt toner.
A text pinged in. Marie.
[Sorry about earlier. Sort of. Anyway, I found out that I'm BABYSITTING TODAY! A four-year-old named Elie. She made me wear a tiara. I'm not fighting it. Hope your morning isn't terrible.]
Gordon replied with a thumbs-up emoji. Then a beat later: [She sounds dangerous. Watch your crown.]
He leaned back in the chair, eyes closed for a moment. Does Marie want kids? The thought came and went like weather—unavoidable but not actionable. He didn't answer it.
Two hours in, he found the right file—week 19. Cat folder labeled OH-23-A, scrawled in fading pencil that had nearly rubbed off.
Inside: shift logs, crew assignments, handwritten notes.
He skimmed Monday. Stopped.
A line entry next to the machine operator's name read:
"Radial fracture – cleared by clinic – light duty ok."
Then the man's name again. Logged in for full shifts, every day since.
Below that, another worker—last name Saad—had clocked double shifts since Monday. Full days, then another four hours tacked on after each. Over time, every day.
Gordon sat back.
There it was.
The operator of OH-23 hadn't been able to operate the machine. But he hadn't been pulled from the schedule. The backup had been covering two machines. Which meant OH-23 wasn't running as often as it should. Which meant the usage numbers were correct.
Malik hadn't lied.
But he hadn't told the whole truth either.
Gordon closed the folder, music still playing softly in the background.
He had his explanation. Now he just had to decide how clean he wanted to write it.
Gordon stepped out of the foreman's office, folder tucked under one arm, music still murmuring faintly from his portable. He paused in the walkway between the fabrication bays, thumbed over to his contacts, and tapped the line for Claire (HR).
Two rings.
"Gordon," she answered, voice crisp and dry, same as always. "Please tell me you didn't call to file a complaint."
"Hey," he said. "Look—I found the issue."
"What issue?"
"Oh, sorry, I didn't ping you about it. Um, the machine shed, Machine OH-23. It's a die press. Anyway, I would like to file a complaint."
SIlence.
"The guy running it fractured his radius on Monday but still clocked in all week, still assigned to the line. Another tech's been running doubles to cover for him, but can't keep up with the load."
"That's not how it's supposed to work."
"No," Gordon agreed. "It's not. Malik knew, and lied to my face about it."
"Full lie or lie of omission?"
"He said the sensor was ghosting and that the machine was fine."
Claire made a noncommittal noise. "And you're calling me because?"
"Because it's unjustified overtime. That has to go through you. Should've reported it straight to you, probably. I'm asking what the right move is from here."
Silence on the other end, brief but weighted.
Then: "We don't fire foremen," Claire said. "Firing foremen is how you train the competition. Malik's old-school, grumpy, and doesn't value doing the paperwork—but he delivers product. I'll handle it."
Gordon leaned against the corrugated wall, watching a drone zip past overhead. "So what happens?"
"The overtime comes out of Malik's pocket over the next year. He'll be pissed. Next time, he'll remember not to authorize the shift coverage without logging it properly. And he won't be happy you caught him."
Gordon nodded slowly. "You need anything else from me?"
"Nope. I'll bring in a vacationed tech to cover the shift and get the production back up. You did your job. Now let me do mine."
She hung up before he could say thanks. He didn't bother calling back.
He stood there another minute, watching the movement of people and machines, the steady churn of metal through the process.
He really wasn't looking forward to talking to the sullen foreman again. He allowed his eyes to wander across the office—to the Binary Systems Corporation logo stamped on everything printed, to the Binary Systems flagship engine's advertisement on the wall, poorly laminated and covered in tiny bubbles:
Binary Systems // "Bring it all back."
From ground to LEO in one burn. From Mars to home in one tank. From contract to contract with zero replacements.
Our TwinCore arrays are the only field-rated SSTM drives on the market—clean, safe, and tuned for orbital transfer under full load.
No staging. No drama.
TECHNICALLY, you could get a binary engine to Mars in one go. Just the engine, no need for anything else. It was practically a small, modular ship in of itself, just with no place to put people. If the planets were aligned, and you didn't mind waiting a while for it to show up.
His father had been so proud of his 'single stage to Mars' slogan. Gordon found himself fighting the urge to nitpick.
It was a single stage to mars - and back! - But only if you refueled on Mars.
Not to mention the 33 mile electromagnetic launch track stretched from Montana City to the Elkhorn mountains.
Gordon's lungs were itching from the dust. He hunted around and found some hand sanitiser, then vigorously rubbed his nose. It helped a bit with the itching.
It was so weird thinking that the company had existed for so long, that it could fossilize like this, but still have been the brainchild of his dad's youthful energy and genius when Hiram was even younger than Gordon.
It wasn't, Gordon thought, a particularly difficult idea to grasp, but that might, he had been made aware, be a matter of perspective. He remembered trying to explain the concept over a date, with toothpicks for visual reference:
"Picture two tops. They're eventually going to start wobbling, and then when the wobble is bad enough, they will fall over. Now, imagine a string between them. One wobbles, now they both wobble. Well, that didn't help. Except—now they're wobbling in phase. Say it's a magic string that can link them in either phase or anti-phase. Now you've got a simple solution to a wobble: induce the same wobble, which weakens the wobble as a side effect, then link the two out of phase to cancel it out. Fusion reactions are wobbly for lack of a better catch-all term—but we connect two, with a variable propagation delay controlled by an AI..." Eventually Gordon saw he had lost her, but he wasn't really sure when.
Nice girl. Not for him, though.
Gordon pushed away from the wall and walked back toward the main building, file still under his arm, music still playing.
He passed Malik near the loading bay, just as the next shift was starting to filter in—boots stomping, steel-toe echoes bouncing off concrete. The foreman stood with one hand braced against a crate of folded parts, pretending not to watch Gordon walk past.
The tank was in front of them. The word was almost a misnomer—disregarding what it was for, it certainly didn't look like a tank. Every piece of plumbing, wiring, support structure—everything needed a route around or through the tank. For their purposes, it had been decided it would be simpler to run nearly everything through and use the bulk for thermal shielding of everything forward from the propellant tank. It would be filled with powdered regolith or water, which would feed down to the fusion output and be vaporized, driving the engine.
Funny to think that you could build something like that up a layer at a time through stamped, cut, and welded sheet metal.
"Nice welds," Gordon said, casting around for what he wanted to say to this man. Besides, they did look pretty nice. Layer upon layer of them, like fish scales.
Look, I know what you did. Don't pretend?
Guy B works his own work; he doesn't have time for two shifts—plus, this is unauthorized overtime.
Okay, well maybe that's true, I'm shorthanded though, it's not like I'm choosing this… we're not a ford plant. I've only got two guys who know the CNC machine.
"Did you file a staff request with HR?"
"No. Because I have a conscience. One of my guys broke his arm and couldn't afford reduced hours. You want me to tell him, 'Sorry man, not only are you in pain, we're cutting your paycheck too'?"
"You'll have a talk to my sister at HR."
"Hey, I was open about what the issue was, cut me some slack."
"We did."
Gordon had done the math as soon as his sister had described her plan: If the trend was reversed and the line on normal production … they'd actually only lose a net of two days. If they dedicated the line, they could get it done. He'd tell the board the bad news.
"Good news, you're not fired," he said lightly to the foreman. "We're two days closer to the big fifteen-thousand-dollar penalty for being late with the US Space Force's engine, though. Best get back to it. Dedicate the line."