42. New Kid on the Block

Turned out the literal first step inside the edible-looking door was towards an office to get sworn in. They prioritized that over tea, wow. No detours. Nigel practically hauled him along like a sneaker dude. Tineye wasn’t kidding. That PBS documentary had mostly been about the technology, not the freaky secrecy. He barely remembered to take off his hat like a normal past person.

“Where are we going?”

“Justice of the Peace.”

Mateo opted to skip the obvious joke. Didn’t seem like the time.

“Ok.”

Nigel hustled him into the office and left, shutting the door. There was a stern nerd in there, but after Monocle Man, Mateo figured he was rated to handle any glare out there.

“Have a seat.”

Mateo sat. These long coats were a little hard to manage, especially when you were nervous and holding a fancy old-fashioned hat you were trying not to squash.

“Uh, hey. Yeah. Thanks.” The whole place stank of smoke. Only upside to 020 right there. Not nearly so much of the cancer sticks. Why couldn’t they dip or something.

The stern nerd shuffled through his papers and handed one to Mateo.

“Read this.”

Mateo read it. It was legalese, but it was pretty blunt. Don’t spill the beans for thirty years, not to anybody, not to the guy in the cubicle next to you that had signed the same oath and that you worked with. Fair enough. He had his own dang secret.

“I realize you’re an American, so the legal side could be tricky. Nonetheless—“

“Hey, I don’t care about the legal side. It’s not going to come up because I’m not going back on what I say. To anybody.” He was looking him square in the eye, he realized, more than was normal.

That seemed to earn him some brownie points.

“...very well, sign here.”

He did.

Nigel looked sleepy and totally wired when Mateo came out.

“I’m all signed up. Where do I go?” Mateo realized that he must look just plain wired. Better dial it back. Didn’t people back now do a lot of meth? Didn’t wanna get pegged as a methhead first day on the job, even if it was less crazy to them.

Nigel yawned. “With me, for now. We need to find you a place to stay.”

The place was hopping. People kept going by, most of them holding coffee mugs. Well, test wiseness said they were tea mugs. Maybe three-fourths of the people hurrying around the place were women, and everybody was wearing a weird mix, a few random uniforms, a lot of civilian clothes, some fancy, some what was probably really casual back now. Some of the women were wearing pants, which was probably weird back now but seemed reassuringly normal to him. Nobody was saluting anybody, which was fine with him, last thing he needed was more etiquette to learn. The place was huge and confusing even before you factored in all the extra buildings, and being in a crowd for the first time since 2005 was awesome, but also freaking him out. He hoped he could understand the accents.

“Ok. I need a guide, that’s for sure. Ahahaha.”

“Come on, then. This place is a bit of a maze.”

“Who do I report to? You?”

“We don’t exactly have a normal chain of command. You’ll learn how it works, don’t worry.” Nigel looked pretty happy, more alive just being here. “You’ll like it.”

The first day was basically a mess, like the first day anywhere new, but still, stuff that needed to happen. He was told where to go for the next morning, which was a start. Some place called Block F. At least he was pretty sure it was Block F, the accent was tough.

Mateo kept looking around for anyone he recognized from those senior year science fair posters, all two of them that were from the 40s, but no dice. This place had thousands of people and tons of buildings even outside the Gingerbread Mansion. They were all called stuff like “Hut 3” and Nigel told him sometimes they’d move huts and keep the old name. (Hut 2 was the important one, Mateo decided, at least for now. You could get food there but no secrets.) Codes must be a hot mess. The place seemed like a hot mess too, so maybe that worked.

Everybody seemed to know where to go and what to do, and more shifts were coming in and leaving all the time, like how a flock of birds turns without crashing into each other. Mateo liked moshing pretty well, but this was on another level, especially after spending so much time in a dead silent cell. He had to watch himself so he didn’t carry himself like he was a little kid at the mall and Nigel was his mom, holy cow.

Eventually, a while after it got dark — rush hour had never actually stopped while they were getting him set up — Nigel said he was getting dinner and turning in.

“I think we’ve got you all set for tomorrow now. Be at Block F at nine, and you can bunk at my place, at least for now.”

“Ok.” He was feeling like a computer with about sixty tabs open. Is your human not working? Have you tried turning it off and then turning it on again? Hah. But dinner first sounded good.

The food was lousy and not enough here too, nail in the coffin for his theory that it was just Three-Eyes screwing with him. Yeah, it was more and better here, but not really by that much. He didn’t care. It was food, he was hungry, he ate it. Hopefully he’d quit losing weight soon, this was getting stupid. The place was so packed he could barely work an elbow loose and it was pretty loud and nobody was paying any attention to him aside from a few handshakes and hellos. So that was great. The tea was still pretty ok, and he was getting too sleepy to worry about anything in the world. In a minute he’d crash into his plate.

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