The arrival of the slate occurred during a pressure variance event that was already being managed by Alucent.
Not delivered by runner. Not passed along from his supervisor. Simply showed up in his designated reception rack at his monitoring station, with notification chime slicing through ambient noise with all the urgency that message implied.
Alucent cast an eye at it as he worked valve seven, his hands acting out the familiar pattern of corrections that had long since been made automatic through repetition. Three gauges nearing the red lines, the pressure anticipating the rates of distribution. Nothing out of the ordinary, just the standard crisis.
The slate chimed again. Insistent.
It stabilized the immediate crisis, diverted the surge of pressure through the relief channels, restored the three gauges to safe levels, then reached for the slate with hands that shook far too much for the words he was reading.
Throughput Variance - Requires Operator Authorization
Not a request. Not a suggestion of the value of his feedback within the decision-making process. Authorization was required, implying that someone had decided he was now responsible for signing off on changes to the operation outside the boundaries of his technical knowledge and moral tolerances.
This was different. Not like the increased monitoring area or the retention evaluations or any other change he'd seen before. This was being made a node in the decision network, a point where information flowed in and authorization flowed out irrespective of his understanding or acceptance.
The header expanded when he saw the full notification and discovered information that made his chest constrict with recognition and terror.
Cargo Designation: BIO-REACTIVE INPUT (UNSTABLE)
Status: HOLDING AT FLOW INTERSECTION 9
Effect: Input improves output efficiency by 12.4%
Risk: Reactive degradation probability exceeds baseline
The parasites. To be discussed in technical parlance that removed the horror of nature and replaced the parasites with metrics and risk assessments. Bio-Reactive Input wasn't a consumable or a resource or a material. It was a living, dynamic, Changing thing based on how it was inputted.
The documentation kept scrolling as Alucent's analytical brain was processing implications quicker than he could emotionally deal with.
The input was held at the intersection point pending authorization for complete processing. However, the present holding situation created a bottleneck in the downstream processing, thus decreasing the efficiency of the facility by a certain percentage. Authorization would have released this input into active systems where it would have been consumed—that is, the exact word, consumed—to provide the recorded 12.4% efficiency improvement.
And reactive degradation probability was greater than the baseline.
This meant that the consumption process was not clean or predictable, that the input was affected in a way that introduced further variables into systems already operating at squeezed margins.
Alucent pointed out that the entry required additional information. Data sourcing, recovery logs, and lifecycle expectations. The minimum level of documentation that should be present for any data that is being incorporated into a production process, especially data so labeled that it is considered to be 'unstable and reactive'.
The slate answered promptly.
LOSS CLASSIFICATION: NON-CRITICAL
That was all. No sourcing data on the origins and methods for obtaining the input. No recovery data on what happened to the degraded material after consumption. No lifecycle data on the time span and influences on the stability of the input.
Just the classification. Non-critical loss, meaning whatever occurred within the BIO-REACTIVE INPUT throughput process was fine from an operations standpoint no matter what the loss was.
Non-critical to what had never been defined. To facilitate productivity? To safety margins? To the products that were being consumed that had been living beings with some kind of experience, no matter how alien and inexplicable?
His hands were shaking now. It was a fine tremor that would pass unnoticed by casual scrutiny but that he could detect through the vibrations that resonated through the slate as his hands held it. He could feel his breathing quicken, but he willed himself to control it.
The display showed three choices in clinical detail.
OPTION 1: AUTHORIZE FULL THROUGHPUT
- Max Efficiency Gain (12.4% improvement obtained)
- Accepts documented degradation probability
- Sustains present operational tempo
OPTION 2: AUTHORIZE REDUCED THROUGH
- Partial efficiency gain (approximate 6-8% improvement)
- Reduces degradation chances by regulated consumption
- Increases pressure variance in alternate sectors requiring compensation
OPTION 3: DECLINE Authorization
- No efficiency improvement
- Triggers escalation to supervisory review
- Flags operator for resistance assessment
They all leaned in, eager for his response, but he could see no neutrality in their collective gaze, no lifting of the basic repulsion at what was being asked for here. He was being asked to condone the consumption of living entities that fed on memories, bred in dreams, and somehow contributed to what the Iron Vale was creating in these forges.
And lack of authorization wouldn't even stop it from being implemented. It would only elevate the authorization to someone else, who would approve it anyway, flagging Alucent as an asset that's non-compliant.
A window opened in the wall near his monitoring station. Not announced, not requested. Simply appearing as if by the inexorable function of mechanics following a program.
The supervisor from the retention evaluation was visible behind the clear barrier. Same boring features, same expression that conveyed a person who had made decisions like this so many times they barely counted anymore.
He wasn't paying attention to Alucent. Not making eye contact or gesturing in instruction. Just observing the slate in Alucent's hands, seeing which way the decision was going to fall, recording the event for later purposes.
This was the silence of the instruction. The silence of a lack of clearly defined directives that, while placing Alucent on the spot regarding the authorization he was to provide, did not, either, definitively direct him, nor command or coerce him.
His choice. His decision. His complicity, documented and permanent.
The analytical part of Alucent's brain calculated the possibilities in a detached, emotionless manner, which defied the emotional state the rest of his being couldn't sustain. The math was simple, regardless of the catastrophic consequences.
It would decrease production and would extend the stress into other areas. His broad range of monitoring made the connections evident, decreasing efficiency in this area would increase stress in others. Gryan's Core Support was already functioning under squeezed margins. Variance would cause his already-dangerous situation to fail catastrophically.
It would consume the input faster if it were working at full capacity. Would put whatever was in the sealed containers through processing that was described in the paperwork with the euphemism "reactive degradation." Probably death. Or something worse than death, for beings that were alien enough already that one couldn't even say they were "alive" in the usual sense.
Saying no would shut him out of decision-making circuits altogether. Would label him as an unreliable option for operational decisions that involve some kind of moral compromise, would diminish his use value to the system and ultimately see him relegated from an asset to a liability. Anyway, some other person would have the same decision to make.
This was not a test of bravery, moral fortitude, or dedication to his principles. This was a test of alignment, of his understanding of the priorities of the facility and his willingness to accept the necessary costs of optimization, which, through their very nature, could not be gotten around by some cleverness or conscientious objection.
The supervisor stayed quiet. The slate was awaiting input. The pressure points that Alucent should be monitoring were slowly trending towards critical levels.
It was time to make a decision. To choose among the various levels of complicity he could live with, among costs he would pay and costs he would shift.
Alucent submitted his authorization with hands that ceased to shake through deliberate concentration rather than genuine serenity.
MODULATED FULL THROUGHPUT
Not maximum consumption rate that could yield a 12.4% gain in efficiency. Not reduced throughput, which could produce compensation needs elsewhere. A compromise balancing the needed gains in efficiency and minimizing volatility in the spike rate.
Still consumption. Still living resources used as input to industrial processes he didn't fully comprehend. But controlled consumption, geared towards mitigation of reactive degradation risk and acceptable productivity increase.
The slate had no hesitation in accepting the authorization. There was no need to click "OK," no chance to reconsider or refine the decision. Simply interpreting the input and implementing the decision in other related systems in a mechanical manner.
The supervisor nodded once. A single gesture acknowledging Alucent's proper choice, showing comprehension of the priorities of the operation and willingness to collaborate with their optimization efforts involving documented losses.
Then the window deactivated, going back to its opaque state as a barrier to visibility from the monitoring station to supervisory observation.
He returned his attention to the management of the pressure in a series of motions that seemed almost mechanical, automatic. His hands worked the valves as he processed in the background of his mind the significance of what he had just authorized.
---
The effects appear at several sites simultaneously.
The pressure escalated in the areas serviced by Flow Intersection 9. Not apocalyptically, not to the point where the automatic systems could not contain through normal flow. Slightly, and the efficiencies would manifest in the reports.
Systems were stabilized at this newly established operational tempo. The facility was capable of adapting on the modulated throughput with mechanical certainty, and the BIO-REACTIVE INPUT was incorporated into whichever processes it was needed for, producing expected results.
The output increased on various production lines. This 12.4 percent efficiency increase was no longer an hypothetical projection but an actuality that could be quantified through sensors and confirmed by supervisory control.
Meanwhile, somewhere out of sight, further within the facility's infrastructure beyond the range of detection by Alucent's monitoring system, there was the BIO-REACTIVE INPUT
Not violently. Not with destabilization or safety protocols being breached. Just an auditory resonance, an organic hum that translated through the pipes like breath through metal tubing. It was a sound that shouldn't be present in strictly mechanical processes, something that was alive to the sensation of being consumed.
Not warning signals. A reaction. Proof that the input was not simply inert matter being processed but actual matter sensitive to the process in ways that generated sonic markers besides the recorded efficiency gains.
The vibration resonated through the transfer lane's flooring. Tremble that was not the rhythm of the forge's regular process, had an almost biological quality to it. Raya had been in the act of transferring the box, the burning in her hands making the crating heavy, when the wrongness had arrested her attention.
Gryan sensed it through his altered armbrace. The resonance was transmitted through the metal infrastructure that complemented his biological body, providing a feedback mechanism that his armbrace sensors recognized as pressure variation, but which was almost like presence. A living component within the infrastructure that reacted to conditions that Gryan's training was unprepared to deal with.
None of them knew exactly what was being used. What the "BIO-REACTIVE INPUT" itself was, beyond its medical designation and efficiency standards. Whether the "Waros from Hollow's Heart" were being consumed on an individual basis or a collective one, whether said beings felt like they were undergoing something that might be described as "suffering" or if alien cognition was processing their consumption based on models of comprehension that were not necessarily translatable via human constructs.
Only that it worked. That the authorization that Alucent had provided had propagated successfully, that the rate was happening at a reasonable level, that there was a clear benefit for the facility from living organisms that had been created and delivered to be incorporated into their production systems.
And that Alucent was the one who had said yes. Who'd made the calculation, put in the authorization, accepted the part of decision node in network, in which moral judgments were reduced to measures of efficiency.
His slate updated with confirmation notation.
AUTHORIZATION LOGGED – PERMANENT RECORD
Not an temporary decision, one that might later be rescinded or reconsidered. A permanent record, one that noted he would always choose, when faced with the decision of refusing participation or optimizing outcomes within the system he opposed, to optimize.
He would come to realize that he had become what he had been pretending to be all this time. That he had crossed a boundary from observation to action, from recording horror to actively enabling it in ways that advanced an objective while running counter to something he had considered integral to who he was. The pressure junctions needed work. Three more gauges meant the pot was boiling once more, requiring changes that ensured no failures occurred.
Alucent's hands cycled through habitual corrections, but his thoughts recoiled at the recognition he could no longer maintain a moral perch. He was the system now. He was a point in the web, a piece of a machine racing with equations that condoned pain for the sake of productivity needs.
The Iron Vale had brought him out, and he had shown his allegiance. Had shown that he comprehended the priorities and was willing to play his part in carrying them out, no matter how he felt or whatever his morals might dictate.
Which meant they would trust him with even more decision-making. With even more authorization. With even more chances to prove retention was acceptance of decision liability for the outcomes of optimization, no matter how horrifying those outcomes would be.
Deep within the facility's systems, there was a continuation of the organic resonance. The destruction of something that responded to that destruction through its ability to experience. The reminder that the gains had been expressed through a cost that was labeled non-critical, yet placed sonic markers on something that cared.
Alucent turned another valve and attempted to put out of his mind what he had authorized and what other authorizations would become necessary as his usefulness to the network became ever more reliant on his willingness to perform calculations requiring him to ultimately categorize living beings as input.
But the idea stuck. "The understanding that he'd crossed a line he couldn't turn back, and the knowledge that the intelligence and disruption they needed to come up with had to justify their infiltration and their part in the machines which devoured the parasites with such voracious appetites in order to create a 12.4% increase in efficiency." But the trend went on.
The plant functioned without regard for ethical repercussions. Also, Alucent did his job aware of the fact that his job now included authorizing the use of products making noise as if the products had experienced consumption. He was a part of the system. And the system knew that he knew what that meant.