The Glitch in Sleep (9 page)

A girl with dirty blond hair and bright green eyes came up on the screen. She was about the same age as Becker, sitting in her bed and struggling not to cry.

“What’s her story?”

With a keystroke, the Night Watchman pulled up her Case File on the screen. It had the seal of the Big Building on the front.

“Jennifer Kaley. Sector 104, Grid 11. I think that’s near Toronto.”

“Caledon, to be exact.” Simly blushed for being a know-it-all.

The Night Watchman seemed troubled as he decompressed the file.

“It looks s like a 532 was ordered for her tonight . . . ”

“What’s a 532?”

“A Dream that only a Case Worker can call in. They use it when nothing else will work.”

“Why? What’s wrong with her?” asked Becker.

The Night Watchman hit another key, but the computer bleeped “Access Denied.”

“Sorry, personal and confidential. You need a clearance level of eight to open that up, and mine’s only seven.”

“Here, let me try.” Fixers have a clearance level of nine-plus (out of a possible eleven), and when Becker typed in his pass code, information began to scroll.

According to her dossier, Jennifer Kaley was being picked on at school for basically no good reason. There were snapshots of her walking down the halls, being shunned by the other kids. Sitting by herself in the cafeteria. And one really painful clip of her being jeered and mocked when she was just trying to walk home after school, with her head down and her tiedyed backpack hanging from her side.

“Well, did she get it?” asked Becker.

“Get what?”

“The Dream. Did she get it before the Glitch struck?”

The Watchman surfed and surfed but found only a solitary beep.

“Negative. And there’s no way to get it to her unless she falls asleep.”

The same hundred pairs of eyes turned to Becker once again, and as he looked at the girl in the window, he finally started to understand what Fixer Blaque had been talking about. Right now, she was forcing a smile so her mom wouldn’t worry as much even while wondering how she was going to make it through the next day. Why Becker was drawn to her, he couldn’t really say—there were probably bigger Cases in The World that day—but for him, Jennifer Kaley was the Mission Inside the Mission. And that’s all he needed to know.

“Let’s Fix.”

9
. Toolmaster 3000s are bigger on the inside than on the out.

10
. Every employee in The Seems gets two weeks of paid vacation, and The World is a perennial hot spot.

11
. A gated community overlooking the Sunset Strip.

12
. For full description of all differences (anatomical and otherwise) between Seemsians and Humans, please see:
The Same, but Different,
by Sitriol B. Flook (copyright XVCGIIYT, Seemsbury Press).

14
. W.T.: World Time.

15
. Staff members at the IFR.

4

The Slumber Party

Though miniscule in size, Glitches are a Fixer’s worst nightmare. They typically pop up in one device, and if left unchecked, can spread across an entire department, eventually resulting in wholesale collapse. Glitches were thought to have been eliminated during “Operation Clean Sweep.” It may be impossible to rid the system of what many believe to be the natural outgrowth of any complex machine.

Degree of Difficulty: 10.0

—
The Compendium of Malfunction & Repair, p. 108

Office of the Foreman, Department of Sleep, The Seems

“No. No. Not that one.” The Sleep Foreman shuffled desperately through a dusty file cabinet in his office. “Ah—here we go!”

On his drafting desk, the devoted employee unrolled the faded blueprints of the famed Department of Sleep. The factory itself was massive and composed of a series of “Bedrooms,” each responsible for producing one individual component of Sleep. Yet the layout seemed to defy any known law of physics.

“The guy who designed this place was a freak. His whole concept was that the department should look and feel like a pillow fort.”

If that was so, he’d certainly succeeded. There were hallways constructed entirely of blankets and pillows, doorways made of upturned mattresses, and soft, custom-made Night Lights, which cast a soporific atmosphere throughout. In addition, a handful of secret Bedrooms seemed to have no entrance or exit at all.

“Show me the progression of the Glitch,” requested Becker.

“The initial Blip was in one of the Rest Areas,” reported the Foreman. “But by the time we got there, it had already hit here . . . and here.”

“Whoa, that’s fast,” Simly marveled.

Unlike Foibles, which tend to pop up in a single machine, unraveling its inner workings but usually staying put, Glitches move from machine to machine, trashing everything in their wake. Becker knew the only way to stop one is to track it down and Fix it, before it does damage beyond repair.

“The last alert was in the Snooze.” The Foreman pointed to the location on the map. “But it could be anywhere by now.”

“We need to pick up the scent.” Becker checked his Time Piece™, then turned to his Briefer. “Recommendation?”

Simly thought it over, then produced several items from his Briefcase.

“Well, you could use a Vindwoturelukinvor™ but those can be flaky at night. A Wharizit . . . oh, wait! I have the perfect thing.”

He whipped out a busted-up old Tool. It was caked with dirt and looked like it hadn’t been used in years.

“What kind of contraption is that?” asked the Foreman.

“It’s a Glitchometer™!”

Glitchometers had been all the rage in the days before Clean Sweep, but they had been discontinued due to serious design flaws and now were mostly collectibles or sold at antique Tool fairs.

“Where on earth did you get it?” asked Becker, impressed.

“I didn’t get it on earth! I got it from my grandfather’s Toolkit. He’s got all kinds of wacky junk.” Simly’s paternal grandfather was regarded as one of the greatest Briefers who ever lived, and though he had never made it to Fixer, he had assisted on many a famous Mission. Simly fired up the Tool and it sprang to life, the sensitive needle flipping back and forth, before zeroing itself. “Glitchometers focus in directly on the unique energy trail left by a Glitch, and when activated, should take us right—”

But black smoke began to cough out the sides, along with an awful scraping sound, forcing Simly to shut it down before it blew up in his hands.

“Sorry, boss. I don’t know what happened.” Simly was dejected, especially considering he prided himself on Tool prep and deployment. “Do you want me to call my grandpa and see if he can—”

“Don’t sweat it, Simly.” Becker rolled up the blueprints and stuffed them in his Toolkit. “We’ll do this the old-fashioned way.”

The Snooze, Department of Sleep, The Seems

Deep in the sub-basement of the factory was where they manufactured Snooze—one of the three key ingredients (along with Refreshment and Twinkle) that were mixed to create Sleep itself. Since this was where the Glitch was last sighted, it was here that Becker and Simly began their investigation.

The air was hot and thick with the smell of burning rubber. Men with smocks and welding visors loaded pure Exhaustion into smelting pots while mechanized arms dropped molasses and maple syrup from gargantuan soup ladles. Once cooled, the gelatinous mess congealed into a thick taffylike substance, which was then cut into chunks and shipped to the Master Bedroom for final mixing.

“No, no, no, no no!” A rosy-cheeked man in a chef ’s outfit was sampling the batch. “Zis is too sweet!”

The Snoozemaster had been promoted from “Sous” all the way to “Chef de Cuisine” because of his instinct for how to make Sleep even tastier, but his bombastic personality had ruffled a few feathers along the way.

“What do you want from me?” cried one of the Tireless Workers. “The Glitch threw off our entire recipe!”

“
Gleech, Gleech, Gleech! I no want to hear no more about zis Gleech!” The Snoozemaster kicked over a row of pots and pans, while beside him, Becker waited patiently for the temper tantrum to subside.

“So tell me again how it started?”

“I get call into ze office, on a night when I have tickets to Ze Snorchestra no less, and what do I findz? All ze recipes for ze Snooze are, how you say, bass ackwards!”

The master pressed the Snooze button and rebooted his computer, which printed Becker a list of recipes that had all been mixed and matched.

“Coffee beans are being blended with Pizzazz. Cinnamon with ze Mope. I told zese idiots from day one not computerize ze cookbooks. We makes zis by hand since back in ze Day, and ze system need no Fixing!”

Becker shook his head. One of the great frustrations of Fixing was the tendency of the Powers That Be to layer “quick fixes” on top of the existing technology, rather than fess up to the need for a page one redesign. “Give me a second, okay?”

“Everybody stand back,” announced Briefer Frye. “Give the man some space!”

Becker closed his eyes, and using the old-fashioned way, reached out with his 7
^th
Sense to hone in on the Glitch. Judging from the goose bumps that sprouted up along his arms, he had picked up the trail, but it was still faint.

“I wish I could stay to help rewrite your recipes,” apologized Becker, “but I have to get my hands around this thing before it trashes the whole department.”

The Snoozemaster understood but still appeared quite shaken.

“But what about ze Snooze? Sleep cannot be mixed wizout ze precious Snooze!”

Becker stepped over to a vat, dipped his finger in the sludge, and took a sample taste.

“It’s almost there. Maybe an Energy reduction would enhance the flavor of the underlying Exhaustion?”

“No, no, no. Zis is crazy. It will never work . . .” Simly and the Tireless Workers dropped their eyes to the floor. “Unless . . . ”

“A little bit of Love?” Becker seemed to read his mind.

“Exactly!”

A spark shot through the room.

“Can you do it in time?” the Fixer asked hopefully.

“Not only can I,” bellowed the Snoozemaster, turning toward his line cooks with fire in his eyes. “But it shall be ze heaviest, most satisfying Snooze anyone in Ze World has ever seen!”

A roar went up among the Tireless Workers, but as they scrambled to gather the necessary ingredients, Simly couldn’t resist taking a taste for himself.

“Needs paprika.”

WDOZ, Department of Sleep, The Seems

“W . . . D . . . O . . . Zzzzzzzzzz.”

Becker’s goose bumps had led them to a small radio station on the roof of the department and while the jingle lingered in the air, he and Simly waited for the disc jockey to finish up his act.

“And that was ‘The Sound of Rain Outside Your Window on a Lazy Afternoon,’ by the Somnambulists . . . an oldie but goodie,
designed
to ease your
mind
into the soft, sweet paradise of Sleep.”

WDOZ had been established to broadcast soft tones to the subconscious minds of the people of The World—helping them to relax in preparation for the arrival of their Good Night’s Sleep. The DJ pulled another forty-five from the library in the booth.

“Up next, I’ve got a fresh take on a deep cut from back in the Day . . . ” He put the needle to the record, which was entitled “The Hum of the Air Conditioner (Remix).” “My name is Johnny Zzzzzzzzzzz and you’ve been listening to WDOZ, greasing the hinges on the ol’ inner doorway since 13303.”

As the record began to spin, the balding, pony-tailed jock lowered the volume and exited the booth to join Becker and Simly.

“Look, brother”—his off-air personality was a far cry from his on-air one—“I don’t know what anyone told you, but there ain’t no Glitch in
my
station.”

“I’m not here to blame anybody,” Becker assured him. “It’s just that Glitches can be tricky. Maybe it got into the board.”

“A Glitch got into the board?” The DJ shook his head, insulted, then pulled out a pair of headphones and jacked them into the slot. “Be my guest.”

Becker gave Simly the okay to put the phones on, and Johnny Z cranked up the volume on what was being broadcast to The World that very moment. In a matter of seconds, Simly’s eyelids started to get heavy and he began to make space for himself on the floor.