Joy made her way to Floor B-101. The elevator from the control room had stopping points every ten floors. She stopped it at B-100, after which only one flight of steps down took her to B-101. Once there, she asked around for where there were irregulars. And she was pointed in one general direction along the donut-shape of the platform.
This floor was much higher up than the ones near the bottom. The differences were negligible. There was still an abundance of conveyors, processors and furnaces. It was afternoon, and school was out, meaning the activity had died down to a more relaxed pace.
Joy knew what irregular mind workers looked like, in that they always looked dramatically different from the ordinary. This was what allowed her to pass herself off as one. And how she would recognize the irregulars when she saw them.
A couple minutes of walking, and she spotted them. A rare expanse of open floor, near to the rock wall that surrounded the entire vertical shaft of the Foundry. There were three of them. They were gathered around a large, bulky vehicle on treads. It looked like a tank, but without the turret section.
As Joy approached, one of them noticed her, then the rest. They said nothing as she walked up to them and stopped near them. They were the same general color as Mind Workers, but with thicker, more humanoid limbs more typical of an emotion. These were the irregulars, she had no doubt.
"Um, hello." She said lightly. "You're the irregulars, I take it?" She wanted to say something; break the ice and get a conversation going.
One of them, with a feminine appearance, looked at the other two, then stepped forward and extended a hand. "Afternoon ma'am. I'm Lambda," she said with a slightly forced tone of politeness.
Joy's nervousness vanished. A handshake was definitely a language she understood. She took her hand and shook it up and down energetically. "My name is-" She stopped herself, realizing she couldn't call herself Joy.
Lambda pulled her hand away, and after a short pause, indicated the two others next to the vehicle behind her. "These are Iota," A tall, skinny one to the right of her nodded, waving lightly at the introduction of his name. "And Gamma," to her left was a worker of average height and build, whose head was concealed under goggles and a leather pilot hat. Lambda turned back to Joy. "Now, is there something we can help you with?"
"I... am an irregular as well." She said easily, lying with the same ease at which she always put up a positive face. "They sent me here as backup."
"Really." Lambda was appraising her from bottom to top. "You definitely don't look like a normal worker."
Joy had to come up with a name for herself. One that wasn't taken by the others. "I'm... Sigma. I was sent from a far-off sector."
"I see." Lambda said, taking a deep breath and letting her arms drop. "I suppose an extra pair of hands wouldn't hurt. Welcome to the squad."
"Great." Joy announced, her hands now clasped behind her back as she rocked back and forth on her feet. "What are my orders?"
Joy was immediately presented with a spray bottle and hand towel by the tall, skinny Iota. She accepted them.
"Your first assignment is to clean the APC." Lambda said. "We're deploying into the caves tonight, and I want her to shine like chrome, feel me?"
Joy looked at the spray bottle and rag in her hands, then at the vehicle. "I guess so. What are we doing tonight?"
Lambda and Gamma turned and left, picking up apparently empty metal cans and taking them with them. Then Iota walked up to Joy, holding an open binder. He read from it: "The entire cave system around the Foundry is overrun with D-Tractors. An infestation of Category Ones, and the occasional Category Two. This is severely hindering any attempt at energy mining by the Foundry's crew. Our job is to enter the tunnel network, locate the source of the D-Tractors, and then neutralize it if possible."
Joy was nodding at this. "Without an abundance of go-juice, Riley will become unmotivated."
Iota shut the binder, adjusting his spectacles. "Our primary objective tonight is reconnaissance. Neutralizing the source is secondary, if we can do so at minimal risk."
"Right then." Joy was mentally sucking her gut in. She walked past Iota, and got to work spraying and wiping down the armored vehicle. She understood why Lambda was treating her like a rookie, and saw no point in complaining about it. As soon as their mission was completed, she could get out out of the Foundry with them.
"We have a fourth guy, Omega, who is still inside the APC." Iota said. "He'll be out with your weapon in a bit. It needs to be calibrated. We really weren't expecting a fifth squadmate."
"Understood." Joy said efficiently, fingering her rag behind the fenders around the treads where dirt had gathered. "I'm looking forward to dealing with the D-Tractor problem." She was honest about this. Eliminating the infestation would seriously benefit Riley.
Iota was standing next to a hard plastic crate, loaded in a basket mounted on the side of the vehicle. He tapped on it. "There's polish in here, I think. Lambda said she wanted the APC to 'shine,' so I think it's implied." He turned, and went around to the rear of the vehicle. "I'll be right over here, switching out the distributor if you need anything." Iota proceeded to open a large cover, exposing the vehicle's engine.
Joy continued looking for dirt spots on the heavy, metallic vehicle. "So... what are Lambda and Gamma doing?"
"Searching..." The noise of a tightened bolt being proken loose rang out from the engine area. "Asking around for go-juice handouts on the different floors. There's a shortage, but we need it to power the APC."
"Uh huh..." Joy said, walking around to the other side of the treaded vehicle, bottle and rag in hand.
It was the late afternoon. Riley was sitting atop a concrete elevation, with a chain link fence to her back. The spot overlooked a public skatepark. Her feet, equipped with rollerblades, dangled in the air above a wooden ramp fitted along the wall. The ramp went to her right and left.. She was alone as she watched the sun, low in the sky, adopt a richer color.
"It's pretty, I suppose." Riley's Dim Joy said out loud.
"I like the sunset." Sadness expressed. "Especially when it makes you think... the day is almost over, and we'll never get it back."
On Riley's left, a kid riding a skateboard came up to the ramp. He jumped it, then grabbed onto the chain-link fence to the side. He held onto it, letting his skateboard roll away, and climbed up to sit on the concrete elevation about half a meter to Riley's right.
"Hello, Jordan." She greeted.
"Hey," he said in a relaxed tone as he leaned back against the fence in as close to a slouch as he could muster in the limited sitting area presented by the wall. Jordan had dark, curly hair, and was almost perpetually spaced out, even in the aftermath of the stunt necessary to get up to sitting on the fenced wall.
"Ooh! It's Jordan!" Dim Joy announced excitedly. "He's sitting here because we are. That's so-"
"This is where we normally sit, Joy." Anger rebutted, slightly annoyed at her giddiness. It's where we sat last time, and it's where we sat the time before that."
"We didn't even invent this spot. Kaede was here first and invited us." Disgust pointed this out with a fast, impatient monotone, wishing to point out a fact but interact with those she was pointing it out to as little as possible.
Riley tapped the heels of her rollerblades on the side of the wall a few times. "So..." she said, "what do you make of the Social Studies essay?"
"Which we still haven't done!" Fear said out loud. "Instead we're playing around here."
"I'll get it done over the weekend, I think." Jordan replied.
"Over the weekend..." Said Dim Joy. "That's kinda just like what we're doing, isn't it?"
"Why, on this brown Earth are you over-analyzing everything, Joy?" Said Disgust.
Another girl on rollerblades came up the ramp from Riley's right. After jumping it, she grabbed the chain link fence and climbed to the sitting spot on Riley's left. "Hey, Kaede." She greeted as she got settled.
"What's your status on the essay?" Jordan asked her.
"I'll... say it's in the works," she replied. Kaede was on the same hockey team as Riley. They had become friends when, in Hockey practice, they worked together to train in tactics that made the fullest use of Riley's left-handed shooting. Kaede was a stoic pragmatist, and didn't care about being in a support role as long as their team scored points.
"Great." Riley said out loud as she banged her head back lightly against the cushioning pliability of the chain-link fence. Honesty island Increased its activity. "Not one of us has made any real progress on it. Correct?"
Jordan groaned as Kaede looked in the other direction.
Dim Joy took the reigns. "Oh, don't sulk you guys. I'm not judging." Riley said immediately following their reaction. "We've got the whole weekend after all. I'm not trying to schedule your lives." She looked left, and right, at both of them.
They were staring at her now. "And... where is this coming from?" Kaede said flatly, frowning lightly.
Inside Kaede's mind, captained mainly by her Disgust, they became attentive toward Riley's sudden lighthearted attitude.
"This must be addressed," said Kaede's Disgust, the biggest of her emotions, and standing in the center.
"I concur," said her Fear. "Riley is not normally so lenient."
"She insisted we practice all day that one time," said her Sadness. "No quitting, until we got the play right."
"It could be she's becoming weak." Her Anger speculated. "It could end up compromising the team, and we will begin losing matches."
"I am not convinced this is cause for alarm," said her Joy. "It is one instance. Perhaps an off day?"
"I am in agreement with Joy," her Disgust declared. "We will abstain from action until we know more. For now, let us observe."
"Very good."
"Fine then."
"Alright."
"Sure."
Concurred the other four emotions.
Riley shut her eyes a second, moving to the edge of their perch. "We'll... talk about it tomorrow, alright? I have to go home."
"You mean... talk about our essay assignment?" Kaede asked.
She nodded. "Yeah, of course. I'll... see you guys later." Riley hopped off the perch, turning her facing rightward and landing near the top of the ramp, and proceeding to roll down it naturally on her rollerblades.
Jordan watched her go.
"Alright guys. I'm convinced." Jordan's Joy was invested in the console, with his other four emotions stopping what they were doing one by one to have a look in varying levels of distance and interest.
"Convinced of what?" his Disgust asked.
"I'm convinced..." his Joy repeated, slouching as it propped its feet up on the console. "That it's all going to work itself out.
"Oh..." They all said in an elongated voice.
"No need to do anything, then."
"Corr-ect-a-mundo." His Joy said. "It's not like Riley is some frilly. And we do have all weekend for that essay. It's golden right now. I feel like..." The other emotions listened attentively. "I feel like we've done it, and we can kick back." With this, his Joy turned up the volume, and the emotions went about whatever they wanted to do.
"Hey, Sigma!" Lambda said.
In Riley's Thought Foundry, Joy was handed what looked like a hand cannon. It was two-handed, and she held it like a rifle. The one who handed it to her was Omega. He was somewhat shorter than Joy, with a rounded head and equally rounded eyes.
Omega had the novelty of lacking a mouth, and so he did not speak as he indicated with his hand a row of empty bottles set up on a table in the distance. Just behind the table was the rock wall which surrounded every floor of the Thought Foundry. And to the left of it was the gated off entrance to the cave network.
"That's an incinerator," said Lambda, who was observing the scene with her arms crossed. Gamma, behind her, was filling the APC with go-juice. "It's a weapon, for dealing with D-Tractors."
Joy was glancing at her from a sideways facing. "And by deal with, you mean..."
"Kill, of course," she nodded. "Go ahead, get a feel for it."
Joy aimed it at the row of bottles on the distant table. After a long, silent, inactive phase of aiming, she squeezed the trigger.
There was no recoil, and a soft, but heavy brushing sound as the gun fired a red beam of energy that extruded smoke. It narrowly missed the middle-left bottle, and burned a narrow hole into the rock facing behind the makeshift shooting range.
Joy remained in firing position. The others remained quiet. And she took another shot, this time striking the bottle and melting through it. There was no force energy in the shot, and so the bottle did not fall over as the afflicted area melted down and collapsed.
"That's how its done," Lambda remarked. "Keep going, 'till you have consistency."
Joy turned to Lambda, aiming the gun safely upward. "Is this powered by go-juice as well?"
She shook her head. "It's a weapon, not a motor, no."
"What, then?"
"Angry memories."
There was a spherical segment on the rear end of the gun's shaft. Joy undid a latch, causing half of its round form to swing away on a hinge. Revealing, inside, a deep red orb. Joy even saw the physical event which the memory was a recollection of. She turned to Lambda. "You're weaponizing Riley's experiences."
Lambda nodded. "That's right. The energy from a disgusted memory will only slow a D-Tractor down or make it sick. Sad ones drain their energy and dull their instincts. Fearful ones... actually make them stronger, as do joyous ones. Angry memories are the only ones that are practical for killing them."
Joy was looking at the angry memory, inserted as the power source for her new weapon. "What happens to the memory, when it's used up..?"
"It goes gray. The event itself can still be recollected, but it loses its emotional coloring."
Now Joy's eyes were shut. She closed the hatch over the memory. "So you go around stealing Riley's experiences, in order to power your guns?"
She only shrugged at this. "If I had any say at all in Headquarters, they'd pump out more angry memories. If there were more in circulation, we could afford to use more powerful weapons that use more than one orb at a time."
Joy's sense of responsibility for the well-being of Riley's mind made her want to object ot this. To yell and loudly denounce the irresponsible practices of Lambda and her team. But she kept herself under control.
Lambda continued, now leaning back on the APC. "It makes sense, doesn't it? The more angry experiences a person has had, the stronger their defenses against things like the D-Tractors."
Joy's jaw was clenched, she was speaking through her teeth. "What... kind of threat, do the D-tractors pose, that would call for using memories like this?"
Lambda let her hands drop, and bounced off from leaning on the APC. "You'll see for yourself tonight, Sigma. For now..." She turned, and walked away. "You're free to do as you want, I suggest practicing with your weapon. We head into the tunnels tonight, as soon as Riley goes to sleep."
Joy was left alone. She stood there, for several long minutes. Reflecting on what she'd just learned, and what negative side-effects it might have on Riley's mind. Were the D-Tractors really that big a problem? Was it worth draining the emotional charge of Riley's memories to solve?
After she finished standing still and processing, she immediately got back to it. With a resurrected optimistic energy, she lifted her weapon, and took another shot at the bottles.