This was not an answer Vera wanted to hear. The whole point of installing and running a sensorweb was to avoid human “judgment calls.” Only idiots used guesswork when a sensorweb was available.
For instance, pumping toxins down here in the first place: That was some idiot’s “judgment call.” Some fool had judged that it was much easier to hide an environmental crime than it was to pay to be clean.
Then the Acquis had arrived with their sensorweb and their mediation, so everybody knew everything about the woe and horror on this island. The hidden criminality was part of the public record, suddenly. They were mining the crime. There was crime all around them.
A nasty fit of nerves gathered steam within Vera. She hadn’t had one of these fits of nerves in months. She had thought she was well and truly over her fits of nerves. She’d been sure she would never have a fit of nerves while wearing an Acquis neural helmet.
“Let me use the drill,” Vera pleaded.
“This drill needs a special touch.”
“Let me do it.”
“You volunteered for mine work,” said Karen. “That doesn’t make you good at it. Not yet.”
“‘We learn by doing,’” Vera quoted stiffly, and that was a very correct, Acquis-style thing to say. So Karen shrugged and splashed out of the way. Karen braced herself against the stony roof.
Vera wrapped her arms around the rugged contours of the drill. Her boneware shifted at the hips and knees as she raised the drill’s tip overhead. She pressed the trigger.
The drill whirled wildly in her arms and jammed. All the lights in the mine went out.
Vera’s exoskeleton, instantly, locked tight around her flesh. She was stuck to the drill as if nailed to it.
“I’m stuck,” she announced. “And it’s dark.”
“Yeah, we’re all stuck here now,” said Karen, in the sullen blackness.
Toxic water dripped musically.
“I can’t move! I can’t see my own hands. I can’t even see my mediation!”