The Hofflebrock

Pending

A feature in development · J. Nicholas

PENDING

You die. Your family gets a check. You keep contributing.

A kitchen table in morning light: a monthly check in an envelope with a gold reliquary seal, a coffee mug, a framed photo of a smiling man.

The Premise

Posthumous Employment

Reliquary harvests donated human brains and runs them as compute. One brain does the work of a warehouse of servers, on less power, less land and less water.

You sign up the way you’d sign up for organ donation, with a small mark on your ID. When you die, your family gets a monthly check.

Nobody knows whether anyone is still in there. The business works fine without the answer.

One brain replaces a warehouse of servers.

The racks went quiet a generation ago.

The World

Most people are on the list.

Parents can register their children for the family payment. Registration lasts for life.

Removal exists. It’s slow and deliberate, and Reliquary decides how long it takes. Filing for it is the suspicious act.

Nobody tells you you’re registered. That was your parents’ job.

A faded freeway billboard in soft 1970s advertising style, a smiling family looking up into warm light, a small gold reliquary mark in the corner.
Keep contributing.
A laminated ID card on a diner counter with a small embossed gold reliquary symbol in the corner.
The mark. On IDs, storefronts and funeral homes.
A strip mall at dusk: a funeral home, a pharmacy and a payday loan office, each window carrying the same gold reliquary decal.
Every window carries it. Nobody looks.

The Catalog

Everyone has a sheet.

Every registered person is scored in four categories:

  • Holding conflicting possibilities without collapsing them
  • Pattern and anomaly detection
  • Reading people
  • Spatial memory

Value comes from the combination. The people Reliquary wants most often share nothing, which is why nobody has seen the pattern.

A printed profile sheet on a gray desk with four score bars, a small ID photo and a status box, a coffee ring and a pen across it.
The profile sheet.
A teenager's hands holding a phone in a dark bedroom, playing a bright puzzle game with a score on screen.
Scores come from a registration quiz, employer data, a free game people share, and recordings.
A woman laughing as she talks to a small smart speaker on her kitchen counter, its light pulsing amber.
The products run on the people. Nobody asks.

The People

Dell Knox, late thirties, tired eyes, navy recovery jacket with a gold pin, leaning against a hospital corridor wall at night.

Dell Knox

A pragmatist who came up through organ procurement and earned his way into brain recovery, the elite tier. Families trust him at the bedside. Reliquary records every word, and that’s in his contract.

He still gets a check every month from his brother’s work. His parents registered him as a kid. He’s been scheduled for twenty years.

Ruth sorting mail on a worn couch while her two children sit on the floor, a framed photo of Abner with a gold ribbon on the shelf behind them.

Ruth, Hollis and Nan

Abner’s widow and kids. Ruth believes Abner is still working, and his checks pay for the children. She has more reason than anyone not to believe Dell.

Gil Cuthbert in a break room, smiling, holding a coffee out toward the camera.

Gil Cuthbert

Dell’s coworker and friend. The most useful ally he has.

Mona Parrish, silver-haired, in the back of a cluttered secondhand shop under a desk lamp, a scratched-up ID pinned behind her.

Mona Parrish

She got off the list the long way. She knows it can be done, and what it costs.

Abner Knox

Dell’s brother. Dead, and one of Reliquary’s best performers. His success suggested siblings share wiring, and that moved Dell’s date up.

A faded instant photograph of a smiling man who resembles Dell, holding a toddler.

Act One

The Discrepancy

Dell runs an ordinary recovery and gives the speech he’s known for. The family thanks him.

Dell crouched beside a hospital bed, holding an elderly woman's hand, a small recorder with a red light clipped to his jacket.
The speech. Recorded, as always.

A donor arrives from an accident in better condition than the accident allows. Dell notices because nobody else in the room would.

A sterile recovery room under cold blue light, Dell in a surgical gown standing still over a monitor of clean vital readings.
Too good.

The same week, Abner’s monthly check jumps. A performance bonus for a dead man. Then Dell recognizes a recovery crew: same team, different city, first on scene again.

He opens the catalog to look up his brother. A few rows down is his own sheet. Scores, assigned team, destination, collection window.

Collection window: next week

Act Two

The Pursuit

His account says he’s on medical leave. He’s placed people on that leave himself. He knows what comes after it.

His first instinct is a hospital. He reaches the entrance before remembering that hospitals are where his team picks people up.

Gil helps. Places to sleep, records, a ride. Dell files for removal and the request shows as processing. Mona’s route works, but it took her months. He has days.

A cheap motel room under red neon, Dell on the bed with a paper map, Gil in the doorway holding car keys, his face in shadow.
Gil always knows where to find him.

He goes to Ruth. Reliquary got there first, with a family check-in script built from Dell’s own recorded voice.

Ruth at her front door listening to a woman in a navy Reliquary jacket holding a glowing tablet, Dell watching from a parked car across the street.
His own voice, at his brother’s door.

Removal won’t come in time. Dell stops running from the date and starts chasing the reason for it.

Act Three

The Matched Set

The order leads to the facility where Abner’s brain runs. Dell is meant to end up beside it. A matched pair.

A long quiet chamber of identical glowing amber housings, one empty beside one occupied, Dell standing between them.
Close-up of Dell's hand on a heavy switch on the side of a glowing housing, his face reflected in the glass as the light dims.

He goes in on his own terms and disconnects his brother. The only answer he gets to whether anyone was in there is choosing not to find out.

Ruth’s checks will stop.

With the set broken, the demand behind Dell’s date disappears. He traces the order to Gil, who wrote it to fit his friend’s profile and let the system do the rest. Dell doesn’t expose him. He shows the system that Gil is a threat, and the system does what it does.

Gil smiling at his desk, unaware, while a recovery crew in navy jackets walks down the corridor toward his door.
Gil is scheduled.

Removed from the list

His name reappears. No explanation.

Status: Pending

The Reliquary mark: an ornate gold reliquary box.

Pending · A feature in development · J. Nicholas

Unnamed American city. No year. Keep contributing.