Futureland - Nine Stories of an Imminent World (10 page)

Also, there was very little, if any, sound to be discerned. Jerry's bare feet on the floor might well have been feathers falling on a cloud. There were no machine sounds or human voices or even the far-off echo of the possibility of life.

Jerry walked along for nearly a quarter of an hour as Bits figured. He'd asked the naked black Adonis all sorts of questions but the young man just repeated his admonition about silence.

"Who's this Logan?" Bits asked, remembering the odd altercation between L. Johnson and the kid. At first Bits thought he was going to get the warning speech again but it didn't come. There was only silence and space.

"Com'on, guy," Bits insisted. "Tell me about Logan." Silence again. Bits was getting ready to ask something else when Jerry said, "Logan's my friend. We carried choke leaves from the upper to the lower terraces after harvesting time. There's always work for somebody who wants to move choke leaves."

Choke was the tobacco industry's answer to cancer-causing tobacco leaves. It was a golden aromatic leaf that made you feel mellow with no effect on motor skills and no cancer in the lungs. Jewel Juarez of the People's Health Watch had claimed that choke caused the equivalent of psychosis in lab animals after prolonged use but everyone on the net thought that Jewel was just a nutbroad who saw conspiracy in everything.

"He an' me'd make little soldiers outta the choke twigs and bring 'em down to Loki, Needles, and Darwin. Yeah." Jerry spoke softly but with feeling. "He was a puzzlemaster, a high planes resister. He proved that even the snake could get bit. Oh shit! Oh no!" The PAPPSI chair stopped moving forward, it wavered a little and was still. Jerry moaned. From the angle of the cry Bits thought that the young man had gone down on his knees.

Jerry's cries ceased and there was silence and stillness in the boundless hall.

"Jerry? Jerry, you okay, man?"

Abruptly the PAPPSI chair started moving again.

"Are you okay, Jerry?"

Jerry did not answer.

After another few minutes they came to a sign of luminescent green letters that read CHEM/BEHAV-SYS CENTER.

They entered the doorway and were flooded by light.

The brilliant yellow ceilings and floors illuminated by Sun Master light grids nearly blinded Bits. A bulky black man in a pale yellow smock came up to him.

"Name and crime," the man demanded.

Bits thought that he was being asked and was considering a variety of smart-ass answers. But before he decided on one an electronic voice reported, "Vortex, aka Bits, Arnold. Member of the outlawed TransAnarchist Trade Union. Hihacking, first degree antisocial code number sixteen point seven."

"Violence?" the bulky black man asked.

"Not reported. Personal commission unlikely. Mass destruction possibility, antisocial, lethal dose pack recommended."

Bits was trying to understand where the voice came from. He thought that it might be a file that the man in the smock had accessed before they'd entered. But it was also possible that a microchip with all this data was stored on his PAPPSI chair.

"Take him to the prep area, convict," the bulky man said.

Again they were going down a featureless hallway. But this hall was the bright yellow of the sun. Bright and shiny and noisy too. Bits could hear the bulky black man's hard shoes stomping the floor. There were also mechanical sounds and music playing softly in the background.

They came to a broad area that was set up as an infirmary of some sort. There was a waist-high bank of cabinets and an operating table made from shiny metal fitted with manacles for hand, head, and foot. A square-faced black woman, also in a yellow smock, came close to Bits and peered at him dispassionately.

"Boo!" Bits shouted while doing his best to lunge at her.

He got the effect he was after. The woman jumped back, startled momentarily. Then she smiled.

"We'll fix that soon enough," she said.

"The justice department wants maximum on this one, Sella," the man said.

"They want it on all of them, M Lamont," she replied. Sella wasn't a pretty woman but she had a figure under the smock and she wasn't yet forty. Bits wondered how many women there were on Angel's Island.

"Put him on the table, convict," M Lamont said to Jerry.

Jerry plucked Bits out of his chair as if he were weightless, slapped him down on the cold metal table and shackled him there. The woman, Sella, pressed a button and the table moved until it held Bits at a vertical angle facing her and M Lamont.

"You may return to your cell, convict," M Lamont said as he punched something into his glove screen. Jerry left on silent bare feet.

The woman called Sella and M Lamont went about with electric shears cutting off the andro-suit that Bits had worn for the past three weeks--since his arrest, speedy trial, conviction, sentence, and deportation.

"Why do they call you Bits?" Sella asked while M Lamont prepared a needle.

"What's that needle for?"

"Don't you mind about that," Lamont said as he jabbed the needle into a vein in Bits's right arm. "You just stay a good boy and this will be the last time you feel any pain at all on the island."

"Well?" Sella asked.

"Well what?" Bits said while watching Lamont. "Hey, man, what's that?"

"It's another needle."

Sella walked away from them.

"How many'a those things you gonna stick inta me?"

"Four," M Lamont said. "But don't worry, you got good veins."

"Why do they call you Bits?" Sella asked again from somewhere behind.

"Are you a qualified doctor?" Bits asked M Lamont.

"Qualified enough for anything you'll need, convict."

Sella approached them with a white enamel cylinder. As Lamont inserted the last needle she unscrewed the canister, taking out a shimmering blue-green sack. Bits could hear glass tinkling inside the bag. Four tubes, each of a different color, sprouted from a single hole in the shimmering skin. M Lamont attached the tubes to the needles and then wrapped the cloth loosely about Bits's right biceps. The cloth seemed to come alive then as it coiled into a snug grip.

"Ow," Bits complained.

"That's the electronic extenders. They go into the nerve system to read your reactions to stimuli," M

Lamont said casually. "The pain should stop almost immediately." And it was true. As Lamont spoke the pain subsided.

"What is that thing?" Bits asked.

"It's a snake pack," Sella said through sensually pursed lips. "What's it for?" Lamont and Sella smiled to one another.

"Should I show him, M?" Sella asked her co-worker. Lamont cocked his head in a noncommittal gesture. "Leave us alone for a few minutes," she said to Lamont. He walked away from the table and out of sight. Bits heard a door closing. Sella took a white metal stool from nearby and set it before Bits. She sat so that her head was at the level of his knees.

"You have a very nice cock, convict," she said in a matter-of-fact tone. Bits swallowed hard. He was only twenty-three and easily excited.

Sella pursed her lips again and blew against his genitals.

Bits thought that M Lamont was probably watching from somewhere but he didn't care. He hadn't been with a woman since before he went into isolation for his hihacking caper.

"Oh," Sella said, "I see a little motion there." She blew again. "I bet I could get it rock hard by just blowing, huh?" She kept blowing and at the same time she put on a pair of prophylactic gloves. "These gloves have a powder on them that's almost like oil." She circled the head of his penis with her right thumb and forefinger. He was fully erect just that quickly. She began moving her hand back and forth, lightly caressing the erection.

"Come for me, convict," she purred. Bits moaned as he felt the unavoidable ecstasy begin. But then there was a sting in his right arm and suddenly his erection went limp. He felt pain in his groin and up his arm into his head. The pain was like an orgasm itself, rising to a fast crescendo and exploding behind his eyes. Bits screamed and strained against his bonds. The pain rose and exploded again. This time Bits went limp and quivered, thinking that he was on the brink of death.

Sella stood up and said, "Any more questions, convict?"

"What, what happened?"

Sella's face was like stone when she said, "You are the property of Angel's Island now, convict. No sex or violence or insubordination will be tolerated. The ChemSys snake pack on your arm can identify almost any antisocial behavior that you might exhibit. It also has an onboard computer that knows where you should be going and what you should be doing. It knows when you should be asleep, when you should be awake, and when you need to go to the toilet. If a question is asked of you and the truth monitor has been activated you will be punished for lying. If you have an erection in your sleep it will be inhibited. If you have an erection when you're awake it will be inhibited and two or more pain doses will be administered. If you attempt to escape you will be put into a coma."

"What about my rights, M?" Bits asked, attempting and failing to get irony into his voice.

"You're thousands of miles from the borders of the U.S.," she said. "And you have been forsaken. Until you prove that you are rehabilitated your citizenship has been suspended." The supreme court had validated the constitutionality of citizenship suspension in 2022. M Lamont returned then. He went about loosening Bits's bonds. The young man fell to the floor when he was freed.

"Anything else, convict?" asked Sella, who was obviously the senior of the two.

"Yes," Bits said as he rose on shaky feet. "I have two questions."

"What?"

"As fast as these snakes'a yours might be I'm sure they can't read minds. What keeps me from giving you a death claw to the throat at my fastest speed?"

"From this moment on," Sella said as she poked at her palm screen, "you will receive a near lethal electric shock if any part of your body comes within eighteen inches of any nonconvict." Lamont grinned, undulating his three chins, and reached out a hand toward Bits, who leapt backward.

"You had another question, convict?" Sella asked.

"Yeah," Bits said, standing straight and trying not to show how shaken he was. "How can black people be like this to other black people? How could you treat me like this?" Bulky M Lamont chuckled to himself. Sella lifted one eyebrow and smiled.

She said, "You don't have that to fall back on anymore, convict. Nobody made you break the laws. You're not black or white, American, or even human, really. You are nothing and that's how we see you. That's how we all see you. Now go down this hall and out of the door you entered. You will see a bright blue line. Follow it. It will bring you to your next appointment. If you stray from the line you will receive a pain dosage. If you try to remove the snake pack you will be reduced to a coma. The third time you get a coma-dose you will not be revived."

__________

He went down the jet-black corridor, following a thin but bright blue line that ran along with red and lavender and green neonlike strings of light. Bits crossed paths with one other naked prisoner along the way. He was a bearded and tattooed white man with a large belly and big muscles. He was following the lavender and orange line that veered off down a different hallway. When they passed close to each other the white man made a silent salute. Bits returned the gesture but maintained the silence. He well remembered what had happened to Jerry and the pain that he felt after Sella's treacherous embrace. The blue line stopped at a doorway edged in blue light. The only indication that it was a doorway was the rectangular outline and the fact that the blue line stopped there.

Through the doorway Bits found himself in a bright, pure white expanse that seemed to go on, in all directions, forever. In the center of this expanse was a black desk. Behind the desk stood an elegant white man in a black andro-suit.

Bits looked from the man down to his feet. The illusion was that he stood on a clear glass floor that looked down upon an infinitely distant whiteness. He wasn't sure how the illusion was maintained, but it was very disconcerting.

"M Arnold," the tall man said in an official but not unfriendly tone. "Welcome to Angel's Island." Bits felt dizzy. He was afraid to advance the twenty feet or so to the man in black, the spot in an infinite sky.

"Hey," the convict said.

"I'm the warden here," the white man said. "But you can call me Roger."

"Okay."

"I meet every prisoner when he arrives. I tell them the rules, answer any questions they might have, and then send them on their way. It's all very civilized here. The guards are unarmed, there's very little interaction between the staff and the convict population. Weeks might go by and you won't see one of us."

"What if I get sick or get mail or something?"

Roger walked around to the front of his desk. He was exceptionally thin but in no way brittle or fragile. He was clean-shaven, with patches of darkness under his eyes.

"There will be no communication with your old life, Vortex. That was forfeit with the suspension of your citizenship. There is no vid input here. No outside. There's you and your cell mates. There's me and my staff. There's work if you want it, and nothing if you prefer. No books or writing pads or church or time. You have been sentenced to limbo and the only hope you have is if we can scientifically certify that you are no longer a threat to your country."

"H-how do you do that?" Bits asked.

"I don't do it, you do."

"Yeah? How's that?"

"It's very simple," Roger said, waving his left hand in the air. "I take it that Sella and M Lamont have explained the rudiments of the snake pack to you."

In the far-off distance, to the right of Warden Roger, Bits saw something like a passing cloud. It was mostly white but there were pale blue fringes and shadows here and there to define it. He thought that this anomaly was the architect's idea of art.

"Yeah," Bits said. "It's a high-tech shackle. Like my own personal guard."

"Exactly," Roger said. "Every time the snake has to discipline you there is a mark registered. If you have to be awakened or if you have to be put to sleep, if you break the sexual codes or talk while on duty. If you approach too close to a guard or stray from an assigned task. Each offense is a mark on the main computer file."