The End of Marking Time (18 page)

I want you to know I have never really hurt anyone. I don’t know if Wendell can look past who I am. Regardless of what he thinks, I need you to believe in me. I need you to know that I had to do those things to survive. You would have done the same if your mother put a gun to your head.

The euphoria of finishing forty-nine discs wore off the first time I thought of the agony Joel was enduring. I strained against the weight of my eyelids and the dull vibration in my head that scattered my thoughts. My tongue tasted like cotton. I could barely focus on the television, but every time I closed my eyes my subconscious played images of Joel in intense pain and reminded me of the hollow, breathless feeling I had when I left the courtroom without him.

I needed to press on. To finish this course before I caused any more trouble. Little did I know how naive that idea was. I’d left school in the middle of eighth grade, but I’d fallen behind long before then. I had to drop out when I left home, but that decision helped me avoid the truth that I just couldn’t keep up. Years without trying stunted my education. I thought I could sit in that little apartment and complete four and a half years of school, but I’d forgotten how hard it was.

Boldly I started the next disc, expecting to tear through it like I had Wendell’s psychological and moral lessons. The introduction droned on and on about the requirements to complete high school equivalency. I would need to pass dozens of tests in math, English, social studies, and science. Fortunately, once passed, I didn’t have to worry about that subject anymore.

Miniature Wendell told me that this was an adaptive environment. The system determined what I knew by measuring how long it took to answer a question and how many consecutive questions I answered correctly. Then it focused on what I needed to learn and not things I already knew. What he didn’t say, and what I would eventually learn, is that the system tested many things I wasn’t aware it was testing.

The first subject was math. Miniature Wendell said we were going to work on my digit span. This would improve my memory. We’d work on it until I had an average digit span. I had no idea what he was talking about until he said three single numbers one after the other and asked me to type them in. That was easy. We graduated to four numbers, then five. I made my first mistake at six and Wendell told me we would try again.

I paused the program by taking off my wrist strap, ran to the kitchen, and came back with a cereal box and a knife because I didn’t have a pen or a pencil in the entire apartment. When I refastened the wrist strap, Wendell started calling out numbers again. I carved them into the cereal box and when Wendell asked for them back, I typed them without fail. We reached seven, eight, and nine numbers without trouble. I was waiting for the system to tell me I’d passed and wouldn’t need to do this silly exercise anymore. Looking back, I should have stopped when we got to eleven numbers, but I kept going through fourteen and fifteen. Wendell congratulated me and then there was a long pause. He began again by calling the number six. The instant I touched the knife to the cereal box, the wrist strap jolted me.

“You’re only cheating yourself,” Wendell said. “And I won’t allow it.”

It would have been better for both of us if he had. I would have finished the program and he would have had another graduate.

He started over.

I shifted the knife to my left hand and kept my right hand, the one with the wrist strap, perfectly still. He called seven and then nine. I paused then carved. Soon as I touched the box, a spark jolted me. The knife flipped from my hand and landed handle first on the couch.

“How many times do we need to do this before you realize I’m watching you?” Wendell asked.

“If you’re watching me, why don’t you come up and teach me the lesson in person?”

“I’m not a teacher. I’m in the security room. What rock did you crawl out from under?” Miniature Wendell was this man’s puppet.

Fitting, if not entirely accurate.

I learned several things in that exchange. There were security people, probably there in the apartment complex somewhere. They could see and hear me and zap me if they chose. I also guessed they could type things for Wendell to say. That meant they could tinker with my lessons just to irritate me. By this time Joel probably had a dozen characters talking to him. None of them would be as polite as the security guard.

I went back to work and honestly failed the digit span test.

The machine began math from the very beginning. It asked me to add single numbers in my head and type in the result. I did so without using the knife, but I did use my fingers. I didn’t get any more shocks, so I assumed that was all right. After a bunch of those, Wendell asked me to subtract simple numbers. I did so and typed in the answers. The numbers got bigger and were displayed on the screen. It took me longer, but I worked through dozens of problems.

I tried to remember what grade we worked on addition and subtraction. It wasn’t eighth. It might have been fifth. Was the black box really asking me to make up eight years of math? I was glad when we moved on to multiplication and division, but it took me hours to pass the exam on the basics.

The unimpressive fireworks started me thinking about what separated a guy like Nick from me. Was what he learned in school really that important? He’d probably gone to college. If he was locked up in here, he’d only have to stay long enough to finish Wendell’s fifty-two morality tests, then he’d go back to his job. What work could I do if you let me out of here? Would math and English be important? I learned to pick locks and start cars. Those were useful skills. Would the black box teach me anything useful on the outside? Or would I have to find someone like Double to teach me to survive all over again?

What a bonehead I was, locking myself in my room until I finished the entire program. I can handle hard work, but I totally underestimated the time it would take. Funny, estimation was on the list of math subjects the black box would eventually try to teach me. Deone was stuck on algebra. The black box hadn’t mentioned that yet, but I remembered doing fractions, long division, decimals, and number lines in school. All those things came before algebra. Wendell announced we were going to add columns of numbers. What was that? Third grade math? It was an insult. How much school had I missed? Dozens of hard lessons lay ahead and math was only one subject.

I dropped the wrist strap and walked to the kitchen window.

I would have run then if not for the tracking device under my scalp. I was sure the pile of lessons would crush me before I finished three years laboring away in this room. Even if I could stick it out, the government would get tired of paying me for doing nothing. My slavery to the black box would be cut short. I just couldn’t know who would bring it to an end.

As I’m standing here, we all know two things. First, the government gave up on me before I quit. Second, three years was ridiculously optimistic.

The living room window was big enough to jump through. From the third floor to the cement walk wasn’t quite enough to kill me, but for a moment while I looked down, I saw a simpler end to my problems.

Did every citizen walk around with all this math in their head? If they did, how did I get so far behind? Did I sabotage myself? Was it my mother or my teachers? I thought about Joel and how close he was to jumping. I had no one really. Double and Cortez had it right. I hadn’t even started down that road. I was going to lose my son to Nick and Kathleen. I was twenty-five and I had nothing to live for.

My feet moved back until I could only see the street through the window. As easy as it would be, I couldn’t throw myself out. I didn’t want to end up mangled on the sidewalk and live only to be tethered to a ventilator for the next twenty years. I stared at the glass and a few times I looked to the door like it would open up and offer another path, one where less work would lead to a comfortable life, like the one Nick and Kathleen were making for Jonathan. The program beckoned, but that was hopeless. I sat and stared until the knock sounded on the door.

Dr. Blake stood on the landing in a jogging suit.

I hadn’t heard from him since the prison hospital, so for him to suddenly show up the day I started his portion of the program was too much of a coincidence. The program had called him just like it had ordered the cables delivered to my apartment. Maybe Wendell knew I’d be thinking about jumping at this point. Maybe someone was watching. I couldn’t be sure. After our talk, Wendell should have been rooting for me to jump.

Blake looked fresh in his suit, like he’d been on his way to the gym and gotten an urgent message to come to my place and keep me away from the window. Based on the bulge around his middle, I guessed he wore the jogging suit because it was comfortable, not because he planned to mount an exercise bike. The brand new running shoes seemed to confirm this.

He sat down uninvited on the couch and put his feet up on the coffee table. I would have done the same if not for the keyboard, the remote control, and the wrist strap for the black box.

“You had a tough day, didn’t you?” He asked the question with a smile, reveling in my difficulties.

I told him I’d plowed through a bunch of Wendell’s discs, but he saw through my rosy spin.

He said math was one of the toughest parts of the program. I just nodded. Then he told me I was at the fifth grade level and that completing the math component was going to take years regardless of what else I worked on. That was the first time I thought he was trying to shove me out the window.

“You don’t appreciate what’s going on here, do you?” he asked.

Appreciate was exactly the wrong word in my mind.

“You’re getting a major opportunity here. A chance to grab hold of your life before you get flushed. While you’re sitting in here learning things you should have learned when you were ten, the government is paying for you to live pretty darn comfortably.”

“Prison is prison.”

“You have no idea how lucky you are?”

“Lucky?”

“What should society do with people like you, Michael? People who for whatever reason threw their lives away? Is it our responsibility to pick you up and dust you off? Is it my responsibility to save you?”

I wanted to tell him to screw. That I’d be fine on my own, but by then I knew that was a lie. Blake knew it, too. I was a thief, an excellent thief, but the government took that away from me. It was impossible for me to make a living and Blake took great pleasure in having control over me.

“The world is at a crossroads. Common sense is returning and you are one of the first beneficiaries. Why don’t you appreciate that?”

Did he really think I should be thankful for being stuck here?

“Listen, when you went into prison, the system was broken. Anytime a system hangs around long enough, you get people pecking away at it from all sides and eventually it doesn’t work anymore. The guilty hired more and more expensive lawyers. Trials took forever and judges let men they knew were guilty go free. So more and more work by the police was accomplishing nothing. Trials work much more efficiently now, don’t you think?”

“And this helps me?”

“Sure. In the past, convicts sat around watching television. What did they learn? Nothing. Were they really being punished? I think not. We tried a few feeble efforts at rehabilitation, but now we understand the truth.”

I couldn’t help myself. “What truth?”

“To rehabilitate someone, to truly help them lead a useful life, takes a mammoth effort. We can’t afford to waste that effort on just anyone. We need to pick those who are deserving and weed out the rest.”

“Which am I?”

“You’re a guy with a chance. You doomed yourself by quitting school. We are giving you a chance to save yourself. We’re offering to teach you all the things your parents and your teachers failed to make you understand. That’s a massive effort. A massive effort.”

For some reason I went back to his revelation that I was learning fifth grade math. Was my mistake really that big? Could I stay in this apartment another six or seven years to learn what I’d missed? He was right that it was a massive effort, and I was doing all the work.

“Don’t be discouraged.”

I didn’t say anything.

“You’re in the best program there is. Wendell is a genius.”

I still didn’t believe I was lucky.

“There are seven programs in Massachusetts. Five are reeducation programs, but a few employ questionable methods. You were lucky to draw Wendell’s program. It’s your best chance to turn things around.”

“What good is this crap?” I waved toward the black box.

“You still don’t get how monumentally you screwed up by dropping out of society, do you? You’ve figured out that you can’t run. Let me show you your alternative and then you’ll see how lucky you are.”

I climbed into the passenger’s seat of Dr. Blake’s BMW, feeling guilty about what I’d done to Joel and nervous that I might actually see him. I was also morbidly curious to see the place where I might eventually die. Blake was my teacher and I believed he was trying to help me however painful the lesson was. I’d never really thought about the man himself until he started the car and rushed off into the dark. Why did a man like Dr. Blake teach in a reform program instead of taking a professorship in a prestigious college? Did he get some special satisfaction from teaching relearners? Or was he unable to secure a position with a more respectable clientele? The answer turned out to be one and the same, but as he zipped along, I was intent on what he was about to show me.