“Thanks,” says Stan. “See you in two.”
Two months – one in, one out – until his next Clint haircut. Before then he’ll be connected with Jasmine, whatever it takes.
He joins the lineup for lunch, which is always the first thing that happens after the haircut. Positron food is excellent, because if the cooking team orders up crap for you, you’ll dish out crap to them the next month to get even. Works like a charm: it’s amazing how many painstaking chefs have sprung into being. Today it’s chicken dumplings, one of his favourites. It’s an added satisfaction that he himself has made a contribution to the production of the chickens, in his Positron role as Poultry Supervisor.
Lunch hour was to be stressful in the months just after he’d signed in. At that time there were still some bona fide criminals in the place. Drug dealers, gang enforcers, grifters and con artists, assorted thieves. Seriously shaved heads, deeply engraved tats that hooked the wearer to their affiliates and advertised feuds. There were shovings in the cafeteria lineup, there were glarings, there were standoffs. Stan learned some ingenious combinations of words he would never have put together himself, even when fighting with Conor, and you had to admire the inventiveness, the poetry, even. (
Things might escalate: stompings, the cracking of bones. Then the guards would be expected to muscle in, but only some of them had formerly been real guards, so these interventions lacked authority. Tramplings took place, kickings, punchings, chokings, hot coffee scaldings, followed by retribution behind the scenes: mysterious knifings in the showers, puncture wounds traced to double-pronged barbecue forks lifted from the kitchen, concussions caused by men somehow banging their heads repeatedly on rocks, out in the market-garden area, among the sheltering rows of tomato plants.
Throughout those days, Stan hunkered down and kept his mouth shut and tried to be as invisible as possible, knowing he was no Conor – he lacked the skill set for such hardcore games. But that period didn’t last long, because the disturbances caused by the criminal elements were too great a threat to the Project. The initial thinking had been that the criminals would be sprinkled among the volunteers now making up the bulk of the prisoners, which was supposed to have an improving effect on the crims. Not only that, but they too would be let out every second month to take their turns as civilian inhabitants of Consilience, doing town-side tasks or acting as guards at Positron.
This would give them an experience they might never have had before – namely, a job – and would also earn them respect from others and a place in the community, leading to a newfound self-respect. Having prisoners act as guards and the reverse would be positive all round, went the mantra. The guards would be less likely to abuse their authority, as it would soon be their turn to be under lock and key. And the prisoners would have an incentive for good behaviour, since violent acting-out would attract retaliation. Also, there was no longer an upside to criminality. Gang dominance got you no material wealth, and you couldn’t fence anything: who’d want to buy stuff that was replicated in all the Consilience furnished houses anyway? There were no illicit substances that could be bootlegged or pushed, no rackets that could be run. That was the official theory.
But it seemed some criminals wanted to throw their weight around just for the hell of it: top dog was top dog, even if there was no financial payoff. Gangs formed, non-criminals were intimidated by criminals or else drawn into circles of dark power they found newly appealing. There were home invasions in the town, trashing-and-smashing parties, maybe even – it was rumoured – gang rapes. At one point there was a threat of an uprising against management, with hostages taken and ears cut off, but that plan was discovered in time, through a spy.
The outside forces could always have turned off the power supply and the water – any halfwit could figure that out, in Stan’s opinion – but then the bad news would leak out and the Project would go down in flames, way too publicly. The model would be judged worthless. And a shitload of investors’ money would have been wasted.
Once surveillance was tightened, the worst troublemakers vanished. Consilience was a closed system – once inside, nobody went out – so where had they gone? “Transferred to another wing” was the official version. Or else “health problems.” Rumours as to their actual fates began to circulate, in furtive hints and nods. Behaviour improved dramatically.
Duty
Lunch completed, Stan has a brief rest in his cell; then, once the chicken dumplings have settled, he works out in the weights room, concentrating on his core strength. Then it’s time for his shift at the poultry facility.
Positron has four kinds of animals – cows, pigs, rabbits, and chickens. It also has extensive greenhouses that stand on the sites of demolished buildings, and several acres of apple trees, in addition to the outdoor market gardens. These, and the soybean and perennial-wheat fields, are supposed to produce the fresh food, both for Positron Prison and for the town of Consilience. Not only the fresh foods but the frozen ones, and not only foods but drink: soon there will be a brewery. Some items are brought in from outside – quite a few items, in fact – but that state of affairs is viewed as temporary: in no time at all, the Project will be self-sustaining.
Except for paper products, and plastics, and fuel, and sugar, and bananas, and …
But still, think of the savings in other areas, such as chickens. The chickens have been an unqualified success. They’re plump and tasty, they breed like mice, eggs roll out of them with clockwork regularity. They eat the leafy leftovers from the vegetables, and the table scraps from the Positron prison meals, and the chopped-up remnants of slaughtered animals. The pigs eat the same things, only more of them. The cows and the rabbits are still vegetarian.
But apart from eating them, Stan has nothing to do with the cows and pigs and rabbits, only the chickens. These live in wire cages but are let out for a run twice a day, which is supposed to improve their morale. Their heating and light are run by a computer inside a little shed, which Stan checks periodically: there was a malfunction once that almost resulted in roast chicken, but Stan knew enough to be able to reprogram and save the day. The eggs are collected via ingenious chutes and funnels, with a digital program counting them; Stan himself has made some improvements that reduced egg breakage, but it’s running fine now. Mainly he spends his four-hour shift supervising the afternoon chicken outing, breaking up the pecking-order squabbles, and monitoring the combs for poor health and moping.
It’s a make-work job, he knows that. He suspects that each chicken has a chip implanted in it, with the real supervision done that way, in a roomful of automated chicken snoopers recording numbers on flow charts and graphs. But he finds the routine soothing.
In earlier days – during the semi-reign of the run-amok real criminals, and before the authorities had put in the spyware cameras overlooking the poultry facility – Stan got daily visitations during his shifts from men inside Positron, his fellow prisoners-for-a-month.
What they wanted was a short time alone with a chicken. They were willing to trade for it. In return, Stan would be offered protection from the furtive gang thuggery that was then running like an undercurrent beneath the orderly routines of Positron Prison.
“You want to what?” he asked the first time. The guy had spelled it out: he wanted to have sex with a chicken. It didn’t hurt the chicken, he’d done it before, it was normal, lots of guys did it, and chickens didn’t talk. A guy got very horny in here with no outlets, right? And it was no fair that Stan was keeping the chickens all to himself, and if he didn’t unlock that wire cage right now, his life might not be so pleasant, supposing he was allowed to keep it, because he might end up as a chicken substitute like the fag he probably was.
Stan got the message. He allowed the chicken assignations. What did that make him? A chicken pimp. Better that than dead.
Conor would have known what to do. Conor would have cold-cocked the guy, turned him into chicken feed. Conor would have charged a higher price. Conor would have been running the thuggery himself. But then, Conor might not have survived, once Management started ironing out the Positron glitches in dead earnest.
Strolling between the rows of cages now, listening to the soothing clucks of contented hens, smelling the familiar ammonia scent of chicken shit, he wonders if he’s ashamed of himself for his chicken pimping, and discovers that he isn’t. Worse, he ponders giving it a try himself, which might ease his tormented desires by wiping the image of Jasmine off his brain with a living feather duster. But there were the surveillance cameras: a man could look very undignified with a chicken stuck onto him like a marshmallow on a stick. Most likely it wouldn’t work as an exorcism: he’d only start having daydreams about Jasmine in feathers.
Cut it, Stan, he tells himself. Block it off. Suck it up. He’s getting way too obsessive. There must be a drug he could take to get rid of this waking dream. No, this waking nightmare: endless tantalization, with no release. Maybe he’ll ask Charmaine about some sort of calming, deflationary pill: she works in Medical, she could get her hands on something. But how can he explain his problem to her – I’m lusting for a woman I’ve never seen– much less his needs? She’s so clean, so crisp, so blue and white, so baby-powder-scented. She wouldn’t understand a compulsion as twisted as this. Not to mention so plain bone-ass dumb.
Maybe he needs to spend some time in the woodworking shop, after his poultry shift. Saw something in two. Pound a few nails.
The Heart Goes Last
Charmaine slips her green smock on over her orange basics. There’s another Special Procedure scheduled for this afternoon. They always do them in the afternoons; they like to avoid the darkness of night. That way it’s more cheerful for everyone, her included.
She checks to make sure she has her mask, and her surgical gloves: yes, in her pocket. First she needs to get the key from the monitoring desk that sits at the conjunction of three corridors. There’s no receptionist in the flesh at that desk, only a head box, but at least there’s a head in the box. Or a canned image of a head. Whether it’s live or not is anyone’s guess: they do those things so well nowadays. Maybe soon they’ll have robots carrying out the Special Procedures and she’ll no longer be required for them. Would that be a good thing? No. Surely the Procedure needs the human factor. It’s more respectful.
“Could I have the key, please,” she says to the head. It’s best to treat the heads as if they’re real, just in case they are.
“Log in, please,” says the head, smiling. She, or it, is an attractive though square-jawed brunette with bangs and small hoop earrings. The heads change every few days, maybe to give the illusion that they exist in real time.
Charmaine can’t stop herself from wondering if the head can see her. She enters her code, verifies it with her thumb, stares at the iris reader beside the head box until it blinks.
“Thank you,” says the head. A plastic key slides out of a slot at the bottom of the box. Charmaine pockets it. “Here is your top-confidential Special Procedure for today.” A slip of paper emerges from a second slot: room number, Positron Prison name, age, last dosage of sedative, and when administered. The man must be pretty doped up. It’s better that way.
She keys herself into the dispensary, locates the cabinet, codes its door open. There’s the vial, all ready for her, and the needle. She snaps on her gloves. The man is attached to his bed at five points, as they always are now, so thrashing around, kicking, and biting are not options. He’s groggy but awake, which is good. Charmaine is in favour of awake: it would be wrong to carry out the Procedure on someone who’s asleep, because they would miss out. On what exactly she’s not sure, but on something that’s nicer than it otherwise would be.
He looks up at her: despite the drugs, he’s clearly frightened. He tries to speak: a thickened sound comes out.
“Hello,” she says. “Isn’t it a lovely day? Look at all that sunshine! Who could be down on a day like today? Nothing bad is going to happen to you.” This is true: from all she’s observed, the experience appears to be an ecstatic one. The bad part happens to her, because she’s the one who has to worry about whether what she’s doing is right. It’s a big responsibility, and worse because she isn’t supposed to tell anyone what she’s actually doing, not even Stan.
Granted, it’s only the worst criminals, the incorrigibles, the ones they haven’t been able to turn around, who are brought in for the Procedure. The troublemakers, the ones who’d ruin Consilience if they had the chance. It’s a last resort. They’d reassured her a lot about that.
Most of the Procedures are men, but not all. Though none of the ones she’s done have been women, yet. Women are not so incorrigible: that must be it.
She leans over, kisses this man on the forehead. A young man, smooth-skinned, golden under the tattoos. She leaves the mask in her pocket. She’s supposed to wear it for the Procedure to protect against germs, but she never does: a mask would be scary. No doubt she’s being monitored via some hidden camera, but so far no one has reprimanded her about this minor breach of protocol. It’s not easy for them to find people willing to carry out the Procedure in an efficient yet caring way, they’d told her: dedicated people, sincere people. But someone has to do it, for the good of all.
The first time she attempted the forehead kiss, there was a lunge of the head, an attempt at snapping. He’d drawn blood. She requested that a neck restraint be added. And it was. They listen to feedback, here at Positron.
She strokes the man’s head, smiles with her deceptive teeth. She hopes she appears to him like an angel: an angel of mercy. Because isn’t she one? Such men are like Stan’s brother, Conor: they don’t fit anywhere. They’ll never be happy where they are – in Positron, in Consilience, maybe even on the entire Planet Earth. So she’s providing the alternative for him. The escape. Either this man will go to a better place, or else to nowhere. Whichever it is, he’s about to have a great time getting there.
“Have a wonderful trip,” she says to him. She pats his arm, then turns her back so he can’t see her sliding the needle into the vial and drawing up the contents.
“Off we go,” she says cheerfully. She finds the vein, slips in the needle.
Uhuhuh, he says. He strains upward. His eyes are horrified, but not for long. His face relaxes; he turns his gaze from her to the ceiling, the white blank ceiling, which is no longer white and blank for him. He smiles. She times the procedure: five minutes of ecstasy. It’s more than a lot of people get in their whole lifetimes.
Then he’s unconscious. Then he stops breathing. The heart goes last.
Textbook. If anything, better. It’s good to be good at what you do.
She codes in the numbers that signal a successful termination, drops the needle into the recycling bin – not much sense in having sterile needles for the Procedure, so they get reused. Positron is big on anti-waste procedures. She peels off the gloves, contributes them to the Save Our Plastics box, then leaves the room. Others will now arrive, do whatever is done. The death will be recorded as “cardiac arrest,” which is true so far as it goes.
What will happen to the body? Not cremation; that’s a wasteful power draw. And nobody in any form, dead or alive, departs through the gates of Consilience. She’s wondered about blood siphoning, about organ harvesting, but wouldn’t they want them brain-dead and on a drip rather than plain old dead, period? Surely the fresher the better, when it comes of organs. Protein-enriched livestock feed? Charmaine can’t believe they’d do that, it wouldn’t be respectful. But whatever happens, it’s bound to be useful, and that’s all she needs to know. There are some things it’s better not to think about.
Tonight she’ll join the knitting circle, as usual. Some of them are doing little cotton hats for newborns, some of them are working on a new thing – blue knitted teddy bears, so cute. “Had a nice day?” the knitting circle women will say to her. “Oh, a perfect day,” she’ll reply.
Scooter
It’s mid-September. In the evenings, when Stan goes for a stroll around the block, he wears a fleece jacket. A few leaves have fallen on the lawn already; he rakes them up in the early mornings, before breakfast. Not many people around at that hour. Just the odd black Surveillance car, gliding past silently as a shark. Is it protocol to give them a friendly wave? Stan has decided against it: better to pretend they’re invisible. Anyway, who’s inside? Those cars may be remote-controlled, like drones.
After breakfast – poached eggs if he’s lucky, they’re one of his favourites – and then a goodbye peck from Charmaine, he goes to his civilian job, working at the electric scooter repair depot. It was a good choice: his one-time job at Dimple Robotics has been taken into consideration by those who hand out the jobs around here, and anyway he’s always liked tinkering, messing around with machines and their digital programs. He once took apart the cheap musical toaster some joker from Dimple had given them for a wedding present and rebuilt it to play “Steam Heat.” Charmaine had thought that was cute, at first. Though repetitive melodies can get on the nerves.
Each scooter has a number, but no name attached, because it wouldn’t do for a driver to know the identity of the Alternate, in case they happened to run into each other on a switchover day. There would be grudges held, there would be arguments: Who made the dent? Who scratched the finish? What kind of a dickhead would let its battery run down, or leave it out in the rain? It’s not as if the things don’t have covers! The scooters belong to the town of Consilience, not to any one person. Or any two people. But it’s amazing how possessive you can get about this shit.
The scooter he’s working on at the shop is the one Charmaine drives: pink with purple stripes. The scooters are all two-tone, to match the two lockers of their drivers. His own – his own and Max’s – is green and red. It’s infuriating to think of that bastard Max driving around on the scooter, with his ass-end clamped onto the very same scooter seat that Stan thinks of as his own. But better not to dwell on that. He needs to keep his cool.
Charmaine has been having trouble with her scooter for a couple of days now. The darn thing – that’s how she puts it – has been sputtering at start-up, then conking out after a few blocks. Maybe something about the solar hookup?
“I’ll take it in for you,” Stan offered. “To the depot. Work on it there.”
“Oh thanks, hon, would you?” she said airily. Maybe not as appreciatively as once, or is he imagining that? “You’re a doll,” she added a bit absentmindedly. She was cleaning the stove at the time: such chores are appealing to her, she gets some sort of a kick out of dirt removal. Since it means he always has squeaky clean underwear, he’s not complaining.