Escape Pod, page 14
Royal began his daily stroll and took inventory of his surroundings: broken streetlights, cracked pavement overtaken by grass and weeds, sewer lines backing up into houses, piles of uncollected garbage—bags of trash long torn open by roaming dogs spilling their gutted contents to the streets and curb. Funny things happened when a person ran out of money. Slowly losing the sense of who they were. The way that hunger and lack gnawed away at their very being. He couldn’t escape the shadow of guilt—of being unable to provide for even himself—that followed him. Even on the verge of economic collapse, checks came too slow and bills too fast.
Royal’s block hid, tucked in the shadow of Indianapolis’ Golden Hill neighborhood. Not enough wealth to move to Mars, but the alcove could afford to dome itself. Its air filtered, its water purified by its own system, the transparent shield screened most of the worst UV. A conspicuous concentration of resources within eyeshot and yet out of reach of his neighborhood, since the poorest always lived in the most vulnerable infrastructures. The worst effects of climate change were felt by those least able to do anything about it, a climate apocalypse caste system.
A surveillance drone hovered low, wanting its presence noted before circling out of sight again. Paint flecked from the wood trim of the house. Columns of worn brick held up the porch. A punching bag dangled from a rusted chain in the corner. The bones of the house were still intact, the rest an echo of what had once been. LISC provided retrofitting loans to homeowners for basic air and water filtration systems. Not even close to doming, but good enough so masks weren’t necessary indoors. Since so many homes fell into default on the loans, LISC owned many of the houses in the neighborhood. Going on its third generation within the family, the house still belonged to his niece. For now. She let Royal stay in a guest room on the second floor. The room had been split into two rooms, just enough room for a single bed and chest o’ drawers. The size of a prison cell.
Ford waited for him on the porch.
Ford. One word. The LISC penal officer barked the word at Royal on their first meeting and that was all he got for a name. It could be his first or last. A light-skinned dude with low-cropped hair and cold eyes half-closed with boredom. He favored tight-fitting T-shirts which showed off his chest and arm muscles. He had an unlit cigarette tucked behind his ear though no one ever saw him smoke.
“What’s up, Ford? Wasn’t expecting you.”
They shook hands without warmth.
“That’s the whole point of a home visit, Old School.” There was always the intimation of threat to Ford, even in the low measure of his greeting. Like most LISC officials, his oxygenator didn’t reduce his voice to heavy asthmatic breaths. Ford called him Old School from the jump. He scanned him like a story he’d read a dozen times before. “Nice suit. What you been up to?”
“Just out looking for a new job. I done been to a half dozen fast food joints.”
“I can’t help you with your hustle,” Ford glanced about the porch, prowling along it like a disturbed cat. “You won’t get a job tatted up like that. Won’t even make it through the interview.”
“Who you kidding? Once they scan that I been locked up, my resume gets shitcanned.”
Ford idly punched the bag. The system tracked the movement of all of its citizens. A PO’s job was to sweep through every so often to verify a parolee’s address and make sure they were where they were supposed to be. Ford’s rep rang out on the streets because he took shit to another level. Like it was his mission in life, he rode each of his clients as if the man wanted them to fail rather than operate as a “re-entry coordinator,” which was his actual official job title. Ford’s brand of monitoring he summarized as to “tail ’em, nail ’em, and jail ’em.”
“Are you a man of your word, Old School?”
“I’m a man who doesn’t like to go through needless motions when we know what the result is going to be.” Waiting for the trap to spring—which was every conversational turn with his PO—Royal eyed Ford’s unlit cigarette. His mouth itched to light and inhale it. Wouldn’t be any worse than breathing what passed for air anyway. A reflexive cough sputtered within his mask. He took an assessing inhalation for any telltale scrapings within his lungs, signaling that he had The Rasp. The high levels of dust and such in the air settled like corrosion within a person’s chest. But he breathed smoothly. For now. “I can’t stand people selling me on fake dreams.”
“Word on the vine was that you were tough. One of the baddest cats who ran the streets before you went on pause.” Ford delivered a combination of blows to the bag, bobbing and weaving when it swayed back toward him. An excuse to demonstrate how fast his hands were.
“I don’t know about all that.”
“Me either. I’m just not seeing it. I’ve brought down taller motherfuckers than you in my sleep. All I see now is a broken-down old man itching to get sent back up.” Ford’s words were another lash of humiliation he had no choice but to accept. This was Ford’s act, trying to provoke Royal into saying or doing something reckless. Stir that anger in him. If Ford were just a man, that kind of slick comment would’ve earned him a quick beatdown. But Ford had the full weight and authority of LISC’s judicial system behind him. Royal could swing at the system, but when it swung back, he’d wake up in jail. Satisfied that his words set Royal in his place, Ford smiled. “You gonna invite me in?”
Shrugging, Royal lowered his head, to hide the flash of anger in his eyes. The gray sky of small particulate fog grew so thick it blotted out the sun. The house door hissed, creating a bubble while the mechanism scrubbed the air with them stopping in the doorway before it allowed them through. They walked through the living room, a minefield of strewn toys from the babies and dirty plates of teenage boys who didn’t pick up after themselves. Royal stayed downstairs when he was alone, retreating to his space only when family returned home. He didn’t want to intrude, remind them that he took up precious space. A low-hanging smell of mildew wafted along the baseboards from the basement hinting at a cracked seal he’d need to attend to. African masks hung on the walls. A portrait of his niece and her children. A blank space where her husband should have been. Royal wondered about all of the blank spaces in people’s lives where he should have been. A sour smell of sweat wafted from the couch where his niece often slept. She worked such long hours as a nurse that some nights she never made it past the couch from the door when she came home. She woke with the kids in time to shuffle them through their morning routines and left for work again.
Royal plopped down heavily into the chair. He heard that on Muungano, their nanobots were so attenuated to their people’s commands, they could fashion custom furniture with a wave of their hands. Or clean surfaces. Or clean air. That world was beyond him every bit as much as Mars. Or even Golden Hills. Unconsciously, he started to rub his leg, nursing a phantom ache from an injury suffered while inside.
Framed photos lined the mantel. Ford ran an inspecting finger along it before taking a long moment to examine his hand. Like a guard, full of his authority to toss his space like a vulture picking his bones, sifting his flesh for anything to amuse themselves. He picked up a framed candid photograph—a holovid system was well out of their finances—of Royal’s grandparents. Royal hated the way Ford combed through his life as if he had the right. That he could pick up his life and set it down any time he wanted. The intensity of Ford’s scrutiny reminiscent of the lingering gaze of a doctor during an exam.
“Nice home,” Ford said almost absently, continuing to nose about.
“Thanks. I’ve worked hard to get things back on track. Made a plan. Working my plan.” Royal recited the words, but to his ear he might as well have clutched his hat to his chest and end each sentence with “yessa, boss.”
“That sounds…”
Royal’s link alert chirped. He held up a “one minute” finger to Ford though no holovid displayed. His was the basic unit issued by LISC so that their citizens could remain tethered to the system network. Clinging to the possibility that it might be an actual call back from a possible employer, he turned his back to the PO. “Yes?”
Ford knocked a photo from the mantel.
“I got to go,” Royal whispered. “Yes, tomorrow then.”
Ford didn’t bother to meet his eyes. His hand rested on another photo, deciding whether it too should tumble. For a moment, Royal saw who he used to be. A brash young man, cocky and sure, his strength and vitality able to power through most situations. Then he remembered that young man ended up in prison. “You seem to barely got time for me, Old School.”
“I’m not trying to put you off. I’m hustling. You caught me at a time. You know how it is. Responsibilities around the house. Trying to stay afloat. I may have a line on a possible job doing deliveries, though. Whatever it takes, right?”
“Yeah, you sound like a busy man.” Ford centered the photo on the mantel. “I may have to see about slowing you down.”
Ford squared off against him, letting the silence land like shackles at Royal’s feet.
“Why you got to play me so hard?” Royal hated how the hint of pleading in his voice reduced him.
The front door chimed and the filtration system whirred. Duke, his niece’s oldest son, stopped within the doorway, allowing a rush of air sweetened by the cloying smell of weed on his clothes. A little dude with an addict’s thinness to him, his twists needed tightening as his hair tumbled out of his head in an untamed sprawl. A constellation of freckles splattered his cheeks and faded splotches lined his neck, like he’d been splashed with bleach. A homemade mask of toilet paper and duct tape dangled from his ear. He worked for the Paschal family. Kevin Paschal, Pass, was once a neighborhood entrepreneur and sometime drug dealer who built an entire family enterprise under the nose and off the radar of LISC. Duke spotted Ford from the threshold and ground his cigarette underfoot.
Royal winced. The last thing Ford needed was an audience.
“I like breaking eggs. If a few omelets get made, cool.” Ford thumbed toward Royal for Duke’s benefit. “This motherfucker right here thinks he’s somebody.”
Duke raised his hands like he wanted to back away without mess landing on him. “My name’s Bennett and I ain’t in it.”
“You clever, ain’t you?” Ford’s voice dripped with the sense of having been disrespected. “Royal, you must come from a clever family.”
“It’s not like that,” Royal said.
“Look at you. Domesticated dude. You playing at being a family man, now?”
Royal swallowed. Not just the dry hitch in his throat, but he wanted to tell this trifling, bureaucratic, overcompensating Napoleon what he could do with his home visits. With his intimated threats. With his assumptions and judgments. But he couldn’t. Ford was just one set of teeth of the disembodied beast people called the justice system. The beast would have its due, its bones to grind to fine powder.
“I’ll help you out, Old School. Why don’t you come down to my office tomorrow and we’ll see what we can do to make sure you aren’t so… overwhelmed.”
“But my job appointment tomorrow?” Royal knew an office visit meant Ford keeping him—and whoever else made his shit-list—sit and wait from 8 a.m. until whenever he felt like dismissing them.
“Fuck. Your. Job.” A pause lingered at the end of Ford’s sentence like the PO wanted to add a word just to make his point plain. “You will be at my office first thing. We’ll go through all of your paperwork. And only if you find yourself not violated can you even think about taking a job. You got me?”
“Yes.” Royal let the sentence stop without adding the word “sir” in mild protest.
Ford glared at him up and down as if he were small, sneering before sucking his teeth. He cut his eyes to Duke, who stepped out of the way. The door hissed, the portal sealing shut behind him.
“Your boy’s trippin’ hard today,” Duke said.
“He ain’t my boy. I trust Ford as far as I can throw him and I ain’t been working out lately.” The bluster sounded hollow. “It’s the end of the world and I still have to deal with this petty foolishness.”
Royal angled away from Duke, unable to sit under his nephew’s gaze. He’d been stripped of something and the less someone was able to see witness, the better. His head slumped, determined to keep his eyes closed until the sting of his humiliation and helplessness ebbed.
* * *
Hope was like a stripper. If you paid her well, the more she came around looking for something extra. But you wanted her around since her company and attention almost felt like the real thing. You came to depend on them like any addict in need of a fix. Then one day you see her fucking around with someone else and you could no longer convince yourself that her attention was anything except fake. She never truly existed. Not for you.
A shrill of alarm clawed at the back of Royal’s head from the first moment he stepped into Ford’s office. The receptionist barely glanced at him, no longer particularly noting the parade of felons when they came through. They were numbers on numbers: a filing code counting down the days until they were off papers or heading back to lockup. Wagging a finger, she directed him to take a seat. Chow lines, sitting in his cell, shower lines, linkage lines the system trained him how to wait on his life.
No one else had their life held up alongside him in the office.
In another life, he had his own construction company. Fixed up and painted many of the houses in the neighborhood as a part of LISC’s “Pre-enact the Future” program. He also had a temper that flashed hot when pushed. It led to the occasional “misunderstanding.” He got clipped for drunk driving (which quickly became drunk and disorderly), escalating once he began shouting at the officers, which led to them calling for a backup unit (which quickly became backup units), once he began yelling about what they could do with their unwarranted traffic stop. The misunderstanding occurred once he stumbled into one of the officers and they began swinging. That cost him a few years. When he went upstate to “college” he got hooked on that her-ron.
Two hours later, the receptionist motioned for him to enter.
No nameplate rested on Ford’s desk. No holovids of any family hovered about. No awards or certificates hung on the wall. No clue illuminating who the man was other than Ford. Perpetual coffee rings scarred his desk as if he left standing orders to never scrub them clean.
Without so much as turning to him, Ford handed Royal a specimen medi-cup. “Fill it up as best you can.”
Royal sized up the medi-cup. He wanted to make a joke to break the tension in the room, but there was less than no play in Ford’s eyes. A level of corruption and ineptitude infected the PO to the bone. Royal turned to head to the bathroom.
“Nuh uh. Where I can see you.” Ford turned to the holographic reports display hovering over his desk.
“Right here?” Royal gestured to his zipper.
“You get a drop on my floor, you’ll be licking it clean.”
With the nervousness of a deer sniffing about, knowing a trap was about to spring shut but not knowing where from, a roar of panic filled the back of his mind. Royal fished in his pants to pull out his dick, there in the open of the office like some animal. Wanting to piss all over the rings on Ford’s desk and leave the final dribbling trail on the PO’s shoes, Royal peered straight ahead. He blinked a few times to fight back the burning in each eye.
Ford’s studious observation veered dangerously close to a leer. Like the guards inside watching an absurd show, they vented the anger of their powerlessness on the prisoners. Their rough hands tugging at his jaw: poking him, sticking fingers in his mouth, ordering him about, controlling him. It was all the same game, wondering how much he’d be worth out in the field. Incarceration was a profitable LISC venture.
Careful not to overfill the container or splash, he slipped his dick back into his drawers lest he accidentally drip on the carpet. He secured the lid, set the specimen cup on Ford’s desk, and backed away. Royal strained to keep any challenge from his eyes. Ford nodded, stepping between Royal and the desk.
“Good and tight.” Ford turned around with the specimen cup. “Temperature says an even hundred degrees. You may be running a fever.”
Royal stifled a reflexive cough. An increasing sense of unease ran through him. Life had a way of going from sugar to shit with a quickness. Ford tapped the screen on the container with a knowing grin. A few seconds later, a single colored line appeared.
Positive.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” Ford said. “Someone’s been a bad boy.”
“That’s not possible,” Royal said. “I’ve been clean for…”
“Yes?” Ford waited for the unprompted confession.
“I’m clean is all I’m saying. I know I am. That has to be one of them false positives.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Jerk LISC around a bit with your claims of false positives. Life is one big conspiracy against you, isn’t it?” Ford eased back in his chair, arms folded across his chest. “You about to accuse me of something?”
