Goldstein Read online

  He looked to cross the street. The traffic of puny, civilian electros and the gas-burning, government behemoths zipped past on the one way street in front of him. He waited. Then there was a break.

  He started forward but as he stepped off the curb his muscles seized and violently contracted. His knees buckled and he collapsed into the gutter. He tried to cry out but his voice was useless. All he could see were overlapping blobs of light. The sounds of the traffic from the street phased in and out between his left and right ears. There was excruciating pain and the terrifyingly helpless sensation of being paralyzed— like being rolled up into a carpet and set ablaze.

  “What is happening? Am I dying?” Then his muscles relaxed. His eyes regained focus. Still in shock and afraid to move, he remained catatonic in the gutter trying to regain his breath. He could feel water seeping into his pants.

  “Freeze!” ordered an authoritative voice

  Devin turned toward the sound and caught a glimpse of a nat wearing the customary black uniform and opaque shades. He was aiming a pen-sized device at Devin. Devin’s vision once again went blurry and his muscles contracted as the cop re-pulsed him. His teeth ground together so hard that they creaked and squealed under the intense pressure.

  Devin remained helplessly frozen in the gutter as the nat yanked his rigid arms behind his back, nearly pulling his shoulders loose from their sockets, cuffed him, and dragged him up against the outside wall of the restaurant. The pulsing paralysis finally stopped as the nat released the emitter. The device retracted into his sleeve.

  “Do not resist!” the nat barked.

  “What did I do?” asked Devin feebly, feeling an intense burn in his abdominal muscles.

  The nat whispered something inaudible into his wrist as he stood imposingly over him. He was scanning through reams of data that was scrolling across the insides of his lenses. He took out his detector and wanded Devin’s shoulder. He paused. Then he wanded him again.

  “Where’s your chip?” the nat barked.

  Already being in custody and softened by the pulse emitter, Devin responded bluntly, “I don’t have one.” He hoped his honesty would elicit mercy. Instead, his response was greeted with a look of disappointment on the officer’s face, followed by a gloved hand gripping his face.

  “Are you resisting?” asked the officer.

  Passersby averted their eyes and continued on down the sidewalk pretending not to notice the scene. The sheeple knew that onlookers were perceived as obstructions to justice and were often arrested too.

  “Did you cut it out? Where’s the scar?” The nat asked as he examined Devin’s wrists, then stretched the neck of Devin’s shirt down over his shoulder and examined his upper arm.

  “Don’t you have to read me my rights or something?” Devin asked reflexively, then regretted asking it out of fear that it would illicit another shock.

  “Your rights?” the cop laughed as he examined Devin for scars. “You’ve been watching too much classic holovision. You know what your rights are. You have the right to shut your fucking mouth until I ask you a question. Now, get up.” The officer dragged him to his feet and started patting him down. “You got a multi? Never mind, I found it.”

  Devin prayed that it generated a new and plausible alias as he doubted this cop would believe he was really a “Hammerstein”.

  “Mengistu Selassie?” the cop asked. “What is that? Is that African?” Devin was at a loss. He stalled by pretending to cramp severely. “Hello! I asked you a question. Is that African? Are you an immigrant? How long have you been here?”

  Devin mustered an innocent look. “Yes sir. I’ve only been here three days.”

  “Well, I guess that explains it.”

  “Explains it?”

  “Explains why you are an ignorant dumbass.”

  “Ignorant of what?”

  “Ignorant of the law regarding crossing the street.”

  “Sir?”

  “Don’t you know that jaywalking is illegal? You could’ve been seriously injured.” Devin, still writhing managed an imperceptible chuckle.

  The nat unlatched Devin’s cuffs and handed him back his multi. “Listen to me,” he continued condescendingly wagging his gloved finger a centimeter from Devin’s face. “Ignorance is no defense for breaking the law. This is a zero-tolerance city. Jaywalking is strictly prohibited. Do you have any idea how much jaywalking costs this city annually in terms of lost productivity and medical bills?” Devin shook his head. “I’m sure it’s in the billions. You see those signs over there? Those are crosswalks. Use them to cross the street and you won’t have any trouble with me. Remember, it’s for your own good.”

  “Yes sir,” answered Devin.

  “A fine of $1000 has been deducted from your account. Have a nice day.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Devin went back to the hotel and up to his room. He removed his soiled, stretched out clothes and ran a shower. He stood there motionless as the hot water ran down his neck.

  His stomach still ached and his wrists were bruised and tender where the nylon cuffs had cut into his skin. His chest ached as if he had a cracked sternum. The concrete of the gutter had sanded patches of skin from his hip, knees, and elbows. But the soothing hot water of the shower relaxed him. He soaked under the stream without moving.

  Just as his mind began to calm, the water was shut off. Four minutes was the maximum allowable time for a shower as determined by the Department of Conservation. He stood leaning forward against the tiled wall allowing the water run off, dried off and went to bed.

  He heard the whistle of a superjet passing far overhead carried in by the cool evening air through his open window. He reached up and slammed the window shut, cinching off the noise and the air from the outside world. He laid back and stared at the ceiling. His ribs ached. His open wounds tightened as they dried out.

  He thought about making The Delivery and chuckled. Returning to Goldstein would be an acknowledgement of the Colony’s rightness. Worse yet, it would be an acknowledgement of his wrongness. He was not ready to embrace Goldstein’s ethic. The Delivery was absurd, anyway.

  How was he going to make it in Amerika? So far, he was either horribly unlucky, or this was just a much more difficult place than he had envisioned.

  Maybe the city wasn’t for him. Maybe he could make his way to the country. He could find work there. Surely there was a place free of nats and surveillance and checkpoints, a ranch, somewhere. What did he know about ranching? Nothing, he was a programmer but it didn’t matter. He would figure it out, somehow. Devin decided he would try to go into the mountains. There had to be small towns and farms and ranches up in there.

  He leaned up in bed and logged on the holovision. It was a gossip show. Apparently some celebrity had made a video of her six-year-old taking mind altering drugs. Devin’s mind went numb as he watched.

  The holovision took him on a journey of impulse— stimulus, response, stimulus, response. It required no mental effort. The holovision pushed all the buttons and turned all the knobs in one’s mind. It guided the viewer’s consciousness as if it were on a rail. It was like sleeping with one’s eyes wide open.

  It droned on senselessly, filling the spaces between his thoughts. Then it drowned out his thoughts entirely, replacing them with its own interpretation of reality. After an hour, he began to appreciate the numbing quality of the holovision. He got comfortable with it, then addicted to it. He didn’t leave his room for six days.

  Chapter Nine

  A thud stirred Devin from his sleep. He wasn’t sure if he had dreamt it or if it was real. He sat up. It was light outside. After shaking the sleep out of his head he deciphered the time on his multi. It was 10:17. The several days of solitude was beginning to slow his mental clock. He had been sleeping in later and later each successive day.

  He turned on the holovision.

  “You are seeing pictures of an explosion that just occurred not thirty seconds ago at the corner of Fourteenth Street and L
incoln Ave. The pictures are courtesy of Numenor’s Cityscape Security network. Numenor: making the world safe for democracy.”

  A burning façade of a storefront filled the holovision’s field. The view switched to the face of an attractive female.

  “What you are seeing now is what remains of a storefront. It is burning.”

  “Obviously,” Devin replied sarcastically. His thumb crept toward the off command.

  “Approximately 35 seconds ago, there was an explosion of some sort which blew out the windows of this store which you are seeing right now.” The reporter touched her ear. “Apparently we have the Numenor Cityscape footage of the actual explosion. Stand by.”

  The image switched back to the storefront prior to its immolation. Then, with a flash, the windows blew out and a ball of fire rolled out into the street and up into the sky.

  The field switched back to the reporter. “As you can see, there was a fireball, possibly caused by an explosion, which blew out the windows of this storefront,” she repeated. “It is still on fire. Patriots from the Department of Fire and Code Security will be on the scene shortly. I can hear the sirens, now.” Devin heard the sirens as well. “The street signals in the vicinity are all flashing ‘Alert’ now. I’ve just been told that a three block radius around the site of the explosion is now in security lockdown. If you attempt to drive into the area, your electro will be disabled. This is for your safety.”

  The reporter continued, “We will check back here in a moment. In other news, The New York Yankees and there ten billion dollar payroll come to town to play our…”

  Devin’s thumb flipped the stereovision to another news channel, then another. They all had the exact same footage. But in seven minutes time, the event had become stale news and was replaced by Bollywood megastar, Buster McDougal, who had just been apprehended under suspicion of sodomizing a goat.

  Devin opened his small window and could see the plume of black smoke billowing up to the west several blocks away. The civil alert sirens on his street finally activated and the ear-piercing wail drowned out the baritone pulses of the armored NaPol gas-cruisers racing to the scene. Devin shut the window and retreated to the corner of his room attempting to evade the noise. His multi-card beeped. It was Roth Smith.

  “Roth?” Devin asked.

  “It is me, your favorite Eskimo,” he replied.

  “What’s going on?” Devin asked.

  “Not a whole lot. We just got snow yesterday.”

  “Snow? In May?”

  “It’s a little late. How’s the weather there?”

  “It’s been cool. They say we might get freezing rain tomorrow.”

  “How are you doing, my friend?”

  Devin was hesitant to answer remembering that he nearly betrayed Roth a few days earlier. He also recalled how he was filled with hubris before he embarked for Amerika and he felt ashamed. “It’s good to hear from you, Roth. I’m not doing so well,” he admitted.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s this place. It’s not what I thought. People are strange here. Nats are everywhere. I got pulsed a few days ago.”

  “Pulsed? For what?”

  “Apparently they have a zero tolerance policy towards jay walking.”

  “They pulsed you for jay walking?”

  “That’s right. I’d hate to see what they’d do to me if I robbed a bank.”

  “They’d probably just write you a ticket.”

  They both chuckled.

  “I just don’t know about this place, Roth.”

  “So what are you going to do? Come back to Alaska? Back to Goldstein?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not sure I can make The Delivery. The entire thing seems ridiculous.”

  “I see,” Roth replied.

  “Why should I do The Council’s bidding, anyway? They exiled me.”

  “Good point.”

  “I think I need to lay low for a couple more days and sort things out. Oh, funny story…”

  “Funnier than the jay walking story?”

  “No, not really, more funny as in strange. I got this cabbie when I was leaving the station who tracked me down while I was looking for work. She seems a little nuts. She goes on this rant about how the nats are looking for me and I got to get out of sight ‘cause they know I’m there and are coming to get me.”

  “Sounds to me like they already got you.”

  “Not like that, more like they want to bring me in as an anti-pat.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Ramielle Nguyen.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “I did what she said. She sent me to this hotel on the east side. You don’t think NaPol would really be after me do you? At least not if I’m obeying all crosswalks.”

  “Well, you are from Goldstein. If they learn that, they’ll probably want to at least keep a close eye on you.”

  “I thought she was right and I was done for when I got pulsed the other day, but then the nat let me go after getting my name because he thought I was just some dumb immigrant. Thanks for that multi, again. It saved me.”

  “Don’t mention it. The transit nats probably won’t take you in unless you do something really stupid. They prefer to deliver justice on the spot. Just be compliant with them and they’ll let you go with a fine. The nats with brainpower don’t work transit beats, they work for the feds. The feds are the ones interested in anti-pats. If you meet one, you are probably in big trouble. And when they’re done with you, you’ll be begging for the pulse emitter.”

  “Well, they’re not on to me.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m not in custody yet, am I?”

  “They might just be watching and waiting. If they come to get you, you won’t even know it’s happening. They’ll be on top of you like a bear on a backpacker. Be careful. Don’t trust anyone in the city.”

  “Right.”

  “I’m going to transmit some dollars to you.”

  “I’m fine, Roth. Brooks set me up with enough to last a while. Besides, I’ve got social assistance payments coming.”

  “Well, do you need anything else?”

  “I’m fine, really. I appreciate you looking in on me. It means a lot. I’ll call you in a couple weeks and give you an update.”

  “Well, be careful and don’t jaywalk anymore. Don’t trust anyone, not even your cabbie friend. If you decide to come back to Alaska just give me a ring. I’ll make all the arrangements at a good rate.”

  “Thanks, Roth.”

  Roth clicked out. Devin set his multi on the desk by a power outlet. In five minutes, the card’s stamp-sized battery was fully charged and good for five more days. Normally, it charged by his kinetics but it had run down with his recent inactivity.

  Feeling uplifted, Devin dressed himself and went out. He carefully looked both ways upon exiting the hotel’s smudged front doors. The street in front was clear and he had a sudden urge to dart out into it but caught himself at the last moment. He looked around once more for suspicious faces, the sideways glances and contrived nonchalant-ness of spies.

  There was a heavy black woman across the street dressed in a sky blue pants suit. She didn’t break stride as Devin looked at her. There was a chubby white teenager with tattoos on his face and an ill-fitting t-shirt sitting on a bus stop bench to his right. His thumb and forefinger were busy digging something from his nose. There was a middle aged Latino with a thick, black mustache and snakeskin cowboy boots. He was talking on his multi in Mandarin. He paid Devin no heed.

  Then Devin saw the transit nat, the same nat who had pulsed him nearly a week ago. He was sitting in his gas-cruiser scanning the intersection for lawbreakers. His fat head scanned from left to right like an animatron. Then his black glasses locked on to Devin.

  Devin averted his eyes. He felt the loathing boil up within him. It bubbled up like a fast acting corrosive. He stared down at his shoes while he envisioned himself walking up to the cruiser, pulling a twelve-g
auge shotgun out from his thermal, pumping the shell into the chamber, dropping the barrel into the passenger window and…

  He glanced back at the nat. The nat grinned at him mockingly, as if he could read Devin’s thoughts and was daring him to try something. Devin looked away again to his right and lawfully started up the sidewalk fully expecting to hear the gas-cruiser roll up behind and switch on it’s sirens. The nat didn’t follow.

  #

  Devin approached the razor-wired confines of Liberty Elementary School. Clustered about the concrete courtyard were some two hundred kids dressed in miniature khaki pants and navy blue shirts. Boys and girls were all in the same uniform with identical hair styles. It was a sea of bowl-cut androgyny.

  Scattered amongst them were some fifty or so child socialization supervisors ensuring that every non-competitive game was played without exploitation (meaning no winners and no losers). The brigade of clones unenthusiastically immersed in a game of ‘share-soccer’— an activity where several dozen kids stand at various fixed positions and work together in collectivist harmony to kick a ball into an untended net by passing it between them from player to player.

  A husky kid, who had sufficient athleticism to boot the ball from his distant, pre-assigned position past the other sentries and into the net, was quickly pounced on by the counselors and scolded for ‘selfish, exploitative behavior’. With tears welling up in his eyes, he was perp-walked into a timeout square where he was publicly mocked and ridiculed by the other, more enlightened children.

  An alarm sounded which was not unlike the pulsating and terrifying NaPol sirens. The little blue shirts aligned themselves into files by age group and were driven back into the windowless, cinderblock building under an archway that read:

  “BUILDING A BETTER CITIZEN”

  “Move along!” came a voice directed at Devin. “Loitering in front of a school is a Class 1 Misdemeanor!”