The End of Marking Time (23 page)

I had never done anything useful to anyone else. I was good at what I did, but that served only me. That was Wendell’s point. To rejoin society I had to earn my keep. Wendell wanted me to follow rules I’d abandoned long ago, but I needed more time than Wendell was willing to give if I wanted to learn how to follow those rules.

I couldn’t answer his question. There was no defense of my last ten years, but what I did have, I pulled from my pocket and held up to the glass.

“What’s that?”

“It shows how your competition has been cheating you.”

Wendell pressed a few buttons. Heavy duty fans blew air up between the floorboards and the smoke slowly disappeared through the ceiling vents. A compartment opened in the wall near the divider. I walked over and placed the camera inside. When I removed my hand, the compartment shut and its twin opened on the other side of the glass. Wendell collected the camera and went back to his desk. When I tried to explain how to view the images frame by frame he waved me off.

“Nice work,” he said when he was done watching.

“Thank you.”

“That’s not what I meant. Did your friend watch the videos?”

“What’s—” Wendell wouldn’t let me continue.

“He learned the lesson? Didn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“So what is the problem?”

“This is wrong. They can’t plant ideas in someone’s brain. Didn’t you see the guy with the knife?”

“Excellent work I’d say.” He saw how flustered I was and kept on. “The stakes in our business are incredibly high. We are the last line of defense for decent people. The lesson is what counts. Your friend Stephan was doing fine until you got in the way.”

He knew I had been to Stephan’s.

“Oh yes,” Wendell said. “Nathan Farnsworth, my friend who runs that program, he was quite upset with you yesterday. Had to start all over with Stephan to make sure he got it right. I’m sure when you see Stephan, he’s not going to be particularly happy with you either.”

Wendell knew about the subliminal messages and he didn’t care. When I heard him applaud the technical work, I wished I had been smart enough to check my own videos for hidden messages. Those children on the playground were probably a cover for Wendell to pump something more ominous into my head. I’d never know because Wendell kept the camera.

I was trapped on the wrong side of the glass. Wendell looked at me like a troubled goldfish that kept leaping from the safety of its bowl. Was he really trying to protect me? He needed me to stay out of trouble until his ratings improved, but that was for his benefit more than mine.

Did Wendell know who had tried to kill me that morning? If he wasn’t such a patsy I would have suspected he was involved. Being worth more dead than alive made me question everyone. Even worse, I was causing trouble for a man who could push a button, fill the room with carbon dioxide, and watch me slowly suffocate, or pump in some neurotoxin and watch me drop. I was glad it was Wendell holding the button.

“Aren’t you upset that he’s cheating you?” I asked.

“Subliminal messages aren’t cheating.”

“It’s more than that and you know it. What are you? Some kind of hero? Is that why you take the impossible cases?”

“What are you talking about? Criminals come in and go to the next program in line.”

“Haven’t you looked at the relearners your friend Nathan is getting?”

“That’s not allowed,” he said, then waggled the camera at me. “This is the most I’ve seen of what they do over there.”

“Haven’t you looked around?” I told him about the people I talked to in both apartment complexes. In Wendell’s program, most of the relearners had offended over and over. That made it look like he was failing, but in reality, they had offended over and over before they arrived. The people who lived with Stephan were mostly first timers with trivial offenses.

Wendell ran his fingers through his hair as I’d seen him do in court.

“Think about me,” I said. “Who is set up to fail more than me? I still don’t understand the new laws. I’ve never had a job. I didn’t finish school. Is it a coincidence that you got me? All this trouble you’ve got now, it isn’t by accident.”

Wendell perked up and asked how many people I had talked to.

“Thirty at home. Twenty at Stephan’s. All you have to do is walk around. They look different. They act different. You’re teaching hardened criminals. He’s running a country club.”

He thought a long time and said, “Telling me this doesn’t change anything. What do you want? Why are you helping me?”

I hadn’t wanted anything when I came in. I was trying to do the right thing. Maybe the lessons were getting through, but his question awakened a thought. “How about this,” I said. “I help you prove that you’re getting screwed by Nathan Farnsworth and you keep Blake off my back.”

Wendell looked disappointed. He must have thought I was looking for a way out of math class or something. He couldn’t have known the truth. At least I hoped he wouldn’t let Blake victimize his relearners.

“Blake knew I was having trouble with the program. He came and took me to see the cat baggers.”

Wendell tried to interrupt, but I just kept talking.

“He told me about the cats, the drugs, the weird surgery. I haven’t been able to sleep since. When I heard bones crashing into the ground and the horrible pained screams coming from the rear windows, Blake had me where he wanted me.”

Wendell assured me that such a place didn’t exist.

“I was there. I saw it. And I saw something else, something mushroom-like that should have stayed in Blake’s pants.”

Wendell bolted upright. He leaned over his desk, measuring me as if I were making up a story to escape my work, but he seemed to know I was telling the truth. I felt like he could read my mind when he wanted to. It was usually disturbing, but in this case I was glad to have him on my side.

He went to the monitor and I saw my silhouette appear in something like an X-ray. Then he pressed a button and the glass wall retracted into the floor. I waited for an invitation to move closer, but it didn’t come.

Sirens sounded at the front gate and Wendell flew into a panic.

What could he be doing here that was illegal?

He pointed at me and said, “Downstairs. To the dining room. Now!”

I left the way I had come. Soon after, I heard him running downstairs for the front door. When it opened a group of heavy feet tramped in. Four men came my way. The man in the lead held a notebook sized screen. He followed it until he was looking directly at me where I stood against the wall by the cabinet.

Things might have been easier to explain if I had just taken a seat at the table, but I didn’t know the police were interested in me.

I heard a conversation in the hallway.

“You know you need to register any relearner coming onto your property. How many assassination attempts have you survived?”

“I forgot to send notification. I’m sorry,” Wendell said.

“That’s crap and you know it. Your dogs are passed out against the back wall. We found three empty hot dog packages thrown into your neighbor’s yard.”

“I’m sure the dogs are fine.”

“The law is the law, Mr. Cummings.”

Wendell came into the room, bowed his head, and the cops cuffed me.

How was I to know it was illegal for me to go to Wendell’s house? Yes, I’d broken in. And yes, when I was led out in cuffs I understood why Wendell was so upset about the dogs and that I climbed through the dining room window. But would he have let me in if I had walked up to the front gate and buzzed? I don’t think so.

It would have been easier standing outside the gate wondering what to do next than riding in the back of the police car to drive-through court. I’d been tried and convicted there twice in less time than they could have scheduled a pre-trial hearing in the old days. The cops always had the evidence they needed by the time they drove me there. Every case was rock solid. The efficiency was startling. I thought about that for a long time. Sure, they could track me everywhere I went, but the real difference was the lack of theatrics for the jury. Even more than that, the judges only cared whether you were guilty or not. There wasn’t a lot of wrangling about admissibility of evidence. When they were trying to put me away for stealing the DA’s Mercedes, the lawyers were constantly wrangling over technicalities. The word admissibility hadn’t been uttered in the next two trials. The facts were the facts and the judge knew whether I was guilty or not. They didn’t spend a lot of time convincing him. The judge knew I was guilty of robbing the DA, too, but back then it took nine months to do anything about it.

We arrived in the building and were stationed in the hallway outside the courtroom for about ten minutes before Wendell escorted me in. I wasn’t surprised by the speed of my trials anymore.

The prosecutor presented the case in less than ten minutes. He showed the judge where I had been that day. How I’d climbed the wall and entered through Wendell’s dining room window. They even showed pictures of the dogs sleeping off the drugs. There was no time to establish what I’d given them, but they guessed exactly where I’d gotten the pills. The guys at the basketball game were going to have a nasty surprise in the next day or so. I hoped they wouldn’t connect it to me.

I just didn’t understand the new world I was living in. I was stumbling around in the dark and stepping on everyone around me. Joel, Stephan, the drug dealer, and especially Wendell. If I didn’t figure out how to stay out of trouble and how get through the program soon, I wouldn’t last.

The judge asked for our defense. Wendell stood up and said that I had come to him with some important information. Or at least I believed it was important enough to rush inside without permission. The judge asked for this information and Wendell approached the bench and whispered it to him.

The judge chuckled in my direction, and I knew even before Wendell sat back down I was going to be found guilty again. I raised my hand and asked permission to speak. The judge allowed my request, but glared at me skeptically. Wendell could barely contain himself in the seat next to me, but I stood up anyway.

“Someone tried to kill me this morning, Your Honor.”

He motioned me to proceed.

“I assumed it was related to the information I collected the day before. I didn’t think it appropriate to bring to the police. Not knowing who else to ask for help, I went to Mr. Cummings’ home.”

“How exactly were you assaulted, Mr. O’Connor?”

“I was walking in front of the donut shop about two blocks from my apartment. A car stopped, a large black sedan, and someone from the passenger seat fired a shotgun at me.”

The prosecutor started clicking away at his computer. I started to speak, but the judge held up his hand to silence me. We waited for the prosecutor to project a short video on the screen. The camera was inside the shop, but it caught me in blurry form, walking down the sidewalk, then ducking for cover behind the blue car.

“That’s me,” I said. “By the tire.”

Somehow the prosecutor projected a red dot on the image. It fell right on top of me. I can only assume it was a signal from my tracking device caught at the instant of the gunshot.

“Did you question Mr. O’Connor about this incident?”

The prosecutor conferred with the lead officer who’d taken me from the house. It seemed the new court system left no time for stories to be fabricated on either side. The officer admitted he had not and the judge was not pleased.

“Our technology does not excuse shoddy police work,” he boomed.

The prosecutor and the officer seemed surprised. I guessed they hadn’t lost a case against a relearner in a long time. Armed with indisputable facts, why would they? What I didn’t know was that this was a court for relearners only. Citizens who had never been convicted of a crime entered the old system of juries and admissibility and free passes. When the officers came here they expected to win, just like they expected to be whamboozled when they stepped in front of a jury.

The judge called Wendell up front and the two whispered. The rest of the room fell silent and I heard bits and pieces of the conversation. “You’ve done great things... This one isn’t going to make it... You’re on the edge. I’d hate to see that happen to you.”

They got quieter, but I knew what was going on. The judge was offering Wendell a chance to dump me, to send me to the cat baggers where I couldn’t give him any more trouble. It was the easiest path for Wendell. One of his biggest problems could be solved with a few short clicks. I thought I heard Wendell say he didn’t mind that I’d come to his house, but it was so soft I couldn’t be sure what they were saying.

He came back to the table.

The judge pronounced me innocent of the charges.

The prosecutor was in shock, ditto the officer behind him. They shot me dirty looks as the prosecutor went up front, clicked the screen a few times and pressed his thumb to the scanner. I didn’t know what the thumb print was doing. Maybe it was charging him for the court time because he lost. Whatever the penalty was, he blamed me for forcing it on him. I was collecting enemies every day. If I was looking for an ally, I wouldn’t find one there in the courtroom.