Futureland - Nine Stories of an Imminent World (13 page)

Three days after his talk with Stiles, Bits was ordered to report to the infirmary. He was so weak however that M Lamont was dispatched to meet him with a PAPPSI chair.

"You shouldn't be this weak, convict," Lamont said. "You're just being a hypochondriac." Bits lolled backward and leaned over, hiding his left hand. He was happy to see his old white room, the trim little bed and the console computer, an XL-2500 Decadon.

"Get up and get in that bed on your own, convict," M Lamont ordered. Bits did as he was told as best as he could manage. It took him a moment to build up the strength to stand, turn, and fall onto the bed.

"This won't hurt, convict," Sella said as she used a laser injector the size of a rifle to deliver the serum to his veins. "But I must tell you, the snake pack has diagnosed you with a strain of subbac cancer."

"What's that mean?"

"There's no bullet for subbacs. They're a new form of infection. All we can do now is try whatever experimental drug the IDA has approved for testing on prisoners."

"How do you get this subbuk?" Bits asked, but his mind was elsewhere.

"Lots of soldiers from the Mideast Conflagration of '25 got it," Sella said. "It's made the rounds of permanent residents of Common Ground."

"How did I get it?"

Sella looked away and said, "How would I know?"

Ninety seconds,
Bits thought.
When the time comes that's all I got.
For the next hour M Lamont and Sella read the data transferred to the computer system from Bits's snake. The triple-chinned shapeless Lamont grunted now and then. Finally the grotesque med got bored, walked away into the distance, and disappeared.

Bits waited for what felt like an hour more before injecting the stinger sack into his left buttock. The pain was exquisite and instantaneous.

"Doctor," Bits said through gritted teeth. "I seem to be developing a hard lump on my left buttock."

"What?" Immediately she turned to the screen.

"Please look at it, Doctor," Bits said with the urgency of pain in his voice. When she turned to look from the prescribed eighteen-inch distance Bits lunged and grabbed Sella's hand, squeezing so hard that he could feel bones snapping.

Before she had time to yell he said, "Tell me your access code. You have twelve seconds or I kill you."

"Sella-118," the woman gasped.

The count going off in the back of his mind had reached twenty-seven.

A red strobe flashed.

"WARNING IN OP-ROOM," boomed a mechanical voice.

Bits dragged Sella to the console and saw that she was already signed on.

"Tell it manual," he threatened.

"Manual," the woman whimpered, and a typing console with an audiophone unit appeared from the bowels of the machine.

Bits socked Sella in the jaw and began punching numbers furiously. The fire in his buttock was almost unbearable. Words began to appear on the screen: Vid access, Sydney, electronic transfer line . . .

"WARNING IN OP-ROOM."

The red light flashed faster.

Bits punched in 14-76T-1187-222.

An image of a green circle appeared on the screen. It broke into eleven equal sections. Twenty seconds went by, thirty.

"Bits displacement system active," a feminine computer voice announced. "Voice pattern Vortex invoked."

"End alert status of current system," Bits said.

The flashing light stopped.

Bits tore off sheets and bound Med Sella to the bed. Then he collapsed on top of her and breathed slowly while the automatic medicine from the snake pack worked to stem the pain and damage from the baby tiger scorpion's sting.

Later Bits located a tranquilizer pistol in Sella's bag. He made sure the gun was loaded and then ordered his virus program to summon M Lamont.

__________

Stiles's eyes lit with amazement when he found that the orange and brown line he'd been ordered to follow brought him to a vast white room where Meds Sella and Lamont were seemingly unconscious and tied to the foot of a bed while Bits sat above them ordering images on a computer like he was a king.

"What the f?" Stiles said.

"We did it, white boy," Bits said.

"The fuck you say, nig."

Bits smiled, thinking that a statement like that would have driven him wild with rage in the world outside.

"Truce?" Bits suggested.

"What is this shit?" Stiles replied.

"The alacrity of justice," Bits said dramatically, "has turned wise men into fools."

"Say what?"

"I went to Hammerstein the memory man and everybody thought I was going to get my memory erased. But I knew that in his earlier experiments with mem-erasure the good Doctor Hammerstein only succeeded in temporary removal. I got that service. So when they asked me what I knew I could say I knew nothing because that was the truth. I got most of the memories back now. They came as monsters in a dream."

"So?" Stiles said.

"The scorpion sting froze up the snake pack and gave me time to grab Sella's computer access. I called a number, downloaded my master virus, and took over the system."

"That had to set off an alarm somewhere," Stiles said, looking over both shoulders as he did so.

"Only temporarily. My virus is sophisticated. It translates the current system to its own code and then makes me the master."

Stiles's eyes hardened.

"You know why I declined to meet you in the gladiator's circle, Stiles?" Bits asked.

"Why?"

" 'Cause I've always known that you could kick my ass."

"Then maybe you made a mistake callin' on me now," Stiles suggested, taking a step forward.

"Before acting on that will you let me explain something about this system?" Stiles held up his left wrist and tapped it with a smile.

"Max screen three up," Bits ordered.

The infinite white wall behind Bits turned bright blue with thousands of small orange boxes broken into various sections.

"Population reports for Angel's Island,"
Bits said. His voice was greatly amplified and seemed to come from all around. Fear crept into Stiles's eyes.
"To the left are the majority of the
inhabitants--convicts. Bring up Jerry Tierny."

Immediately a large overlay appeared in the middle of the convict area. It was titled with the convict's picture and name hovering about a series of file tabs with the labels
criminal history, incarceration
history, experimental studies, current status . . .

"I can tell you where he is, what he's doing, his physioemotional state, and whether or not he
has to go to the toilet. I can also activate any function on his snake pack, including the death
option."

"Who's in those boxes on the right side?" Stiles asked meekly.

"Everybody here is wearing a snake pack, Stiles,"
Bits replied, though his godlike voice did not seem to come from his mouth.
"The guards, the chaplain, meds, and even Roger."

"What chaplain?"

"We have a chaplain who prays for us regularly. He comes into our cells when we're
unconscious in our beds. The board of directors of Angel's Island Inc. are Christians and they
ordered a chaplain to be present at all times.

"He has a snake pack too; they all do. It's why you can't attack a guard without being shocked
silly. The snakes talk to each other."

"And you're in control?"

"Do we work together, white boy? Or do you try to jump me and get put in a coma till I say you
can open your eyes?"

4

Bits called a general inquisition with twelve convicts, chosen by the qualifications of their files, from all over the prison. He chose those prisoners not deemed homicidal or violently antisocial. He had six Negroes, three Hispanics, two of other races, and Stiles, the international Nazi, to represent the white race.

"We should kill M Lamont and that bitch," Lines Retain, a credit counterfeiter from the Twin Cities proclaimed. "They killed at least four people I know of. And if you let us see the files, Bits, I bet there's a lot more."

There were some grumbles of agreement.

Bits knew that almost five hundred research-related deaths--murders--had been committed by prison officials. That data from these medical experimentation deaths had been sold to research facilities around the world. But he said nothing.

"Escape is our only priority," argued Nin el Tarniq, the Eros-Haus pimp from Miami. "Killing them will just make the law look harder."

Bits stifled a cough and said, "The files are mine and I respect their security. I will not let anyone commit murder here."

"Who made you king?" Edward Fines, a fellow hacker from Cincinnati, wanted to know.

"I did!"
Bits replied in an amplified voice that was loud enough to instill terror into the panel of twelve.

"When will the guards start worrying about us?" Stiles asked. "We can't stay in here forever."

"Not that long," Bits said in his normal voice. "But pretty long. Lamont and Sella sometimes have up to thirty prisoners under study. And as long as the staff doesn't know about us we can make our plans in leisure."

"If the guards all have snake packs why don't we just put them to sleep?" Jerry asked.

"Because they have families and friends all over the world. If they stop communicating that'll set off an alarm. I can control what's inside the prison, but if they send in soldiers we're up shit's creek." __________

After many hours the panel came up with a plan. The great cargo planes that picked up the choke every day of the harvest would be hijacked and flown to various ports. There, all seventeen thousand prisoners would have prepaid transportation to the destination of their choice. Angel's Island had a large bank account from its choke crop and Bits was now in sole control of that wealth. It was decided that everyone would be freed regardless of his crime or disposition toward violence.

"If America won't claim 'em," Lines Retain said, "then America cain't blame 'em." Bits would transmit over one hundred thousand C-mails set to a delay of thirty-six hours before being delivered to news organs and families and friends of the Angel's Island population. Bits also planned to send his displacement virus to every revolutionary organization he could think of, including the Seventh Radical Congress and White World Order.

"Who stays to make sure the prison is secure while we leave?" asked King Theodore, the cult leader who had tried to claim Delaware as a free state.

"I'll stay," Bits replied, rubbing a painful spasm in his back. "I figure that they'll have to take me back for a new trial when so many people get the news."

__________

In the infinite white room, sitting in front of the computer, Bits imagined the guards and staff, even Roger himself, slumped into unconsciousness. The naked forms of Sella and M Lamont were there at his feet. He thought about the robot-piloted cargo jets carrying over seventeen thousand prisoners to major hubs around the globe. They had clothes, fake credit accounts, and fake passports based on their eyescans. Some, he believed, would make it to freedom. The rest would have a solid defense--they were no longer members of the American union and therefore not answerable to the justice system there.

"What are you doing there?" M Lamont said as he rose on wobbly legs. He reached out toward Bits but recoiled at the electrical shock from his snake pack.

"What?" Sella said. "What's happened?"

"We're the only ones awake in the whole of this island," Bits said. "And we all have cancer." M Lamont's eyes went dull.

"What are you talking about?" Sella asked. "Why did Lamont get a shock when he approached you?" Bits explained everything in a slow painful voice, ending with, "I had the med system duplicate the causes for the cancer you caused in me. The lab is open to you. If there's a cure we will all live. If not . . ." He smiled sadly.

__________

United Nations forces entered Angel's Island on the third day after the escape. They found three hundred seventy-five guards and staff unconscious and unwakeable--victims of the ChemSys snake pack. Everyone had fallen while going about their duties. The warden was unconscious next to his desk, men slept on toilets or in the long gloomy halls. Two men on guard duty had died from exposure up on the choke plantation.

Everyone else was asleep, except for Sella Lans and Vortex "Bits" Arnold, who were also dead, and Med M Packard Lamont, who was dying in the infirmary.

"What is it?" the doctor who ministered to Lamont asked.

"Subbac cancer," Lamont moaned. "We were studying it. The convict Bits infected us with it."

"Subbac . . . But that's incurable. Who infected him?" asked the doctor, an elderly Swede. Lamont did not answer the question. Instead he said, "Bits said that he put a timer on the system. His virus will wake the staff and then erase itself. He said that by then I should be dead." The fat under the big man's skin had dissipated. He was slowly being eaten away by the fast-acting incurable disease.

"He said to tell you that he had the system monitor our deaths because that's what we liked to do." And then Lamont himself was dead.

5

Three years later Fidor Esterman and Meena Tokit, employees for the Manatee Tobacco company, were sifting through the Angel's Island computer records. After an international outcry about the medical practices on Angel's Island, the Manatee corporation had closed the prison and remade the facility into a robot plantation. Fidor and Meena, both computer programmers, were two of fifteen people responsible for the plantation operating system, which included four state-of-the-art GE-AI computer systems, sowing, harvesting, and bundling machines, and various robot vehicles.

"Look at this, Meena," Fidor said. He was seated at the main screen of the central computing system. On the screen a green circle appeared. It broke into eleven equal sections.

"What's that?" Meena asked.

"I don't know."

"Bits displacement system active," a robotic female voice announced.

"Oh shit," Fidor said. "That's the Bits virus, isn't it?"