The Complete Karma Trilogy (11 page)

“I’m not cutting you off because you’re drunk.”

“Then what is it?”

The bartender pointed to Aaron’s Karma Card, which was lying on the counter so that he could keep track of the money he was drinking away. “The Tax is coming up here soon. You can’t afford this.”

Aaron was unbelievably perturbed. “First the machines are judging me, and now bartenders? Bartenders! First my wife is spying on me, and now bartenders? What is this world? It’s not the one I signed up for.” He snatched his Card up off the table. “I’m going to a place where my patronage is appreciated.”

“I would strongly recommend against that,” the bartender responded. When Aaron had gone, the bartender looked at his own Karma Card. He had earned one hundred dollars, for reminding a wayward man about the Tax. It was a good time of year for his business.

Decay 7

Learning to Be Good Again

Will was at
one of the Rehabilitation clinics, receiving training in preparation for the few weeks after the Tax. Once again, Lieutenant Caplan was the one showing the group of new officers around, pointing out various things and explaining them tersely. Some of the people that made up the group had been officers for considerably longer than Will, but due to timing knew as little about the Rehabilitation clinics as he did.

“This is the main entrance, if you couldn’t tell by the large gates. You’re going to stand right here with the person you arrested, and wait for the screen of your Karma Card to change. When it does, you’ll hit accept. They’ll send two people out and escort you in. If you can see those people up there, up in those towers, those are some of the guards. All guards here have an extended range of twenty feet on their Evaporation Pens, so they can hit you even from up there.” Caplan hit a few buttons on his own Karma Card, and soon a group of uniformed men came out to greet them.

“Okay, we’re going in.”

All around them were men armed with thick vests and absurdly little Evaporation Pens. They all wore expressions of advanced disinterest. Will couldn’t quite tell why, but he knew already that he didn’t like it there. They were about twenty minutes outside of the city limits, in a place he had never heard of before.

“It isn’t entirely necessary for you to know why the people you arrest are arrested, but I’m going to tell you anyway, for clarity’s sake. As you know, the Tax is based on age, gender, and economic status, but it’s going to be roughly two thousand dollars no matter who you are. And if you don’t pay it in time, this is where you end up. There is no forgiveness for lateness and no exceptions to the rule, so don’t be calling your superiors saying that the person you arrested says they are a special case and didn’t have to pay at the same time, or anything like that. They will be lying to you, and a lot of them do at that point.

“Here are some things you perhaps didn’t know, or didn’t think of. Some of you might think that the way we treat people in here is harsh, but just remember that the Tax was established to make sure everyone’s doing their fair share of work throughout the year. We don’t want any people freeloading on the system. The people in Rehabilitation, if they prove themselves to be valuable citizens to society at any point during their detainment here, are free to go. But only if they show promise. The people that don’t show a will to reform their ways will be here the rest of their life. You’ll see some old people in here—some of them are new additions, some of them have been here longer than any of you have been alive. Just keep that in mind. I’ve always considered this a good time to remind you that your own Tax rate has gone up a little bit, but your new Good Work rate should more than compensate for that. Just don’t be surprised when you see the bill.”

They were passing by prison cells, one after the other, all filled with emaciated people, all wearing orange. There were women and men alike, and Will was glad that he didn’t see many children as they went by. “We’re on our way to the Rehabilitation room, just so you can see what that’s like. We want to give you a good idea of what it is we’re doing here. Now it used to be, even up until recently, that this place had its fair share of violent criminals too. But ever since violence was reclassified as a felony, all the violent people are just Evaporated. Everyone here either couldn’t afford their Tax, or was tampering with their Privacy Room, or that kind of thing. Basically, people that have morally lost their way. But we believe that we can show them the right way again.”

The long hallway of prison cells opened up into a large, open room, full of prisoners in orange uniform. He didn’t understand what most of them were doing. Some were in large circles, talking, but others seemed to be acting out scenes, complete with props.

“Only about a tenth of the detainees fit in here at a time. They’re opening up some more facilities here soon, so the crowding should be a little less by the time you’re here again. As you can see, they’re all acting out Good Works, kind of like practice, only for them it’s learning. They’re learning how to open doors for each other over there by that group of doors, they’re learning how to pick dropped items for each other over there, and how to compliment each other over there. It’s all really good practice, and they even get paid a small rate for it. If, during some Tax, they can ever afford to pay what they owe, they’re let out. But the food costs them too, and their entertainment, so it really takes a strong aptitude for goodness to get out of here. But that’s exactly what we’re trying to do, so it works out great. And we have a reasonably good success rate.”

The gaze of one of the prisoners caught Will’s own as the group made their way across the room, and he stopped immediately. It was the strongest resentment he’d ever seen expressed towards him, from a young girl that was picking up a shoe for an old man that had intentionally dropped it for her to pick up. It was entirely in her eyes, the mouth gave away nothing, and she wasn’t even furrowing her eyebrows. It was hardly perceptible at all, and yet Will knew beyond doubt that it was there. He wanted to talk to her. She was only ten feet away from him.

The group had already moved on, and it was just him and the surrounding prisoners. “Why?” he asked, meeting her intense, accusatory gaze as best as he could. “Why?” he asked again, when she didn’t respond. He couldn’t understand her resentment. Perhaps she was mad because he was free and she wasn’t, and the Rehabilitation clinic did look like a horrendous place. But she only had herself to blame, and she should have known that.

Will had never had difficulty doing the right thing, so he couldn’t understand her failure to do the same, the failure that had led her to Rehabilitation. And then he realized that the failure to understand and do what was right was probably also the failure to understand justice when she saw it, so her resentment was really just a deep misunderstanding, embedded in her character. He wanted to help her, just that one person, but already he was being called.

“Officer Spector, focus. Please stay with the group. We’re on a time schedule here,” Lieutenant Caplan yelled, from across the room. With effort, Will broke the eye contact established between him and the girl. He tried to push it out of his mind as he rejoined the group.

Later that day, back at the police station, Will was overhearing a conversation between his mentor, Eric, and another officer. Eric was saying, “That Charles Darcy guy, he just keeps getting more and more popular. It’s kind of disgusting really. Did you know I was the one that they had offer him a Government position? I talked to the bastard. He was sitting in the City Park, reading some book. Everyone’s making it sound like the guy’s a hero, but I sensed something really off about him when I talked to him back then. I hope he makes a huge mistake here soon, or just disappears, so I don’t have to hear any more about him.”

Will was fairly shocked. He had read all there was to read about Charles, and had admired his dedication to society. He couldn’t help but to intrude on the conversation of the two officers. “What do you mean by that?”

Eric looked at Will for a second before answering. “I mean exactly what I said. The guy’s just suspicious. It was the way he talked. And he was hanging out in the City Park. I don’t trust anybody that makes a habit of being in that place. It’s not like it’s very pretty, or like there’s really that much ‘nature’ in it, and that’s the only reason I could see anybody being there, other than the fact that it’s the largest Privacy Room in the whole city.”

“Well, have you looked into it?” Will persisted.

“I haven’t had the time, since I got assigned to look after you. And like I was saying, if he’s really up to something then he’ll be found out sooner or later, whether I’m watching or not. Karma’s unbelievably good at spotting those kinds of things.” With that the conversation was over, Eric had gone back to talking about something else entirely with the other officer, leaving Will to think.

He’d had a lot of abrupt surprises, ever since becoming an officer, and that conversation was one of the larger ones for him. In his former life as an ordinary citizen, he never would have questioned even once the heroism of a man like Charles. But once he began to question it, he didn’t stop. He sifted through everything he had read about the man, and tried to figure out what was so patently false about any of it.

“He seems sincere,” Will thought to himself, thinking of the interview he had watched on television. And he had always felt he had a deep perception of those kinds of things. “When did I get deceived?”

That night, he went home and took his Karma Map out of his large bag of equipment. He wanted to see for himself what was suspicious about Charles Darcy, wherever he was. It had occurred to him earlier that he could do exactly that, with his Karma Map.

He hadn’t quite figured out all of the buttons yet, but he tried just speaking Charles’ name into the Map several times, to see if it could figure out what he wanted on its own. It did, it took him to a restaurant, where he was sitting across a table from some other middle-aged man, in his hand a glass of wine. He kept glancing up at the people around him, who were all discreetly staring, which was an odd sensation for Will, who felt like it was him they were staring at and had never experienced such a strange sensation.

The man across the table was speaking about a delivery of uniforms, which struck Will as odd. What did a private citizen need a bunch of uniforms for? They only mentioned it briefly, then Charles was talking about a common friend of the two, who Charles seemed to be expressing some concern for.

“I’m worried about Peril. It must be hard for him, doing what he does. But he’s the only man I trust, really. If the circumstances were any different, I would tell him that he had done enough, thank him, and have someone else do it. But there is no one else. And he knows how to make a Good Work out of any situation, that’s a strong quality in a man.”

Will didn’t know what was meant about the first part, but he strongly agreed with the last statement, since it resonated deeply with his own values as a citizen. Will said to himself, “He doesn’t know that anyone’s listening, and that’s still the kind of thing he says. A man like that couldn’t be suspect.”

But he wasn’t satisfied, he kept watching. For hours and hours he watched, late into the night. Whenever Charles went to a bathroom, the screen became blank for a while, the only thing remaining on the screen being the Karma logo at the top right, but when he emerged again, Will was right there with him.

Charles went home. One thing Will had always found somewhat at odds with the man’s character was the absurdly large house he lived in, which was decorated lavishly with tapestries, vases, and even sculptures. He had seen pictures before of the man’s house. The images of Charles’ own eyes had been given by Karma’s permission to the newspaper, which had published them in an article about how the man lived. It all seemed extremely excessive for a single man, in a world like the one they lived in.

He also noticed, when Charles entered the only bathroom in the house, that there wasn’t a mirror in front of the sink, which he saw momentarily before the screen went to black. “It must be modesty,” Will thought to himself. “The man doesn’t have a single mirror in his house, as important as his image must be to someone of his popularity. That’s a strong character.”

It was three in the morning, but Charles was on a subway back into the city, doing a Good Work even as Will watched, and he had never slept at all. Will found it odd that Charles no longer said a single word, everything he did was noiseless. Earlier, Charles had always seemed to be talking, to everyone he met. Perhaps his spirit quieted at night. In the city, he got up from his seat and waited at the door to be let out into the station. Something caught Will’s attention, and frantically he tried to pause the scene. He hit some other button on accident, one that zoomed out and took a broad view of the station, where he could see everything from above, and the few people trickling out of the subway before it left for the next station.

“Go back, damn it,” Will said to the Map. “Go back right now.” He tried tapping again on the dot that represented Charles’ perspective. Again he was seeing things from his eyes, as he took the staircase up into the city. “Rewind, rewind.” A control panel popped up in the bottom part of the screen. He pressed the rewind button, and then the pause button when he was standing at the door of the subway again, the nearly empty station visible on the other side of the glass.

It was indistinct, but Will felt it with a dead certainty. A reflection could barely be made out from the glass of the subway. It wasn’t Charles. It was a man that looked a lot like Charles, the same stature, the same haircut, the same eyes and the same distant smile. But it was a different person. He didn’t even know how he knew. He spent a few minutes, staring at the frozen screen, trying to put a finger on what was different about the slightly distorted reflection from all of the pictures he’d seen before. He ended up giving up. But he was confident regardless.

It was nearly four in the morning, but he called Eric. A rough, sleepy voice answered the call. “What is it, Will?” he said on the other end.

“I found something. I don’t know what it is, though. I was watching Charles. I believe you now, he’s up to something.”

The voice became more awake, more alert. “What did you find?”