Futureland - Nine Stories of an Imminent World (28 page)

"Is that worse than Common Ground?" Blue Nile asked with a sly smile. Neil didn't answer the question. The comparison seemed impossible to comprehend. Nothing seemed possible except his job, his apartment, and the daily fact of his survival.

"Come here, Neil," Blue Nile said. He stood up and went over to the nearest GT table. Neil went along. The little man was proficient at table use. He hit a couple of virtual keys and joined two screens into one large monitor. He then entered the Unit Controller screen.

"What are you doing?" Neil asked.

"Showing you something."

"But that's the UC page. It's permanent unemployment over that--even just to look at a UC's screen."

"I have the protocols."

"Are you the UC?"

"None of us are. But we have all been given the protocols and clearance to use our UC's codes." With that Blue Nile entered a forty-seven-digit code number. The central computer paused for a moment and then presented the image of a handprint. Blue Nile placed his hand inside the print. The computer paused three seconds. Neil felt his heart thrumming.

A red entry screen appeared. Neil had only once seen a red screen. That was when he first worked for Specifix, almost six years earlier. He had somehow frozen the whole GT system; no one at the table could log on. The UC, an unclean man named Nordeen, had entered his codes to fix the problem. He had used a red screen with yellow and orange letters just like the one Blue Nile had raised. On the search line he entered Neil's name and his last GT, LAVE-AITCH-27. A file appeared that had Neil's ranking and picture at the top.

"You see that blue dot?" Blue Nile asked.

Neil saw the large blue spot pulsing at the right side of his photograph. He also noticed that the picture was not the one he had taken when he came to work; it was a recent shot of him leaning over the camera's lens. He realized that his monitor must have an internal camera so that he could be watched continually.

"What does it mean?" Neil asked.

Blue Nile placed his finger over the dot and tapped the virtual clicker. Immediately a green screen, also with yellow letters, appeared. The words PENALTY SCREEN were at the top of the form. Neil read through the document. Every time he had fainted had been logged, the number of times he had drifted while he was supposed to be working had been recorded and graphed. His verbal complaints, even those he made only to himself, had been recorded. Toward the end of the form there was a diagnosis box that read
Labor Nervosa;
Acute. The suggested treatment was permanent unemployment at the end of the current work semester.

The date of his discharge was three days before he was to have his first vacation. Neil's stomach began to roil. He heard a sound that he thought was coming from the table but then he realized that it was a low moan from his own chest. He thought about sitting down but he was frozen over the screen.

His teeth began to chatter.

Suddenly there was a sharp pain at the side of his head. He fell to the floor. He looked up and realized that Blue Nile had hit him.

"Why?" Neil asked.

" 'Cause you were losin' it. A shock sometimes breaks you out of it."

"No, not that. Why are they firing me? What did I do?"

"You're just part of the margin, kid," Blue Nile said. "Workin' for the corporation is just like goin' to school, and in this classroom they grade on a curve."

4

"It's simple, Neil," Oura Olea said in the UC's office. "You either erase the data from your record or you're thrown into permanent unemployment."

"There has to be another way," Neil whined. "I mean, tampering with work records is a crime."

"And living in Common Ground is a prison sentence," Oura said. "Obey the law and you spend the rest of your life in jail."

"It can't be. It can't be," Neil said. "Will you do it for me?"

"No."

"Why not? You understand these things better than I do. You sit in the inner circle."

"You could sit there if you wanted. Athria and I are prods like everyone else here."

"But I could get sent to jail."

"We've covered this ground before, Neil," the golden woman said. "It's one of our only rules. If you want to work with us you have to clean up your own file."

"But if I get thrown out they might find out about you," Neil said softly.

"How?"

"I don't know. They'll check my records. They'll, they'll come here to ask questions."

"Only if you send them, Neil." Oura's face was impassive. Neil missed her maternal smile.

"I don't mean that--"

"You wrote in your journal that you thought you were being tested, that maybe they expected you to turn our GT in."

"M Olea," Neil said. "I'm scared. Really scared. I've never been anything but a prod. When I was ten my mother sent me to prod-ed and that's all I've ever been. I don't know about forging records and using a UC's codes. I never knew about glass elevators and windows that look out on the sky or sitting backwards or letting people smoke cigarettes. All I want is to go back to being normal, back to LAVE-AITCH-27 between Hermianie and Juliet."

"That's all gone, Neil. The doors are closed, your seat is taken, and if you don't change the files you will be underground for the rest of your life."

"I can't."

Oura smiled again. It was a sad smile. She touched Neil's hand and said, "It's a lot to take in all at once. You have six weeks before the judgment will be executed. Think about it." __________

At his station on the upper tier Neil was lost. He looked out at the open sky filled with clouds. He tried to imagine some way to get out from under the weight of his fate. He knew now that GEE-PRO-9 wasn't some kind of test, at least not a test produced by his employers. He'd fallen into a renegade group that had subverted the company's structure. But all Neil wanted was to go back to his previous life. He spent the late morning trying to figure out how he could succeed at staving off permanent unemployment. Close to noon a red light appeared on the table before him. It was an interoffice e-mail. He touched the light and his table monitor came to life.

Greetings M Hawthorne,

I am M Un Fitt, Unit Controller for GEE-PRO-9. I noticed that you haven't been working on
our Third Eye project this morning. I assume this is because you need a handle with which to
grab hold of the idea. Your initial notes show that you understand that the major problems here
are the size of the processing unit and the type of receptors that can receive on a par with the
broad range of perceptions possible for the human nervous system.

I have not worked out the problem fully but I am convinced that there has to be a physiological
element to the Third Eye project. As you may know from the vid news programs there has been
a great deal of research done on brain functions as both receptors and projectors of ideational
material. Sadly, the congress has outlawed this type of brain research because, they say, there
are certain constitutional rights that may be violated. In reality international corporate
interests have lobbied against such research because it might lead to greater freedoms and
access abilities for the common prod.

I have attached several documents that were created before the federal laws went into effect.
These are basic chip designs that can connect and interact with the human nervous system. I
don't expect you to be able to approximate the neuronal connectors, just try to design the chip
logic(s) based on the studies enclosed.

Have a bright day.

Yours truly,

UF

By the time he reached the end of the document Neil had completely forgotten about his impending doom. He was amazed by the candid, conversational transmission of the UC. He was also deeply interested in the content of the attached documents. He downloaded fourteen segments, each of which contained in excess of a hundred thousand words. On top of these text documents he received over fifteen hundred graphs and illustrations, and seventeen video presentations. Neil read through the rest of the day and way into the evening. He was so enthralled by what he read that he would forget to look out at the sky for over an hour at a time.

The introductory document Neil thought must have been written by Un Fitt himself (if indeed the UC was a male). This long rambling essay explained how Congress passed legislation that allowed neuronal research for use in computer technology but at the same time outlawed any brain implants, neuronal connectors, or mind-altering experiments. This latter prohibition was supposedly based on the possible infringement of individual rights.

From there was a long essay called "The Road to the Mind," which postulated that any working neuronal pathway could extend brain functions using certain octal protocols. This pathway could utilize the brain's instinctual functions to manipulate data calculations. Ultimately, the essay postulated, the only computer a human would need would be an octal interface and the use of his own brain. A footnote from this essay said:

Therefore, a comparatively small interface device might be implanted under the subject's skin. This device could utilize the subject's own brain to achieve the bulk of the Third Eye's functions.

But,
Neil thought,
a device that small could never store the amount of information necessary to
make the Eye useful.

He read on through the night. The types of circuits necessary to run the device suggested had not as yet been developed, or, if they had, the corporations using them had not shared or released the technology. __________

Neil returned home twenty-four hours after he had been taken away by Blue Nile. He fell onto his mattress, slept for five hours, and then awoke in a sudden panic. Everything came back to him. The diagnosis of
Labor Nervosa
, the promise of forever unemployment, of fifty years underground in the honeycombs of Common Ground. His only other choice, the erasure of his record, was a felony. He began to tremble and sweat. He threw up in his small toilet and collapsed on the floor. __________

"Can I talk to you, Nina?" he said to the dark young prod.

"Sure, Neil," she said.

Neil was confused by her friendliness and obvious flirtation; by her apparent ugliness and the deep sexual attraction she held for him.

"Could we go in the UC's room."

"Yeah," she said.

She had been sitting next to a male prod, an Asian man. "Excuse me, Nin," she said to him. The man nodded and smiled at Neil.

__________

"What do you want, Neil?" Nina asked when they were in the back room.

"I want . . ." he said.

"Yeah?"

"I want you to do something for me."

"What?"

"The thing, the thing with the records."

"What thing, Neil?"

"You know what I mean."

"No I don't. Not unless you tell me what it is."

"I don't want to say it in here."

"There's no monitor cameras or listening devices here, hon. We had them removed."

"I still don't want to say it."

Nina gave him a broad smile. Her skin was almost black, but not quite. Her smile was happy; red gums and spaces between all of her small teeth. Her eyes were deep holes, dull but not lifeless or unintelligent. They were too deep for Neil to fathom. Her hair was thick, braided into a dozen short ponytails. Neil felt his stomach rumble when he looked at her.

"Come sit with me in the window," she said.

He obeyed and she sat close to him, putting her right hand on his thigh.

"What is it you want from me, Neil?"

"I want you to do for me what they make everybody else here do for themselves."

"Your assignment?" she asked. Her hand began sliding up his leg.

"No."

"Then, what?" Her hand moved further.

Neil squirmed.

"Don't move away," she whispered.

He stopped and her fingers reached the tip of his penis through the thin material of his tan andro-suit. He became instantly erect. Nina smiled and breathed into Neil's face. Her breath was strong but not bad, sweet. Neil wanted to scream.

"What do you call this?" she asked.

"My, my penis." As he said the word her hand slid over the erection and squeezed it slightly.

"Is that what you call it? Really?"

"Dick, cock. My hard cock."

"Say it."

"What?"

"Say it."

"That's my hard cock. Hard cock."

"That's right. You see? You know how to talk. You know how to say it."

"Please," Neil said.

Still holding on to Neil's erection, Nina got up on her knees in the window space. She flipped her dress up, showing that she wore nothing underneath.

"Do me, baby," she said.

"Somebody might come."

"I put a sign on the door."

"What kinda sign?"

"Just to say not to bother us. Do me now, baby. Come on."

"I don't have a condom."

"You don't need it."

"You don't know that."

"If you want me to help you, you have to do me." Saying this she let him go and raised her posterior into the air, spreading her legs so that the sun shone through, illuminating her wild and errant hairs. Neil had never even dreamed of something like this. The bold blue sky and the bolder still woman who excited him so much that he felt sick down in his core.

He pulled down his pants and fumbled around until he pushed inside her. She moaned and called out a name that was not quite Neil. He looked down at her butt thrusting against him and then up at the sky. They bucked hard against each other and for the first time Neil thought about dying without fear or trepidation. When he came he saw his own reflection grinning in an infinite blue sky. A muscle tore in his groin but he didn't care. He tried to pull away but Nina reached her hand around his backside and held him.

"Don't, baby. Don't take him out yet."

"Somebody might come."

"That's me, hon," she moaned. "That's me comin'."

__________