by James Axler
Webb smiled, indulgently. Kane suspected it had been a long time since he’d had the opportunity to have a discussion like this, and could see that he rather reveled in being able to talk with someone new.
“Have you ever heard of a phenomenon called Sick Building Syndrome, where one’s environment is said to affect one’s physical and mental state?” the Supreme Magistrate asked. “Curved air applies that principle to affect the human mind by a subtle change in air currents. This structure you find yourself in—and really, we must establish just how you came to be here, but there’s time enough for that—is built to incorporate the very ventilation methods outlined in the research, affecting an individual’s inner ear and thus upsetting the production of negative thoughts. There’s more to it, of course, but that is the foundation of the system.”
Kane looked mystified. “Am I being affected now? Because I sure don’t feel like I am.”
“It takes a little adjustment for a newcomer to fit in,” Webb told him, “but once that’s done you’ll find you let go of all that anger I can see bottled up within you.”
“What if I like my anger just the way it is?” Kane asked.
Webb shook his head and smiled. “Before long, you won’t care,” he assured Kane. “You’ll just let it all go like it never was. You’ve looked around Ioville a little, I take it?”
Kane nodded grudgingly.
“It’s efficient,” Webb trilled. “No problems here, no issues, no fighting.”
“You have a Magistrate Division,” Kane pointed out.
“Yes, but it’s one primarily dedicated to service work and operations outside of the ville walls,” Webb told him. “We have very little trouble with the population itself.”
“No Tartarus Pits,” Kane recalled.
“Not necessary,” Webb explained. “Here in Ioville we have all the docile and amenable labor we need. No job goes undone, no task is rejected. If I were to command the people to kill themselves right now, in my name, they would do so. And they would do it so swiftly that you and I would be sitting inch-deep in their blood before I could even retract the command. Think about that, Kane. A docile and utterly obedient population in a ville where crime will never exist. It’s quite the achievement, isn’t it?”
“Quite,” Kane said sourly.
“You sound unconvinced,” Webb said, picking up on Kane’s tone. “Would you like me to show you around so you can get a real feel for things here in Ioville?”
I would like to know what you’ve done to my friends, Kane thought, but he didn’t say that. That would wait. Instead he just said: “Sure, show me around. Let’s see what perfection looks like when it’s running smoothly.”
* * *
ACCOMPANIED BY A discreet armed escort comprised of two Magistrates, Supreme Magistrate Webb showed Kane around Ioville, from Epsilon Level all the way up to Alpha. Kane saw a model of efficiency in action, but it was a dull kind of efficiency, people turned almost into mindless robots as they worked at their tasks, building huge military transports or boiling food down to its core components, maintaining the substructure of the ville and polishing the plain gray-white walls that could be seen everywhere.
A whole swathe of white-clad citizens were being drilled in a vast chamber on Cappa Level, traditionally the level dedicated solely to Magistrates. Kane wondered what this augured. Supreme Magistrate Webb’s words were not reassuring—he said that everyone in the ville was expected to remain in the peak of physical fitness and was trained for certain eventualities. Kane did not ask what those “eventualities” might be, but he suspected it was nothing positive—the man was building an army, whether he meant to use it offensively or not.
Kane asked a few questions, hiding them in the nature of genial conversation, and concluded that Grant and Brigid had only just been inducted a few hours before he had found them here, that they were being familiarized with their new lodgings from which they would conduct their new, regimented lives in Ioville. Kane wanted to ask if they had fought back, and, more crucially, why they were not still fighting now, but he could think of no way in which to phrase this without giving himself away. Thus, he settled instead for a discussion about the snowstorm that seemed to have racked the area for as long as Cerberus could divine.
“Ah, yes, the northern climate,” Webb chuckled. “A little cold, the risk of frost and snow—it’s all perfectly normal. Of course we have had to take precautions, because the weather can be punishing to the buildings of the ville long-term. But the barons understood that before they began construction.”
“And when was that, exactly?” Kane asked as the two men looked out through the windows of a high walkway on Beta Level. Above them, the plastiglass of the walkway showed the sky where the snow fell in flurries, and the snow had settled on the crest of its rounded roof in a straight white line.
Webb took a moment in thought before answering. “This experiment was begun twelve years ago,” he stated. “It took three years to build Ioville and to perfect the ventilation system that would deliver air along the curved air principles.”
“So you’ve been here nine years, then?” Kane checked.
Webb shook his head and the long strand of ponytail swept to and fro behind his back. “There were other structures that needed to be put in place before the whole system could function. Even now we’re still not at full capacity for a ville, but it’s all a learning process as I’m sure you can appreciate.”
“Where are you...recruiting your citizens from?” Kane asked.
“The villes initially,” Webb said. “Each baron allocated one hundred and fifty people to populate Ioville, along with a cadre of trained Magistrates whom I chose personally to serve under my command.”
“And you came from...Ragnarville?” Kane prompted.
“Ragnar, yes,” Webb confirmed. “How did you know?”
“I have a good ear for accents,” Kane told him. “So, by my calculations you have four hundred and fifty people, plus Mags, here. That’s not enough to keep a ville this size running.”
“We have also recruited locally,” Webb said with a selective vagueness. Kane suspected what he meant was that people were press-ganged into the ville and brainwashed.
“In the longer term, we’re now looking at a natural turnover and replenishment of the ville population,” Webb continued. “We have an admirable birthrate. The early bloomers of Ioville’s second generation are almost ready to join the workforce, just a couple more years.”
Kane nodded, still watching the incessant snow falling on the towers. “Kids? And they’re obedient to this Terminal White system you have going? They’re usually unruly, especially as they reach the teenage years.”
Webb laughed. “Not our children.” Then he looked at Kane and smiled. “You ask a lot of questions, Kane, but they’re good questions. Insightful,” he said. “Your profiling did not overestimate your intelligence. You’ll be a real asset here.”
Kane turned to take in his surroundings. The gray-clad Magistrates and the gray-clad citizens, all of them quietly going about their duties without any chatter. It certainly wasn’t a life, not from what he could see. “I’m not sure I’d fit in.”
“You will,” Webb assured him. “Processing only takes a little over an hour and then, I can assure you, you will never look back.”
Kane didn’t like the sound of that. “Where are your orders coming from, Supreme Magistrate?” he asked as they walked back along the skyway toward the elevator.
“I follow the instructions as laid by the barons,” Webb replied primly.
“Baron Cobalt, Ragnar...?” Kane queried.
“That’s correct.”
“So they are the ultimate authority over this...experiment?” Kane checked as he and Webb entered a waiting elevator accompanied by their Magistrate guards.
“Yes, that’s correct,” W
ebb assured him.
“But the barons are dead, Supreme Magistrate,” Kane said. “They upped and left a long time before, and they all died over a year ago.”
Kane did not delve into the way that the nine barons had transformed into the Annunaki ruling family. If Webb pressed him on it, Kane would explain, but from what he suspected Webb had been out here so long just following orders that he was entirely unaware that the world outside of his artificial snowstorm had long since moved on.
“Dead?” Supreme Magistrate Webb asked, not quite masking his incredulity. “Then what of the villes? What of the baronies? What is happening out there? Surely the world must have descended into chaos!”
Kane shook his head and smiled. “No more so than it did under the barons themselves.”
Webb looked ashen as he considered the implications of Kane’s revelation.
“Been a long time since you got any new orders, I guess,” Kane teased.
Webb fixed him with a serious stare. “Someone must correct this,” he said gravely.
It was only then that Kane began to wonder if perhaps he had overplayed his hand.
Designated Task #011: Cleaning
The question remains: Why is Air Monitoring so critical to the running of Ioville?
I had wondered if it had something to do with breathing but I can find no evidence of any breathing difficulties in Ioville. In fact, there is little sickness that I can find any evidence to speak of.
I tentatively ask Citizen 058F, my colleague on Designated Task #011, if she is aware of any breathing-related problems in Ioville. My shift with her is one of the few occasions when I am alone with just one other individual. I have deduced from her low identification number that she has most likely been here since construction of Ioville, and as such she would likely have more knowledge than most. She looks at me strangely as we clean the gray doors to an elevator on Epsilon Level, surprised that I have spoken.
“It is a reasonable concern,” I assure her. “Each citizen should be concerned for the welfare of their fellow citizens and of the ville.”
She accepts this with a slow blink, then replies in a timid whisper. “No incidence I know of.” Her voice sounds as if it is an alien thing to her, an instrument rarely used.
—From the journal of Citizen 619F.
Chapter 15
Kane was taken to Processing.
Processing was located on Delta Level, which struck Kane as perverse. In the standard ville structure, Delta Level was dedicated to the preparation, storage and distribution of food—to process humans here suggested that, perhaps unconsciously, the designers of this ville considered humans to be just more meat going through the system.
Webb accompanied Kane, now escorted by four Magistrates like an honour guard in their stiff gray uniforms.
“You deal with all your prisoners so personally?” Kane asked as they emerged from the elevator on Delta and paced into a dimly lit, white-walled corridor.
Webb shook his head and laughed. “You have exceptional genes, Kane,” he said. “We’ll be glad to have that here. Longer-term, yours will be the seeds of a strong strand of humanity that will help guide us into the twenty-fourth century and beyond.”
Kane looked at the man askance. “And what makes you think I’ll give up my...seeds willingly?” he asked.
“Free will is an outdated concept, I find,” Webb replied without pause. “That great experiment failed a long time ago and the concept of free will should have been put out to pasture at the same time that the barons introduced the Program of Unification.”
Webb watched Kane a moment as the posse walked toward a set of double doors at the end of the dimly lit corridor. The doors were tall, twelve feet or more, twice the height of Kane or the other men. They were designed to impress, to intimidate. Kane recalled the theatrics that Baron Cobalt had used when people were brought in his presence, of how they had been frightened and disoriented by a whole series of psychological tricks, the better to give the baron the upper hand. And here it all was again, those same tricks, carefully chosen to make a man feel small.
“I see from your expression that you know what I am talking about,” Webb observed after a moment. “The Program of Unification was a masterstroke, but one that did not go far enough. You, even as an ex-Magistrate, can surely see that now.”
Kane slowed his pace and locked eyes with Webb. “People have problems,” he said, “and sometimes people can create problems. But they—we—are also capable of brilliance, Supreme Magistrate. I didn’t learn to appreciate that until I’d left the service. Maybe you should try doing the same.”
Webb shook his head and chuckled as the double doors opened, revealing a medical complex with numerous security protocols in place. These included two Mags at the doors, and an auto-gun affixed to a ceiling mount on a swivel point. “You do have spirit, Kane,” Webb said. “The file was right about that—”
Before the man could say another word, Kane moved, taking a long step backward and swinging out his left arm so that it connected with the nearest Magistrate’s chin in a solid blow. On seeing the medical wing that passed for Processing, Kane had realized that it was now or never—if he didn’t make his move in these moments then he would be trapped in Ioville forever more, caught under the hypnotic yoke of Terminal White.
The Mag stumbled back as if he were drunk. Kane dropped low, even as the other Magistrates pulled their blasters and took aim at him. They were not standard-issue Sin Eaters, Kane noted as he ran at the closest of them, keeping the Mag between him and the other Mags to block their line of fire.
Kane leaped as he ran, barreling into a gray-clad Magistrate in a powerful shoulder barge that sent the other man hurtling backward. Kane landed in a running turn, spinning on his heel as his opponent crashed to the floor. He was unarmed of course—time to change that.
The two remaining Magistrates, who had accompanied Kane as Webb had given him the tour of the ville, discharged their curious weapons at Kane, loosing twin dart-like projectiles at their suddenly energetic captive.
Kane spun, twisting out of the path of those projectiles as they zipped toward him. Then, without any loss of momentum, he kicked the Mag to the right, bringing his foot high so that it connected with the man’s chest in a blurt of expelled breath. The Magistrate staggered backward, dropping his weapon as his colleague reeled off a second shot.
Kane leaped over the incoming missile, moving in great strides toward the dropped firearm as it skittered across the tiled floor. He dropped low as he ran, reaching down so that his knuckles almost scraped the floor, snatching up the dart gun without slowing his pace.
Another dart came racing toward Kane from behind, smacking into his left shoulder, impacting harmlessly against his shadow suit.
Webb was giving orders now, calm but urgent: “Carefully, this one’s a keeper. We don’t want to damage him.”
The two Mags who guarded the white-walled Processing area were hurrying out from their posts, surprised at the scene that had been playing out before their eyes in the past five seconds. Kane turned to them, taking swift aim with the stolen dart gun, and fired off two shots.
The first missed its intended target entirely, spinning off to the far right of the man’s armored flank.
The second, however, struck the other Magistrate full in the chest, imbedding itself just beneath the flash of white that decorated his left breast. The Mag did a kind of uncoordinated two-step dance backward before slumping against a wall and wrenching the dart from his chest.
More darts peppered the wall by Kane, drilling into the white space there like debris from a meteor shower.
Kane turned again, conscious that his first two victims were even now pulling themselves up off the floor, ready to reenter the fight. He could run for the elevator, but that would take precious seconds to call, and
then he needed to get the doors closed without getting shot. Or he could head inward, into the area known as Processing, but that was fraught with its own dangers—the primary of which was he had no idea whether it contained another exit. No, his best option then was to overpower these Magistrates and maybe hold Webb hostage to give himself the bartering chip to get out of here with his partners.
Sounds easy, Kane thought grimly.
He ducked and rolled across the floor, eyes locking on the other Mag who had emerged from the medical center, squeezing the trigger on the dart gun even as another burst of fire snapped at his heels.
The Mag cried out as Kane’s dart hit him in the neck, at the vulnerable fraction of an inch between helmet and leather. But his blaster fired, too, delivering a dart of sedative to Kane’s right bicep, the impact sending a spike of pain through Kane’s arm and chest.
“Yeargh!” Kane howled as the dart struck. He kept rolling, reaching for the dart with his free hand and ripping it out of his arm. Once again, the shadow suit had saved him from more serious harm, deflecting the dart’s needle and preventing the liquid within from discharging. Kane tossed the dart aside, its nib bent where it had struck against the shadow suit.
“He’s just one man, dammit,” Webb was saying over the sounds of the scuffle.
Then Kane was up, like a sprinter leaping from the starting blocks, powering toward the Mag who had just taken the dart to the neck, landing a vicious left hook to the side of his helmet so that he caromed to the deck.
As the Mag crashed to the ground, Kane spun to face the others, the dart gun raised ready in his right fist. Another dart whipped through the air toward Kane, and he sidestepped out of its path so that it caught him only a glancing blow on the right leg. Then Kane was moving forward, sprinting for Supreme Magistrate Webb in his bland gray uniform, a determined grimace on his face.
Supreme Mag Webb saw Kane’s attack coming, processed it in an instant, and subtly shifted his weight so that it rested on his back foot. Kane reached for him, and Webb leaned back and grabbed Kane’s grasping left hand by the wrist, pulling him forward and down in the same movement. Wrong-footed, Kane skipped forward, tumbling toward the Supreme Mag as he sank to the floor.
