The Innocence Treatment

by Ari Goelman

  You can’t imagine how surprised I was when they pulled over a few hours later and slid open the van’s back door, and I found myself facing a large INTERNATIONAL DEPARTURES sign. Two porters in blue uniforms smoked by the curbside check-in booth, and a woman walked by pushing a stroller with one hand and pulling a small suitcase after her with the other. The airport. They’d actually taken me to the airport.

  A few seconds later an airport security guy arrived to meet my guards. Together, they escorted me past the airlines’ check-in desks and through security, bypassing the metal detectors and X-ray machines and heading straight toward the gates. Crowds of people waiting at security watched as I was led past them in handcuffs.

  We stopped in front of gate C12. The electronic display said: BA 312 TO HEATHROW. NOW BOARDING.

  One of the guards unlocked my handcuffs. The other guard handed me some papers, which turned out to be an airplane ticket and a provisional visa for the UK. “Safe travels, Ms. Fielding,” she said. She almost smiled at the look on my face. Not quite.

  I ran onto the airplane, expecting at any moment to be stopped. The flight attendants took my ticket and waved me on, for all the world like I was just another passenger. I found Lauren and my parents waiting for me in coach class. There were no empty seats around them.

  Lauren quickly stood. “Evelyn,” she said. She had tears in her eyes, and I remember thinking it was the first time I’d seen her cry since just after her operation.

  “Lauren.”

  We hugged. She put her lips next to my ear and whispered, “Keep Mom and Dad on the plane. Don’t let them make a fuss. Make sure I’m not doing this for nothing.”

  “Doing what?” I pulled away from her.

  Louder, so our parents could hear, she said, “Take my seat, Ev. I’ll get the attendant to assign us another seat.” She winked at our dad. “Maybe they’ll let me stay in first class.”

  She walked past me, not giving our parents a second look. Nothing to let them know what she was doing. I discovered later that she’d told them a story about how Dr. Corbin was happy to help, how the Department really didn’t want to keep me, but just needed a way of saving face, so we were all going to the UK for a few months. God knows how she convinced them, but Lauren was an extremely good liar by then. And they were desperate to believe her, I’m sure—desperate to believe that I’d be released from jail without any lasting damage to me or them.

  A minute or two after Lauren walked away, the plane started taxiing for takeoff. My parents assumed Lauren had been given a seat up front. By the time they realized the truth, it was too late—we were an hour over the Atlantic. My parents had a choice: they could throw a fit, possibly forcing the plane to turn around and land, at which point we’d all be arrested, or they could let Lauren’s sacrifice mean something.

  They never made their peace with it, though. My dad spent weeks trying every contact he had in the Department. People stopped taking his calls, but he didn’t stop calling.

  In the end, my parents surprised everyone—including themselves—by becoming anti-Department activists. To date, they have never returned to the U.S. They sold their house in Maryland later that year and bought a tiny apartment in the Willesden neighborhood of London. Willesden was just in the process of becoming London’s Little New York, filled with American dissidents and refugees of every stripe imaginable. These days you can walk around Willesden for hours without hearing a British accent—that’s how many expatriated Americans have settled there.

  My parents used the rest of the money from the sale of their house to fund Innocence.org—a nonprofit providing resources and information to victims or potential victims of the Innocence Treatment. If you go to their website, you’ll find the latest news of successful treatments and the latest (debunked) rumors of vaccines that can make you immune to the Innocence Treatment.

  Ironically, I was the one—teenaged activist and wonder child—I was the one who rejected activism. My high school sent me my diploma and I started university in Spain a few months later. I buried myself in the study of twentieth-century Chinese literature, becoming fluent in Mandarin and Cantonese, with every intention of losing myself in the Chinese academy.

  I had no intention of editing a book like this. For years, I wouldn’t admit to any connection with Lauren—that’s how terrified I was of drawing the attention of the Department. I started going by my middle name. People would ask if I was related to the Innocence Girl, and I’d laugh. I practiced the laugh until it sounded real, though no doubt Lauren would have seen through it in an instant. “Ha. No. I get that all the time. Fielding is such a common name.”

  I couldn’t help hearing rumors about Lauren from time to time. I hoped the good ones were true and prayed the bad ones were not. I tried to believe that I could put it all behind me. Live whatever passed for a normal life in the twenty-first century.

  But enough about me. What follows are five never-before-published entries from Lauren’s journal after she went into Paxeon’s custody. A panel of independent forensic-document examiners has verified that these journal entries were written by my sister during the period in question. I’ve posted the verification documents online at Innocence.org, and filed the originals with my aggregator.

  Thank you for your continued interest.

  Dr. E. Sofia Fielding, Ph.D.

  London, UK

  June 2041

  FROM THE PRISON JOURNAL OF LAUREN C. FIELDING

  December 9, 2031

  Funny how attached I’ve gotten to keeping a journal, even one that no one else will ever read. I’m scribbling this on a notebook I begged from my therapist, writing in the bathroom (where I’m pretty sure there’s no security camera) with the lights out (just in case). Though, clearly, if Dr. Corbin really wanted to read it, I’m in no position to stop her.

  I couldn’t quite bring myself to keep addressing my journal to Dr. Corbin when just writing her name makes me want to ram my fist down her throat. (How’s that for a violent and paranoid thought, Dr. Brechel?)

  Poor Dr. Brechel. Still trying to convince himself that I’m crazy. As long as he believes I’m crazy, he doesn’t have to accept how deeply screwed he is.

  Kind of funny, kind of sad: Dr. Brechel has a new watch that I’m almost sure he bought with the advance he got from Paxeon. It’s made of some expensive silvery alloy, and I know it’s new because it doesn’t match the tan line on his wrist. He touches it every time I tell him he should run. I think it reassures him. He didn’t throw away his life for nothing—he got a really fancy watch out of it.

  Not that I’m complaining. I’m glad he took the job. Dr. Brechel is a good person, especially as far as Paxeon employees go. He has them take off my restraints when he and I meet, and he gave me the pad and pencil I’m writing with right now. The pencil is kept blunt in case I get the urge to stab someone with it, but at least it writes. Locked up in a windowless cell twenty hours a day, it makes a big difference, having a way to write and sketch and just generally not go any crazier than I already am.

  Along those lines, I’ve given myself a schedule. I wake up, do push-ups, sit-ups, draw, write, push-ups, sit-ups, draw, write, and so on. Eat when they bring me food. Sleep as much as possible. Not nearly as much as I’d like. Work out with the makeshift punching bag I’ve made in the bathroom. (I’ve wrapped my towels around the towel bar, which makes an okay punching bag. I don’t mind bruising my knuckles a little.) So that’s twenty hours a day.

  As for the other four hours, I have two hour-long sessions with Dr. Brechel every day, and then there’s my gym time. They’ve converted one of the offices on this floor into a mini-gym—a treadmill, some weights, and a real punching bag. I think it’s like giving a guinea pig a wheel to run on. Dr. Corbin doesn’t want ill health interfering with the results of her latest tests. Still, I can’t resist. They turn me loose in the gym twice a day and I make the most of it.

  Speaking of tests, they’ve given me an injection or two every day that I
’ve been here. Plus a nasal spray the first day I arrived. At first I was worried—terrified, really—that they were going to turn me back into an idiot. But so far that hasn’t happened. Whatever they’ve given me, I still don’t believe anything these liars tell me. I still have no problem telling when Dr. Brechel is trying to keep something from me. There was the one day last week when I thought Dr. Brechel was the funniest man I’d ever met, but whatever that was wore off pretty quickly.

  Even then, the drugs didn’t make me talk to him. I could have kept my mouth shut if I wanted. I probably should have kept my mouth shut, if I cared as much about Brechel surviving this job as I pretend to. But it feels good to be honest with someone—like writing this journal, I guess. After the first session or two with Dr. Brechel, I stopped trying to resist.

  Plus, if he listens to me about setting up a webpage to be published in the event of his death, that’s one more piece of evidence out there in the world. Which, by the way, is why I didn’t tell him what happened between me and Eric Schafer. I imagined Mom and Dad reading Dr. Brechel’s account and … well, yuck. Some things they don’t have to know.

  What happened was this: I’d just come into Paxeon custody when I saw him again. Eric Schafer—the orderly I remembered being so nice. I wasn’t restrained yet.

  Some other orderly was leading me up to my new room. This place has become a ghost town compared to how it used to be when I visited with my parents. Paxeon headquarters used to bustle. Tons of scientists wandering around, chatting or hunched over their tablets. People in expensive suits striding down the hallway carrying briefcases.

  All of that’s gone. The day I came in, the lobby was empty except for the orderly who was waiting for me. We took the elevator to the seventh floor and found the hallway empty, too, except for Schafer.

  “Lauren!” Schafer said, coming toward me, both arms out for a hug. He’s a short, broad man, balding with a few tufts of blond hair on either side of his head. The orderly who had brought me walked past Schafer, headed for a computer terminal at the other end of the hall.

  “I heard you were coming back.” Schafer smiled, arms still outstretched. His eyes flicked down to my chest and stayed there. “So nice to see you again. I’m really looking forward to your stay!”

  I stared at him, hazy memories surfacing from when I’d been heavily sedated after the operation. Eric touching me. Eric bathing me. The smug smile on his face as he soaped up my breasts. “Stay away from me,” I said, stepping back toward the elevator.

  Eric’s forehead creased. “Shoot,” he said. “We got along so well on your last visit.” He folded his arms, muscular and pale, across his chest and smiled at me. That same smug smile.

  I stopped retreating. “You’re not going to be my orderly this time.”

  Eric’s eyes strayed to the camera mounted on the wall. “Sorry, Lauren, but that’s not my decision or yours.” He walked toward me. “I’ll show you to your room.”

  “Make it your decision,” I said, trying to control my anger. “Stay away from me. Quit if you have to. I don’t want to see you again.”

  “I’m sure we’re going to get along fine, once you get settled—”

  “No,” I said. “You’re not going to get along fine. Not anymore.”

  I drove my knee between his legs. One thing I’ve realized since the operation is that wanting to hurt someone else is more dangerous than any martial-art technique. Just being willing to inflict pain without any warning. Most people aren’t. Not without a drink or working themselves up into self-righteous anger. Not without hesitating for a few seconds between blows.

  He doubled over and gasped. I didn’t hesitate.

  I grabbed his hair and stepped behind him, pulling him off balance, then kneed him hard in the throat as he went down. He curled up on the floor and I stamped the heel of my boot down on his right hand. He made a kind of strangled squeal, in too much pain to scream.

  I leaned over him and whispered, “I want you to quit. Today. Get a job where I never have to see you again. Nod to show you understand.”

  “Bitch,” he managed to gasp. “Can’t … wait … till … they … fix … you back.”

  That’s when I broke his leg. I kicked the side of his thigh, just above his knee. It’s a kick I’ve practiced hundreds of times at self-defense class. I put just as much force into it as I did when I broke three boards in last spring’s exhibition. I heard his leg crack and he screamed.

  I leaned back over him. “If I see you again, I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you, and I’ll walk away laughing. Nod to show you understand.”

  Tears were running down his face. He nodded.

  The whole thing had taken maybe thirty seconds. The other orderly had run back to us and was staring at me, eyes wide, so scared I could see the pulse in his neck.

  “Make sure the other orderlies hear about this,” I said. “Make sure they know that I hold grudges.”

  He nodded, swallowing heavily and staring at Eric, who had passed out on the floor.

  That was pretty much the most fun I’ve had since being committed. The only fun. I just wish it had been Dr. Corbin instead. She hasn’t let me see her since I got here. My guess is she’s worried about me figuring out what she has planned for me. Not because she cares about my feelings, you understand, but because it might throw off the results of her experiment if I know too much about it.

  Nothing else to write for now. Off to do push-ups, punch the towel rack, and stare at the wall until lunch arrives.

  FROM THE PRISON JOURNAL OF LAUREN C. FIELDING

  December 12, 2031

  This morning Dr. Brechel told me the Emergency Act won’t be renewed. I smiled, and he had the gall to tell me not to celebrate too soon. As though I was the sucker who had let Paxeon bribe me into its clutches for the price of a nice watch.

  “You still didn’t download my journals, did you?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “But now maybe—”

  “Don’t do it now,” I said.

  He looked up at the video cameras.

  “No, I’m not just saying this for the cameras. I’m saying it because now is the last time you want to get the Department’s attention. All due respect, but you’ve been an idiot, and now you’re screwed. Not quite as much as I am, but still.”

  He frowned, not understanding. Or not wanting to understand.

  “If the act isn’t renewed, the folks in the Department could be prosecuted for the stuff they’ve done over the last ten years. You and I are already seeming like inconvenient leftovers to someone. Leftovers with embarrassing, even dangerous, stories to tell.”

  He didn’t say anything then. Didn’t ask me anything, either, just sat there staring, this scared and stupid look in his eyes. I’ve never been to a slaughterhouse, but I imagine it’s the same look a cow would have as it approaches the slaughterhouse floor on the conveyor belt, the smell of blood getting too strong for it to ignore.

  “Dr. Brechel,” I said. “You know how I told you to quit before you got in too deep?”

  He nodded dumbly. “Yes. I should quit—”

  “No. Too late. Your best bet now is to keep your head down. Keep to your usual schedule. Keep filing reports about me. Don’t get anyone’s attention. They let you out of here sometimes, don’t they?”

  “Of course they let me out of here,” he said, his voice thick and slow. It gathered energy, became a bit more normal as he continued. “I’m not a prisoner, Lauren.”

  “Great. Lucky you. So don’t quit. Go to a movie. Better, take a weekend off to … I don’t know, visit your kids or watch snow fall in New England. Whatever. The point is, don’t quit. Just leave and don’t come back. Call in sick for a few days. Get out of the country and wait for things to settle down. The Department is scared, Dr. Brechel. Scared people do stupid things. But if the Emergency Act isn’t renewed—” I let the smile creep back onto my face. The Emergency Act wasn’t going be renewed. At least my death would mean something. “They’re
gonna have other things to worry about. Don’t get their attention, and you’ll be fine.”

  He nodded to himself, lips pursed, tapping his stylus on the edge of his tablet. Finally he said, “What makes you such an expert on the world, Lauren?” There was an edge I hadn’t heard in his voice before. Hostility. Active dislike, even. “You get an operation that takes off some blinkers, makes you more observant, okay. But why would that make you any better than me at gauging how the Department is going to react to all this?”

  I don’t think he was expecting an answer, but the truth seemed obvious.

  “You hope too much,” I said. “You’re so busy hoping that you’re not paying attention to what’s really happening.”

  “Ah shit.” The hostility left Brechel’s face as quickly as it had swept over it, leaving only defeat. “Could be. You know who did download your journal?”

  “Who?”

  “Half the Senate. Maybe more. Senator Witherspoon of Colorado was waving your picture around on the Senate floor yesterday. You’re famous, Lauren. The press is calling you the Innocence Girl.”

  I thought I was resigned to death. From the moment I posted my journal entries and committed myself to Paxeon custody, what else could I expect? Still, when he told me a U.S. senator had been waving a picture of me around, I felt a thrill of pure fear. The Department couldn’t let me live now. Even if Dr. Corbin wanted to keep me alive, the decision was going to be out of her hands soon. If it wasn’t already.

  I thought about making a break for it right then, but there was nowhere to go. Two orderlies waited outside the locked steel door to Brechel’s office, and anyway, there were seven floors between me and escape. At that moment, if the windows hadn’t been barred, I might have taken my chance with a seven-story fall instead of waiting for the Department to come and get me. I wish I knew what they’re waiting for. Maybe with the Emergency Act not getting renewed, they’re worried about being prosecuted. But I doubt it. I’m pretty sure my name is on a list somewhere and it’s just a matter of days before they get to me. Once the Emergency Act expires, it’s going to be harder to clean up messes like me.