Michelle’s phone rang and for the third time that day she selected Ignore. She knew she’d have to face Jenny eventually, but she didn’t have to do it right now. Last night she was ready to call Jenny a slut and tell her she wanted nothing to do with her or her friends, but now, after having some time to think about it, she realized it would be better to just distance herself from Jenny gradually without burning her social bridges and incurring Jenny’s wrath. She didn’t want to hang out with the popular girls or even be one anymore, but neither did she want to be ostracized and shunned by everyone in the school, which is what would happen if she became Jenny’s enemy.
She sent Jenny a plain text message with no video: Still sick. Talk later…
***
Charlie could not get into a deep sleep the night before. He would fall into a light sleep, then wake up at the slightest sound. Every time he woke, he was painfully aware that Feenix wasn’t there. He kept expecting to see her lying beside his bed. The empty space on the carpet was a jab to his heart every time he saw it. He finally got up and went outside, wrinkling his nose at the faint odor of burnt grass. He hated the laser mower that popped up on the edge of the lawn twice a week at 3am, shooting out its low-powered beam and rolling down the width of the square yard, cutting it to a height of exactly 1.5 inches.
He sat in a folding chair that he kept on the porch and looked at his perfectly groomed lawn. Then he looked over at where he’d buried Feenix and just stared. He heard the low-pitched hum of a neighborhood drone before he saw it. When it was even with Charlie’s house, it stopped and turned toward him. Charlie waved and it took a picture and then continued on down the street. Charlie shook his head.
The drone reminded him of the government, and that reminded him of Deron. He didn’t buy Kathleen’s story that Deron was in a residential therapy program. His daughter was lying to him. This wasn’t the first time, but it was the worst.
He knew she was lying because it never would’ve occurred to her to seek out such a program for Deron. She’d complained about his unwillingness to get involved in sports or any afterschool activities, and his lack of a social circle, but she never once said she thought he needed mental help because of those things. This was definitely someone else’s idea. So either someone put her up to it, or someone else decided on it and she just went along with it.
Maybe it was the Child & Family Services people. The same idiots who had come to his house after he’d reported that Kathleen was pregnant. They came and explained to him that his daughter had a right to discover and explore her sexual identity regardless of her age. He could easily imagine them deciding that someone wasn’t as actively involved with their peers as they deemed normal. Or maybe it was the school that was behind it. They were in a position to see Deron not socializing every day, always sitting with his nose buried in a book.
Whoever did it, it wasn’t right. Deron had a right to be exactly how he was. If he wasn’t hurting anyone, what gave anyone the right to meddle in his affairs and try to make him into someone he wasn’t?
He didn’t understand how Kathleen could fail to see the simplicity of that. Actually, he did understand. She’d always been superficial and she fit right in with the rest of society in thinking that your social activities defined you. She was a social butterfly, and completely undeveloped mentally. She never thought about anything more complex than fashion, make-up, or the latest ridiculous show on television.
She probably jumped at the chance to hand Deron over to the government to make him more social. Maybe he’d come out of the program and join a football team, then he could finally be considered to have value to the school and to society. Idiots.
Then he’d graduate high school and find out that all of the popularity in school vanished like fog the day after you graduated. You were suddenly nobody. No one in the adult world cared if you were the quarterback or the homecoming king. School is just a big playground and social get-together, and once it’s over, the only thing you take away from it is the education you were supposed to have gotten. And that’s the one thing Deron did well – the one thing he was supposed to be doing. He was learning and getting good grades. But apparently that wasn’t good enough.
Charlie decided he would go to this facility Deron was in and find out everything he could about their program and what rights Deron had as a citizen.
Twenty-seven
Deron looked at the question and thought about how he should answer it. He wasn’t supposed to give the questions any thought, but he had to. His first thought was, of course violence was okay when it wasn’t in self-defense. What if you were defending someone else? Duh. But if he answered it that way, would they think that he wasn’t law-abiding? The law said that if you saw a crime being committed, you were to call the police. No exceptions. But Deron thought that was stupid. What if the police couldn’t possibly get there in time to save someone? What if violence was the only way you could save someone else from harm, or even death? What you did should be the important thing – not how you did it.
But the DEO counselors were not looking for rational responses. They were profiling him; gauging whether he was socially maligned. He was surprised they hadn’t done the questionnaire before his treatment had begun. It would seem they’d want a benchmark for comparison and to measure his progress, or lack of it.
“Remember what I said?” Gerald asked.
“Yeah. I was just thinking about something. Sorry.”
Deron typed “No” without delay, as if that was the answer he’d intended all along but had just been distracted. He continued through the questions, automatically answering in the way he assumed a “normal” person would answer; someone who trusted the government to always do the right thing and who wanted to get along and be liked above all else.
As he sat trying to not over-think any of the questions, Gerald was typing away on his personal communicator, apparently involved in a fast-paced text conversation with someone. Every time he stopped typing, a few seconds later, his comm chimed with an incoming message. After he received the last message, he looked at Deron and appeared to be weighing something in his mind.
“Deron, I need to make a call. I’ll only be a minute. I’m going to trust you to stay here and not try to run off. Can I do that?”
“Sure. Isn’t the door locked anyway?”
“Right. You couldn’t leave if you wanted to. I’ll be right back. I’m just going to duck into the bathroom.”
Gerald got up and went through a door at the far back end of his office. As soon as the door closed behind him, Deron got up and tip-toed over to Gerald’s desk. The screen was unlocked with Deron’s treatment plan sitting in plain view. He couldn’t believe it. Gerald had to be talking to a girl.
Deron read over the plan, unable to understand much of what he was reading. There were references in the beginning to his therapy and entrainment sessions; he understood some of that, but then there was a list of what must’ve been medications that he’d never heard of before that he was apparently taking without knowing it. Were they drugging his food?
He recognized one of the names in the list of drugs. Fluoride. Why would they be giving him fluoride? It was already in the water, wasn’t it?
He skipped past the list to where normal text resumed and read as fast as he could. He could hear Gerald laughing and talking in a different tone of voice than he normally used. Definitely a girl. He read the last paragraph: If corrective therapy fails, subject will be transferred to legacy rehabilitation studies to improve leucotomy and cingulotomy procedures, followed by aptitude testing to assess remaining potential for meaningful contributions to society.
Deron wasn’t sure if he really understood what he was reading, but it sounded pretty much like they intended to fix him if possible, and dispose of him if they couldn’t. He needed to find out what those two strange words meant. He assumed they couldn’t be good.
He quietly got back to his seat, picked up the slate computer and resumed answerin
g questions. A few minutes later, Gerald returned to his desk, smiling as he sat down.
“Hey, Gerald. Have you got a dictionary I can use to be sure of the meaning of some of the words in the questions?”
“Just tap on a word you don’t know and a definition will pop up.”
“Oh yeah. Thanks.”
The questions were worded in simple terms. Deron felt that he’d given Gerald the impression that he wasn’t very bright. But it didn’t matter. It might even work to his advantage later. He went through the questions more quickly now, unconcerned about what the results would say about him. He wasn’t going to stay around to find out.
When he finished, he handed the slate to Gerald and asked, “Now what?”
“Um… back in the water.”
“Again?”
“Yep. You like it, don’t you?”
“It’s relaxing, but I don’t know how much I want to keep getting relaxed in one day. It would make more sense if I did it once, right before bedtime. Don’t you think?”
“That does sound like a practical approach, yes. But we’re aiming for therapeutic goals – not just to help you get to asleep.” Gerald smiled as he said this. “Come on. In you go…”
Deron disrobed and entered the chamber feeling very ill at ease. He didn’t want to be here, didn’t want anyone messing with his mind and he absolutely did not want to find out what was going to happen to him if he failed to make progress. This time as he lay floating on his back, he felt anxious and restless, and when the lid came down, he had greater difficulty getting past the feeling of claustrophobia.
Twenty-eight
As Michelle looked around the clothing boutique she and Jenny had always shopped in, she found herself mentally putting all of the outfits she observed into two categories: Slutty and Very Slutty. Whenever she looked at a top that was too skimpy or shorts that were too short, she could just imagine Jenny gravitating straight to those items.
She couldn’t believe she’d never seen this before. Her best friend was a total slut and she’d been blind to it. Actually, she’d been blind to a lot of things. She decided this store had too little to offer now and she exited, thinking about other things she hadn’t been seeing, but should have. Jenny wasn’t the only slut she’d been hanging out with. Everyone in Jenny’s group was just as bad as she was, if not worse in their efforts to compete with her.
She glanced at the stores on either side of her, some featuring 3-D posters, some with barely clothed androids, and one with live models. All of them attempting to lure shoppers with provocative imagery that spoke of sex and being sexually attractive. She wondered where she could go to find some plain old normal clothes. What if she didn’t want to be a sex object?
She needed to stop for a few minutes and just think. Ahead of her, before the entrance to the food court, there was a fountain ringed with benches. Michelle walked over to it and sat facing the marble figures in the fountain display. In the center was a bronze statue of a nude man looking like an Olympian god. Rising up from the water in various places around him were topless mermaids.
Michelle blurted, “Does everyone have to be naked?”
No one thought it was odd that she was sitting by herself and talking out loud. Most people were seen talking by themselves and everyone knew or assumed that they were on the phone with either Bluetooth or subdermal devices. The procedure to have an earpiece and microphone surgically implanted was relatively inexpensive and many people had done the quick out-patient procedure.
A few feet away from Michelle, a man sat looking straight ahead with his eyes glazed. His right thumb continuously moved around on the side of his index finger just below the knuckle, occasionally pressing on the flesh there. Michelle recognized the creepy behavior. He had the new micro touchpad-mouse embedded in his finger and was looking at a display that was projected onto his retinas from what appeared to be sunglasses.
That was another thing Michelle thought was out of control. Talking to friends or being on the internet was not important enough to her to ever have computer parts put in her body. Did people really need to be online twenty-four hours a day? This guy had come to the mall for a reason, right? So why didn’t he do what he came to do and then get on the web or go to the digital dens after he was finished?
The man started rubbing his crotch with his left hand and Michelle had seen enough. She looked around for a mall security drone and spotted one hovering just twenty feet away. She waved at it and it flew close to her. She pointed at the guy. The drone turned slightly, presumably examining him. It detected no crimes or signs of distress, then returned to its previous position.
Michelle decided she’d had enough of the mall. She’d find somewhere else to buy clothes. It was stupid to have come here in the first place. She knew it would be filled with sex-obsessed people, sexual ads everywhere, semi-nude shoppers, girls with spray-on tops, men with colored saran-wrap pants, and of course, the nude statues and nude models and nude mannequins. She really needed to start using her brain and making conscious choices instead of operating on autopilot like everyone else.
Michelle got up and started walking toward the end of the mall, ignoring the stores and their advertisements as she passed them. She walked fast and also ignored anyone who spoke to her, whether they wanted to sell her something or hook up with her. She decided that the mall and those who shopped in it had nothing to offer her and she had no reason to ever come back.
Outside, the fresh air and sunlight were a welcome relief. She headed toward the bus stop and tram terminal, but walked past it without even consciously deciding that she was going to walk home instead. She just walked, trying to clear her mind and feeling like she was missing a lifestyle that she hadn’t really ever had. She wasn’t sure what it was she was trying to put her mind on until she thought of the word innocence. That led to other words. Natural. Honesty. Security. Fun. Safety. These words crystalized in her mind to form a conceptual thought. She just wanted to be a normal teenager, living and acting naturally, being honest with herself and others, able to have fun, and enjoy the comfort and security of feeling safe in her daily life.
Was that too much to ask?
Twenty-nine
When Drake’s pizza arrived, he took it without thanking or tipping the delivery man. There was already a tip and delivery fee built in to the price, so why should he? He just shut the door, took the box to his couch and began stuffing pizza into his mouth, barely even noticing the taste as he watched a reality show called “You Almost Got Rape’d!”
In the show, a hidden camera crew filmed a man who would be stalking a woman until he found an appropriate time and place to begin his attack. Footage from the cameras was edited to include jerky motion from body cams worn by the attacker. After the woman was taken down, the producer and a cameraman would come out of hiding, approach the pair and suddenly aim bright lights at them, announcing, “You almost got raped!”
Invariably, the women were relieved that the attack wasn’t real, and they looked around in delight to see other hidden cameramen come out of hiding, and then they blushed in embarrassment, wondering how they looked, knowing now that they were on TV; adjusting their hair and clothes and hoping their makeup looked good. They laughed and smiled and hugged their almost-rapist. Off-screen they always wanted to know when the episode would air so they could tell their friends they were going to be on TV.
Drake got an adrenaline rush every time he watched the show and fantasized about raping someone for real. He looked at the time to see how much longer it would be before his adult companion would be there. He was ready for her now. He wondered if acting out a rape fantasy was allowed.
He recalled the prostitute’s image from the website and imagined raping her. The thought of this pretty blonde coming to his house specifically for the purpose of having sex with him was exhilarating and he couldn’t wait. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t done this before. Why had he always been too embarrassed about it? It was her job. It was how
she made a living. And besides, no one would know. His neighbors weren’t likely to recognize the woman when she knocked at his door – and if they did, then it was only because they’d used her services, or at least seen her on the Adult Companion pages themselves. So who were they to criticize him?
Drake was working his way through his past fears and simultaneously getting aroused as his thoughts went back and forth from why he’d never done this to what it was going to be like now that he was actually doing it. He stuffed the last of the pizza into his mouth and stood up to take the empty box to the recycler when his autohost announced a visitor.
For just a second, Drake was afraid to answer the door because he had an erection. But he quickly realized that it was perfectly okay for once to answer the door with a large bulge in his pants. In fact, it might even be a compliment. He laughed and wiped his greasy fingers on his pants as he went to open the door. He waited a second to finish swallowing the pizza in his mouth, then brushed his hair out of his eyes and pulled the door open.
“Hi! Mr. Austin?”
“Yeah. Come in.”
Drake couldn’t believe it. She looked way better in person than she did in her online photo. He feared it would be the opposite, like the time he’d tried online dating. She was tiny in a purple mini-skirt with a see-through top; bright blue eyes made up to look big and innocent like one of those Japanese cartoon characters, and had short platinum blonde hair with a hint of violet shading.
She came through the door and Drake felt like she was his for the next hour. Not just as his guest, but as if she were something he owned, or at least rented, and could do whatever he pleased with her. At least for a while. And goddamn, she was cute.
2043 A.D. Page 12
