The Anarchists

by Brian Thompson

  Minutes later, Wynter indicated that the pair could go, and she departed herself. Cee Cee reentered the room, blindly passing Quinne a fresh pair of clothes and undergarments. The crime scene clothes would be kept for evidence.

  It’s “right” to him, what he did. He had the power. But I’ll have the power someday.

  “They’ll catch him, Q.”

  “No,” said Quinne, putting them on. “They won’t. And I’ll spend the rest of my life clean on the outside but filthy on the inside.”

  “You don’t know that. Forensics has come so far and now. . .”

  “Don’t lecture me!” she warned. “You don’t know what it’s like, do you? Especially when you ain’t want it. You think about it. You think, am I pregnant? Do I gotta disease I can’t get rid of? I remember it all. How do you get rid of that? And don’t give me any of that Jesus crap, either.”

  “It’s what I believe,” Cee Cee shouted. “Get angry at the world, your situation, God, whatever. But who took off two days to be there? Whose shoulder did you cry on? Mine. Show me some respect, Quinne, or you’re going to lose the only real friend you’ve got.”

  The two stared one another down in silence for a moment. Wynter reappeared just as Quinne pulled down her midnight green football jersey over her black sweatpants.

  “Miss Ruiz, one of the hospital’s benefactors, The Genesis Institute, provides counseling services for trauma and crime victims.” The android offered her a thumb segment-sized, blood red disk. “One of its best psychoanalytic doctors, Dr. Adharma, is on staff here at the hospital, and. . .”

  “No!” She recoiled. “Not one more person tellin’ me what to do, or what to take or not take. I got it, had enough. I’m done.”

  “Thank you.” Cee Cee accepted the disk on her behalf. “She’ll give him a call.”

  “No, I will not! You call them. You need counselin’, if you think I’m going. If I ain’t go to the other place, this wouldn’t have happened in the first place.”

  “You’d be in jail, if you didn’t go to group,” Cee Cee argued. “And if you hadn’t gotten hooked on sniff, you wouldn’t have had to go to group and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

  “Or if you had taken me home, like a true best friend, and not left me on the street, I never would’ve gotten picked up. And, for the last time, I’m not hooked on sniff. You, Mason – when are ya’ll gonna start listenin’ to me?”

  “So, that’s it then? It’s my fault? I guess I put the drinks in your hand, too? Sooner or later, it would’ve caught up to you. You and I both know that. ”

  As the examination drew to its conclusion, the room lost its soundproofing. Noticing this, Quinne stood up and exited with as much of her dignity intact as possible. Cee Cee followed. They waited at the front for Cee Cee’s black Tarpan to pull up.

  “So, you think after blaming me for everything that’s happened to you that I’m just gonna drive you home like everything’s okay?”

  Remembering what happened the last time she traveled by herself, Quinne humbled herself. “Please?”

  Cee Cee melted beneath the sudden show of sincere emotion. Regardless of fault, Quinne had experienced a lot in the past three days. “Look, Heifer, I called in again. Let’s go to breakfast later – my treat. I’ll catch Sunday service on the Internet.”

  Quinne nodded and sent a text message on her holophone. “Go to early service and we’ll do lunch instead. I need some good sleep. And, can we go to that place on north 24th?”

  “You want to go downtown? I know the food’s good, but. . .alright.”

  After Quinne spent the morning in bed, showered and changed, Cee Cee picked her up in front of their apartment building and motored to their destination; a family-owned diner in a slightly better neighborhood than Quinne’s alley. A drugstore, a liquor store, and a few abandoned brownstones surrounded it. Still, Cee Cee locked her doors and set the Tarpan's anti-theft mechanism.

  “Let’s go.”

  “Wait.” Quinne rounded the vehicle and confidentially spoke to her friend. “Let me hold some units. I need pads.”

  “What do you need pads for? The hospital gave you enough for a week.”

  “Yeah, but it’s like wearing a diaper.”

  “Then let me go buy them for you, and you can get us a table. Heavy, right?”

  Quinne scrunched her eyebrows. “You seriously won’t let me buy my own pads, Cee?”

  “Then let’s both go.”

  “I get it. I ain’t exactly been trustworthy, but I don’t need that much. Just transfer me about 70 units. Let me do this one thing for myself.”

  Her friend reluctantly authorized the transfer via holophone. “If you’re not back in ten, I’m coming after you, Ordnance blazing.”

  Quinne slipped into the drugstore. While strolling down the appropriate aisle, just in case Cee Cee followed her, she sent another text message to her dealer. Sunday mornings followed his busiest night and she hoped he’d be able to quickly get to her. Her holophone chimed Cee Cee’s ringtone.

  Cee Cee’s face popped up. “What’s taking so long? The coffee's getting cold.”

  “Go ahead and order, I’ll be right there. You know you eat slow anyway. I’ll order, eat, and be done before you even pick up your fork.”

  “Whatever, Heifer. Hurry up.” Cee Cee’s face vanished. Quinne picked up a box of pads and dropped it when a familiar pair of hands surrounded her waist.

  “I’m guessing if you’re getting those, you’ll be paying me in units this time.”

  “How’d you get here so quick?” She pretended to adore his grasp to avoid alerting the desk clerk. “I just messaged you a minute ago.”

  “Was close by. Said all you got is 30? That’ll barely get you a taste.”

  “What you talkin’ ‘bout? Thirty’s good.”

  He produced a vial of aqua blue liquid. “Not for this.”

  The color mystified Quinne. “What’s that?”

  “Sniff base chemical.” He closed his palm. “Pharmaceutical. Better high without the side effects. I’m out of the regular ‘til Friday.”

  “It’s traceable? They pee test me every day.”

  The dealer sucked his teeth. “Went and got yourself caught. Heard about that.” He noticed the hospital band on her wrist. “You look awful. What’s up?”

  “Nothin’.” She dug her hand into her pocket. “Look, traceable or not, you gotta give me somethin’. I’m itchin’.”

  “I like you, Q. So, I’ll tell you what. Float me your 30 units and you owe me.”

  Quinne made the transfer but allotted herself enough to buy a sample size of sanitary napkins. To her surprise, the dealer put the vial inside a miniature syringe and slipped it in her handbag. “What? I ain’t doin’ no needles.”

  The dealer silently dipped behind a New Year’s Day ornamental display. Quinne hurriedly bought the pads, pocketed the box inside her handbag, and joined Cee Cee at their table next door. She poured herself a cup of coffee and ordered a combo breakfast platter. Several police officers sat at the counter.

  “Got what you need?” Cee Cee’s voice contained a small twinge of suspicion. “Where’s the box?”

  “In my bag.” She remembered the needle and her probation sentence. “Which reminds me. I’ll be right back.”

  Quinne darted for the bathroom and entered a stall. The syringe did not intimidate her, but she wondered; if the drug’s got side effects, what are they? Without much other thought, she tied off her veins below the bicep with the string of her pants, stuck herself in the left arm and pushed the liquid into her veins. She discarded the syringe in the sanitary napkin container and waited. Her eyes tingled a bit, but the sensation reminded her of tickling. Her body no longer stung. And the smell of her attacker’s drunken breath evaporated from her mind.

  Quinne opened her eyes to her old room in her mother’s house. How’d I get here? Is this a dream? Already, she felt suffocated from the lack of space. She could walk in a straight li
ne and stretch out her arms, but if she leaned in any direction, her arms would touch something. Her broken audiodome lay in the room’s right hand corner. It cost about 100 units to repair – an amount Anibel Ruiz was loath to pay.

  “You can get that thing fixed,” she’d remembered her mother saying, “or eat for a week. Your choice.”

  When it had broken down, Quinne felt that sacrificing entertainment for eating was no decision for a seventeen-year-old high school junior to make. Her poor term grades encouraged Anibel to ground Quinne from having a job or dating boys. Those rules and regulations made her rebel. Anibel had also formulated rules for Guillermo and paid the price. He left her to start a real life and his jilted, knocked-up girlfriend got stuck in a job as a public transport driver. When she wasn’t drinking her cares away over it, Anibel cussed out Quinne for existing. The girl remembered having peace in her life when her mother passed out.

  Quinne brushed her bare feet across the texture of her bedroom’s carpeting. She did not remember it being this soft and plush. The vibrant, violet walls were almost mystical in sheen. The resonant snoring coming from the living room let her know that her mother had called it a night. Quinne relaxed. If this was the drug’s lone effect – dreaming of her miserable upbringing – going cold turkey should be no problem.

  “Q,” said a familiar male voice. Troy? “You decent?”

  Quinne pulled him inside the room and kissed him with voracity. “When’s that stopped you?” Confused by the realistic sensations, she continued kissing him, her hands wandering to his belt buckle. “Don’t stop.”

  “Hey,” Troy said, backing up. “What’s the rush? We got a lifetime for all that. Besides, your mom’s in the next room.”

  “Anibel’ll never hear us.” Quinne removed her blouse. “And we ain’t got a lifetime, we got now. Trust me. Why you actin’ like we ain’t done this before?”

  He pushed her away. “Because you’re not here for that.”

  Quinne crossed her arms and cursed over and over again. “Then why am I here?”

  “You know why.”

  “You gonna get set.” She choked up. “I’m gonna lose our baby. And my life ain’t gonna be right side up again.”

  “You can’t go back, Q.”

  “Why not?” she cried. “Why I gotta continue in this messed up life, where don’t nobody care about me?” Her left cheek went numb and then her right followed. “Troy?”

  “Come back to me, Q!” No longer masculine, the voice sounded like a woman’s calling after her underwater. “C’mon Q, don’t go out, not like this.”

  Quinne’s eyes fluttered open. Cee Cee hovered over her in the bathroom and stopped slapping her cheeks. A female policeman read Quinne her rights.

  CHAPTER SIX

  January 4, 2050

  The tightly-wound bandages around his head and arm startled Damario, as did the throbbing. Stinging, dull metal barbs in his right eye socket shot waves of lightning through his brain. Frantic, he thrashed everything he could move until a medical droid named “Ellis Murtaugh” anesthetized him.

  Madison sat to his left. He wished she hadn’t. While the details of how he got into this particular predicament were fuzzy, the reason why remained clear. In the quiet moments, he pictured Justin Rochester, Yvette’s ex-husband and a police medical examiner. He and Justin played basketball at the gym. They had conversations about women – with lurid details. Justin spent time at the house and ate from Damario’s table. Justin slept with Damario’s wife. He wondered if Justin bothered to use protection with her, given his proclaimed “allergy” to it.

  He did not know the attendant at the hotel, except by his bulky physique. Damario caught his wife looking at the boy on more than one occasion. Summer, 2049 was the hottest recorded season in a century and the four-star hotel relaxed its dress standards. As such, the young man handling their luggage had rolled up his sleeves. She spotted the tattoo on his forearm and nearly swooned. He thought nothing of it, until he mistook her holophone for his and received a graphic picture message. Shell-shocked, he marked it as unread. When Madison confronted him about the mix-up, he claimed that he had been signal-free most of the day and did not notice.

  The private investigator he hired found another, but suspected one or two more before Damario called him off the case. It certainly explained why Madison had been cool to intimate touch for half a year. He’d wept over his broken marriage. Thinking about it made him tear up again. He fought it. Madison did not need to see him more vulnerable and damaged.

  The tube in his throat itched so badly that he had to be restrained from bothering it. He’d tried to scratch it once, before anyone could stop him, and paid a steep price. Now, with his wrist limited to a range of motion not exceeding more than a few inches, he had to swipe his fingers on a glass pad to be understood. This frustrated him, as he was not ambidextrous. Also, the machine did not have a volume control function.

  “Hey there.” A cheery Madison approached his bedside.

  His fingers pecked Hi into the keyboard. The male voice he’d selected sounded like that of an old-time game show host.

  “Can I get you something?”

  “Date.”

  “It’s the fourth, 3:05 p.m.”

  Three days had passed. When not in surgery or semi-conscious, Damario requested for the time followed by the date. Though he intended to ask a question, without punctuation, his requests sounded like commands. Madison compressed her frustration and irritation at it, but extra sweetness bothered them both. Keeping this part of her vows – to love him for better or worse – challenged her will infinitely more than the others.

  Immediately after the accident, she notified Justin and her other lovers not to contact her; that she must devote herself to the recovery and wellness of her husband. At first, it felt like a morally-binding duty to her. From the litany of injuries – the collapsed lungs, the broken nose, right knee contusion, and the right eye and arm they had to replace – she owed him loyalty. Betrayal helped put him in there, and love and devotion would bring him back. Perhaps he would not forgive her, but she must try. She did love him, and hoped that merited forgiveness.

  Damario’s eyes tightly squinted. The first occurrence of phantom pain happened following the amputations. Damario moaned in terrible agony then, though machines routinely pumped his body with medication. The sensation of missing appendages would not totally subside until the robotic prosthesis process took place. That could take days, or months, depending on his body’s reaction to the new drug his psychiatrist had introduced to the daily regimen. But not even that comforted him.

  Nothing gave him relief, save for the presence of Dr. Nandor Adharma – the sole human cog among Ellis and the androids tending to her husband. He reminded Madison of a man she hated, though she could not remember why she disliked him. Obviously intelligent, Adharma spoke with a calm, superior intellect – especially when it came to Damario’s treatment.

  Perhaps what bothered her was the way Damario’s face lit when Adharma arrived, for relief would soon come in the form of a psychotropic drug. The substance, which Madison stumbled in pronouncing, contained the addictive base chemical that produced sniff. In controlled amounts, it did wonders, but uncontrolled on the street, it killed.

  The doctor inserted a tube of aqua-blue liquid into Damario’s bloodstream feed. As it drained, Damario’s left iris matched the color of the drug. Madison tapped her foot.

  “Questions, Missus Coley?”

  The sterility of his tone bothered her. “N. . .no,” she stuttered. “Why do you ask?”

  “Each time I administer this particular drug, you appear nervous.”

  “I don’t like it,” she spurted out. “Isn’t there another you can use?”

  “He’s experiencing a great deal of inflammation that will keep the prosthetic eye and forearm from bonding with his nerves and muscle tissue.”

  “What about anti-inflammatories? They work.”

  “Not with simultaneou
s neurotransmitter application.” Adharma docked his eyeglasses on the bridge of his nose. “Your husband’s full recovery will take weeks; a fraction of the time that it would have under normal circumstances. You’re doing the right thing.”

  Madison rubbed her eyes. Adharma convinced her to do it in the first place, and again to up the dosage despite her misgivings. “And the side effects?”

  Ellis flashed a lightscope across Damario’s intact eyelid, which fluttered.

  “The dreams?” Adharma asked. “We’ve been over this. Maybe if you see the ADA’s report on the research being conducted on the psychoana. . .”

  “Just explain it to me again,” she interrupted. “In layman’s terms.”

  Adharma sighed. “Your husband’s dosage is the maximum allowable and without the customary side effects of high usage; hives, dehydration.”

  For once, through Adharma’s condescending tone, she understood exactly what he said.

  “The enhanced brain activity comes from an additive, an artificial protein, if you will, that simultaneously suppresses those symptoms but also reactivates the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex and neurotransmitters to a degree. In other words, Missus Coley, his brain has the ability to control what he sees and remembers in his dreams. It’s temporary and harmless.”

  Damario’s bare feet sunk a bit into the moist, dark brown loam. It had been turned and contained no rocks, insects, worms or foreign bodies. He knelt and squeezed some between his fingers. The soil squished and turned to patties of earthen clay. He returned them to their native home, rose, and inhaled. The farm-like aroma reminded him of summers at his grandmother’s country house in Georgia. That place lacked every modern convention of the mid-21st century, and she refused to conform to them. He hated visiting there for any extended length of time because of its remoteness.