The End of Marking Time

by CJ West

  He thought a long time before speaking and I knew he only trusted me because his situation was so dire. He had been working on an early reeducation program when the Supreme Court decision came down. He was the foremost authority on prison reform and his relearners were the most successful in the country. He got millions for research and his company boomed. Soon he had a monopoly and others wanted part of the exploding market. He sold his black box company and went back to running a program for relearners. It’s what he loved. It’s what he did best, but in the last several months Wendell’s program had begun unraveling.

  The programs were scored, he told me, by how many relearners were judged non-conformant. That was the new word for a conviction. Every time he had to reeducate a former client, his effectiveness rating was lowered. Lately, he’d had a terrible string of non-conformers and his program was close to being shut down. There was more to it, but basically, if I kept getting into trouble, he’d be forced out of business.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  “I know what you did for me in there,” I said. And I meant it. I was terrified for Joel. Wendell knew what it would be like. I wondered how he could let it happen. He cared about the people he taught. He’d dedicated his life to reeducation even before there was money in it, but there were things even he couldn’t control.

  He shook his head as if I couldn’t know how horrible a death Joel was about to meet.

  “How can you let it go on?”

  “It’s not up to me.” He told me the best thing he could do was to help the relearners that came to him. Eighty percent of his first timers stayed out of trouble once they were released. Even some of those who came through a second time were helped. It was an amazing improvement over the old way when a third of prisoners wound up back in prison within three years of finishing their sentence. Relearners went on from his program to productive, normal lives. His eyes were full of pride. He was helping people like me who’d been gypped by the genetic lottery. The things my mother failed to teach me were stuffed into Wendell’s program. I could reshape my world if I tried. It was a nice idea, but changing the way I fit into society was a massive undertaking. Even trying my absolute best, I kept falling down.

  I couldn’t blame Wendell. He was doing everything to help. But why was he standing aside and letting the court officers deliver Joel to some barbarian? “Can’t you do something? Couldn’t you go public?”

  “Are you kidding? The people would applaud.”

  I was stunned. Would decent citizens celebrate Joel’s torture?

  Two million felons were let out of prison all at the same time. I was in a coma then and I missed what happened on the street. The sheer numbers overwhelmed the police. Society changed. Ordinary people shuttered themselves inside. Then one day it all threatened to come undone. The Supreme Court had voted five-to-four that extended prison sentences were cruel and unusual punishment and must be abolished. Six months after the mass release, the chief justice was gunned down during a robbery. His face was plastered all over the news, but what made a bigger impression was what happened to the non-conformer. He was enrolled back in his program, where he collected a government check that was larger than what many citizens earned.

  Every news station and every talk radio show screamed for changes.

  The changes started, but something surprising happened first. Over the next week, the remaining four justices who voted for the release were shot to death. The guys who killed them didn’t even run. They were cheered and after they were reeducated, they walked out of the programs free and clear. The government had to go underground then. Unpopular officials risked being murdered by anyone who disagreed with them. By removing real punishment, they had unwittingly made themselves assassination targets.

  That’s when the big changes started. Local police forces across the country had already swelled. Their numbers tripled. That helped, but the real control didn’t come until the money disappeared and the welfare system changed. That took away the biggest motivator for most relearners. Once they realized they couldn’t make a living burglarizing homes and stealing cars, they stopped. They got enough money to live comfortably even if they didn’t work. I realized that myself. Only when I spent myself out of money did I resort to selling the jewelry. That was a mistake I’d never make again.

  “You think if people knew relearners were being tortured they’d look the other way?”

  “Look the other way? No. They’d volunteer to help.”

  I couldn’t believe decent people would line up to torture someone like me, but I remembered how Nick treated me and how hard he was trying to keep me from seeing my son. “Really?”

  “Imagine how powerless you’d feel if you were attacked and the relearner was simply moved a few blocks away and set free. Decent people want blood.”

  “Is that why you take all the tough cases? You trying to save the relearners from jumping out a window?”

  “It doesn’t work that way. Each program is assigned new non-conformers in a defined order based on when the non-conformer is arrested. Once someone is in a program, he or she returns to that program until expelled. Every program gets its share of hardened criminals and its share of first timers.”

  He told me that there were special cases. Some program managers volunteered to take tough cases because they earned triple credits for convicts like Joel that were expelled from another program. The credit was only good if the relearner didn’t non-conform again. If that happened more than once, the benefit of getting the troubled relearner was erased.

  “You don’t take those people?”

  “Some people don’t want to be helped, Michael. Some people will never change. They are hardened criminals and there is only one way to deal with them.”

  “And?”

  “I’m not willing to do what those cases require.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  As smart as Wendell is, he has a bad habit of assuming I understand what he means even when he gives me little more than a hint. He tells me half the story and expects me to figure out the rest. I wonder if he’s done that with you, too. Don’t get me wrong, I’m good at understanding people. I get what people are about just by watching them for a few minutes. But there is a big difference between understanding someone’s motives and understanding complex rules you can’t see or touch. Wendell told me the government went underground, but he didn’t tell me that special measures were taken to protect officials—and that he is one of those officials. That simple message would have saved us both a tremendous hassle.

  Then there was the small matter of punishment for hardened criminals. Joel had made mistakes. I was somewhat responsible for his latest problem with the jewelry, but before that it was attempted murder. That wasn’t his first arrest either. Wendell had to decide which of us was more likely to get into trouble and sacrifice that relearner to the cat baggers. Until I learned about the cat baggers, I thought the new laws were gutless. Sure, the program was annoying and the counselors were irritating, but you couldn’t go to prison and you couldn’t get the death penalty. Now that I knew about the effectiveness ratings and how much our mistakes cost Wendell, I understood that he controlled my fate with a few clicks on a computer. Wendell had given Joel his chance. Now he was as good as dead. If I didn’t turn myself around, I’d end up on the concrete next to him.

  I spent my adult life perfecting my craft to put myself beyond the law’s reach. I never believed I’d be seriously punished until I met Joel and Stephan. I was terrified that day in court, but still couldn’t comprehend my vulnerability. How could people close their eyes to torture and murder? I was afraid to imagine the sort of man who would torture people he didn’t know. In my heart I knew it wasn’t the money, but I had to bury the knowledge that I could be delivered to men who reveled in their despicable task. You know I’m not like that. You’ve been watching me for weeks, years as far as I know. If you’ve been paying attention, you know I could never take pleasure in hurting anyone.

&nbs
p; Wendell believed I could make it. That’s why he took me home.

  He may have been watching me then, but I didn’t care. I was glad to be alone at home where I couldn’t be arrested for breaking a law I didn’t know about. I made myself a frozen pizza and sat down on the couch with a six pack of Coke and a box of frozen Devil Dogs. I chained the door closed and from then until Friday afternoon I did nothing but eat, sleep, and battle the evil little discs I fed into the black box. The idea that a lesson would take six hours and I would be free after doing one a day was forgotten. I lined them up one after the other and I struggled, really struggled, to do my best. That I was out of money and couldn’t really do anything on the outside helped somewhat, but the thing really driving me was the short walk from the defense table to the conference room—the moment when I’d abandoned my friend. I’d gotten him arrested and I’d left him to die. For days when I slept I imagined volunteering to take his place, but that was a pipe dream. I couldn’t offer myself to be killed. I was barely beating the box. I was in no shape to deal with the cat baggers and I knew it.

  With the strap around my wrist, I saw a man lose his wallet. I maneuvered myself to pick it up, then found a policeman to help me return it. I met a lost little boy wandering the park and helped him find his mother. I turned off leaky faucets, righted spilled garbage cans on the sidewalk, and stopped traffic when a child darted into the street. Disc after disc I did the most righteous deeds I could imagine. And as time went by, the wrongs became harder and harder to identify.

  In my final challenge, there was a group of men playing basketball on the playground. I walked by them a dozen times before I realized one of them was selling drugs out of his bag. When I told a police officer, the men scattered. The wrist strap gave me a shock, but it wasn’t particularly painful compared to what Joel was dealing with. Early Friday morning I remembered what I had seen in the donut shop when I set off the alarm. I bought myself a virtual camera and went back to the playground. At four o’clock in the morning, I recorded the man selling drugs from his bag. Minutes later I was at the virtual police station with my camera. When I placed it on the counter, the screen lit up with fireworks like never before. Did they really expect people to walk around with cameras and turn in their neighbors? It was easy in the simulation, but in real life there would be consequences.

  In three days I completed forty-nine discs. It was as easy as Deone said it was, but I had forgotten what he said about the other half of the lessons. Deone was stuck on algebra. I didn’t even know what algebra was yet. That morning I fell asleep and dreamed things my old self would have dismissed as ridiculous. In my dreams, I acted like the virtual Saint Michael. Maybe it was because I had done so many lessons all at once. Maybe it was because the painful shocks made the consequences real. Whatever the reason, I was becoming the person Wendell wanted me to be, in my dreams at least.

  When my eyes cracked open at ten o’clock, I could still see the faces of the people I’d helped. Wendell would have been proud of what he’d done to me, but honestly, I’d been trying my best all week. I wasn’t ever trying to get in trouble, I’d just been unlucky. Some part of me would always be the boy stealing peaches from the grocery store.

  I want you to know I have never really hurt anyone. I don’t know if Wendell can look past who I am. Regardless of what he thinks, I need you to believe in me. I need you to know that I had to do those things to survive. You would have done the same if your mother put a gun to your head.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  The euphoria of finishing forty-nine discs wore off the first time I thought of the agony Joel was enduring. I strained against the weight of my eyelids and the dull vibration in my head that scattered my thoughts. My tongue tasted like cotton. I could barely focus on the television, but every time I closed my eyes my subconscious played images of Joel in intense pain and reminded me of the hollow, breathless feeling I had when I left the courtroom without him.

  I needed to press on. To finish this course before I caused any more trouble. Little did I know how naive that idea was. I’d left school in the middle of eighth grade, but I’d fallen behind long before then. I had to drop out when I left home, but that decision helped me avoid the truth that I just couldn’t keep up. Years without trying stunted my education. I thought I could sit in that little apartment and complete four and a half years of school, but I’d forgotten how hard it was.

  Boldly I started the next disc, expecting to tear through it like I had Wendell’s psychological and moral lessons. The introduction droned on and on about the requirements to complete high school equivalency. I would need to pass dozens of tests in math, English, social studies, and science. Fortunately, once passed, I didn’t have to worry about that subject anymore.

  Miniature Wendell told me that this was an adaptive environment. The system determined what I knew by measuring how long it took to answer a question and how many consecutive questions I answered correctly. Then it focused on what I needed to learn and not things I already knew. What he didn’t say, and what I would eventually learn, is that the system tested many things I wasn’t aware it was testing.

  The first subject was math. Miniature Wendell said we were going to work on my digit span. This would improve my memory. We’d work on it until I had an average digit span. I had no idea what he was talking about until he said three single numbers one after the other and asked me to type them in. That was easy. We graduated to four numbers, then five. I made my first mistake at six and Wendell told me we would try again.

  I paused the program by taking off my wrist strap, ran to the kitchen, and came back with a cereal box and a knife because I didn’t have a pen or a pencil in the entire apartment. When I refastened the wrist strap, Wendell started calling out numbers again. I carved them into the cereal box and when Wendell asked for them back, I typed them without fail. We reached seven, eight, and nine numbers without trouble. I was waiting for the system to tell me I’d passed and wouldn’t need to do this silly exercise anymore. Looking back, I should have stopped when we got to eleven numbers, but I kept going through fourteen and fifteen. Wendell congratulated me and then there was a long pause. He began again by calling the number six. The instant I touched the knife to the cereal box, the wrist strap jolted me.

  “You’re only cheating yourself,” Wendell said. “And I won’t allow it.”

  It would have been better for both of us if he had. I would have finished the program and he would have had another graduate.

  He started over.

  I shifted the knife to my left hand and kept my right hand, the one with the wrist strap, perfectly still. He called seven and then nine. I paused then carved. Soon as I touched the box, a spark jolted me. The knife flipped from my hand and landed handle first on the couch.

  “How many times do we need to do this before you realize I’m watching you?” Wendell asked.

  “If you’re watching me, why don’t you come up and teach me the lesson in person?”

  “I’m not a teacher. I’m in the security room. What rock did you crawl out from under?” Miniature Wendell was this man’s puppet.

  Fitting, if not entirely accurate.

  I learned several things in that exchange. There were security people, probably there in the apartment complex somewhere. They could see and hear me and zap me if they chose. I also guessed they could type things for Wendell to say. That meant they could tinker with my lessons just to irritate me. By this time Joel probably had a dozen characters talking to him. None of them would be as polite as the security guard.

  I went back to work and honestly failed the digit span test.

  The machine began math from the very beginning. It asked me to add single numbers in my head and type in the result. I did so without using the knife, but I did use my fingers. I didn’t get any more shocks, so I assumed that was all right. After a bunch of those, Wendell asked me to subtract simple numbers. I did so and typed in the answers. The numbers got bigger and were displayed on
the screen. It took me longer, but I worked through dozens of problems.

  I tried to remember what grade we worked on addition and subtraction. It wasn’t eighth. It might have been fifth. Was the black box really asking me to make up eight years of math? I was glad when we moved on to multiplication and division, but it took me hours to pass the exam on the basics.

  The unimpressive fireworks started me thinking about what separated a guy like Nick from me. Was what he learned in school really that important? He’d probably gone to college. If he was locked up in here, he’d only have to stay long enough to finish Wendell’s fifty-two morality tests, then he’d go back to his job. What work could I do if you let me out of here? Would math and English be important? I learned to pick locks and start cars. Those were useful skills. Would the black box teach me anything useful on the outside? Or would I have to find someone like Double to teach me to survive all over again?

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  What a bonehead I was, locking myself in my room until I finished the entire program. I can handle hard work, but I totally underestimated the time it would take. Funny, estimation was on the list of math subjects the black box would eventually try to teach me. Deone was stuck on algebra. The black box hadn’t mentioned that yet, but I remembered doing fractions, long division, decimals, and number lines in school. All those things came before algebra. Wendell announced we were going to add columns of numbers. What was that? Third grade math? It was an insult. How much school had I missed? Dozens of hard lessons lay ahead and math was only one subject.