Rubberman's Cage

by Joseph Picard

  Lenth wandered in, looking at the pane of glass, and was startled when he heard the door close behind him.

  He was alone.

  He went to the door, finding it locked. He knocked. No answer. Again. No answer. Maybe he'd be luckier with the pane of glass. He walked back over to it and raised his fist to give it a knock when a voice stopped him.

  “Please don't.” The voice that came was flat, and maybe a little irritated. And it just sounded strange, somehow.

  “Ah. No need now, is there?” Lenth said “Um...I'm Lenth. How—”

  “You can be seated,” the voice interrupted.

  Lenth scrunched his lips and looked at the chair. Fine. He sat. “So, where's Slim?”

  “Lenth. You are here to give us information about the six-toed man, his associate, and their location.”

  Lenth tilted his head. “Well no, I suppose I could, but that is not why I am here. I'm here to find Slim.”

  There a brief moment of silence before the voice replied. “You must tell us about the six-toed man and his associate.”

  “If I tell you about Six and Eyes, you'll take me to Slim?”

  “Tell us.”

  “I don't know if I trust people who hide their faces. You first.”

  There was another pause. “You can't be expected to know how important this is, but we...and by we, I mean you, me, and everyone, can't have a killer running around in the walls.”

  “What's a killer?” The Rubberwoman, Carin', had used that word. And 'kill'.

  The voice sighed. “A killer is someone who kills. Who makes another person dead. And now you're going to ask me what dead is, aren't you?”

  “Dead is dead. I keep hearing that, and I know Slim is dead now. I don't see why that's so important, or why it made him disappear.”

  The voice became a little softer in sympathy. “Dead people can't do anything. They don't talk, they don't move, they don't even think. They're done, they're over. It's much deeper than sleep, and they can never wake up.”

  Lenth stared for a while at the blank wall below the glass panel and tried to understand. “Never?”

  “Never.”

  He let that sink in for a while. It hurt. He remembered trying to wake Slim up. He'd be like that forever? “Why?”

  “People's bodies aren't perfect. They can get hurt in ways that they can't heal. A body fails sometimes, for various reasons. Eventually, they all fail.”

  Lenth slowly stood, still looking down, and held an arm across his chest.

  “And Slim?”

  “We think there was a problem with his medicine. He may have had an allergic reaction to a new version of the usual kind of—”

  Phil had mentioned medicine. “Medicine made Slim dead? Killed him?”

  “It wasn't meant to happen. We didn't know that his...”

  Walking backwards slowly, Lenth bumped into the back wall and began sliding down it. “You put the medicine in there?” he said weakly. “You killed him?” Lenth felt his shoulders cave inwards, his chest tight. “You killed my Brother...you killed Slim...”

  “I'm very sorry. It wasn't meant to happen.”

  Lenth didn't reply, instead obeying the urge to curl up in the corner. He felt the tears building up, but they refused to give him the satisfaction of escape. He stared into nothingness, embracing slight escape through numbness.

  Some time passed, and the voice remained silent for a long while. Lenth sought sleep, but sleep denied him as well.

  “Are...are you hungry?” the voice asked quietly.

  Lenth gave the glass pane a cold gaze. He still had food stashed in his sleeve, but it was rather squished. Not that it mattered much.

  “Are you hungry, Lenth?” the voice repeated.

  “Hungry?” Lenth muttered. “For medicine? Will you kill me too?”

  “You've been having the same medicine and food since the day Slim died. It's not going to harm you.”

  Lenth sat up and stared at the glass panel. “No. I'm not hungry. I want to see Slim.”

  “I'm afraid you can't. The body is gone now, too.”

  Assuming that was part of death, Lenth just gave a frustrated little huff and turned his head to the door.

  “Fine then. I guess I’ll go home. I guess it's back to work as usual while I wait for another Brother to get dead.”

  “I'm afraid you can't. We'll have to find you a new home.”

  Lenth slammed his fist on the floor. “Why? I live with my Brothers! They are my...my Brothers!” He stood, defiantly staring at the glass.

  Another pause from the glass pane before a reply. “Fine. Fine. But first, I answered your questions about Slim's death. Tell me about 'Six' and 'Eyes'. We believe they killed their Manager.”

  “Their Rubberman. If you find them, then what?”

  “We won't kill them, if that's what you're worried about. We cannot afford to lose people. We will find some way to give them a home that they can fit in with, and hopefully be happy.”

  That sounded reasonable. He began to explain everything, starting with the escape from his home, leaving out Phil's involvement. He then described the directions he travelled as best as he could remember.

  The voice asked several questions to try to get more specific. Some of the questions Lenth could answer, others he couldn't help with. Eventually, the voice seemed satisfied enough.

  “That should do,” it said.

  “All right, then. Take me home.”

  “I'm afraid I can't do that. I'm truly sorry, Lenth.”

  Lenth strode over to confront the glass panel. “You lied to me?”

  “I never really said that I could take you back. But yes, I guess it sounded like I was going to. I'm sorry, but finding the killer was too high of a priority, and-.”

  Lenth let out a roar and pounded both fists against the glass, over and over. “I need to see my Brothers! You took Slim from me, and now you're taking them all?”

  “You know far too much for a Subject now, Lenth!”

  “What does it matter? What am I going to do, knowing you're here?”

  “This is the way it is. Subject level people can't know. It's forbidden. Besides, could you ever be content with your old life now?”

  “Yes!” Lenth's answer resonated off the walls and he stood there, making his most determined face at the glass. He hoped he was staring directly into the face of whoever the voice belonged to, but the dark pane of glass itself was just as worthy of his contempt.

  Eventually, the voice came again. “You can't.” It spoke patiently, softly, but it was firm. “But there are choices to be had. More than you had before.”

  “But going home isn't one,” Lenth said.

  “Correct.”

  Lenth turned from the glass and walked to the back of the room. “So, what's to stop me from just going? Sneaking out when I find a way and just going home?” He knew the answer before he even finished asking.

  “We'd know right away if you popped up in your old Unit.”

  “Right.”

  “And your Brothers would be compromised.”

  Lenth looked back to the glass. “Compromised? What do you mean?”

  “Part of their value is in their ignorance. Their innocence.”

  Lenth glared at the glass. “Value? So am I less valuable now?”

  “Arguably. But we can find you another way to contribute, as a favour. We could not accommodate more. The system has very little flexibility, especially after the trouble with 'Six', 'Eyes', and their Unit.”

  Lenth cooled down and looked at his feet. “Things are complicated above my old ceiling.”

  “You have no idea.”

  Chapter Nine

  Gabe

  Lenth was taken to another room on the same floor. The leading Provider pointed to an off-white table. This table was unlike any Lenth had ever seen. It wasn't attached to the floor, and it wasn't a big solid block. It had a matching chair, much like the one on the last room, except that it also wasn't
attached to the floor.

  Lenth picked the chair up by the back and marvelled at its freedom, turning it around at eye level.

  “Hey, hey,” said the Provider as he took off his concealing head-wear, “don't make things difficult. There's stuff in here that doesn't need wrecking. You're here, and not somewhere else, because...well, you seem kind of okay, so we might be able to find you a place.”

  Lenth put down the chair. “Oh, didn't mean anything by it. Just...loose chair! That's new!” He sat down carefully, not fully trusting furniture that was loose.

  He glanced around the room. Compared to the spartan order of home, this place was a den of overbearing clutter. Several racks of shelves lined the walls. And they had random things on them, which were likely as loose as the chair. There were containers of at least three different sizes, and quite a few of those things like in Karen's closet, likely filled with those symbols.

  It was only fitting that the unmasked Provider before him had hair sticking up all over his head. When the Provider put his hand through it, the hair was so long, it nearly hid his fingers.

  While the Provider had his back turned, getting another of those loose chairs, Lenth copied the hand motion on his own head. At best, his own hair would have to be three times as long as it was now to even rise past the width of a finger.

  The Provider sat down on the other side of the table and plunked one of those symbol-box-things down. “Call me Gabe, by the way.”

  “Gabe? What kind of name is that?”

  Gabe smirked. “It's a name-name. It's not something that describes me, it's a regular name.”

  “Regular names are supposed to describe you,” Lenth said.

  “If you're a Unit Subject, sure. No one gives you names; you have to invent your own.”

  “Who gave you yours? And what does it mean?”

  “Real names don't mean things. Mine was assigned to me, just for me, when I was little. The nursery Manager on duty when I was born picked it from the lists.”

  “Why didn't they give me one?”

  Gabe leaned his head in sympathy. “You were going to be assigned Unit work. Intricate social interactions aren't required. In all honesty, you're lucky they teach bottom Subjects how to speak.”

  Lenth frowned at the tabletop. “I'm...I'm less.”

  Gabe shrugged. “I didn't want to put it as blunt as that...”

  “How is that fair?” Lenth asked, frowning harder, not looking right at Gabe.

  “It's not, in a lot of ways. But luck is luck. It could have been the other way around. It's just a matter of what jobs are predicted to be needed done when we were born. Subjects are actually the most common. Then Providers, which includes the nursery and medical, and I suppose the smallest group is the Unit Managers.”

  “You mean Rubbermen.”

  “Yeah. There's one of them to every four Subjects. It's a simple life, but a lot of them don't have nearly as much access to information as Providers. They don't need to worry about things that don't relate to working the Unit.”

  Lenth looked at the symbol-thing that Gabe had put on the table. Putting his hand on it, Lenth asked, “So, this thing. I've seen one before, in that...'woman' Unit. It's filled with symbols, stuck on those thin, floppy things inside?” He held a random page up.

  “Yes. Those symbols are called letters, and when stuck to other letters, they make words. Want to learn how to read them? It takes quite some time.”

  “Is that the new purpose I'm supposed to have? Reading?”

  Gabe smiled. “No, but it's a step. It makes other things easier, kind of like being able to talk does. I guess that's why they teach Unit Subjects language. Some communication is valuable for anyone.”

  Lenth tapped the book. “And this is more valuable?”

  Smiling again, Gabe got up and walked over to a shelf, running his finger across the backs of a few dozen books. “It is one way that you become less 'less'.”

  “Then I'm in.”

  Gabe led Lenth to yet another room. Smaller, and more familiar. It had four seats that reminded him of the exercise stations back home, but these ones looked more comfortable, with thicker padding. Also, they had no apparent handles or bars for exercises. It did still have the headset attached by a jointed arm to the ceiling, and a cuff.

  “Why the cuff?” Lenth asked as he seated himself.

  “This one comes off whenever you want; don't worry.”

  “Then why put it on?”

  “We want to get a fresh reading on your blood. You're going off the meds, uh... medicines from now on. Time to clean that stuff out of you.”

  Lenth looked up from the little panel of buttons on the chair he'd been toying with. “Uh...what kind of stuff is in me?”

  Gabe smirked. “Well, you and your Brothers have had your sex drive suppressed since before puberty, mainly to keep life simple among your Brothers, among other things. Of course, this disqualifies you from certain other medications due to potential chemical comp—”

  Gabe stopped talking, noticing the lost look on Lenth's face. “Uh...it's complicated.”

  “I get that. I've been noticing that a lot.”

  Gabe gave Lenth a sympathetic, if smarmy smile. “Baby steps, I guess.” Gabe put the visor on. “Let me just start up your first reading lesson...” He reached to the little control panel on the chair and tapped various buttons for a few moments. “Right. Okay.” He put the helmet onto Lenth's head. “Okay, Lenth. See the buttons I was pressing?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You really only need to worry about these two buttons. That one will skip ahead a bit if you understand what it's telling you and are ready for the next one, and the other will go back. The one in between will stop it where it is, and can be pressed again to keep going.”

  Soon enough, Gabe left Lenth to his tier two education. As he sat there, the feel of the chair brought back hazy memories. Learning the sounds and meanings of words, leaning to talk, and learning numbers.

  That much was all that a Unit Subject needed. But now he was being given more than even the numbers. One after another, he was shown letters and told the sound it made.

  Each of the letters had two kinds for some reason, most of them with a big version and a small version which sometimes looked very different. Some of the letters made more than one sound, but this didn't seem to have anything to do with the size.

  Lenth lost track of how many letters he had been Subjected to, and then something amazing happened. The letters came in quicker succession, while the names of them were spoken in unusual tones, to sound pleasing. Other sounds went with it. Sounds of...just sounds! Stimulating, beautiful sounds that seemed to carry the names of the letters along.

  When it reached “zed”, it ended. Lenth scrambled for the button to make it jump back, to hear it again. Half way through the second time, he started quietly humming along. Unconsciously, his head swayed to the rhythm.

  Occasionally, he would fumble when the song ended, and started the next segment, but he was determined to know the song by heart. When Gabe came back and asked how it was going, Lenth put on his more noble expression, lifting the helmet towards the ceiling, and sang;

  “Ay, bee, see, dee, ee, eff, jee, aych...aych... huh. Umm... Something, jay, kay, elle, en, em, oh, dee, kyu, arr, eff...no...that's not right...” He looked up at the paused screen in the helmet. “Arr, eff? Arr...”

  “Ess,” Gabe said. “You made some other errors too, but if you ask me, that's amazingly good for the amount of time you've had.”

  “I like the sounds!” Lenth said, nodding with a furrowed brow.

  “Music?”

  “If you say so!”

  Gabe smiled and sang, “Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream!”

  Lenth laughed out loud. “There's more music? I guess that makes sense. What did that music mean?”

  “I have no idea. A lot of music has totally made up words. And a lot of it has no words at all.”

  Lenth
just smiled, shaking his head. He looked up at the helmet. “Is this my work now? How long do I have?”

  “Right now? Right now I was thinking we should go eat. I know how long it's been since you've slept, so if you want to do that after, I can set you up.”

  Stroking a finger along the helmet, Lenth asked, “Well, after all that, can I do this more?”

  Gabe nodded. “By all means.”

  Lenth followed Gabe back to a different elevator than before. The trip was only two lights up. The floor they came out on was very similar, except there were unmasked Providers walking the halls here and there still in the yellow outfits. They came to a very large room, with tables everywhere, and Providers seated randomly around.

  “...Twenty-two, twenty-three!” Lenth whispered in awe.

  “Twenty-three what?” Gabe asked.

  “People! There are twenty-three people! Adding my Brothers, my Rubberman, the Rubberwoman, her four people, Six, Eyes, their surviving Brother...am I missing anyone? Oh, I...I had no idea there were this many people! And if I'm seeing right, like half of them are women! Just acting casual, as if hanging out with the men is an ordinary thing! And their skin! I mean, lots of these people have the same colour of skin as us, but some are kind of browner. That guy over there is a lot darker! What does that mean?”

  Gabe snorted. “It just means he has darker skin. There's a fair amount of people here because this is a time when a lot of folks come and eat.”

  Lenth looked at all the empty seats. “You mean...there's even more people?”

  “Oh, Lenth...you mean as in everywhere? All the people that there are?” Gabe shook his head slowly. “There's a lot more.”

  “What? Like how many?” Lenth followed Gabe to a dispenser counter, where the wall had food disks, a water outlet, and a cup, sticking up from a hole, upside down.

  Gabe grabbed the cup, and the next popped up into place. “Hundreds of Providers,” he said, filling his cup, “a little more than half that amount of Managers, and well over a thousand Subjects like you. Well, like you were. All in all, a couple thousand, I guess.”