Rubberman's Cage

by Joseph Picard

  Staring into the wall, Lenth glazed over a little and tried to picture it. “That's got to be a lot of rooms...how far does it all go? The edge of everything?”

  Gabe lazily looked back and forth as he grabbed some food, as if he could see through the walls. “Eh...quite a ways. I've walked across it all just for the sake of doing it. I haven't been all the way up and down, mind you. I don't have any business on your levels, or much farther up. Well, I've been as far up as the clinic. That's only a few floors up. No big deal, really.”

  As Gabe started to slowly head to a table, Lenth quickly gathered some food and water so he could catch up. “It's so huge!”

  Gabe just tilted his head and shrugged as he chowed down. They got seated, and Lenth just looked around for a while. So many people. It was intimidating. Some of them took notice of Lenth and his blue Subject attire, but lost interest when they noticed his Provider escort.

  “Are these all...are they all your Brothers?” Lenth asked in quiet awe.

  “Huh?” Gabe looked around. “Oh, I get it...no. I guess they're 'friends'. Some more than others. I can't be expected to know everybody well.”

  Lenth continued to eat, pondering. “Hey, if I'm not a 'Unit Subject' anymore, am I a Provider now?”

  “Well, no,” Gabe said, “You're not a Provider. You might eventually become one. You're kind of in a grey area right now. There's some people who don't fit nicely into a category. You're…in transition, I guess.”

  “But I'm not a 'Manager', so that leaves 'Provider'.”

  Gabe smirked and shook his head. “If you really want to have a tidy little label, sure, whatever. But don't get overconfident about it. You might end up back in a Unit in the end, anyway.”

  Lenth was quiet after that semblance of a threat, even if Gabe delivered it in a friendly tone. “But you said I knew too much to go home.”

  “Your home is not the only part of the Unit level.”

  “But I would still know things, even if I were put in another area.”

  “In some places, it's okay to know things. In some, you forget.”

  “Forget? I don't think there's much chance of me forgetting what I've seen!”

  “There's ways to help people forget. Or so I've heard.”

  Once the meal was finished, Lenth was eager to go back to learning, but Gabe convinced him to go with him for a change of clothes. They ended up at a clothing and laundering room.

  “You're a...large/tall, it looks like?” Gabe said, eyeing Lenth up and down. “Try one on. The regular, not the containment type.”

  Lenth stripped down on the spot, crumbs from his old stash tumbling down from his sleeve. He put on the body suit Gabe suggested and gave it a little wiggle. It fit much looser than his old clothes, but they were very comfortable.

  “Lenth, there's changing rooms right over there,” Gabe murmured. A Provider tending the laundry nearby was already back to his work after witnessing Lenth changing, but his amused grin was still in place.

  “Huh,” Lenth said, looking over to the little door. “What do the rooms change into?”

  Gabe rolled his eyes. “No, a small room you can go into so you can have a little privacy when you change clothes.”

  Privacy? What was that? “All right, I'm dressed like a Provider now. Can I go back to the learning chair now?”

  “Yes, but there's another thing to show you.” As they headed back, Gabe pointed out a room with dozens of exercise machines, much like the ones at Lenth's Unit.

  When they got back to the 'learning chair room', Gabe showed Lenth that it was attached to a room with sleeping quarters for four and a shower. Just one shower, though. Learning chairs for four people, beds for four, and one shower.

  This struck Lenth as quite peculiar. But he tried not to think too long on it. Sharing this single shower with his Brothers was a horrifying thought. And Joints naked! Ugh! Lenth had seen that before; it wasn't pretty.

  Lenth accounted for all the things his old home had and compared them to what he now had here. The new location also supplied bed, shower, work (in the form of learning), food was in that big room, and exercise in the gym.

  No Brothers though. No Slim.

  Gabe went back to the doorway into the main hall and leaned on the jamb. “Okay. You'll be okay for a few hours, yeah?”

  Lenth patted the learning chair with a smile. “You bet!”

  “Okay then. I'll check in on you in a while, and if you have any issues, just hit the button.” Indeed, there was a small, nondescript button by the door.

  “Or I can just go find you,” Lenth said.

  “No, this door will be locked.”

  Lenth frowned at Gabe and at the button. “Locked? Why?”

  “You're still kind of an…anomaly, you know?” Gabe scrunched his mouth and looked down the hall. “I like you just fine, but frankly, we don't know you. We know you didn't kill anyone, but other than that, you're a...you're really lucky you're being given the chances you are.”

  Lenth was stunned, and stepped back, stumbling against the chair. “I don't understand.”

  “You broke out of your place!” Gabe said with frustration. “You messed up routine, you're not doing your normal job, your Brothers are facing having to get used to another new Brother, your Manager is under investigation, you mingled with suspected killers, and you can't see why we don't want you running around loose?”

  “Another new Brother? I'm...being replaced?” The thought of a new person replacing him, just like Spots replaced Slim, was a heavy blow all on its own. Replaceable, disposable, interchangeable. And to make it worse, it reminded him that he left his Brothers. That he wouldn't see them again.

  Gabe left quietly while Lenth was deep in self-pity. It was the sound of the door closing and locking that snapped him back to his senses.

  He hadn't escaped anything.

  And now he was alone.

  Chapter Ten

  Eyes Witness

  This new place, locked as it was, still had to have an opening. Lenth clambered up onto the back of one of the learning chairs, pulled the arm of the helmet down, and used it as leverage to reach the ceiling.

  Nope, this one was much firmer than the one he'd pushed up to escape from Phil's floor. Lenth went on, inspecting every wall for signs of a movable or even breakable panel. Nothing seemed to even hint at the possibility.

  Defeated, he decided to take advantage of a learning chair. Settling in, he pulled down the helmet, and started it again. It sang the letter song again, but Lenth didn't hum along, or watch, really. His confinement was distracting.

  After the song, the images went on to things and the words for them, spelled out, going over each letter.

  Cup.

  Nose.

  Foot.

  Door.

  Food.

  On it went, with images of things he knew, as he knew them. It was difficult to pay attention. Partly because he was tired. Comfortable in the learning chair, and unmotivated to move, he let himself fall asleep.

  Gabe entered quietly, but it was enough to wake Lenth. Enough that he opened his eyes. The learning chair was still prattling on. Having gone through a selection of nouns, then verbs, it was on to adjectives. Lenth slapped a sleepy hand at the buttons to pause it and shoved the helmet up.

  “You're awake!” Gabe said. “You were out for quite a while. Makes sense, I guess. Hungry?”

  “Hm? Uh, waking up, give me a second.”

  The open door was behind Gabe. It wouldn't be too hard to shove past and run for it, but the sounds of other Providers nearby discouraged such heroics.

  “Sure thing.”

  Lenth groggily wandered over by the shower. He didn't feel like a shower, nor to keep his escort waiting too long, so he just went to the toilet and spritzed a little water in his face.

  “Okay, let's go.”

  Breakfast was as expected, but Gabe was being a little quieter than usual until about halfway through.

  “Hey, Lenth.
The others found the place you described. It looks like you were telling the truth about where you met Six and Eyes.”

  “Yeah, so?” It hadn't occurred to Lenth that anyone could have thought that he was lying. It hadn't occurred to him to lie.

  “Well, that means your trustworthiness has been improved by quite a bit.”

  Lenth shrugged. “Well, good, I guess. What does that mean?”

  “For one thing, I'm going to be giving your learning chair a little more data access. It won't be a ton of use until you can read better. We might also start looking at long-term jobs for you.”

  “Like a Provider kind of job? I'd be a Provider?”

  Gabe wiggled his head back and forth a little with a nod. “Yeah, pretty much, I guess. It could be learning simple repairs, running regular facility inspections, or food construction. We'll see what job's good for you and what's available.”

  “Neat.” Not that it sounded a great deal better than his old life. Any of those jobs were sure to soon be as tedious as his old one.

  Gabe gobbled down his last chunk of food. “All right. Finish up, and we can have our first department visit.”

  With a short elevator ride up a few floors, Gabe and Lenth walked into the clinic. Colour seemed to be forbidden here. Even signs of age and wear seemed missing from the walls. A Provider dressed in white made himself busy, going from one area to the next quietly. The people he was attending to were hidden behind curtains. More of this 'privacy' thing.

  The white-clad man spotted Gabe and Lenth from across the long room and raised a hand to acknowledge them.

  “He's a doctor,” Gabe quietly explained. “If you get sick or hurt, it's his job to fix you up.”

  “Oh. I've never been that sick, or that badly hurt,” Lenth said.

  “You probably have been. Your Manager would have put you to sleep, you'd be treated here, and then put back before being allowed to wake up.”

  Lenth's eyes widened. “I've...I've been here before?”

  “More than likely. If you really care, I could look up your file and see how many times.”

  “Then, the people here,” Lenth said, pointing at the rows of curtained-off stations, “They're all Unit Subjects?”

  “Probably about half.”

  It was then that the doctor walked up. “Hello. What seems to be the problem here?” He lowered his head a little and peered into Lenth's eyes, mistaking his stunned expression for an ailment.

  “We're both fine, doc,” Gabe said. “This is the Subject that was helping find that killer.”

  “Ah. Come this way, then.” the doctor said. He led Gabe and Lenth to the end of the rows of curtains and off to the left. They went through a door with a single word on it. Lenth was proud to be able to identify several letters. M, O, R, oops, no time to try to read if he wanted to keep up.

  This smaller room was equally colourless, but in greys instead of white. It may have just been the lighting, but Lenth felt colder here.

  “He only got here a couple of hours ago, but he's been dead a bit longer than that.” The doctor grabbed the handle of a metal drawer in the wall and started to pull it open. It kept coming, and coming, and coming, until the drawer was longer than a person is tall. Which worked out pretty well, as there was a person in it.

  The body was covered, but Lenth could tell what it was. Gabe pinched the top end of the cover and turned to Lenth. “Okay, I want you to tell me if you recognize this person.”

  Lenth nodded.

  Gabe pulled the cover down enough to reveal Eyes' head. The side of his head wasn't shaped right anymore. Where it was dented inward, the skin was black and blue, with red cracks in the middle.

  Lenth's jaw dropped as he backed away. Eyes was as silent and still as Slim had been the last time Lenth had seen him.

  “Dead?” Lenth asked in a quiet squeak.

  “Yes.” Gabe said softly. “I'm sorry, I guess I should have warned you.”

  “Massive head trauma,” The doctor said. “As far as we can tell, someone just grabbed him and hit his head against the floor repeatedly. The place he was found was quite a—”

  “Yes, I heard,” Gabe said, interrupting.

  Lenth stared at Eyes for a long while and found himself remembering being gassed to sleep the night Slim died. “So it's true. This happens to everyone.”

  “Do you know him?” Gabe asked.

  “Yeah. Yeah, that's Eyes.”

  “Are you sure?” Gabe asked. “I mean, you're probably right, but there are other people out there with eyes kind of like his. I know you probably haven't seen many—”

  “It's him.”

  Gabe nodded to the doctor, who covered Eyes back up and closed the drawer. He excused himself and went back to tend to patients.

  “There's evidence that Six killed him,” Gabe said. “It suggests that Six was also the one to kill their Manager.”

  Lenth looked at all the other closed drawers. “Is...is Slim here?”

  Gabe sighed and shook his head. “He was, for a little while.”

  “Then what?”

  “We all have to help society, even in death.” Gabe sighed again. “It's not a pleasant thing, really. Eyes will go the same way soon enough. No one feels anything after they die, but it's still unpleasant for the rest of us.”

  “Where?” Lenth's distant gaze began to harden. “How? What?”

  Gabe took a few steps out of the morgue, and called to the doctor. “I'm using your terminal for a second.”

  “Sure,” came the reply.

  While Lenth watched with quiet irritation, Gabe tapped at a small panel of buttons. A nearby screen belched numbers and letters too quickly for Lenth to make any sense out of, but Gabe seemed satisfied. “Good. Okay, let's go see the ladies.”

  Six lay in the darkness, the tight space between two floors. He was about as far from the fight as he could navigate safely.

  Stupid Eyes. Stupid Eyes with his stupid eyes. Six had to kill him. Bad enough that Eyes was always messing up, risking them getting caught all the time, but when he kept bringing up his idea about going and talking to the Providers... that made Eyes too big of a risk.

  He had begged. Eyes said they should split up and go their separate ways. For a moment, Six had considered it. It was still too much of a risk.

  Now Eyes can't talk.

  Oh, the noises he made, gasping and choking, while Six held him by the neck and hit his head against the floor. If the fool had just accepted it, he could have died quietly, but no. He had to make it a struggle.

  And now he was dead. He didn't complain after that. So strange now. When his Rubberman came crashing down onto their Brother, this was a new thing. This was death. When he finished what Eyes had started on the Rubberman, this was also death.

  It wasn't overly easy, but it was simple. And the Providers he had killed? All right, one wasn't too necessary. Eyes just wanted to know if they died the same way.

  They did, and Eyes seemed almost as interested in it. The time after that, Eyes was grateful even. They had been caught taking food, and there was only one thing to do about it.

  The next wasn't so cut and dry, but it was a matter of safety. The last one was...well, there wasn't much reason at all, but it was such a thrill! And that was around when Eyes got whiny.

  Eyes didn't see the justice involved. He, nor Six, had much experience with the word, but Six felt it. Felt outrage for all the Providers, keeping all the Subjects working in ignorance. Keeping them at arm's reach with their rubber pawns, letting those rubber pawns do... what they do.

  Killing them all would be ideal. But there were so many. So, so many, Six didn't even know how to start counting them.

  It was a shame that Eyes couldn't see what had to be done in the face of this injustice. A partner was very useful, before it became a liability. But now he was doing the forever sleep. Death is mercy.

  Too good for the Providers.

  Too good for the Rubbermen.

  If only there
was a way to make them suffer. To put them to work, perhaps. But how? To give the Unit Subjects a turn on top, and the Providers a turn being trapped, worked, and regulated with shocks.

  And the other thing. The other thing cannot be forgiven.

  Chapter Eleven

  Girl Stuff

  Lenth and Gabe arrived at Karen's room. Karen had been asleep, but woke when the upper door opened.

  “What's going on?” she asked.

  Lenth was stunned to see her out of her Rubberman suit. Seeing the women Subjects from a distance before was intriguing, but seeing Karen in her normal clothes, close enough to touch, was nearly bewildering. He decided that lumpy was indeed very good.

  “We won't be long. No problems,” Gabe said. He was wearing the Provider's full contamination suit, his face concealed.

  Lenth had been fully equipped as well, but lifted his mask to look Karen in the eye. “Hi. It's me.” Karen's eyes lit up.

  Gabe grabbed the edge of Lenth's mask and pulled it back down. “You're supposed to keep these on,” he said in a grumpy voice.

  “Why?” Lenth asked.

  “Lenth?” Karen said with a half-smile. “New clothes?”

  “Coming here was a mistake,” Gabe groaned. He turned to Karen. “They're asleep?”

  “Y-yes. Why?”

  “Just trying to explain a few things to Lenth. Stay here. Both of you stop talking to each other.”

  Lenth was busy ogling Karen from behind his opaque mask and only gave a patronizing nod.

  “You!” Gabe stuck a finger out at Karen. “You didn't see under a Provider's mask, am I clear?” His tone was less than menacing, only speaking out of procedure.

  Karen nodded.

  “You,” Gabe turned to Lenth. “Come with me and keep quiet. I'm going to gas them, but keep quiet anyway.”

  As they passed the panel of buttons, Gabe pressed a few before pressing the ones to open the door to the grating.