Karen closed her eyes with a faint laugh. “Nope. No, not to be rude or anything,” Karen said.
“Oh, thank goodness.”
Karen looked a little surprised by Lenth's reaction. “You—”
“Me? I don't know what I'm doing! Why, do you?” Lenth asked.
Karen shook her head slightly with a soft smile. “Just eat the stupid papaya.”
For more than two decades, Lenth 'knew' what 'food' tasted like. The same thing, every day. The taste of standard food, water, a tiny bit of blood from cuts or gums, and in younger years, curiosity about inedible objects.
He was entirely unaware how much he didn't know about taste. Even before the moist, soft, yellow piece reached his mouth, the feel and the scent were reaching out, trying to prepare him.
Holding it in his mouth without chewing, his eyes widened in shock. This taste was tingling around his mouth, and seemed to be wrapping around his head from the inside. And it was incredible.
“Whuh vuh...?” As incredible as it was, it still didn't enable him to talk easily with his mouth full. He shoved the piece of papaya into his cheek, planning to talk, but not ready to swallow. Moving it released another wave of flavour, and he forgot that he wanted to speak. He merely whimpered and slumped to his knees.
“Lenth! Are you all right?” Karen asked with concern.
“Mmmmmmhmm!” Lenth held his hands out to prevent any interference, chewing slowly with his eyes closed. He leaned over and steadied himself against the end of Karen's bed.
“Ah, I remember my first time,” Gabe said from the doorway. “Messy, and wet, and…” Gabe stopped, seeing Karen's expression.
Better prepared, but still not swallowing, Lenth cried out, “Why don't we all eat this all the time?”
“A body needs more than what a papaya has, so we mix it with a bunch of other things,” Gabe said.
Lenth mentally digested that, and his eyes lit up. “I...I want to try them all!”
Gabe chuckled. “Maybe we can work that in, but just to let you know, papaya's the best of the bunch, for sure. Rice? Beans? Lablab? Wheat? Those are boring as heck! Sweet potatoes and peanuts are okay, I guess.”
Karen chimed in with a smirk, “And beets?”
“Gack! The only way I'm ever eating those is when they're hidden happily in the finished food disks,” Gabe said.
“They're bad?” Lenth asked.
“Pretty horrible,” Karen said, “at least most people think so.”
“Then I really want to try beets some time!”
“Why, Lenth?” Gabe said with a puzzled look. “In case you're one of the few that love them?”
Lenth held his hands in front of his face, as if closely inspecting an invisible ball. “The experience! Knowing what it is! Really knowing!”
Gabe shrugged as Karen smiled, and Lenth went on. “All my life I lived in that little set of rooms, and what did I know? Lots of nothing! I knew how to eat, get clean, sleep, and do my little job. I didn't even know what my job was for. There's so much more out here! I want to meet Contact and the Messenger, and I want to see what other Subjects do. What they make, how it matters. I want to meet a lot more people, and I want to...”
Lenth stopped himself and crossed his arms.
Gabe sighed with a leer. “I bet you want to. But don't go rushing that.”
Choosing to play dumb, Lenth turned to Gabe, very cautious not to look at Karen. “Rush? Rush what? Who said I was in a rush for what?”
Karen blushed and bit her lips to avoid smiling. She shook her head. “Are you two goofs going to get out of here? You know it's not allowed.”
Looking Karen up and down, Lenth glanced to one door, and then the other. “I'm unclear about a lot of things. About what things are not allowed.”
Karen took his hand gently, slowly, and put a small package in it. Papaya for later. She smiled softly. “This is also not allowed.”
“How's your reading going?” Gabe asked while they rode the elevator.
“The machine says I'm almost done grade two.” Lenth shrugged. “Is that good?”
“For the amount of time you've been at it? Seems really good to me. You know it goes a lot higher though, right?”
Lenth nodded. “I figured. There's still lots of words I see that I can't manage.”
“Yeah. But that's still a ton more than your old Rubberman knew.”
“Fill?”
Gabe smirked with a raised eyebrow and looked at Lenth. “So, you did talk to him.”
Lenth's jaw dropped, and his eyes widened. “I...yeah. Don't give him trouble, all right? It turns out he's kind of nice, but he was pretty scared of Providers when—”
Gabe coughed. “Doubtlessly, you spoke to him when you were already in his ceiling, and he had no way of stopping you. Doubtlessly, helping you get out would have been be a bad thing for him to do.”
“He...” Lenth nodded. “Doubtlessly.”
The elevator stopped and opened. They started walking to Lenth's quarters. “Hey Lenth, if things end up going accordingly, how do you feel about becoming a Manager sometime in the future?”
Lenth slowed, forcing Gabe to turn back to face him, and they stopped in the hall in front of Lenth's door. “Me? A Rubberman?”
“It's not your only option, but think about it.” With that, Gabe headed off. Lenth went into his quarters, where the learning chairs were the first things to meet him.
“Being a Rubberman,” Lenth thought, “Sounds lonely. Then again, Carin' said she can go to the Provider areas when she wants. And obviously, she can have visitors. Maybe it's not so bad.”
But whoever he was put in charge of... he'd have to shock them from time to time. That wasn't a pleasant thought. He had been shocked enough to not want to wield that ability. It often felt quite unfair when he was shocked.
He had hated the Rubberman. But somehow he didn't mind Phil. As if the suit itself were the bad guy. Is that how Phil sees it?
Heck, is that how Karen sees it? He hadn't even thought of the idea that Karen must shock the women beneath her from time to time.
Maybe it wasn't so bad. Maybe he could get used to it. Then again, would he want to be used to it? To be a person who didn't mind shocking people? He got used to being shocked. Well...not really.
Ugh. So much to think about. Could he change his mind later? What were his other options? All this effort being put into learning to read, and he had nothing to write with. It would be handy to jot down questions to ask Gabe later.
That was a pretty bold idea... that he could possibly write these ideas well enough to make sense in the morning. Right now he was only approaching the idea of reading simple sentences. He'd have to just memorize to basic concepts. Refine them as short as possible.
“Quit?” and “Other options?” He repeated them in his head until he was just annoying himself.
Lenth went to take a shower, and he found himself again thinking of Karen. She had been so close. Being that close, he could feel the... force of her presence. Thinking of it again made his blood pressure rise and his breathing deepen.
She had been close enough that he could have reached out and held her. What would she have thought?
What would she have done?
Lenth had no idea how she'd react, and it terrified him.
He wrapped his arms around himself while the shower continued to rain on him, and imagined squeezing her.
She might have pushed him away, or even hit him. But the drive towards fantasy painted a very different picture in his mind.
A confused picture, painted mainly by sterile education, but he knew better. A mystery, a fantasy, terrifying and invigorating. It was clear what his body thought of it all, and that only compounded the confusion.
He looked down at his 'condition' and decided he should go review some of those lessons on the learning machine. The ones that showed... what to do with it.
When Lenth woke up, the notions of becoming a Rubberman were far behind his immed
iate needs. He was hungry, but wanted to save his papaya treasure. All else aside, it was from her.
He got cleaned up and headed to the cafeteria. Lately, his door remained unlocked, and he didn't need to summon Gabe to let him out.
Food and water obtained, he glanced around to choose a seat. There were plenty available, but quickly he was people-watching more than anything.
Woman-watching, specifically.
Someone passing by caused him to snap out of it and go sit down. Then resume woman-watching.
They were each lovely in one way or another. He unconsciously compared them to Karen. What was supposed to be ideal? Karen was nice. Her smile and her laugh. The women here weren't smiling or laughing much, but then, there was no immediate reason to.
The idea of talking to a stranger, (a woman, even!) was intimidating. All the people he'd met and talked to weren't exactly his idea. Not exactly. Lenth used to have three people to talk to. They weren't strangers in the slightest.
They also weren't lumpy. Things were simple.
He finished his meal, regretting that he didn't eat his papaya piece. Then he sat there, leaning on the table, just watching people.
They were living a life so alien to how he had grown up, coming and going as they pleased with no threat of electrocution. No cuffs confining them to one place or another. Being able to read. Interacting with so many people like it was nothing.
This was normal to them. This was normal.
So focused on people, he failed to see a person. Gabe walked over and stood beside him.
“Found you,” Gabe said.
“Wasn't hiding,” Lenth replied.
“If you still want to go meet Contact, we can do it.”
“What, right now?” Lent said, wide-eyed.
“Right now.”
Lenth got up and followed Gabe to the nearest elevator. When they got off, it was another typical hallway, but one of the quieter ones. Gabe wasn't talking, and Lenth didn't feel like he should break this silence.
They came to a door, and through it sprawled a room larger than the cafeteria, but mostly empty. The walls curved in a wide arch to meet the ceiling, which was twice as high as most. On the other end of the room sat a desk, and around the desk stood four Providers in their contamination suits, headgear held under their arms.
“Well, isn't that fitting?” came a grim voice from an unseen man on the other side of the desk. “Get back at it, then. You know how important it is.”
With that, the four tired-looking Providers turned towards Lenth and Gabe and headed past them for the door wordlessly.
Lenth and Gabe turned back towards the desk and the man seated behind it. “Yes?” he said flatly. The man was almost as wrinkly as Bones, but he had Provider amounts of hair, also on his chin and jaw. Grey and rough. He was wider than most people. A bit more than twice as wide, and it made him look soft, sort of. But not in any way that made him look any friendlier.
“Bad timing?” Gabe asked, taking a few hesitant strides forward.
The man shrugged, pinching his forehead. “No. Yes, but no. On top of everything, we brought out those shock sticks and found that the battery cells had bled out. Hopefully we can get...ah, never mind. Come on in.”
Gabe gestured for Lenth to follow, and headed to the desk. “May I ask what that was all about?” Gabe asked with a tone of respect.
The man pointed at Lenth. “This guy's buddy just killed again.” he said dispassionately. Lenth eyes widened.
“What's that, the fifth?” Gabe asked.
The man shook his head. “Sixth. Six killed six, isn't that cute.” The man tapped a computer screen that was built into the top of his desk, and it turned off.
“Is that including his Rubberman?” Gabe asked.
“Ex...excuse me,” Lenth interrupted, “Six isn't my buddy, I hope you under—”
“Yes, yes,” the man said. “Lenth, right? You and I have something in common. Our names have meaning.”
“You're...”
“Contact. I'm the contact with the Messenger. I used to have another name, but when I took this job, I got this name. And Lenth...well, it's a Unit Subject name, but that's not a word. What does it mean? Unit Subject names almost always mean things.” The way he said 'Unit Subject' made it sound almost like a slur.
“Length.” Lenth spread out his arms to illustrate. “It's not a super long reach…”
“But bigger than your Brothers,” Contact concluded.
“That's right.” Lenth stared at Contact, but silence soon made him avert his eyes to the desk.
“Lenth, you had something to ask me? Gabe tells me you want to know more about why your Brother died.”
Lenth sighed. If Contact knew that, why make Lenth ask? “Yes. The medication that killed him. What was it? What was it supposed to do? Did the rest of us get it?”
Contact seemed unaffected by Lenth's trembling tone and fidgeting. Contact seemed to find Lenth a bit...distasteful. “Air,” he finally answered flatly.
“Air?” Lenth frowned. “Like, air?” he waved his hand in the air above his head.
“Yes, air. Very fine to breathe it, very bad to get bubbles of it in your blood.”
Lenth looked at his wrist. “But the rest of us were okay?”
Contact frowned. “No, no, Slim was the only one to get air in his blood. The piping going to his cuff had a leak, and air got in with the mixture.”
Lenth nodded with partial understanding. He'd felt the cuffs 'jab' him before, and he sometimes had found the mark of the tiny injections, but until recently, assumed they were... meaningless. Harmless. He gave a slow sigh, staring into the floor. “This leak... that put air in Slim... how did it happen?”
“Realistically? It could have been many things,” Contact said. “Natural material deterioration, a pressure surge causing the lines to slip off the connector, the Manager might have bumped something, by accident of course, or possibly a combination of all those things.”
“The Manager? My Rubberman? Fill.”
Chapter Fourteen
Of Air and Ascending
Phil was resting as his Subjects slept, and no other tasks called him. He played cards with himself. He'd invented several games he could amuse himself with. Simple games of chance, building meaningless structures with them, or tossing them into his overturned mask from across the room.
The cards were a treasure he'd found under the desk, most likely left by the previous Manager of this Unit. Where they came from originally, he could not guess.
Phil didn't dare ask a Provider, for fear of having them taken away.
He had just started the third layer of a building when he heard his back door starting to open. In controlled panic, he scooped the cards into one tight pile and slipped them under his mattress.
Calm, relax, everything was all right. Quick look around for any wayward cards. Nope.
The door opened, and two Providers stepped through in the usual faceless suits.
“Hello? I wasn't expecting you, what's wrong?” Phil asked.
One of the Providers stayed near the door and the other came closer. “Fill,” said a voice that seemed somehow familiar to him, “are you doing all right?”
“Yes, I am. No complaints,” Phil replied.
“How is the Subject 'Joints'?” Lenth asked from the anonymity of the Provider suit.
“Joints? He...he seems to realize that he's being given lighter weights, but he hasn't taken advantage of the lower requirements for the work. He seems to be working as hard as he always has. He seems okay overall.”
“Good. That's good. Spots and Blue?”
Phil nodded. “Same as always. The new one, Brow, he's doing well also.”
Lenth paused, and Phil fidgeted nervously a little bit. The new one. Of course. Lenth knew that, and had heard it several times, but it still hadn't sunk in. Hearing the new one's name made it all the more real. He'd been replaced, just like Slim.
What must his Brothers be thinki
ng of all this? They knew he left, Phil knew that they knew. No... wait, of course not. Joint, Blue, Spots...They were all gassed to sleep before Lenth went above Phil's ceiling. They probably think that Phil, their Rubberman, took him away, just like when Slim disappeared.
He wanted to go out there and tell them that at least, he was okay. He knew it wasn't possible.
Gabe, standing by the door, spoke from inside his mask. “Ask him what we came here for.”
Lenth turned back towards Phil, who was now standing all the more rigidly.
“Right,” Lenth said. “What happened to the one named 'Slim'?”
“He...he died,” Phil said.
“I know. I meant why? There was a leak that got air into his blood. But how did the leak happen?”
Phil looked concerned. “I thought this was settled. I thought we all agreed it was an accident! I couldn't know the tube wasn't on tight enough; it's never been something I've had to check before! It's never been a problem before, but you can be sure I check them regularly now. I... I...”
Phil backed away and slumped against the wall. Lenth lowered his head and stepped closer to Phil, who began to tremble slightly.
“You what, Fill?” Lenth asked.
Phil tightened his body up, and mumbled for a bit. “It's not my place, not really, I know that...”
“What isn't your place?”
Phil shook his head slowly, still looking down. “They call each other 'Brother'. They care for each other, and... and,” Phil looked up into Lenth's dark mask, seeking eyes to stare into. “—and I care for them too! I take care of them, I watch them grow, and talk, and have fun as much as they're allowed. It was the same four for a long, long time, then Slim dies, I have no idea where Lenth is, and the new boys are fine, but they're not Slim and Lenth, and as fine as they may be, they'll never be Slim and Lenth, and I sometimes feel like if they're all Brothers, then I...”
Lenth reached out gently grabbed Phil by the arms. “It's a shame you're not allowed talk to them. They might appreciate you if you could.”
They stood there for a while, Lenth remaining masked as Gabe looked on. Finally, Lenth turned to leave.
Rubberman's Cage Page 11
