Running Start

by J. A. Sutherland

  “Not so good from what I can see in the record,” the prosecutor interrupted. “Very poor grades in Social Assimilation and Civic Conscientiousness. His teachers have given him an aggregate 5.6 on the Morgenstern Disruptive Personality scale.”

  “But quite high in his science courses — chemistry, engineering —”

  “All right, Bradley, that’s enough,” the judge said. “It’s not as though some lowly’s going to need those — not sure why they even teach them still. More important to get those sorts of kids ready for the jobs they’re capable of — or at least teach them to live peacefully on their stipends and leave the rest of us alone.” He fixed Mason with a stern glare. “And not vandalize the systems the State so generously provides them.” He shook his head. “Anyway, the important question is whether he’s a danger to society or not, and that MDP rating worries me. Do you have any actual witnesses to call?”

  “I … ah … in looking at the records, your honor, perhaps a teacher or two and maybe some residents of the building? There’s a mother, I think —”

  “Yes, the mothers always give honest testimony. The others are all character, I suppose, and nothing concrete,” the judge muttered. “Are they available?”

  “It’s a workday, your honor, we could call on them, but —”

  “Never mind, I’ve been watching the security recordings here and there’s no doubt about who did what.” She focused on Mason, who had to stop his eyes from jumping back and forth between the screens, still trying to understand just what was going on. “How old are you?”

  “I — seventeen, ma’am, eighteen in two months.”

  The judge frowned. “Any documentation on that?” he asked.

  Mason blinked. He’d IDed himself at the start of this. That should have shown the judge all his records — wouldn’t they confirm his age?

  “Ah … school records, is about all there is,” the public defender said.

  “Worthless,” the judge said. “Damn lowlies always lie about their kids’ ages to start getting the full stipend early instead of just the dependent-enhancements.” He took a deep breath. “All right — we’ll call it fifteen years old, that looks about right. Make that official. My finding is guilty on all counts, sentence as a juvenile, we’ll put him in … ah, Bright Horizons has room, so Bright Horizons until he’s eighteen or has a 3.0 or lower MDP for six months running. Next case.”

  Three

  The flashies grasped Mason’s arms and dragged him from the room before he could recover enough from his astonishment to object. Behind him, the court clerk’s voice bellowed over the speakers again, calling the next name and the crowd shuffled as that man made his way forward, but Mason was already through the door and into a dimly lit corridor.

  “Hey! Wait, guys, this has to be some —”

  One of the guards spun him around and slammed him face first into the wall. A hand on the back of his head pinned him there, grinding his face against the hard, gritty surface.

  “Shut up,” the man said.

  Mason grunted as another flashy jabbed him in the kidney with a stunstick, thankfully off, but the impact still sent a new blossom of pain through him.

  “And stop resisting,” the one holding his face to the wall said.

  Mason closed his eyes tightly and tried to nod, but could barely move his head. It must have satisfied the guard, though, because he yanked Mason back into the center of the corridor and resumed walking.

  Mason was beyond astonishment now, and well into fear.

  Other guys in the tower had been picked up by the flashies — some came back, others didn’t — and he’d heard some stories. One thing they’d made clear — don’t screw with the guards once you’re taken. You didn’t want to screw with the flashies in the corridors or streets, either, not even with the ones patrolling the real streets between towers, where they never went in numbers less than a half dozen, but more than the flashies, you didn’t mess with the guards. The flashies might mess you up, but the guards … well, one of the guys came back with a story that he’d seen someone mouth off once too often and the guards had taken him up — way up, past the mids, to the very top — given him one first look at the open sky, then sent him back down to the lowlies again. By the express, they called it, and made sure everyone knew it.

  Mason kept his head down, shuffling his feet to keep up with the guards, but not so quick they might think he was trying to get away.

  The corridor opened into a tube station, but one unlike Mason had ever seen before. It was certainly as dirty and ill-kept as the stations he was used to, maybe more, but instead of lines for the boarding platforms, there were cages. Six on each side of the platform with wire mesh stretching from floor to ceiling and locking doors facing the platform and the tubes. Guards stood at each door and elsewhere on the platform.

  “Bright Hors?” one of Mason’s guards called out.

  “Three-left,” a guard on the platform answered, pointing to one of the cages.

  They marched Mason up to the door. Three other guards came over from around the platform, shock-rods out and ready. Those were worse than the stunsticks carried by the flashies on the street and in the courtroom — these were designed to incapacitate with pain instead of just knocking someone out. They swung the cage door open, shoved Mason inside, then closed the door with a resounding clang.

  The guards who’d taken him from the courtroom turned and left without another word and the others returned to their places on the platform.

  Mason looked around the cage — that was really the only description he could come up with. He supposed it could be called a cell, but it felt more primal than that. There was crediting the space with too much humanity to call it a “cell” — he felt like he’d just been shoved into a cage without any regard at all.

  There were three others locked in with him. All three clearly lowlies like himself. They had the paleness that came from living inside all their lives, or, if they ever went outside, still being in the artificial lights that lit the lower levels of the city’s towers. Even the two with darker skin had that look — the kind of paleness lowlies got was more than pigment, it was skin, eyes, hair, everything was just … muted. Mids like the teachers at his school seemed astonishingly bright and healthy in comparison, and the tops, like the prosecutor and judge, well, you could tell they lived where the sun streamed through windows all day long. No, there might be some UV in the lower-level lighting, but it wasn’t the same.

  The three others in the cage were spread out, each going to a separate corner. One was a skinny black girl who’d claimed a corner on the platform door side, away from the tube itself, she had moved down the wall when the guards came to put Mason in, but she was back in the corner now. Mason moved to the fourth corner, also on the platform side, as that seemed to be the thing to do. He met the black girl’s eyes briefly, but they both looked away. The other corners were occupied by two guys — one Mason thought was his own age, but the other looked much older. That one stood a head taller than Mason and sported a beard and mustache that was fuller than Mason or anyone his age should be able to grow.

  His real age, not the bogus one that judge had assigned.

  That brought his thoughts back to his “trial” and he snorted derision.

  Some trial.

  He’d heard the stories from those who’d been picked up, those who’d come back, at least, but thought they were just making the system out to be worse than it really was. Now he’d had a firsthand experience with it.

  His legs felt weak as the reality of his situation struck him and he put his back against the wire mesh of the cage’s side, then slid down to sit on the bare concrete of the floor. He drew his knees up, rested his forehead on them, and closed his eyes.

  What just happened?

  Yesterday he’d been going to school — enjoying it, at least the science classes. Maybe not the bogus “society” classes, but definitely the science ones. He’d been talking with Mr. Mathews about the
possibility of college. That was expensive and he wasn’t quite sure there was a point. Sure, he could take out loans, but then he’d have to pay them back and the difference in earnings didn’t seem that great. Realistically, a kid from the lower-levels could get a job, but not one of the great ones. Maybe be a nurse or an orderly or some sort of engineering assistant — not a doctor or an actual engineer. The mids took all of those jobs. He’d looked at the salaries for those jobs and the degree costs to be able to get one — really he’d still spend about twenty years living off the basic living stipend and working just to pay back the education loans.

  Mr. Mathews, his teacher, seemed to think it was worth it, though.

  Mason felt his eyes burn and rubbed them hard on his knees. No chance of that now, though, not with a record.

  That made him wonder what his mother would think — which made him wonder if she even knew.

  Had they notified her? Or was she sitting at home, not knowing what had happ —

  Crack!

  Pain lanced through Mason’s side and his muscle’s jerked, flinging him to his side and onto the hard concrete of the floor.

  “On your feet, lowly! No sitting — tube’s comin’.”

  Mason blinked away the pain and looked up at the guard just outside the cage. The man slapped his shock-rod into the palm of his hand, then cocked his head to one side.

  “You need another one? On your feet!”

  Mason sprang to his feet, ignoring the pain in his side. The air still held the tang of ozone from the rod’s discharge and he felt like his whole side was on fire. He clutched himself and edged away from the cage wall, out of reach of the guard’s shock-rod.

  The guard appeared on the verge of saying something more, but just then the platform vibrated with the approach of a tube capsule. This one eased to a stop near Mason’s cage and the guard walked away without another word.

  Unlike the passenger capsules Mason was used to, this one had no windows. A door in its side slid open and three guards exited. One went to the tube-side door of Mason’s cage and opened it.

  “Move along, lowlies!” the guard yelled, gesturing toward the capsule’s door.

  Mason and the others in his cage moved hesitantly toward the door.

  “Move along!” The guard swung his shock-rod at the nearest of them and they picked up the pace, crowding through the cage’s narrow door and into the capsule. There was another cage there, filling the capsule’s rear and they were herded into it.

  This was a smaller space. In addition to lacking the windows of a regular passenger capsule, this one was also about half the length. Most of that was the caged area, with a smaller space near the only doorway for the guards.

  The capsule took off, propelled by the tube’s magnets into the near vacuum of the main tunnel. Mason couldn’t tell how fast they were going or, without windows, even where in the city they might be.

  Their arrival at Bright Horizons — Mason could tell that’s where they arrived, because as soon as the capsule’s door opened he was faced with a brightly colored, but chipped and stained, mural with those words — along with a rainbow, unicorns, and some sort of horse with wings. He thought it also said “Welcome to” once, but that was chipping too bad to be sure. Someone had run big scrapes across some of the main letters too, so it really read, “… come to Bright Hor…s.”

  Mason wasn’t impressed so far.

  He was even less impressed when they herded him and the three others into another room and ordered them to strip. The skinny black girl looked around, scared, and one of the guards smacked her with a shock-rod and she fell to the ground crying. That got Mason and the two other guys stripping as well, no matter the embarrassment. They all stared down at their feet, not wanting to do anything to attract the guards’ attention.

  The stress, the fear of one of the guards lashing out with a shock-rod, not knowing what came next and worrying how it could be worse — because so far, every step had been worse — left little room to think about the others seeing him naked. He hunched over, trying to hide himself and avoid looking at any of the others, even the girl.

  Then they were marched into another room, after the guards made a show of bagging up and inventorying all their clothes while they stood around naked.

  The guards closed the door on the new room, which was tiled from floor to ceiling — and the ceiling as well. As soon as the door clanged shut, foul, chemical-smelling water started spraying from pipes in the ceiling. It was ice cold and all four of them hunched over, covering themselves — then a guard’s voice came over a speaker.

  “Clean up, lowlies! You’re in there until you’re clean enough, so scrub down!”

  Mason and the others made some tentative scrubbing motions to spread the nasty water over their bodies until the guards were apparently satisfied.

  The water stopped spraying and the doors opened.

  Each of them was tossed a threadbare towel and a stack of clothes — orange pants and shirt that closed with Velcro fasteners that just pressed together, along with a pair of slippers and what Mason would have thought was underwear if it hadn’t been dingy, stained, and nearly see-through.

  “No dressing yet!” one of the guards yelled, seeing the girl start to slip her new clothes on. “In here.”

  The next room had a couple benches in the center, but the guards didn’t tell them to sit. Instead, they just pointed to a vidscreen mounted to the ceiling above their heads. A second later it came to life with a bored looking guy dressed in a middie suit with a big, fake smile.

  “Welcome to Bright Horizons,” he said, “a five-star rated juvenile rehabilitation facility made possible by a grant from Perigree Corporation. Here you’ll have the opportunity of a lifetime, with a safe, restful room, healthy cuisine rated A-plus by a board of certified nutritionists, and twenty-four hour care by the finest attendants.”

  The guy smiled wider, spreading his hands as though to take in the guards stationed around the room.

  “Please remember that Bright Horizons is not a prison and your attendants are not your guards. The Bright Horizons staff is here to help you become a more stable, productive member of society, and you can ensure your stay here is a positive one by remembering they always have your best interests at heart. They’re here to help you help yourself!”

  Mason looked around. All the attendants looked like they wanted to help with was slapping him with a shock-rod — in fact, one of them was slapping his shock-rod into a gloved hand over and over again right now.

  “Now that you’ve been decontaminated and we know you’re safe to be around the rest of your Bright Horizons family, we just need to make sure you’re not bringing in anything that would hurt yourself or others. You may find this next experience uncomfortable or embarrassing, but remember, it’s for your own good and your attendants are here to help.”

  Mason lost track of what happened next, withdrawing into himself to avoid thinking too much about it. More shouting, touching, prodding — being shuffled from one place to another. He lost track of the number of times he had to put a hand on a scanner to ID himself or confirm some form he wasn’t given a chance to read.

  Then the guards shuffled them all through an open space full of empty tables and chairs, past rows of doors with security glass covered by wire mesh. They opened one door and shoved the black girl inside, then opened another and one of the guards shoved Mason.

  The door was closing even before he’d passed it.

  That final door clanged shut behind Mason and he looked around at what must be his new home — at least until he could call his mom and straighten the whole mess out.

  The room was tiny and cramped, with a pair of bunkbeds on either wall and a toilet directly opposite the door he’d come in — right out in the open where the other two guys looking at him from the lower bunks would be able to see. Mason didn’t want to do that — even if he was only here for a little while, he didn’t think the first thing his new roommates wanted to see
was him on the toilet. But he thought he might have to. Whatever the guards — attendants — had used to slide the scope down his throat and up his —

  Mason broke off, not wanting to think about the inspection anymore. He just knew that he wanted to both vomit and crap, but there was only one toilet and he didn’t want people watching him do either.

  “Fuck,” one of the guys said. “I was happy with two.”

  “Take a bottom,” the other said, clambering out of a lower bunk and up to a top. “I don’t want to smell your farts all night. It’s almost lights out.”

  Mason swallowed hard. Maybe he could keep from doing either for a while.

  He tossed the pillow and blanket he carried onto the vacated bunk and crawled in himself.

  He’d barely gotten the blanket spread over him when the lights in the cell went out.

  Mason rolled over to face to the wall, swallowed again, and let himself silently cry.

  Four

  Rosa Marie Fuentes was twenty-years old today, no matter what Bright Hors’ records said.

  She knew this, because her damn implant kept popping up an alert to tell her so, and she wasn’t happy about that.

  She was also not happy to be spending her twentieth birthday in line for breakfast in the Bright Horizons Reformatory and Secondary School cafeteria.

  Her personal knowledge of her age was in contradiction to Bright Hors’ records, which recorded her as sixteen — up three from the thirteen the judge had assigned her three years ago when she was sent here. That was after his adjudication that she was guilty of: 1) being Incorrigible, 2) was probably Socially Maladjusted, 3) had committed Unauthorized Access of a Private Computer System, 4) further Unauthorized Access of a Public Computer System, 5) definitely Malicious Modification of State Records, 6) almost certainly Attempted Fraud, 7) yeah, Fraud, 8) and, oh, yes, Hate Crimes Against a Protected Class, to wit, a Public Employee.