Bio-Justice

by Scott Takemoto

  As the faces of Felice and Nina fell away, Danny looked up and saw the ceiling panels accelerate past him into a blurry slash of white. His eyes were drifting back now, a hazy smile curling the ends of his mouth.

  CHAPTER 28

  Simon Carmichael, Senior Managing Editor at the Washington Daily Journal was handed the opened manila envelope marked urgent, by his assistant Andy. Inside, there was a flash drive and Carmichael held it in his hand before shouting back to his assistant.

  “Did you check this out first?” Carmichael asked. “Don’t hand me any virus or I might have to kill you—after I fire you.”

  “It’s clean.”

  Carmichael looked at the return address on the envelope as he inserted the flash drive into his computer. “Hey, isn’t this Felice Bennett, the same one who sent us that video?”

  “Same one,” Andy said. “Want some coffee?”

  “No,” Carmichael said.

  Carmichael’s monitor suddenly filled with lists of Congressmen and Senators, their PACs, contributions indirect and direct from American Correctional, vote counts and compensatory dollar amounts.

  “Jesus—” Carmichael muttered to himself. “Andy, get me this Felice Bennett on the phone. I want to set up a meeting right away.”

  “She’s out front.”

  Carmichael squinted his eyes. “What?”

  “Dr. Felice Bennett. She’s sitting in our lobby right now.”

  Dr. Ellison examined the last twenty-six cases of product, the remaining batch of the junk the users had started to call “Wayback”. The cartons stood against the wall of the office above the factory floor. Ellison reflected on the garbage he had created and laughed at the thought of the money this last batch would bring in, double or even triple what he had been able to get for the stuff even two weeks earlier. Pete had probably spread the word that the remaining stock was the last that would ever be produced and would therefore, by necessity—to meet the ferocious supply and demand—be hiked in price.

  Ellison had enjoyed dabbling in his own Bill Gates moment, creating an industry out of nothing, with money pouring in until it had no meaning. He already had six million dollars put away in Swiss Bank accounts and two million stashed in the Seychelles. He would never have to think about money again although that was never the goal, never the lure.

  Empire builder. Now Ellison understood how the Colombian drug cartels thrived, how sex traffickers, and organ harvesters got up every morning with excitement rather than self-loathing. But now his time was over. He had dabbled and won. Jonas Pasteur, indeed.

  Ellison was ready, even excited to get back to Conlan’s laboratory to work on the real youth serum. The facility had called and Sarkis had raved, his voice barely able to contain itself. High concentrations of ADP-5 platelet mutations had been discovered in a processee. That would change everything. Ellison would be a part of that triumph, part of the team that men of science and academicians would herald through the centuries. He had tasted the thrill of dark industry and would now ascend into the glorious stratosphere on the wings of Serum 59, Type A. And then, with Conlan and his other esteemed colleagues sitting a breath away, they would share thoughts and test results while his heart would secretly resound at the guiltless thrill of his riches and accomplishment.

  As Ellison closed his ledger for the last time, he looked up and saw Pete, who was halfway in, halfway out of the doorway, as if a giant hand were manipulating him through a hole in his back, like some bizarrely creepy puppet show. Pete had a dazed look on his face, tentative and terrified. “Doc?” he said.

  “Pete, what’s wrong?” Ellison asked.

  Ellison heard three chunking sounds like apples being cored and Pete’s face went white except for the crimson stream that bubbled from the corner of his mouth.

  After Pete fell to the ground with a knife, a fork and a screwdriver in his back, the room started to fill up with destitute men. These men were beyond help. It was a matter of days for most of them. Many of the eyes that stared back at Ellison were already devoid of any focused light. One of the men put his hand on the stack of cartons that held the remaining vials of Wayback and pushed it over. Ellison could hear the glass vials shattering inside spilling the junk drug and causing the cardboard containers to turn black from the absorption.

  As more men crowded into the small space, Ellison was nearly overcome by the smell. It was the smell of decay and death, and now Ellison made his last stand on behalf of his legacy. He pulled out his weapon and fired until the magazine was empty. Smoke and blood filled the room but still they kept coming. One hulking figure came forward and wrestled Ellison to the ground. Another skidded a carton of the drug across the floor. The box was ripped open and several of the men loaded the Wayback into dirty syringes and plunged them into Ellison. His veins and arteries sped the drug straight to Ellison’s heart causing it to expand and then explode. By the time they had stopped, Dr. Ellison had eight spent syringes wagging in the air from his inflamed carcass.

  Steven Harrier sat at the head of the table in the main Conference Room. The domed model of American Correctional’s privatized prison of the future was pedestaled a few feet away. Harrier’s chief legal counsel, Lindsay Moore, was seated a chair over from him and she was taking tough questions from the prime shareholders.

  “I want to know what the threat of this Premium Sentencing—this Bio-Justice scandal—is going to have on American Correctional?” an immaculately dressed man in his thirties asked, his open laptop on the table in front of him.

  “There is no threat,” Lindsay Moore said calmly.

  “No threat?”

  “None,” Moore repeated. “First of all, Premium Sentencing, Incorporated and American Correctional are separate legal entities, instituted that way by design. Even if Premium Sentencing should—and I don’t think it will—go down, it will not affect American Correctional’s timetable for growth. Congress has already voted on the omnibus bill that contracted this company to be exclusive agent to provide incarceration services for the federal government and most states.”

  A hand was raised, belonging to a female executive who looked unconvinced and ready to take off a few heads if need be. “With Premium Sentencing taking it on the chin, won’t that reality, by the very nature of how the privatization network was supposed to operate, cause an impact on profit for American Correctional because of the hardened criminals who may be forced to stay behind bars?”

  Harrier held up his open hand to his counsel. “I’ll take this, Lindsay. Folks—privatization is moving forward. Nothing is going to stop it. This talk of whether one entity pulls down the other is nonsense. American Correctional has a solid plan based on its inclusion of the public need in its business model. Premium Sentencing may have scared people, making them ask uncomfortable questions to which they came out with “science fiction answers” but the fact is that the privatization of the American prison system comes across to most Americans as economically practical and judiciously fair. We’ve got the public on our side and we have taken the steps to legally separate ourselves from any downside to this ‘Bio-Justice’ affair. To talk about that perception issue, I have invited to this meeting, our Marketing Strategist, Senior Vice President and Creative Director of Harris, Boyce and Selden, Mr. Ray Van Houten.”

  After thanking Harrier, Van Houten cleared his throat and went into his pitch. “Gentlemen—and ladies, just as our campaign to brand Premium Sentencing was met with total acceptance with the viewing audience, so will our new campaign to inform the American public about the brilliance and necessity of prison privatization under American Correctional’s capable and watchful hand…”

  CHAPTER 29

  Danny Fierro, twenty-five again, turned over in the soft, silken sheets and his radiant Sonya de Leon was there. His thick black hair fell across his handsome young face. There was a soft luminance, shaded almost an aqua blue, casting a strange, lovely light over them as if they were underwater. Danny looked at Sonya’s beautiful bod
y—her wide sloping shoulders, the bountiful baby-soft breasts, the long swan’s neck. Her mouth opened and he leaned forward to take it with his. His arms were firm and his muscles flexed from his biceps to his forearms. Sonya’s face was touching his, and her breaths were matching his own as if they were breathing together in a wonderful, surprising harmony. His hand glided over her silken, warm skin. His hard, chiseled upper torso draped over Sonya, feeling the soft heat rising from her. His fingers were now lost in her explosion of hair and he buried his face in it, inhaling the deep, heavy scent of her that left a trace in every strand. Sonya’s face came up to his and her eyes were lit with such love—they shined and twinkled like some beguiling constellation that left him spellbound on a starry summer night. And when she smiled, she entered his soul—his spirit delivered to ecstasy. Danny kissed her on each eyelid, and pressed his lips to hers so that they barely touched as if by holding back, the hunger became even stronger until it was satisfied. He wrapped his arms around Sonya and she around him and they rolled on the sheets in the tightest embrace. When he drew his face from hers, he touched noses with her and she smiled again. And then a movement came from a short distance away—their baby on thickly sturdy legs, crawling towards them. The baby giggled as he spotted both of them. Danny laughed and Sonya did too as the baby pitched and wobbled between them. They all fell backwards onto the pillows that nearly swallowed them, laughing and feeling the warmth of their bodies, the tingle and smells that meant devotion and love. It was all that Danny had wanted and now it was his. The room was shadowy and indistinct around the bed but their skin gleamed over one another and they were all bathed in the glorious blue light.

  There were three layers of security before you could enter Room 14 in Research Ward 3. Each layer had two fully armed guards and the room itself had two laser entry points accessible only by retinal recognition. The room was kept cool—fifty-eight degrees—with no white light sources, only a soft blue light that kept properties in the subject unreactive.

  The subject, Danny Fierro, had slipped into an irrevocable coma after the severe blood loss. Attempts to bring him back to consciousness had proved unsuccessful. His still functioning body had been suspended by fortified plastic wire in chemically treated water to keep him from developing bed sores and infection, with a tube forcing oxygen into his lungs. Other tubes hooked to his arms carried the flow of precious ADP-5 rich blood from his veins into a processing machine.

  The official word was that Danny Fierro had died. That his body had gone into shock after the extreme blood loss and that he had expired. An empty casket received a burial at a state managed cemetery in Staten Island on an overcast day in late March. A handful of people including Felice Bennett and George from The Diamond Bar attended the burial. Felice had looked for Sonya in case she showed up, but she never did.

  A YEAR LATER

  Felice Bennett descended the steps of the Capitol in Washington, D.C. after giving her final testimony to the Senate committee investigating Premium Sentencing. She had managed to avoid most of the reporters by taking an alternate way out but was followed doggedly after being spotted by a reporter from a cable news station.

  The reporter politely but assertively pushed her microphone close to Felice while walking in step with her. “Dr. Bennett, do you personally feel responsible for Congress having voted to dismantle the Bio-Justice program? After all, it was your inside information that connected many politicians with bribes taken for their votes on Bio-Justice. Many are calling you the hero that put a stop to Bio-Justice…”

  “I can’t speak right now,” Felice said pushing forward.

  “Please Dr. Bennett, many people are grateful that you took such a courageous stand.”

  Felice stopped and the guilt that comes from taking credit for someone else’s sacrifice overtook her. “I wish I could say I was responsible for the outcome but it was a concerted effort by many who had more courage and who sacrificed far more than I ever could.”

  “What about Dr. Conlan who claims your testimony has been morally dishonest, full of exaggeration and conjecture?”

  Felice shook her head. “I have nothing further to say.”

  “Do you still think Dr. Conlan is a great man? You once said it was a privilege to work under such a brilliant, forward-thinking visionary…”

  “I was wrong,” Felice said. She looked pained for having said it but knew the reporter would have clung to her until she got her answer.

  By now, Felice had reached the curb and her awaiting car. Stepping in, she shut the door and the car slowly pulled away into the busy D.C. traffic.

  The blonde girl raced across the schoolyard, her friends struggling to keep up with her. The seven year olds gathered beneath a tree and shared their morning snacks and laughed at the boys on the opposite side of the yard. The laughter was giddy and marvelous and a few minutes later, after they finished exchanging stories and scampered about playing tag, the girls would be ready to go back inside for arithmetic and social studies.

  After a time, Mrs. Gold, a fifth grade teacher and the yard monitor that day, called out and the students from all of the different grades lined up to return to their classes. Recess always felt so short but maybe it seemed so amidst the long periods of instruction, and therefore made it all the more precious. After the children had formed neat rows, Mrs. Gold had each of the lines of children march back into the school buildings in orderly fashion. The kindergarten children went first.

  The blonde girl, Nina, looked at her friends in line and despaired that she stood at least six inches taller. Her head stuck out conspicuously and Nina found herself slumping her shoulders and stooping her neck to make her more aligned with the others. When they returned Nina to her proper age, the scientists could not bring her back exactly to her previous height but her parents were assured that over the years things would level out. Sometimes the girls were mean and called her Big Bird but most of the time they made no mention of her height and Nina was happy.

  A school bus across the street from the elementary school pulled away from the curb, revealing a billboard which now could be plainly seen: A handsome, strong-faced man with jet black hair and youthfully etched lines of experience which framed a confident smile, looked out like a benign father from storybooks. The faint images of soldiers saluting and the American flag unfurling against the blue sky allowed the man’s figure to pop forward pleasingly. General Winfield smiled generously from the billboard, underneath a taut slogan: Leadership Tested and Proven – Ronald Winfield for President.

  Mrs. Gold was now signaling for the second grade children to march in. Nina took her place behind her best friend Amy and giggled as she marched in step back into the school building to face a half hour of arithmetic.

  About the Author

  Bio-Justice is Scott Takemoto’s debut novel. He lives in Los Angeles. Three books that changed his life are Sister Carrie, A Tree Grows In Brooklyn and Revolutionary Road.