by J L Bryan
“Good point.” He only had to help them capture somebody who was obviously dangerous. The alternative was horrifying. “I’ll do it.”
“You don’t want to think it over?”
“What’s to think about?”
The Captain smiled, but his pale blue eyes were flat and lifeless. “You are correct. It is an easy choice, isn’t it? I only hope you do not let the comforts of your life outside delude you into thinking you’ve escaped us. You must carry out this task or we will take you back.”
“I understand, sir.”
The Captain studied him for a long moment. He touched the AGE PROGRESSION button on the screen, and the face of Hollis Westerly appeared again, his hair longer and heavily streaked with gray, his bald spot expanded, his jowls deeper.
“Take a careful look, Mr. Ruppert. When you find this man, you will contact us. If you touch the weather icon on your wallet screen, then touch the Ski Forecast icon, that will send the necessary signal to us. That’s all you need to do. Understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Your cooperation is appreciated.” The Captain stood and gathered up his things, including Ruppert’s wallet, then moved for the door. “You will see that we are just as proficient at rewarding our friends as we are at punishing our enemies.”
He left the room, and a minute later the guards unstrapped Ruppert from the chair. This time, they did not take him back to the refrigerated cell, but up two flights of stairs, down a corridor lined with full-size doors, and into a concrete, windowless room with a padded bunk, a sink, a clear toilet. A few minutes after they locked him in, a hatch in the door opened and a plastic platter covered with foil was deposited on his floor.
Ruppert pulled away the foil. Underneath was a steaming hot meal of roasted chicken, baked potatoes, broccoli and carrots. There was even a chilled can of soda. After days of starvation, it looked like a feast. The hunger had taken second place to his physical suffering, but now it rose to consume him.
Ruppert began to eat his reward.
TWELVE
Ruppert fell asleep on the padded cot, which felt like a down-stuffed mattress after countless nights on the cold concrete floor. He awoke in the back seat of a moving car. A yellow taxi cab. A clear panel divided him from the driver, who looked back at him in the rearview mirror.
“Got you moving, huh?” the cabbie said. “You’re almost home. Just take it easy.”
Ruppert became aware of a sour odor flooding his nostrils and the back of his throat. More sour-smelling air poured from the vents overhead. The sky was a dark blue outside, either just before sunrise or just after sunset.
“Where are you taking me?” Ruppert said.
“Like I said, you’re almost home. I got you up just in time. Here we are, pal.” The gates to Ruppert’s walled neighborhood opened in the cab’s headlights, and they drove inside. Ruppert began to understand that it was not a regular taxi, but a discreet way for Terror to move people around.
They stopped in front of Ruppert’s house.
“Remember the agreement you made,” the cabbie said. “I’m supposed to remind you of that. I don’t know anything about it myself, but I’d advise you to stick to whatever agreement you made. The organization does not care for unreliable people.”
“I will,” Ruppert said. He reached into his pocket, found the hard square of his wallet. “Do I pay you, or…?”
The cabbie laughed. “On the house, Jack. Now get out. Nice place you got here.”
The car door beside Ruppert swung open, and Ruppert tried not to look to eager as he climbed out and stepped onto his driveway. He swayed on his unsteady feet; Terror must have tranquilized him for the ride home. He had no idea where he’d been imprisoned or how far away it was.
The cab’s door closed and the taxi drove towards the exit gate. The sky had already brightened a little; it must be morning instead of night. Ruppert stumbled for the front door, groggily aware that something was strung around his neck, swinging with every move. When the motion lights over his door clicked on, he saw it was a lei of fake flowers. They’d dressed him in an absurd outfit, a bright tropical shirt and Bermuda shorts, as if he had just returned from an island vacation.
The front door opened and he continued into his house. Everything looked just as he’d left it; his house had not been searched and gutted like Sully’s. It was hard to believe he’d been gone at all.
“Mr. Ruppert, you have one urgent message waiting,” the house said in its pleasant female voice.
Ruppert shuffled to the video wall in his living room. “Show messages,” he said.
More than a dozen images appeared, but one of them blinked red. It showed George Baldwin, the Terror agent assigned to his GlobeNet office.
“Play the urgent one,” Ruppert said.
The image of Baldwin swelled to take up the whole wall, then it animated. Baldwin was all smiles.
“Daniel,” he said, “George Baldwin from work. Just a quick note to say we hope you enjoyed your vacation, and we’re all looking forward to seeing you back at work on Monday. Rest up this weekend, and be sure and put some ointment on those jellyfish burns. Have a good day, and say hi to your wife for me!” Baldwin’s grinning face froze, then vanished.
In his drugged, disoriented state, Ruppert had forgotten to worry about Madeline, but now an overwhelming fear washed over him. They could have done anything-kept her in custody as a means of controlling him, or brutalized her as a warning.
“Madeline!” he yelled. He went up the stairs, but his balance was poor and he climbed most of the way on his hands and knees. He lurched down the hall, leaning on the wall the whole way, and into the bedroom.
“Madeline?” He entered the master bedroom, and thought immediately of Sully’s bedroom-the shredded mattress, the imprint of blood and hair on one poster.
His bedroom looked fine. Madeline lay in her usual place, the covers bunched up around her. He sat beside her, peeled back the blankets to look at her. She had no visible injuries to her face. He checked each of her hands, and neither of them bore the black tangle of scars that his did. As far as he could tell, she was unharmed.
He touched her dark red hair, then leaned down and kissed her cheek. “I love you, Madeline,” he whispered. Even if it wasn’t strictly true, she was his to protect and care for in a world that grew increasingly hostile, and he didn’t want to see her harmed. They’d both survived this. They could heal from it together.
“Hmm?” She opened her eyes, and her lips snarled. She slapped at his face repeatedly with both hands. “Get back! Get away from me!”
Stunned, Ruppert barely managed to block her flailing hands as he retreated to the far corner of the bed.
“Look, Madeline, I’m sorry. Whatever they did to you, it’s over now.”
“They told me about it, Daniel.”
“What?”
“Don’t act innocent. They told me about her.”
“Who?”
“You know who, Daniel.” Her green eyes burned at him. “Your…girlfriend. How could you do that to me?”
“I don’t know what you mean.” Ruppert hadn’t slept with anyone but Madeline since their wedding. “Madeline, there’s nobody else.”
“They had video!” she screamed. “I saw you doing…nasty things with that ugly brown girl. Unnatural things. Putting it in unnatural places, Daniel.” She looked at the crotch of his Bermuda shorts, and then her lips began to tremble and she turned her head away from him, leaving a wall of red hair between them. “Places God didn’t mean for it to go.”
“It’s not true, Madeline. They can fake video. Easiest thing in the world. You can’t believe something just because you see it on a screen.”
“So what does that mean? You’re on the screen every night. I guess the news is all made up, too.”
“Most of it.”
She let out a screech and hurled a pillow at his face. He didn’t bother knocking it away. At least she had the presence of mind to pick a decorative pill
ow laden with buttons and beads, a couple of which gouged at his cheek when the pillow hit him.
“Madeline, I’m telling the truth. I never cheated on you.”
“They told me. I know it’s true.”
“Why do you trust them?”
“You have to trust them, Daniel.”
“Even when they kidnap you out of your bed? Did they interrogate you? What did they do?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Madeline-”
“I don’t want to talk to you, either.” She sat back against the headboard and drew the blankets around her. “I need to ask my counselor at church about this. I think it would be best if you slept in the guest room for now.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to talk about it?”
She just stared at him, her mouth a hard flat line. Ruppert stood and walked to the bedroom down to the hall, where he lay on top of the coverlet and throw pillows, but didn’t feel like sleeping. After a few minutes, it occurred to him that Madeline had been dressed in a bright, flowered blouse and a long grass skirt.
He awoke on his side, his right arm numb, daylight boring into his eyes from the guest room window. For a moment he thought it was a dream, that he would wake up again in the frigid Terror cell, and then he remembered how and why they’d brought him home.
He sat up, turned away from the window, and asked, “Time?”
“Six minutes until eleven A.M.,” the house’s voice said in its always-cheerful tone.
“Uh…what day?”
“Saturday, June 23, 2036.”
“Thanks.” He stood and stretched. His right arm was a rubbery dead weight. “Is Madeline here?”
“She is not. Her schedule indicates that she is attending her FaithCrafts group at church. Would you like to contact her?”
“No, that’s okay. Can you make coffee?”
“I would be happy to, Mr. Ruppert, but the coffee maker has not been prepared.”
“Forget it.”
Ruppert took a hot shower, scrubbing days and nights of his own filth off his body. He even used some of Madeline’s scented soaps and an exfoliant full of grape seeds to try and scrape his skin clean.
Afterward, he drifted from room to room in the house, not sure what to do. He figured out he’d only been gone for nine days, though it felt more like a year. The familiar walls and furniture of his home looked alien to him. He’d thought of his house as a safe place, barricaded by walls and digital security systems, but now he saw that any feeling of security was an illusion. The most dangerous people could get to him at any time. They might as well live out in the open, as Sully had.
Normally he would go out for a game of golf, but he wasn’t scheduled for anything this afternoon. He did not particularly want to leave the house, either. The world seemed full of danger. He wondered how Madeline had managed the drive over to church, if that was where she’d gone.
He took his wallet from the ridiculous Bermuda shorts. Everything had been replaced; he thought there might even be more cash than before. He slid out the plastic card Sully had given him, looked over the meaningless numbers and letters. Sully had said the person on the other end was a very close friend, somebody he cared about a great deal. If Ruppert contacted him, it would draw the attention of Terror. Of course, both he and the person on the other end clearly had Terror’s attention, anyway.
He remembered what Sully had promised him: “what you always wanted.” He still couldn’t guess what Sully might have meant by that.
He spent most of the afternoon laid out on the couch in the living room, conjuring up music and movies on the screen. He avoided the news altogether-it only offered confusion and lies.
Madeline arrived home in the evening, her makeup smudged and blotted. There was a dullness in her normally bright eyes that he hadn’t seen before. She sat in a recliner across the room.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
“I’m…” Madeline’s voice was soft. She cleared her throat, then began to speak in careful, businesslike tones, as if dictating to a stenographer. “I met with my life counselor and told her about our problems.”
“You told her everything?”
“Of course not. Everyone seems to think we were on vacation somewhere, so I’m going along with that. I meant about the…the other woman.”
Ruppert wanted to protest again that there had not been another woman, but the hard, determined look on Madeline’s face warned him not to try.
“She pointed out that divorce is still a sin, and that a woman’s duty is to hold a marriage together. I don’t know if I’ll ever trust you again, Daniel, but we have to keep going.”
Daniel felt relief, but also a tinge of disappointment. Some little part of him had apparently been hoping she would leave him, but she would never do anything so strongly discouraged by the church.
“So what do you want to do?” he asked.
“She told me that the best way to heal a damaged marriage is to go back to the purpose of marriage, and that’s to create life.”
“You want to have a baby?”
“I want four.”
“What?”
“It’s not natural for people to put off children as long as we have, Daniel. I’m almost thirty. It’s our duty to have children, and anyway I’m tired of getting sneered at by the young mothers in my groups. I want to have so many children that nobody can question us. If we time it right, we can have at least four. She told me that I’d be so busy as a mother that I wouldn’t have time to be so self-centered and worried about my own feelings. So that’s what we’ll do, Daniel. I’m going to the doctor on Monday to get a schedule, and I expect you to make me pregnant.”
“Do I get any say in this?”
“You had your say when we got married.”
Ruppert didn’t feel at all excited about the idea, with Terror watching them so closely now. Children would make them even more vulnerable. Children would force them to be obedient citizens. He supposed that was the idea.
“Madeline, I really don’t think a child is going to solve our problems.”
“I’m not interested in your opinion. It is your duty to God to sire children, and mine to bear them.”
They sat in silence for a minute, and then Ruppert asked in a quiet voice, “What did they do to you?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I’ll tell you what they did to me. They threatened to drown me. They electrocuted me. They nearly beat me to death. They kept me in a freezing cell-”
“I don’t want to know!” she screamed. She bolted from the chair to her feet. “Maybe they were punishing you for your sins. Did you ever think of that? Did you ever think maybe you deserved it?”
“No, I never thought that.”
“They said you were a sexual deviant. They had proof. They made me swear again and again I would make sure you lived a clean and moral life. That’s what I’m going to do. From now on, we’re going to be a normal family.” She stalked out of the room. Her high heels clicked on the hardwood floor of the foyer as she crossed to the stairs.
Ruppert stared at the blank video wall, which he’d turned off, leaving it like a slab of polished obsidian in the middle of the room. He could see his own dark reflection looking back at him.
It wasn’t just the constant surveillance and the secret laws and the powerful agencies, he thought. It wasn’t just the state church, or the crushing weight of propaganda generated through every available medium, though all these were important tools. Ultimately their power was to colonize individual relationships, to use ideology to isolate those who questioned the state of the world from their own families and friends. If you wanted any kind of intimacy or any kind of success in life, you had to play along. If you pretended to believe a thing long enough, eventually it just became easier to go ahead and believe the thing was true, especially when every mechanism of social and economic reward depended on you adhering to the prescribed beliefs.
“You guys really know what you’re doing, don’t you?” he said to his dark reflection. The reflection stared back at him, unblinking, and said nothing.
THIRTEEN
At the GlobeNet studio on Monday, a makeup girl painted over the bruises on Ruppert’s face and the injuries to his hands, then sprayed on a fake tan. One of the producers hung a plastic lei around Ruppert’s neck and told him they were going to “ad-lib” some chatter about Ruppert’s recent vacation. Ad-libbing meant they would read some scripted informal chatter, the type that reassured the audience that GlobeNet reporters were just regular folks like them.
When he’d settled in between Amanda Greene and the new, younger, hipper sports reporter, he waited for the theme music to pass and then read: “Good evening and welcome to GlobeNet-L.A.’s nightly news. I’m Daniel Ruppert, returning from a fantastic week on St. Lucia.” This confused him-wasn’t the lei associated with Hawaii rather than the Caribbean? Would the audience bother to notice?
“Looks like somebody wishes they were still on vacation.” Amanda delivered the line as if it were perfectly spontaneous. Following the stage direction floating before him in giant holographic letters, Ruppert pretended to notice he was wearing the lei.
“Oops!” Ruppert said, holding up the plastic flowers with a finger. “I guess I had such a good time I forgot I was coming back to work!”
“I think we all feel that way on Mondays, Daniel,” Amanda said.
“That’s right, Amanda.” Ruppert forced his charming newsguy smile. “Well, big news from the mayor’s office: This year’s Fourth of July parade is going to be bigger than ever, including tanks driven by the brave men and women at Fort Irwin and a spectacular air display courtesy of the fine boys at Los Angeles Air Force Base. Ten thousand flags will hang along Sunset Boulevard to celebrate.” Video of workers hanging flags and bunting played as he spoke. “Police are promising to sweep up the homeless and the drug addicts to make the parade safe for good citizens…”
After the taping, a notice appeared on the green desk in front of Ruppert summoning him to George Baldwin’s office. He trudged down the wide corridor, keeping his hands in his pockets to hide their shaking. The Terror agent’s office was at the end of the hall, walled with black glass where most offices had clear windows. His body seemed to grow heavier with each step. Could they be displeased with him already?