by Phoenix Ward
Until now, the I.I. had been just white noise. Now that he was demanding a response, Karl felt the resentment growing.
“Nope,” he said. “Just you.”
“Have you been thinking about it at all?”
“Not really.”
“Why not?”
“What’d be the point?”
“Potential freedom, that’s what!” Maynard yelled. He gave an indignant sigh. “Don’t you wanna get outta here?”
“We’re not getting out of here.”
“Not with that attitude, we aren’t!”
“Look, the deck is stacked against us,” Karl said. He liked the sound of his voice in the midst of so much silence. “Whoever wanted to get us into trouble did a remarkable job. They’ve got the evidence, they’ve got fake motives, and they have alibis from anyone else. The case against us is rock solid, even if it is built on false notions. We’ll be going to prison for the rest of our lives. If we’re lucky.”
For a moment, Karl thought he heard a noise come from down the block. Maybe the other alleged criminals had heard him talking aloud to himself. Maybe it’d help keep him safe if everyone thought he was just insane.
“How can you talk like that? Have you given up? Do you forget that, despite their case against us, we’re still innocent?”
“We wouldn’t be the first people to never see the light of day again in spite of our innocence,” Karl said. “It happens all the time. Why should we be any different?”
“Because we’re smarter than that!” Maynard retorted.
“Or maybe too dumb to quit,” Karl said.
“Quit?!” Maynard echoed. “Why on Earth would we quit? We know there’s a traitor, and the list of possible candidates is so much shorter than you’d think. Why would we give up when we are so close to the truth?”
“Close?” Karl asked. “Ten inches might as well be ten miles with how they’ve got us locked up. What wiggle room do you imagine we have?”
“That’s why we have to start thinking of ways out of this!” Maynard said.
What do you wanna do, burrow through the walls? Karl thought, his voice tired from speaking. The only way out is through an honest defense.
“Well, like you said, the deck is stacked,” Maynard replied. “What do you imagine the odds are that we’ll actually be given an ‘honest’ defense?”
I know! Karl thought. That’s why I’m trying to come up with something. Some piece of evidence that the prosecution missed. Something that exonerates us that no court could refute.
“And where is this magic piece of evidence, Karl? I don’t see it anywhere in this small cell with us!”
Well, if you could just shut your face for a few moments, I might have some peace to think!
“While you’re busy doing your meditation, the window of opportunity is closing on us. You’re wasting your energy on the defense. Our only hope now is escape.”
If you don’t shut up, I’m going to turn you off, Karl threatened. I’ll put you right to sleep and you can stay there, quiet and alone, until I decide to let you sense again. Got it?
“Oh nice,” Maynard said. “Real nice. While you’re making dumb threats at me, the traitor is out there enjoying OUR freedom. Who knows what he’ll end up doing with it? Do you imagine the lab was his only target in jail—that his plan has already ended? Don’t you think more people out there are in danger? More people that he can order gunned down, because each time he does it, he gets a new patsy and walks free? How much blood do you want on your hands—”
And with that, Karl disabled the communications function in his cerebral computer.
Karl returned to his cell in shock. He knew that the case against him was bad, but he’d had no idea the extent of evidence implicating him. The door was sealed electronically once he was inside. Without putting much thought into it, he reactivated the portion of his C.C. that Maynard lived in.
In less than a minute, Karl was able to convey the entire trial to the I.I. with a sequence of thoughts. The information apparently overwhelmed Maynard, who remained silent for over twenty minutes.
“How did they get those logs?” he asked, startling the inmate.
“I don’t know,” Karl said.
“They said you were badged in over twelve times in less than ten minutes, right when the gunmen made their entrance.”
Yes, Karl thought sourly.
“How could they have done that? Had you misplaced your RFID badge?”
“No,” Karl said aloud. “I had it with me all week.”
“What about before then?”
“They didn’t take my badge.”
“Then how’d your credentials get used twelve times?”
The hack, Karl thought. When they broke into my cerebral computer to leave me that threat about I.I.s.
There was a silence in his head, but he could sense Maynard’s contemplation.
“That would explain how authentic the logs looked. I found it hard to believe they could counterfeit your identity.”
It doesn’t matter, Karl thought. There’s no evidence of the threat. They won’t even listen to me without something to support my claim, which also makes any future appeals that much harder.
“There’s gotta be something that would exonerate you,” Maynard said. His tone didn’t seem so certain, however.
If there is, it better be pretty damn good, Karl started. On top of my badge being used, I have no evidence to support my alibi. All footage of me fleeing or moving around during the attack has been erased. In fact, the mere existence of edited security footage seems to have solidified the case against me further.
“Damn!” Maynard said. If he had hands, he’d have slammed them against a nearby surface. “That’s my fault.”
How do you mean?
“When we were escaping, I was breaching the security feed,” Maynard explained. “Perhaps my handiwork left the footage ruined. I hadn’t thought about that—I hadn’t thought of much more than getting the hell out of there.”
The psychologist took a moment to absorb the information. He wanted to lash out and yell at the I.I. for his part in the sentence, but he knew it was irrational. He had been damned long before the security footage issue arose.
This wasn’t just a bunch of bad luck, Karl said. This is deliberate. Someone wanted us to take the blame, and they wanted us to do so without relying on chance. Whoever is behind this also planted emails between me and the terrorists.
“Emails?”
Yep. And they must be someone I know because they captured my tone flawlessly. Every odd misspelling, every capitalization habit, they had nailed down. They must have gone through thousands of old messages to perfect my voice. Maybe they even had an A.I. scan them.
“So what does this all mean?” Maynard asked. “What do we do?”
It was clear he was becoming overwhelmed with the hopelessness enveloping his host. The wave of dismay that washed over them both was intense.
We’re going to prison, Karl said. There’s nothing to do.
“But we’re innocent!”
You keep saying that like it means something, Karl said.
Caged
Yellow teeth grinned back at Karl. The inmate they belonged to locked his face into a mask of subtle malice, smiling as the psychologist squirmed before him.
“How ‘bout it?” he said. “Willin’ to spare some?”
Karl looked down at his tray. There was a bit of mashed potatoes on one portion, but the knucklehead had put his filthy fist into it when he’d first arrived at the table. Beside that was a cup of fruit, which the brute insisted on having.
Karl reacted with no expression at all. It was like he was an android before it had received emotional training. The thug didn’t seem to like that.
“Whatcha say?” A bit of saliva flew from his lips.
“Fine,” Karl said. “Take it.”
The aggressor cocked his head.
“That’s it?” he asked. “You’re just givi
ng it over to me? Did they take your cock, boy? Are you even a man?”
Karl was at a loss.
“I don’t know what you mean,” he said.
“Don’t you know what respect is, boy?” the inmate asked.
“Yes.”
“Then why aren’t you showin’ it?”
“What?”
“Why aren’t you shown’ it, boy?”
“To who? What do you mean?”
“To me, you shit!”
“Am I not showing respect?”
The inmate slammed his fists onto the table.
“Damned right, you’re not!”
Karl could stay a zombie no longer. His face screwed up in confusion.
“I don’t know what you want!” he said.
Then he felt a sharp pain in his thigh. He hadn’t notice it at first, but the inmate had dropped his fork down below the table and jammed the pronged ends into Karl’s leg at the appropriate moment.
Karl’s face wrenched in pain and he cried out.
The inmate grinned.
“That’s what I want,” he said. Then his smile fell a little. “But you still aren’t looking me in the eye.”
The words reached Karl, but he was in too much agony to respond. The inmate waited a moment before anger stole his expression. He twisted the fork.
Karl writhed in pain, a shriek breaking before it could escape his lips.
“Look me in the eye!” the inmate demanded.
At any moment, Karl could call out for a guard to help him. But he didn’t dare. He would be forever remembered as a snitch, and then it would only be a matter of time before someone killed him in his sleep.
Just before he was about to break and scream for help, an orange jumpsuit blurred past him.
“Stop that!” the jumpsuit shouted.
The voice, another inmate, had a firm grip on the brute’s wrist.
Karl’s aggressor shot a sharp glance at his attacker, then his eyes went wide. His arm loosened, and the fork clanged to the floor.
“What do you think you’re doing there?” the new inmate asked.
“It’s not what it looked like, S.S.,” the aggressor said. “This new meat wasn’t showing me the usual respect.”
“So you expect it’ll come from tortured lips?” the new inmate said.
“I take it how I get it,” was the reply.
Karl’s rescuer twisted the aggressor’s wrist a little, which seemed to bring immense pain.
“If you don’t leave this ‘new meat’ alone, you can consider yourself cut off,” the new inmate said. “Permanently.”
The thug’s expression instantly fell into one of complacency. With a snort, he pounded on the table, stood up, and lumbered away. He stopped to stare at Karl for a moment, which made the psychologist uncomfortable, before he peeled off with the rest of the crowd.
Karl turned to his rescuer.
“Thank you!” he said.
The stranger was rather thin, at least compared with most of the other inmates, but he was tall. He had a sort of spider-like appearance, but that was likely only due to his lankiness. He brushed at his curly red hair before waving a hand of dismissal at Karl.
“Think nothing of it,” the redhead said. Then he stuck out his hand. “The name’s Sam Sam.”
Karl took the hand and shook it. “Karl,” he said.
“Need a walk back to your cell?” Sam Sam asked.
Karl looked down at his tray. The mashed potatoes were ruined anyway. He snatched it up and nodded at the new inmate. Sam Sam nodded back, then started to lead the way through the thickening crowd of other prisoners finishing their dinners.
None of the guards at their usual station beside the security gates paid Karl or Sam Sam any mind, and they were able to wander through the checkpoint as if they were staff.
Sam Sam took notice of Karl’s observation.
“You’re probably wondering why they’re letting us through like this,” he said.
Karl replied with silence.
“It’s okay to be curious,” Sam Sam said. “I am what you might call a ‘data runner.’ ”
Still, Karl said nothing.
“You might notice the biggest thing missing when comparing prison life to the outside world,” Sam Sam started. He waited a moment for Karl to reply, but continued when nothing happened. “It’s data.”
Karl looked over at his rescuer. It was impossible to discern his level of interest.
“Everyone out there—they’re always connected, you see? In here, we got none of that. We’re living on just the barebones of society. But some folks can’t cope with that, you know? They gotta get their connection. So that’s where I come in.
“For a nominal fee, I get data from the outside and deliver it to people on the inside. Someone wants to watch a new movie, or even play a new game, they can buy that right from me.”
“So you’re a smuggler,” Karl said.
Sam Sam chuckled. “If that’s how you wanna look at it, but I see myself as a businessman. I just know my market and what they want. Is there anything wrong with that?”
Karl shrugged.
“Guess how many people need porn in this prison, Karl,” Sam Sam said. “Or how many people want to know about the health of a loved one. Or even what the state of modern politics is? As you can imagine, these commodities have made me a very wealthy man.”
“Why are you telling me all this?” Karl asked.
Sam Sam stopped walking and turned to the psychologist. Karl halted when he realized he wasn’t being led anymore.
“Because I can sense men of talent,” Sam Sam replied. “Since I did a solid for you, I need a solid from you.”
“What do you want?” Karl asked.
“I know about your experimentation,” Sam Sam said. “I also know about Maynard. I need your help if I’m ever going to get out of here. Are you in?”
Escape
“Why not?” Maynard asked.
Karl was baffled.
Why not? he echoed. How about additional sentencing, for one?
“You’re being ridiculous.”
I’m being what?!
Karl looked around to make sure none of his neighbors heard his argument, then remembered that it was all in head.
“Really,” Maynard said. “Do you think that you’re going to get out in the next century? You’ve been found guilty of a mass shooting, Karl. Your sentencing couldn’t get much worse.”
Well I don’t think this is the way to go about it, Karl thought.
“Why not?”
I don’t trust Sam Sam’s plan, for one. Karl looked around to make sure no one was making any patrols past his cell before turning back inward. Do you?
“Does it matter?” Maynard said. “You’ve seen what we’re capable of on our own. Maybe not bending the bars of justice, but we were able to escape the lab unscathed. Why do you think that is?”
Luck.
“Nonsense. It was teamwork—it was the mindshare. Together, we are a force to be reckoned with. I can tackle our digital hurdles, and you can surmount the physical ones. Regardless of what Sam Sam has planned, we can use it to help our escape.”
It’s dangerous.
“What do we have to lose?”
Our lives.
“And what are those worth?”
I don’t know.
“Why not? What’s your hesitation?”
I don’t know! I just don’t want to take the risk! Call me a coward, I don’t care. I find the best solutions are reached through the natural currents of the world.
“You’ve given up.”
You’re damn right I’ve given up! Karl thought angrily. We’ve reached the end here, Maynard! For most folk, the end means death, but we don’t even get that luxury. You get to continue on in a digital purgatory as you always have, and I get to rot out the rest of my life for a crime I didn’t commit. That’s it, Maynard. End game. Roll credits.
“That’s the way a fool would look at
it,” the I.I. said. “And it’s terribly unfair. You’re not the only one in the boat, so to speak. You do know that, right?”
I don’t care. So it’s unfair—what of it?
“I’m not going to bully you into this, Karl,” Maynard said. “That’s not who I am. No, you’ve got to find the inspiration from within. And I know you can do it. I have no doubt. You will reach the same conclusion I have, because you are smarter than you give yourself credit for. You think it’s all over now, but it’s only a change. Change begets no end—no beginning. It’s the only constant. I’ve seen into your mind, Karl. You can roll with the punches. You just… you just gotta do it for me this time. I’m not strong enough for the two of us.”
Karl took in a deep breath, calming his thoughts before he replied.
And he stared at the ceiling all night.
“Psst!” a voice came from Karl’s cell door.
He jolted a little, then looked down at the plexiglass divider that separated his cell from the rest of the block.
The data runner stood before it, unaccompanied. There was a playful grin on his face.
“Karl!”
“Sam Sam?” the psychologist said.
“That’s right.”
“What are you doing here? How’d you get out of your cell?”
“My cage has no lock,” Sam Sam explained. “I come and go as I please. Even the guards know what kind of hole would be left in this prison if I was restricted.”
“Why are you here?” Karl repeated.
Sam Sam smiled. “I’m here to take you to work duty,” he said. “Come along. We’re going to the laundry room today.”
Karl was surprised when Sam Sam opened the psychologist’s cell door as if he were the warden himself, then beckoned Karl to follow.
“Is this about what we discussed yesterday?” Karl asked as Sam Sam led the way.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. We’re just going to do some laundry,” Sam Sam said, pointing up at one of the camera hubs that lined the prison’s ceiling.
Karl caught the gesture’s meaning and nodded. “How far is the laundry room?” he asked.
“It’s just down the stairs and around the corner,” Sam Sam said. “Come on.”