The Adjudicator stifles a smile and scurries out the parlor, through the foyer, and down the hall; past an ajar doorway from which bellows the thumping jive of the Count Basie Orchestra, resurrected after eighty years by the needle of a gramophone. The Adjudicator hustles up the limestone stairs, turns the corner, and pauses before an imposing, closed, blank, white door. He raises a fist, and exhales.
He knocks twice. And twice more, louder.
He presses his ear against the wood.
His hand finds the brass knob and cups it, squeezing; turning; creaking the door open, and he peers inside.
At the center of the room is a bed containing a large and dormant man. Hanging on the wall behind him is a framed poster, drawn in the artistic stylings of the Works Progress Administration, depicting a mighty patriot of yesteryear: “CAPTAIN CENTENNIAL,” in block letters, screams across the bottom in golden yellow. The barrel-chested hero stands proud; his cape flows behind him, alternating thirteen red and white stripes across. His chin points north. One hand rests on his hip; the other is raised, glowing gold in the same respect as a jagged ball of metal—the remnants of a crushed Panzer tank—that hovers in the background.
The elderly man asleep in his bed is an unrecognizable caricature of the man in the poster. His skin pools against his bones, wrinkled, like unstimulated rubber. Beige liver spots freckle his face. Every inhale and exhale he draws is a labored wheeze. He turns over.
The Adjudicator lowers his gaze and closes the door.
He descends the stairs, pensive—looking without seeing—but stops when he hears the somber crooning of Billie Holiday, singing of a romance lost through the vinyl; the haunting of happy memories.
He stops to listen, and he follows the voice around the corner, to the ajar doorway.
Therein stands a chairless credenza, supporting the musical culprit: a forty-year-old plastic record player from General Electric, spinning a vinyl LP.
Sunlight strains through the stained glass window, casting geometric colors across the stone floor. Ensconced in a red sea is an ovate oasis of blue—a single spot of difference.
The Adjudicator lingers, staring at the static speck; transfixed, as if it were a metaphysical compulsion.
“Beautiful stonework, huh?” grumbles a voice nearby.
The Adjudicator looks up, noticing the withdrawn, wheelchair-bound Blue Streak in the corner—and he, too, is staring at the color-cast floor.
“The limestone was quarried at Sing Sing,” he says. “Ironic, isn't it?”
“What's that?”
“Extract the stone for one prison, and use the space to build another.”
Adjudicator takes a step forward and leans against the doorjamb.
“Structured meals. Sparse activities. Nobody to talk to,” Blue Streak sighs, petulant. “I can't leave the grounds; I can't leave this floor; hell, I can't even see out my goddamn window…”
Adjudicator crosses his arms.
The old man looks up, catching the eyeline of the chiseled hero.
Half-lidded, the Adjudicator stares back. He nods and turns his gaze to the floor, where his foot canters back and forth against the stone.
Blue Streak watches this meager, anxious, time-killing two-step. He fills his lungs and releases.
The Adjudicator sucks his teeth. “So, uh,” he mews, “what were you saying about Robert Kennedy?”
( I | VIII )
The youth sits, reclined against the iron bars; buried within his hoodie and pensive, as if asleep with his eyes open. His hands are plunged in his pockets, and his swooping hood conceals his face. He sniffles.
He peers out, under the cloth rim, staring across the cement cell, at the planar spine of his dirty neighbor.
Fogman lies fetal upon his own bench—arms crossed, knees tucked, and facing the wall.
The youth clears his throat, and waits.
He forces a cough.
Then, he utters, “Hey.”
“Yeah?” asks the dozing desperado.
“Are you cold?”
No response.
“I can’t get warm.”
“They run the A.C.”
“Huh?”
“So you don’t get comfortable.”
“Oh,” the youth hems, “um, why?”
“It’s a jail—they want you to want to get out of here. But you know what I say? No blazing heat, no freezing nights; no rain or wind; three guaranteed meals a day… If all I have to do to get Maslow's basic needs met is kick a kid or rob a bank, well, you’ll know where to find me come springtime.”
The youth stares. “Maslow’s what?”
Fogman turns his head, without moving his body, enough to make the slightest of eye contact with the youth. “Kid,” he says, “if you think this is cold, then you’ve never known real cold.”
He turns back and tenses.
The youth shivers. “Hey,” he asks, “why do they call you the Fogman?”
Fogman raises a finger and from it emerges a thin wisp of fog. “Any other questions?”
“No, like,” he sits up, “why do they—the police—call you Fogman?”
“It’s my name.”
“Has it always been your name?”
“No,” Fogman replies, flat.
“What were you called before?”
“No real names.”
“What?”
“I don’t tell you my name, and you don’t tell me yours. That’s how jail works.”
“I don’t see that rule posted anywhere,” he riffs.
“Ha,” Fogman replies, flat.
The youth stirs. The air hums.
He looks up, at the thin metal vent from which the hollow din echoes.
It persists.
He sighs, rippling his lips like an outboard motor.
“My name is Twyler,” he says, in a flagrant flout of the rules. “My mom said she made it up but, I googled it and, um, it’s supposedly Old English; meaning ‘perseverance.’”
No response.
“Yeah, um, it was like this one family’s last name in England. Some document in eighteen-something said there were four Twylers in this one town, and that was all the Twylers.” He looks to Fogman for acknowledgement, and then he looks elsewhere. “Yeah, I know I’m not their descendent, but it feels that way sometimes.”
He sniffles and drums his fingers on his knees.
The air vent drones on.
“I’ve been thinking,” Twyler continues, “if my name means ‘perseverance,’ maybe I’m destined to, like-”
“I said no names.”
“Yeah, but, like, why?” Twyler groans, “You got the right to blow smoke; can’t I just talk?”
“No,” Fogman says. “I don’t have the space for it.”
“Space for what, man?” He spreads his arms like wings. “You’re all I’ve got right now—and it’s not like either of us want that, but,” he rants, “but I fucked up, and I’m scared, and my mom can’t get me out of here. And you fucked-up, too, right? So we’re alone in here together, and I just need someone to talk to, cos I’m freaking out, and cos it’s- cos it’s too fucking quiet in here!”
“The natural state of things is quiet,” Fogman says, against the wall. “You can’t expect me to be there for you. I don’t know you, and I don’t care to know you.”
Twyler bangs his head back against the iron bars. He inhales sharply, “But I’m scared.”
“We’re all scared,” Fogman replies, flat, “but I’m not your surrogate parent.”
The youth sniffles. “That’s selfish.”
“No,” says Fogman, rolling over to face his cellmate. “Asking this of me is what’s selfish. I don’t have room,” he punctuates, “for another person.”
Fogman's eyes glower dark and deep, like telescopes inverted.
Twyler fumes, clenching his teeth and looking away. His eyes water and his lips purse.
He represses himself, only allowing a burbled curse before turning away.
&nbs
p; He lies down and rolls onto his side, to face the iron bars.
Fogman eyes the sulking youth, masking himself with obstinance, and yet a shade of shame shines through.
He rolls onto his back and stares at the ceiling.
The air vent drones on.
( I | IX )
Sergeant Tessio steamrolls down the hall, pumping his arms; breathing heavy; sweating. His scalp shines under the flitting array of fluorescent lights. The collar of his button-down, slick and yellowed, cuffs a necktie drawn too-short.
He slows outside an oak door embedded with a thin window of fogged glass. His partner, Cesar Singleton, leans against the wall with his arms crossed; uprighting as Tessio clomps to a stop.
Tessio catches his breath. “Traffic.”
Singleton loosens Tessio’s necktie. “You gotta leave earlier, bruh.” He slides the nylon lengths according to an eyeballed ratio, coming to tail atop Tessio’s belt buckle. “I had to drop my kids off and I still made it in on time.” He tightens the knot at the nape of Tessio’s neck, and he wriggles it beneath the points of his collar.
He diddles Tessio’s chin with his finger. Tessio slaps his hand away.
Singleton chuckles. “Hey," in earnest, "did you catch the news this morning?”
“No,” Tessio sneers, “like I said, I was running late.” He pushes past his partner, opening the oak door. As it swings wide, the twenty young cadets within rise immediately—halting conversations, dropping beverages, and pushing back their chairs with harsh, metallic squeals. Tessio marches across the floor to a waiting podium.
Singleton saunters in behind him. “Alright, sit down.”
The twenty cadets descend, relieved, to their seats.
Tessio arrives at the podium and grips its frame; leaning in, he yells, “Stand at attention!”
The twenty cadets rise again, beleaguered and suppressing their groans.
“You are all shitbags!”
“Yes, sergeant!” reply the cadets, in unison.
Tessio holds high a stack of papers. “What is this? — Duhamel!”
One thick-lipped cadet shouts, “Paper, sir!”
“Can you be more specific, cadet?”
“Um,” he winces, “our tests, sir!”
“Huzzah, cadet!” Tessio feigns, “you might not be a dumbass after all! As for the rest of you,” he slams the papers onto the floor; they thud, slide, and scatter. “You all made me look like a retard!”
Anxious heat surrounds the cadets, burying them in silence.
“Am I a retard?” Tessio shouts.
“No, sergeant!” reply the cadets.
“Then I can hardly understand why you all wanted me to look like a retard!” he scorns. “Do you hate me?”
Silence goads a hesitant chorus from the cadets, “No, sergeant!”
“I can’t think of anything in these past three weeks that would’ve turned you all against me.” He turns to Singleton, “Can you?”
Arms crossed, his partner shakes his head.
“I left the beat for you all,” Tessio quiets, “and this is how you repay me?”
In the stillness of the air resonates the smallest squeaks of patent leather and gulps of glottal swallows.
“The lieutenant was far from pleased with your scores—which, of course, I paraphrase with less colorful words—and he has requested that we review the material… again!”
The cadets sway on their feet, stifling their exasperation.
Tessio bends low and scoops-up one of the fallen papers. He holds it before him, and squints. “Leary!”
“Yes, sergeant!” blurts a round-faced cadet.
“You actually scored a ninety-two. Sit down.”
“Thank you, sergeant!” He descends into his seat, relieved.
Tessio crumples the paper and tosses it aside. He retrieves another from the floor.
“Robertson!”
“Yes, sergeant!” shouts a blue-eyed cadet.
“You made me look like a retard!”
“I’m sorry, sergeant!”
“I do not believe your apology is sentimental, cadet!”
“Sorry, sir!”
“That’s not good enough!”
“I- uh,” he stutters, “I am sorry for disappointing you, sir!”
“Apology not accepted!” Tessio shouts. “Everybody sit down!”
The cadets all take their seats, lowering with indignity.
Tessio approaches the blackboard behind him. He snatches a stout log of white chalk and stipples six dots down the board. He then stands beside his column and points, with the chalk, to the topmost dot.
“Class: tell me! What is a Chauk?”
“You’re holding it, sir!” shouts one broad-nosed cadet, smothering his grin. Those around him attempt to suppress their laughter.
Tessio hurls the chalk at the cadet, who braces himself, but it veers in-flight to thwip the chest of the thin-faced cadet seated beside the loudmouth, and he blinks as it falls into his lap.
“Gagnon!” Tessio barks.
The broad-nosed cadet rises, “Yes, sir!”
“Fifty burpees!”
“What?”
“FIFTY BURPEES, CADET!”
The broad-nosed cadet dismounts his desk, grumbling to himself. Singleton saunters to his side. The other cadets watch, wide-eyed, as Singleton pulls a thin plastic whistle from his sleeve and blows—a sharp tweet then scrapes the air.
Cadet Gagnon jumps up, reaching for the sky, then falls into a crouch; he folds into a push-up position, lowers himself to kiss the floor, and scrambles to his feet to jump once more—and so on, and so on.
Singleton beckons the thin-faced cadet with two fingers. The kid climbs out of his desk, hustles the chalk into Singleton’s hand, and returns to his seat. The classroom’s eyes follow the chalk as Singleton then throws it to Tessio who—in one swift motion—catches it and plunges it against the blackboard.
“McBride! Define Chaukeedaar!”
A big-eared cadet replies, hesitantly, “um, the robots, sir!”
“Robots? What robots, cadet?” Tessio shouts.
“The, uh,” he stutters, looking around for answers but finding only glaring eyes. “The, uh, the- the robot guys, the robots that-”
Tessio turns to his partner. “Hey Cesar.”
Singleton turns away from the hopping-and-dropping Cadet Gagnon.
“Got gum?”
Singleton nods, reaches into his suit jacket pocket, and pulls-out a small plastic container. He tosses it to Tessio who promptly hurls it across the room. The big-eared cadet flinches but the flying container falls short, hitting the thin-faced cadet in the chest. Singleton beckons him again, wordlessly, and the thin-faced cadet hurries the container back to the officer.
Tessio faces the room.
“The Chaukeedaar have been operational for nearly as long as the youngest of you has been alive! They're current-fucking-events! But only four of you were able to accurately define them!”
The classroom is quiet, save for the labored breathing and squeaking shoes of Cadet Gagnon.
Tessio calls on Leary, and the round-faced cadet spouts-off enough information to satisfy Tessio's six chalk dots. Cadet Gagnon finishes his exercise and returns, panting and dripping, to his desk.
“Gagnon,” Tessio shouts, “what is a Chauk?”
The broad-nosed cadet pushes in on his sternum, catching his breath. “Fancy robocop.”
“Good enough,” he pivots, “McBride, what's the maximum classification a Chauk can subdue?”
The big-eared cadet winces. “Three?”
“Three what?”
“Three… levels?”
“That's ‘three, sir,’ McBride. Good morning. Time to wake up,” and, “Ortiz—are Chauks replacements for cops?”
A well-shaved cadet stands at attention, shouting, “Sir! Chaukeedaar are NOT a replacement for law enforcement, sir! They are a supplement for the shortcomings of human anatomy and physiology!”
; “Nice enthusiasm,” he winks. “Goohs, what are a Chauk's strengths?”
A rotund cadet bolts upright, screaming, “SIR! A Chauk possesses vast physical strength and a highly-durable body equipped with top-shelf military technology,” he inhales, “including night vision, fusion-powered flight, and energy weapons.” He exhales the rest of his breath.
“Good, Goohs—but maybe bring the energy down a bit. Don’t wanna disturb McBride during his beauty rest.”
A handful of cadets chuckle, and McBride is not among them.
“I'm awake, sir,” McBride says, slouching.
“Awake, huh?” He turns to Singleton. “Does he look awake to you, Sergeant Singleton?”
“No he does not, Sergeant Tessio,” says Singleton as he puffs his chest, “but he says he is.”
“Well then, McBride, what are a Chauk's flaws?”
McBride sits upright and cranes his neck. He averts his eyes to the ceiling, racking his brain.
“Are you looking to see if the answer is written on your forehead, McBride?” The class laughs. Tessio allows the moment to linger before divulging, “McBride, it's up here, on the board.”
The big-eared cadet looks ahead, and nods. He recites, “Limited artificial intelligence; lacks instinct; overexposure to elements.”
“Meaning?”
He shrugs, “Weather?”
“Good,” Tessio placates. “Remember, class, one of you is going to have McBride as a partner. You will share the responsibility of each other's strengths, and weaknesses—much like a marriage.”
Singleton folds his hands into a heart and aims it at Tessio.
Tessio waves him off. “So—who wants to marry McBride?”
No response.
“Alright,” he says to the big-eared cadet, “you’re going to want to become a more desirable lover.”
The class chuckles.
“What’s the number one complaint we get about Chauks?”
“Privacy,” says the round-faced cadet.
“Being? Anyone else, shout it out.”
“Surveillance,” “Nothing to hide, no reason to worry,” “Nuclear generators,” “Command authority,” “Hacking; Chinese and Russian hacking,” “Sentience-”
“Who said that?”
Supers Box Set Page 6