The Free Citizen

by T. J. Sedgwick

  “Hello! Earth to Cal… Are you feeling ok?” she chuckled nervously, staring at him as he emerged from his mind-trip.

  He cleared his throat, said, “Err… yeah, I’m fine. Just tired.”

  The old Servile waited, expressionless, pretending not to be there.

  “Right… Serviles are here to serve us. That’s why they’re called Serviles. They like it. Remember? Anyway, this one’s on his way out next week.”

  “Sure.”

  He needed time to forge a plan but hadn’t yet figured out how much to tell Cora. She had taken the Citizenship Pill like every other Citizen. She’d opposed it for as long as she could. But by 2075, the Regime’s grip on power was such that it became law. To not take it wasn’t a choice at all. That would mean becoming a non-Citizen and either leaving the country forever or becoming an Illegal in the Badlands. Cora had Rae, and had her family, her friends, her business. Rae’s story was different. They’d essentially tricked him into taking it in 2073 by not disclosing what it was. She’d also had neural implants herself—common, especially amongst the professional class and elite, but by no means universal. As far as he understood it, the Citizenship Pill ensured susceptibility to Regime information.

  Propaganda, he corrected himself.

  Mindchips, on the other hand, had a wide variety of functions. Cora’s mindchip helped her retain facts, connect straight to the Net and recognize anyone, Citizen or Servile. Like the Servile in front of them.

  “What do you mean, on his way out?”

  She stopped before reaching the elevator, looked at him quizzically.

  “Are you sure you’re ok, Cal?”

  She sighed, drew closer, whispering, “Passed his functional life. On his way out.”

  He felt numb, looked over at the old guy struggling with his heavy backpack.

  “Right, sorry. I’m just tired.”

  She leaned over and kissed him.

  “Not too tired for me I hope.”

  “Never.”

  The elevator opened straight into their luxury apartment taking up the entire one-hundred-eighty-fifth floor. At this height the obelisk-shaped One Renaissance narrowed to ‘only’ the size of half a football field. Continuous glass windows bordered each side of the high-ceilinged condo. Situated close to the lakeshore, the living room faced Lake Michigan. The moonless night gave view to billions of stars, the dusty band of the Milky Way running across the sky as the backdrop. Rae’s eyes caught the brief flicker of tracer fire somewhere over the dark water, far outside the Chicago perimeter. The flash of an explosion from whatever the military had hit.

  Probably some starving Illegals’ fishing boat.

  A faint glow replaced it.

  Cora came over and pulled him close, kissing him passionately. Her full, velvety lips and sultry, inviting eyes were enough to render him defenseless.

  His hands explored the contours of her body—a playground for the returning soldier. Her skin felt silky and delicate to the touch. He continued reacquainting his mind with her form—her toned mid-riff, slender waist and firm, curvaceous rear. He’d not been with her for just a fortnight, but she felt brand new. This novelty aroused him even more than he could remember. She reached around and unzipped her dress, the thin red cloth slipping down to her breasts, holding up momentarily on her nipples before falling to the plush carpeted floor. Now wearing only her matching red heels, desire overwhelmed them.

  *

  Steam and cascading hot water enveloped him as he watched Cora drop her bath robe to join him in the en suite’s walk-in shower. It was the only place in the apartment safe from surveillance cameras, the roar of water from overhead hiding their words from the ever-alert, Ruby. That was the name of the home’s AI assistant. Every home Rae had ever seen had a Ruby. It was mandatory. But a concession in the building code gave a modicum of privacy in the shower. Everyone knew she spied for the Regime as well as suggesting recipes for dinner. Nearly total surveillance was yet another thing he had simply accepted before Dr Muller had changed his view of the world. Despite feeling more connected after their love-making, a tension, a nervousness remained as his naked wife wrapped her arms around his neck and reached up to kiss him long and slow. He found it distracting but broke off the embrace. This was the moment. The moment of trust, of vulnerability, a leap of faith. Telling his wife what was going on in view of the possibility she may report him to the feared State Intelligence Agency. If he couldn’t tell Cora, who could he tell?

  He locked eyes with her, holding her close, then leaned down to whisper in her ear away from the shower flow.

  “Cora… I have something to tell you,” he said sternly.

  She held him closer, giggling. He’d sometimes tease her like this. First, he’d come over all serious, pause a few seconds, the come out with some silly, trivial thing like, “You have weird toes,” on account of her big toes being a lot shorter than the neighboring one. She wasn’t to know this time he wasn’t kidding.

  When the tease didn’t come, he felt her try to break the embrace, but he held onto her.

  “I really do have something important to tell you,” he said. “But we can’t let Ruby hear. Ok?”

  “Ok,” she whispered, nodding slightly, her voice somewhere between concerned and intrigued.

  “Something happened to me while on mission. Something that disrupted my mindchip, maybe the nanites in my system too.”

  “Yes, of course—you already told me that you’re going to the hospital to get fixed. It didn’t sound serious at the air terminal. So… what happened to you then?”

  “Some sort of disruptor device fired at me by the enemy. It made me black out. When I came to, I felt different. I’ve felt different ever since. Some of the functionality doesn’t work. Information recall. My fusion flicker rate is back to biological.”

  “So, go to Lakeshore Hospital in two days’ time, like you said. You’ll be good as new!” she said airily, trying to make light of it.

  “I guess I will… I mean… They will want me to, yes. But I might not go.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because of what I’ve seen.”

  “Because of what you’ve seen? Like what?” she said, now more concerned. “Please, not another head injury. Last time was so bad, Cal.”

  The time when she stuck with him after his traumatic head injury from the Baton Rouge mission in 2073. A year after they’d met. The doctors had stabilized him, sent him home to Cora. The way it had affected his behaviors wasn’t pretty. Mood swings. Anger. Depression. Her thriving business needed her too. No contest. She took three months off work and hired people to fill the gap. They could have hired a nurse instead, but she felt it her duty to be with her fiancé. He knew she’d saved him from himself. And in the process had cemented their relationship in a more permanent place, matured them past lust and infatuation and into love.

  The shower was now like a steam bath. He conveyed to her the visceral feelings evoked in the pit of his stomach at what he’d seen. The extra-judicial imprisonments and killings, the enslaved Serviles, the total surveillance, total control of the media, no freedom of movement outside the cities without permission, a one-party state with President White as dictator for life. Now he could remember more clearly, the comparison to life in the United States was stark. She listened, hardly saying a word. He paused and opened his eyes, still holding her close. Her hair had long-since flattened into a silky, wavy mane streaming water down her back. The skin on her shoulders and back had flushed from the hot water. He felt nauseous as he confessed his sins. The terrible things he’d done without really knowing why. Like the American scientist in Edinburgh who he’d beaten and strangled because someone in Intel had ordered it. “Make him suffer,” his handler had said. The faces haunted him. His remembering brain now recalled the atrocities he’d executed without compunction. By the time he’d finished, his hot tears were tributaries to the river of shower water flowing down the drain.

  He composed himself as C
ora comforted him, holding him close, whispering soothing words.

  “We’ve got through difficult times before. I’m always here for you.”

  But this was a tear in the fabric of his reality. A traumatic wakening from a nightmare, only to find himself in yet another nightmare.

  For a while they said nothing, just let the hot water run over their entwined bodies. Then he started speaking. If he couldn’t trust Cora, then there was no one else left to trust. He told her everything. About the Erasmus and Dr Muller’s device that had made him black out and changed his world. About the injustices and oppression and the way he now remembered how things used to be. The one-party state. Surveillance everywhere. The more he thought about it, the more he realized what a monster the country had morphed into. Cora listened intently, nodding, seemingly in accord with his impassioned whispers masked by the flow of the shower. Yet he knew there was a risk in telling her, such was the power he suspected the Regime held over Citizens’ minds. But he had no choice. His time window was short. Once they fixed his mindchip at the hospital, any choice he thought he had would be gone.

  Then came the words he never thought he’d say. He was strong, had his pride. He was the protector. Yet he felt more vulnerable than ever. Holding her face, he saw she’d been crying too, but there remained a caring strength in those light blue eyes.

  “I’m scared,” he whispered.

  “I know,” she said.

  “I don’t know what to believe. I—I don’t want it to be true. I keep thinking, maybe this is all trickery…”

  His words trailed off.

  “What do you mean, Cal?”

  “Maybe the Alliance have re-programmed my mind to believe what they want me to believe. Like… like a Manchurian Candidate or something…”

  She looked at him, puzzled.

  “What is that… a Manchurian Candidate?”

  “It’s someone being used as a puppet by an enemy. Like the Alliance.”

  She nodded, gave a tight smile.

  “Yes,” she said approvingly. “The Alliance is our enemy.”

  She pulled him close once more and rubbed his back.

  “I have faith in you, Cal, but you need to get to the hospital and get some help.”

  He said nothing.

  “We’ll get through this, Cal. I’m here for you.”

  8

  The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant.

  Maximilien Robespierre

  H e woke up alone in the darkness, head in his hands, panting, covered in sweat, his heart thumping. Images lingered from his nightmare. He pressed his fingers tights into his ears in a vain attempt to shut out the scream that had shocked him awake. The dissident ambassador lady he’d kidnapped from her own home in Rome before smuggling her back to New York and handing her over to the State Intelligence Agency. Realizing now where he was, he sat up in bed, wiping his wet brow on his cotton tee-shirt, regaining his breath. His eyes adjusted to half-light. Only the dim nightstand lamp fought the darkness of the blackout glass running along two sides of the corner bedroom. He sat back, releasing the tension in his body and recalled his nightmares. The faces of those he’d kidnapped and killed had plagued his sleep—people that his chipped mind had long-since forgotten had come flooding back. It felt real, reliving the brutality he’d wrought, wanting to stop himself but being unable to. He rubbed his eyes as his heartbeat calmed. Despite the full night’s sleep, he felt exhausted, as though his mind hadn’t rested at all. But now he was awake and didn’t want to return to the horrors his sleeping mind had relived. No sound came but for the gentle flow of air through the ducted heating vents in the master bedroom’s ceiling and some indiscernible noises transmitted through the building’s structure and of the faintest sounds of the city far below.

  “Cora!” he called, thinking maybe she was in the ensuite.

  No reply. It was a Monday. She’d have gone to work early. He checked the time. 0915.

  He closed his eyes for a moment. Again, came the terrified face of Ambassador Lowell—the lady he’d dragged out of her residence in the dead of night in Rome.

  Probably dead or Servile by now, he thought, wincing, his head shaking in self-disgust.

  He tried to rationalize that it had been involuntary, that it must’ve been the mindchip’s doing. Otherwise, why would he feel such disgust now? Being a Manchurian Candidate was the only alternative to this theory. That would be so much easier. Just go back to how it was before Dr Muller released his demons. He would just need to attend the hospital tomorrow and let them do the rest. But that was a one-way street, a ratchet. A chance encounter like on the Erasmus would probably never happen again. He’d joined the US Army to find his purpose, to get trained up and be great, to serve a cause he’d seen as righteous. He hadn’t joined to kill innocent people and serve a regime whose character was becoming disturbingly clear to him only now.

  He arose and went to the open-plan kitchen-lounge to get coffee, fully aware he was inside the surveillance bubble. He knew he had to be careful. Part of him was already questioning the way he’d told Cora everything last night. But his emotions had overtaken him. He had to tell someone. Who else could he confide in? His buddies in SC Chicago, mostly military guys? The handful of friends he still knew from college? His and Cora’s friends from the tennis club? Definitely not. Cora was the only one he could trust. Whatever path he followed now, he needed her. None of that changed the fact that she may betray him against her will though. Had he been stupid? Time would tell. Of one thing he was totally sure: that the AI assistant, Ruby, would relay everything to the State Intelligence Agency. Ruby was listening. Ruby was watching. Always vigilant.

  “Good morning, Ruby,” he said as cheerily as he could.

  “Good morning, Cal,” said the home’s virtual assistant. “Would you like a coffee? Black, no sugar?”

  “Yes please, Ruby.”

  He wondered what she was feeding back to her masters.

  “My pleasure, Cal.”

  He retrieved the steaming mug from the counter-top machine and sat down on the couch. Out the window to his right, the brilliant blue sky had transformed the lake and its frame of autumn land beyond the walled city. The reds, yellows and golden browns of fall. The newly ascendant forest covered everything that wasn’t city or lake.

  Reverting to wilderness. Maybe nature deserves it more than we do.

  “Ruby, put on the TV news, please.”

  The large internal wall transformed from what looked like textured, designer wallpaper, complete with unframed modern art canvases, to a four-meter-wide TV display. The strangely ageless news anchor of the country’s only news channel—National News Network, 3N—sat next to his younger female presenter. His plastic perma-smile stretched into a grin, even when talking. Rae found it odd how David Lincoln never aged. He was one of just four middle-aged male anchors, that had been a constant since the Renaissance, eight years prior. By contrast, the cast of much younger female hosts, and reporters was like a revolving door. He didn’t know much about news broadcasting, but if experience and continuity was important to the male presenters, why not the females? And why were all the reporters women? It seemed strange, illogical. Prejudiced. The more he thought about this society, the more he didn’t like.

  “And now today’s headlines,” said Lincoln. “Security Secretary, Oliver Young, announces that people infected with the alien parasite have been discovered in large numbers at locations near the Southern Border Zone. Secretary Young informs that this worrying development is a deliberate act of terror orchestrated by Democratic Alliance Special Forces and terrorists in the Military Operations Zone.”

  A video clip played of the ruddy-faced, rotund Secretary Young in the White House cabinet room.

  “President White will be unequivocal when he meets Alliance representatives later today. They need to convince us that they have the parasite under control, and they have nothing to do with
the outbreak in the MOZ. Frankly, I’m not convinced. We’re working on eradicating it in our territory. The Alliance needs to do the same,” he concluded, thumping the table.

  The news show returned to the studio—this time an artificially-perfect-looking young woman with a pink-highlighted, bleached blonde coif. Rae didn’t recognize her.

  “A true patriot, David,” she said deferentially, turning to her colleague.

  “He sure is, Petra.”

  “Staying with problems caused by the DA,” she said, “President White has renewed calls for the Alliance to rescind its security guarantee of El Paso-Juarez. He told a press conference last night that ever since the city unified and had to remain south of the border zone it had been a nest of vipers harboring terrorists and enemy agents.”