Instead, noticing that my ex-girlfriend was not on the bus, I said:
- Poor Phyllis.
“Bitch,” Mo said.
“Come on,” I said, surprised. - She was staged by the devil knows what horrors! You cannot blame her for breaking under pressure.
Mo somehow looked sideways at me.
“Have you not heard?”
“Didn't hear what?”
- The Phyllis was specially introduced to us. She works for Safe En Sound Sound Security. She was just a spy, a spy! Her task was to turn all of us in time for the election.
“Oh,” I said, and was silent for quite some time after that.
“If we were allowed to continue to have fun with cable TV as we please,” Mo said again, “what would we do?” Broadcast whale and dolphin programs? Open meditation workshops? To tell people that liars are sitting in government? We didn't decide. We tried to cast a spell without first imagining the result.
When we drove Chiswick, I realized that I like Mo. There was nothing special about this - as a rule, I fell in love at least twice a week (as I myself realized with considerable regret). And each time it seemed to me that now everything would be different.
This time I realized that everything will really be different. Mo had strength and common sense, and despite all the witchcraft, she was surrounded by an aura of calm and mystery. I closed my eyes and a strange idea invaded my mind about how it would be if we had children with her. And I liked it!
It was very strange. At that moment I attributed everything to the pressure of circumstances.
I told her what I was thinking. It turned out pretty awkward, but I did not have time to abide by the rules of etiquette. By the way, I had already used this trick before (“Hi, my name is Brian, and I decided that I want to have a baby from you”). Sometimes they gave me in the face, sometimes they called me a powerful friend, covered in a centner of muscles. Most often they just laughed at me and moved on.
Mo laid her head on my shoulder. I hugged her waist, and we did not talk anymore.
An hour later, when the bus was still rolling along its guide, a guy stood up from the front seat - a tall, nervous type with a beard - and addressed us with a speech.
- Well, people, now listen. My name is Daniel Organ, and I am your supervisor. Actually, I should not do this, but it seems to me that it will only be honest if you immediately know what awaits you ...
Everyone looked up.
- “Southern Cable” agreed to take you under its care. They are going to fire several members of their support staff - all kinds of janitors and junior technicians - and some of you will take their place ... However, most of you will be distributed to the homes of individual members of the company board of directors and senior managers.
We were silently aware of the information.
“In my opinion, it's like throwing dice,” I finally said to Mo. “No one knows if you will be taken to a good person or a bad one.”
- But this is unfair! She snorted indignantly.
Enrollment was a favorite means of resolving the problems of the Law and Order that were at that time - a cheap and effective method of dealing with convicts. If someone robbed you or got into your house, then after the trial he passed into your property for the duration of his sentence. You could use his work as compensation for losses. Many people liked this idea, because the victim and the offender could face each other, this helped them cope with their problems. In test trials, such a method showed better results in turning criminals into useful members of society than imprisonment in a prison cell for twenty-three hours a day.And if someone did not want to receive a personal criminal at his disposal, he could transfer the employee ascribed to some company as an employee for the duration of the sentence - and receive his earnings. However, it is unlikely that they paid especially much for such work.
But in our case, the situation was different: we were handed, like a basket with gifts, to people whom we did not cause direct harm.
“Will you now fasten pink ribbons on our necks or a little later?” Someone asked from behind us.
Daniel Organa pulled out a small box with a keypad, similar to a remote control for home robots.
- This thing is unofficially known as the “box of bastards”, “pack of pain” and under several other names. This particular remote control can control you all at once, so there is no security on the bus. I'm not going to show you even the minimum amount of pain that the remote control could inflict on you through your implants - but I will still show you how it can be used to immobilize you. Please get ready ...
He pressed the button with his thumb, and everyone on the bus froze. Some even stood at attention.
I could not move. No matter how I tell my hands and feet to do anything, whatever the hell! - they just didn't obey.
Daniel Organa pressed the button again. At that moment, my members began to obey my orders again.
- It is believed that you have some rights, but forget about it. We do not have enough people to visit you even once during your term. If you're lucky, someone from the Howard League of Prison Reform or some nice old lady from a charity can visit you. If this happens, and at the same time you have problems with your owner, do not bother to complain. You will only make your situation worse. You are the property of the person under whose custody you are transferred, and there is nothing you can do about it. There is a positive side to this: most of you will be given to private individuals. It is still not some kind of company for the processing of hazardous waste or mining.And I don't think it would occur to any of these nice people to arrange gladiator fights between you ... You are not allowed to visit relatives and friends. Once a month you can write letters to them through the Supervision Service. Letters will be read by the censor and any attempts to disclose your whereabouts will be deleted ...
As for me, the censor did not need to worry. My mother died many years ago, and with the old man we never got along. I have not seen him for several years already. And such friends who could risk abducting me, I never had.
“Do not imagine that you or any expert can somehow influence the remote control or the system,” the Organ continued. “The codes are very long and change every fifteen minutes.” The British privatized penitentiary system is now in the hands of world corporations with very large sums of money, and you can rest assured that their systems have a very high degree of protection. Until now, they have never been cracked. And do not believe in these fables, which you might hear - about the fact that you can reconfigure the remote control so that you will feel an orgasm instead of pain. This is not true. Which, perhaps, is only for the best ... And by the way, do not be too disappointed if no one comes to set you free exactly on the day when your term ends.It happens, and there's nothing to be done about it. Sooner or later, someone will remember about you ...
When the bus turned off the highway, signs showed signs such as Bristol and Weston-super-Mer. A little later we drove up to a brightly lit gatehouse with two heavily armed hired cops dressed like New York police officers (the less they pay thugs from private security, the more they try to dress like they were just from Hollywood), a robot dog , surveillance cameras and that kind of thing. On the tablet it was written: "WELCOME TO HINTON LEE."
If none of us has ever heard of Hinton Lee, it is only because ten years ago it simply did not exist. It was one of these villages with barriers at the entrance that grew like mushrooms after the government destroyed the green belt, privatized the Forestry Commission and forced the National Trust [58] to sell some of its land holdings under golf lawns.
Let's all get out of the city smog and crime and live exactly like these people from the magazine "Village Way of Life", with the first payment of five hundred kilobaks!
Some of us were supposed to land here, the rest were waiting for other suburban fortresses nearby.
I was the first. I shook several hands, slammed several backs and hugged Mo.
“See you on the other side,” I
smiled.
“Yes,” she said. - It is good to. I will send you all the power that I can share.
* * *
And now I am standing on the steps of this private house with three bunks, this semi-detached parody of Victorian neo-Gothic mansions - a house indicating an absolute lack of taste in the owner. My belongings boil down to one shrimp-free shrimp sandwich and half a bottle of Molvernaya Vodka, and Daniel Organa reads my rights to a young man standing in the doorway who looks at me with a look like he has a cup of cooled vomit with a cherry on top.
It's already ten o'clock in the evening, but since it's spring, it's still quite light, and I can quite see it.
He is about thirty-five. Not much more than me, but the whole Universe separates us.
His hair is too black not to be at least partially dyed or implanted. He is wearing shorts and a vest with the name of some sophisticated fashion designer. This piece of clothing is almost not worth it to wear, as it is specially tailored to open vast spaces of muscles depilated and grown on steroids.
“... you must provide him with at least three meals that are adequate and nutritionally balanced per day," Daniel says. My new owner is already impatient.
He has a large mustache - the type that was appreciated by Stalin and some other dictators of the twentieth century. Mom always said that mustachioed people should never be trusted.
“... you must ensure that he has access to the appropriate facilities for washing and the toilet.”
Oh my goodness!
“... you must not commit physical or sexual abuse against him.”
A wolf appears near the owner's foot. Correction: this is just a very large dog, one of those that are trained for attackers. He absently strokes the dog.
“... you must guarantee him a sufficiently warm and covered room, as well as ...”
“Good, good,” the owner says impatiently. - Let's get the remote control and manual here, and we'll finish it. My golf is about to end.
The organ gives him a remote control packed in cellophane. In addition, he provides Mr. Universe with a glossy booklet on the cover of which a man in a convict costume digging a garden is schematically depicted, while a cute elderly lady in a deck chair is sitting in the background, enjoying a cup of tea.
- You must ensure that the well-being of the attributed will be ...
“Good, good,” interrupts Mr. Impatient - Where do I sign?
My new owner speaks of a stress-free, measured tone of a man who spends a ton of time dictating to a car.
As soon as the bus leaves the house, it unpacks the remote control, sets it to maximum and tries.
I feel the pain, starting in the back, piercing my body to the tips of the fingers and toes. I'm yelling like a shred.
A limiter is built into the remote control: after five seconds, it automatically turns off.
I heavily settle on the threshold.
- Wow! He says. “I almost woke the whole street!” Let's make sure we understand each other, buddy. I don't like people like you. I don't like what you did with my company. You are a bastard. You are struggling with a system that takes the interests of all people to heart, instead of helping yourself and others by finding yourself a job. But now you are here, and we will have to somehow put up with each other. So, do not stick your nose where you should not, do what they tell you, and we will get along perfectly.
He leads me to the garage behind the house. A dirty mattress is thrown in the corner and a pair of blankets.
“For now, you'll sleep here,” he says. “My wife will be nervous if you spend the night inside.” Well, where is it with us ...
He turns over several pages in consultation with the management, while I stand and admire his collection of various units, wondering if it is possible to kill a person with a sand spreader.
- Yeah, there it is! He says, pressing a few buttons on the remote control. - If you try to enter the house or move away from this place more than twenty meters, the immobilizer will turn on. Goodnight!
With these words, he returns to his golf. He never asked my name, did not tell me his own, and did not notify me where the toilet is.
Later, I slipped outside and urinated on his flowerbed.
Jeremy Henderson was not a member of the Board of Directors of Southern Cable. He was not even a senior manager. For this, he lacked intelligence. He was in charge of the local sales department, although he avoided calling this title directly, trying to create the impression that he was something more solid, more well-paid and more, his mother, indispensable than some kind of head of the sales department .
When the company discovered that after they fired their cleaners and handed us over to their senior management team, she still had some of our guys left, she arranged a lottery. Jeremy Henderson won eighteen months of my life because he scored the most points in the Bushido game.
There were very few printed books in Jeremy Henderson's house, apart from the Bible, the bound book of Jeffrey Archer's novels (hehe!), A beginner's guide to the game and a copy of Sun Tzu's “Art of War” - which probably a time of fashionable reading for proactive corporate workers.
He spent whole days in the gym and pumped steroids. Mrs. (and she was exactly Mrs., do not think to doubt!) Henderson did not work. And the less work she had in the house, the more Jeremy had reason to be proud.
For a while, even before they got married, he flirted with this church, which considers Freddie Mercury to be a god and believes that he will soon return to Earth in a spaceship. "Queen" were for DX the standard of classical music.
Now he was a Christian, because Christians were all who mattered, and also because deep down in his soul he needed some kind of total quality control, which would confirm his moral superiority over the inhabitants of the first and second quadrants and everyone else who didn 't live like him. Jeremy's most basic fear was that someone could surpass him in something.
I believe that in the SWOT analysis [59], which he did on my account, I presented for him both an opportunity (a status symbol, a labor-saving device) and a threat (I could surpass him in something).
Mrs. Henderson - Natasha ... Do you know how they know the age of trees by annual rings? If I paid attention to fashion, it would not be difficult for me to find out Natasha's age, having studied the traces of her plastic surgeries and transplants. I could pledge my freedom that seventy percent of women of her age living in Hilton Lee have the same hairstyle, the same breasts, the same nose, the same lips, the same teeth, the same shape of the back, the same flawless color faces ...
Natasha looked like a whore from a soap opera, but before her husband and master she was a modest mouse huddling in a corner. She met her husband seventeen years ago - she married two weeks after graduating from high school. She never had a job and most likely she never had any business with other guys. She was not one to cheat.
At her disposal was all kinds of home electronics, which decorative little housefrau could only wish for, including Mulinex Andy for complex cleaning. She had no other interests in life, besides soap operas on TV and talking about diets with friends over tea with cakes.
And she was not indifferent to drinking.
About a week I washed the windows, painted (Jeremy did not trust me to do anything complicated), cut the grass and even received permission to go out of the fence to go shopping. Almost every minute that I was awake, I thought about making my legs. But this would not make sense: a beacon was built into the chip, which this abomination can recognize at a distance of several miles, and to cut the chip, according to them, was a bitter occupation. And I absolutely did not want to try to perform surgical operations on myself.
After a week of my captivity, HH arranged one of his "famous barbecue".
Of course, the most interesting piece of meat was not fried. In any case, not literally.
About seven, the garden was already full of cream of local society. People in T-shirts and tight shirts, designed to show off their canned muscles, stood in a cir
cle with bottles of Budvara and Sapporo [60], talking about cars, golf, court cases and management issues - and that's all trying to show to one point that they occupy a more important position than it was in reality. Women, mostly little wives who have not worked for years (or may have worked part-time, but tried to hide it), talked about children or cosmetic surgery and also tried to show that their husbands are more important than they actually were. .There were also several children, half of whom ran around laughing and screaming, and the second half stood in circles, like cloned doubles of their parents, showing either well-trained behavior and politeness, or exaggerated listless boredom.
My task was to slide the swan around the guests, delivering drinks and snacks - in a white shirt, an apron and an embroidered vest, which Natasha bought for me the day before. I thought with horror that I would have to perform a ceremony on a pile of burnt stinking meat, but I forgot that to look after the roast is the Work of a Real Man.
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