Zone 23

by Hopkins, C. J.

  And this is what was eating at her. Not the sex ... the logic of it. Because what did the geneticists mean by typical? Typical in relation to what? If the Leos’ neuro-affective activity during sex was somehow atypical, and the Clarions’ genes had been modeled on the Leos’ ... wasn’t their neuro-affective activity during coitus also atypical? And what about her own neuro-affective activity, altered as it was by Zanoflaxithorinal? Didn’t it follow that it was also atypical? But, again ... in relation to what? In relation to the A.S.P.s? No. That didn’t make any sense. The only difference between the A.S.P.s and the Variant-Positives was pharmatherapy. They were all just Homo sapiens sapiens. They all had the same defective genes. The only difference was that the Anti-Socials were non-responsive to Zanoflaxithorinal, and every other MAO-A antagonist. So how could their neuro-affective activity during sex be considered typical and variant-corrected, or pharma-mitigated neuro-affective activity atypical ?

  Valentina did not know. Valentina was getting a headache. Her jaw was clenched. She was grinding her teeth. She suddenly felt extremely dizzy. Today was Wednesday ... Kyle was late. In addition to which she wasn’t supposed to be asking herself these kinds of questions, or thinking all these negative thoughts. Not that there was any law against it. In the Age of the Renaissance of Freedom and Prosperity, everyone was free to think what they wanted, and ask whatever questions they wanted. It was just that some of these thoughts and questions, like the ones Valentina was entertaining, and had entertained more or less all her life, were extremely unhealthy, and were symptomatic of latent Anti-Social ideations ... which meant one’s dosage of Zanoflaxithorinal, or whatever one was taking, should be increased.

  Valentina went in her purse, got her pills out and took another one. Her hands were shaking. She closed her eyes.

  “The loving, compassionate oneness of the …”

  Doctor Fraser burst into the room, reading her file, beaming warmly. He was wearing a watermelon Oxford shirt, which Doctor Fraser could get away with.

  “All right. Looks like we got ourselves a winner.”

  Valentina opened her eyes. She smiled the smile she had, for months, been practicing in her bathroom mirror, alone, at night, while Kyle was sleeping. She felt like her chair had dropped into a hole that had opened in the fabric of space, down which she was being sucked by some bottomless black eternal nothing.

  “The multiplicitous way of the One. The oneness of the …”

  Time had stopped.

  Doctor Fraser, freeze-framed in place, was grimacing at her like a frightened baboon ... all of which were dead, of course. Half the planet Earth was dead. The Indian Ocean was probably boiling.

  Valentina ordered time to resume its march ... it would not do this. Apparently she was now trapped inside some interdimensional transport capsule plummeting into some Boschian Hell where drooling animatronic infants materialized out of plasma screens gurgling horrible incantations in backwards Latin like demonic seraphim. It wasn’t that she didn’t want this baby. She did. She wanted it. She wanted it desperately. Everything was going to be OK, and so much better, once she had it ... her ... It. No. No, it was just this headache, and Kyle being late, and her mother, and her genes, and her family history ...

  Doctor Fraser was grinning again. The masseter muscles in his face were moving. Apparently, time was back in business.

  Valentina burst out laughing, laughing in Doctor Fraser’s face. She had no idea why she was laughing. Nothing was even remotely funny.

  Doctor Fraser grinned and beamed, mistaking her laughter for relief and joy. “Yes, I know, it’s wonderful, isn’t it?” he nodded, turning back to her file. “Let’s see you again in a week, OK? We’ll run a few tests, but don’t you worry. Everything’s fine. You’re definitely pregnant.”

  The baby Clears were smiling at her. The Leos were wriggling their noses at her. Doctor Fraser was grinning at her. She heard a SNAP inside her head, and ...

  The Heat

  Meanwhile, approximately four months later, so back where we originally started, or shortly thereafter in any event, Taylor was still on his way to Cassandra’s, or, rather, he was on his way there again. He was sticking to his usual route, as ordered, because despite that fire, or conflagration, that appeared to be spreading throughout the Southeast Quadrant, and those choppers swirling through the dirty column of thick black smoke that was rising out of it, and whatever, or whoever, had temporarily blown the entire Content grid ... no one was coming after him. No one was even tailing him. He hadn’t seen Community Watcher one, which was kind of unsettling given that they’d been on him for weeks now, but he shrugged that off. The sky to the north, his current bearing, was quiet, as in dark, or relatively dark, as in there weren’t any choppers, and nothing was burning. He could make out the glow of the massive Klieg lights they used at the markets in the early mornings, and the Public Viewers, and video billboards, and the corporate stores that lined one side of Jefferson Avenue, which was where he was going.

  Cassandra Passwaters lived in this little cul-de-sac alley right off the avenue. It was back behind the big TŌ Fish tent, which, thanks to some secret olfactory additive that mimicked the breakdown of triethylamine oxide, reeked like real decaying fish. During the pre-dawn shopping frenzy, if you didn’t already know it was there, you’d never find it, hidden as it was behind the tables stacked with mounds of assorted brands of slimy TŌ Fish. There was some kind of makeshift garage back there where two old guys with Yakuza tattoos repaired the scooters, beat-up old cars, work vans, golf carts, and other such vehicles that the A.S.P. 1s were allowed to drive, which, along with their jobs, better housing, and slightly expanded access to Content, was one of the 1s’ most cherished privileges. 1s with Out-of-Zone Travel-to-Work passes drove their cherished motor vehicles up to the boom arms of Gate 15, submitted to extensive Security procedures, and then drove out to the specially-designated “A.S.P. Only” commuter stations, where they boarded the specially-designated shuttles that took them to their specially-designated jobs, mostly as sanitation technicians. 1s who worked for IntraZone Waste, and were not allowed out, but were nonetheless privileged, drove around the Zone all night, putting down poison, collecting garbage, tagging unidentified bodies, and basically doing whatever they were told. The rest just drove up and down the avenue, not really going anywhere in particular, mostly just showing off their vehicles and clogging up traffic something awful. They did this after sunset, of course, but also in the predawn hours, inching, jerking, and honking their way through the sea of pedestrians, rickshaws, bikes, wagons, wheelbarrows, trolleys, carts, people shoving their way to the stalls, vendors lugging crates of TŌ Eggs, MREs, spoiling produce, gangs of scoliotic old women, some of them cloaked in tattered burkas, assless old men in their slippers and bathrobes, Transplants in their Transplant whites, Plasto junkies, night-shift zombies, and pretty much every other variety of Anti-Social human being ... all of them streaming obliviously past the mouth of Cassandra Passwaters’ alley, which, once you made it through the throng of bodies, and through the labyrinth of stacks of crates of stinking TŌ Fish, was like an oasis.

  Taylor’s usual route to Cassandra’s was north on Mulberry, west on Jamesway, north up Ohlsson to Gillie’s Tavern, where he’d usually stop and grab a quick beer. After which he’d shoot up Collins, which ran all the way through Sector B, take a left onto Transammonia, bear right onto CostCo Place, cut up Speedway Motorsports Alley, and come out right on Jefferson Avenue. The whole trip took about ninety minutes, typically, that is, on a normal morning, when unidentified person or persons hadn’t blown the whole IntraZone Content grid, and IntraZone Waste & Security choppers weren’t swarming all over the Southeast Quadrant ... and possibly into the Southwest Quadrant. Taylor thought he could hear them back there, their rotors, off in the distance behind him, but he didn’t want to turn around to confirm, as you never knew when the BirdsEye was watching. * He turned onto Jamesway, and kept on walking.

  Taylor, since he’d “sett
led down” with Cassandra and officially retired as a part-time robber of Plasto dealers, pimps, rapers, and assorted other unsavory scumbags, had done a fair amount of walking. It was mostly just a recreational thing, but it also helped him clear his head, and kept him from getting drunk too often. He walked at night, while Cassandra was working, usually around the English Quarter, but sometimes out to the far West Side, or along the bank of the Dell Street Canal, which snaked down into the Southwest Quadrant, but, generally, he stuck to the Northwest Quadrant. Not that there was any ordinance against crossing into other sectors or quadrants. The Zone was only eighteen kilometers across, so you could walk the whole thing from end to end in three or four hours ... but no one did. It wasn’t exactly scenic or anything, and you were liable to get egregiously violated. The gangs came out around sunset, mostly, some of whom were rather territorial. Most people stayed inside their sectors, except in the mornings, when they went out to shop, or occasionally went for a beer or three at some makeshift bar like Gillie’s Tavern.

  Beer, liquor (i.e., full-strength liquor, not the stuff the Normals drank), tobacco, candy, and other foodstuffs containing harmful processed sugar, real caffeine, or dangerous trans-fats, although banned throughout the United Territories, were still manufactured and sold in the Zones. Groceries, drugs, items of clothing, Content discs, and other such essentials, were all for sale at the stores and markets. The quality of everything was crap, of course, but you could get whatever you needed, basically. You paid for it all with paper money, which hadn’t been used outside the Zone for three or four hundred years, at least. The notes, which were issued by whatever company ran whatever Zone you were in, had pictures of famous CEOs, CFOs, COOs, and other illustrious Normals on them, industry titans like Vladimir Chiba, Theodore Hadley, and “Jimbo” Cartwright. IntraZone Dollars is what they were called. The 1s and the 2s, who worked in the factories, could earn up to IZD 2000, monthly, most of which they spent on rent, food, and drugs, and the rest on Content. The 3s, who wouldn’t dream of working, were issued a basic subsistence allotment of IZD 486.20, all of which they spent on food, which meager income they were forced to supplement by stealing, robbing, dealing in substances, and other such Anti-Social enterprises.

  According to people like Meyer Jimenez, the corporations that supplied the Zone had some kind of deal where they all got paid directly by the Local Territorial Authority, which was technically still the municipal government, but nobody really knew for certain. It was possible they all got paid directly by the Hadley Corporation of Menomonie, Wisconsin, which billed the Local Territorial Authority as part of their contract to administrate the Zone. According to Meyer, the L.T.A. (and presumably the rest of the so-called government) was nothing more than a virtual entity the corporations used to stockpile taxes, which were paid back out to the corporations in the form of contracts and service agreements. Which meant, if Taylor had gotten that right, that the Hadley Corporation of Menomonie, Wisconsin was paying him 486.20 a month for nothing, which made no sense. Apparently it did to Meyer Jimenez, who’d repeatedly explained how the whole thing worked (it was something to do with taxes or fees), but Taylor, who didn’t really give a shit anyway, hadn’t listened very closely, and couldn’t remember.

  In any event, there was cheap booze aplenty, and as long as you didn’t mind too much that the beer, which came in aluminum barrels, was hot and flat and tasted like piss, and that the liquor burned your throat going down, you could drink yourself into a bellowing stupor, which most people did on a nightly basis. The produce they sold at the outdoor markets was invariably bruised and wilted and spoiling, but at least it was actual food from somewhere. ** You couldn’t grow anything edible in the Zone. People tried, but it was always the same. Either nothing sprouted at all, or whatever did was all weird and wrong, bright blue squash that had no skin, tomatoes in cloves that resembled garlic, mutant ears of toxic corn, glowing broccoli ... you get the idea. The markets, as well as the indoor stores, carried a decent range of TŌ Food ... artificial soy-based meat-like products, which sometimes smelled like, but never quite tasted like, whatever meat it was pretending to be. The stuff in cans, the MRE packs, the boxes of milk and flavored juice drinks, were totally synthetic and full of preservatives, so none of them really tasted like anything. The rice and the beans were usually OK, genetically modified, but real, technically. People made do with what they got, and washed it all down with beer, mostly.

  The outdoor markets, where they sold the produce, along with most of the In-Zone stores, were located out on the very edge of Sector A, right across from Wall. One of the bigger ones was Jefferson Avenue. It stretched from Gates 15 to 16, and serviced the entire Northeast Quadrant. Weekday mornings, from 0500 to just before the sun came up, the 2s and 3s would make their way out there from wherever they lived in the inner sectors, do their shopping, and scurry back home. The 1s, who were already there, of course, stayed inside the Sector A ring, none of them having any reason or desire to venture any deeper into the Zone. IntraZone Waste & Security Services, Inc. maintained cleanliness and civic order with a regiment of Waste & Security Specialists armed with UltraLite automatic rifles. Most of them were stationed in Sector A, to protect the corporate stores and property, and also to protect the A.S.P. 1s, who worked at the In-Zone plants and factories, and while they weren’t officially corporate property, were close enough to it to warrant protection. Units of Waste & Security Specialists, clad in helmets and puncture-proof armor, occasionally patrolled the inner sectors in their APCs and MRAPs, but mostly it was just the Community Watchers. The Community Watchers were A.S.P. 3s who’d turned Cooperator, and been issued truncheons, and in some cases cans of mace and stun guns, and answered to IntraZone Waste & Security, and were the lowest forms of life on Earth. At night, in Sectors B and C, you were constantly getting hassled by Watchers, but they didn’t come out much during the day. Neither did anyone else for that matter, apart from totally burnt-out geeks, Plasto fiends, suicide freaks, and the Transplants, who, for some sadistic reason, they delivered just before dawn each morning. Sadistic, because at that time of morning, you had about an hour to get inside, and the Transplants, of course, had no idea where they were, or where they were going. You would see them out there on a daily basis, staggering down the desolate streets in their Transplant whites with their rolled up bedding, desperately trying to find their housing before their brain cells fried completely and they sat down on a curb somewhere, passed out, and promptly died of exposure.

  The thing was ... it was really hot.

  Unlike up in the northern latitudes, where the weather was ... OK, unpredictable, snowing one day, scorching the next, but often quite pleasant, and generally mild, the average temperature in Zone 23 was 46 Celsius, in the shade. Out in the sun, your skin just sizzled. Your brain stopped working. Then you died. At night it got down into the upper 30s. Still, everyone sweated like pigs. You fell asleep in a pool of sweat and woke up in that same pool of sweat. Everything, everywhere, stank of sweat, and mold, and mildew, and general decay. Your skin was coated with a film of sweat that never washed off, no matter what you did. Your mattress stank of and was stained with sweat, and assorted other bodily fluids, which due to the unrelenting humidity never really completely dried. A steaming river of human excrement coursed through the sewers, which were open in places. It tasted like you were breathing in shit, or some sort of shit-scented air-freshener spray that was squirted out of some sensor-activated shit-scented air-freshener sprinkler system. A stifling heat haze hung in the air, viscous and thick, like petroleum jelly, distorting anything you saw at a distance. It looked like there were pools of water up ahead at the end of every street, but then, when you got there, there was no water. It was just a mirage, an inferior image, hot air rising off the molten asphalt. Clouds of filthy sweltering steam shot up out of the sidewalk grates, coming from ... no one exactly knew where, some vast infernal heating network that was somehow impossible to ever turn off. The iron railings on the stoops o
f buildings, the rusted-out gates of old underground stations, the metal chassis of stripped-down cars, anything metal burned to the touch. Everything trapped and radiated heat, which heat built up and trapped more heat, which process then repeated itself, creating this kind of multi-layered oven-inside-an-oven effect that never abated because there were no seasons .. .

  Basically, it was fucking hot.

  According to folks like Meyer Jimenez, the Zone had only been the Zone for two, maybe three hundred years, and before that it had been part of the city, which must have been built back when there were still seasons and the cold was a bigger problem than the heat. Taylor subscribed to this particular theory. A person would have to be a drooling moron to build this way in this type of climate. These narrow streets lined with old brick tenements, built maybe seven, eight hundred years ago, jammed together side by side, their chimneys bricked up to keep out the pigeons, the ruins of an underground network of trains, the ancient radiators, the sidewalk grates ... everywhere traces of a colder age. This desolate patch of dirt and sawgrass (the one he was just now passing on Jamesway), strewn with garbage and crawling with rats, its crumbling stumps infested with woodlice, had once been a square where people sat, talking, he imagined, or smoking, or reading, or maybe just dozing on the long wooden benches that ran alongside this winding path here. The wood had rotted away long ago, or had been consumed by mutant termites. All that remained were the iron frames, snaking through the yellow sawgrass like the petrified spine of some giant serpent.