by RJ Johnson
Johnny nodded, “He ain’t dead exactly.”
“What do you mean?” Meade asked.
“Well, the Bioxx box works by accelerating the person’s brain and transferring that over to us so that we can live out our sentences faster. Basically, it overclocks a fella’s noodle if that makes any sense.”
“I get it,” Meade said, “what happens when you take too much?”
“You veg out in here until whoever’s in charge checks your body to see if it’s all running correctly. Problem is, they only do that once every couple of months in the meatworld, and that can mean decades for us.” Johnny said. “Worst part is, once you’re a vegetable, you ain’t coming back from that.”
“Where’d they put the Captain’s body?” He knew he sounded desperate, but if there was any shot, he owed it to Sarah to exhaust every option.
Johnny shrugged, “Same place they put all the veggies, out back.”
“Show me,” Meade said with more authority than he felt, “but first…”
Meade kept the wires attached to Howie’s palm and flipped the switch back on. Howie’s face returned to the paralyzed look of pain and fear as the Bioxx Box drained his mind of all the extra time he had been taking from other prisoners. Meade looked down at the other end of the wire and dropped it to the ground.
“Let’s go,” Meade said firmly. Johnny looked down at his friend, panicked.
“You’re wasting all that power!” Johnny cried out, “Please, let me take some, otherwise it’ll overload the box and no one…”
“Will be able to use it on anyone else ever again,” Meade said nodding, “Which is the whole idea.”
“But… but…” Johnny stuttered. Meade grabbed him by the cuff and dragged him out of the tent.
“Time to go unless you want to end up a roasted crisp next to him too.”
Johnny unwillingly let himself be dragged away from Howie and the Bioxx box that would have been his ticket to an early release.
“Show me where you put the Captain’s body,” Meade said.
Johnny pointed towards the other end of the camp, “Over there.”
Meade and Johnny moved towards the other end of the camp. As they approached, Meade could see a large green canvas tent that had been placed over the top of what looked like a small hill.
Johnny moved forward and grabbed the edge pulling it up. Meade reacted in horror at what he saw.
There, dozens, hell, maybe even hundreds of bodies were stacked like cordwood. Each one was piled on top of each other, reaching nearly twelve feet into the air.
“Gods…” Meade said in wonder and disgust all at once, “How long have you been stacking people here?”
“At least the last two years, figure about fifteen or so fresh fish every month and suddenly,” Johnny shrugged, “we had all this.”
Meade felt sick to his stomach looking at the bodies stacked like cordwood. He had no sense of scale for the death he had to be looking at. They were all prisoners, probably bad men in their own right, but no one deserved to be lobotomized on the whim of a madman.
“Help me find the Captain goddamn you!” Meade was ready to strike Johnny down for his part in this horrifying sideshow, “Man with a white beard and white hair.”
Johnny moved and began to pull the bodies off each other, while Meade followed and began to do the same. Johnny would hold up each face for Meade to inspect. With as many bodies they were going through, Meade was sure they’d never find the Captain.
“Is this him?” Johnny asked, Meade glanced over to see the familiar ruddy face of his friend.
“Get him down from there,” Meade said, “And hurry, the more time I waste in here with you, the longer it’ll take me to get outta here.”
“You ain’t getting outta here friend,” Johnny said, while holding the Captain gently under his shoulders. He eased him down into Meade’s waiting arms. “I keep trying to tell you, the Source won’t allow it.”
“Fuck the Source,” Meade grunted. He caught the Captain and eased him gently down on the ground. “Help me take him back to the tent.”
Johnny went around to the Captain’s feet and pick them up as they carried the Captain over to Howie’s tent where he was still under the assault of the Bioxx box.
Meade gently laid the captain down on the other cot while looked at the Bioxx box’s display count up.
“What’s that?” Meade asked, pointing to the display.
“That’s how many years available to someone,” Johnny said after looking down at the display. “Fucker was holding out on me.”
“He was?”
“He was a long-timer,” Johnny admitted. “That meant his sentence was so long that he stood no chance of getting outta here. I’m talking hundreds, even thousands of years.” Johnny looked down at the display which was still counting up, “I guess he thought he could collect enough years from the fresh fish in here to get him out.”
“Doesn’t look likely now,” Meade said glancing down at the prostrate Howie.
“The Box is about to overload,” Johnny warned.
Meade glanced down at the captain and back at the Bioxx box. Suddenly the idea of letting the thing overload didn’t seem like such a good idea.
“Grab the wires,” Meade instructed.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m gonna wake him up.”
Johnny shook his head, “I dunno if that’ll work, we’ve never tried to reverse a veggie before.”
“There’s a first time for everything,” Meade said, determined. He missed his hat, he would’ve pulled the brim down right now, something he liked to do when he had a mission to complete.
Johnny disconnected the wire from Howie who remained frozen in fear and shock and pushed the heavy Bioxx box over to Meade. Meade took the receiver wire and looked at the box skeptically.
“I’m guessing his years are stored inside the mainframe somehow?”
“In a sense, yes,” Johnny agreed. “Your mind is used to break algorithms inside the Source’s mainframe. Every solution is equal to one year spent inside, which is why when you overclock your sentence using other people’s brain you gain their time. What the Bioxx box does is store those algorithm solutions away from the Source.”
Meade looked down helplessly at the captain, “Then If I’m understanding that correctly there’s no way for us to reverse the process then is there?”
“Not from in here,” Johnny shook his head. “You could trip the computer to bring him back out, but he’d still be a vegetable out there in the meatworld.”
“So the captain…”
“Is forever trapped inside his own body, at least until he’s released. Docs on the outside I hear can reverse lot of the damage through stem cell therapy, but, I never met anyone who actually went through with it, course I been in here, so I don’t know all of what they’ve managed to do.”
Meade swallowed and looked around considering his options. He glanced down at the display and saw an impressive balance of algorithms. Just over a thousand solved equations were waiting to be used.
He looked down at the old captain and decided what to do next. He attached the wires to his fingers and nodded to Johnny.
“Turn it on and get me out of here,” Meade said looking at Johnny. “Take care of the captain and do what you can for the others. You do right by him and I’ll take you back too along with the rest.”
Johnny caught his arm, “how do I know you’re telling the truth?”
Meade said nothing, only staring at Johnny.
“I don’t…” Johnny completed the thought.
“Turn on the machine and get me out of here,” Meade ordered. Jonny nodded and turned the Bioxx box on.
This time however, the sensation was not as pleasant. Meade felt the same sharp stinging of pain as the Bioxx box sent its instructions through his virtual avatar and delivered the thousands of already solved equations to the Source. Meade’s whole body began to glow bright blue.
He
stared at his hand which began to fade away. He looked up to see Johnny staring at him and Enzeli thankfully melted away.
Chapter Twenty Four
Meade woke inside what looked to be a white box illuminated by bright light around him. For a moment, Meade wondered if he had died and ended up in heaven. However, he realized that as nice as heaven reportedly was, they probably wouldn’t insert an IV into his arm or keep his skull restrained by a wire harness.
Or shove a plastic tube up his urethra.
Meade winced as he pulled the various cords the Coalition guards had put into his body to keep him alive while his mind wandered through Enzeli. Once free of his restraints, he struggled to remove the wire harness that surrounded his head and kept his chin in place. He felt around the harness, searching frantically for the bolt that was holding everything in place.
Finally, his fingers were able to search out the bolt. As he unscrewed it he was relieved to feel the pressure under his chin release. Meade exhaled in relief and continued to unstrap himself from the MedBay bed that had facilitated his trip into Enzeli.
Free from his restraints, Meade set about the business of escaping his pod. He gently pushed on the lid and was discouraged to discover that no matter the amount of pressure he put on it, the lid wouldn’t give. He looked around the inside of the gleaming cube and looked for a switch of some sort that might trigger the hatch, but still didn’t see anything.
He swallowed the rising panic back down his throat and forced himself to think rationally about his situation. He’d already accomplished the hard part of escaping from an inescapable prison; this was merely the next step in the process. There had to be a way out.
Suddenly, he heard a crash and the distinct sound of gauss rifles being fired. Meade scrambled against the edge of the box. Outside, he heard gunfire being returned and the confused shouts of the Coalition MPs tasked with prison guard duty who sounded like they couldn’t tell where the attack was coming from.
He began to pound on the edge of the coffin, hoping that whoever was outside was here to rescue him. Meade began to shout for help, hoping whoever was outside could hear him over what sounded like quite the pitched battle.
His box groaned and rumbled as it fell to the side, crashing to the ground. Meade braced his arms against the sides of his would-be coffin, making it so that while he was shook up, he remained unhurt. More screams and shouts from the outside, until there was the sound of a violent explosion.
And then there was nothing but silence.
“Hello?” Meade called out. “Anyone out there?”
He heard scraping and felt someone trying to move his pod around. Meade scrambled back and braced himself for whatever was next, with the way his day had been, he wasn’t sure who – or what – was going to open his pod.
The lid above him opened and he was relieved to see Emeline’s tired and bloody face.
“Em!” Meade cried out in happiness. “Damn fine to see you girl!”
Meade moved cautiously out of the box, his legs still rubbery after his experience. Once on his feet, he was able to take a moment to appreciate the devastation that surrounded them. The formerly pristine white intake room that the Coalition MPs had taken him into was now scorched with the obvious signs of a pitched battle. Dozens of white pods like the one Meade had been stuck in were scattered haphazardly all around.
He looked down at the pods, each with some criminal peacefully sleeping and blissfully unaware of the battlefield they were lying in the middle of. On the opposite side of the room, being covered by Kansas and his intimidating gauss rifle, there were three Coalition MPs lying on the ground. One held his head looking dazed while the other two were leaned up against the wall moaning in pain and tending to their wounds.
“We don’t have much time,” Kansas called over his shoulder from the other side of the room. “Maybe two minutes.”
“Can you walk?” Emeline asked without preamble.
“I… think so…” Meade replied. “Where’s Sarah?”
“She’s outside with the Aerocycles,” Kansas called over his shoulder. He checked over his other shoulder while keeping his rifle trained on the guards. “We’re gonna want to move sooner rather than later friends.”
“It ain’t like I’m waiting for an invitation,” he replied.
Emeline helped Meade step out of the podbox they stored him in. He nearly fell, his legs still rubbery from the hours of sitting in one position.
“Easy now,” Emeline cautioned as she caught him before he fell out of the pod.
“How did you find me?” Meade asked in a low voice. He wasn’t looking to go back to Enzeli anytime soon.
“Easy enough when the whole damn city is celebrating your capture,” Emeline whispered back.
“I always knew the city’s collective hate of me would come in handy one day,” Meade said with a grin.
“People are dumb, stupid animals who join mobs at the drop of a hat,” Emeline shrugged, “Instead of pitchforks and torches, we’ve got our ArmBars and social media. They’re ready to crucify anyone the Coalition tells ‘em to.”
“Part of the reason why I need to get the hell out of here and start setting things right,” Meade replied.
Emeline snorted, “Of all the times to get yourself a fucking hero complex. Come on, we don’t have much time. Kansas!”
“Yes ma’am?” Kansas never moved his eyes from the Coalition MPs who were still lying on the ground.
“Time to get moving,” Emeline called back.
Kansas grinned and withdrew a small cylindrical object out from his belt, “Sorry gents, but I think you had to know this was coming.”
The guards cowered in fear away from Kansas. He dropped the object and a blinding white light flashed out of it as white smoke billowed up and towards the three guards. Kansas drew back and pulled his jacket over his face covering it as he retreated away from the poisonous smoke.
Meade glanced back at Kansas, a quizzical expression on his face, “What the hell was that? And am I gonna end up with a three headed kid because of it?”
“Bug bomb,” Kansas said, his low voice rumbling, “That smoke is actually a cloud of nanites that will put our Coalition friends in a state of suspended animation.”
“You’ve stolen some creepy shit, you know that Kansas?” Meade said, half in jest, half in fear. The man seemed stable enough, but there weren’t a whole lot of people he would’ve trusted with that kind of weaponry and that included the Coalition.
“Don’t worry, they’ll be fine, maybe a little disoriented by the time they wake up, but they’ll go on oppressing everyone just like they always have in about twelve hours.”
Meade wasn’t buying it which Kansas could clearly see from the expression on his face.
“Besides,” Kansas added, “I think it’d be a shame if all that fun stuff my people intercepted never got used.”
Meade shook his head and turned his attention back to Emeline, “How long was I in there?”
“Soon as we realized that your brilliant plan of intercepting the Ambassador went cockeyed and you were under lock and key, we figured that Corcoran wouldn’t waste any time throwing you right into Enzeli. Kansas had a contact that helped us bypass the guards and get back to the prisoner intake. Once we got that far, it was fairly easy to track you down. The Coalition ain’t good for much, but they know how to keep track of their bureaucracy.”
Meade was disoriented. If they had asked him how long he’d been in Enzeli, he would’ve said he’d been inside for at least a few days. He shuddered, if that’s what it was like for someone who was inside for only a few hours, what kind of hell was it for those who were in for years at a time?
“What’s wrong?” Emeline asked.
Meade shook his head, “Just realizing how lucky I am.”
“Better believe that,” Emeline said humorlessly. “I’m still out a bar after all this is said and done.”
Ahead, someone cried out a warning. Kansas raised his
gauss rifle and began firing down the corridor, shouting over his shoulder, “Go, I’ll cover your retreat! Sarah’s outside with the Aerocycles just down the hall!”
Meade and Emeline turned to flee down the hallway. Emeline tossed Meade his ArmBar and pistol wrapped up in his red duster jacket. Meade caught the bundle in midair and smiled. He slid the ArmBar back on and enjoyed the familiar weight and enjoyed the comfortable grip of his grandfather’s gun.
“Just need my…” he didn’t even have to finish his sentence when Emeline tossed him his black cowboy hat with a braid down the back, “hat. Thanks Em.”
She nodded and they continued down the hallway where Meade could see four Aerocycles ahead waiting for them. Meade hopped on his and looked behind him, seeing Kansas firing at the Coalition MPs as he walked backwards through the hallway to join them on the Aerocycles.
“Wait!” Sarah cried out when she saw Emeline and Meade emerge from the hallway, “Where’s my father? You were supposed to grab him too!”
“No time,” Emeline said, turning her rifle to the side and reloading the cartridge. “Kansas’s people can’t jam the Coalition’s frequencies for much longer and once they get those back, we’re toast.”
“You promised!” Sarah cried out, she whirled on her heel and looked at Kansas her eyes flashing, “You said...”
“Sarah,” Meade said gently, “I found your father inside.”
Sarah looked back over at him, tears threatening to burst the dam in her eyes. “You saw him?”
“I saw what was left after those animals got through with him.” Meade refused to sugarcoat the news - she deserved to know her father was brain dead.
A pair of Coalition guards emerged from the hallway holding their rifles out cautiously. Kansas caught the first one’s rifle under its barrel with his rifle. He swept the rifle up forcing the MPs’ rifle to point upwards at the ceiling. Kansas jammed the butt of his rifle into the MPs’ chest knocking him back. The second MP stunned by his comrade’s quick turn of fortune was quick to recover however as he swept Kansas’s legs out from under him.
Kansas went down with a grunt. Meade shouted, hoping to distract the man before he could take his shot and kill his friend.