Force

by A.R. Rivera

Oh The Irony

  In the light of day, the plain buildings of this strange city called Neutopia are moving with people of every color—normal and unnatural. Honest to God, there are people with purple, pink, and even green skin, along with the obligatory black, white, and brown. Every race and every color.

  I’ve been out of that tower no less than an hour and I'm still having trouble determining the defining feature that sets the unnaturally colored people apart from the normal ones.

  Turning to the human-like android that’s escorting me on this walk through insanity, I ask the burning question. “Why aren’t the popsicle people intermingling with the regular people?”

  The droid actually looks shocked. “Popsicle: a brand of brightly colored frozen desserts composed of —”

  “I know what a Popsicle is. I don’t need explanations for terms I understand. Please, just... never mind.”

  To his credit, the droid shuts up.

  “Now, where can I find a cup of coffee?”

  “Coffee is not allocated at this location.”

  We’re standing in the middle of a park-like complex that adjoins several apartment buildings.

  “Obviously.” I roll my eyes. “There isn’t a barista in sight. At what location might we find this allocation?”

  The whole speaking literal thing is damned tiring. I’d love to rip his head off right now. I can’t deal with stupidity before a caffeine fix.

  The droid recites the name of some street, or possibly a business and directs me to follow him, which I do.

  It’s just me and the droid right now. Rocky was moved to a more suitable recovery area earlier this morning. I wasn’t entirely comfortable with Amora taking him anywhere, but she showed me the way and granted me access.

  I learned how to make the doorways appear. Apparently, it will only work if you’re in their system. I’m not—or I wasn’t—and so I couldn’t get any exits to reveal themselves. I let Amora prick my finger and a few minutes later, all kinds of doorways appeared as I made my way out of the pinnacle apartment.

  The android version of my patriarch is called Origin Two-One-Seven. He—or it—was allocated to be my guide through today’s tour of the inter-workings of Neutopia—the tour that’s supposed to make me more comfortable stealing a non-existent yet invaluable food source from dead people and leaving Rocky in the care of the man that’s ordering me to do it.

  Scrambling up the street beside 217—who must moonlight as an Olympic sprinter by the pace he’s keeping—I gather enough breath to ask him to slow down.

  “Where’s the fire?”

  Origin 217 comes to a sudden halt.

  As I catch my breath, the droids eyes begin to bulge. My mind flashes to my father’s face as Daemon strangled him; the horrible way his eyes protruded. Shaking off the images, I force myself to focus on the robot beside me, watching as the widened, bulging, eyes fill with inhuman light.

  A second later, they shrink back to normal size and dim. 217 speaks. “My sensors do not detect any unapproved fires in this vicinity.”

  “Geez, is that what the freaky eye-thing was about? Your model is way too dramatic. You might want to tell your designers to cool it on the literality’s with the next batch.”

  The droid stares coldly and I can tell that it isn’t computing.

  “I’ll explain. ‘Where’s the fire?’ is a very old expression. It asks a variety of things, mostly meaning, ‘where are you going in such a hurry?’ In this case, I used the expression to convey my dislike for the pace you set. As in, ‘why are you walking so fast that the human you’re supposed to be escorting can barely keep up?’”

  I wait a beat and then repeat the phrase. “Where’s the fire?”

  The android responds. “A phrase defined as curiosity for one’s unknown or unnecessary haste.”

  I nod. “Now, can we continue at a more human pace? I am supposed to be exploring after all.”

  Origin 217 agrees, in the form of allowing me to set our pace and stopping whenever I do, and making no more stupid assumptions. He keeps his commentary limited to directions.

  It feels like I’m never going to get the coffee I’m feening for.

  We’ve gone about ten blocks already and my nose finds nothing to make me think we’re anywhere near a coffee house.

  “Where I’m from, there are coffee shops on every corner.”

  No response.

  Not many other people around, either. I mean, there’s a lot more than I saw last night, but nowhere near as many as LA at any given time of day.

  “Why is everyone dressed the same?” Sure, everybody looks like they’ve been dropped in different vats of Easter egg dye, but they’re all wearing the same blue jumpsuits. Male and female. And I haven’t seen a child since leaving Rocky.

  “It is reporting hour. All citizens are responsible for reporting to their stations in a timely manner to account their contributions.”

  “Contributions to what?”

  “The social order.”

  “What do they contribute?”

  “Their time is contributed in a form of service, for which they are granted tributes.”

  “You mean like a job? Are they on their way to work?”

  “Some say ‘work,’ others call it what it is.”

  “And this work they do, what is it called?”

  “The Contribution Cycle.”

  “So... they all have jobs. That’s good. Do they all have the same job?”

  “No.”

  “What type of job does he have?” I point to a random guy walking up ahead of us. He’s got short black hair and purple skin peeking from the obligatory blue jumpsuit.

  “Electrician.”

  Pointing to another, I ask the same question.

  “Supply clerk.”

  “What does she do?”

  “Jacking Technician.”

  It all sounded pretty normal until now. “‘Jacking?’ Is that, like, a sex thing?”

  The droid doesn’t miss a step. In fact, he nudges my arm, a very human way of alerting me that we should turn a corner. We don’t need to wait to cross the street. There aren’t any cars or bikes. No lighted intersections or walk signals even though everyone is walking.

  My computing companion answers, “Not ‘like a sex thing.’ Sex is not a thing, but an unlawful act. Jacking is a term to describe recreational affixing of human minds to—”

  “Hold the phone.” I stop walking. “Sex is against the law?”

  The droid stares at me. “Confusion. Are you requesting a communication device?”

  “No.” I roll my eyes. Again. “Another expression. Please answer my question: is having sex against the law?” That would explain the lack of children... But even the Outliers had procreation pretty heavily regulated. They went through a council to get approval.

  “No.”

  “When you corrected me you called it an unlawful act.”

  “The act of intercourse is permitted for procreation.”

  “When is it unlawful?”

  “The act of intercourse is illegal when committed without proper requests and permissions.”

  “Why should a person need public permission to do something private?”

  “Doyen cannot allow the population to increase faster than the technology that stabilizes this habitat.”

  “Oh.” I nod, understanding. The world is one giant freezer compartment with no defrost in sight. It would be reckless to let people make babies whenever they wanted.

  Maybe that’s why there were so many pets roaming around outside Citrina’s house. No one could have kids unless they were permitted.

  “But what about Rocky?”

  “What is Rocky?”

  “The human child Doyen is caring for. He lived in the Squalid. The people on that side had many children.”

  “Humans of the Squalid possess the genetic material considered clean enough for breeding.”

  “Okay,” that makes some sense. “But
, what makes a person’s DNA dirty?”

  I’d like to pay attention—I really would—but the droid goes into some long-winded, intricate, explanation that starts with evolution and then moves into some BS about environmental impact, and so I lose interest pretty quickly.

  The weird-ass city of Neutopia looks as if it was designed on grid paper. Every new block is nearly the same as the last. Each section having only four buildings. As I ask more questions of my patriarchal humanoid tour guide, Origin 217, I’m told that one building on each block houses the people who work within the other three buildings. I can’t tell one from the other because the four buildings on each block match the other three—an appalling marketing point for sure.

  Whose got two thumbs and doesn’t want to eat and sleep where he works? This guy.

  Neutopia is a highly structured environment that uses location as well as color-coded clothing to tell one class of worker from the next.

  In the very center of the city, surrounding Doyen’s pinnacle is the place where all the care providers live and work. It’s where Rocky is; where all the hospitals and clinics are. Persons residing in that area wear white robes and since most caregivers are androids, not many real people live there who aren’t plugged into an outlet at night.

  The next neighborhood over, the one with all the plain buildings and giant lighted billboards, is the entertainment district. Everyone who lives there wears blue and works in some kind of occupation where they service others: everything from retail and catering to plumbers and electricians.

  Then there’s Enforcement, the area we’re currently walking through. All peacekeepers are androids and the higher in rank they are the more human they appear to be. This was done on purpose, my guide tells me, to ensure that people trust and respect their leadership. This android must be a high-ranking officer because if he didn’t look so much like my father, it’d be tough to tell him apart from regular people.

  All citizens in the district for Enforcement, like peacekeepers and soldiers, wear gray jumpsuits unless they’re working outside the city where they dress to match the environment. In the snow they wear white, just like the group that attacked the Outlier camp.

  Something about that really bothers me. Neutopia is supposed to be the last city. So the hovercraft had to have been sent by Doyen, yet he doesn’t seem to know what happened out there. But he knew about me and my interactions with the Outliers.

  The next neighborhood we pass through is the farming district. This is the place where every human residing within Neutopia comes to pick up the goods to feed their household, at their assigned time.

  “They have to come every day? Why not once a week?” Seems like an awful lot of trouble.

  “Doyens directive. He is generous and wise. He feeds all people every day.”

  There’s no inflection given to the praise which tells me it’s part of his programming.

  “Where do they keep the coffee?” I ask for the fiftieth time, but my question goes unanswered because it’s drowned out by a scream.

  A woman dressed in the obligatory brown jumpsuit that tells she lives in this farming district is standing in front of a vegetable cart. A pile of tomatoes rocks and splatters to the ground as a man, dressed in the same color-coded jumpsuit, standing on the other side of the pushcart jostles it. I guess trying to knock it over as he stuffs a tomato into his mouth. When she screams, the man turns to run.

  He’s stealing?

  Origin Two-One-Seven bolts toward the pair inhumanly fast. His voice booms through the square we’ve just entered like he’s shouting through a megaphone and the woman stops shouting. The man who was attempting to escape is now stopped about ten feet from where he started.

  Just then, I spot another cart stacked with small glass vials. Each vial contains a black liquid that gives off the most erotic and unmistakable smell. Coffee. Even though what’s happening in the square has captured the attention of everyone in the vicinity, it can’t hold mine.

  “I’d like one, please,” I say to the vendor, but she isn’t paying attention. Everybody is watching the skirmish. So I help myself to two vials and then follow my wayward peacekeeping android as he investigates the tomato incident.

  The woman answers 217’s questions in a quiet voice. She’s upset that her daily gifting of goods is now damaged by the man’s theft and expects the android to compensate her. She’s cute, even in her baggy brown jumpsuit. She looks younger than me but her hands have large dark calluses all over the knuckles.

  The most fascinating part of the scene is the man who ate the one tomato. Because he isn’t moving. At all.

  His feet are planted far apart and half-sunk into the concrete covering the square. His arms are stuck swinging wide as if someone pressed pause in the middle of a movie. Even the tomato juice splattering down his chin has stopped.

  I step closer, still more than an arm’s length away, but close enough to notice the man’s eyes are moving. In fact, they’re wild with fear.

  When 217 steps in to warn me off, I interrupt his orders with a question. “What’s wrong with him?”

  “His actions have triggered the suspension method.”

  “What is a suspension method?”

  “A tool developed for use on criminals who feel their needs supersede everyone else’s.”

  I swear the android gives the man a death glare as he raises his voice for the crowd to hear. “We are all equal.”

  Slowly, 217 turns his head, measuring the watching citizens. “No one is permitted to take more than what they provide for others. The system only works if Doyen is obeyed. You must give to get. Give to live.”

  As he says this, he takes a gray baton from a holster on his waist. Pressing a button along the side of the baton produces a white stick, three feet long.

  Origin 217 continues addressing the crowd. “You will all learn from his mistake.”

  Turning back to the man kept in his frozen state, he raises the long baton. And I am sure he’s going to beat him to death and start to wonder if I stepped in, would I be able to stop him? The guy didn’t rob bank, he ate a tomato. The thief is rail-thin, too, like he desperately needed the food.

  But there isn’t any beating. In fact, the droid doesn’t even swing the baton. He touches the tip of it to man’s back and it’s like he’s pressed play. The man is suddenly moving, dropping down to the ground. He doesn’t attempt to run but instead cowers in fear in front of the droid and me.

  I give him a look that asks, ‘when the hell did I become part of this regime?’

  Well, I am wearing the white jumpsuit Amora ordered me to put on this morning. She wanted me to shower and then change, but I just changed because I couldn’t figure out how to work the shower.

  Two more droids appear from beyond the crowds—the lower ranking kind in helmets. They sweep the man from his crouched pose, walking him into an Orb transport parked nearby.

  I choose this moment to hold up the two vials of black liquid I lifted off the distracted worker at the coffee cart. “I think you’d better pay for these so I don’t end up like that tomato swiper.”

  This is where a human would laugh, scoff, or roll his eyes. But I’m not talking to a human. So I get nothing. The law-abiding citizens of Neutopia, however, get a blanket announcement.

  “This man is a personal guest of Doyen. He will take whatever he needs from whoever he chooses.”

  All are equal, my ass. Taking in the murmurs of the crowd, I know that no one is happy about this announcement of my superior status, but no one questions it.

  Going back to the coffee cart, I ask for three more vials of coffee. After the woman operating the stand shows me which vials contain the strongest brews, I ensure her that today will be my only visit and then apologize if my habit causes her any hardship.

  Her eyes go wide, but she just nods.

  I could do without most things in this place, specifically all things Doyen, but I need my coffee.

  This
is so embarrassing. The noises my body is making are unlike any I’ve ever heard before.

  Staring up at the back of Origin 217, I try once more to make awkward conversation over the sounds of the emergency evacuation of my bowels.

  I’ve never regretted ingesting caffeine, never in my life. Until right now. I don’t think I’ve ever ingested so much at once.

  Thinking of the farmer in the marketplace, I ask, “How does Doyen deal with criminals?”

  217 starts to turn and I throw a hand up to block his mug. “No! Stay facing the other direction.”

  “Contradiction: I am programmed to make eye contact with the humans addressing me.” Thankfully, he doesn’t turn around.

  “I’m ordering you not to look at me while I’m….” Shitting my guts out.

  “Defecating.” 217 finishes for me and I’m torn between laughing and wanting to kick his ass.

  “Doyen deals with all criminals in whichever way he sees fit.”

  Origin 217 insisted on escorting me into the bathroom, saying he was instructed not to let me out of his sight. I’m sure he’s only facing the opposite direction to pacify my human emotions and I’m sure the fact that he is doing so also means that he literally has eyes in the back of his head.

  “Is there is no such thing as privacy anymore?”

  “We are all the same. We have nothing to hide.”

  “My wanting privacy doesn’t mean I have something to hide. It means—in this instance—that I’d like to retain some dignity.”

  I shake my head, feeling my guts gurgle and clench. Sweat breaks out all over and I brace myself for the onslaught of shredding abdominal pain signaling another wave to this never-ending squirt-fest.

  “Could you at least move towards the doorway? I’m sure your secret robot eyes can still spot me from a few more feet away.”

  I can’t believe this place. It’s the ultimate in simplicity: no partitions in the public bathroom—just a row of small, simple toilets and a single wash basin.

  Origin 217 responds with five long strides that take him straight to the blank opening of the restroom area.

  Good-god, the coffee in this place is strong.

  Much more of this mass departure and I’ll be slipping inside out.

  “What does your law say about how Doyen should punish that man from the market?” I ask to cover the telltale sound of my upset stomach.

  “Doyen’s choices are his to make. He is wise and generous. He takes orders from no one.”

  “Does Doyen program you to say all that nice stuff about him?”

  I get no answer to that question.

  Thankfully, my guts go silent too.

  It’s a long walk back to the innermost part of Neutopia. Origin 217 answers most of my questions, all the ones that aren’t related to the character of Doyen.

  But that gets me thinking about Citrina and her family. One of them mentioned Doyen and the tone of the aside made me think that he wasn’t well liked.

  “I’ve heard humans use the word ‘displaced.’ What does that mean?”

  “When a human’s body has past usefulness due to aging or disease, but the mind remains intact, they become available for Displacement—a procedure that removes the essence of that human to a more suitable container.”

  “What is a human being’s essence?”

  “The mind, the will, and all connected emotions.”

  “They’re replaced into android bodies?”

  “Yes.”

  That explains why Quartz looked so young.

  The people of that outer district wore muted greens and gathered for family dinners where everyone talked about the burden of parentage, getting too old to live inside their bodies and the strange benefit of being displaced.

  “That neighborhood beside the Squalid, who lives over there?”

  It was the outermost community, the first one I stumbled upon when I got over the perimeter fence. The people weren’t dressed in brown jumpsuits, like the farmers.

  “That section is for select citizens.”

  “Why or how do they get selected?”

  “Every human born in Neutopia undergoes intelligence testing. Only the most intelligent citizens live in Green. Humans that contribute as record keepers, educators and historians are placed there.”

  “Green is the color code of their contribution?”

  “Yes.”

  Heading back into the blue section of Neutopia, the entertainment and service district, we come across a flashing billboard on the side of a building that advertises a Jacking Depot. I remember 217 using the phrase earlier and ask him what it means.

  “The Jacking Depot is a place where patrons gather to conjoin their human minds with others.”

  “Come again?”

  Origin 217 pauses as if he’s stuck. I fight not to roll my eyes and repeat my question in plain terms. “Could you explain that again? I didn’t understand.”

  “Transmitting cerebral signals allows humans to engage in communal thoughts and fantasies. It is compared to hijacking another human’s brain. One may stand and observe or actively participate to create new realities within each other’s mind.”

  “That sounds… weird.”

  “It is most common. The most popular form of entertainment, using an increasing margin of the participant’s recreational hours.”

  As we pass the Jacking Depot, it doesn’t look like much, but it’s crowded. The Depot is a large room, lined wall to wall with benches. Every bench is filled with people, sitting quietly and wearing visors that cover their eyes.

  “Would you like to participate?” Origin 217 wants to know.

  “I’d like to know more about it.”

  The androids dark eyes brighten with electricity for a scant second before responding. “You must have a connection unit and data storage installed to participate.”

  Images from the Matrix and hard-wired humans used as batteries flash through my mind and I shake my head. “I’ll pass. Just take me back to Doyen.”

  This place is infected with useless rules and weird people with even weirder habits. I’ve seen enough and am beyond ready to get the hell out of here.