‘What about the old lady?’ Paxton jerks his head at Catherine, who is tapping at her seatback display. She stops when she notices us looking at her.
‘Does this thing have solitaire?’ she asks. ‘Or gin rummy?’
Paxton shakes his head. ‘Obviously a real criminal mastermind.’
‘She could have been, once,’ I say. ‘Criminals get old and senile too, you know.’
‘Nia.’ Sandra’s voice is clipped. ‘You obviously don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Oh come on,’ Nia says. ‘You said it yourself. You’re high profile, practically a celebrity. A celebrity criminal. If Cato Bell can prove that an everyday criminal can make better decisions, then that’s interesting, to a certain kind of academic. But if someone like you can make better decisions, then that makes headlines. Everyone is suddenly paying attention.’
‘I do not have to stand here and listen to this slander—’ Sandra starts, but she stops when text appears on the seatback displays.
You are in a moving vehicle. Before you the road forks. Ahead, there is one human. On the side road there is another human. You can press a button and the bus will turn off onto the side road. The bus will not stop.
Please select two passengers to participate.
‘No,’ I say, before I’ve finished reading. ‘Absolutely not.’
I look around, and the others are nodding, all except Catherine, who is looking confused again.
Paxton kneels down next to her. ‘Catherine,’ he says, his voice kind but firm. ‘Please don’t touch your display, okay?’
Catherine blinks and nods. ‘Okay, love.’
Finally, we all agree.
We will not be participating.
‘They must be panicking,’ Nia says. ‘The surveillance feed is down. They’re trying to scare us.’
A timer appears on the display, counting down to zero. The skin under my wristband starts to itch, but I can’t tell if it’s just because of my own anxiety.
‘Are we sure—’ Sandra begins, but Paxton cuts her off.
‘Nobody else is going to die today.’
The timer reaches zero. There’s a pause, and more text flashes up.
Completion of this problem will be rewarded with lunch.
‘Nice try, dude,’ says Paxton.
After a few more minutes, the seatback displays go blank. Nia pulls up the Erasure Initiative document again and keeps reading.
‘Is it permanent?’ I ask her. ‘The memory-wiping?’
Nia shakes her head. ‘No. It says here that if the wristband is removed, it wears off in a day or two. But the eventual plan would be to make an implant – something you couldn’t get rid of. So it would be permanent then.’
‘That’s monstrous.’ Sandra shakes her head. ‘Much crueller then prison.’
‘Is it?’ Nia shrugs. ‘I don’t know. Surely most people would jump at a real opportunity to change. A real second chance.’
‘But you’re separating people from their communities. Their families.’
‘Prison does that too.’
‘Not permanently. Prisoners are allowed to keep their memories. They’re allowed to speak to their loved ones on the phone, see them during visitation, and return to their homes once their sentence has been served.’
‘But if you go home, you fall into the same patterns. It’s a cycle.’
Sandra raises her eyebrows. ‘You think you’re a criminal. Do you want to stay like this forever?’
Nia hesitates. Sandra has hit a nerve. None of us want to get rebooted. We’ve each only just started to cling to a fragile sense of self that we’ve pieced together over the last few days – the idea of being totally adrift in that fog is terrifying.
‘It wouldn’t be forever,’ Nia says. ‘You’d make a new life. New memories.’
We lapse into silence. The seatback displays don’t come to life again.
‘What now?’ Paxton asks.
‘We wait,’ Nia responds.
‘We do nothing? What if they don’t give us more food and water?’
‘We can refill our water bottles in the bathroom.’
‘What about food?’
‘A human can go for three weeks without food,’ Edwin reports.
Sandra blanches. ‘I’m going to need a fresh pad before then. And a shower.’
‘It won’t take that long,’ I say, trying to keep my voice confident.
‘What about the wristbands?’ Sandra asks. ‘Won’t they burn us, like they did with Riley?’
My wrist starts to itch again.
‘I’m so hungry,’ says Catherine in a small voice.
Sandra looks over at me and Nia. Nia shakes her head. ‘Stay firm,’ she murmurs.
Paxton sits down with Catherine and tries to distract her with I-spy. He is patient and kind with her, and I can imagine him being like that with his own grandmother. He’s a good guy. Everyone has been kind to Catherine, except me. Making sure she gets a sandwich and water. Taking the time to explain things to her, even though she almost always forgets straight away. Even Nia has refrained from showing active hostility to Catherine, which is her equivalent of friendliness.
Not me, though. I’ve been rude and petty. All I’ve done is snapped at her and ignored her.
I look over at her face, the dry papery skin sunken from lack of food and water. She could die here.
We could all die.
Something isn’t right. It’s been too easy. We’ve figured it all out, every piece of the puzzle. The files have all been there, in order, ready for us to find. Were we supposed to find them? Was Nia supposed to hack into the network?
And why is the bus still going? Why hasn’t Cato Bell turned up to reboot us?
I feel Riley’s wristband poking into the soft flesh of my belly and glance at the seatback displays.
I notice Edwin in his seat, staring out over the ocean. I sit down beside him.
‘I wonder if Cato Bell’s here, on the island,’ Edwin says, trying and failing to keep the eagerness out of his voice.
‘You’re a real fanboy, aren’t you?’
Edwin spreads his hands. ‘It appears that way,’ he says. ‘Although of course I don’t know why.’
‘Do you think she’s here?’
‘I want to say yes.’ Edwin grins ruefully. ‘But if I’m being completely honest, I don’t think she is. She’s such an important and busy person. She doesn’t have time to sit and watch us all day from a bunker on a remote island. I would imagine there’s a small team of researchers here, who are reporting back to her.’
I gaze at him, my pulse quickening. ‘So you think someone on this island is transmitting information back to civilisation?’
He nods. ‘It would make sense.’
‘That’s great news,’ I say. ‘Nia told me that the network we’re on now is closed – the server, the displays. That they’re not connected to the internet in any way. But if there’s a team of researchers nearby, then there’s another network on the island. One that is online, reporting back to Cato Bell.’
Edwin looks back at me. ‘You think we could call for help. Announce our presence.’
I nod. ‘We have to find out where the research team is hiding.’
‘But …’ He hesitates. ‘Suppose we do that – we disable the researchers and send out a distress call. What if no one comes? Suppose nobody cares about a motley assortment of criminals stranded on an island?’
‘Because of us,’ I tell him. ‘You and me. We’re the odd ones out. Plus Catherine, I guess, unless she has an unexpected dark past. Why are we here? We’re not criminals. You weren’t even involved in the whole Russia thing. What are we doing here?’
‘I don’t know.’ Edwin picks at his cuticles, which are ragged and bleeding. ‘I dearly want to believe we’re innocent bystanders, but it doesn’t seem logical.’
‘Maybe we’re like a control group?’ I suggest.
He shakes his head. ‘Why give me the wrong identit
y?’
A thought occurs to me. What if I’m a criminal by omission? What if I overheard Sandra talking treason, but didn’t go to the police? Is that a crime? Could I be convicted for my silence? What if the Blue Fairy wish was a threat – a warning for me to stay quiet?
It makes sense. And it’s a relief, too. I was scared. Intimidated. My crime wasn’t a real crime. I didn’t hurt anyone. I’m not a bad person.
I can feel Riley’s wristband digging into my stomach. Why did I take it? If Nia is right and the surveillance feed has been cut, then why do I still have it shoved down the front of my pants as though I’m trying to hide something?
‘How long do we wait?’ Sandra’s tone is snippy, but it’s a good question. We were so intent on cutting the feed, like that would be the solution to our problems. Now what?
‘Someone will come eventually,’ Nia insists. ‘We can try to negotiate.’
‘And what happens if they won’t negotiate?’
Paxton punches a fist into his hand suggestively. ‘We convince them.’
There’s something tugging at my mind. At first I think it’s an old memory emerging from the fog. But this is different. It’s like I’m missing something. Something important. I pull the blue thread from my back pocket and tie a knot.
I’m not sure there’s been a point to any of this.
‘Perhaps Nia could try to open the door of the bus, so we can disembark,’ Edwin suggests.
‘We can’t escape,’ Sandra argues. ‘We’re on an island.’
‘But we could send out an SOS.’
‘Will anyone listen?’
Edwin looks pointedly at me.
An island. Something is tugging at my memory. A recent memory.
I tie another knot.
An island.
I hear Catherine’s trembly old voice in my head. I hope it’s Fiji. I always wanted to go to Fiji. My friend Janice went, once, for her honeymoon. She brought me back a bowl made from a coconut shell, carved to look like a turtle.
I should have taken more time with Catherine. I should have sat with her. Talked to her. Then maybe I would have realised earlier.
I pull the knotted thread tight between my hands.
At the time it didn’t even register. The boring ramblings of an old lady. I never wondered how she could remember her friend’s honeymoon, or the turtle bowl.
She shouldn’t have been able to remember anything.
The knotted thread snaps.
‘Oh shit,’ I say out loud.
‘What is it?’ Nia looks at me, one eyebrow raised.
‘It doesn’t matter that you turned off the surveillance,’ I tell her. ‘All of it, the hacking, the files. None of it matters. She wanted us to find that stuff. That’s why it’s all been so easy. She left us a trail of breadcrumbs to follow.’
‘She?’
‘Cato Bell. She’s watching us.’
Nia grins. ‘Not anymore. I cut the feed, remember? There’s no signal leaving this bus.’
‘It doesn’t matter. She can see us.’
‘CC, it’s not possible.’
Why does she call me that? We don’t have a cute nicknames kind of relationship. Unless maybe we did … once. I shake my head. Now isn’t the time.
Paxton puts his hand on my shoulder. ‘What’s going on?’ he asks.
Sandra turns to watch me too.
‘She can see us,’ I repeat.
Nia sighs in frustration. ‘How?’
I take a deep breath. ‘Because Cato Bell is on the bus.’
I turn to look at Catherine, who is staring straight back at me in a very un-Catherineish way.
BELL INDUSTRIES HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL
THE ERASURE INITIATIVE
Meet Riley. He’s 24 years old, and he’s in prison.
Riley was one of four kids raised by a single mother. He never knew his father, who was incarcerated for armed robbery.* Riley had an unhappy and unremarkable childhood. His mother worked two jobs, leaving Riley and his brothers alone. They sporadically attended their local school, which was underfunded and underresourced, a breeding ground for delinquency.
It didn’t take long for Riley to fall in with a bad crowd of local youths, and by the time he was thirteen, he was in juvenile detention. Released at the age of sixteen, he struggled to find gainful employment, and slid back into his old ways, taking on small jobs for a local crime syndicate. Before long, Riley found himself in trouble.
Riley thought he was conducting a simple drug-related transaction, not aware that his customer was an undercover police officer. He pulled out a gun in a show of bravado, and the officer revealed himself. Riley panicked, and pulled the trigger. The officer died before paramedics arrived on the scene.
Riley will spend the rest of his life in prison. He will have no access to education programs, drug and alcohol rehabilitation services, mental health support, counselling, vocational programs, furlough or conjugal visits. He can’t escape from the crimes of his own father, from his poverty-stricken childhood, from his teenage mistakes.
PRISONS DON’T WORK.
As a form of retribution, they don’t benefit victims or their families.**
As a form of deterrence, prisons don’t work. Despite mandatory sentencing and ‘tough on crime’ legislation, the rates of crime, incarceration and recidivism remain virtually unchanged over the past two decades.
As a form of rehabs Offenders will be fitted with a Neilitation, prisons don’t work. Prisoners emerge more vulnerable, aggressive and prone to committing violent crimes than they were when they went in.
Bell Industries proposes a radical overhaul of the criminal justice system. Under our program, sentencing laws will divert offenders down one of three paths.
1. Permanent incarceration
This path is for the rare offenders who are beyond rehabilitation. They will be incarcerated in a Bell Industries facility that will use the neural processing capacity of the offenders for data storage, reducing the cost of incarceration.
2. Rehab
An expanded, virtualised healthcare system, where offenders can access top quality AI health specialists in exchange for a small portion of their neural processing power.
3. The Erasure Initiative
Offenders will be fitted with a NeuroBell – a neurotransmission device which alters cholinergic synaptic transmission through postsynaptic actions, inhibiting acetylcholinesterase and changing transmission across synapses in the brain. This effectively takes control of dopamine receptors to erase the offender’s autobiographical memory, removing them from the seemingly one-way track that they’ve been placed on due to personal circumstances and upbringing. The NeuroBell is currently operable in a removable wristband, but we are developing a subdermal implant that can be used for a more permanent solution.
Once the NeuroBell has been fitted, felons will be relocated in order to avoid any potentially upsetting and confusing contact with family. Temporary housing and employment will be provided until each offender can establish a life for themselves. The relocation program will help to repopulate our dying rural towns, as well as allowing these people to become contributing members of society.
Offenders will be monitored through the NeuroBell, which also provides tracking data, and an immobilisation function should an individual need to be restrained.
We are currently undergoing trials of the NeuroBell, and look forward to working with you further.
As always, the mission of Bell Industries is to make the world a better place. We hope that you will help us.
_______________
* Having a parent in prison makes a child six times more likely to commit a crime.
** If anything, victims are punished along with the rest of the population, because the prison industrial complex costs taxpayers over $50 billion each year – ten to fifteen times more than we spend on education.
13
DAY 4
16:50
‘You’re Cato Bell,’ I say.
/>
Catherine lets out a sigh. ‘You meddling kids,’ she says, and her voice is totally different. The aged warble is gone; instead her voice is deep and smooth. Confident.
Even her posture has changed. She doesn’t look old and frail anymore. Her shoulders square, her chin lifts, and suddenly she’s fifteen years younger.
‘No way,’ says Nia.
Sandra charges forward and grabs the woman we thought was Catherine roughly by the shoulders. ‘Where is my baby?’ she says through clenched teeth.
‘She’s fine,’ Cato Bell replies, unperturbed. ‘She’s being raised by her father. He had no idea about everything that was going on with you and Paxton. Her name is Honour, by the way. A last-ditch attempt on your behalf to convince voters and judges of your innocence.’
Sandra’s eyes narrow to slits. ‘You’ll pay for this. People will notice I’m gone. They’ll be looking for me.’
‘Sandra, nobody is looking for you. Everyone thinks you’re in jail.’
‘You’re lying. I am not a criminal.’
‘You are arguably the worst criminal here. You laundered money, you conspired to commit treason, you attempted to rig an election. And your tax returns …’ Cato Bell blows air through her cheeks.
‘I’ve been framed.’
‘You confessed.’
‘But the blue shirts …’ It’s Paxton, frowning. ‘The blue shirts mean we’re innocent.’
‘The blue shirts mean nothing at all. Shirts were assigned randomly at the beginning of the experiment.’
She’s been messing with us this whole time. Presenting us with puzzles and clues and red herrings to keep us busy.
Paxton looks down at his shirt, then back at Cato. ‘So the red shirts aren’t criminals?’
‘You’re all criminals,’ Cato says. ‘How else do you think I got you to sign those consent forms? You each made a deal. Participate in my experiment, get a reduced sentence and a guaranteed spot in one of the friendlier, cosier prisons. It’s a good deal.’
I’m not a criminal. I withheld information, because I was afraid for my life. That doesn’t make me a criminal. Cato Bell is right. Our justice system is broken.
The Erasure Initiative Page 15