The tunnel was packed all the way to the rear, much more so tonight than Beverley had ever seen on previous occasions.
Even though she and Tom had arrived late it wasn’t long before they were pushed and compressed further into the dark, dank underground sewer, one of several that had been sanctioned by the committee. The sewer system had quickly become the last resort for those who were determined not to surrender to the smoking ban, and the stench had proved effective allowing them to avoid detection, so far.
Beverley shivered. The only comfort against the biting cold came from the cigarette they were sharing, that and the heat generated by the other bodies. There were many groups sharing, people passing a cigarette from one to the other. Based on the size of the tunnel, she figured that there had to be several thousand people. With more than fifty much larger venues still undetected, she thought that the movement was still on the increase, despite all efforts by the government to track and eliminate them.
Beverley took another drag on the cigarette. “This is good shit,” she said. “Where did you get it from?”
Tom shrugged and took the cigarette. He inhaled deeply and the glow from the cigarette lit up his face enough for her to see the amount of pleasure he was experiencing. He looked like a kid locked in a pastry shop, someone who can’t believe his good fortune would last forever, and so he has to make the most of it.
It was more than a minute before Tom exhaled and responded.
“Same as all the others,” he said. “Bought it on the black market.”
Cigarettes had been taxed heavily back in the 2015 budget when the government was desperately looking to fund the growing demand on the health services. Governments had always raised a significant portion of their revenue through Sin Taxes, but this time the levies became so onerous that several companies went out of business. Ten years later, those that remained were successfully sued by governments and many had to declare bankruptcy, unable to pay the billions in fines imposed by the courts. It took another five years for the anti-smoking lobby to convince the government that additional legislation was needed, and smoking had been completely banned. The few manufacturers who refused to quit went underground.
Beverley leaned closer to Tom to get a whiff of the smoke that he was exhaling. In the glow of several thousand cigarettes, there was a distinct blue haze overtaking the entire tunnel. The latest trend was the mixing of tobacco with marijuana and this had been well received by those who were against the ban.
At times, Beverley couldn’t figure who was the more addicted of the two of them. She’d come from a family of non-smokers but had picked up the habit more so to rebel against the growing interdiction than from the fulfillment of a craving. Tom had started even before he turned ten. He’d come from a family of smokers and it had been a real challenge for him, especially after they passed the law outlawing the tobacco companies and smoking became a prohibited act, punishable by a fine for the first infraction, rehabilitation for the second, jail for subsequent offences.
“How did you manage to get released?” Tom said.
“It wasn’t easy,” Beverley said. “Son of a bitch Wong put me through the ringer, wanted to know where the latest underground was located, and names of the people who went to them.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Nothing. The new Aromaless cigarettes help. They can’t detect smokers that easily these days.”
“Won’t be long before they come up with something to counter it, though. Must have been a real battle of wills between you and Wong.”
“It was. How did you escape? I thought for sure they had you cornered.”
“I gave them the slip and went down a back alley.”
It had been three days ago when the underground they were in, an abandoned tunnel that had been constructed to connect Centre Island to Toronto was raided by CSASS –the Canadian Squad Against Smoking and Smokers. Beverley and Tom had made their way to the back of the tunnel and escaped by climbing a ladder leading up to a manhole. In the early days of the movement, hundreds of people were picked up easily and it was only after emergency exits were added to every tunnel that flight from the CSASS became possible. But, on this occasion, just as they emerged through the manhole cover, they found the squad waiting for them. She was certain that someone had squealed, not only about the location, but about the emergency exits also. In addition to having to worry about people in the movement squealing to gain favours, they also had to be on guard for vigilantes –armed squads of roving citizens on the lookout for smokers. There were reports circulating about a few smokers being shot on sight.
“You were lucky,” Beverley said.
“I know. It’s getting tougher and tougher to evade them with that heat and smoke equipment they’re using these days.”
The technology had changed radically over the last decade, some of it for better. Sure, diabetes had been virtually eradicated with the introduction of engineered pancreas. Body parts could be bought off the shelf: there were manufactured kidneys, livers, pancreas, all coded with the recipient’s genetic code for implantation. Cancer had decreased by over eighty percent. AIDS and the common cold had been eradicated with the discovery of new antiviral drugs. These were all things that had helped to raise the life span to nearly one hundred and twenty-five years. And people never looked and felt better. Baldness drugs were now available for both men and women. Artificial skin transplants meant a society free of wrinkles. People never suffered the discomfort or embarrassment of dentures –teeth were replaced by implants. But, with the improvement in health had come growing government intrusion in the lives of its citizens, something that the underground movement was formed to combat.
“You can still outrun the best of them,” Beverley said, with a certain amount of admiration.
Tom shook his head. “There’s coming a day, though, when I won’t be able to get away from them.”
Tom had always been able to outrun SAS. He was one of the Bionic athletes, people who had artificial knees, ligaments and muscles. Olympic rules had been relaxed to accommodate them since many athletes worldwide had found ways to utilize the technology. It was at the 2024 Olympics in Cape Town, the first in Africa, that she’d met Tom and they’d started living together a short while after.
Beverley shook her head. It was the uncertainty that got to her most of all; they never knew where it would end. It was like pulling a loose string from a quilt and having no idea about the actual length of the thread.
“I’m so tired,” she said. “I feel like I could sleep for a year. Why can’t they just leave us alone to carry on with our lives?'
She hadn’t been allowed to sleep for two days and nights during Wong’s interrogation…
He’d come into the interrogation room time and again. Just as she was about to nod off, he’d return and wake her with more questions.
“Tell me where the next Smokevention is and I’ll let you go,” Wong said.
He carried around his short, rotund body with an agility that defied his size, bobbing around the room in his uniform and constantly stopping directly in front of her to blow smoke in her face. The irony of what he was doing could hardly escape her: here was the man in charge of eradicating the institution of smoking in Canada, and yet he was using the very act to torture her.
“You know we’re going to get all of you, sooner or later,” Wong said. “Why don’t you make it easy on yourself and tell me what I want to know. I can make it worthwhile for you.”
She was intrigued. “How are you going to do that?”
Another puff of smoke in her face, followed by: “Unlimited cigarettes in payment. You’d never have to worry again about satisfying your craving. Or, we could put you through the program, if you want.”
The program –she’d heard enough of that to know it was the last thing she wanted. Those who participated were pumped full of drugs containing a cocktail of Nicontrolic, Nicofin and Nicototrelief. It either killed you or cured you but the government had refused
to release information and Statistics Canada had been so emasculated as an institution that there was no data available. If CSASS had any doubt that the cure had worked, you were shackled with an electronic monitor that tracked your movements and filtered the air around you, sending back messages to CSASS.
“You have nothing on me,” she said. “You have to let me go.”
Wong sat down across the table and accessed an electronic tablet he’d been toting around. He had a way of parting his lips and opening his mouth wide, and when he did, his even, white teeth were on display. He was obviously not a habitual smoker. He was someone who only took pleasure in it to show that he had the power to do it. Here was a man, she thought, who would actually like going to the dentist, someone who liked the feel of the drill, the shaking, rattling, whirring, buzzing that creates a sensation that he would actually get high on. “Give me more,” would be his thought as he sat in the chair.
“Why are you giving me a hard time? I can take good care of you, if you let me. We have a lot in common, you and me,” Wong said, as he scrolled down the tablet.
“I doubt that very much.”
Wong continued, as if he hadn’t heard her. “We’re both cut from the same cloth, so to speak.”
“What do you mean?”
“I see that your great-grandparents came from Guyana, in South America.”
“So?”
“Mine did too, around the same time, back in the nineteen sixties. They were all coming here to give their children a better life. It’s what we’re trying to do here, now. Why don’t you help us?”
Beverley laughed. “That’s funny. I heard that they left the old country because of a brutal dictatorship, and now we seem to be going down the same road here.”
Wong ignored the remark and looked at his tablet. “Says here that you applied for a child permit twice and you were rejected because you didn’t pass the means test.”
He had to be accessing the government’s central database. What other information did they have on her, she wondered. It was rumored that they knew everything about you these days, right down to your smoking habits. Wong would also know that Tom had been a sperm donor before he was sterilized in his early teens. His sperm was now held in a central bank, monitored and doled out by authorities, to be used in artificial placenta and vitro fertilization, a process that regulated childbirth from conception right down to delivery.
Beverley sniggered. Means Test: it was an oxymoron for a process to determine whether you were fit to be a parent. The Department of Conception developed a dossier of the applicant, no doubt with information from the central database. Based on a number of different factors ranging from your ability to provide for the child to your psychological profile, you were deemed eligible for parenthood or rejected outright, with no explanation provided. The Freedom of Information Act had been abolished long ago and no one could access government information, but Beverley was sure that smoking would have played a major part in the decision.
“I can fix things so that you have that permit,” Wong said.
Beverley shook her head. “No deal. It’s a bit too late for that. Either book me, or let me go.”
Beverley stirred. She’d been sleeping on Tom’s shoulder. The tunnel had grown even more crowded and the noise level had increased substantially. A few people had fallen into the actual sewer and climbed back out with the help of others in the group. Tom was still smoking. She’d thought it was the only one he’d had and was surprised to see another cigarette between his lips. He seemed to have a secret stash that he was not sharing with her, something that was unlike him.
Sooner or later they had to leave and go out again, hoping to escape detection. It was growing much more difficult in the city than the rural areas that were facing a prolonged dry spell. Forest fires had already wiped out thousands of acres of prime forest. The government was unable to detect smokers there, as much as they were unable to control the fires raging out of control.
The tunnels in the city had become the last escape for smokers, and all around she saw nervous people coming to the end of their community cigarette. Tom was no different – he looked like a bird that had grown accustomed to the security of its cage and was fearful that if he left he might meet some unknown peril and not know how to deal with it.
A sudden calm rippled through the entire tunnel. It was like being in the eye of a hurricane.
Everyone stopped what they were doing and listened.
“Do you hear that?” Beverley said.
Tom shook his head. “Don’t hear anything.”
“Yes, it’s coming from the direction of the entrance.”
It was where everyone’s attention was focused.
“You’re imagining things,” he said. ”There’s nothing back there.”
But people had already started to head for the escape tunnel in the rear.
“We should go,” she said.
“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” Tom said. “Wait here with me. I will take good care of you.”
Wong had told her the same thing: that he would take good care of her.
She ran with the others. The last time she looked back, Tom was calmly puffing away on his cigarette, looking as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
THE END
THE FAMILY TRADITION
by Kirstin Pulioff
https://www.kirstinpulioff.com/
A World of Possibility Page 22