He bowed his head as a final goodbye, and they parted company.
On the platform, the breeze paused. The heat of the day broke through her black cassock for the first time, baking her under the thick cloth. She opened her eyes and looked down at the duffel bag at her feet. Everything she owned was in the bag—some books, spare clothing, a few morsels of food leftover from her hike through the forest. She bent down, unzipped the bag, and removed a book. The cloth cover was worn from years of use, its edges frayed, the gold on the embossed lettering now a dull yellow. She ran her fingers over the title—Order of the Coppice, A Brief History. It had been the first thing she’d received when she arrived at the Pupil’s School. It was meant to give her a background of her new life, to bring her some peace when she thought of the past. She preferred to think of it as her locomotion into the future. It gave her a base of understanding about who she was and what she’d ultimately become.
She turned to the first page.
Coppicing is an ancient practice used to manage woodlands. It takes advantage of a tree’s natural capacity to grow shoots from a cleanly cut stump. Felling a tree at or near ground level encourages the tree to start anew with several infant shoots growing from the stump. These new shoots exploit the original tree’s well-established root system.
In this manner, forest harvesters grow many trees from one. The mother tree is sacrificed to bear her sons and daughters who will grow quicker and straighter to fill the space she left behind. The shoots, when ready, are harvested like their mother to make room for more of their brothers and sisters. On and on the cycle goes.
In 1982, the wisest and most prominent leaders of the time created the Order of the Coppice. They tasked the Order with practicing this ancient art in a new setting and with new subjects. Society itself became the mother tree. Her people became the shoots. The Order became the harvesters.
What began as a social, legal, and political experiment of sorts, the Order has blossomed into an institution without which our society could not function. Economies have flourished, crime rates plummeted, culture has been enriched. Studies show that without the Order …
Movement in Francesca’s peripheral vision caught her attention. Squinting down the length of rail to her right she saw it. Sunlight glanced off the windshield of the train, still miles away but moving fast. For a moment, she forgot to breathe. Her heart beat noticeably harder.
As the train coasted silently toward Francesca, she thought about what these next steps of her journey meant. She was trading one life for another. The first life had been intended to prepare her for the next one. But had it?
The train slid to a stop with a quiet bump followed by a low hiss. In front of Francesca, the doors opened. Thus began her apprenticeship, after which she would transition to the third and final phase of her life as a full Member of the Order of the Coppice; the phase that would end in her mandatory, self-inflicted death.
* * *
The prison train’s boarding doors, inches from Ken’s nose, came abreast of the small square platform outside. His stomach twisted as awareness of who was on the platform hit him like a punch in the gut.
Watching the platform come into view several minutes ago, he assumed they were picking up or dropping off a maintenance crew. As the lone figure materialized, clearly a woman whose blonde hair shone bright in the harsh sun, he grew confused. Was she a crew of one out here working on the track alone, out here in the wilderness?
When the train stopped, he knew exactly who she was. Rather, he knew what she was.
He had never seen a Tapper up close. As the train halted with a silent hitch, she was a foot away from him, just on the other side of the glass. The woman’s dark eyes were warm but hard and didn’t flinch as Ken stared into them with bewilderment. He felt them bore into him, slicing him up into his essential parts, dissecting him, examining, and judging him.
Ken stood wide-eyed as the doors gave a quiet ding and slid open. He didn’t move. He couldn’t move. Too much had happened to him today, too many new things shocked his system and now this.
A death bringer here, right in front of him. Panic bloomed in his guts and spread down every vein until it enveloped him. His mind spun. Was she here to execute someone on the train? Did they kill in public? Was she here for him? What if she touched him? Could they kill with a single touch? Of course, they could, he thought, that’s why they called them Tappers.
“Excuse me,” she said.
The Tapper spoke in a low, calm voice. Unnervingly calm. So much so, Ken’s senses snapped back to him in a flash. He jumped aside to let her pass. Without another word, she entered and took an empty seat near the front.
The doors hissed closed once more, and the train sped off toward its only other stop—the Keep.
Ken’s eyes found Muntz across the car standing at his normal station. Muntz stared back. He wasn’t laughing this time and his face had lost a little of its color. With a knowing nod to Ken, Muntz turned to walk the aisle and converse with the passengers.
4
The Mentor
The train crested a small rise and made a long, sweeping turn above the sprawling forest of trees. Several minutes had passed since she’d taken her seat near the window and Francesca could still feel the eyes of the other passengers watching her. Sideways glances, incognito peering over the edges of tablets, outright glaring. One turn of her head toward the onlookers seemed to extinguish most of the rubber-necking. She appreciated their curiosity. Most prison workers who weren’t guards would rarely glimpse a Member of the Order, but she would not allow herself to be gawked at like an animal at the zoo.
She gazed out the window into nothingness. So much was behind her now. So much in front of her. The train was the bridge and she was likely never to board it again on anything other than Order business.
From some distance away, Francesca saw the dark monolith break the horizon and grow steadily in size as they sped toward it. After a life spent in the austere Pupil’s School of the Order tucked away in an unreachable part of the forest, the prison looked enormous, larger than anything she could imagine. She knew it was not as large as most of the skyscrapers in the cities, but its significance far outstripped the physical space it occupied.
The Regional Corrections Center, known to the Order as the Coppice, known to most others as the Keep, had an ash gray shell almost totally featureless. Only two things marked its exterior. Around its top rim, a single row of identical square windows circled the building like crown jewels atop a faceless head. And where the dark exterior met the earth, a bright archway, two stories high, appeared like an open maw.
From the archway, the maglev rail stretched toward them and beyond to the city as the only physical connection between the two. Francesca and the other passengers were heading into the archway, into the prison’s one and only exit.
The maw swallowed the train and its riders as they coasted silently into the Coppice’s depths.
Francesca thought it was fitting as most of the people on this train would never leave their new home, herself included. They were swallowed, digested, and metabolized; their energy reallocated.
Just before entering the maw, Francesca craned her neck to look up at the Coppice. It was hard to guess at its true size, but she knew its specifications by heart. Learning about the physical structure had been almost as important as learning her purpose within it.
“An artist,” her teachers had told her, “must know the brush, the paint, the canvas as well as they know the strokes they will make and the beauty they will produce. They are extensions of the artist, not tools.
“This is true for you, too,” the teacher continued. “The Coppice is as much a part of you, as you are of it. It is a living, breathing animal. Its physical nature must be known and intimately understood if you are to properly perform your function within it.”
The layout of the building and all its floors, the intricacies of the mechanical and electrical systems, and all the general proc
esses and procedures for its inmates had been objects of her studies for years. She would not be where she is now had she not committed all of it to memory long ago.
The train began to slow while she pondered on the word so often used by her teachers to describe her new life as an Apprentice Member: function. Her teachers had always used that word coupled with others like “sacred” and “honored” and “noble” to describe what Members of the Order did. It was equal parts spiritual and mechanical.
The Coppice was a body ridding itself of diseased, dying, or useless cells, but also a world where the chosen few ushered its unworthy inhabitants into the beyond. Selection and judgment had been reserved for those who stood higher than the rest.
Was she higher than the rest? After all, she was chosen so young, how could they possibly know she was special? And when was she ever given the option?
The bright white lights of the depot poured into her car and she shook her head sharply; the doubts and questions were gone. Her mind was as clear as it had been before boarding the train this morning. The next phase in her life had already begun and it would not benefit anyone to look back into the past and ask questions. Forward was her path now.
Her car slid past a large, empty platform packed with guards in tactical gray uniforms wielding non-lethal batons. The floor of the massive inmate debarkation area was painted with wide black lines crossing the width of the floor; a guard on each end. Doors on the far side, she knew, led to processing—identification tattoos, uniforms, and chip implants. This is also where the new inmates would have their cerebral signatures recorded and logged, assisting with round the clock tracking and identification.
Everything about the prisoner debarkation area was foreboding—the ceiling was low, the lights were bright white, almost blue, flickering intermittently to the point that looking directly at them was disorienting. Other than the black stripes on the floor, every surface was painted gray and appeared not quite clean. A cold feeling passed over her as she and the other passengers in the first car passed the large room.
Just as a wide concrete barrier flew past the nose of the train separating prisoner debarkation from the visitor’s platform, she glimpsed at least five Members stationed around the prisoner debarkation area.
Dressed in the traditional black cassock, the Members gave the impression of being casual observers but exuded a presence of strength and purpose easy for her to feel even on the train. She had always been told, “be a part and apart.” But she had never quite understood until now.
Seeing the men and women of the Order standing around that huge, brightly lit room, she finally, truly understood what it meant. They were unmistakable. You couldn’t not see them, but you would walk right past them and not think twice about it. This she realized was the only way for them to effectively perform their function. They observe their charges in all aspects of prison life. This must be done on an intimate level and therefore, the only way was to be a part and apart. Otherwise, she knew, their judgment would be inaccurate and unfocused.
Their purpose was to judge the individual as a whole. Only then could a Member properly determine the inmate’s fate. Only then could they grant life or take it.
The barrier passed. In a moment the inmates would be welcomed to their new home.
The train stopped and the passengers in Francesca’s car began to disembark. She stayed in her seat wanting to be the last one off the train. She wanted to watch.
She knew her Mentor would be here and she wanted to see him before he saw her. The workers crowded on the platform for a moment, naturally forming into three lines to pass through the Coppice’s secure entry points leaving the platform, beyond which a large bank of elevators would take them to their duty stations.
The lines crossed the platform intermingling with new passengers waiting to board the now departing train, their shift just ended.
Through the crowd, against the far wall, she saw him. There was no doubt who he was or why he was here. No other Members were on the platform. They rarely were, she assumed.
He stood stock still, more like a fixture than a sentient being. Hands behind his back and his head cocked slightly to one side, he stared at her through the crowd. She stared back with equal intensity, although for different reasons.
With a snap of the mind and body, she stood and exited the train.
She traversed the wide platform with long steps and approached the man that was to be her Mentor. He stared unmoving, as she came nearer.
He was assessing her even now, she thought.
He had black hair with well-formed tear-drop shaped gray spots on his temples, the points stretching toward the back of his head. Francesca thought they could easily be mistaken for an extra set of eyes.
His face, drawn, waxy, and clean shaven, held light eyes containing an energy that would have given the impression of vigor and youth, had they not been sunken in proud sockets, surrounded by deeply etched wrinkles, and topped with a furrowed brow.
She stopped in front of him.
“Francesca?” he asked, parting his lips only enough to let the air carrying the words past them.
“Yes.”
“I am Brother Rudolfo. I am to be your Mentor.” He spoke evenly, completely neutral and robotic.
“It is a pleasure to meet you, Brother Rudolfo,” she said bowing her head slightly. “I’m honored to …”
“The Member Principal would like to meet you. We should be on our way.”
Brother Rudolfo turned and walked toward a nondescript gray door in a wall to their right. Francesca followed, half-jogging to keep up with his long strides.
5
Martin Aubrey
May 5, 2043
Martin Aubrey woke from a long nap, his second of the day. Rubbing his eyes and scratching at his temples, he tried to revive his groggy brain. Cracking his eyelids, he turned away from the sun pouring in through the cheap blinds. Beeps behind him, the constant low hum from the vents overhead, and the sterile air all reminded him where he was. Still in the hospital. For one sweet moment, just after his mind awoke from its slumber, he thought he’d fallen asleep at home.
No such luck, he thought. Still here.
Many patients at the hospital had to adjust to life in the waking world; he had to remember what it was like to sleep again. Added to that, he’d never been much of a napper. But his doctors at the hospital wouldn’t allow him his daily dose of Zentransa, so sleep assaulted him with a vengeance.
“For a man in your condition, you need real sleep,” the doctor had told him.
He had to admit to himself that he had been in particularly bad shape when he first arrived at the Metropolitan Memorial Hospital. He’d been shot, beaten, and blown up by a group of terrorists guilty of killing scores of innocent people in the city of New Aberdeen, Maryland. In the end, he’d gotten the better of them; they were dead and he was alive. But days of recovery later he still felt terrible. Aches and soreness plagued his body. The spot where the bullet entered his leg was tender and burned and itched twenty-four hours a day thanks to the implant that was now healing him. His head pounded from the blast that killed the leader of the terrorists; the blast that detonated a few feet from his own head.
Aubrey knew full well that his doctor regularly worked seventy-two-hour shifts with no sleep all thanks to that tiny pink pill he now refused to give Aubrey. All the doctors and nurses were on Z. Sickness didn’t sleep and neither would they; Zentransa was just another perk of the job. Eliminate sleep with the Z pill and doctors treat more people, save more lives, bill more patients, bring in more revenue.
Aubrey could overlook the doctor’s hypocrisy, however, if becoming a sleeper again meant he could leave the hospital sooner rather than later.
Between no Z pill and the plethora of medications they were giving him, he had slipped into the bad habit of napping twice a day on top of a full night’s sleep every night. He felt like all he had done was sleep since he woke up in his hospital bed four days
ago. It had been seven days since the firefight that put him down and nearly killed him.
The anti-anxiety meds and mood stabilizers they pumped into him helped him sleep by keeping most of the nightmares at bay—one benefit of never sleeping was the convenient lack of nightmares that haunted someone like Aubrey. Years of fighting overseas with the Marines and battling criminals on the streets as a cop stuck with you, in a bad way. Worst of all were the mistakes that cost others their lives. One mistake, the one that resulted in Aubrey leaving the police, tortured him most frequently. The meds worked mostly but the dreams came now and then—faceless enemies running around him, his legs immobile, his weapon unusable, the faces from his past—and he’d find himself sitting upright in bed drenched in sweat.
Before the firefight that landed him in the hospital, he’d helped the Metro PD find the terrorists he’d fought and, if it wasn’t for Aubrey, the bad guys would have detonated a small mountain of explosives adding hundreds more to the death toll. The police would never admit to his being there. The Chief of Police made sure everyone knew that her men and women, the full-time cops, were responsible and no one else.
Aubrey was working for the police on a volunteer basis only after giving the investigative team their first real lead, which impressed a senior officer on the force. The fact that Aubrey had once been a cop himself had helped as well. The terrorists, who went by the moniker One Front for the People or OFP, had claimed responsibility for seven deadly bombings and a string of child poisonings. The poisonings, dubbed Boarding School Syndrome, or BSS, left at least four children in a perpetual state of sleep. No one knew how OFP was making the kids sick, all anyone knew was why they were doing it. The victims were children of prominent citizens with connections to Ventana, Inc., the makers of Zentransa. OFP’s goal was the eradication of the Zentransa pill, anyone associated with its propagation, and anyone who used it. The Z pill, according to them, was a destabilizing wedge in society, a disease which had to be snuffed out.
Executioner's Lament Page 3