“Surely, you – Senator Tyler – don’t mean —?”
“No, Rod, I mean every word of it. The President does have the right to issue executive orders. But for him to unilaterally issue an order requiring every American citizen to accept an electronic implant means the end of what little freedom Americans in this country still now have. And I think his executive order is one worth fighting against.”
Maybe everybody fell in love with Senator Tyler because they saw the fighter in him. Nobody could remember the last time a government official cared one whit about what happened to the people he was supposed to represent after they’d voted him into office. Over the last little while, Long Wait Prison had seen an awful lot of Capitol Hill’s rabble arrive for the booty call on the first floor. If those guys were having sex with drugged-up, unconsenting minors here at Long Wait, they were liars, thugs, and bad guys. It was that simple. By summer of 2045, I had a written list of senators and congressman who had been coming to Long Wait. That list was so long I could wipe my butt with it for a year and still have enough left over to blow my nose until next Spring.
I once asked Bobby and Elton if ECPAP could verify the visits of all those congressmen. They told me that they were working on that. But it seemed to them at the time that ECPAP was acting quirky and refused to allow electronic access to that particular data. Neither of them knew why. It seemed that, one day, ECPAP just jumped up and said, “You can’t have that.”
Three months later, we got the news. “Chips Ahoy!” is what Bobby said when he heard the news that the president’s executive order for chip implants was moving ahead unchallenged. Senator Kevin Tyler, in spite of having the highest popularity rating of anyone on Capitol Hill, had been marginalized. Not only that, but several of his fellow senators went to work smearing his name. They accused Senator Tyler of embezzlement, wire and securities fraud, graft, extortion – just about anything they could find having to do with supposedly ill-gotten booty. The investigations didn’t produce a single strand of evidence. But that didn’t matter. Another investigation was opened up, and a full-time prosecutor was assigned to look into issues associated with Senator Tyler’s vast estate. Never mind that no proof of any crime existed, the prosecutor would find one, even if it were something as small as an unreported dividend on last year’s taxes.
All of us at Long Wait, including every Boney and every lackey in Administration, stood in line to receive a government-mandated implant. And let me tell you, getting that implant was the most painful thing any of us had ever experienced in our entire lives. No need for the details. But I will say this: the chip was about as large around as a dime, went through your navel, and attached itself to the back of your navel with hooks and barbs. Every person at Long Wait lay in bed for two days straight after the ordeal, writhing in pain. Boneys included. That would’ve been as good a time as any to escape – and I’m sure it crossed everyone’s mind. But an escape at the cost of a torn and lacerated belly button with fatal consequences wasn’t very attractive. So we all opted to lie on our beds in our rooms and bleed on our sheets.
2045 marched into the history books like every year had before it, each day like a turned page in a horror novel. Long Wait’s prostitution business got bigger every year, as did the Seeds for the Future Program. The best we could do with the girls being raped was hand them a Bible, pray with them, and be there for them after their drugs wore off. And people were getting beaten, too. Beaten because they’d been caught trying to compromise their implants – or they’d forgotten they had them, and they did something stupid, like stealing or trying to sneak into Administration. Some of those kids just vanished, and nobody noticed them missing until a few weeks later when someone started talking about so-and-so and you-know-who. And it was also about the time the first of several people here at Long Wait hit that magic age of thirty. Some of them ended up in Administration, if you can believe that. Others vanished.
On December twentieth of that year, Bobby and Elton kind of vanished. too. April and I hadn’t heard from them in a week, and we started worrying. That was also the same week Warden Neal had decided to disable the texting features on the tablets so none of us could communicate with each other. But we saw Bobby and Elton two weeks later, and April and I breathed again.
“You won’t be seeing me for a while,” Bobby told us early one morning while helping us with breakfast. “I’m going dark.”
I chuckled when I heard him say it. April heard me, and she shot me an evil look. I knew Bobby pretty well by that time. “Going dark, huh?” I said. “Or do you mean darker?”
Bobby grinned and shook his head. “You know me,” he said. “Or maybe you really don’t. I’ll have ECPAP done soon. I won’t be back up here very often. I trust you’ll have my meals sent down to me. Could you do that?”
That didn’t sound like the Bobby I had known over the last few years. He looked tired and sounded quieter than usual. Almost defeated. I knew then that something was up. How bad it was, I didn’t know, and I suppose Bobby wouldn’t have told me if I’d asked. The boy was Twenty-six now, a grown man. I figured he knew what he had to do and I respected that. But I also told him he had only four years left. But he didn’t hear me say that – or he acted like he didn’t hear it.
“Promise me, Shorty,” he said. And when he said it, April looked up like she’d seen a ghost. “Watch out for April. She doesn’t go to the first floor for any reason, you hear me? If I find out anything bad is going to happen, I’ll get word to you through the older-style channels.”
I knew what he meant when he’d said “the older-style channels”. That just meant he’d hide a note in the Garbage Droid. Seems like DEAD had designed their droids for just such an eventuality. Of course, they never told us about that. We had to figure it all out on our own.
After breakfast that morning, Bobby, Elton, April, and I spent a few minutes together. But those minutes disappeared quickly, especially since April was in tears and hanging all over Bobby.
“I guess they’re going to hear me,” Bobby said as he looked at Elton.
“Yep,” Elton said. “The only way they won’t is if they’re busy with someone else. Even then, they’re recording it all.”
By now, there was little we could do to enhance our privacy. Elton had assured us of that but also said he was working on it. He’d told us a while back that Administration was using new SNUPE technology linked to the implants. Not that the implants could hear us. They couldn’t. But all Administration had to do to eavesdrop on anyone was to enter a person’s implant code, find the person on the GPS tracker, and collect vibrations. Elton compared the technology to that used by the Russians against the American Embassy in Moscow in the 1980s and 90s. All the Russians had to do to intercept dispatches was to monitor the vibrations on the Amercian Embassy’s window panes. Those vibrations could be from typewriters, encoders, computer keyboards, hand-written notes, or from human voices. It didn’t matter how many devices were being used in a room or how many people were talking. The Russians knew how to separate them all out and get the intelligence they needed. Today? The Federal Government and its entities could read vibrations through walls, through water, through the air, through just about anything.
By late 2046, even the best and brightest among us would stop gaming the system. If there were any such thing as freedom in Long Wait Prison, it would all but vanish by December of that year. Come January, everyone in Long Wait, including the Boneys and some of the people in Administration, would start to feel the effects of the loss of their own personal freedom.
“ECPAP is heading for the end zone,” Bobby said. “It has always proceeded at a pace set by you-know-who. Not by me, not by Warden Neal, not by anybody in the government. And Elton and I are being sequestered until the thing's finished.”
“You’ve come along way since that science fair project, Bobby,” I said with a half-smile. “Back when Senator Forbes —”
“ECPAP hasn’t been live since that day –
well, not technically. Sure, we could turn it on in here from time to time, but only because you-know-who let us. But I think it’s strange, Shorty. Nobody on the outside – not even the President – seems to really care about ECPAP anymore. Not really. And Senator Forbes? He’s a lesson no one has ever learned.”
“You think that’s because of the implants?” I said. And I have to admit that, as of this year, it seemed to me that Bobby’s old program might be obsolete. Sure, maybe it could still be used for insurance purposes, but I wasn’t about to open my big mouth and say it.
Elton nodded. “They’ve got us nailed down.”
“But ECPAP goes on, no matter what,” Bobby whispered. “And Warden Neal is going to kick the ball all the way to the goal like a soccer player. And I – and Elton – are going to be the soccer ball. No. ECPAP is very much alive, if you know what I mean. And for a very good reason.”
Elton stood up, turned around, and lifted his shirt. And I’ll be. I’d never seen marks like that on a man’s back in all my life. Scars. Raised up and straight. I thought of Jesus after Pilate had whipped him. Couldn’t say exactly what that was like for the Lord, but I knew the beginnings of a crucifixion when I saw one.
And then I said it. Right there. Right in front of April. “They’re going to kill you, Bobby. They’re going to beat you, and they’re going to nail you to a cross when they’re done with you.”
April fell to pieces.
“That’s what we’ve believed all along, isn’t it, Shorty?” Bobby whispered.
“I’m sorry, Bobby,” I said. “Sorry about all of this.”
There was an awful racket coming towards us from the hall. Boneys. And what we heard coming was that famous synchronized Boney strut used by thugs everywhere to unnerve their victims. Their black jackboots just thumped out that time, getting louder and louder by the second. Then we heard a clickety-clackety-clickety, a bright sound, which must have been following behind those Boney guards.
“That’ll be Warden Neal,” Bobby said, and he picked up his steel fork, turned the tines so that they faced outward, and made a fist. “They can’t hurt me too much, not if they want their little ECPAP program.”
Elton grabbed his fork, too. He had the same protection as Bobby did, being Bobby’s assistant, though probably not as much as Bobby had. I reached for my fork, but Bobby took it away from me and flung it across the room.
Three Boneys and Warden Neal stepped into the cafeteria and stopped. One of the Boneys – Chief Carlisle himself – had come along for the ride, and he smiled a big smile.
Seems like my informant Boney and Chief Carlisle had hit it off when they first met. Warden Neal by this time showed herself to be one hell of a piece of insane work – efficient at frightening people into getting their jobs done – but for the last few months, Chief Carlisle seemed to have had been wielding quite a bit of power here at Long Wait.
Carlisle was a short, heavyset man with greasy black hair. He got angry easily and he shouted every time he said something, maybe because he was going deaf or else he thought we were all stupid. But that evening, he acted like he was the man in charge.
“Time’s up, maggots,” Chief Carlisle yelled. “Bobby Griffin and Elton Peacock – front and center.” And that sucker just had to slap that rubber truncheon against his palm like “Fish Bait” Burlison used to do.
None of us moved, not until Bobby told April that he loved her and ordered her to leave. She got up, kissed Bobby like a woman might kiss her husband on her wedding day, and hurried out. That left Bobby, Elton, and me. But then Bobby asked me to leave, too. He didn’t say a word. He just looked at me and nodded toward the door. I’ve always felt like a coward since that day, and there’s not a voice in the world that can convince me I’d made the right choice. On the other hand, I knew I was expendable. I may have been the chef, and a darned good one at that, but chefs like me came a dime a dozen. I took a deep breath, patted Bobby and Elton both on the back, and walked away.
And that was the last time I ever saw Bobby Griffin and Elton Peacock in the flesh again.
Next morning I heard the news. Bobby and Elton had both had the tar beaten out of them, and both of those boys ended up in the infirmary for a weeklong stint. Warden Neal – to the surprise of all – had come to the rescue of my two friends the moment those Boneys had started swinging their rubber truncheons.
And that was after Bobby and Elton had driven their forks deep into the eye sockets of Chief Carlisle.
I like to think that that bright spot on the floor in the cafeteria is there because it took janitorial a lot of work getting all that blood off the tile. But that’s not why the floor’s shiny. It’s shiny because every person at Long Wait, especially the new kids that arrive, come over to that spot, stand there, and think about what happened that day.
And they ask me about Bobby. And I tell them that Bobby is my friend.
Chapter Ten
A year went by here at Long Wait Prison. Seemed like more and more kids were coming in, lots of kids, some of them young, some of them teenagers. April and I set up some small groups. Nothing fancy. Just a place for young kids to come and hang out. We’d sing, pray, read the Bible, and play games. Sometimes we’d head up to the terrarium on the roof. Sometimes I’d make the kids help me with the clean up after a meal – work was always good for the younger kids – and then we’d stay in the cafeteria and just hang out.
April had found the Lord by early 2047 as did quite a few others here in paradise. Never thought it would happen. Not in a million years. Why did she do it? I like to believe it was my defense of Christianity from the apologetics angle. You know, about how the odds of a planet like earth appearing in the universe was something like one chance in seven quintillion. But whenever I’d say something like that, she’d smile and tell me that somebody always won the lottery and that earth’s number had just happened to come up. Then I’d get all angry, tell her she was wrong, and we wouldn’t talk to each other for a couple of hours. What did convert April in the end was not apologetics. It wasn’t the fear of dying or the possibility she might be thrown back into Long Wait’s prostitution gig and get all used up by some nasty old congressmen. What changed April was what she saw in the lives of others here at Long Wait, people who, though they might be lying on their backs for congressmen on Saturday nights, they’d be on their knees praying on Sunday morning. Those girls never complained, never fought back – unless they were witnessing to the Lord in those dark and lonely bedrooms – and they never once took their eyes off the Lord and his Good Book.
You wouldn’t believe it if I said that even Warden Neal thought our small group project to be a good one. Never mind that some of our precious little girls were headed for the first-floor meat market when they reached the age of fifteen. Never mind that some of these young boys would be impregnating society women in just a few short years. April and I had to take what we got and do what we could within the time frame God allowed. We never looked too far into the future, but we often found ourselves shaking in fear when the darkness of the past cast its shadows in our dreams. And we’d have to relive that darkness every day for the rest of our lives after Long Wait. And others, like these young kids we were mentoring, would eventually have to do the same thing.
But April and I hoped to make a difference. We taught them through our words, our teaching, and our actions to allow the horrors of the day to drive them into the arms of Jesus. Some people laughed at us behind our backs because we were people of faith, but they never laughed to our faces. After all, April and I were doing the cooking here at Long Wait. And though I never manipulated the food again after Bobby and Elton got sequestered, people still knew not to mess with the chef.
Kids were turning to the Lord in droves that January, and Administration just let it happen. Then, we got a shipment in February. A whole crate full of honest-to-goodness Bibles and study guides. The word was that Warden Neal had ordered them. A week later, Bible-themed posters started popping up al
l over the place, Bible verse quotes about how servants were to be obedient to their masters and how that government was given its authority by God. April and I had a good laugh about that.
But the bad always came with the good. 2047 also saw its first wave of suicides. Some kids slit their wrists in the showers using those dull, steel dinner knives. Others hung themselves in their dorm rooms. A few chose to stick their fingers into electrical sockets.
Suicide wasn’t unusual at Long Wait Prison. Maybe we had one or two a year. Sometimes we’d skip a year, and then maybe the following year some kid would put himself out of his misery. But by February, five kids had taken their lives. Administration, I think, was on the verge of panic. That would explain the Bibles and the sudden nod at our little support group. But most kids just shook their heads and saw right through Administration's little charade. The desperate ones came to April and me.
Then, in March of that year, Senator Tyler put his name in the hat as a presidential candidate to run in 2048. In fact, he was the first one to announce his candidacy. April and I heard about it on TV, just like everyone else did. Seems like the televisions at Long Wait were running nonstop these days. This year, it was DVD vampire movies, including all the old ones from years ago: Twilight, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Thirst. April got hooked on Twilight after the first episode. Don’t ask me why, but I couldn’t get into it. Now, if you had asked me about one of those movies from The Terminator franchise with that guy Arnold Schwarzenegger, I was all in. I liked The Runningman, Total Recall – stuff like that. Yep, anything with Arnold in it.
I waited one night until everyone had finished the last movie. April was passed out on the recliner with a troubled look on her face. And everyone except another girl, Emma Jacobson, had left and gone to bed. That’s when I got up and switched on the news. It was nine o’clock. Fox News was just coming on. You know how the commercials are, and there were a lot of them about beer, male enhancement drugs, Lazy Boy recliners, male enhancement drugs, Pepto Bismol, and male enhancement drugs. I got to thinking that the world outside hadn’t changed much. After all these years, America was still full of drunk, lazy men who couldn’t get laid and who couldn’t get their crap together. I guess that’s why America was the way it was. Why places like Long Wait Prison could exist and nobody but Congress know anything about it. Most of the kids at Long Wait didn’t bother with the news, but most of us had been following Senator Kevin Tyler precisely because he seemed to be quite the rebel in Congress. And the Lord knows we needed a rebel here at Long Wait.
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