The End of Marking Time

by CJ West

  The real-life Wendell placed a keyboard on my lap and handed me the remote control. When he did, the miniature Wendell and the miniature Michael started telling me about the buttons on the remote control. They hopped on top of a gigantic controller exactly like mine and explained the buttons in such numbing detail a four year old could operate the system. The instructions took twenty minutes, and when they finished I felt like a moron for watching. Wendell stood three feet from me, glaring down.

  I got up to go get a drink from the fridge and mini Wendell stopped me.

  “Whoa, big fellah. If you need to take a break, remember to hit the pause key, like this.” He jumped on the gigantic remote and playback stopped. The real Wendell hadn’t moved or spoken.

  I wondered if he had a button in his pocket, so I took two steps back toward the couch and watched him intently. Miniature Wendell said, “That’s better.”

  I stepped toward the kitchen and he said, “Whoa, big fellah.”

  “Listen to them,” real Wendell said. “They won’t steer you wrong.”

  He left me there wondering how a television program knew I wasn’t watching. The box didn’t have any sensors on the front panel. I wasn’t an electronics expert, but it had to have some sort of motion sensor or something to know where I was. Wendell had secured the box to the television stand so firmly it wouldn’t even wiggle. The stand itself had been built into the floor. It was impossible to move. The fastener that held the box down was hidden underneath the box. I couldn’t release it without moving it, and I couldn’t move it without releasing it. I guessed it was important to Wendell that the box be placed exactly in front of my television and aimed squarely at me on the couch.

  The outside edges were smooth. I couldn’t find a single screw to open the cover and get a look inside.

  “Please don’t do that,” mini Wendell said.

  “What are you going to do?” I said to him as I rummaged through my boxes to find a standard screwdriver.

  “The educator is an expensive piece of government electronics,” mini Wendell said. “I cannot allow you to tamper with it.”

  There was a lip at the top of the box. I choked up on the screwdriver and worked it inside to pop off the top cover.

  “I warned you,” mini Wendell said.

  I was actually glad for the warning. I got up and unplugged the television. The little box had to get its power from that wire so I went back to work on the box, assuming I was safe. The instant the screwdriver tip shimmied inside, a painful current pulsed out of the tool, through my fingers, and knocked me flat.

  Mini Wendell reappeared, this time floating above the black box.

  “Hurts, doesn’t it?” The hologram floated seemingly out of nowhere. The television was off and the solid black cover of the box seemed incapable of projecting anything. The most haunting part of the experience was that Wendell wasn’t looking at the spot on the couch, he was looking at me down on the floor.

  Holographic Wendell followed my retreat to the couch and then I thought I understood what was happening. The box was tracking the ankle bracelet. Prison may have been outlawed, but the government wasn’t giving up that easy. They replaced prison cells with brick apartments, prison guards with ankle bracelets that kept you inside, and your time was measured not in years but with a bunch of plastic videos you watched like a kid in timeout. I couldn’t imagine the whole thing fooled anyone. Did they really expect talking to a few counselors and watching a few videos—well maybe a bunch of videos—to change anyone?

  Wendell Cummings wasn’t my friend. He was the new prison warden, and from the moment that black box zapped me, I decided to get through the program as fast as I could and get back to my old life. I plugged the television back in and mini Wendell picked up where he left off just like nothing happened. I glanced at the stack of videos and realized I couldn’t possibly sit through this drivel for three hundred hours.

  I outsmarted the box the only way I knew how. I slipped off my ankle bracelet. Left it on top of four magazines, precisely where it would have been if I was sitting on the couch facing forward and paying attention. Then I walked out the door to freedom.

  The world outside my brick-walled prison looked the same as it had before I’d been locked up four years earlier, but so many things, invisible things, had changed. People in this new world knew what I was even if they didn’t know who I was, but I hadn’t figured that out yet.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Everything on the street looked the same, but drastic changes had been made while I slept. With every single felon released from prison, America was a dangerous place. People learned to protect themselves by using subtle clues to measure each other. Vocabulary, clothes, stride, they mattered more than ever. I couldn’t see this as I walked down the sidewalk, but in a few days people would learn my face and when they saw me coming, they’d go the other way.

  There was a Dunkin’ Donuts around the corner from my apartment. I was glad to see it because I expected to visit every morning. I walked to the familiar pink and orange sign and went in. A tone sounded when I came through the door, a low-pitched ding to signal the door had been opened. No one came in behind me, but when I had taken a couple of steps, three higher-pitched tones played louder and clearer than the first.

  The woman ahead of me stepped out of line and moved far to my left, pulling along a girl who was about three or four years old. The little girl yanked her mother’s arm and started crying and stomping her feet because she wanted a donut. The woman whispered something in her ear and the girl straightened right up. The two of them walked out the side door and disappeared in a rush. I wanted to ask her what she said. Now that I had a son, stuff like that could be useful.

  With them gone, I had a clear line to the teenage girl with long strands of dark hair escaping from her pink and orange hat. A teenage kid to my left looked really frightened. He pretended to talk into his phone while he aimed his camera at me with a shaky hand. When I stepped up, the girl behind the counter said, “What do you want? You can have anything.”

  She didn’t offer to sell me a donut, she offered it free so I wouldn’t hurt her. Why? And why was the kid so interested in my transaction at the donut shop that he’d waste his time filming me? Was I that popular? Had these people been warned I moved to their neighborhood fresh from prison? Maybe they put my picture on television. I looked down at my shirt and pants. There was nothing different about them. Nothing I could tell.

  I asked for a Boston Kreme donut and a coffee. I hadn’t had Dunkin’s coffee in four years. She made my coffee and bagged a donut from the metal tray. I reached for my back pocket to dig for cash. I didn’t have any. No one did anymore. The girl flinched when my hands disappeared. She must have thought I was going for a gun to rob her of a stinking donut and coffee.

  I shook my head and asked her how to use the scanner.

  I rolled my thumb over the top and magically the bill was paid. I didn’t need a credit card or a plastic thingy. All I needed was my thumb and I brought that everywhere. It sucked that no one carried cash anymore. That would make my work a lot harder, but the thumb thing was cool.

  When I turned around to look for a table I saw a cop standing inside the door. He hadn’t been there when I came in and he wasn’t there to buy breakfast. When I sat down to eat, he watched. When I trailed out the front door, he followed. It got even weirder after that.

  Two blocks down, the cop turned back, but a black SUV with tinted windows paralleled me. The hybrid barely made a sound. I learned later that the FBI jumped on the green initiative to get these, not because they polluted less, but because they were so quiet.

  Right then I felt like I was trapped in a reality TV program. Everyone around me was an actor. I could talk and people could hear me and see me, but the world around me was a fraud. Everyone was watching. They were keeping me locked up no matter what. Wherever I went, my cell expanded to accommodate. I tried, but I couldn’t shake the paranoid feeling.

 
; I stopped on the sidewalk to talk to someone from my old life.

  I dialed Hank Bernier. He answered the phone all businesslike, but when he heard my voice he slowed down. Hank told me he was sorry. It had been a long time. Things had changed. They couldn’t rent my room anymore. I didn’t know what to think when I hung up. Maybe things had changed or maybe Charlotte and Wendell had told him what to say.

  The whole time I was on the phone, the SUV waited at the curb. No one got out to shop and the dark windows made no excuses for following me. The donut shop was only ten blocks from my old place on Dent Street and my bank was somewhere in the middle. New England Bank had been a fixture in every shopping mall and on almost every block downtown. I hadn’t seen a single ATM in six blocks. It took a while, but I realized people didn’t use ATMs anymore. There was no reason to.

  My old branch was still there with the familiar sign over the door, but above it was a larger sign for Govbank in red, white, and blue. I walked through the front door and over to the customer service desk like I did every time I needed to put something in my box. When I told the woman behind the desk what I wanted, she asked me to wait.

  After three minutes, the lobby was empty. The glass doors at the front of the lobby must have locked because I saw a man come to the front door and push, but the door wouldn’t budge. It felt like it had in the donut shop but on a much larger scale.

  Eventually three men led me down the concrete stairs to an iron grate. The scanner verified my identity and again I waited. In two minutes a telephone rang. The man on the inside handed me the phone.

  It was Morris Farnsworth. “What’s going on Michael?”

  I was stunned silent. Had my thumbprint summoned him?

  “Aren’t you supposed to be at home?” he asked.

  “I went out for a walk.”

  “What are you doing at the bank, Michael? I’m here to help you, but I can’t help if you’re going to go around acting crazy.”

  “I’m just getting something out of my box. No big deal.”

  “What could be so important that you need to visit the bank? I see you’ve used your funds without trouble to buy coffee and a donut. What else do you require?”

  I’d only bought the coffee and donut fifteen minutes earlier, and he already knew? Maybe thumb scanners weren’t so great.

  “I don’t need your permission,” I said and hung up.

  I flashed my key to the guard and asked him to help me open the box. He shook his head grimly. Did he think I really needed Farnsworth’s permission? I lost it. I poked my fingers into the grate and yanked like I could pull it off the frame and rip the guy out of his cage. “That’s my stuff,” I screamed. “I put it in there and I want it now!”

  He shook his head again, with pity in his eyes this time. He had three buddies standing behind me and the grate to protect him. His eyes said I was the one in trouble. I didn’t mean what I said. I wouldn’t have hurt him. I was just angry they wouldn’t let me get my stuff. Stuff I’d worked years to save.

  I had no idea what was going on when the four guys in black came clomping down the stairs all knees and elbows. “Michael O’Connor,” the lead man yelled. “Hands above your head. Turn and face the wall.”

  I’d heard the drill.

  Gone, though were my Miranda rights.

  Also gone was the deference previous officers had shown me when I was arrested. They smacked my face against the wall, then shoved me up the stairs and across the lobby.

  “What’s going on? What did I do?”

  A baton caught me square across my gut. I had no way to protect myself while my hands were cuffed behind my back and I couldn’t keep from folding and dropping to my knees. They yanked me up without slowing.

  Like the citizens Double warned me about, the cops no longer feared the law they upheld. Years ago a prison sentence for a cop meant doom. With that threat of prison lifted, they were free to swing away. The baton drove home an important lesson. Don’t dis the cops.

  They walked me across the street and I got to see the inside of that black SUV with the tinted windows.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  I’d never seen Wendell Cummings mad until then. I really hadn’t given him that much credit. He was a flimsy guy, hair hanging down, glasses hiding his eyes. Five minutes in my old neighborhood and he would have been stripped clean of anything worth taking. Here in the courthouse, people bowed their heads as he passed like he was a rock star or something. Everyone in a suit knew Wendell Cummings. Half of them stopped to shake his hand and congratulate him on this or that. I really didn’t understand what was going on. I just followed him down the long hall and watched dozens of people fawn over him.

  When no one was looking, Wendell glared at me through narrowed eyes. His jaw clenched so tight it was hard for him to speak. “You say nothing in there, understand?”

  At that point I didn’t know what was happening. I thought I’d been arrested in the bank for trying to open my own safe deposit box, which seemed ridiculous. Not knowing what I’d done, I just breezed along, but soon I’d find out that my visit was far more serious than I imagined. The court didn’t take nonconformance lightly. Wendell less so.

  What could they really do to me? No matter what they couldn’t send me to prison. There was no capital punishment in Massachusetts. What were they going to do? Sentence me to extra videos?

  I’d already gotten the worst I could expect from the baton, or so I thought. Unfortunately, I’d completely underestimated Wendell’s creativity and that of his colleagues. Punishment helped society work. I was thumbing my nose at authority like so many on their way to the gallows. I couldn’t know the danger I was flirting with. If I had, I would have acted much differently.

  When I followed Wendell to the courtroom door I realized my cuffs had been removed and no one but Wendell really cared where I was going. I could have turned and ran out the front, but there were sixty police officers swarming around. I wouldn’t have gotten far, and standing here in front of you, I can say I’m really glad I didn’t run.

  All the courtrooms I’d been in up to that point were large enough to hold a basketball game. This room was tiny. The judge sat behind a desk, not raised up on a platform to be worshipped. There was no jury and only a few rows for an audience. Two people sat behind the prosecution table. One was the officer who hit me with the baton. The other wore a dark suit and a smug expression.

  I knew how these things went. This would be a pre-trial hearing. We wouldn’t accomplish much. We’d talk about a trial date and the charges, and in about a month we’d select a jury and spend the day arguing. Between now and then I planned to figure out how to get out of this mess. I relaxed behind the defense table and wondered what maneuvers Wendell would use to get me off.

  The judge motioned with his finger and the prosecutor went to the front of the room. Wendell didn’t move to join them. I’d been in court. I’d watched trials on TV. Never had I seen the prosecutor talk to the judge without the defense listening. I wanted to ask Wendell why he wasn’t up there, but he wouldn’t meet my eyes. He glared until the men broke up their hushed conversation. The prosecutor laughed. Both men shook their heads in my direction, openly ridiculing me. I had no idea what I could have done that was so funny, but their mockery intensified Wendell’s scowl.

  “It seems your client has escaped his leash,” the judge boomed.

  “Yes, Your Honor,” Wendell said humbly.

  “Recommend we proceed to phase two,” the prosecutor suggested.

  “Objection,” Wendell shouted from his seat.

  “I’ll hear it.”

  “It’s only our first day on the outside with Mr. O’Connor, sir. It seems he’s a little fuzzy on the ground rules and I’d like more time to get him accustomed to his new circumstances.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” the prosecutor hollered.

  The judge waved him off and Wendell continued. “Mr. O’Connor has some extenuating circumstances, Your Honor. He’s been
in a coma for four years and has not had time to fully absorb the new rules.”

  The judge pondered this.

  As I watched, it slowly hit me that my guilt had already been settled. We’d been in court four minutes. Wendell had barely said anything in my defense and they were already talking about sentencing. I was surprised, but what did it matter? They couldn’t really do anything to me. Whatever phase two was, it would be an inconvenience and nothing more. I told myself I shouldn’t be nervous about being ordered to watch more DVDs, but I was starting to feel queasy. I was annoyed at being caught for whatever I’d done. Even more annoyed that no one would tell me what that was, but at least I had the good sense to sit there and be quiet.

  “Move to have this event stricken from Mr. O’Connor’s record.”

  The prosecutor jumped from his seat. “Objection. We’re already playing catch and release here. Don’t take away my net, Your Honor.”

  “Denied. You may keep the relearner at phase one, but you must readmit.”

  “It’s been one day, Your Honor,” Wendell begged.

  The judge pointed to a computer station at the front of his desk. Wendell walked sullenly forward, clicked several times on the keys, and scanned his thumbprint to sign for my release.

  The judge banged his gavel and everyone stood. I was caught by surprise and rose last.

  The prosecutor chuckled as he left the room. “This one’s a winner.”

  Wendell was too angry to respond. He led me out of the room and to his car. He didn’t say a word as we got in and drove through heavy traffic back to my apartment. Somewhere during the trip I remembered that he’d said, “My trouble was his trouble,” or something like that. I felt it now.

  When we were inside, he closed the door behind us.

  The television was off. Holographic Wendell appeared. “Glad you decided to rejoin us.”