Walter Mosley - Futureland - Nine Stories of an Imminent World

“He an’ me’d make little soldiers outta the choke twigs and bring ’em down to Loki, Needles, and Darwin. Yeah.” Jerry spoke softly but with feeling. “He was a puzzlemaster, a high planes resister. He proved that even the snake could get bit. Oh shit! Oh no!” The PAPPSI chair stopped moving forward, it wavered a little and was still. Jerry moaned. From the angle of the cry Bits thought that the young man had gone down on his knees.

Jerry’s cries ceased and there was silence and stillness in the boundless hall.

“Jerry? Jerry, you okay, man?”

Abruptly the PAPPSI chair started moving again.

“Are you okay, Jerry?”

Jerry did not answer.

After another few minutes they came to a sign of luminescent green letters that read CHEM/BEHAV-SYS CENTER.

They entered the doorway and were flooded by light. The brilliant yellow ceilings and floors illuminated by Sun Master light grids nearly blinded Bits.

A bulky black man in a pale yellow smock came up to him. “Name and crime,” the man demanded.

Bits thought that he was being asked and was considering a variety of smart-ass answers. But before he decided on one an electronic voice reported, “Vortex, aka Bits, Arnold. Member of the outlawed TransAnarchist Trade Union. Hi-hacking, first degree antisocial code number sixteen point seven.”

“Violence?” the bulky black man asked.

“Not reported. Personal commission unlikely. Mass destruction possibility, antisocial, lethal dose pack recommended.”

Bits was trying to understand where the voice came from. He thought that it might be a file that the man in the smock had accessed before they’d entered. But it was also possible that a microchip with all this data was stored on his PAPPSI chair.

“Take him to the prep area, convict,” the bulky man said.

Again they were going down a featureless hallway. But this hall was the bright yellow of the sun. Bright and shiny and noisy too. Bits could hear the bulky black man’s hard shoes stomping the floor. There were also mechanical sounds and music playing softly in the background.

They came to a broad area that was set up as an infirmary of some sort. There was a waist-high bank of cabinets and an operating table made from shiny metal fitted with manacles for hand, head, and foot. A square-faced black woman, also in a yellow smock, came close to Bits and peered at him dispassionately.

“Boo!” Bits shouted while doing his best to lunge at her.

He got the effect he was after. The woman jumped back, startled momentarily. Then she smiled.

“We’ll fix that soon enough,” she said.

“The justice department wants maximum on this one, Sella,” the man said.

“They want it on all of them, M Lamont,” she replied. Sella wasn’t a pretty woman but she had a figure under the smock and she wasn’t yet forty. Bits wondered how many women there were on Angel’s Island.

“Put him on the table, convict,” M Lamont said to Jerry.

Jerry plucked Bits out of his chair as if he were weightless, slapped him down on the cold metal table and shackled him there. The woman, Sella, pressed a button and the table moved until it held Bits at a vertical angle facing her and M Lamont.

“You may return to your cell, convict,” M Lamont said as he punched something into his glove screen.

Jerry left on silent bare feet.

The woman called Sella and M Lamont went about with electric shears cutting off the andro-suit that Bits had worn for the past three weeks — since his arrest, speedy trial, conviction, sentence, and deportation.

“Why do they call you Bits?” Sella asked while M Lamont prepared a needle.

“What’s that needle for?”

“Don’t you mind about that,” Lamont said as he jabbed the needle into a vein in Bits’s right arm. “You just stay a good boy and this will be the last time you feel any pain at all on the island.”

“Well?” Sella asked.

“Well what?” Bits said while watching Lamont. “Hey, man, what’s that?”

“It’s another needle.”

Sella walked away from them.

“How many’a those things you gonna stick inta me?”

“Four,” M Lamont said. “But don’t worry, you got good veins.”

“Why do they call you Bits?” Sella asked again from somewhere behind.

“Are you a qualified doctor?” Bits asked M Lamont.

“Qualified enough for anything you’ll need, convict.”

Sella approached them with a white enamel cylinder. As Lamont inserted the last needle she unscrewed the canister, taking out a shimmering blue-green sack. Bits could hear glass tinkling inside the bag. Four tubes, each of a different color, sprouted from a single hole in the shimmering skin. M Lamont attached the tubes to the needles and then wrapped the cloth loosely about Bits’s right biceps. The cloth seemed to come alive then as it coiled into a snug grip.

“Ow,” Bits complained.

“That’s the electronic extenders. They go into the nerve system to read your reactions to stimuli,” M Lamont said casually. “The pain should stop almost immediately.”

And it was true. As Lamont spoke the pain subsided.

“What is that thing?” Bits asked.

“It’s a snake pack,” Sella said through sensually pursed lips.

“What’s it for?”

Lamont and Sella smiled to one another.

“Should I show him, M?” Sella asked her co-worker.

Lamont cocked his head in a noncommittal gesture.

“Leave us alone for a few minutes,” she said to Lamont.

He walked away from the table and out of sight. Bits heard a door closing.

Sella took a white metal stool from nearby and set it before Bits. She sat so that her head was at the level of his knees.

“You have a very nice cock, convict,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone.

Bits swallowed hard. He was only twenty-three and easily excited.

Sella pursed her lips again and blew against his genitals.

Bits thought that M Lamont was probably watching from somewhere but he didn’t care. He hadn’t been with a woman since before he went into isolation for his hihacking caper.

“Oh,” Sella said, “I see a little motion there.” She blew again. “I bet I could get it rock hard by just blowing, huh?” She kept blowing and at the same time she put on a pair of prophylactic gloves. “These gloves have a powder on them that’s almost like oil.” She circled the head of his penis with her right thumb and forefinger. He was fully erect just that quickly. She began moving her hand back and forth, lightly caressing the erection.

“Come for me, convict,” she purred. Bits moaned as he felt the unavoidable ecstasy begin. But then there was a sting in his right arm and suddenly his erection went limp. He felt pain in his groin and up his arm into his head. The pain was like an orgasm itself, rising to a fast crescendo and exploding behind his eyes.

Bits screamed and strained against his bonds. The pain rose and exploded again. This time Bits went limp and quivered, thinking that he was on the brink of death.

Sella stood up and said, “Any more questions, convict?”

“What, what happened?”

Sella’s face was like stone when she said, “You are the property of Angel’s Island now, convict. No sex or violence or insubordination will be tolerated. The ChemSys snake pack on your arm can identify almost any antisocial behavior that you might exhibit. It also has an onboard computer that knows where you should be going and what you should be doing. It knows when you should be asleep, when you should be awake, and when you need to go to the toilet. If a question is asked of you and the truth monitor has been activated you will be punished for lying. If you have an erection in your sleep it will be inhibited. If you have an erection when you’re awake it will be inhibited and two or more pain doses will be administered. If you attempt to escape you will be put into a coma.”