Walter Mosley - Futureland - Nine Stories of an Imminent World

“To show you the power you have. To amaze you and make you laugh... To save you from taking that megadose and to keep you from reporting us to the monitor staff.”

Even these words could not make Neil turn away from the night sky.

“How did you know about that?” he asked.

“We been monitoring your wrist-writer for three months, son.”

Now Neil did turn to Blue Nile. “What? How? What for?”

“How many people do you think work in GEE-PRO-9?” the small man asked.

“One hundred and three.”

“No. We have six hundred forty-two members in our cell.”

“That’s impossible. It’s policy to have one hundred and three prods in each GT. That’s all. Never more, and only less if someone is sick or dies or gets fast-fired. I worked in a GT where the assignment desk sent an extra prod once. They laid me off for a day because of it. It was the only day off I’ve ever had except if I was sick.”

Blue Nile shook his head and smiled.

“Six hundred forty-two,” he said. “All of them like you and me.”

“What does that mean? I’m not like you or anybody else here.”

“We look for the prods on the margin, prods like you and me.”

“What’s that? The margin?”

“Excuse me,” Blue Nile said. “I keep forgetting that you don’t know. Come on, let’s go sit on the cushion and watch the sky.”

It was an offer that Neil could not resist. He went to the first place he’d known in the crazy GT and sat so that he could see the night and Blue Nile smiling.

“We look for the creative mind,” the small man said. “We monitor all bands, even the incidental ones, like the weak emissions from your wrist-writer.”

“How would you know to read my journal? I mean, there must be thirty million electronic journals in Greater New York.”

“The UC, Un Fitt, wrote up a program that looks for certain criteria from the various human-generated emissions.”

“What kinda criteria?”

“Suffering,” Blue Nile said, holding up one finger, “intelligence, creativity, discipline, courage...” For each subject he put up another finger. He had, Neil noticed, powerful hands.

“How could you tell that from my journal?”

“Your method of suicide is both creative and brave, my boy. The fact that you’ve struggled with and mostly overcome Labor Nervosa on your own tells of discipline. The intelligence-testing driver that Un Fitt built is still opaque to me, but I can tell by talking to you that you’re bright.”

“Why me?”

“Why not? We have a list of thousands of potential GEEPRO-9 mems, but we can only accept a few. We need prods who won’t be disruptive and who will be able to work on their own. We wanted you because you fit all the categories, you already worked in the building, and because you needed us.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? I need you? I’m doing just fine with nobody’s help. I got money in the bank, a vacation already reserved, only three D-marks in two years. I’ve only had one unemployment cycle and I’m twenty-two with six years’ service.”

“Don’t forget the four Pulse capsules you have in your ID case,” Blue Nile said. “Or the fainting spells you’ve experienced. And then there’s how much you sweat and fret at work every day.”

“Everybody has problems like that,” Neil said.

“I don’t.”

“But you ride secret elevators and take breaks and turn your seat around to look out the window. Those infractions alone could throw you on an unemployment cycle. And using company devices to listen in on people to recruit them secretly — that’s enough to put you in corporate prison. You’ll be living in the dark taking drugs that’ll keep you docile for twenty years. By the time you wake up, half of your brain will be sponge.”

“Is that worse than Common Ground?” Blue Nile asked with a sly smile.

Neil didn’t answer the question. The comparison seemed impossible to comprehend. Nothing seemed possible except his job, his apartment, and the daily fact of his survival.

“Come here, Neil,” Blue Nile said. He stood up and went over to the nearest GT table. Neil went along.

The little man was proficient at table use. He hit a couple of virtual keys and joined two screens into one large monitor. He then entered the Unit Controller screen.

“What are you doing?” Neil asked.

“Showing you something.”

“But that’s the UC page. It’s permanent unemployment over that — even just to look at a UC’s screen.”

“I have the protocols.”

“Are you the UC?”

“None of us are. But we have all been given the protocols and clearance to use our UC’s codes.” With that Blue Nile entered a forty-seven-digit code number. The central computer paused for a moment and then presented the image of a handprint. Blue Nile placed his hand inside the print. The computer paused three seconds. Neil felt his heart thrumming.

A red entry screen appeared. Neil had only once seen a red screen. That was when he first worked for Specifix, almost six years earlier. He had somehow frozen the whole GT system; no one at the table could log on. The UC, an unclean man named Nordeen, had entered his codes to fix the problem. He had used a red screen with yellow and orange letters just like the one Blue Nile had raised.

On the search line he entered Neil’s name and his last GT, LAVE-AITCH-27. A file appeared that had Neil’s ranking and picture at the top.

“You see that blue dot?” Blue Nile asked.

Neil saw the large blue spot pulsing at the right side of his photograph. He also noticed that the picture was not the one he had taken when he came to work; it was a recent shot of him leaning over the camera’s lens. He realized that his monitor must have an internal camera so that he could be watched continually.

“What does it mean?” Neil asked.

Blue Nile placed his finger over the dot and tapped the virtual clicker. Immediately a green screen, also with yellow letters, appeared. The words PENALTY SCREEN were at the top of the form. Neil read through the document. Every time he had fainted had been logged, the number of times he had drifted while he was supposed to be working had been recorded and graphed. His verbal complaints, even those he made only to himself, had been recorded. Toward the end of the form there was a diagnosis box that read Labor Nervosa; Acute. The suggested treatment was permanent unemployment at the end of the current work semester.

The date of his discharge was three days before he was to have his first vacation.

Neil’s stomach began to roil. He heard a sound that he thought was coming from the table but then he realized that it was a low moan from his own chest. He thought about sitting down but he was frozen over the screen.

His teeth began to chatter.

Suddenly there was a sharp pain at the side of his head. He fell to the floor. He looked up and realized that Blue Nile had hit him.

“Why?” Neil asked.

“ ’Cause you were losin’ it. A shock sometimes breaks you out of it.”

“No, not that. Why are they firing me? What did I do?”

“You’re just part of the margin, kid,” Blue Nile said. “Workin’ for the corporation is just like goin’ to school, and in this classroom they grade on a curve.”

“It’s simple, Neil,” Oura Olea said in the UC’s office. “You either erase the data from your record or you’re thrown into permanent unemployment.”

“There has to be another way,” Neil whined. “I mean, tampering with work records is a crime.”

“And living in Common Ground is a prison sentence,” Oura said. “Obey the law and you spend the rest of your life in jail.”