Futureland: Nine Stories of an Imminent World

“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.