Futureland: Nine Stories of an Imminent World
- Автор: Мосли Уолтер
- Год: 2001
- Язык: английский
- Год: Aspect / Warner Books
- ISBN: 978-0-446-52954-9
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «Futureland: Nine Stories of an Imminent World». Краткое содержание книги:
“Not that long,” Bits said in his normal voice. “But pretty long. Lamont and Sella sometimes have up to thirty prisoners under study. And as long as the staff doesn’t know about us we can make our plans in leisure.”
“If the guards all have snake packs why don’t we just put them to sleep?” Jerry asked.
“Because they have families and friends all over the world. If they stop communicating that’ll set off an alarm. I can control what’s inside the prison, but if they send in soldiers we’re up shit’s creek.”
After many hours the panel came up with a plan. The great cargo planes that picked up the choke every day of the harvest would be hijacked and flown to various ports. There, all seventeen thousand prisoners would have prepaid transportation to the destination of their choice. Angel’s Island had a large bank account from its choke crop and Bits was now in sole control of that wealth. It was decided that everyone would be freed regardless of his crime or disposition toward violence.
“If America won’t claim ’em,” Lines Retain said, “then America cain’t blame ’em.”
Bits would transmit over one hundred thousand C-mails set to a delay of thirty-six hours before being delivered to news organs and families and friends of the Angel’s Island population. Bits also planned to send his displacement virus to every revolutionary organization he could think of, including the Seventh Radical Congress and White World Order.
“Who stays to make sure the prison is secure while we leave?” asked King Theodore, the cult leader who had tried to claim Delaware as a free state.
“I’ll stay,” Bits replied, rubbing a painful spasm in his back. “I figure that they’ll have to take me back for a new trial when so many people get the news.”
In the infinite white room, sitting in front of the computer, Bits imagined the guards and staff, even Roger himself, slumped into unconsciousness. The naked forms of Sella and M Lamont were there at his feet. He thought about the robot-piloted cargo jets carrying over seventeen thousand prisoners to major hubs around the globe. They had clothes, fake credit accounts, and fake passports based on their eyescans. Some, he believed, would make it to freedom. The rest would have a solid defense — they were no longer members of the American union and therefore not answerable to the justice system there.
“What are you doing there?” M Lamont said as he rose on wobbly legs. He reached out toward Bits but recoiled at the electrical shock from his snake pack.
“What?” Sella said. “What’s happened?”
“We’re the only ones awake in the whole of this island,” Bits said. “And we all have cancer.”
M Lamont’s eyes went dull.
“What are you talking about?” Sella asked. “Why did Lamont get a shock when he approached you?”
Bits explained everything in a slow painful voice, ending with, “I had the med system duplicate the causes for the cancer you caused in me. The lab is open to you. If there’s a cure we will all live. If not...” He smiled sadly.
United Nations forces entered Angel’s Island on the third day after the escape. They found three hundred seventy-five guards and staff unconscious and unwakeable — victims of the ChemSys snake pack.
Everyone had fallen while going about their duties. The warden was unconscious next to his desk, men slept on toilets or in the long gloomy halls. Two men on guard duty had died from exposure up on the choke plantation.
Everyone else was asleep, except for Sella Lans and Vortex “Bits” Arnold, who were also dead, and Med M Packard Lamont, who was dying in the infirmary.
“What is it?” the doctor who ministered to Lamont asked.
“Subbac cancer,” Lamont moaned. “We were studying it. The convict Bits infected us with it.”
“Subbac... But that’s incurable. Who infected him?” asked the doctor, an elderly Swede.
Lamont did not answer the question. Instead he said, “Bits said that he put a timer on the system. His virus will wake the staff and then erase itself. He said that by then I should be dead.”
The fat under the big man’s skin had dissipated. He was slowly being eaten away by the fast-acting incurable disease.
“He said to tell you that he had the system monitor our deaths because that’s what we liked to do.” And then Lamont himself was dead.
5
Three years later Fidor Esterman and Meena Tokit, employees for the Manatee Tobacco company, were sifting through the Angel’s Island computer records. After an international outcry about the medical practices on Angel’s Island, the Manatee corporation had closed the prison and re-made the facility into a robot plantation. Fidor and Meena, both computer programmers, were two of fifteen people responsible for the plantation operating system, which included four state-of-the-art GE-AI computer systems, sowing, harvesting, and bundling machines, and various robot vehicles.
“Look at this, Meena,” Fidor said. He was seated at the main screen of the central computing system.
On the screen a green circle appeared. It broke into eleven equal sections.
“What’s that?” Meena asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Bits displacement system active,” a robotic female voice announced.
“Oh shit,” Fidor said. “That’s the Bits virus, isn’t it?”
“Downloading document Last File,” the lady robot declared. “Download complete.”
The green segments began sparkling and changing colors. The segments of the green pie swirled together, adding colors and definitions, until they formed the face of a young black man, made old by the ravages of disease.
“Hey,” the man said. “I am very close to death and so I hope you will excuse me if I get right into what I have to say. I don’t know who you are and you might not know me so I’ll start from the beginning. My name is Vortex Arnold. I have no other designation because the United States government has nullified my citizenship and sentenced me here, to the Angel’s Island private prison authority. You may already know all of this. I was able to send out a hundred and fourteen thousand C-mails detailing the practices here and the particulars of our escape.” Bits stopped a moment to rub his left eye. A large, yellowish tear pressed out of his sagging lid. Bits took a deep breath and then another before attempting to speak again. “I think it was probably the largest prison break in the history of the world. Maybe... As I said, I sent out thousands of detailed explanations of this prison and its inhuman practices, with special emphasis on the snake packs that they used on prisoners and guards alike. If this is many years later, which I doubt, and you haven’t seen my report, which is more likely, then there will be a copy available to you at the end of this transmission.
“I tried to send out a C-transmission a few moments ago but I suppose the authorities have received my earlier communication by now and have isolated my signals...”
“Should we be listening to this?” Fidor asked Meena.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I guess we’d better. If anyone is monitoring our system they will believe that we’ve heard the whole thing anyway. If they ask us what it said we should probably be able to answer.”
Fidor touched his large nose and nodded uncomfortably.
“... my earlier messages had information that wouldn’t have been surprising for most people. Maybe many of them would agree with the practices here. After all, there are no beatings, rapes, or dangers to the guards or the guarded. If you follow the rules then you are treated well, well enough for a social deviant. Even if we are political prisoners, what of it? The ruling system, one might say, has the right to protect its constituents.” Bits allowed his eyes to close. He nodded, leaned forward, almost fell from his chair. But then he righted himself. “Protect... But I have done further study. The ChemSys Corporation has signed contracts with the federal government to supply over three million snake packs to the military and mental services by the year 2053. Snake packs used to make soldiers into drones, our mental divergents into brainwashed zombies. Read these reports and ask yourselves how long will it be before schoolchildren will be snaked. The reports are all here, at the end of this file. All here...”