Public Enemy

He knew what would happen next.  He knew, and he dreaded it, yet for as long as he could, he clutched hope deep in his core.  Hope that this sham trial would go his way.  Hope that the rule of law would prevail, that he’d walk free.  

Of course he recognized the absurdity of those feelings.  Justice was for those with the means to purchase it.  Still, if he’d had legal representation…  But of course that was only for indigent and the richest of the rich.  Until a month ago, he’d been gainfully employed and was, therefore, neither.  So he sat there, alone, to face the mercy of the court.

The door to the jury room swung open.

The jury, all thirteen of them men, each and every one carefully selected for below-median social status and high financial vulnerability, filed into the courtroom.  They stood shoulder-to-shoulder, fidgeting, eyes on the floor.  They looked nearly as scared as he felt.

Tension ratcheted up as the judge turned a flat, reptilian gaze upon the jurors.  “Have you reached a verdict?” he asked finally.

Head bowed, the foreman turned toward the bench.  He crushed his hat in work-roughened hands. “We have, Your Honor.”

“Let the accused stand and face the jury,” intoned the judge.

The bailiff jabbed him with a baton.  “Stand up, loser,” the bailiff muttered.

Shackles rattled as he pushed himself up.  He tried to stand up straight, but the chains were too short.  “Stand still,” hissed the bailiff and poked him again, harder this time.

Across the flag-draped courtroom, the judge looked him up and down.  The distinguished jurist’s upper lip curled, distorting his aristocratic features.  The judge slung a quick glance at the jury.  “And what is your verdict?” he asked, as if there were any doubt.

“We find the accused guilty of holding antisocial beliefs,” said the jury foreman.

The judge nodded once.  “As it should be.”  He cleared his throat.  “Does the prisoner wish to make a statement?”

This was his last chance.  He took a breath.  “Your Honor.  I only wish that—”

But the bailiff struck him hard in his lower back and he fell facedown onto the floor.”

“I thought not,” the judge said and slammed the gavel.  “Your are hereby stripped of all rights and privileges as a Citizen of the Republic.  You will serve your sentence, duration to be determined, in solitary confinement.  Get this thing out of my sight, Bailiff.”

*     *     *

On the morning of his Intake Day, less than twenty-four hours after the guilty verdict, he was dragged from a windowless van.  Two guards force-marched him through a sterile hallway.  The shackles kept him from matching their stride, and they were not gentle as they hauled him to his feet after his third fall.

He felt dizzy and sick by the time they reached a door.  One of the guards stabbed some numbers into a keypad and the door hissed to the side.  He faced a small room.  There was a gurney with restraints. 

They stripped him naked, strapped him to the gurney, and left him.  The room was cold,  and by the time the med tech came in, he was shivering uncontrollably.  The tech wore a surgical mask and avoided looking directly at him.  He felt a sharp pain in his upper arm, and the room whited out.

Pain brought him awake.  His hands and feet throbbed with it.  His mouth screamed with it.  He ran his tongue around his gums.  All his teeth were gone!  His head felt colder than before, as did his pubic region.  Evidently, they’d shaved him bald.

And his balls ached horribly.  Had they castrated him?  He couldn’t raise his head to see, but something had definitely changed.  Something was not right.

With infinite difficulty, he turned his head and curled his right hand up so he could see the backs of his fingers.  He wept then.  All his nails had been surgically removed.  Ugly black stitches criss-crossed the ends of his fingers.  

The door hissed open, and another med tech came in.  The tech checked him over and patted him roughly on the side of his face.  “Well, you came through prep well enough,” the tech said.  “No signs of infection, so it looks like you’ll serve out your sentence.  You poor, pathetic fuck.”

He tried to speak, to ask what had been done to him, but his first three times came out inarticulate croaks.  “What happened to my balls?” he managed finally.

The tech tilted his head to the side.  He snorted.  “Noticed that, did you?  Well, you’re going to want to avoid any form of sexual arousal.  I hear those testicular implants feel like you’re being kicked by a mule when they trigger.”

“Why?  Why do this?  I’m only a—”

“An Enemy of the People is what you are.  You should have thought about the consequences before you published lies and advocated armed insurrection.”

“I did neither of those things!”

But the only reply was another sharp pain in his arm.  Once again he fell unconscious.

*     *     *

The lights came on, harsh and dazzling after the pitch-blackness of sleep time.  Before he could react, the Sleeping Shelf slammed back into the wall, dumping him onto the metal floor grid.  He lay there, trying to collect what remained of his wits.  He needed to do something.  What?

Electroshocks spasmed his muscles, and too late, he remembered: he must always stand or sit within a single square of the floor grid.  The shocks continued as he fought to control his limbs, to curl into a ball.  

Desperate, gasping, he hauled first one leg then the other in close to his chest.  He hugged his arms tight around his legs.  The sudden absence of pain felt wonderful, but he knew better than to linger.  He’d been here for many cycles of light and dark.  Far too many to count.  By pain and trial-and-error he’d learned that the Cell had many ways to torment him.  

With a groan, he forced himself to stand.  Slow walking was permitted, so he paced around the room on unsteady legs.  Through more pain, more trial and error, he’d determined exactly how much movement was allowed.  He paused and stretched his hands overhead, taking care to keep his elbows bent.  It felt good to straighten his battered body, and he wanted to maintain that privilege for as long as he could, so after one quick stretch, he resumed his slow traversal of the room.  

Four steps.  Pivot slowly.  Repeat. 

The Cell was nearly featureless.  Walls, floor and ceilings shone steadily, eliminating any hint of shadow.  There was a slot for the Food Tray.  There was the slot where the Sleeping Shelf emerged for dark time.  There was the place in the floor where he could relieve himself.  If he squatted there, a port irised open.  He did his business and moved away.  Lingering brought Punishment.

And there were the sluice gates.

Twice each Light Time, the sluice gates opened.  Water flooded the Cell.  If the purpose was hygiene, the water would be tepid.  Mostly.  There were, of course, random floods of water either scalding or just above freezing. 

His hair had never grown back.  He figured there was something in the Gruel that stunted the follicles.

The sameness, the lack of stimulation of any kind was the worst.  For the longest time, he’d hoped he would go completely bonkers, but even that had been denied him.  More Gruel additives, he figured.  

Of course he’d tried to drown himself, but the junctions of the floor grid were micro-drains.  The water could be sucked out within seconds.  And they obviously monitored his breathing.  Punishment had been harsh.  Lesson Learned.

Four steps.  Pivot slowly.  Repeat. 

Another stretch would feel so good, and to straighten all his limbs at once would be divine.  He paused and glanced up, but he immediately stifled the urge.  With a shudder, he resumed his pacing.

Just once, he’d made the mistake of touching the low ceiling.  Immediately, manacles had emerged, trapping his wrists and ankles.  The manacles had drawn his limbs until he’d been sure his shoulders and hips would be dislocated.  When he was painfully stretched to his full length, the shocks had started.  They went on and on.  

He’d shat himself that day.  The sluicing, alternating hot and frigid, had gone on and on too.  Lesson Learned.

There was a soft chime.  One of the few breaks in the silence.  The Food Slot opened, revealing the Plastic Tray.  He altered his pacing slightly, but took care not to hurry.  Hurrying was evidence of hunger.  Hunger prompted withdrawal of food, or, occasionally, less palatable Gruel.  

He’d tried to starve himself too, but that had led to more Punishment.  A meal skipped meant floor grids heated to a painful level, one that made it difficult to maintain his steady pacing.  And the room was, evidently, mounted on gimbals.  A second meal skipped resulted in the room tilting randomly and severely enough that he stumbled and fell.  Then the shocks started.  Lesson Learned.

He pulled the Plastic Tray from the Food Slot.  Carefully, he slurped the watery Gruel.  Not too fast.  Not too slowly.  

His concentration on the Gruel betrayed him, and he made the mistake of straddling two tiles in the metal floor grid.  There was a sudden jolt.  He jerked and spilled some of the Gruel.  

His heart thudded in his chest.  Would he be Punished for the spill?  He knelt, taking care to keep inside a single square and slurped the Gruel from the floor.  He tried to get most of it up.  Anyway, the Sluices would take care of the remainder.

Evidently his response wasn’t acceptable.  The room tilted sharply, and he stumbled, staggering into the glowing wall above the Food Slot.  He smacked his face against the glowing wall.  There was a jolt of electricity and he lurched back.  The Gruel on his chin left a slight smudge on the surface.  

He reached for the smudge but hesitated.  Touching the walls could easily result in Punishment.  And it was, after all, a little smudge.  

He finished the last of the Gruel and slid the Plastic Tray into the Food Slot.  He took care to keep his hands outside the Food Slot at all times.  The Food Slot snapped shut and he resumed his slow pacing.  

Four steps.  Pivot slowly.  Repeat.

Something caught his eye: an alteration of the sameness.  The little smudge of leftover Gruel on the wall above the Food Slot was still there.  The Sluices never rose that high.  The splotch would remain until it flaked away.  

His stomach lurched, and he nearly stumbled, but his heart stirred with excitement rather than fear. He’d inadvertently caused a change, had put a mark on his environment.  And he’d gotten away with it!  

He did his best to maintain his steady pace.  Surely the Cell monitored his movements.  And what about his vital signs?  The Cell’s systems probably kept track of those too.  Quickly, he averted his gaze.  He took a deep, slow breath and with feigned nonchalance, turned away.

Four Steps.  Pivot slowly. 

Four Steps.  Pivot slowly.

Four Steps.  Pivot slowly.

But now, every third or fourth time he faced the Food Slot, he permitted himself the tiniest glance at the smudge on the wall.

He was real.  Alive.  And now he had a goal.  What else could he do?  How many subtle changes could he accomplish?  A scuff here.  A slight stain there.  These might all add up.  They might keep him… not sane, exactly.  He knew better than that.  

But might he at least retain some sense of self?

*     *     *

Gruel smudges were fine, but bloodstains were even better.  It had happened by accident.  Once, in the waning minutes of Light Time, he happened to be padding past the Sleeping Ledge slot just as the Ledge shot out of the wall.  The Ledge’s corner nicked his thigh.  

He stumbled and recovered, continuing the pacing with his finger pressed to the wound.  It stung.  Careful to maintain his even stride, he shot a glance at his fingertip.  The Ledge had drawn a bit of blood.

Four Steps.  Pivot slowly.

He lengthened his stride slightly, and just before his next Pivot, he brushed his fingertip over the wall.  Of course there was  a shock, but he expected that and was prepared.  He flinched back and returned to his pacing.  

His heart thrummed with excitement, and he did his best to breathe deeply, to dampen any signs of enthusiasm.  

Four Steps.  Pivot slowly.

Four Steps.  Pivot slowly.

Jaw clenched, he kept his eyes on the metal floor squares for as long as he could, all the while continuing his back-and-forth.  At last, once he’d regained his composure, he risked the tiniest glance.  He’d left a faint mark on the wall.  Now he had two spots!

*     *     *

Of course nothing was permanent, and in retrospect, he decided that it was probably for the best.  Occasionally, seemingly at random, many Sluices would open.  Water would jet everywhere, drenching him and leaving everything wet.  These major wet-downs washed away his Marks.  

At first this upset him, but he soon realized that the major Water Events didn’t matter.  The erasure of individual smudges and spots was unimportant.  What counted was that he’d acted on his environment, that he’d made the Marks in the first place.  That he’d pushed back.  However evanescent it was, he’d left a mark.

And wasn’t that the way of the External World?  Buildings decayed.  Paintings went moldy and faded.  Books crumbled into dust.  Empires rose and fell.  Lives were lived.  In the end, everyone’s marks faded.

So he waited and paced and slept and awakened and paced some more until the walls were completely dry.  Then, at his next meal, he left a bit of Gruel on his chin and pretended to stumble.  As before, he paid with a jolt of electricity but left behind a small smudge.  

He’d created a Game.  Something in plain view but at the same time invisible.  His heart soared with the enormity of it.

*     *     *

Eventually, the shocks stopped.  It took him a while to notice, and though it meant that something had changed, he missed the Game.  He was old by then.  He could tell from the creak in his bones and the way his eyes struggled to make out his Marks.  

Soon after, they came for him.  His heart nearly stopped when a Door opened and someone ducked into his Cell.  He’d forgotten how to speak, forgotten most of his words, but they were solicitous.  They spoke softly.  They even gave him a robe to wear, though they had to help him get the belt right.  When had his hands grown so gnarled and weak?

The old, cruel regime had fallen, they said, collapsed beneath the weight of its own depravity, though such complex ideas seemed alien to him.  Too abstract to fathom.  

They took care of him, nursed him back to a semblance of health.  They did something that made brand new teeth grow in his shrunken gums.  His hair began to grow, and it itched.  They fixed his eyes and even restored his fingernails and toenails.  They claimed they’d removed the implant in his testicles too, but at his age, such things scarcely mattered.

And they gave him clothes and a place to stay.  He had a nice room that kept itself clean without Sluices or Punishments.  Instead of Gruel, he had real food, though it took a while to get used to his new teeth.

He was interviewed many times.  His interviews were collected in a book, they said.  They told him that his book sold well.  He wondered about that.  How could he have written a book without noticing?  

Anyway, they said that he’d never need to worry about money or food or shelter.  Not ever.  That was nice, though until they told him, it’d never occurred to him to worry about those things.

In short, the new regime did all they could to undo the harm that the old regime had caused him.  And though he was often bewildered by things, he truly appreciated the kindness with which he was treated.

Still, sometimes, in the quiet hours of a sleepless night, he would get up.  He’d take off his pajamas and shuffle back and forth in his room, leaving small Marks on the walls.  And afterwards, he’d lie back and look at what he’d done.  It felt good.  Like he was still in the Game.

Copyright © 2021, Michael C. Glaviano.  All rights reserved.