literature

Change of Address

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I was born and raised on an algae farm just North of the coast of Antarctica.  Well, that’s our joke about it, anyway.  See, everything in the sea is North when you’re looking from the coast of Antarctica.

Algae farms are actually floating cities.  Well, towns, anyway.  Each community owns everything they need.  We sell the algae to the mainland and that pays for our consumables.  That’s our economy in a nutshell.  Each farm has its own way of dealing with things beneath that point.  In some, everyone owns an equal portion of everything and in others each person owns a share and has to work for more.  That’s the kind of farm I lived on.  Only we had the Lottery.

It wasn’t a lottery in the old sense of the word.  Well, other than the bit about matching the numbers to “win”, it wasn’t.  The Lottery was different.  For starters, it wasn’t always good to win the Lottery.  There were always at least two prizes: the one you want and the one you wouldn’t wish on anyone.  When I finally hit the numbers, I bet you can guess which one I hit.  That’s what brought me here. I returned my attention to my guide.

I was in The Great Metropolis and following this round, slouch-backed guy who was mostly bald even when he didn’t shave his head.  He was Mr. Sales.  Mr. Sales was in charge of assigning quarters for newcomers to TGM.  See, the prize I’d won was to leave the farm.  The genetic lines at my particular farm had become tangled enough that it was time for them to put the expulsion prize back into the Lottery.  

Usually there are enough open berths in the farm from death and whatnot that we don’t have to worry about keeping enough variety in our gene pool.  That’s why we are all taught about the other farms while we’re still children.  Once we reach adulthood, we are free to migrate as we please.  Fortunately, our farm was doing quite well.  Unfortunately, that meant that our berths were full up.  It had been so good for so long that our gene pool was getting a bit shallow for the local geneticists.

So that’s what put me in the hall behind Mr. Sales – genetic diversity and just plain bad luck.  Hey.  I could have won a month in a North Rim luxury berth.

“… and there’s a fifteen thousand credit deposit on children.  You don’t have any children, do you, Mr. Reed?” Mr. Sales’ voice was high-pitched and nasal just like you’d expect someone from TGM to talk.  “Mr. Reed?”

“What? Oh. Sorry. No children.”  At least we were still on Earth.  As I heard it, the bubble-people (what we called the folks that lived in man-made habitats in space) and the folks in the colonies on the Moon and Mars had it even rougher than we did.  There were people out there who didn’t even have sauce.  To think… people who haven’t yet thought to ferment their algae and make a drink out of it.

Mr. Sales slunk his way down the hall in front of me.  Had to have been a good twenty-five centimeters shorter than me.  He was the first actual heavy I’d ever seen.  His line had adapted to higher than normal gravity.  Looked almost like a Dwarf from one of the old fairy tales.

Finally he stopped and opened a door.  “Here you go, Mr. Reed.  Number 13849245.  Remember:  if you break anything, it comes out of your pay and I guarantee you your pay in the beginning won’t cover more ‘n meals.”

“Don’t worry about me,” I said as I ducked through the door and stepped into the smallest berth I had ever seen.  The door closed behind me, and I must confess, I never saw Mr. Sales again.

TGM is basically a corporation.  Works a lot like the farm I’m from.  Only the folks that control the production of food have to be treated a lot better than the folks who just consume food.  That’s what has allowed the farms to maintain their autonomous states (though some claim it’s old maritime tradition that each ship is an independent agent).  You have to watch these TMG types.  Every so often one of them will get shipped off to some farm to diversify it’s genetic line, or if they have some unique aptitude for some position they need filled.

I’ve yet to meet one that’s as trustworthy as a born-and-bred farmer like myself.  I suppose the folks in TGM basically think of us as a bunch of bumpkins or a bunch of rubes, but I knew what I was potentially getting into with the Lottery, and I didn’t come into this totally unprepared.

What I was unprepared for, however, was the group of five burly men that burst into my berth in the middle of the night yelling and screaming and hitting and kicking.  I think I broke someone’s nose, but they still ended up bagging me, quite literally, before they dragged me off to who knows where.  I overheard one of them reporting, “We’ve captured the spy, sir.”  Me! A spy?

TGM did have its factions.  The old mega corporations had merged, yet each managed to keep at least a small part of their identities intact.  They divided up essential services in a balance that made earlier political attempts look like child’s play.  Of course, they also subcontracted out the actual services.  Teams and divisions changed hands so quickly now that only the elite few could even begin to guess which corporation they were working for on a daily basis.

But for a city that covered every available parcel of dry land on the entire planet, it worked.  There’s a giant computer somewhere that they say does nothing but keep track of population.  Trillions and trillions of us all wandering around the face of our planet in magnatubes and by HC.

Of course, all the real work is done by D.R.O.N.E.S. (Durable Robotic Optically Networked Elastic Slaves).  The Drones were simple enough to operate, but they were never meant to be autonomous.  People still have to mind them.  All in all not a bad job to be a Drone minder, but it’s usually about as exciting as a sensory-deprivation chamber.

But that’s what I was going to be:  a drone minder.   That is, until the five burly men tossed me into that bag and started dragging me who knows where.  All I knew so far was that they thought I was some kind of a spy.

Even through the bag, I could tell when we got out-of-doors.  TGM doesn’t smell anything like the sea.  First off, the people are way too close together and secondly, their breath stinks.  I didn’t know it was still legal to eat animals, but it was all the rage in the back allies and on the seedier corners of the world.  The stench of it made my stomach clinch involuntarily.

They dumped me in a dark room that was smaller than my berth and there were no handles or indentions on the inside of the door other than a slot at the bottom.  I don’t even know how long they kept me locked away in that room, because I slept fitfully.  Even as I drifted in and out of sleep, I knew that they would come for me when I least expected it.

The light was blinding.  I had been asleep, and I couldn’t quite make out what the skinny man in glasses was trying to ask me.  When I gave him what must have been a rather dumbfounded look, one of the burly men he brought with him slugged me right in the mouth.

The salty-metallic taste in my mouth was blood.  I got drunk on sauce and had fallen once.  They had to replace several of my front teeth.   This was a similar pain and a similar taste.  I squinted at the skinny man and tried to focus on what he was saying.  It was not a pain that I wished to have repeated.

“I asked you what you were doing in Berth 13849245 at the Gulf Coast Apartments.  Who are you spying for?”  His voice was tight and crisp, kind of like an accountant’s.

“My name is Julius Reed,” I said.  “I’m from an algae farm just off the Northern coast of Antarctica.”

The pain repeated itself anyway, and the men left me there, crumpled on the floor.  Skinny-man must not have a sense of humor.

I woke immediately the next time someone approached the door and pushed myself back into the farthest corner of the room.  I hadn’t thought of it before, but I really had to go.  When I heard the scrape of a plastic dish on the tile floor, I asked, “Where do I relieve myself?”

“Grate in the floor,” replied a gruff female voice on the other side.  Then the footsteps retreated down what I had to assume from the number of footsteps that I did hear was a long hall.

The meal was two wafers of pressed algae and a bit of water to soften it in.  I remembered thinking that if they kept this up for too long, I’d end up rocking with my hands around my knees and one of those plastic dishes on my head like a hat while I drooled on the floor.

Skinny-man only brought one goon with him the next time, but they had a chair.  The goon bound me to it and Skinny-man started asking questions again.  I told him my name and where I was from.  I gave all the right answers to each question.  This time was going good.  Skinny-man was calm and professional.  There was very little pain involved, except where the restraints were cutting into my wrists.

Then, with a nod from Skinny-man, they left me there.  The door closed and the light went out.  I wondered if it was automatic.  My meal came under the door before I had even decided whether or not it would be worth the effort to try and get out of my bonds and away from the chair.

In the end, I had to hop the chair over to what I thought would be near the plastic dish.  Then I knocked myself over.  My head landed in the dish, knocking the algae wafers onto the floor and spilled some of the water.  That was okay, though, since it smelled more like a swimming pool for cockroaches than something intended for human consumption.

I was too involved with trying to get my mouth on one of the wafers to question the sanitary conditions of the surface off which I was eating.  It never occurred to me that there might have been someone else in here relieving themselves on the floor right up until the minute I was tossed in.

I don’t know if it was the water or the floor that got to me, but I started feeling sick to my stomach almost immediately after.  I wanted to make the effort to not make the mess I was about to make while I was still attached to the chair, but I had already struggled enough with my bonds to know it was hopeless.  I shat in place.

The stench went away after a while, but I was still wracked with feverish shivering.  I was finally starting to feel sorry for myself just as I drifted off into what must have been a quite fitful sleep.

Next thing I knew, the burly men were yelling and shouting at me from the door in some language I didn’t understand, and they were spraying me with a water-cannon of some kind.  All I could do was lie there and moan.  Finally, one of them cut off my clothes and they sprayed me and the inside of my cell down one last time and left.

I knew what they were doing.  They had become territorial animals and were investigating the newcomer that was making everyone else nervous.  If I stuck with my story, and reacted in a “normal” way to the torture, they would eventually find me acceptable and let me go on to wrangling Drones.

As far as I could tell, lying there in the darkness as cold as I’d ever been, I had been doing everything correctly.  At least I didn’t think there had been any inconsistencies in my story.  Self-doubt had crept in, though, and reared its ugly head.  I began to re-analyze every word I could remember saying to Skinny-man.  I was too exhausted to sleep.  I marveled at the hot weights that had replaced my lower eyelids.  My eyes were swollen and no doubt red.  I felt as if I’d lost half my body weight, and the headache I had was almost unbearable.  I did still have enough of my wits about me to know that the headache was from dehydration.  I should have copped a drink while they were hosing me down.

It felt as if my eyes had only but barely closed when Skinny-man came into my cell again.  This time he confronted me with the inconsistencies in my story.  I wasn’t aware that there had been so many.  This time, though, there was no pain as he patiently allowed me to explain how each of them had occurred.  I had, after all, embellished a few things about my past.  Life on the farm was awfully boring, when it comes right down to it.  Especially, I thought, to a corporate interrogator who was born and raised in TGM.

He seemed to buy it.  I was detached from the chair and they didn’t take it with them.  Right after my food was slid under the door (I had guessed by now that this was a once-daily occurrence), some clothing and a blanket was also slid in.  It looked like we were finally making progress.

Then it started all over again.  Skinny-man and the burly men re-introduced me to pain.  They bound me back to the chair and left me there until I got sick.  Then they hosed me down again, only this time, while I was still wet, they broke out the electricity.  This was a whole new kind of pain, not sudden and throbbing like a punch, but rather sharp and clinching.  It wasn’t just the battery that was being drained by this.

Eventually I became too exhausted to coherently answer their questions.  They left.  I slept for what felt like days before I heard footsteps outside my door again.

It was a wholly unsuspected tack that they were taking here.  The owner of the gruff feminine voice opened the door and the light came on.  But this time, her voice wasn’t gruff.  It was sultry.  She did a little dance and looked at me with lust in her eyes.  She was one Hell of a piece of work.

She stripped for me, all the while crooning to me with that husky voice.  The cell went from being uncomfortably cold to burning hot in about three-point-two seconds.  Just as I was certain that she was there of her own volition and (some might say sick) attraction to helpless men strapped to chairs in detention cells, Skinny-man barged in the door and started barking out questions to me.

I stuck with my story.  It was all I had left.  All I have is my story and if I cling to it long enough, they will have to believe me.  Won’t they?  They’re asking for a written confession.  I agree.  But this is all they’re going to get.
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© 2006 - 2024 JLeonard
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KahlaDelahay's avatar
I refuse to read this on the principle that your Description is nothing but an ellipse... That does my head in. Make a decent description, even if only to say "I wrote this while sitting on a bench outside the post office" or something to that effect. Please, no elipses! I'm sure judging by the comments it is a great piece and elequoently worded to perfection, but please please please write a description!!!

xxx