For the first time in decades, the county jail has guests
Perfect Timing, Part 29, Under arrest in virtual reality
| We serialize this novel, set in a world working right for everyone, a chapter a week for 32 weeks. © 2008 Jeffery J. Smith, all rights reserved. |
by Jeffery J. Smith, May 2008
In the anti-gravity van, Voltak, Tepper, Corey, and Kenny fly over the city of competing buildings and tall trees. The Pastians slouch in their seats, focused on nothing. Testing their consciousness, Tepper picks up Corey’s hand then lets it drop back to his lap.Voltak pokes the mole on his throat then speaks into the air, “Rendezvous at the museum,” then lets up his mole and turns to his captives.
Slowly regaining their wits, the boys focus on Voltak.
“Wait a minute,” Kenny says. “Is this an arrest?”
“Yeah!” Corey says, defiant. “What’s the charge?”
Tepper turns from her friends to Voltak who merely slaps his pincers in his hands.
Kenny leans toward Corey, as if to tell a secret. “Conspiracy to destroy the known universe?”
Voltak stares at him. “That’s even worse than stealing another’s identity – which you two did twice – and using false ID – innumerable times, triggering Protocol Six.”
“Man, we were just trying to do what your bosses wanted,” Kenny says, “show we know how your system operates.”
Tepper commiserates. “This is not an arrest exactly, but,” she looks out the window for the right words, “what happens is, well, it’s safe. Sometimes, people need it.”
Corey stands up. The flying van swerves and he grabs a pole to stay upright.
Voltak looks at him. “The less frisky you are, the less trouble you get into.” He holds his pronged pacifier ready.
“Where’re we going?” Corey says.
The van touches down before a big block multi-story building that has narrow recessed windows. In front of it a pole flies a flag of lady justice. The four file out of the vehicle, Voltak first.
He turns back to face the other three. “No bicycle escapades this time.” It was not a threat but a simple statement of fact.
Corey juts his jaw toward the building before them. “Looks just like the county jail.”
“‘Cept the doors are wide open,” Kenny says.
“It’s a museum now,” Tepper says, “mostly.”
Drawing closer, they see engraved in an archway above the grand front entrance the words, “Museum of History”.
Inside of the museum nee jail, Voltak thumbs the docent automaton guard three times to pay for himself and his guests.
Corey laughs. “So even prisoners pay their jailor?”
Kenny shakes his head. “I don’t know. Makes it seem more like a hotel.” He looks around at what would be a lobby with the high intake counter where a hotelier might stand, welcoming guests.
Tepper pays, too.
After inspecting the Pastians for signs of insurrection and catching a nod of acquiescence from Tepper, Voltak decides they’re complacent enough. Leading the way over to the intake desk where sergeants used to sit, he returns his pincers to the rack behind it.
An ancient Rottweiler lifts its head up off its paws, struggles up and, wagging its stubby tail, shuffles over to them.
Behind them, the racket of a slamming door assaults the ears.. Excited, Pilard bursts into the foyer, and thumbs the docent, hollering. “About time, Voltak, but at last you came through.”
“Jesus, it’s the Host of Boast,” Corey says.
“Man, Corey,” Kenny says regretfully, “I don’t know why I tried so hard to figure things out. I just got so curious.” He shakes his head. “As if we really could prove we understood their geonomic stuff.”
Tepper regards him with despair, folding her hands. “Don’t quit yet.”
Like a bowling ball, Pilard rolls over to the others in his army green uniform. “Not in seventeen years have we had an inmate – not since that atavistic carnivorous poacher - now you two.”
“A poacher?” Kenny finds it difficult to accept poaching as the nadir of criminal depravity.
Corey pats the dog’s head. “There's a bone in it for you if you gum these two bad men to death.” The old canine whines and drips saliva.
The docent joins Corey in patting the old Rottweiler. “You know Dogish? What did he say?”
With Pilard in the lead, his cap set jauntily, and Voltak bringing up the rear, the party of five cross the foyer which has on exhibit a guillotine on one side and across the way a gallows.
Without turning around, Pilard waves one hand at one means of execution, the other hand at the other exhibit. “Trem, eh?” He glances at the Pastians over his shoulder.” I figured this old stuff would make you feel right at home.”
What would be tremendous would be returning to the old present safely. Kenny looks at his watch. Corey grabs his companion’s wrist to get a better look at the time.
The five file into a corridor leading deeper into the museum that began as a jail. They pass rows of photos hanging on the bars of the cells, pictures of the convicts executed by the old state before the establishment of Geotopia and, to be fair, the victims of those found guilty of murder. The cells themselves are empty, devoid of life.
Ahead of them farther down the hall, Dr Bernard Saint stands before a room with its door wide open. “Well, Ms. Tepper Karlin,” Saint says, “so good of you to drop by with your charges.”
Grimacing, she can only nod. The boys pause outside the open door. Voltak crowds behind them as Pilard stands aside.
“Welcome,” Dr Bernard Saint says to the Pastians.
“It’s actually kind of interesting,” Tepper reassures the boys. They regard her searchingly. She nods encouragingly.
Saint leads the Pastians into the padded room with Voltak marching smartly in rearguard formation. Pilard and Tepper wait outside.
Inside the asylum, sets of goggles, earplugs, gloves, and wires hang on pegs in the wall. Saint takes down two sets and hands them to the boys. The two travelers accept the proffered gifts but look at each other then Saint for further instruction.
Voltak steps forward, urging the visitors into action with his hands. “Need help putting it all on?” The would-be police officer takes a tiny battery pack from Corey and flips it on then hands it back.
Saint nods at the rest of the equipment. “Virtual Reality. It lets one work out aggression. What you imagine will seem real.”
Corey starts to put on his gloves and pushes out his lower lip. “Worse ways to spend time in jail.”
Kenny likewise flips on his equipment and dons the gloves and helmet, all wired together.
Saint ushers Voltak out, sliding the door shut. The Pastians stand still. As if blindfolded, the boys reach forward tentatively to feel what there is to feel, solid objects or the objects of their desire.
As in a dream state of rapid eye movement, they experience the gamut of emotion. Kenny moves from laughing to taking offense to actual belligerence; he jumps backwards, punching and kicking.
The Futurites watch the antics of the Pastians through a one-way mirror.
Turning to Tepper, Voltak speaks softly. “When I caught them and slammed them down, afterwards, part of me felt bad but another part of me actually enjoyed it.” He looks through the dark glass at the gyrating boys. “I wonder if I should try that therapy.”
The images that well up into Corey’s inner vision quickly sour, slipping him into paranoia. Backing up, he trips and scuttles backwards crablike until pressed against the wall where he curls in a fetal position. “Mama, am I going to die?” he cries out.
In the corridor of the former jail, Saint picks up a microphone for the intercom to the boys’ virtual reality salon, speaking into the mouthpiece soothingly. “Uh, are you planning to die now?”
Corey does not respond so Saint shrugs and hangs up. He turns to Tepper. “Once they’re calm, we should probably suspend their animation until it’s time to send them home.”
A personal phone (PP) rings. Uniformed pudgy Pilard answers his. It’s a holograph of Dr Ultra.
“The chronoscope’s ready for a dry run,” Ultra’s image says. “What’d they bring to now with them that we can send back as a test?”
The three Futurites peer through the mirror at the two writhing Pastians. Tepper turns to the phone’s imagery. “Their mobile? It doesn’t work here.”
Across town in Tepper’s mansion, in the same room where the Pastians first appeared, Yuri places Corey’s cel on the floor and, looking up, gives a thumbs up to Dr Ultra who’s manning the controls of the chronoscope remade into a time machine. Walking into the room wearing an apron and carrying a feather duster and on a course that will take him directly to the phone on the floor, Andrei One nearly steps on it. But Yuri bumps Andrei, sending him off in another direction, and watches him shuffle away.
The computer terminal on the table supporting the time machine displays a ticking digital clock that shows the time remaining, “02:17:55”. Another clock – one in the desktop phone -shows “02:17:44”, an eleven second difference. Both times keep ticking away.
As soon as Andrei exits the other side of the room, Yuri again turns to Dr Ultra, giving him yet another thumbs up. Ultra smoothes his hair then throws a switch. The mobile phone on the floor disappears but in the screen showing Mr. Otten’s mansion, nothing shows up, the scene remains an absolute still life. Dr Ultra and Yuri exchange worried looks.
“They’re all new parts,” Yuri says. “What could possibly fail?”
The machines in the room whisper among themselves. From the computer monitor, the homunculus pops out and raises his voice in his Irish accent. “Kind sir, did you imply mechanical failure?”
The mechanical voice of the desktop printer says, “Dear Silicon, no!”
The clocks quickly synchronize at “02:17:59” both.
“Never!” chimes in the desktop phone.
Dr Ultra wipes his brow. “A breakdown would leave them God knows where, I mean when.”
In the monitor showing Mr. Otten’s mansion, the cell suddenly appears on the floor. All the machines in the Tepper’s salon exhale loudly. Yuri and Dr Ultra high-five.
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Jeffery J. Smith runs the Forum on Geonomics.
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