Daughter 4254

Chapter 17

It’s day 58. Thomas hasn’t spoken to me since he helped me with the the ear plugs. I’ve spent so much time sleeping and reliving my past, I’m not sure which reality I’m actually in anymore. If I hadn’t been meticulous about my grease smears at meal time - more so than eating - I am sure I would think this was all just a horrible nightmare I was having back in my school living quarters. Funny though, I’ve spent more time in this prison than I spent there, and yet Secondary School seems more real to me.

I decided to call to Thomas myself today. I waited for him to call to me again, but I supposed I had given him no reason to. Plus it had been enough time that if the security tapes were going to be reviewed and we were going to be disciplined for our exchanges, it would have happened by now.

“44!” I hissed, not want to yell and attract the attention of the other inmates.

There was no answer, I tried again. “44! Psst!” I couldn’t be sure if he was sleeping or had his ‘brain blocked off’ as he liked to say.

“Pretty dreary, deary dear, calls her lover. Come! Come near!”

I shuddered and stepped back as I heard the familiar rasping voice from the cell next to mine. She seemed to be getting some sort of pleasure out of tormenting me. I had heard her in the night moaning and singing about a young girl who was too naughty for the Mind Wipe. Her wails were hard to block even with the earplugs. I was getting better at ignoring her, and all of them actually. There was a man somewhere down the row that was constantly tapping metal on metal, that was hard to ignore. I started imagining it was the forest laborers cutting down trees behind our house or driving stakes for a new fence around saplings. These imaginations and the plugs helped a great deal, but today I just wanted to talk to someone.

I stepped tentatively back up to the barred door and looked in the direction of the woman’s cell. It was hard to make anything out as we were flush with each other, but I knew she routinely hung her sallow, fleshy arms out the door when she was in a particularly restless mood and I couldn’t see that now.

I decided to try one more time to get Thomas’ attention. “44!” I waited... then, “Thomas!!” I hadn’t wanted to use his actual name, but I was feeling desperate enough to risk it.

“Oy!” The familiar voice rang back, I could hear a smile on his lips before he even showed his face. “You called me lady?”

“I did. How are you today?”

“Bored and lonely, just like the rest of the likes of us.”

“What do you do all day in your cell?”

“Mostly I think about where I’d rather be spendin’ me days. How about you? I haven’t heard from ya in a while. Your pluggy plugs workin’ right well I’m guessin?”

“You called me?”

“Sure I have. Haven’t had a nearly sane chattin’ partner in ages!”

“I must not have heard. I’m sorry.”

“It’s no worry love,” he spoke the endearment love casually as if we’d known each other our whole lives and he was my dearest playmate. It wasn’t a word I was used to hearing. It didn’t sit comfortably with me and made me question his sanity. But it was a safe kind of crazy I felt I could endure much better than sitting alone with my own thoughts any longer.

I ignored his sentiments and asked, “Are you allowed to read?”

“Isn’t that a fine question. Now even if I wanted to read, and was allowed to, who would be bringin’ me anything to use that fine skill on? Hmm?”

“I have a paper reader if you’d like to borrow it.”

“And who brought you such a treasure?” he raised his eyebrows with much interest.

“A guard on one of the other wings. He never spoke, but he was very kind to me.”

“Fancied by a mute in prison eh? That’s a right beautiful story there.”

“Oh I don’t know that he was a mute, I’m sure he could speak, he just chose not to for whatever reason.”

“Not so love. He prolly hadn’t a tongue to form his words with. That’s what they do with the ones they can’t keep from jabberin’. Sometimes they do the wipe and they train em up, but for some reason they jabber all the times. It’s a rare side effect. But they found if they remove the jabber tool, the jabber stops and they make fine security guards as their brains is soft as putty.”

“That’s horrible,” my throat closed off a bit at the thought of the sweet faced, silent guard being subjected to such an operation.

“Welcome to paradise.”

“For someone who can’t read, you know an awful lot about an awful lot,” my tone was more accusatory than I meant for it to be.

“I didn't’ say I couldn’t read. I said I might not be disposed to.” He smiled at me in his crooked way, setting my nerves at ease. “What’s your book about then?”

“Oh, it’s just a nature reader from a Basic School. Nothing ground breaking but, it has nice pictures.”

“Color?”

“Yes, full color.”

“Now that I’d give an arm an a leg for. I haven’t seen a color other than gray anywhere but me food plate in I dunno how long! Slide it over.”

I went back to my meager box of clothing and pulled the reader out. I had thumbed through it so many times it was permanently a part of my memory and the pages were well worn. Still, the colors shown through vibrantly and it felt good to be able to pass it on to someone else.

I slid it under the bottom of the door then put my arm through the bars at the bottom and carefully slid it back and forth a few times testing the trajectory and slickness of the surface of the floor. It seemed to slide easily enough so I took a deep breath and shoved it in Thomas’ direction.

“Nice aim!” he exclaimed. It slid directly in front of his cell and he easily slid it in the rest of the way. He picked it up and examined it. He didn’t seem to be looking at the content, however, it was as if he was looking at the actual structure of the reader.

“What are you doing,” I asked?

“These, my deary dear, are real metal staples.” He face split in a wide grin like a child with an unexpected surprise.

“Yes, I suppose they are.”

“You have no idea how handy dandy these darlin’s are. Can’t believe you’ve had this all these days and hadn’t thought a sharin’ them yet!”

“I’ve never thought twice about a staple in a reader actually. You’re not going to hurt yourself with them are you?” I’d heard stories from 0203 about people in prison going mad and hurting themselves on anything they could find, even hitting their heads on the walls until they were bleeding. Those staples looked sharp.

“Haha! Don’t be silly. I won’t hurt me self. But there’s no tellin’ what they will do to me when they sees what I’m gonna do with ‘em!” He nodded his head in the direction of the guards station at the end of the hall.

I had no idea what 44 was talking about, and at the moment I didn’t really care to know. I was much more curious about his past than what he was planning for the future.

“How did you end up in here?” I asked.

“They hauled me off the mountain in a truck.”

“No, I mean, why did they haul you off the mountain?”

“We was discovered. Most of these folks here in this wing are from me community. We was turned in by the bag next to you for dabblin’ in the arts and namin’ our youngsters with proper names.”

“There was a whole group of you? A whole community of people with real names?”

“Yes in deedy darlin’. And that’s not all, we had songs and beautiful things we made with our hands on our free days when we was supposed to be plantin’ sapplin’s and excavatin' for new mine sites.”

“But the crazy lady turned you in?” That wasn’t hard to imagine.

 “Yes ma’am.”

 “Then why is she here too?”

“Because she was one of us. She has a name and her babies did at one point.” He grunted and looked down at the reader again. “Fool woman. She was mad about a little strummin’ box that Ol’ Joe had made for another woman. She wanted one for herself, to make her some music on in the night times. He refused to make her one because she’s always been a stingy one with her own wares. Well she got so worked up about it she decided to just teach us all a lesson and turn us in. Break the code.”

“The code?”

“Yes. We had ourselves a code of silence. We decided we’d live in peace, the way we’s wanted, and keep our beauties to ourselves, never tellin’ no one in the higher uppy ups what we was doin’. No one broke the code in over 50 years till that hag.” He motioned to my neighbor again. “Other’s tried, but we gots ‘em turned out on their arses as being crazy loons. This one, she was smart and planned a surprise attack. Only the surprise was on her cause they hauled her in with the rest of us.”

“So your whole community is getting the Mind Wipe for having music and names?”

“No lassy. Many of the young ones got away into the woodys and caves. They knows those hills better’n any soldier from the flat lands. They’ll do just fine. And of us...” he gestured down the corridor and up again, “already they’ve taken several oldies out to be put to final use and a few to the Mind Wipe. Not sure what the hold up is for the rest of us.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. For years I had been convinced that if I could just get to the mountains or beyond I’d find a new life, a place to live that made sense and filled the huge gaping hole in my heart where beauty should have been. After all of my failed plans and spoiled dreams, I found out that I had been right all along. Only it was too late now. It took being locked up for good to find out from a boy in prison that the place I’d dreamed of living actually existed, in exactly the place where I guessed. But even if I’d made it there the outcome would have been the same: sitting in prison, waiting for the Wipe.

“That is incredible. I never knew anything about music and art and names until just a few months ago. It seems like years now.” I laughed at the irony of it all.

“And why do you find my tragedy so funny? That hurts a fella’ ya know.”

I looked up and met his gaze. “I’m not laughing at your story. I’m laughing at the irony of mine.”

“How did you get yerself thrown in here then?” His voice was soft and coaxing. I’d never felt so comfortable talking to someone before like I was with him. Even 0203 hand’t been this easy to spend time with. And yet, I still wasn’t comfortable admitting my own mistakes.

“It is a long story.”

“Haven’t I told you before I’ve not got any other places to be?” He grinned at me again and I decided he was right.

“Do you want the long version or the short of it?”

“Long ma dear. The longer the better. I haven’t heard me a good tale in a tall time.”

I slid down to the floor facing his cell and tried to get comfortable leaning my head against the bars while I filled him in on the details starting with my mother’s death. We were occasionally interrupted by the wailing of our neighbors, but for the most part it was the best afternoon I’d spent in months. He asked few questions and nodded and watched me with a concerned look on his face. It reminded me of 0203 the day she came to tell me what she’d learned in her digging on Professor789.