The Cast

eight

“Wainwright, have you given them their last round of injections yet?”

            He turned around to see Glacia, her glare matching the frostiness of her name, looking at him placidly for once. He was unnerved by her careful expression. “Wainwright? Rufus? Are you all right?”

Rufus Wainwright, otherwise known as Sagent Faulkner nodded and tried to keep the pained look off of his face. “Yes, I’m fine.”

            She came towards him. Rather than admonish him, she put a careful hand on his arm. “Was that your first time in a simulation?”

            He nodded.

            “I remember my first time in an episode. We’re out here and they are inside there…or rather inside of themselves.” She motioned at the people held in suspension in front of them. The wall was flat and covered in glass panels that shone like obsidian. Encased underneath the glass were several bays, fifty-two at a time, to hold the prisoners. There were never more than fifty-two at a time. Rufus didn’t know why. He just did his job as it was asked. He rested his hand one a pane of glass that shone over the face of one particular individual.

            “This one interests you, doesn’t she?” Glacia stopped at a bay and looks into the glass. A name plate on the front of the glass bears the name “Poppy”.

            Though it was asked as a question, the tone was not one of cruelty. “She’s very beautiful. I can see why you like her.”

            He blushed. Turning to her, he held out his hands, one holding his SAED device. “I don’t understand. Why can’t we just lock them up?” He turned to look at Justin again. “Why can’t we just put them away? Why do they have to be in suspension?”

            “You know the answer to that. You passed your exams, didn’t you? Only last week, if I remember correctly; and I do as you were one of my students.” She came closer to him. “Only in suspension can we administer the scenarios. Only in the scenarios can we keep them sedate for the term of their sentence.”

            “But their sentence ends in death. Why keep them living for months, only to kill all of them in the end. That wasn’t part of the training.”

            “Well, if you had known that you would be interacting mentally with people who are going to die on a daily basis, would you have taken the job?”

            He thought about it. “No, I suppose not.”

            “I didn’t think so. We explained about everything but the scenarios. We did tell you that they were drugged and sedated.”

            “What you didn’t tell me was that we’d be jumping into their minds. You seemed to have left out that part.”

            “Darling, it was only a dream of sorts. That’s all it was.”

            “But I interacted with her in there. Whether it was a piece of my mind or not, and not the whole me, it was a piece of me. A part of me; I was still me, inside of her.” He was not getting his words out as clearly as he wanted to. “And why the fuck do you make them think they are on some reality television show? That’s the part I really don’t understand.”

            Glacia sighed and motioned to his left. A pair of setae’s appeared before them where before there had been only grey cubicle walls. Two coffee mugs sat waiting for them, steaming on top of a black lacquered table. “Darling, sit. Let’s have a coffee.”

            He sat in the settee to his right. Immediately, it began to warm him. The coffee was good too. Rufus waited for Glacia to take a sip of coffee. When she put her cup down, the handle and rim of the mug had a coating of frost. Rufus wasn’t surprised by the thin layer of ice along the surface of her coffee, either. “Why do you bother drinking hot stuff if you always turn it to ice?” He asked her.

            “Because, I like coffee, okay?”

            He grunted and took another sip of his.

            “Look, most of these people, when we find them, they have nothing. Some are hiding out in non-approved Spero apartments, shacks really. We have to punish them in some way; otherwise there would be an outbreak of some sort in the Compound. You’ve seen what it’s like outside our walls.” She flicked out a thin pack of cigarettes from the sleeve of her dress. Opening the slim silver case, she offered Rufus one. He shook his head.

            She lit her cigarette and continued, a shower of sparks floating through the air with every drag she took. “We find that these kinds of people excite the most. We also find that these are the people who dreamed of being something, of doing something with their lives. They are the ones who didn’t want to leave being nothing. The Haven Simulation Scenario gives them that chance.”

            “And then you kill them.”

            “No, darling, we don’t kill them, not really. Yes, sure, their bodies may perish, but you know the drill: we keep the bodies in suspension for thirty days and then dispose of them to make room for more. However, after thirty days of being hooked up to the mainframe, their spirit, soul, personality, everything that they were, remains in the wires.

            “The flesh may perish, but the will of the spirit is strong.” She took another sip of her coffee and another drag of her cigarette. Rufus wondered if this was a reprimand or a coffee date. He hoped it was neither.