Daughter 4254

Chapter 12

The first night in my new cell had been fitful, filled with dreams and noises. The first day was even worse. It was like being locked in a room full of animals only I couldn’t see any of any of them, I could only hear their shuffling, muttering and occasional outbursts. After so much silence I was not prepared to be immersed in this kind of chaos. I kept trying to think of ways to block it out, to dampen it. I even tried joining in at one point late in the day, moaning to myself: “Please.... uhhhhhnnnnn... just stop!!”

At this point I heard the familiar lilt of the voice across the hall speak out.

“4254! Oy!” It was a welcome shout above the din of the other inmates. “I say oy!”

I got up from the corner of my cot where I curled myself up in a ball and peered between the bars to the left searching for his face. He met my gaze with a half cocked grin.

“They be gettin’ to ya eh? You gonna go as bonkers as yer neighbor there if’n you don’t plug yer brain off.” He tipped his head toward the woman who caught my hair the day before.

“What do you mean? And how did you know my number?”

“Oh, I hears a lot of stuff. They think we don’t listen in, that we’re all brain dead already cause we’re headed for the wipe, but I hears a lot.” He smiled his wicked grin at me again and walked away.

“Wait!! Don’t leave me today, please! I know we’re not supposed to be talking, but please!” I felt foolish for begging this way but I couldn’t stand being in such a noisy place with no one speaking to me. It was so much better when I could focus on one voice.

He popped his head back over and  held up a corner of his bed covering. “Don’t worry yer head darlin’. I wasn’t goin’ far.” He chuckled at his joke and held up the sheet for me to see better. “See this?”

“Yes, I see it. It’s a sheet, so what?” I was annoyed at him for making fun of my begging.

“Oh no. It’s not just a sheet. It’s your brain saver. Watch closely and repeat.” He took the corner and bit at it with his teeth while he pulled down on one side with both hands. The cloth easily ripped at the point he was biting. He then held it up and looked it over carefully. “You don’t want to get be gettin’ too much now. About like this.” He marked off a small square with his fingers and repeated the process tearing it free.

“Excellent. We can tear up our bedding for fun to keep us distracted from the real crazy people.”

“No, ya silly girl! Watch!” He took the square and rolled it up and held it for me to see. “You gotsta roll it up tight like this here and then ya sticks it in yer ear. Body boom boom! No more nutters bouncin’ around yer head. A good night’s sleep and some peace and quiet. Well, almost quiet. You can thank me later.”

“Ah!” I smiled at him gratefully. It was a brilliant idea. I didn’t know why I didn’t think of it sooner. My father used to wear a similar sort of contraption when he went to the mills to work the saws. Only his was government issued and quite soft, easily formed to the inside of his ear. “That is a trick I will owe you for. What are you called then?”

“44.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s all that matters now eh? Won’t that even matter no more after the wipe.”

“Have you ever seen anyone get the wipe?”

“No. They takes ‘em somewhere else then they don’t never bring ‘em back heres.” He looked at me and grinned sideways again. “Your not feeling a bit shakey in yer shoesies are ya?”

“What?”

“The wipe ain’t nuthin to be afearin’. Most I know is it hurts yer eyes out then Boom! You never remember nothin again. You’re a regular ‘A Number One First Class Model Citizen’.”

I shuddered at this careless description of the Mind Wipe, recalling the first time I’d heard of it. I didn’t believe it could be true. It was my first day of school, the first night in my quarters. The older girl I was to share a bathroom with stopped by to give her version of a greeting.

I was sitting on my bed looking through my papers and maps, trying to plan a route through the labyrinth so that I could get to all of my classes on time. The room was like any other pod quarters. Sleek white walls, gray standard issue furniture. None of it remarkable or even very comfortable. There was no window, and the bed was rather small but it did have very soft coverings. That was a luxury I was not used to. None of the coverings in my community were soft. I was quite enjoying myself when the door to the washroom burst open. I jumped a little bit and looked up to meet the hostile stare of the girl who shoved me into the crowd of boys in the hallway that morning.

“You!” I hissed.  She returned my observation with an incincere smile.

“Yes, me.” She took two steps into my room and folded her arms. “I’m 0203 and I just wanted to make sure you knew how things are going to work around here. I know you’re a roughy, right out of the fields. I also know you’re a trouble maker and on probation so you can’t miss a beat or you get sent back to the fields. So first thing I want to know is what did you do to get yourself into this mess.”

The air in my lungs caught up a bit. I forced myself to focus and stay calm. “How did you know I was on probation?” I was imagining all sorts of wicked people breaking into my files at this huge school and using all of my information against me.

“Easy genius. Firsties never get put in private rooms unless they are labeled as trouble makers. They don’t want you sharing all your bad ideas with the other babies and making new problems. So they put you with someone like me who’s been sufficiently broken down and trained to nip little snarks like you in the bud.” Her last words were so dripping with sarcasm I wasn’t sure what to say next. She didn’t give me a chance to decide. “And most trouble makers are admitted on probation. Which means you’ve got some mighty big talent hidden somewhere that they need or they wouldn’t have let you set foot anywhere but the Mind Wipe. So spit it out. What redeeming quality do you have to get yourself in here?”

“Why do you care?” I wasn’t sure if she wanted to know what I’d done wrong, which was easy, or what I’d done right. That was harder to put a finger on. She rolled her eyes and put her hands on her hips.

“Because you never know. I might need to make use of your specialness some day. What are you? Mathematical genius? Champion with words? Can you make things float in the air with your mind?”

“What?” At that point I thought I might not be dealing with a sane person. “I don’t know anyone who can do that.”

“Ha! I do. I have a girl on my list in the C dorms that can shoot a writer at your face without lifting a finger.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Doesn’t matter. What is your story?” She didn’t sound nearly as tough now. I began to wonder how dangerous she really was.

“I don’t know. It’s not very exciting.” I shrugged figuring this would be a disappointment following the girl who could shoot writers. “I scored really high on all the sections of the entrance test and they agreed to ignore my bad citizenship record and give me a change I guess.”

“Bad citizenship eh? What did you do? Kill someone?”

“No! Of course not. I didn’t do any one really bad thing, just a lot of little things I guess. I have a hard time controlling my temper sometimes. I don’t agree with a lot of things that they tried to teach me.”

“Ahhh. A revolutionary then?”

“No, not hardly.” I’d read about revolutionaries, risking their lives to change their governments. They all ended up dead. Not quite my idea of what I wanted to do with my life.

“Sure you are. You disagree with the Leaders don't’ you? That makes you a revolutionary.”

“No! I didn’t say that. Stop calling me that.” I looked around for the Auto Eye and she noticed my movements.

“Don’t worry. They don’t ever look in on our private quarters. Had trouble with some Auto Eye Attendants spending too much time watching the girls undress so our quarters are off limits unless an investigation is underway.”

“How do you know so much?”

“Easy. I’ve been here forever. I’ve kept my nose down and I’ve met people, seen things.” She shrugged and seemed to relax a bit now. I didn’t feel she was a threat at all, just someone who liked to play Leader.

“So what are you studying then? You must be about ready for an assignment?”

“I have one more year. I’m studying Human Psychology - that’s what makes you who you are, your thoughts, your ideas - where they come from and why. And ultimately they want me to discover how to control them.”

A feeling of dread returned to my stomach. “Wonderful. So my first roommate assignment is a walking talking Auto Eye.”

“Haha. Good one. No, I didn’t say I wanted to control them. I said THEY want me to control them.”

“And can you?”

“Not yet. But we’re onto something. Right now all they have is the Mind Wipe. You get in too much trouble and they haul you off to the Penitentiary and erase your brain completely. It takes away all of your memories - everything you learned in school, everything you were born with, leaves you like a hollow shell, a blank piece of paper for them to draw on. Then they put you in a training program with hopes that they haven’t completely erased your aptitudes. Sometimes someone who’s good at math is still good at math after a Mind Wipe. Sometimes their not good for anything. But it’s better than just killing off a perfectly good body right? Everyone has to be useful.”

“That’s horrible.” It came out as barely a whisper.

“Hey. I didn’t invent it. I’m trying to come up with something better. Remember?”

I couldn’t speak. She’d just turned up the pressure on my whole Secondary School experience by at least a million degrees. I could handle going without food. I could handle being assigned to heavy field work my whole life, even the sewers didn’t sound so bad at this point. The thought that if I messed up bad enough they would take everything away from me? My entire being? My memories... my mother. A spark of hope occured to me.

“They’d never do that to a child though... to us?”

“Ha!” This girl had an annoying habit of laughing at everything I said. “They’ve already done it to their own children some of them.”

I looked down at my papers without even seeing them. Where did my mother sent me to? Did she know the risks I’d be taking? I doubted it.

“Cheer up firsty.” Her tone was almost friendly now. “It’s not the end of the world. It’s not like you’ve blown it on the first day and are being dragged off to the cells. What did you score on your test? Give me exacts so I can file you away for future use.”

I looked back up at her trying to shake off my complete state of anxiety. “Perfect.”

“Excuse me?”

“I got a perfect score.”

“Nice one... Tell me the truth.” She seemed a bit annoyed now, not so friendly as before.

“I’m not lying. The letter said I got a perfect score in all subject areas.”

“That is impossible. No one gets a perfect score.”

“But people can shoot writers with their minds? Here’s the letter right here.” I pulled it out of the bottom of the pile and handed it to her.

“Hmm.” She was looking over the letter and considering it’s official seal. “Well this is very interesting.” She looked back at me as if sizing me up for a new uniform and handed me back my papers.

“Tomorrow you need to eat lunch with me. What are you picking as your elective class?”

“History of Western Civilization with Professor789.” I hoped I didn’t sound too eager. I read and reread the title in the electives list so many times that even though I didn’t know what it meant I had it memorized.

“Whoa. Have fun with that one.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because 789 is a bastard.”

“What does that mean?”

“It just means that he’s one of the worst teachers in this place. But don’t worry. You’ll do fine as long as you leave your feelings at the door.”

“You gone off some where darlin’?” It was a strange man’s voice... with an accent. “Oy! Over here.” I was back in my cell, suddenly ripped from my memory. I looked at the boy across the hallway. He was waving at me, his eyebrows arched in a question.

“What did you say they called you?” I brought my focus back to the present.

“They calls me 44. You better get those brainy pluggers in quick. You’re bein’ sucked away.” The way he answered made me stop and think, then ask again.

“What do you call yourself?”

He smiled at me, an irresistible grin filled with mischief and mayhem, then he lowered his voice so I could just barely make out his answer, “I call me self Thomas. Now plug up those ears dolly and get yerself some rest. That’s where I’m headin’.” He wagged his fingers and stepped back into his cell.

I was too tired and too amazed to move at first. How did he know about names? How did I know what he would say? Eventually I stepped back into the recesses of my own cell and went to work on my sheet. There was a lot to block out and a lot to remember. I wanted to savor every last moment of the memory of my life before they took it all away.