Future Crimes Part 68

"But I have," he says, laughing, and then he's gone.

As the door slides shut, the mag straps automatically let go, and I'm free to move about the cell to use the toilet, to pace the length of my ten by twenty foot cage. My feet are so swollen now that it's all I can manage to stagger to the bare commode squatting obscenely in the middle of the cell. Once, early on, I tried to outwit him--sleeping on the floor, hoping to evade the electromagnetic field which paralyzes most of my motor functions as I lay on the cot--only to discover that the field worked equally well no matter where I came to rest in this torture cell.

I sit on the toilet, voiding myself, knowing he is watching, knowing he derives pleasure from my humiliation and loss of privacy. Above me the video fragments mirror my movements--a tremor in my leg; the small movement of my rib cage as I take shallow breaths--recording them for my persecutor's future enjoyment. And I think of this record outliving me, the last mark I will leave on this world .. . and I start to cry.

Tears of grief, and shame, and helpless anger.

He enjoys this, too, I know .. . but I just can't stop myself.

I was a teacher. History; junior college. I think now that's why he chose me--someone who had at least a nodding acquaintance with the past, someone who could appreciate what was happening to him. Perhaps he was one of my old students, though he denies this.

I was chosen, he claims, entirely at random--"within certain logistical parameters," including location, access, predictability of daily movements.

It was that predictability which no doubt made me such an appealing target. Spring Quarter, April: Nine o'clock to ten-thirty, Delacroix Hall, first floor, Nineteenth-Century European History; ten-thirty, up to the second floor, Interactive Study Group until noon, then lunch, either in the commissary or a restaurant somewhere on State Street; one o'clock, Gower Hall, TwentiethCentury American History until two-thirty, followed by Twenty-first Century until four, back to Delacroix 268 Alan Brennert for another Interactive Study Group until five, and then home.

I never saw his face then, either. I was on one of the quiet, shaded paths between Delacroix and Gower after my four o'clock study group when I felt the press of a blunt object in the small of my back, followed by a tingling sensation, followed by oblivion, A neural suppressor, I imagine, shutting down the higher brain functions while handing over most motor control to him. If anyone saw us leave campus, all they would have glimpsed was the two of us walking together toward the parking structure his arm, perhaps, draped across my shoulders in what appeared to be good fellows.h.i.+p but was in fact gentle guidance of my usurped body. And when I regained consciousness.. ..

I was here. In this windowless box, soundproofed, white walls neither cold nor warm to the touch, hidden nanovids refracting and reflecting my image above me.

Am I above ground? Below? I'd guess below, a converted cellar perhaps, but I have no way of knowing for sure. In the middle of a city like Dr. Holmes' murder castle or in some rural corner far from urban sprawl? I have no idea.

I yelled for help. I yelled to be set free. I yelled until I was hoa.r.s.e, until my hands were bloodied from pounding away at the steel door .. . and as I sank onto the cot, rubbing my bruised and battered hands, experiencing the first taste of pain in my captivity .. .

the door slid open. I jumped to my feet, managing no more than two steps before the mag kicked in and I fell back onto the cot, helpless.

Then my captor appeared, towering above me ... his Zodiac hood forbidding, frightening. The only parts of me I could move, obviously by his design, were my eyes and my mouth.

"Who are you? Why are you doing this?"

He squatted down beside me, his voice m.u.f.fled by the fabric of the hood.

"You're the history teacher," he said.

"What comes to mind?"

"Please ... I have a family--" "Parents, brother, no wife, no children. Does the name Edward Gem mean anything to you? Kenneth Bianchi, Cleo Green, Heinrich Pommerencke?"

"No. I don't--" "Albert De Salvo Fritz Haarmann? Coral Watts?"

"Who the h.e.l.l are you, why am I--" "You may not know the names, but perhaps you'll recognize the handiwork." Above us the video fragments shattered and reformed into a horrifying collage of death, torture, mutilation. Men, women, children, the sovereignty of their bodies violated by monsters the likes of which I could barely comprehend; though the implications for me were becoming clear.

"No," I said, my voice hoa.r.s.e, "Jesus, you can't be-- I mean, things like this don't happen anymore--" "How do you know they don't?"

"Look," fighting to stay calm, to be rational, "it's not the twentieth century, for G.o.d's sake, you can't get away with this--" I thought I saw a smile in those clear blue eyes.

"Murder is not extinct in your White City."

At the time I had no inkling of what he meant by that.

"No, of course not, but--the last serial murderer in the U.S. was, what, fifty years ago--?"

"Forty-three," he corrected me.

"Theodore McCoy, killed and mutilated three women in Seattle, Was.h.i.+ngton; Tacoma; San Francisco." Voice calm, collected, as though he were a student in my cla.s.sroom, pleased to offer up an answer to a question from his professor.

Before I could point out the obvious, he beat me to it: "By examining the bodies of the three women-the pattern of mutilation, means of death, probable instruments--and comparing it to neural signatures of other known serial killers, FBI and local authorities were able to construct a neural profile of the killer.

Signature tracking of the area yielded three close matches, one of whom turned out to be McCoy."

Maybe he wanted me to talk him out of it; maybe 270 Alan Bremen I was supposed to play the role of teacher, or conscience.

"Yes. Right," I said.

"And that was before gene scan Today you can't even dispose of a single body without being found out, much less commit multiple murders without being--" I felt a jolt in my arm. He had pulled a syringe from his robes and injected me with what turned out to be the first of his tiny agents. He stood.

His eyes seemed to smile again.

"We'll see," he said, turning away, the door sliding open, and once again I was alone. Even as the mag straps let go, I felt a sharp stab in my chest. I cried out--my pain, soon to become my only companion in this cell, mirrored above me. And so it began.

It will end soon. I know that for certain. The small intruders in my system are thriving, multiplying, feasting on blood and bone; my body feels less and less my own, more and more merely a landscape on which the designs of others are forcibly writ. Soon this fragile biosphere will burst, the last battlements of flesh will be overwhelmed, and I will die.

I look back on my forty-odd years of life, and I try to visualize every woman I ever made love to. Julia, Colleen, Laurie, Mikaela. I try to block out the pain and conjure again the feel of their lips, the brush of their skin against mine. Chandra, Brianne, Mei ... I could have married Mei, why didn't I? Could have had a son, a daughter, something that would have outlived me; I might not even be here if I had, my life not so proscribed and easily usurped, or at the least I'd be here thinking of someone I love, knowing I had lived a genuine life and not .. . whatever it is I have lived. Oh, G.o.d .. . Mei. Tears well in my eyes, I repeat her name over and over, wis.h.i.+ng my words back in time, and for a moment I seem to be there, some quiet night at home with her, whispering to my younger self: Marry her, you idiot! For G.o.d's sake ask her, ask her now! But the young me doesn't hear or if he does doesn't believe, I lose sight of him amid the wrong turns and blind alleys of his future, my past .. . and I find myself once again here, alone, with tears in my eyes and a lover's name dying on my breath.

The door opens. To my surprise the mag straps do not activate, but I'm too weak even to sit up; it's all I can do just to turn my head and look up at my captor as he enters. His mask today is a clown's face, garish crescents of red and white around nose, mouth, cheeks. I've seen this one before. The leering face of some long-dead psychotic who killed by night, and made balloon animals for ailing children by day.

What the h.e.l.l did he call himself?

"Pogo"?

For the first time, he sits down on the cot beside me. I wish desperately that I had the strength to reach up, to claw at him, wrestle him to the ground .. . but my body fails me, as he knew it would. He takes a small notebook from a pocket.. . places it beside me.

I look at it, then at him" What An effort to force out even one word.

He produces a pen from another pocket; folds it into one of my hands.

"In case there's anything you want to say. To ... whomever." I must look incredulous, because he laughs and says, "I'm serious. There's nothing you can tell them that can hurt me, after all; you have no idea where you are, you've never seen my face. I have nothing to lose. Go on." He pushes the notebook closer to me, then stands up. Smiles impishly.

"Have I ever lied to you?"

In moments he's left again. It takes an enormous effort just to roll over on my side; I reach for the notebook, open it. Blank pages stare out at me, beckoning with the promise of a last good-bye, apology, declaration of love--anything I wish, to whomever I wish.

Mei? Long married, mother of three .. . and not in a million years will I give this madman her name and address (a.s.suming he doesn't already have them).

Who, then? I think of my father, my mother, regretting the years of unease and distance between us. My captor already knows their names, where they live .. .

but the thought of giving him an excuse to contact them is too horrifying, I can't risk it.

And besides: I know why he's offered me this. Not for me, but for him: a grisly souvenir, a memento mori--a reminder of my own impending death, written in my own hand. His leering interest in whatever I might say rendering it unclean; worthless. I hurl the notebook away from me; it just barely makes it halfway across the room, where it falls open, its empty pages reflected in the video fragments above.

Something satisfying about this: pages and screens staring blankly at one another, offering nothing for voyeuristic eyes.

As if in response to my action, something wet and cold seems to break loose inside me, and I scream as I realize that it is my life itself which has finally ruptured--whatever years I had left to me stolen by this ridiculous anachronism, this monster out of time.

"b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" Where do I get the strength to shout, the breath to curse him?

"b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" The video images seem to recede from me, as I at long last make my escape from this place.

"I'm your last victim!" I cry out, even as the walls of the cell seem to bend and constrict into a tube, a dark tunnel with no beginning and no end. He's succeeded in killing me, but I can take bleak comfort in knowing he won't kill another; that in this White City he reviles, no one can kill repeatedly and remain at large--and that someday death will come for him as it now comes for me. But oh, how beautiful it is! A light sings at the farthest end of the tunnel, a light I seem to ride like a wave; I am no longer flesh, nothing so perishable, I am photons riding a solar wind, riding backward into the blinding warmth of the sun, its bright beckoning disk growing larger with each thousandth of a second.. ..

Until... I suddenly begin to slow. The sun becomes less perceptibly bigger; a hundredth of a second more, and it ceases to grow larger at all. I've .. . stopped.

The sun now starts to move away from me, or me from it, the solar wind reversing direction; I find myself hurled away from its warmth and light and, voiceless, I try to scream in protest, begging to go back, to go--home? I drop below c and feel myself growing heavier, photons reverting to gross flesh, thought changing to voice. Take me back, take me back, as the walls of the tunnel close in around me, and the sun, long set, gives me over to the night.

The light returns slowly. Not as bright as before-but just as warm, and just as welcome. My eyes open, but I have to s.h.i.+eld them against the glare. I'm staring into ... the sky?

And then I notice ... the pain. Or rather, the lack of it. Impossible as it seems, nothing hurts inside; and I know, as only someone who has experienced it can know, that nothing is inside , .. that I am alone in my own body once again.

I sit up; look around me. Trees, gra.s.s, a ribbon of concrete threading through shady arbors. My briefcase lies on the ground not three feet away, ungraded term papers scattered around it. With a start I realize where I am.

On campus. That building over there--my G.o.d, it's Gower Hall! I jump to my feet, my heart pounding.

Jesus--can it be? Am I really here? I roll back the sleeves of my jacket; my s.h.i.+rt. My skin is unbroken, unscarred. I take a deep breath of air and hold it. My lungs are strong; my heart races. My G.o.d, I am-I'm alive.

I break into laughter--relieved, delighted laughter.

Was the nightmare only that--a dream, a delusion? It seemed so real--so hideously, perversely real. But clearly it wasn't. I think suddenly of Mei, of my parents, of all the paths I am free to take again, the blind alleys I newly dedicate myself to avoid. Another chance: I have another chance!

I pick up my briefcase, shuffle the fallen papers back into it, snap it closed. I fairly well jaunt along the path; I feel like breaking into dance, or song. As a compromise I start humming, which turns again into laughter. A short distance from Gower Hall I pause at an automated kiosk offering free copies of the college paper. I press the screen, opting for hard copy rather than audio or electronic. A copy slides out, and I eagerly scan the masthead, looking for the date--April 2nd, wasn't it?--that will serve as the final confirmation that my nightmare was just that.

The date on the paper ... is May 14th.

My heart skips a beat. I drop the paper to the ground.

I feel the press of a blunt object in the small of my back.

The scream dies in my throat as my body seizes up and I find myself quickly paralyzed. This time, however, he doesn't shut down all of my higher brain functions.

Trapped inside a body which no longer responds to my wishes, I can see him out of the corner of my eye as he steps up beside me--feel him as he drapes a friendly arm across my shoulders.

"Good morning." His eyes are bright, warm, and friendly.