E (2 page)

Hunched over, I scuttle down the alley.  Halfway to the end,
I pick up a metal bar that must have once been part of a balcony rail.  I
lean on it like a cane, but it will give me a weapon if I need one.  At
the open mouth of the alleyway, I hesitate.  My feet don't want to go any
further.  My thoughts and my heart race each other.  Go back. 
Go back.  People wrapped in coats and shoulder blankets hurry by, intent
on getting quickly from one place to another.  Are they cold, or
fearful?  I'm not sure.  Their gazes are downcast, hoods pulled
across faces.  They don't greet each other.  They don't smile. 
I shiver, and my mind keeps whispering the same words.  Go back. 
Just go back.  You can still go back. 

But where, exactly, would I go back to?  The drop zone? 
I work up what saliva I can in my dry mouth and hack and sputter as I hobble
down the street.  I'm right.  People give me a sizable berth, alarm
showing in the widening of their eyes.  A woman clutching the hand of a
small boy crosses the road to avoid me.  I shuffle along in the shadows
under stoops, around corners, putting some distance between me and the drop
zone.

The pavement is crumbling, like everything else.  Old papers
skip along the street or soak in puddles near gutters that eject foul-smelling
steam.  As I shuffle, a splinter of glass burrows into the pad of my
foot.  I don't care; not yet.  But I will.  I'm sure I'm leaving
bloody footprints behind me, but I don't want to look back to check.  I'm
debating with myself whether or not it's better to stop and have a look at my
foot, when I freeze.

Ahead of me in the intersection looms a thick, metallic
body.  Chunks of steel, reflecting the grey sky, worked together in
semi-humanoid form.  It sees from a single curved pane of black mirror
that comprises its void face.  Perfectly still, framed in aether's
characteristic blue-tinged heat shimmer, the Sentry takes in everything around
it.  The people passing by.  Bone-level facial features.  The
rapid beating of my heart.

I draw a ragged breath and tell myself there's nothing to be
afraid of.  I've done nothing wrong.  Or at least, I've already been
punished for what I've done.  The Sentries are here to protect us; to
enforce justice in a way that humans cannot.  They uphold the Ten Laws of
the New World Covenant, impartial, blind to diversities, without feeling. 
They are our government, and beyond that we're free to make our own
choices.  Our own mistakes.  Our forefathers, strangling in red tape,
frozen by eternal debate and endless committees, eventually, out of
desperation, made a sharp turn to this drastically simpler system.  They
meant for us to live in a world that balanced basic protections with freedom of
choice.  But they underestimated mankind's ability to adapt, to commit
atrocities in new ways that defy computerized logic.  Those who are
brought to 'justice' are often the desperate, the destitute, and the
helpless.  Our world is thinly disguised chaos, and the scales of justice
have been replaced by guillotines with legs.  A shiver runs through my
body as I realize what I'm thinking-- as I realize that I am even
capable
of thinking it.

Erasure should have removed every part of my personality-- every
opinion, dissension, every thought that is
me
.  Political views
violate the Second Law.  To have them is dangerous.  To have them
after an erasure is unthinkable.  Is it possible they were embedded so
deeply within my basic understanding of the world that they passed, unchecked,
into my new life?  And if so, what else could have come with them?

My eyes fix on the Sentry. 
Now
I'm afraid.  I
take a deep breath and start counting backward.  I hobble into the street,
cross in front of the machine.  Ninety-nine.  Ninety-eight. 
Ninety-seven.  Its jointed, steely toes enter my peripheral vision. 
I move into its shadow.  Eighty-two.  Eighty-one.  I step onto
the opposite curb.  The metal monster has not moved.  Seventy-eight. 
I'm OK.  I'm safe.  Seventy-six.  Shifting metal behind
me.  I glance back.  Its head has turned toward me.  It makes no
other move.  I duck my face and shuffle off, trailing bloody footprints
behind me.

***

Long minutes later, I find the beginnings of the bad part of the
city.  Not that this is really a city, after all.  By now, I've
realized there are no skyscrapers crumbling in the distance.  There are
not enough people.  And judging by the cold, the icy drizzle that has
begun to sink into my rags, it's either getting toward winter, or I'm in the
north.  One of the Outposts, I guess.  I consider what's happened to
me as I make my way slowly past lean-tos and shanties, past people with
sunken-in faces, vacant, bloodless stares.  Some of them don't bother to
avoid me, but neither do they pay me any attention. 

I ignore them, swimming in the black memories of the box, my mind
prodding, obsessed with poking the wound despite the pain it brings. 
People don't talk about the torture.  Maybe no one knows.  No one who
is able to speak about it.  You emerge from the box half-mad and paranoid,
unable to function.  Unable to pretend that life is the same.  It's
supposed to be a humane punishment.  Supposed to erase a person's criminality
and give them a second chance.  If they break the Covenant a second time,
then
they're considered to be intrinsically flawed and are simply 'removed' from the
system.  But no one ever mentioned sticking you in a tiny metal box until
you crack.

You have been warned
.  I shiver again.  Is it
meant to compel me to an honest start in my new life?  I don't feel
honest, wrapping myself in rags and pretending to have the pox.  I feel
hardly anything more than fear, and I have the strangest feeling that this fear
will compel me to
dishonesty
.

***

When I reach my destination, I know it at once.  The bottom
of humanity's barrel.  Two fires in identical, rusted-out trash
cans.  Black smoke trails spill into the damp air, an acrid infusion of
burning waste.  A scatter of frail bodies swathed in layers of rags hover
listlessly nearby.  Further out, leaning against a chunk of concrete wall,
more are slumped-- broken, or drugged out, or damaged enough to keep from
drawing closer to the fire.  One man has puckered, pink stumps where his
legs should be.  A grey-haired woman stares through eyes filmed over with
a thick layer of milky white.  Here and there, piles of rags identify
bodies that may or may not be alive.  But surely if they were dead, the
others would have stripped them of their belongings by now.

As I approach, I work up a rattle in my throat-- subtle-- just
enough to convince anyone paying attention.  Keeping my head ducked, I
shuffle into the ranks of the condemned, and try to find a spot where the
fire's heat can touch me.  I start to settle against the concrete wall,
but I've not so much as bent my knees to sit, when another bundle of rags
standing by the fire barrels turns and eyes me wildly.

It makes a noise of rage and frustration, moving toward me. 
Dirt obscures the twisted face, filthy hair frizzing into the eyes, but I think
it's a boy-- young, skinny, but taller than me.  From the distorted
expression and insistent, wordless sounds of grievance, I surmise that I've
angered someone unbalanced.  He rushes toward me, arms flailing.  I
fall back a step.  My fingers grip my metal stick.  I make my own
noise of rage as I swing for his head.

He skids to a stop, his feet slipping in the rubble.  He
falls backward.  My stick cuts through the air.  I take a step toward
him, and he scrambles back on his elbows.  He flips over and claws his way
to his feet, retreating to the furthest barrel of fire, where he glares back at
me nervously.  I stand my ground a moment, then adjust myself and sit
against the concrete wall, eyeing him.  My fingers cling to my piece of
metal.

No one else challenges me.  I scan my surroundings, trying to
sum up any other potential threats, but really, I'm so tired that my mind
wanders.  An old woman catches my eye despite my efforts to avoid her. 
Her hands are so gnarled they're twice their normal size.  I look away, at
the ground, at the dark spots where rain drops are hitting the packed
earth.  I hunch down and pull my rags tighter.  Face in knees. 
This fabric smells like piss.  I would recoil, but exhaustion has taken
over.  I'm weary in every part of myself, inside and out.  Before I
know it, my eyelids sink shut.  I mean to open them, but I don't. 
Not for a long time.

***

Dead of night.  Everyone is still, lying in piles-- some closer
to the fire barrels than others.  Only the scurry of disease-carrying
rodents and broken rustle of cockroaches disrupt the silence.  In the
broken light of the fire I inspect the slash between my toes.  A little
prodding and I feel the hard chunk of glass in my foot.  Grinding my teeth
and refusing to make a sound, I try to get at it with my fingers, but I can't
get a hold of it.  I dig and dig, but in the end I only make the wound
sting like fire and restart the bleeding.  I sit and watch the fat red drops
fall, sucking down to black spots in the dirt.  There's nothing to do for
it.  I wind some of the rags from my legs around my feet, which at least
will keep more glass from cutting me tomorrow.  A rat skitters between
bodies and runs past me.  I retract my limbs, shivering in
repulsion.  A sort of shell-shock hits me as I realize fully where I
am.  Drops of rain start plopping into my lap.  Only, it's not rain;
it's tears.  And once I realize I'm crying, there's no stopping it. 
I rock forward, grabbing my knees, and weep silently.

When dawn's light spills through the ruins of the overpass, I calm
my breathing and wipe my palms over my eyes.  I cannot show any
weakness. 

Movement.  It's the old woman with fingers twisted like tree
roots.  She's holding something, and when she's about ten feet away, she
flings it toward me.

I flinch as the object skitters across the broken concrete and
hard dirt.  Then I see what it is.  I scramble for the bread crust
and seize it, stuff it greedily into my mouth.  It sticks in my throat,
but even the mold tastes good.  The old woman hobbles off, studying me
over her shoulder.  Now, she looks away. 

I tremble, moved by her act of kindness.  Some day, I will
repay her.

I head into the heart of the Outpost to find a way to survive. 
My foot is far more tender than it was the night before.  I step on my
heel only.  I need to remove the glass, sooner rather than later. 
That means I need some sort of tool.  But before that, I need more food,
and water. 

The water turns out to be the easiest part.  I find rain
collected in an old tire leaning against a wall.  Food is more
difficult.  I wander the back alleys, looking for scraps, but the only
thing I find in the trash is clearly unsuitable for consumption.  A
chicken carcass with some meat on the bones sprays a load of tiny flies into a
black cloud when it's touched.  White maggots writhe in and out of the
flesh.  I drop it and move on.  In another trash barrel, a scoop of
beans smells like shitty death.

Surely there's a better place to look.  After some wandering,
I find a row of buildings that, though still dilapidated, are larger, at one
time dignified.  I avoid a Sentry and move toward a side street. 
Just as I turn away, something small and pink runs across the street.  A
pig?  I do a double-take, and see nothing.  Perhaps erasure damaged
my brain.  The alley in back hosts a row of ragged beggars, hunched in a
line like carrion birds.  Their presence here means I am right.  Food
will be discarded.  And it's right about lunch time.  I grip my metal
cane and go to join their ranks.  I'm about two-thirds of the way down the
alley when one of them springs into motion.  Jumping from his perch, he
draws something out from under his rags, winds his arm back, and hurls the
object at me.  I dodge sideways.  The rock just misses my face. 
My shoulder slams into the alley wall.  I stumble, trying to stay
upright.  While I do, the other beggars fling more things toward me. 
Chunks of metal.  Broken bottles.  More rocks.  I spin away,
folding in on myself.  My back takes the brunt of the assault. 
Something heavy strikes above my hip, just to the side of my spine, sending a
jolt of pain and a wave of nausea through me.  I run, though every step is
like a dagger in my foot.  Though doing so exposes more of me as a
target.  Trash pelts against my back.  I'm almost to the end of the
alley when I hear their attacks turn against each other.  I glance
back.  Blood spurts from an exposed arm.  The victim screams. 
Just around the corner comes the sound of metal footsteps.  I almost
faint.  Almost freeze.  Instinct alone drives my body into
motion. 

I shoulder through an old back doorway, slamming it behind
me.  Inside, in a dusty grey half-light, I huddle down, and don't
breathe.  Outside, the Sentry's footsteps move by.  More screams join
the first one.  I can't listen.  I scramble away, limping further
into the dilapidated structure.  Bursting from room to room, I find an
external door on the opposite side.  I slam through it into the open air,
running.  Crashing by people, sprinting for all I'm worth, I'm halfway
down the street before I realize I'm losing my costume.  I force myself to
slow, grabbing at my rags.  Ducking my face, I rewind them carefully about
my head.  I take one alleyway, then another, wanting to lose myself. 
Wanting to hide.  For hours, I glance behind me to see if anyone is
following.  I cannot shake the feeling of being stalked.