Page 16 of From the Noblest Motives
Five days later, Shudder had settled into the routine—the dull, hopeless, endless routine. Up with the chimes to wash and dress. He couldn't say in the morning because there was no way to tell. His day might have started at midnight, and he'd simply become accustomed to it. Shuffle off to first meal. Eat filling but soul-killing food. Shuffle back to his cell. Pace. Nap. Ask the AI questions, many of which went unanswered. Let brain wander in endless, anxious circles. Go to second meal. Return to cell. Sleep. Repeat.
He had managed to file an attorney contact request for his mother's attorney, but he had no way to check on his request's progress, and the AI wouldn't tell him how long it might take. They wouldn't even let him keep the pen, a blue one, a color he didn't have access to in this nightmare of white. Would he forget his colors? Be unable to name them correctly if he ever walked free?
At least no one's tried to kill me yet. There. That's a bright side in all this, isn't it?
"Hey, AI friend?" he called up toward the speaker, which he didn't have to do, of course. The AI heard him if he whispered. "Is it possible to get something to watch, maybe? Serials? Documentaries? I dunno, classroom lectures?"
After a two-second delay, the informational screen lit up on his wall, and the AI voice explained.Educational texts are provided. The list is searchable for individual classes as well as curricula for specific degree study.
"Ah. To read on the wall screen?" Shudder cringed at the disappointment in his voice, though the AI wouldn't care one way or the other. "Not something I can hold?"
All texts are available only through the informational screen.
"Could you read to me? I have a little bit of trouble with words I can't… well, at least on the wall, you see… It's not that I can't. It's just easier from something I can hold. I know that sounds..."
Your file states that you are dyslexic. Text-to-speech may be provided upon request for approved disabilities.
"You really like me to drag things out of you, don't you?" Shudder ran a hand over his scalp with a desperate laugh. "Is dyslexia an approved disability?"
Yes.
"Thank stars for that." He thought for a few moments about what might be interesting versus what might be useful and decided he'd be in a better position to improve his situation with useful. “What sorts of law degrees do you have?"
Criminal justice. Business law. International law. Environmental law. Civil rights law—
“That last one. Is there a class list? A thingamajig... curriculum?"
The AI began reciting classes, numbers, and titles, and he had to admit the sheer number was impressive. He chose one of the introductory classes—History of Civil Rights in North America—and settled in to listen, wishing he could take notes.
Some of it, he'd at least heard of. The Civil Rights Act that attempted to end racial segregation in the mid-twentieth century. The striking down of the Defense of Marriage Act in the early twenty-first century that finally allowed marriage equality. The continued struggles of racial, sexual, and gender minorities well into the twenty-first century baffled him. Why had people been so determined to keep taking barbaric steps backwards? After the wars and the food riots, the focus of civil rights and anti-civil-rights legislation shifted, though. Bill after bill illustrating governmental struggles to define who was human, who was normal, and who was not.
The Variant Education Act, passed in 2172, mandated the identification of variant children during early childhood development, supposedly to make certain their needs were met, but in practice, the law served as a means of segregation and data collection.
The Registration of North American Variants Act, which created a registry of known variants that was shared by law enforcement, education, and health systems, again under the guise of meeting the needs of variant citizens. But it was all about tracking and control. They tested all the kids in school. As soon as the kid manifested a talent, onto the registry they went.
Shudder nodded along to the recitation of current legislation in process. The Variant Protective Act, which would require all variants to be implanted with government-monitored tracking. The Voting Reform Act, which would strip variants of nearly all voting rights for the protection of normal humans. The Property and Inheritance Act, in which, hidden among tax reforms and streamlined estate procedures, were brief mentions of variants being ineligible to own property or businesses. All of them had stalled at various points in the process, but all of them kept coming back, resurrected with growing Humans First support.
This. This was what he'd been fighting against all these years. Futilely, very often. Alone, much of the time. Though he was starting to think that civil disobedience, while important, couldn't be the whole of his strategy.
Flailing, McKenzie. You've been flailing out in the wastelands.
He'd finished the first three hours of the course by the time the chime sounded for second meal, and he laughed despite his grim situation. Using his brain for something productive—or something that might eventually prove productive—was so much better than staring at the walls and asking the AI random questions.
A few of the stones lifted from his chest, the ones that had piled there since his strange and, he was certain, less-than-legal arrest the week before. He whistled as he shuffled after his companion orange lights to the mess hall. Not that he needed the lights any longer. He knew the way, but they were obviously part of the prisoner control system that kept them separated and made minimal contact with prison personnel possible. Cost savings with fewer guards? Fear of variants? Isolation as a form of aggression deterrent and emotional control? Probably all three.
Despite the Horace Act, though, which made so many of the procedures at San Judas Tadeo legal when they wouldn't have been tolerated in a normal prison, they hadn't been able to remove the education requirement from the facility. It pleased Shudder's rebellious little heart that something good was still out of their control.
The day got better by the tiniest degree when Shudder collected his food tray and discovered that evening's meal was beans and rice with a pickled cabbage bowl on the side. Recognizable food with recognizable flavors had become a welcome sight, when many of the second meal offerings tended toward excuses for stews containing gray chunks of possibly meat and vegetables cooked to the point of despair.
Is this my life now? Reaping tiny sparks of joy from pitiful things? No, because once the family lawyer gets through with that trial, I'll have the mistrial of all mistrials called, and I'll be walking out.
I hope.
The next two days passed in ever-more-familiar routine, with Shudder trying his best to be a model variant in captivity. He followed the rules, kept himself and his space scrupulously clean, and only asked the AI questions about his classes. No ammunition for the authorities. They would get nothing for them to point to and say he'd been aggressive or uncooperative.
Still. When the lights went out, before he managed to drop into restless dreams, he would run his hands over and around the metal plate on his scalp, trying to work a fingernail underneath the edge, trying to find any give to its adhesion at all. They'd probably have to redo it at some point—shave his head again and reapply whatever cement they used before his hair grew out and ruined the seal. His hair tended to grow fast. Mom's complaint ofit's getting shaggyhad occurred at most, two weeks after every haircut.
Which meant his seal would have to be redone more often. Every two weeks? Fifty-two weeks in a year. Sixty years. His half-asleep brain couldn't do the math, but that was a hell of a lot. Would his skin break down? Would they eventually be attaching it directly to his skull? He shivered and starting singing nonsense in his head to keep those macabre thoughts out.
