Events begin to close in on Ames, and a computer error at IO turns Mikey loose in the lower complex as Ned makes an attempt to liberate his little brother before he dies there.
A - E F - J K - O P - V W - Z Newest Files
For Your Own Good 8
The wind was soft, very nearly a breeze, as a bright and
silvery moon made its way across a clear night sky without a single
cloud to impede its progress. From seemingly everywhere, yet
nowhere in particular, crickets chirped and an occasional tree frog
croaked. Carried on the soft wind was the slight fragrance of some
sweet flower, its shape and color unknown, hidden in the darkness.
It was the perfect night, the type of night that poets wrote about
and lovers fantasized about. There was a slight chill to the air,
not actually amplified by the breeze. All of this was lost on the
man making his way up the walk, however. For him, this night was
anything but peaceful or romantic. It was a turning point in his
life, and the utter serenity of Nature’s perfection did absolutely
nothing for him.
He twisted his key in the locked door, entered the apartment
that he could scarcely afford, and re-locked the door. He switched
on only one small lamp, making his way more by feel than anything
else to his desk in the corner of the small living room. He
switched on another small lamp near the computer, and snatched the
yellow Post-It note off of the screen. He read it half aloud, his
breath catching as his mind stumbled over the words. Although he
was tired and his body cried out for rest more so than his
overworked mind did, he still had work to do. Work, and the
thoughts that he knew would deny him any good sleep. Good sleep
had been harder to come by of late, although that was nothing new.
He touched the computer’s mouse, and the screen came to life.
There was work to be done.
It was a simple setup. There was no happy wallpaper on the
desktop to greet him. Instead, there was only a cyan-colored
background with a very few icons scattered across it. Deep within
the computer’s tower, however, other things were happening. As he
read the note over and over and went in search of some coffee,
three 1-gig multi-processor chips and over 1,000 Megs of RAM sensed
the mouse movement and came to life. Somewhere, a DSL modem made
connection and began to download his email into a browser that had
begun to run. One instant messenger program with only two contacts
on the list came to life as well, marking him as “available.” The
CD rewriteable drive, a uniquely modified invention that his friend
Jason had made for him out of spare parts as a technology project,
spun up the CD that waited inside of it. It was a blank CD-RW
disk, but by the time the coffee was done it contained over 400
megabytes of nasty and aggressive code that would viscously assault
any other system that they came into contact with. Even the best
anti-virus software would stand no chance against Jason’s coding,
which had just arrived via the DSL modem. The lights dimmed
briefly then came back up. He sipped his coffee and sighed.
“Phase 1 complete,” he murmured, “THANK YOU, Jason.”
His friend, Jason, in building this contraption, has
demonstrated beyond the shadow of a doubt that he had far too much
free time on his hands and was too intelligent for his own good.
An email came in, notifying him that the same data was also
awaiting him on a CD-RW in his computer terminal at work, which no
one would be able open it anyway without help.
There in the darkness, he waited. He switched off the one
lamp near the computer and sipped his coffee. Quietly he
contemplated the moonlight spilling in through one of the windows
and sighed again. Although he really needed sleep, and was off
from both work and school the following day, he couldn’t bring
himself to rest. There was just enough light to see the pictures
on the end table.
In the center was a picture of himself as a child. He didn’t
recall the date, and there was no writing on the back of it. He
guessed himself to be about twelve years old in the image. To the
left of his childhood picture was the image of another little boy.
This one he knew well. He took another long drink of the warm
coffee and felt the tears welling up in his eyes. The boy in the
lefthand image was smiling back at him, almost as if trying to give
him comfort at this odd hour. He looked so happy, so healthy and
alive. But he wasn’t. Flashing in the man’s mind was another
picture - an image of the same boy but with his facial features
drawn and pinched and his soft and thick blonde hair all gone.
Unlike the real picture, his facial tones were not the magenta-
tinged tan of youth at its best. Instead, they were gray and
sickly. In his mind, the glittering slate colored eyes were closed
and sunken. For all that he now knew, for all that medical science
had known then, nothing had been able to save his little brother
from leukemia. But on the right of his own childhood image was
still another face; a digital print, but quality nonetheless.
The tears that had welled threateningly in his eyes finally
spilled over as his gaze fell upon this last picture of a boy with
severely buzzed blonde hair and mysteriously colored eyes. This
was the face that now haunted his dreams. Instead of the boy on
the left, it was now the boy on the right. No longer was the
haunting question that he heard over and over in his sleep, “Why
did you go away when I was sick?” Now when he attempted sleep, he
heard, “Why did you castrate me and leave me in here?” His mind
raced. His eyes jumped from image to image. There was no doubt,
despite the varying haircuts, that the three boys were brothers.
The set of the forehead, the shape of the nose ... and the eyes.
He found himself lost in those eyes, and unable to tear himself
away from the gaze of those penetrating eyes in the image to the
right, he became lost.
He saw himself, an eternity ago. He looked left. It was the
shape of the face, his mother’s nose. He looked right. It was the
set of the forehead and the eyes. Left - the ears. Right - the
shape of the mouth. He cursed his own father for abandoning him
when he was little, and cursed the unknown man again for siring
another boy whom he would not care for either. Perhaps he had
sensed it. Perhaps something had brought them together, fate,
karma, God ... who knew ? Perhaps it had been something else. He
thought of his stepfather, warmly, and of his mother. He bowed his
head, his mind full, his senses waning, but far from rest. “Oh,
God,” he whispered, “Oh, Michael, if only I’d known sooner!” The
soft moonlight fell across his face, but he failed to notice it.
It was with a start that he was pulled from his reverie by the
obnoxious UH-OH sound of his instant messenger program going off on
the computer. The message was simple. “It’s done. You know what
to do next. Whenever you’re ready. I still don’t know why you
wanna do this for a boy you hardly know.” He didn’t reply.
Instead, he turned back to his contemplation of the three
pictures. Of the boy in the center, he remembered love. Of the
boy on the left, he remembered more love and sense of family, later
torn apart by unbearable pain. But of the boy on the right he
remembered only pain. He hadn’t known this boy for long, and if
his plans failed, he wouldn’t be knowing him for much longer. Of
that he was sure. The tears continued to fall silently down his
cheeks, and he remembered that other than the night before, when he
had announced his discovery to his friend Jason, that he not cried
since the funeral. Or had he? Yes, he had; he just didn’t want to
think about it. Another image arose in his mind, an image of one
of those boys - beaten and unconscious - being taken out on a
gurney. Not since the boy on the left, his little brother, had
died, had he been moved to tears. Not until the boy on the gurney,
the boy on the right, had come into his life. Not until he had
castrated that same boy.
He retrieved the CD from the computer and put it in his jacket
pocket. He paused only long enough to email the computer at work
that he had forgotten something and was coming back in for it. He
then turned to go, but paused for one more look at the three
images. As he locked the door and stepped out into the perfect
night once again, he wondered what that boy in the right-hand
picture was doing. The boy, he knew, certainly wasn’t enjoying the
night, locked up and lost in a building with more stories
underground than most had above. A building where the interior
lights never went off, and there was no night or day. A place
where there was no full moon shining down on his face, or a soft
breeze ruffling his hair. Not even a window. And, like himself,
where one was unable to even dream of something better.
“Not again,” Ned choked, as the fragrance of that unknown
flower came to him on the wind, “I won’t bury another little
brother.”
The boy sat curled up in a chair, his arms locked about his
knees which were drawn up under his chin. Although the temperature
of the room never varied by more than a degree or two, he was
shivering. He wore an all-white sweatsuit and white ankle length
socks. His sweatshirt’s hood was pulled up over his closely
cropped blonde hair. He sat rocking back and forth, his head
pounding and tears streaming down his face. He was all alone in
the rec room. Everyone else was either in class or with a
counselor. He himself should have been in History class at the
time, but somehow in light of what had happened, he just hadn’t
been able to bring himself to go to class. Surprisingly, they had
relented to his pleas to simply be left alone. He was seldom alone
in this strange place. If he wasn’t asleep, he was in the company
of his roommates or in class. If he wasn’t in class, he was with a
counselor. If he wasn’t with a counselor, he was in the rec room
with at least one roommate and or a guard. If not that, then he
was in bed.
Bed. The word stuck in his mind. His own bed was so
comfortable and warm, but yet he didn’t want to be in it anymore.
He thought of his old bed at home, lumpy and hard and not very good
for the back. He never thought that he would miss it, but as he
rocked himself in the deserted rec room, he realized that he did.
At least there, he had dreamed. Here, he didn’t. He thought of
his bed in the ICU, which he had occupied for weeks, or so they had
told him. He thought of the bed there where he had, only so
recently, discovered sex and the pleasures that it could bring
him. Pleasures, that despite his castration, were still available
for him. He had not had sex nor even masturbated until that time,
that very first time.
And then a fresh storm of crying overtook him. The slight
boy’s body was wracked by violent sobs as he choked on his own
breath, his entire body shaking. Gooseflesh broke out all over
him, the tiny hairs that he had here and there on his body standing
on end. He had promised himself that he wouldn’t let them see him
cry anymore. The constant pain in his head intensified, and he
pulled himself up into an even tighter position. They might have
relented and allowed him his time alone to grieve, but they hadn’t
mentioned this. It was one of the worst punishments he had yet
endured at IO. Unable to help it, he gave in and wept.
Michael Baines, eunuch, aged 13 years and IO inmate was
breaking his promise to himself.
He had no idea of how long he had been alone in the rec room.
No one was playing pool. No one was playing with the Playstation -
but how much fun could one have with games like Poke’mon red and
blue and yellow and nothing with any action - he wondered
silently. He wished that there was a TV or at the very least a VCR
with prerecorded movies, even anything G-rated. But there wasn’t.
There was no contact with the outside world. Michael found himself
suddenly wishing desperately for a window, to see the sun or least
something green. He was so tired of white. White, gray, pale
yellow ... and red. He was so sickened by red. He had seen far
too much of it already.
He shot one spiteful glance at the mirrored globe in the
center of the ceiling and bowed his head once again. Although he
hadn’t had a religious upbringing - if his previous life could even
be called an upbringing at that - he found himself praying to
Someone, Anyone, who would listen to him. He wasn’t sure if God
was there, or Jesus, or any other religious figure for that
matter. He simply cast his thoughts silently in the direction that
he thought was up, hoping that there really was a Heaven and that
Someone there was listening to his desperate cries for help. He
made no sound as he prayed, yet his ears were still filled with one
horrific sound in the empty rec room that was as silent as Death
itself, save for his own crying. And even though his weeping eyes
were tightly closed, he saw before him that same image ... that red
image of the tiled shower floor as he pressed his ear down near
Cheng’s mouth. And then the scream. It filled his mind, and
suddenly Michael realized that it was probably a good thing that
the therapy transceiver in his pillow wouldn’t let him dream
anymore.
He thought of the beds again. He thought of what he had done,
albeit at Cheng’s insistence. It all seemed like a fading dream,
although he couldn’t remember having had a dream since his arrival
at IO. A wave of sudden confusion welled up in him, to be followed
shortly by anger. He had done what he had done, and - he finally
admitted to himself - he had liked it. Never before had he given
any thought to the fact that he himself might turn out gay, but as
one hand instinctively moved to his crotch at the very memory of
it, he was reminded also that he was now a eunuch. This only
served to add to the confusion in his mind, which was scarcely
functioning anyway. He thought of how he had been told that once
castrated, men lost interest in sex - yet he hadn’t. He had just
discovered it, and after the fact at that. He remembered the
pleasure, but could feel only the current pain. He tried hard to
remember the smile on the Asian eunuch’s face, but all he could see
behind his closed eyelids was the red floor. With a struggle, he
tried to remember the sound of that stuttered goodbye, “L-lhuv y-
yhu ...”, but all he could hear was that final scream of sheer
agony. The pain in his own head was almost unbearable, and
although he cursed himself for it, he couldn’t stop crying.
“‘At least no one’s here to see me,’” he thought, half aloud.
But Michael was wrong.
In his office several floors above, Ames stared at the
monitor. He sipped his strong coffee and lit a cigarette, punching
a few keys on his control panel which controlled the level of ULF
waves that were slowly, and without any real tissue damage, tearing
through Michael’s brain and putting him in extreme pain. Although
mercy was not really in his nature, Ames had suddenly had a second
thought as an alarm went off. “SHIT!” he exploded, spilling coffee
in his lap. The alarm was to remind him that he was going to have
to cease the ULF punishment for the time being. He couldn’t prove
it, thanks to the glitch in the camera in the ICU, but he was
almost certain that this new inmate, Michael Baines was - despite
his castration - inclined towards homosexual behavior. Ames
couldn’t tolerate a great deal of things, and ‘faggots,’ as he
called them, were very near the top of his list. “Dammit anyway,”
Ames mumbled to himself, blowing smoke at the monitor, “I guess
we’ll have to adhere to the manual and just let the death of your
little butt-buddy be punishment enough for now.” Ames slowly rose
from his chair, wiped himself off with a napkin, and left the
office muttering to himself about fags and rotten kids and
castrations and the assorted values of things like hangings, firing
squads, and the like.
Several floors below, Michael fell out of his chair and lay
sprawled and gasping on the floor, his brain flooding with
endorphins as the pain suddenly stopped. “Thank you,” he
whispered, his body shaking with relief. Of course he knew it was
coming - it always did - but that didn’t lessen the fact that they
had decided to punish him for merely begging for some time alone to
grieve the loss of his friend. “I didn’t think I was messing up
when I asked!” he cried aloud as the tears started again. But if
anyone heard him it would only have been God, for Ames had left his
station.
Outside, where Michael couldn’t see it, a cloud slipped in
front of the moon and the breeze died as Ned pulled up to the main
gate, allowing the guard on duty to scan his badge.
“MICHAEL,” the auto-voice said from everywhere and nowhere in
the rec room. The boy on the floor didn’t reply. He merely stared
at the ceiling. “MICHAEL BAINES - report to the mess hall for
supper.” He thought about it, considering what might happen to him
if he refused to move, and thought better of defiance. He stood up
and straightened his white clothing. He tugged at the legs of his
sweatpants, noticing that they were getting a bit short and riding
up to the tops of his socks. He was definitely growing, but then
again Ned had told him that he was being injected with growth
hormones and being made to exercise more lately. What they hadn’t
told him was the fact that the lack of testosterone in his youthful
body would encourage that adolescent ‘gangly’ look; there would be
no male hormones to put the brakes on the long bones of his arms
and legs, and they would grow a bit disproportionately over time.
He was incarcerated until age 18, and if nothing happened to change
that, Michael was going to grow more than expected. He sighed and
allowed the door scanner to read his ID bracelet. The door chimed
and slid open, and then it happened.
Without warning, the lights went out. Michael found himself
plunged into pitch darkness, and for a horrible moment before the
emergency systems came online he thought that the ULF punishment
system had blinded him. Although it took only a few seconds for
the dim emergency lights to power up, to the frightened boy it
seemed like an eternity. He screamed as the lights came back on
and jumped through the door into the hallway. Surprisingly, there
was no guard at the desk. There was, however, a steaming cup of
coffee and a burning cigarette. There were also papers scattered
over the floor, and the rolling task chair was flipped over.
Michael looked around and called out, “Hello?”
No one answered him.
“Hello, is anyone here?” he asked.
No response. Then he remembered one of Sam’s tricks. He
didn’t know if it would work for him, but he didn’t know what else
to try. “MAINFRAME,” he shouted to the ceiling, “What’s wrong?”
The reply of the auto-voice nearly made him wet his pants.
“System failure, emergency backup routers have taken over.
Implement disaster Protocol C-1. Verify ID ...”
Suddenly emboldened by the words “system failure,” Michael
committed - considering his circumstances - what was an act of
sheer and utterly insane defiance. “NO.” he replied as he saw the
red lights of an ID scanner flashing at him. He picked up the cup
of coffee and took a long drink. He let the bitter taste linger in
his mouth, finding it potent and refreshing compared to the
constant bland diet of dull foods and milk or water that the
inmates were routinely served.
“VERIFY,” the auto-voice demanded again.
Michael ignored it. He tried the door to his room, but it
would not open. He tried the door to the elevator, but it would
not open either. The light level was, he guessed, not even a
quarter of the norm. It was almost like walking around outside
when the light had almost totally gone after sundown. Suddenly an
idea came to him. “System failure” might mean that escape was
possible, and if not escape, then perhaps a bit of outside air. He
might get a look outside. The idea thrilled him, and his body
shuddered at the thought. Slowly, looking over his shoulder every
now and then, he took the cup of coffee and went back to the rec
room. He tried all of the doors there, but none of them would
open. He took another drink. He then went back to the desk and
picked up the cigarette. He had smoke a few times before, to
look cool, but had never actually inhaled the smoke. As the
crippled computer system desperately tried to restore itself,
demanding that the unknown person in this section identify, Michael
took a drag and inhaled deeply. “SHIT!” he choked, seized by a
coughing fit. He coughed for several minutes, then another idea
came to him. There were other doors in the hallway down from the
door that opened into his dorm room. He smiled.
Very slowly and deliberately, Michael began going down the
hallway trying doors. The fifth door he tried opened and he
stepped through it.
In his temporary office, Ned smiled and got up from his
computer. He pulled a small flashlight out of his pocket and made
his way towards the propped-open door. He listened as the auto-
voice demanded that he identify and called for implementation of
disaster Protocols. “Five, four, three, two, one ...” he said ...
and as he said ‘one,’ the emergency lights went out. The auto-
voice died. Ned turned and looked at his computer, running off of
it’s power supply backup that he had installed a few days before.
The CD drive was happily spinning, throwing more and more of
Jason’s handiwork into the system. The program had been named
MONKEYWRECH.exe, and to Ned it was very fitting. The lights
flickered on and off. The auto-voice stuttered. “Emergency ...
primary system failure ... backup system failure ... ... ...” the
auto-voice tried to say, it’s voice slowing and dropping like an
old fashioned vinyl record winding down. Somewhere deep in the
bowels of the mainframe, the main CPU was trying to desperately
save itself. For every recovery protocol that it could activate
however, ten other ‘monkeywrenches’ jumped in to smother it,
however. Then, as the lights went out for the final time, Ned
smiled broadly. “Fuck you,” he mumbled and left his office for the
last time.
He screamed again as the dim lights failed altogether. It was
totally black now, and Michael had no clue at all where he was.
There had been a momentary surge of power when he had pulled the
mystery door open and stepped through, but the surge had also
closed the door behind him. Common sense told him to sit and
wait. He did that.
In the mess hall, Joey stared into the darkness and calmly
asked Sam, who had been sitting across from him, “So what now,
boss?”
“Fucked if I know,” Sam replied, “Hey Bolton, dude, you got a
light?”
There was a scraping sound, and a single flame appeared in the
darkness. It was followed by a few flashlights here and there as
other staff members broke into emergency boxes. “Thanks,” Joey
replied, continuing to eat his dinner as if nothing were happening.
Ames made his way back to his office, a stream of obscenities
coming from his mouth. Things like this couldn’t happen, they had
told him. The Mainframe CANNOT crash, they had told
him. “Bullshit,” was the nicest word that he said as he rummaged
through his desk in search of a flashlight. He found one. Images
of chaos filled his mind. He could only imagine what was
happening, inmates running loose in the corridors, doors not
locked - anything could happen. It was utter chaos just waiting to
explode. “Stupid fuckin’ computers,” he swore. Fumbling in the
darkness, he found his flashlight and made his way to the far end
of the office. He screamed at the scanner on the wall, demanding
that the Mainframe do something, anything. Instead of the auto-
voice, however, he got music. From everywhere, the sounds of the
song “Before You Were Born” by the group Toad the Wet Sprocket from
the album Fear began to play. Of course, this analogy was lost on
Ames, but several of the inmates - who showed a remarkable amount
of good sense and calm - recognized it and laughed aloud. Some of
them. As the lyrics “Goddamn the people who left you in pain ...
Goddamn the father, without face without name ...” rang through the
halls, Ames continued to swear again. “This has got to be
someone’s idea of a sick joke,” he muttered, instinctively going
for his cell phone. The red NO SIGNAL lamp was flashing. “FUCK!”
he screamed, realizing too late that cell phones didn’t work inside
the IO complex. He picked up the real phone. Dead.
In the mess hall, the inmates of Sam and Joey and Michael’s
ward continued to eat and then sat in the dark chatting about this
that and the other. No one was stupid enough to try anything,
since the guards were still there and they were armed. The song
went on and on, and a few of them recognized it. Sam was sitting
next to Bolton, who had lit another cigarette. By the dim light,
Joey could see Sam rocking to the tune. “Not bad fo’ a white
band,” the boy commented.
In the darkness of his unknown surroundings, Michael waited.
He then got brave. He put one foot out, tentatively, and felt
floor under his sock. He took another small step, and found
floor. After ten paces, he found a guard rail. One more pace told
him he had come to stairs. He began his descent, unknowingly, into
the bowels of the IO complex.
Ned ran through the familiar corridors with flashlight in
hand, headed straight to where he now knew Michael would be. Once
he had come inside, he had realized that it was dinner time. He
had placed his CD into the computer, and ran the MONKEYWRECH.exe
program. He then had planned to go and find Michael, and confront
Ames with some rather interesting custody papers that his lawyer
had drawn up on short notice. Legal loopholes could be such
wonderful things, once one found them. Of course, he had nothing
solid yet, but in haste, his lawyer had been able to find one legal
glitch in Michael’s sentencing concerning notification of kin and
custody. It was a slim chance, but then again, if the MONKEYWRENCH
program did what he expected, he wouldn’t need much to make Ames
pull a few technical and electronic strings that would release
Michael Baines into Ned’s custody. Computers were wonderful data
gathering devices, and from what Jason had been able to tell him
via cell phone on the drive to IO, there were some things that Ames
would really NOT want to go public about. Ned smiled again as the
music played. “Goddamn the lovers, who never showed up ...” the
speakers blared. “And Goddamn the brother who never knew,” Ned
added, his pace quickening as he neared the door, which once forced
open, would lead him into the mess hall where Michael was.
He expected chaos when he arrived, but didn’t find it. As he
passed his flashlight around the room and heard the click of drawn
weapons, he announced himself hastily. The weapons clicked again.
Everyone in the cafeteria was seated around their usual tables,
chatting as if nothing had happened. The guards, however, looked
wary. “Ned, dat you?” he heard the familiar voice of Bolton
asking, and a light was shining in his face.
“Bolton? Put the light down. Yea, it’s me.” He aimed his
own light at in that direction and saw Sam and Joey, but no
Michael. A brief pang of regret hit him when he didn’t see
Cheng. “Where are Michael and Cheng?” he asked, perhaps a bit too
anxiously.
There was a long silence.
It was Sam who broke it.
“Cheng died this morning.”
Ned felt as if his legs had gone numb, and in the darkness
thought he was falling. He hadn’t expected it so soon. What had
triggered it? What had set off that last final release of
endorphins that had killed the Asian eunuch? A million thoughts
passed through his mind, but only one came to the
forefront. “Where’s Michael?” he demanded again, shining his light
at various tables, although he knew that the slight boy, despite
his recent growth, wouldn’t be far from Sam.
“Not here,” Bolton replied, “He begged to be left alone, so
Ames locked him the rec room instead of making him go to class
today. He should still be there.”
Ned’s heart sank. He knew what Ames had no doubt done to the
boy to punish THAT request.
“Did he see it?” Ned asked.
“Yea,” Sam replied, “It was awful. It was in da shower -
Cheng died in his arms.”
“How?” Ned asked, feeling the terrible need to know.
“He just fell down, screamin’ ‘n poundin’ at his head. Then
he rolled over and started shakin’ and coughin’ up blood. He got
quiet, then Mikey picked him up and he screamed ...” but Sam’s
voice failed him, and he was unable to go on. Joey sighed deeply.
Ned cringed inwardly. “So he was left in the rec room?” he
asked, with a sinking feeling again.
“Yea,” Bolton replied, “And with the system down, I don’t
think he could get out.”
Ned moved closer, whispering in Bolton’s ear, “None of the
doors are secure, Bolton. The locks are electronic and the whole
system is DEAD in the water.”
Bolton took a step back. “SHIT!” he exclaimed, “We need to
GO!”
Bolton called another guard, and told Sam to behave and score
some points. The bald black youth nodded. “Need all da points I
can get.”
Ned and Bolton left the cafeteria, forcing the door through
which Ned had come. He had thought that the issue of doors would
be obvious. “I doubt he’s still there,” Ned said as they made
their way down the short connecting hallway.
“I don’t know, Ned. Ames was being pretty hard on him with
the punishment when I saw him last. Poor kid. It’s not like he
did anything wrong by askin’. All he wanted to do was be alone so
he could cry. They was close ya know.”
“I think I can guess how close, my friend. Right now, if
Michael is still there, we need to get to him. He’s in need of
medical attention before what happens to Cheng can happen to him.”
Bolton stopped. “You onto somethin’?” he asked.
“What do you mean?” Ned countered.
“Lotta boys die in here, and I think dat most of ‘em be gay or
somethin’.”
Ned thought, and answered carefully. “I think so too. I read
some stuff, in the public domain issues about a few deaths here. I
did some research; it’s what I do, you know. I’m not sure, Bolton,
but there’s a commonality in the boys who died here, if you think
about it.”
“Well,” Bolton thought aloud, “Let’s see. Cheng was a null,
smooth as you can get down there. No hormones. A few ULF
punishments, but a good kid. Happy, mainly quiet. He was kinda
proud of his state, though. I know that Harvey kid was into him
some, bastard. They shoulda cut all of his off too before he got
to Cheng, but I guess Sam got him in the end. Cheng loved
attention though, and he liked to be touched. Most boys cringe,
but not him. You think he LIKED what happened to him?”
“I think he just wanted affection, and that’s no crime,” Ned
replied, “What happened to him was a mistake. Some boys don’t
endure the punishments too well, though, and that’s what I’m
driving at. A link.”
“From what I seen, I think the ones who die be gay and I think
THEY already know it, if you know WHO I mean,” Bolton theorized.
And then they were there. They found the door to the rec room
open, and Ned sighed. He shined the light into the room, his
heart in his throat. Michael wasn’t there.
In Ned’s office, a data stream was torn from the Mainframe as
it desperately tried to regroup and throw off the invading
Monkeywrench program. As a last-ditch effort, the Mainframe had
tried to shut down and reboot, but the relentless virus would have
none of that. Things were going to happen according to Jason’s
plans. The data was transferred to Ned’s computer, sent out via
DSL modem to his own computer, and the virus-laden CD, it’s work
done, reformatted. The music stopped abruptly. The CD ejected.
The files that Ned would need in his fight to save Michael were
safe and sound and being burnt to another CD somewhere in Jason’s
system as well. Then Ned’s computer shut itself down as well,
feigning its own death. Mercifully, Jason had had the foresight to
let the Mainframe recover only its emergency protocols. The dim
emergency lights came back up, the phones came back to life, the
air circulation units kicked back on, and the Monkeywrench program
gave the IO Mainframe once last blast of digital CPR and made sure
it was limping along in emergency mode. It’s work then done, the
Monkeywrench committed digital suicide.
A few floors below, Michael yelped as the lights came on,
dimly. He stared into the darkness, making out the shapes of
massive amounts of lines, piping, doors, and stairs that seemed to
go on endlessly down into the darkness as if inviting him to step
into the depths of Hell. He stood on the landing where two
staircases met, and decided to try the one door there. It took
some force, but the thin boy was able to slide it open just enough
to squeeze through. He found himself in a cool office-type room,
empty except for a desk and a computer and few filing cabinets. He
pulled his hood back up and shivered. He drank the last of the
coffee, and realized that he had to urinate. Looking around, he
saw nothing that resembled a bathroom. He took the next best
option - he peed in the wastebasket. He flinched a bit as the cool
air struck his exposed penis, and let one finger move down to touch
his tight and empty scrotum. Under his breath, not knowing if
anyone could locate him or not, he cursed Ned, shook the last drop
of urine out, and put it back. He was still reminded, with every
step that he took, of what they had done to him - and how they had
lied to him.
How Ned had lied to him.
And since he had nothing better to do, he began to ransack the
file cabinet after finding the computer to be dead.
Ames let his head fall onto his desk as the emergency lights
came back on. His computer was still out, though, but he could
feel and hear the soft whir of the air pumps. Fervently, he hoped
that the doors were working again. A riot was the last thing he
wanted. With the Mainframe down, there was no way to punish the
inmates, no way to put them to sleep - and worse - what if they
went to sleep on their own without the benefit of the conditioning
transceivers in their pillows? Ames’ mind raced. What could have
happened? The IO Mainframe, he had been told, was the most cutting
edge piece of penal security technology made. It was virtually
foolproof. It was theorized that left unattended, without a single
guard, the Mainframe could run IO and keep up to 1,000 inmates in
line with no human intervention for up to six months if need be.
Then it hit him.
Human Intervention.
“I think I have a mole,” he mumbled, “or more like a virus.”
One name came to mind, but he didn’t get long to think about
it. His monitor snapped to life as the last action of the now-dead
Monkeywrench program delivered its final message to his terminal.
“What in hell?” he gasped, staring at the screen.
A media file was opening. It was a movie. On the screen,
Ames watched a very fast and edited video of Michael’s castration.
Then it skipped to Ned pouring over files - Ned, a zoom up, with a
look of abstract horror on his face. Then Ned was crying. It
skipped to an image of Joey, sitting on his bed and staring at his
hands in his lap. Michael and Cheng were talking with him, but he
didn’t look up them or answer them. Then it skipped to a close-up
of Joey, tears in his eyes. The image shifted yet again, and the
music began to play. Ames swore. “Goddamn the father, without
face, without name ...” it sang ... and the image changed yet again
to show Michael and Cheng and Sam in the showers. Cheng was
spitting blood out of his nose and mouth all over Michael, who held
him close and was sobbing. Sam was turning his back, and Joey was
screaming for help at the locked door and the unresponsive scanner
at that door. Then there was a scream as the music cut off, a
terrible scream of agony in a sigh of relief to be followed by a
slight and blood-covered eunuch’s choked sobs of indescribable
loss. Then a guard was there, pulling the sobbing and bloody child
off of his friend who lay still on the red floor. Michael was limp
in Bolton’s arms as the guard handed him over to Sam, who washed
him off and led him to his bed. There was one final zoom, an image
too clear for the security devices to have made - a close-up of
Michael’s small and empty scrotum, and a face-shot of Joey. The
music played on relentlessly. Then a voice spoke up from the
computer.
“Did you think no one would find out, Ames?”
It was Ned.
“Dammit!” Ames screamed, going for the door. He found it
locked, however, and all of his orders would not open it. He
couldn’t force it either.
“You and I are going to talk, Ames. That is, I’m going to
talk and YOU are going to listen. I know what you did to Joey and
why. I know what you did to Michael and why, and worse yet, to ME -
a contracted employee. I know about the guards, and the trainees
like Sam. Most of all, I know what you let happen to Cheng - and
to every other boy that turned out to be gay or inclined in that
direction in this festering hell-hole you call a correctional
institute. I know about the Death you’ve been dealing in for your
own sordid gains, and I’m going to stop you. I know, Ames. I know
how and why Cheng died, and how and why Jon-Paul and Timmy and all
the others died. Names ring any bells? You don’t like ‘faggots’,
do you, Ames?” The voice dug in.
“How DARE you?!” Ames screamed again, slamming a fist on the
desk.
“You’re having problems,” Ned’s voice went on, as the screen
blanked, “but it’s too late. The IO Mainframe is toast, and not
even God can make it run again. I can overlook some things, but
what you did to Cheng and are trying to do to Mikey and to ME are
inexcusable. I’m going to win, Ames, and nothing you can do will
stop me. Think about it, it’ll come to you. You know what I want.”
Ames broke out in a cold sweat and began to shake. But Ned’s
voice on the disabled computer system had one last thing to say -
“How do you like my virus? Wouldn’t Mr. Norton just shit himself?”