For Your Own Good 11

“Shut your eyes, Mikey,” Bolton ordered, “And no one else say a thing. Don’t look at us, don’t think about anything other than what you want to say.” Strangely, there was no hint to the accented slang with which the huge black man usually spoke. Sam and Joey stared at him. Ned let his arm slide from Michael’s slight shoulders and got up to sit on the edge of Joey’s bed. Oddly enough, Joey moved slowly closer to him and leaned up against his left arm. Bolton joined Sam, and they averted their eyes. Then he glanced nervously around the room. “I hope nobody fixes that damn computer before they can get it all out,” he said.

“Why the subterfuge, Bolton?” Ned asked.

“Conditioning,” Bolton replied, “The slightest gesture or wrong word will shut him up just like a clam. It’s part of what they get when they’re asleep.”

Ned’s eyes grew wide. Sam gasped. Joey didn’t move.

“That’s why no one ever heard about this place before,” Bolton offered.

Michael, however, was deep in thought. He was shaking a bit, but it was from pure rage and not the least part fear. In his piping and unbroken voice, he began to tell his story of his recovered memories.

Lawrence Taft’s cell phone rang all the way home and continued to ring as he entered his opulent and overdone house. The butler met him at the door, took his coat, and advised him that there were a great many messages on the machine. Taft snorted. “No calls,” he snapped, heading up the stairs to his study. He entered the room, it’s walls lined with bookshelves, and seated himself at a polished table of dark wood. He turned on his computer, and began to call up records. For the better part of the night, he read. He looked at prisoner profiles. He looked at medical charts. Finally, he turned on his instant messenger under invisible mode. A flood of offline messages met him, very nearly choking his computer. Most of them were from HIS boss, the Governor, who WAS online. With a grimace, he picked up the cell phone. The screen was full of ‘missed calls’ error messages. Most of them were from his boss as well. The phone rang. He sighed deeply and answered it. “Taft,” he said flatly.

“TAFT!” An angry voice shouted through the phone, “Just who in the name of Hell IS this Linda Johnson and what the hell were YOU doing on television talking to HER!?”

“Sir, we have a problem,” Taft whispered.

“You’re damn right we do. IO is the premiere institution in this country for rehabilitating juvenile offenders, and the wicked witch of the whatever-the-hell-direction she came out of is trying to make us look like butchers and murderers. What the hell have you got to say for yourself?”

Taft thought. The faces on the screen stared back at him, or most of them did. Many of the boys in the IO pictures had their eyes downcast.

“Are you aware that this Erik kid on TV is suing us? He and his parents? Did you see the late news? That boy was on TV talking about castration and aversion therapy. He even offered to show this Linda woman his wound in private! We’re talking class-action here, Taft, and believe you me, mister, it’s not MY ass that’s gonna get bitten off on this one! Something has gone very very wrong here, Taft. Are you listening to me?” the Governor demanded.

“Sir, I was unaware of what was happening inside of IO. I am fully aware now, and becoming more and more aware by the minute. I think you should look into the secure database files from the remote server,” Taft replied weakly.

“Hold on,” the Governor replied in an irritated voice.

Taft could hear clicking and pecking in the background.

“Standard data, the usual procedures. Now what I want to know is HOW this Erik kid got onto national television and ended up blind and ...” but Taft, suddenly sick to his stomach, found his last remaining nerve and interrupted him.

“Standard procedures?” he screamed into the phone, “YOU knew? You call genital mutilation and torture and memory altering with attempted mind control standard? You say it’s all for their own good? Have you seen the death rate report? Sir, I had no clue this was happening. The whole board of directors had no clue. I think you need to speak with the man in charge, Joe Ames. Find out what HE is doing in this matter. After all, HE is the one running the show at IO! How dare you lay this at MY feet?”

There was a deadly silence on the phone.

“Don’t tell me YOU didn’t know, Taft. I put you on that board for a reason. You and Ames go back a ways. This Linda Johnson is in the way, Taft. She’s trouble. So is this Erik kid. I think it’s time that Erik reverted to his fire-bugging ways, don’t you? And maybe Ms. Johnson should be silenced as well? She’s in the wrong place at the wrong time, Taft. Do something.”

The cell phone beeped and read ‘call terminated’.

Taft buzzed his intercom. “Slocombe,” he called.

“Yeeeees?” the butler’s voice answered.

“Did you tape the news on channel 9?”

“Of course,” the butler drawled.

“Bring it up to me at once,” Taft ordered, startled by a beep from his computer. On the screen was a monkey animation, and it was holding a large pipe wrench. It was smiling at him.

Taft turned from the computer as Slocombe arrived with a VHS tape. He popped the tape in and watched in horror as the boy in dark mirrored glasses stumbled through a bizarre story that he swore was the truth. Taft very nearly fell out of his chair when the boy paused, took a deep breath, and said, “I’ll show you, Linda, to prove it. You have to do something about them. They did THIS to me ...”

“Did what?” Linda Johnson’s voice encouraged the now-crying boy on the screen, “Something related to your having the aneurism?”

“No, C-castrated me,” Erik replied, leaning heavily on his father’s shoulder.

Taft watched the tape again and again. It was around 3:00 AM that he sorted through his messages and missed calls. He dialed up one number. The phone rang and rang. A groggy voice answered, finally. “Yes?” a soft feminine voice asked.

“Ms. Johnson, this is Taft.”

“TAFT?!” she exclaimed, sounding fully awake, “My God, man, did you see Erik’s interview?”

“I just finished it, Ms. Johnson. I had no idea. I’m so sorry,” Taft choked.

There was another of those deadly silences.

“You really are, aren’t you?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“It’s all coming out, Taft. Erik was just the first. The rumors are beginning to be substantiated. You’ve got a certified eunuch on your hands, Taft, and he’s talking. So far there’s no word from the techs inside of IO, but I’m on call. Would you like to meet?” she inquired sweetly.

“I-I- don’t know,” he stammered, “It’s so terrible. Please believe me, Linda, I had no clue. It was Ames’ doings. I can’t get that boy’s face out of my mind. Meet me at IO’s front gate ASAP, Linda. Bring a crew, and call the cops. Don’t be alone. Hurry!” And with that, Taft slammed the phone down and dialed 911. A sleepy sounding operator took his call with the usual blather which was usually long enough to kill someone. Taft demanded a ‘Code-black-G-supervisor,’ and the operator gasped and transferred him.

“G-man,” the voice replied.

“Taft,” Taft said flatly.

“Understood,” the supervisor replied.

“Send fire and police to the residence of the IO parolee from tonight’s news NOW!” he demanded in his shrill voice, “I believe there’s about to be an attempt on his life.” Taft hung up the phone. He turned to shut his computer down, but the screen was solid red and a document was rolling out of his printer. Taft watched it finish, and then the computer quietly died ... its last message being ‘Monkeywrech.exe is now shutting down’.

Slowly, he picked up the paper and read it.

Jason and Max, at the urging of Jason’s tracking device, forced a door that was at least ten floors down inside the IO complex. They entered the room, and found several workstations and huge pieces of computer equipment all along the walls. Max whistled. “There’s gotta be 2000 square feet in here, at least,” he commented.

Jason nodded, shining his flashlight around the dimly lighted room at the near-dead systems. “2,328 to be exact,” he replied, “I helped test it, you know.”

“Let’s just fix it and get the hell out of here,” Max responded, “This place almost feels haunted to me.”

Jason seated himself at a workstation, and while Max was digging through his briefcase, he plugged his laptop into a dead terminal’s network card. The laptop spun to life, and the CD in its drive kicked the terminal into life. The usual start up screen came on, but Jason quickly executed a file from the CD called, of all things, ‘Banana Boat’. Max heard the beep and spun around.

“We got a pulse,” Jason joked.

“You won’t have for long,” Max replied, pecking at some DOS commands on another terminal that Jason had resurrected. “The main processors are shot, and so are most of the secondaries. It seems that only emergency systems are operating, and only lights and air flow are being controlled. Everything else is FUCKED! Man, this CANNOT happen to a CyberHound 2!”

“Well, something sure happened,” Jason said wryly.

Max had pulled an access door open on one of the huge wall-mounted banks and had stuck his head inside. “Oh God, no,” he mumbled.

Jason laughed.

“What?”

“Man, this thing has been smoked! I mean toasted! Get me the case with the spare parts in it, we’re gonna need ‘em all.” Max sighed.

Jason, however, had his own agenda. As Max worked to replace dead hardware, Jason’s ‘Banana Boat’ program began to make repairs of its own. “You’re as good as out, Mikey,” Jason thought to himself.

“I’m d-done n-now,” Michael choked, his story over.

They all turned back to face him, and even Sam’s face was pale. Michael was shaking, his eyes wild and filled with tears. “A-ahw-ll I did w-w-was s-steal some st-st-stuff,” he sobbed, his anger ebbing, giving way to fear and remorse, “a-and they p-put m-me in h-here and m-made y-you c-c-cut my b-balls off! I d-didn’t mean t-tuh b-be ...” but he couldn’t finish. Ned gestured to Sam, who came and unwound the shaking form of Joey from his left arm. Joey attached himself to Sam then, his eyes tightly shut and his slight frame shivering badly. Ned poked around in his case, and pulled out another needle. Michael whimpered. “Noooooo ...” but Ned took the young eunuch in his arms and quietly whispered, “It’s only a light sedative. It won’t put you out, but it WILL settle you down a bit. Michael, listen to me - you’re sick. You’re sick, like Cheng was. I know it hurts, and I know they’ve done some rotten things to you in here. I know you miss him bad, that he was your friend and more, but he’s gone. I’m sorry you had to remember it all this way, but there wasn’t any other choice. BUT - you cannot get EXCITED, Michael! Listen to me!”

Michael faced Ned and nodded, wiping at his eyes. He pulled the cover back and allowed Ned to inject him.

“If you keep staying so keyed up, you’re going to have another episode. The ULF punishments and the lack of hormones in your body from the castration are combining to - well - let’s just say it’s messing up your brain’s chemical balance, OK?” Michael nodded. “Add to that some physical things about the structure of your brain, and you’ve got a deadly mix going on in there. We have to keep you calm, and get you some hormone replacements, or otherwise, what happened to Cheng is going to happen to you. There’s much more, but I’ll have to tell you later. I can’t have you getting worked up anymore. Promise?”

Michael nodded again and looked over at Sam, who was still holding Joey. The pale boy was shaking his head. “I can’t,” he cried, “Please don’t make me. He’ll find out and hurt me. If I talk, he’ll get me.” Sam pulled the pale eunuch closer, rubbing a large black hand over the boy’s stubbled scalp.

“C’mon, Joey. Computers be down, hell, they dead. No one gon’ find out. Spit it out. Mikey did, and he’s still here,” Sam encouraged him.

“Give him a shot of this, Sam,” Ned ordered, passing the young black guard-to-be a needle.

“Tranq?” Sam asked.

“A light one, like Michael got,” Ned replied. Sam did that.

Joey whimpered. “I hate shots,” he said in a quiet, but flat voice. “I hate shots and being naked and everyone looking at me. I hate being poked at every week and that damn hot water hose you stick up my ass every week too.”

“I know, Joey. I know,” Ned replied, “But it’s my job. I have no choice, not yet. Tell us what you know, Joey. We need to know if we’re going to help you.”

“No,” he shouted, “I don’t know anything! Leave me alone! Get away from me and stop bothering me! He’ll find out, he always does! He hates me and he’ll kill me!”

Sam held fast to the now struggling pale eunuch. He was amazed at how strong the puny boy really was. “I be holdin’ him ‘til that shot kicks in,” Sam observed.

“Don’t talk to him or look at him,” Bolton reminded them, “He’s been conditioned the worst. Hell, the poor boy’s been broken.”

Joey coughed, and his shoulders slumped. “That’s just it,” he said, “I’m NOT a boy. Not anymore, and I hate it! HE saw to that.” One small hand made its way under the blanket, and they all knew to where it went. “Why’d he do it to me?” he asked of them all, looking from turned face to turned face, “I didn’t do anything bad.”

“You mean castrate you?” Bolton asked.

“Yes.”

“All the boys in IO get cut, Joey, you know that,” Bolton answered carefully, “And WE know, so YOU can tell ME.”

Ned heard the tone in Bolton’s voice, and he realized that the guard had just tripped a subconscious trigger in the pale eunuch’s conditioned mind. He picked up his pad and pen.

“But why ME?” Joey demanded, “I’m not a criminal. I just did what he told me. I was good, I tried to be, but it was never enough for him, and I tried SO hard.”

“And?” Bolton prodded.

“When my mom died, he got into his work more and more. I was left alone, or with the neighbors. He was never home, never had time for me. One of my uncles was gonna adopt me, but he had a fit over that. Finally, they said something and he started taking me to work with him. I’d stay in his office, follow him around. When he was off, or had a break, we’d go outside. I had to wear this red sweatsuit when I came in with him. I never saw anyone but guards in gray and adults, like teachers. Sometimes we’d play ball or stuff out there on the grass, but I was never good at that. He’d get so mad at me. All the doctors here looked me over, but they said I was fine, just small. Then one day he was talking to one of the guards and he said I wasn’t ‘boy enough’ for him and he was going to have to do something with me because he didn’t have time for taking care of a baby.” Joey paused to catch his breath.

“So yo’ momma died, and yo’ daddy didn’t have time for you? Maybe HE was hurtin’ too?” Bolton urged softly. His accent seemed to be resurfacing.

“No,” Joey continued, “him and mom didn’t talk much. She was always yelling at him, they fought a lot. They said bad things to each other, lied to each other. Finally, she said she was leaving and taking me with her. He said ‘good, go, just don’t come back.’ Then she got sick after we moved out. He came and took me home, but whatever she had was bad. They said it was cancer, and she died a little while after. It was so fast.” The pale young eunuch paused again, leaning heavily on Sam. His eyes were drooping, and he was crying again.

“So he come got you back, then he ignored you?” Bolton asked.

Joey nodded. They all seemed to realize that this ordeal was taking a great deal out of the usually reticent youth, and Ned wondered how long it would be before Joey came right out and said what Ned already knew.

“Why you think he brought you to work with him?” the guard asked.

“I was riding my bike one day while he was at work and a car hit me. I wasn’t hurt, but he had a fit. Then he started taking me with him most days, and trying to do more with me, but I wasn’t good enough. He made me play sports, but I sat on the bench most of the time. When I did play, I wasn’t good and I got hurt a lot. He was always mad at me and yelling at me, saying he didn’t know what he was going to do with me. When I started going in to the office with him that last summer, I lived in it mostly. He made me wear those red clothes, and I was always by myself, except for another employee sometimes, like the secretary or a guard would talk to me. I slept on the couch in his office at night, and when we DID go home, he left me with the neighbors.”

Bolton drew a deep breath, and Ned almost knew what was coming next.

“Joey, how old was you when yo momma died?”

“10.”

“How old are you now?” Bolton asked.

The pale eunuch looked at the ID bracelet on his left wrist. “It says I’m 16.”

Bolton, who had glanced briefly at Joey, nodded. “Six years is a long time for somebody who din’t DO anything.”

“It didn’t matter WHAT I did, I wasn’t good enough for him,” Joey choked, “So he brought me in one day and left me alone in a room with just a chair. I don’t know how long it was, hours, but finally a voice came from the ceiling and told me to take off my clothes and get in the chair.”

Michael, although he knew he wasn’t supposed to say anything, spoke up. “He brought you HERE ‘cause he didn’t want you?”

“Yes,” Joey replied, his voice shaking.

“But that’s what they did to ME when I got locked up in here! The room with the chair and the voice!” Michael exclaimed.

“Joey,” Bolton said softly, “tell US who HE is and why HE left YOU here.”

“He didn’t want me. He hates me. He told me if I hadn’t been such a bad kid, or been so hard to deal with, that him and mom wouldn’t have split and she wouldn’t have got sick.” Joey was clinging tightly to Sam now, and despite the sedative, he was still shaking. “He’ll find out, he always finds out. So I don’t talk. He’ll punish me.”

“YOU can tell US,” Bolton urged, “Prisoners TELL the guards about problems.”

Joey took a deep breath, glanced nervously about the dimly lighted room, and then pulled the blanket up over his head again. Ned felt a lump rising in his throat. He was afraid that the confession that might be too much for the young eunuch.

“HE brought you to work with him, you said, where there were guards in gray?” Bolton urged.

“Yea, one day he said ‘you’re going in to work with me today, son’ and when we got here, he left me in that room without making me put on the red clothes. I never knew why I had to wear them until the next day after - it was to set me apart from the boys in white. Then voice made me sit in the chair. I didn’t want to, but my head started to hurt really bad and then when I sat down, it stopped. Then it told me to take off my clothes, and my head started to hurt again. I did it, and sat back down and the chair grabbed me and locked me in. I couldn’t get up and nobody came for me.”

Ned noticed the change of Joey’s tone. His shy and hurt voice was taking on a darker tone, and he could tell that the eunuch was getting angry. Ned made a note. Joey didn’t seem to suffer from what Cheng had and Michael did. His records indicated that, as well as having labeled him as ‘straight’.

Joey went on, and Ned knew where he was going. Sam and Michael listened, hardly breathing. Ned suspected that Bolton had put two and two together already.

“You said ‘here’,” Bolton commented.

“Yea, HERE!” Joey announced, “Here where the bad boys get put, he told me. Where I belonged, he told me, because I was bad and because I wasn’t much of a boy anyway. Here where you wear white clothes and you don’t know what time or day it is and they shave your head and doctors pick at you all the time and counselors nose into your life. He came in while I was in the chair. I was almost asleep, and it was cold. He just looked at me and said something like, ‘get used to it, son, at least if you’re in here I can work in peace and not have to worry about you.’ I didn’t understand it. I started crying, I was so scared. I just wanted to go home, but he said I was home, in a new home. He’d see me every day, and since I wasn’t turning out to be the boy he wanted, he said, it was just as well and it was for my own good. Then a man came in and he shaved my head and they took me to a room like Ned’s doctor office with a shower and they ...”

But Michael interrupted him. “H-holy Christ, m-man! Your d-dad worked h-h-here and he d-d-dumped you here to g-get rid of y-you? Can they d-d-do that?” he asked Ned.

“Shit,” Sam interjected, “dis ain’t no orphans’ home! You can’t just be puttin’ any ol’ kid in here!”

Ned nodded. “But Joey’s dad can do anything in here,” he coaxed.

Michael stared at Joey with a look of abject horror on his face. Sam and Bolton had turned to face him, since Joey still had the blanket pulled up over his head. Michael might have been ignored by his own parents, but what had been done to Joey was far, far worse. “You m-mean ...”

“He STILL works here,” Bolton supplied, his large white eyes bright with anger as the clues fell into place.

“Yes,” Joey whimpered from under his blanket.

“Y-you’re si-six-six-t-teen?” Michael groped.

“Yes,” Joey answered, “Don’t look like it, do I?”

“Oh, G-g-g-god,” Michael stammered.

“Shit!” Sam exclaimed, “Dat means dat ... dat Ames is ...”

“Mr. Ames is my father,” Joey answered with a choked sob, “and he hates me.”

Michael and the rest of them were almost in tears at the end of Joey’s story. The cruelty with which Ames had dispatched his own unwanted son was almost beyond belief, yet there in front of them sat the proof. “I-I don’t g-g-get it,” Michael offered.

“It’s simple, Michael,” Ned answered, “Ames sees in our Joey here exactly what HE isn’t himself. He had his own concepts for a perfect son and an ideal life, and he didn’t get it. He and his son are almost exact opposites, and he can’t stand that. His ideals of masculinity, strength, perfection, perhaps - all of which Joey is nearly the antithesis of. He sees, in Joey, failure - and that’s more than his ideals of perfection can take.”

Ames had shut his cell phone off on the first ring. His sense of duty told him that he should back the IO Complex, watching the repair technicians, if nothing else. He was confident that the staff on duty could handle the boys, however, since he had long since weeded out the slackers in his employ. With the main entrance blown open, the next shift would be able to get in and relieve the exhausted workers who had been trapped by the computer crash. There was no worry there, and since he had not been home in days, he decided to check his house. Besides, there wasn’t much chance that anyone would call or come looking for him there. The Ames house at 4548 Parkway was almost always empty now.

He pulled his black BMW sport sedan into the driveway slowly, watching the automatic garage door raise. Another button informed the security system that he was home, and as the door sealed shut once again, he got out of the car and went into the connected breezeway. He paused to kick off his shoes, flexing his toes with some degree of relief, but then gasped as he kicked one of them out of his way. The discarded shoe flew off to the side of the room to land beside the box where shoes were put when taken off. It landed right next to a polished and black, but very dusty and long-unused, size 5 little boy boot.

Ames bent and picked up the boot, blew the dust off of it, and placed it in the box next to its mate. There was a scuff on the toe of the boot he had picked up, and as ridiculous as it seemed, he wiped at it and reached up to the small cabinet above for a bottle of black scuff patch polish. The boot repaired, he placed it back in the box so that it could continue to wait, if for another six years, for the boy who probably wasn’t coming back to wear it again. “Damn kid never took care of anything,” he muttered.

But the image was there. In his mind’s eye. When he walked into the house, some lights came on, and another met him. The 11x14 print hanging on the opposite wall stared at him. The little boy in the image was wearing a neatly pressed white dress shirt and a black tie with tan khakis. His polished boots gleamed with catchlights in the toes from the studio lighting, and his eyes sparkled with mischief. His white teeth shown brightly and in abundance. The gold stud in his left ear glittered, and Ames gasped. In his mind, he saw the pale and thin eunuch with the shaven head, the one who had not dared look right at the ID camera, much less smile. But the boy staring back at him was fleshy and happy, and was smiling broadly into the camera, his jet black shoulder-length hair shining and slightly curled at the ends where it was pulled back away from his face and behind his ears. Ames shook his head, and cursed the automatic lighting and security system. He pulled the picture of Joey, the boy who had left a boot out on the floor six years before, off of the wall and deposited it in the kitchen can. “Why that bitch couldn’t get him a HAIRCUT I’ll never know! He was a boy, for Christ’s sake!” he yelled at the empty house. The house made no reply.

Somewhere a heat pump kicked over, but then there was silence.

He made his way through the forlorn dwelling to the stairs, and headed up to take a bath. A hot bath would certainly help, he told himself, as well as a short nap in a good bed and not the divan in his office. Lights came on ahead of him, and he stopped by his bedroom to turn on his computer. It came obediently to life, and connected itself simultaneously to its ISP and its remote IO server, which still seemed to be up and running. Ames breathed a sigh of relief and headed for the bath. As he turned his back, a very happy and musical monkey came onscreen, banging a pair of cymbals. In his virtual teeth, he carried a pipewrench.

Ames ran himself a bath, steam filling the room. He lowered himself with a groan into the sunken bathtub and closed his eyes. “Fuckin’ take me AWAY! Least something took HER away ... not before she ruined my life though,” he shouted to the empty house. There was no reply. He leaned back in the tub, feeling the tension drain out of him. He thought, naturally, of work; as the tension drained, he thought of how SHE and her son had drained him as well. But HE could fix it, of that he was sure. Jason and Max would have the Mainframe up again soon, he told himself, then everything would be back to normal. He didn’t even notice when the transdermal patches on his upper arms came loose and floated off amongst the suds of the bath water.

He soaked for perhaps half an hour, and then he heard it. From somewhere down the hall came a muffled cry, no more than a whimper. Ames’ eyes snapped open, and he cocked his head. There was NO way anyone could be in the house, not with the security system online. Again, the small cry, despairing and small. Jumping from the tub with a vile curse, he snatched up a towel and secured it about his waist. Even though he knew that he was alone, subconsciously, he despised his own nakedness. He crept down the hall, looked into his bedroom and saw nothing but the glow from the computer screen. He checked the closet, he checked the guest room. He checked the half bath connected to the guest room. Again, the small and faint cry came to his ears. He stared in disbelief at the last door on the second floor, a door that had not been opened in six years. It was a plain wooden door, thick and sound dampening and unremarkable like the rest - of which it matched in set. It was unadorned, but he was reluctant to open it. He approached it as if there were venomous snakes on the floor, glancing often over his shoulder.

“Why?” came the choked whimper from behind the door.

Ames jumped and yelped.

His towel came undone, and he stood naked in the hallway, gasping for breath. A sharp pain shot through his chest, and he shivered. His flesh rose up in goose bumps, and he began to tremble. His penis rose as well, not quickly, but he paid no attention and the erection went unnoticed. Slowly, he reached for the dusty brass doorknob. It was cold under his damp palm, and it turned with reluctance, almost grudgingly. The hinges squeaked as he pushed the door open. No light came on. He fumbled along the wall inside of the doorway and he flipped the first switch he came to. Unfortunately, it was the master switch that was tied into the house’s security systems, and the dutiful electronics - sure that their young master had finally come home at last - turned on everything else in the room.

From the stereo came a song with some boys singing about “You got the right stuff, baby ...” and the VCR began to autoplay as the TV snapped on. There came a startled voice from the TV, “Michelangelo, you have much to learn ...” Ames jumped again. There was a thin layer of dust over everything in the room, and he snorted in disgust at the noise. He tried to switch off the stereo and TV/VCR, cursing the absent inhabitant of the room for his irresponsibility. Instead, he pressed the wrong button and skipped to the next CD in the player. A man’s voice said that “Lightning crashes, and an old mother dies ...” He listened to this song for a moment or two, until the singer mentioned “the baby down the hall.” Then he found the OFF button. “Right stuff, my ass,” he swore. He looked around at the semiorganized chaos which was a part of the bedroom of every young boy who had ever lived. There were clothes laid out on the foot of the bed, and with a start, he realized that they were same clothes from the 11x14 picture which he had disposed of. A blue baseball cap with a white letter “A” on the front of it lay on the pillow of the half made bed. The bedspread was covered with images of green humanoid turtles in multi-colored masks, all of them holding weapons. The curtains, which were closed, were done in the same motif and the dark green carpet looked as if it could use a vacuuming. At the head of the bed leaned a new baseball bat, and on the night stand was a dusty glove and an unscarred ball. On the pillow next to the cap sat a bright red action figure with a silver face mask and silver boots.

Ames looked down, and saw the size 5 white cleats there, not in the box out on the porch where they belonged. They were worn, but very clean. He swore again, but went rigid as he heard the voice once more.

“Why?”

It seemed to come from all around him. He glanced nervously around the room, the hairs on the back of his neck rising. From in the hallway he heard, “Daddy’s home!”

“I need a drink and a nap,” he muttered, leaving the room and slamming the door. After a few minutes, the systems assumed that the boy had gone to bed or had left. The lights went out. The fact that they had not come on in six years didn’t concern them in the least.

Ames picked up his towel, made his way back to the bedroom, found a bottle of scotch, and retired back to his bath. The water had cooled, and he turned up the heat and ran a bit more of hot water. He leaned back once more, taking a long drink. “Better,” he sighed. Then he heard the breathing. Slowly, he turned his head and opened his eyes.

Standing in the bathroom doorway was the boy.

He stared for a moment, his mouth open in disbelief. The boy’s white shirt was torn, and his black tie was wrapped around the back of his head and in his mouth like a gag. His scalp was shaven, and his long black hair was laying on the floor at his bare feet in piles. His left earlobe was torn open. His tan khakis were stained with blood which ran freely from the crotch, dripping from the cuffs and pooling up in the hair clippings at his feet. In the boy’s hand was a scalpel, bloody and sharp. He took a few steps towards the tub, his small bare feet leaving bloody footprints on the white tile floor in his wake. There were tears, unshed, standing in his eyes. One of them was blackened, an angry bruise surrounding it, and his lower lip was swollen. “Why?” he asked, the sound of his fragile voice muffled by the necktie gag, “I tried so hard.”

A sharp pain shot through Ames’ chest again, and he pressed himself against the back of the tub. The bottle of scotch slid from his hand to sink below the soap suds. “This ... this isn’t possible!” he shouted at the boy.

The tears in the boy’s eyes broke free and ran down his cheeks. He nodded. “How can you hate me when I love you?” the once-dapper boy asked, waving the bloody scalpel.

Ames shook his head. “You’re not real,” he defended himself, “Too much work. Too much stress ...”

“But I tried, Daddy, I really did,” the boy replied, inching his way closer, leaving more bloody little footprints. An irrational thought flared in Ames’ mind.

“Everywhere you go, you make a mess!” he yelled.

The boy halted his approach, looking down at the floor. His free hand went to his crotch. “You did this, not me,” he said.

“It isn’t real,” Ames gasped, hugging his arms to his chest, not noticing the pale shaven spots on his arms where the patches had been.

“Was it because YOU were in there too, when you were MY age?” the boy asked, “Was it because YOU were bad once?”

Ames’ head began to throb. Unbeknownst to him, the monkey on the screen of his computer was asking the same questions, its virtual mouth moving in time to the phantom boy’s own. “Is that why you did it to ME, too?” the boy pressed.

“I did it for your own good!” Ames shouted, the pain in his chest and head increasing.

“Noooo ...” the small voice whispered through thin, red lips and shiny white teeth.

Ames groaned. The pain was unbearable now, and getting worse. His breath came in ragged gasps as the monkey asked, as the boy asked, again and again. It wasn’t possible. He was seeing things, he told himself. He just needed a bit of rest and some word from the technicians.

Then the boy turned away, dropping the scalpel on the floor. It clattered loudly across the bloody tiles, and he sighed. “I love you, Daddy,” he said through his necktie gag, the words oddly muffled and sounding like “Iy Wuf oo Dead-ee.” Then he passed through the open door and vanished. A few seconds later, from down the hallway, came music - “Heroes in a halfshell ... Turtle Power!”

Ames screamed.

Max slammed the last circuit board into place and crawled out from under the nerve center of the IO Mainframe. He threw a master breaker, waited for one minute, then threw it again. Lights came on all over the room, and the computers began to whine. From somewhere deep inside of the fresh processor parts and memory chips, Jason’s Banana Boat program watched as the IO programs booted up. Very subtly, it modified them. The room’s main lights came on, and a voice spoke from overhead. “Emergency reboot in progress. All inmates report to dorm rooms and beds. All staff report to stations. Prepare to identify. 90 seconds to full operation. Repeat ... the computer continued to blather, even as the IO ISP server came up. As the system tried to regain control of the Complex, delicious bits of data began to head for Ned’s and Jason’s computers at home, which dutifully wrote it all to CD R’s this time. Their printers began to run, and pictures and facts began to pile up. Max scratched his head in puzzlement. “Why is there a large banana on all the screens?” he asked Jason.

“Dunno,” Jason replied, “must be a glitch.”

The lights suddenly all turned red and an alarm began to wail. Outside the shattered remains of the front gate and office, Linda Johnson jumped. Lawrence Taft very nearly wet his pants, and Erik’s parents - all of them summoned in the middle of the night with full police protection - tried to comfort their panic-stricken son. Linda recovered herself first.

“Hello again, I’m Linda Johnson, once more on location at the IO Rehab Center for Boys, where it seems that something is happening inside the complex. Earlier in the night, the Complex was breached and new employees made their way in to relieve the staff that had been trapped inside when the main computer crashed. We also met with Mr. Ames, the director of the IO Center, who seems to have gone home to refresh himself. Comments so far have been that no one has been hurt, and that things are well in hand. From the looks of it, with all the lights coming back on, I’d say that the two technicians who went in have restored the systems. We’ll have a full story in the morning, but for now ...”

Linda, however, was interrupted by Erik’s father. They approached her, surrounded by armed police officers. “Linda, we have to get Erik somewhere where he can rest. If you need us, can we do it NOW?”

“We can tape now, yes,” she agreed.

“Erik,” Taft asked the boy, “Tell Linda what you have to. Don’t be afraid of her.”

The blind boy nodded, adjusted his mirrored glasses, and tried to collect his thoughts. “My name is Erik Anderson,” he began, “and I got put in IO when I was 12. I set an old barn on fire. I was released a couple of months ago when I was 15. I know it sounds stupid, but I didn’t even know how long I was in there. When I got put in there, they shaved my head and gave me complete physical. Every week, we got examined by a doctor. Not long after I got put in, the doctor who took care of me cut my balls off. All the boys in there are castrated, or the bigger ones who want to graduate and become guards only get their penis cut off. They didn’t feed us very well, and they had something that made us have bad headaches if you were bad or broke the rules. If you saw things you shouldn’t, or talked too much, they would strap you down and shock your head. Sometimes, they just put you in a straight-jacket and left you alone in a padded room while that ULF thing - I think they called it - tried to make your head explode. Sometimes it went on for days. No food, nothing. I know one boy in my dorm died while I was there, his name was Jon-Paul and he was gay, he said. I know some other boys died too, and they were gay as well. Mr. Ames hated gay boys. I think he hated us all, really.”

Taft put a hand to his brow and bowed his head. “I had no idea, Linda,” he offered.

Erik’s father let the boy lean on him. “They did things to me, after they castrated me. They used to stick needles in my head, up under my ears. They shocked me a lot. My doctor says that’s why I had the aneurism and why I can’t see now,” he finished, panting for breath. “Dad, Mom, can we go home now, please?” he begged, tears coming from under his dark glasses.

Linda Jones then turned to Taft, who handed her a briefcase.

“What’s this?” she demanded.

“Your Pulitzer Prize, Ms. Johnson,” he said flatly, then turned to Erik.

“Mr. & Mrs. Anderson, Erik, Linda, there’s something else you all should know. I’ve never been a brave man, not until now. Not until I found out that Ames was butchering children in there for his own pursuits, God only knows what they are. They always told us ‘it was for their own good,’ what they did in there, but I swear to you I didn’t know. Tonight, I was told by the Governor himself to dispose of YOU, Linda, and to have someone set fire to Erik’s home, making it look as if Erik has backslided into arson. It was supposed to look like retaliation to his family for letting him be put in IO. That’s why I called you all here and the police as well,” he addressed the officers. They all nodded and looked around. “I’ve never been brave, as I said earlier, but I’ve called the FBI on this one. Ames has much to answer for, as do I. You’ll all be safe now, I hope. Be well.”

They all watched in shock as Taft went back to his car, the cameras following him. From the remote news van, a voice called out, “We’ve got CNBC uplink, Linda, feeding now, the tapes, and getting ready to go live!” From somewhere in the distance, there was a roaring of an engine getting closer, and suddenly the sky was alight with the landing lamps of a helicopter. The camera men followed it, the live feed went online, and the helicopter made a dangerous landing near the front gate. A man with male pattern baldness stepped out of the craft before it even settled, and ran towards the group.

“What’s happening, dad?” Erik asked.

“I think the big guys just got here, son,” he breathed. “My God, what IS this place they put you in, and who IS this Ames person?”

“My friend Joey’s dad,” Erik replied, as if that explained it all.

The balding man approached them, flashing a badge. “Skinner, Federal Agent!” he called out, and the police lowered their guns. Linda Johnson greeted him cooly, professionally, and asked, “Are we live?”

“Yes, CNBC in fact,” she answered.

“Good. Get on FOX too. The Governor should be here shortly.”

The lights went back to normal, and the Auto-voice, as the boys called it inside of IO, ordered them all to identify. “Normal operations resumed,” it announced. Each boy in turn let the scanner of his room read his ID bracelet. Then the guards all called in. The Mainframe was running happily, unaware of just how badly IT had just been castrated by a virtual knife known as the Banana Boat. Jason smiled at Max as the screens all went to the geometric screen saver pattern. “I think we did it,” he said.

“Good. Let’s get the hell out of this hell hole!” Max replied.

In Dorm 23, Joey screamed and clung tightly to Sam. He was shaking so badly that Ned had to inject him again. He screamed again as the needle pierced his skin, and Sam held him tightly, keeping his stubbly head pressed against his muscular shoulder. Michael, his eyes drooping, leaned back against the wall. “I’m n-not put-t-t-tin’ m-my head on th-that p-p-pillow,” he stammered.

“No, if all goes well, you don’t need to,” Ned replied.

“What u be up to?” Bolton asked.

“Let’s just say that the Mainframe isn’t really firing on all 8 cylinders right now,” he replied cryptically. Bolton smiled, his white teeth bright. “Go to sleep boys, sweet dreams!”

They all looked confused, then Sam smiled as well. “SHIT!” he exclaimed.

“N-no,” Michael said, shaking his head, his blonde flat top not quite long enough to wave as he shook it.

Ned laughed and handed him a stack of papers from his bag. “Read these when you wake up, little brother,” he said, pulling the young eunuch into a rough embrace. “Read ‘em and think.”

Michael looked confused as he took the papers and put them on the night stand.

Bolton, however, was laughing, a rich throaty laugh that was full of mirth. “I KNEW it!” he cried, “You two looked it to me!”

Ned, still holding Michael close, watched as Joey slid from Sam’s arms. The burly black youth tucked the boy into bed, ran a hand over his forehead, and sighed. “I think we need to get you some gray clothes in the morning,” he told Sam.

Bolton was still laughing. Sam smiled again, but Michael still looked confused. “B-b-broth-th-ther?” he asked.

“I think the stutter will be gone in a few more weeks, Michael,” Ned replied, “Nothing a little fresh air and sunshine and few shots of testosterone won’t cure. After that, we’ll see how the patches work for you.”

Michael raised one eyebrow. He yawned, and despite his burning curiosity, he didn’t resist as Ned tucked him in and kissed his forehead. “I’ll be right here all night long, just me and the laptop and Jason on the other end with Linda Johnson,” he assured the slight eunuch. Michael reached out to take Ned’s hand, and Ned noted the length of the eunuch’s arm and fingers. “You’re growing fast, little brother,” he said softly, but Michael was already asleep. Ned stretched out on the vacant bed that had been Cheng’s, and ran Winamp, selecting a few soothing MP3's that might help to induce pleasant dreams for his charges.

“What ‘bout Ames? He gon’ be PISSED!” Sam said.

But Ned shook his head. “Ames isn’t coming back, Sam. He wont’ be hurting Michael, or you, or even Joey ever again.”

Sam looked at the still form of Joey, the pale eunuch’s breathing being slow and regular. “His own dad ... damn. How could he?”

“Takes all kinds,” Bolton replied, “But I shoulda seen it comin’ when we graduated IO, I guess.”

“WE?” Ned asked, “Bolton, what am I missing here?”

But the large black guard was laughing again, harder this time. “Hooooooooo-eeeeeeee, shit, Ned! Here I thought you had it ALL cookin’! Dint’chu know Ames was a prisoner in here from age 15 to 21? We was BOTH on the graduate/career list together! Hell, we was roomies for 4 years at the end!”

It was Ned’s turn to be startled that time. Dumbly, he shook his head. Then he glanced at Joey, who by rights, shouldn’t even exist if Ames had done time in IO as a boy.

Sam whistled in surprise. He sat up in bed, pulling his sweatshirt off to reveal his hard and muscular upper body. “Dis I gots to be hearin’, dude!” he exclaimed.

“Bed check, LIGHTS OUT,” the Auto-voice ordered from above.

“Piss off,” Ned replied. There was a beep, but the lights stayed on. Then a strange voice came over the system. “Come, Mr. Tally-man, tally me banana ...”

“Two chimps, two gorillas and me,” Ned replied.

“Make it a split,” Jason replied, and Ned said, “Thank you. Now, Bolton, why don’t YOU tell ME about Ames and what HE did?”