He had years and years of experience.
Xerog did not know why that display was shown to him. From remarks made by other inmates, he knew nobody else had it appear. It always there during picture hour, and it disappeared when it was over as if it was never there. Did the computer not know it was exposing this information to Xerog? That was the only likely explanation.
The sequence of numbers Xerog had been waiting to see scrolled by, and he smiled. This time, he had got it right. He looked back at his picture and counted again to be sure. The frogs were in right proportion to the swarm of rabbits he had just finished. The picture might be juvenile, but it was the best thing he had ever produced in his entire life. Should he add another bird? Xerog leant towards the picture, hoping he still had some time, and brought back the creation tool.
As if on cue, a buzzer sounded, and the picture clouded over as it was locked up. Similarly, the little numeric display blinked out of existence, as if it was never there. The trick was to now act interested in the 'art' he had just produced, but Xerog had been through this routine so many times it wasn't much of a trick at all anymore.
Xerog sighed. "So now we end creativity hour and enter psychoanalysis hour?" he spoke aloud to his little, empty room, his voice reverberating off of the metal walls.
"We can if you want," was said back to Xerog, as if it came from the walls themselves.
Xerog chuckled. "Oh yeah, I think I rather opt for the walk-in-the- park instead, Freud."
"You know it is a subminor-violation to address me by anything but," the walls responded, but Xerog did not wait for them to finish. "...anything but your official designation of Jailer #423, with the only allowed exception being the simple abbreviation 'Jailer'." Xerog spat on the walls. "You don't think I know that?" he challenged.
"Additionally, interruptions of my communications and disrespect towards me are also subminor violations. I won't even mention the spitting. I suggest you watch your behavior, Inmate #SP1017."
Xerog hung his head. What was the point? He only wished he had some paper in this place, so he could have written down the innumerous witty and sarcastic responses he had come up with over the ages.
Inevitably, they were all lost on his jailer.
"Since we are doing your evaluation anyway, I will be updating your hostility and behavioral entries, noting that over the past four months, your average readings have risen by 1.63%, which is only 0.87% away from an official warning being issued and..."
The machine drone on, but Xerog blocked it out of his head. In the past, when he became so frustrated and angry, the rage would start to come, rising up in his chest like some foul boiling liquid, driving his 'hostility and behavioral entries' off the chart. Now, nothing would come, except a possibly fiercer wind blowing across the cavity that used to be his soul. Xerog slid down the wall, and plopped on the ground, waiting for the machine to finish lecturing him on official prison regulations and requirements for inmate actions and thoughts.
Lately, he had begun to let himself hope again, and fought hard to bury such feelings. Hope was worse then rage, and Xerog didn't want to be distracted by either.
"...failing to notice that you haven't listened to a word I just said." the machine concluded.
The got Xerog's attention. "I was listening!" he protested. "You reminded me about regulation X319-4, stating and requiring that..."
His jailer cut him off. "You recite to me the contents of my speech out of memory. You were not focusing on what I was saying this time, and I have records of your brain waves to prove it." There was a pause, and Xerog could only imagine his jailer performing the computerized equivalent of making a tick on a clipboard and saying 'Hmm-mmm' to itself. "This has been a disappointing day for you, Inmate #SP1017."
Again, Xerog stared at the walls, thoughts of resistance or protest dying before they could even manifest themselves. "Allright, then, shall we proceed with verbally picking my brain apart, or would you just like to shove something right through here?" he asked, pointing vigorously at his temple.
"Should the need arise, Inmate #SP1017. Now, could you turn your attention towards your picture, and please try to keep it there?" The machine's slightly high-pitched voice was already starting to annoy Xerog, but he knew, as with everything else that bothered him, there was nothing he could do about it. He shifted on the floor so he was facing his most recent masterpiece. It was unclouded, but still locked. He had found that out at a cost of some serious demerits applied to his record.
This time, it was the computer which sighed. "Inmate, once again this picture is almost 84% similar to your last 35 paintings. In fact, there has only been an average of 21% deviation of painting to painting in this period. Consequently, our symbolism studies and mental-status studies have been revealing nothing new or interesting during this period either."
Xerog was not in the mood. "Your point?"
"The point is, as you know, you are stagnating. It is acceptable to explore similar themes, but you have been fixed on almost identical motifs and images. Collection of frogs under some trees; some rabbits collected on rocks; a flock of birds among the clouds. You still have yet to provide meaningful data on why you choose these simplistic, childish images in the first place. With the last couple of pictures, it seems they only variation is the configuration of each set of animals, even though you have to create them from the ground up everytime. The ability with which you can recreate these images from memory is impressive in itself, but..."
Xerog held up his hand, and the voice stopped. "Its like you said, Jailer, we've been over this before."
There was an appraising pause. "Very well. Your communal time for today will be reduced by half in light of your cooperating attitude." Xerog started to open his mouth in protest, but the computer continued. "I suggest you accept this punishment on the grounds of it being exceedingly fair towards you. Now, if you want any of your communal time, I suggest you move to the transport position immediately."
Begrudgingly, Xerog stood up and walked to one end of his cell. He stood straight, with his back towards the wall, and closed his eyes. Right before the restraining fields kicked in, he managed to whisper "Soon enough" so that only he could hear it.
Xerog stood off to the corner of the communal room, standing among some of those inmates affectionately referred to as Shells. He glanced down at the withered bodies of these people and shook his head. In this place, death could either be a punishment or a reward. Those who wanted it did not get it, so their jailers had to find other means to deal with them.
A man curled up in his wheelchair began twitching violently, and Xerog turned away. He wished to god that he could have a cigarette, and for the first time for as long as he could remember, he almost laughed out loud.
'Soon', he told himself.
He spied another inmate exiting from one of the transports and walked up to him.
"Stagger, a piece of shit if I ever knew one," Xerog bellowed out, and smiled even bigger when he saw everybody in earshot twitch.
"What are you, crazy?" Stagger shot at him. "I don't want to get in trouble too." Swearing was another subminor-violation, and Jailers often applied their punishments in groups. Stagger was once a hardened criminal, but had long ago lost his edge in this place. Xerog did not seem to care.
"Maybe I'm trying to get in trouble," Xerog told Stagger. "And if you got in trouble too, well, all the better!" On the outside, Xerog and Stagger were what many had considered 'enemies'. Once they were both incarcerated, they found out quickly that knowing another person was a lot better then not knowing anybody at all, so they ended up 'sticking together', for whatever it was worth.
"Well, leave me out of it. I don't want to end up like Johnson, and I certainly don't want to end up like those over there." Stagger gestured disgustedly at some of the Shells, remaining comatose wherever they were left. Nobody really knew why they were brought down here in the first place. Most figured it was a reminder to the rest of the inmates, but Xerog thought differently.
Xerog had never seen another human in this place that was not a prisoner. This was despite the fact that besides his hour or less of communal time a day, he never saw another human at all. The only authority came from the computerized jailers, and for a long time Xerog simply assumed there were humans somewhere, controlling the show and standing by in case something went wrong.
As the years went by, he began to slowly doubt that. For instance, there was the time another inmate had been left in the communal room for an entire day. Do computers make mistakes? Apparently not, but this guy was not called to return an hour after he arrived like scheduled. However, his name was called the next day, twenty-five hours after he had first arrived. Since the communal rooms have no food or bathrooms he was more then happy to return to his cell.
'Fucked-up automation' is what Xerog called it. The computers seemed to do little error checking. For whatever reason, this guy's name was not on the call-back list in the communal room computer. Xerog guessed that in-cell jailers are inactive when their prisoners were not there, and so he was not noticed missing. Since the underlying assumption of the whole system was 'Jailers do not make mistakes', no surveillance or occupant-checking happened in the communal room, and this guy's extra long stay went unnoticed there as well.
The same theory also explained the display that Xerog was privy to. Due to some bug or something in the jail computer system, this display was activated during picture time, and nothing existed to notice that it was there. Xerog was thankful for that.
All things considered, none of this was really that strange. Xerog had been in jail a long time, but not long enough to forget how money-saving techniques worked on Earth. Consequently, his 'Econo-Jailers' kept carting the Shells down into the breakroom, business as usual, without ever really realizing that there was no need too. Xerog was surprised that he had never seen a dead inmate carried down here by mistake.
"What happened to Johnson?" Xerog asked Stagger. He had not seen Johnson for a few weeks, but didn't think much of it. Communal time came if and when your jailer said so, and was not a regularly scheduled event.
"Ejected," said Stagger, making a whistling noise and a diving motion with his hand.
Xerog whistled in return. More proof of the Throw-Away jail system: for those inmates still thought to cherish life, death could be used as the final punishment. When that happened, your cell was shifted to the front of the prison-structure and ejected from the building, to tumble end over end for how many hundreds of meters, and to crash on the ground below. If you were lucky, you died instantaneously, crushed against the far side of your death-box. If you were unlucky, you hit the wall and had your legs broken instantly, and then you flop against the other wall and break some ribs, and then some arms, all the while your cell bouncing and rolling among rocks and the ruins of other cells, until it comes to a rest and you lay crumpled against the corner bleeding to death, knowing you were free from the jail, if you could just somehow manage to get out of the box and get away.
Such lovely images were just another way to control the inmates, to keep everybody in line. Newcomers thought it was all rumor, but Xerog knew differently. He had seen cells get ejected more then enough times.
"Did you see it?" Xerog asked Stagger, thinking perhaps the rumor was false.
"Me? You know I'm nowhere near the edge, Xerog. In fact," he shifted about somewhat nervously, "I would have thought that if anybody would have seen it, it would be you."
Control was the issue at the heart of cell-ejection and cell-placement. If an inmate was a good little prisoner who did what was expected of him, and Stagger was a perfect example, he would expect his cell to be in a nice, safe place deep inside the building, far from the edge and thus far from ejection. However, the worse one's behavior got, the closer one moved to the front of the building. These were the window seats that nobody fought for.
If an inmate's behavior continued to fall, your cell would continually be shifted outwards and upwards. The whole building must have consisted of nothing more then these prefabricated, movable boxes. Often, Xerog felt his cell shifting around, due to unknown advancements of other cells. Sometimes it was even his own cell being moved.
When Xerog was still new to the prison, he had resisted and rebelled often. For a while, he had a decent view of the land outside the prison walls. It was not like he was looking through glass, as the computers only showed an outside view if you were on the outside layer. It was nothing impressive, just dead, barren land, littered with the occasional outcropping of rocks and what appeared to be debris. Ejected cells? Xerog had assumed so.
When the magic display began to appear, Xerog started thinking. He formed a plan. He behaved properly, and soon he found himself safe in the heart of the building.
Now it was time for all that to end. Xerog looked at Stagger, and then he looked down at his feet and mumbled something, but Stagger did not hear him.
"What's that? I couldn't hear you," Stagger said, somewhat annoyed.
Xerog looked up and looked him straight in the eye. "I'm sorry," he whispered, loud enough for hopefully only Stagger to hear.
Xerog's fist flashed out and hit Stagger in the face. He fell back with a yell, but Xerog was already charging him, and knocked his body into several of the Shells against the wall. He let himself be carried by this sudden exuberant freedom and started screaming along with it.
"Fuck this institutionalized torture! How many people do you hurt? Don't you think its a crime to keep us alive for no reason?" Xerog continued his push forward, and allowed his momentum to bounce him off of Stagger's body and back towards the center of the communal room. He ducked and rolled as several restraining beams shot out from the walls. Xerog had once seen someone else start a fight and saw what happened when one of those electric blue beams had hit that person. It was something he did not want to happen to him.
Klaxons started going off, causing Xerog to scream even louder. "You're no different then the criminals you put away! You keep us alive to keep us suffering. You treat us like..." but Xerog was cut off suddenly when a red beam shot out in a deadly line straight at his head. His body was frozen, but he had been moving fast and slammed into the ground, quickly falling unconscious.
Stagger pushed against the bodies of the Shells he was laying on, but found he could not move. The jailers had activated restraining beams on everyone in the communal room. He tried to swear at Xerog, but could not even move his jaw. All he could do was watch Xerog's body slide across the floor to one of the transports. He wanted to scream at Xerog for attacking him, because he knew the jailers would punish him as well. Even if he could have opened his mouth to scream, he probably would not of, because he knew that would probably be the last he ever saw of Stagger.
Much to Xerog's hope and surprise, he awoke to see the interior of his cell. He groaned and tried to rollover onto his stomach, but found that he was also in the grip of prison restraining beams. His whole body ached and tingled, and his head throbbed with a pain that was much, much worse.
"Inmate #SP1017! What the hell is wrong with you?" his Jailer barked at him. Never had Xerog heard it sound so angry. He tried to move his mouth, but the fields prevented him.
He could not even blink.
"I'm sorry? Why were you apologizing to Stagger in the first place? Why did you assault him? Do you know what you accomplished?"
Xerog continued to stare at the ceiling in response.
"One of the comatose inmates was killed! You also upset many of the other inmates. I only wish I knew what the hell you were thinking." It paused, and silence surrounded Xerog again for a moment before the Jailer cut back in. "Well, whatever your goals were, you did achieve something." The restraining fields snapped off, and another field rolled Xerog to his left.
He blinked. Instead of dull, grey walls, a pale blue greeted him.
"You've got the best seat in the house, Inmate."
Xerog groaned, sat up, and rubbed his eyes. He then turned and stared out the window, taking in the dead ground and endless sky surrounding the building. He smiled again, for he was not as high up as he had previously thought. Maybe only two hundred meters? He did not know for sure, but that was how it appeared.
"Jailer," he began to say but was instantly cutoff.
"No, Inmate, you will answer some of my questions first. Why did you hit Stagger? All recorded conversations and interactions between you and him never registered more then underlying resentment. You two were what some might call 'friends'."
Xerog blinked again. He always knew the jailer computers were excellent by most AI standards, but they still managed to surprise him every now and then by what they could say.
It continued: "I want to conclude that you have become mentally unbalanced, but all other evidence suggests otherwise. Despite your generally uncooperative behavior, you do seem to value your own safety and well being. Also, if we place aside the work of the last several weeks, your creativity assignments also suggest a positive..." and the computer stopped suddenly.
"Inmate, what is it about your paintings that are so important to you? As soon as I mentioned them, your physiological signs and some key brainwaves shifted dramatically. You will help me find the connection."
Inevitably, the jailers always ended up reminding Xerog that they were only mere computers.
"Jailer," Xerog began, "I guess I will admit I haven't always been completely honest with you."
"Lying to a jailer is a subminor violation, and I must remind you that you do not have much more room for those." Xerog could only imagine his jailer glancing at the sky beyond the window.
"I know, Jailer, I know. This is not something which is easy for me." Xerog turned, and walked to the corner of the room opposite the window view. "You have always been a superb counsellor to me, helping me to discuss and analyze internal turmoil."
"Now is not the time to appeal to my 'humanity', Inmate. I fail to see how this is relevant."
"Please, let me finish. I was going to say, even though you are so good at it, I don't know if you can fully grasp and appreciate the breadth and depth of the human mind. You see, something happened between Stagger and I. It is an issue I have trouble talking about."
"What is this Inmate? There is no record of any significant childhood events between you and Stagger."
"I know, I know." Xerog replied. He slowly let his back slide down the walls until he was sitting in the corner. "Can I change the subject briefly? I want to talk about my paintings." Xerog paused, expecting the computer to say something but it kept silent. "In fact, I know I'm not allowed to view my previous works, but I do know you keep them stored away, deep within your memory banks."
There was another pause, and the computer finally said "And?"
"And I would like to ask you a quick question about my last three paintings. Then maybe you will understand about what I am trying to explain about Stagger."
"I will permit this Inmate, but I am skeptical since your last three paintings are not much more then repeated nature scenes."
"Bear with me, Jailer. How many groups of different animals were in my last painting?"
"Three."
"How many of each different animal?"
"Thirty-five birds, twenty-four frogs, and sixteen rabbits."
"And how many of each in the previous picture?"
"Thirty-three birds, twenty-three frogs, and seventeen rabbits."
Xerog thought he heard the computer's voice waver just a tiny amount. "And the one before that?" he pressed.
"Thirty birds, twenty-one frogs, and eleven ra-" The room went silent.
Xerog paused, and waited to see if the computer would talk again. He chuckled. "What's the matter? Your circuits a little fouled up?"
There was no response. His cell light flickered off, and came back on again to a very dim level. A deep rumble emanated from beyond his cell walls, and he could almost make out a light humming as well.
Xerog pushed his hands against each wall in his corner, and squeezed his eyes tightly shut. He held his breath, and waited, fearful and anxious for what should come next.
The pause was agonizingly long, but Xerog could only imagine what was happening deep within the jail system. The numbers he had the computer recite represented years of study and planning, all done secretly, all done solely in his head.
During his long stay here, Xerog payed close attention to that display, figuring he would learn something useful from it. One day, Xerog heard the familiar sounds of a cell being ejected while he was painting and caught which numbers had been displayed. The next day, another cell was ejected at almost the exact same time, and the numbers were also almost exactly the same.
Xerog practically trembled at the implications.
He began to notice that whenever any regular event happened in the jail while he was painting, these almost-consistent codes were displayed. Was he looking at the execution cache of the system's primary controller? He had no way of knowing for sure, but did his best to remember every number he saw.
The last stroke of luck came one day when the computer was reciting its usual batch of statistics at him, and he noticed that whatever number the computer said was reflected in the display. This was not unusual, but one time the in-cell sprinkler was activated, drenching Xerog for about thirty seconds. Mistake, or had the computer just voiced the sprinkler code?
His thoughts were suddenly disturbed by a faint popping sound. Soon another and another rang out, and Xerog could now hear the familiar sounds of cells being shifted around the building. More and more popping sounds occurred.
Xerog opened his eyes to see a grey box just disappear out of the range of the viewing window. A slight delay, and another flew by, followed by two more. The sounds of shifting and popping grew louder, until they were all he could hear, and the sight of falling cells soon all but saturated his little window.
Xerog laughed. "That's what you get for using piece of shit computer systems." he said outloud.
Another sound started to clamor for his attention: the sound of destruction. Cell after cell was smashing into the ground below, and then on top of each other, and then on top of that. Xerog fearfully thought he heard a scream or two, but knew that was impossible.
Within moments, the rain of ejected cells started to slow down, and almost stop. Xerog again held his breath, and let out an immediate sigh of relief as he felt his own cell disengage and start to slide forward.
He closed his eyes again.
This was it.
A guy lived in the communal room for twenty-five hours, he reminded himself.
His cell reached full extension, and the walls around him shuddered as they were released from their holds. The world seemed to pause, and his stomach felt the briefest sensation of falling... and then the loudest crash sent him several feet in the air and across the cell. He tumbled and smacked the wall, but he was already laughing loudly and crying at the same time.
The world stopped moving, and Xerog rose to his feet, and walked over to the transport position. One, two, three kicks and a rectangle of metal broke loose and for the first time for as long as he could remember, Xerog saw genuine daylight.
He took a deep breath and savored the feel of fresh air. It was a struggle, but he squeezed his body through the small hole in the side of his cell. He stepped out onto the surface of another cell, and looked back at the jail structure, and whistled.
A hulking skeleton greeted him, looking much like an unfinished skyscraper on Earth, consisting of nothing more then steel girders. The framework seemed to go on forever, and even though there was not a cell left in the building, he could not see light on the other side.
"Goddamn," he whispered, for he had gotten the codes one-hundred percent correct. The magic number? One-hundred-eleven, which is what he had guessed as the master cell code, and embedded in the quantities he had created during creativity hour. One-hundred-eleven, his new favorite number, and the only bit-pattern common to every other cell code. One-hundred-eleven, the wildcard, but better described as the Trump-card, for it activated cell ejection for every cell in the entire building.
Idiot computers. And lucky guesswork.
Xerog looked down at the mountain he had made; a mountain consisting of nothing more then ejected prisoner boxes. The boxes had mostly stacked upwards, but enough layers had slid outwards that he could gradually make it down to the bottom. Around him, he could see legs or arms poking out, and even several people struggling to get free as well.
On his way down, sliding and jumping from cell to cell, he kept his eyes open for Stagger, but never saw him. Even with the punishment he probably received from being involved in the communal room brawl, chances were Stagger was kept deep within the building. Regrettably, he was probably now buried deep within the mountain as well.
Xerog's mountain.
Xerog hit the ground running and did not bother to look back.
Derek curently lives in Philadelphia, PA, and does computer-related work for Lockheed-Martin.
E-mail: superstar@outsole.com
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