I hit the meal-break key. A cuber has to chow sometime. I am not one of those crackpot juvs who feel guilty for their petty crimes, revulsion at their misdeeds, starving themselves selfishly. Although I haven't killed or disfigured anybody like some of them have. But not one of those poor bastards ever goes through with the starvation bit, you fact. News travels, even in these dim halls. Maybe those crackpots wouldn't break if it weren't for the sunless cubes and the subliminals slamming into their mushy heads day after day. And some of les miserables slack-eat unintentionally by mindsetting food-stuffs from their better days. Eat all the ice-cream sundays you can stomach, Butch. At the end of the month you've dropped twenty pounds and you can't raise your chin from your chest. Curried beef and snow peas, molecularized by a juv who doesn't fact the basics of neurovits or Y-protein chains, will not keep himself healthy for long, especially if he's a hyperactive punk with an instaform pillow physique who spends most of his time crying for his mommy. Sure, you can spoon the dreamy foods into your mouth, they'll chew up real nice and tasty-like, and they'll even fill up your belly for a split-second or two, but it's no diff from chowing down on a plateful of sawdust. You can't program vitamins, pal. Can't be done. Now, on the off chance that I do exit 23!6oB someday, I want my health in good order, even if I do end up in a quonset-hut on some stinky biosphere, blistering my palms busting rocks. They love to outsource us post-juvies, cheaper than using work tanks. But I am way snake, and I will make whatever situation that comes along tutti-fucking-fruity. I'll get by. So the health must be maintained.
Out slides the meal tray. I mindset my instaform for sit up and I exec-key a light ale. I do indulge a little, sometimes. But even though the moleculared beverage does nada for my health, the mealgrub slopped on the meal tray does plenty enough. This oatmeal-sludge is just bursting with the things a young body needs to grow and thrive. Out slides a frosty pint of ale, and I sample a bit off the top. Tastes great. I sample the mealgrub. Tastes like grizzly shit. Fair enough. I shove the tempopts into my brain-jacks and search for Brother Mike. I prefer him over the other meal-break companions. He seems developed beyond his programmed parameters. I wouldn't search him out if I didn't like his company. Being alone in a cube 24/7 seriously sucks. A fella needs someone to talk to once in a while, you fact? And Brother Mike facts lots of interesting outer- and inner-cube gossip. He's linked up to God, after all.
I locate the file and mindset an activation code, and Brother Mike's world solidifies around me, blocking out my candlelit cube. His environ is a lot like mine. He's settled in across from me, candlelight glowing orange off his, what I can only imagine to be for lack of better lighting, pale skin. Between us is a deeply etched, old-as-Moses, softwood dining table, its length shooting off to either side, its width a mere one and a half arm lengths, and I fact if I stood I could lean forward and slap that pudgy face of his. He's wearing that thick, scratchy-looking, brownish, black-ink stained robe he always wears. His head is bare of but a few stray, sweaty strings of hair. His eyes click into focus as the cavernous dining hall stitches every last pixel into place, becomes a real place, more real than cube 23!6oB. Brother Mike, as always, greets me with a sneer.
"Devil be damned," he whispers, echoes slicing through and smashing against the stone walls of the hall. They'd keyed in a machismo vox for Brother Mike, and so his whispers are hardly whispers, way amped and booming. He rolls his eyes upward, searching the dark ceiling above for God him-shimmering-self. "Why me," he laments. "Why does he always come to me?"
Brother Mike has a feast spread out in front of him. Looks like roasted game hen on a bed of steaming greens and rice. He uses a large ink well for a wine glass, black ink staining the sides in driblets. His fingers are greasy from having just torn into the hen. He stuffs some meat into his mouth and chews, breathing noisily in and out through his nose. I sample some more mealgrub. Still tastes like grizzly shit. I spoon in a few mouthfuls, and I smile at Brother Mike as I work my tongue around the nasty stuff, try to mulch it with my teeth. Our eyes are locked, and we're taunting each other, each of us drilling home the fact that the other guy doesn't count; I'm the reality here, you bastard, and you're the dream. Brother Mike hates it when I chime in and lay claim to my side of the table. I'm not going anywhere, mister. And Brother Mike's tiny mouth, tiny compared to the rest of his fat head, is working at the meat, his cheeks jiggling, his drooping eyes filled with his hatred of me. He may very well be a pain in the ass, not to mention a terrible host, but he's squared. And I mean that in a mathematical way. His whole is better than his parts. I mean, yeah, it looks like he could use some time on my muscle stimulator, trim off some of that fat, but his head is on straight. He's the only programmed companion I've dug up during my imprisonment that talks to me--when I can knock him off his preprogrammed rocker-horse of rhetoric--like a real human being. Sometimes I consider him my only friend in this matrix of holding cells. Sure, we don't get along too well, but who does these days.
"Game hen?" I ask him, pointing at the strings of meat hanging from his fingers.
"More like rodent," he spits meat juice at me, his blood boiling for no apparent reason besides the fact that the sight of me sickens him. It's nice to have an effect on someone around here.
"What's got your ballsack all bunched up, Mike?"
He doesn't like that kind of talk. His lips start quivering with rage. How much can a guy pent up, I wonder. After a few moments of heavy breathing and opening and closing his fists on the tabletop, he calms down an iota, goes from red to orange, and he glares at me.
"Restrain yourself," he whispers, not whispering, and do I detect a hint of comradeship? "You know we're being watched."
"Could be," I say with a smirk, "but I don't see how that justifies impolite behavior. And I, sir, for one, am not going to allow it." So I stand, lean, and I slap the bastard full on his fleshy cheek. Let them watch, let them see how I will not be restrained. His flesh stung my palm. It'd felt as if I'd passed my hand through an electric gravity field. I plop my ass back down on the bench and I say, "Pray for me, Brother. Forgive as only a true warrior of the Lord can. I' m sinner, a bullshitter. My mamas ain't proud. I'm a non-facter, a knower of naught. I am a plague, sir. I'm a glitch in the system and a fly in the ointment. Can you pray for me?" I puppy-eye Brother Mike, fake tears brimming at my eyelids. My hand is throbbing, the pain uncomfortably realistic in this virtual landscape where pain cannot exist. Brother Mike groans, and then he goes back to tearing apart the hen and stuffing meat into his mouth. I let him finish, and he's pretty quick. He wipes grease off the fingers of one hand, with the other he holds the inkwell and gulps it dry. He's used to this shit, my shit, or he should be used to it by now. I pull this tirade out of the bag every once in a while, pull other diatribes out other times. I use these to break the ice. Brother Mike is a tough skull to crack.
I ask him, "What's your god tell you about the real world?" Then, deciding to narrow the topic a bit, "How's my eve's, Brother Mike," and his eyes dull as his god inputs updated data variables into his subprogramed read instructs, the Almighty shelling down divine facts in binary code. He snaps to and tells me, "They're quite comfortable. There's no need to concern yourself with their wellbeing," as if I'd worried an undigested corn kernel about them. I was just curious to see how the Higher Ups' upgrade was working; during our meal breaks, the companions were supposed to be our link to the outside world, they were supposed to tell us what it was we were missing so we'd focus on our good-behavior and try our damnedest to earn an early release. So, a theory of mine: depending on how I ask certain questions, Brother Mike might throw down some vitals that the Higher Ups would rather he not throw down. But, apparently, from what I've just read from Brother Mike's reply, I am going to have to blind-grope through a few exec routines and grab a new, more extensive exec code. The old one, "knower of naught", had worked fine during earlier meal breaks, but now it'd morphed into monkey shit somehow. Those Higher Ups, though mostly dumb as head lice, were tricky at times. But I'm way snake, and I will come up with a solution.
"Brother Mike." I'm watching his eyes. "How soon before my sins are forgiven?"
He leans on his elbows and steeples his fingers. He lowers his head and peers at me from under his fingertips. Like he's peering out from within a little cage. How apropos. "When you've waged numerous battles against the caprices of your mind," he tells me, "you'll find that you've done things you thought yourself incapable of doing. It's that core sin that must be purged from your body, dug up like," oh shit, I've triggered one of his sermons, must've been a phrase I used. But that's how I've always referred to my release date with Brother Mike: when will my sins be forgiven. I interrupt the sweaty, fat monk with, "Hey now, big guy," my hands spread wide, beseeching an end to the nonsense, but he babbles on about the book of Romans and spiritual law verses the law of the mind and the cleansing power of Jesus Christ and, oh to hell with this. I don't even fact what caprices are.
I shove my mealgrub to the side and pound my head against the table. This should summon an interrupt. Or a headache, if I'm actually slamming my head against something back in my cube. Doesn't feel like it. I glance up, and I can see he's pondering my antics, perhaps running through a couple hundred patterned responses. Now I ask, before he has a chance to open his flapping lips, "When can I leave cube twenty-three-ex-six-little-o-bee?" His eyes, once again, grow dull as his god speaks to him. Somehow I've got to patch into that moment when God speaks to Brother Mike, probe where the flow of data originates, track down the Holy Ghost. Maybe I could MacGyver some sort of homing device with the limited supply I've collected in my cube. Yeah, right. A homing device that'll find God? Good luck. Brother Mike's eyes come back into focus.
"Eighty-six months, seventeen days, twelve hours and fifty-two seconds," he says. He pounds the tabletop with his fist and adds, "Mark." And I'm thinking, that is a long motherfucking time. Too long. He must have got his data flow twisted up, got the wrong information. He must be talking about some other guy. He has a question for me. He says, "Why should any man complain when being punished for the sins he committed?"
A glint and a gathering of wetness in his digitized eyes tell me he's actually asking himself this question. But that can't be. He's just a programmed companion. So I have no choice but to take it personal, and I spit as I shout "Who's complaining? Have I ever complained? I don't throw tantrums!"
Silence after the echoes die.
"I'm not complaining, I'm just curious," I add.
"Ah," he says. "Curiosity," and I can tell he's about ready to jump into another one of his sermons, so I pull the tempopts from my skull, watching as Brother Mike melts from view, his last words, "…eleventh commandment should have read ‘thou shalt not be curious'," and then a quick lean forward and a hurried, "They're watching," and then I am back in my cube. No miracles this rotation. The candles have burned down a bit. I mindset sit-back and ponder the time left in my sentence. Some mental pitchfork is poking at me, and I realize I'm glad to hear my eves are alright.
