Fifteenth

I came upon Christopher moments later. Stripped down to his underwear, but still wearing his helmet, he ran from one side of the platform to another; attempting to made controlled leaps at a sewer pipe a few feet above his head. My sigh of relief startled him. He screamed that he needed to get out of here. That he could talk to his Dad, pay the low level Governor's Tribute. The litigation would take years, he shouted, he would have time to live.

He ran up to me, grabbed handfuls of my cover-alls. At the top of his lungs he shrieked about how had never fucked a girl. How was he so stupid to give up his youth, he asked me in-between panicked breaths. I shook my gloves off and grabbed him by his shoulders, attempting to calm him. I told him to take deep breaths, even though the air quality down here was so abysmal. He would gasp for air and beg me to help him escape; convinced he could climb that ladder to freedom. Over and over he repeated "I just have to see my Dad, I just have to see my Dad." I tried to explain to him about the last guy who escaped, not mentioning how much more pleasant my existence down here has become since his exodus.

You're too young, I imparted to him. In all honesty they would have made up a hundred reasons to keep you down here until you were too past your prime to remember that you'd had paid off your debt decades before. There's a reason no one volunteers to do the hard time, but escaping will mean someone else will have to suffer for your sins. They'll go after your parents or siblings to get what is theirs. I look him dead in those pale blue eyes screaming in terror. I ask him if he could bare the burden of someone else doing this time for him. He's shaking horribly, so hard that he vomits, and only then do I notice that the sewage has begun to rise.

Fourteenth

I force myself down the passages back toward the sewer entrance hatch. My legs feel like they're dragging an ever increasing weight as I push closer to my destination. I turn the corner and hear the security guard acknowledging my arrival into his headset. Not so much for my safety, but to calculate how much time I lost today and how much more I'll be penalized. My best estimation is that our keepers will add another twenty-four hours to my sentence. I barely feel the pangs of regret.

I dress quickly. It takes a few minutes for the hatch to unseal and I enter the sewer. Down the ladder and into the muck, greeted like curious dogs by a dozen offensive odors at once. It's darker down here then usual, it must be raining topside. I switch on the flashlight mounted into my safety hat and sweep the area searching for Christopher. I wait for a moment for the magnetic hum to disappear before calling to him. The waste has risen since yesterday to just below my crotch and it's thick as you can imagine the collective excrement of hundreds of thousands can become. Moving through it is an uphill battle, but I trudge through searching for my young comrade.

In the darkness, I see a faint light in the distance of the pipe. I call to see if it's Christopher and get no answer. As the light gets brighter, I hear a quick and frantic sound getting louder. My approach finds the waste becoming less and less until I finally arrive to a raised grated platform. I pull myself upon it; moving toward a darting light and the moans of a wounded animal. I fear the worse.

Thirteenth

I extended myself as much as possible to reach the being in the door of white light. I saw the door coming closer and I shouted with joy, but made no sound. Our hands clasped with a gentle familiarity and I could feel my peace being cemented into place. In an instant, the cement was shattered by the power of a wrecking ball as the hand threw my hand aside and grabbed my wrist and yanked me forward. I flew forward at an intense speed and feel to the cold linoleum with a sickening thud. My deflation was explosive as I looked up and saw the lab coat emblazoned with the crest of our keepers.

He instructed two guards who were standing behind me to lift me up and they complied, vigorously. Before I could brace myself, I was pulled to my feet. The sheer speed of my movement from the floor to an upright position disoriented me momentarily, while the doctor checked my ears and eyes for signs of damage from the third level wake-up alarm - something I had never experienced before, heard about only through third hand experiences.

"He's fine." The Doctor barked, a bitter haze hung over both syllables like an unrelenting humidity of disdain. I was let go and told to that I was going to be docked four hours. After releasing a tired, dismissive sigh, I was waved on to my appointed task; another day in that godforsaken sewer. Perhaps, Christopher will be working with me again. It would be good to talk with him and feel human after what experiencing the equivalent of being spanked with a rolled up newspaper.

Twelfth

The cranking sound continously pierced my eardrums like razor sharp spearheads attached to pistons. I couldn't shield my ears from the terrible noise and search for the orange circles. My search became more desperate, furiously sliding my hands across the wall seemingly in vein. My cries for help and mercy were unheard; overpowered by the horrid sonic assault on my remaining senses.

Tears poured from me. Shockingly, I felt pairs of hands grabbing me and my anguish turned to fear. I was torn off of the wall and dragged away from the menancing racket in my cube. I still couldn't see, my world was a ghastly white and the ringing in my ears prevented me from hearing shouts as whispers. Hoisted to my feet, I was escorted down the halls and tossed haphazardedly into a pervasive darkness that swallowed me whole.

I felt nothing in thas place, not even the pangs of my ears that I thought would have driven me out of the city limits of sanity. An odd kind of peace in this temple of greed where I've spent these long years, something I hadn't known but in my dreams. My feet don't even touch the ground, nor can my hands feel out anything tangiable. I float in the silent black and wonder if this is what Death is like: a stationary freedom from our burdens, but freedom none the less. A rectangle of white cuts through the nothingness and a figure stands in the middle. My eyes shoot open. I smile wide and reach out for it. God has heard our prayers, my thoughts squeal with excitement, our time in Hell has ended.

Eleventh

One moment, I'm anxiously awaiting my meal and the next I've found that the walls to my prison have melted and washed reality away, leaving but the two of us. That first embrace lasts eternally, twisting our two human forms into a beautiful atom that becomes trillions more in an instant. All matter of phenomenon and life come to fruition and we are the makeup of everything in existence. In the stead of a cold and hostile place, everlasting perfection and beauty now resides.

Something has caused ripples throughout that which we have willed to be. Suddenly, our wondrous design distorts and peels apart. As time passes, untold eons since we rebuilt all that is in our image, the unraveling has picked up tremendous speed. Stars and planets and their populations become undone. She and I attempt to hide, to escape it's wrath, but it deletes every quark. If your eyes could see down to the subatomic level, you would see nothing but us.

This horrible anomaly in our perfect system made a beautiful sound that I thought was so familiar. We could feel it all around us. Suddenly, the most intense pain you can imagine beset us. In the flash of a roaring electric discharge, our embrace was broken; we were being pulled by the sound in complete opposite directions toward the nothingness that now was. The sound became low, singular note. When it ended I could feel her hand in mine no longer.

Tenth

A few hours later, we start patching up a rotted section of the piping; looking like the lead equivalent of Swiss cheese. We gab away like old hens, this young man and I, and he fills me in on everything topside. Unemployment's non-existent since Operation Open-Ends passed. Hell, that was just being debated as they were rounding up the first waves of debtors. It's funny what a no-party system was suppose to do and how it ended up enslaving the entirety of the United States.

Stock markets across the world are flying. Honduras has finally been accepted as the fifty-ninth state. Newspapers are crowing about the new American golden age; the young man lets out a heavy sigh and shakes his head because the awful lie weighs too much. But, that doesn't matter to us or the thousands under the watchful eye of our keepers. What matters is the task at hand and it seems that for every crack we slather the sealant on, we're losing another small patch of skin. The scratches, scrapes, and burns we accumulate here are the smallest price of the greater whole. Our keepers would put a value on our living souls if they could take that from us as well.

We talk less and less as the day progresses. With every sentence I can feel the reality of the situation starting to sink into the young man. By the time the bright, blinking red light signals the end of the day, his mouth might as well have been another crack that he sealed up. We trudge back to the hatch in silence. Our pace had quickened exponentially when the conversation had peaked and as we exited the sewer, slowly pealed off our layers, and stumbled into the area to be purged; we had nothing left. This may have been the hardest day of the young man's life.

We grip the handrails that hold tight to the walls of the hallways and corridors. I lead the way, he drags behind. Every breath he takes his heavy with a slight wheeze. I try to keep a slow pace, but I'm desperate to get off my feet. It's been awhile since I've been so physically exhausted, most of the time I suffer from a perpetual mental fatigue. It's a bittersweet feeling; I'll eat and then fall asleep before the gas puts me down. A whole night to dream means a whole night to dream of her. I'm not too overtaxed to smile and I do so the whole way back to my cube.

Ninth

Yale Law. Harvard Medical. Vice Versa. You hear those words drenched in such disdain it's become something you spit out when your upset. Christopher was a bright young man and his focus was aimed at the study of the codes of our society. Top marks across the board; he tells me before some of the sealant burns away a nickel sized portion of his flesh; sending him into a screaming fit. The first time's always the worst.

I pity the young man. Has the experience, but will leave this place with none of the wisdom to back it up. Probably did some humping in his time at college, smoked a little reefer during a summer break, the occasional Saturday night dinner party like they have at the old alma maters; expensive meals followed by paying a couple bucks to put your face in a kiddy pool of cheap beer for as long as you can remain submerged. Times change, but I hope that cusp of manhood remains the same. It's something to think fondly on while you're digging through feces as we are today.

Volunteered for a short period of the hard time, he says. Five years of busting his ass so, and he assures me that he means no offense, that he's doesn't lose his golden years. I tell him I he did the smart thing. He'll come out of this by the time he's thirty and have sixty years to make up for five. I try not to make wishes or raise my hopes to high, you can't have either in a place like this, but I let a regret slip pass my lips and float away. I wish I had the chances the kids today, although I'm glad they didn't have to go through what I had to. It wasn't that easy in the beginning.

Eighth

The door magnetically sealed behind us, the low hum of the magnetic field informing us that we would be trapped here until they decided to let us out. The kid shouted as loud as he could muster and the echo ran rampant through the pipes. My ear drums began to squeal, I pressed my hands against my ears to block out the initial loud, horrible rumbling. When the echo had found no escape, it shriveled up slowly in some far away corner of this labyrinth and died.

I carefully moved my hands and away from my head and with a confused, yet amused look on my face; studied the features of my charge. That wail was testing the waters, seeing what he was be capable of getting away with as far as sound was concerned. He probably had a decent lie on hand to tell anyone who came to question him about it. He saw my curious smile and rescripicated. We began to talk freely, a breath of fresh air in this rank sewer and our prison in general. Chances to converse with our given language these days were few and far between. For a moment, we're free men.

His name his Christopher and he was Manhattan born and bred. Probably the type whose parents ran themselves ragged to avoid the horrors of debt and kept the silver spoon out of their kids' mouths to make sure they stayed comfortably in the black. They were appreciative of the finer things, but not dependant on them; a good contemporary upbringing. Like all first day conversations, the talk goes immediately south as I discover what gets a kid with his whole life ahead of him in my personal corner of Hell.

Seventh

I tear through the meal, hardly chewing and barely tasting. I feel like I could have choked at the end if I didn't wash it all down with my portion of milk. I take a long, slow breath in. I feel my lungs expand to the point where they can't hold any more oxygen and enjoy a long, controlled exhale; my moment of peace. I collect my tray and scurry across the row so as not to block anyone's view of the grainy black and white film from an long begotten era. I dump the tray with the horrid dessert still sitting in place and make my way to the back door to return to my labors. It'll be short lunches for a month of two, I have some time to make up.

I shuffle down the corridors back to the containment area and stare dreamily at the entrance hatch while I get dressed for the remainder of my day. I've got one hand on the handle when the fat security guard leaning against the opposite wall struggles against gravity and then waddles down the corridor. One set of footsteps went down the corridor, but two sets were returning. I don't enter the sewer until the guard returns, dragging a fresh faced young man with him. I hold back a gasp, he looks like he just started having enough to shave everyday. The young man studies the floor intently, like there are bricks attached to his forehead. First day. Everyone looks the same.

Within a few minutes, we look like we could be running a Father/Son plumbing outfit. His gaze finally lifts up from off the floor and he stares to me with a much understood sadness in his expression. I don't smile, that's not what he needs right now. I lock my eyes with his and nod solemnly. He exhales hard, we put on our rebreathers, and enter the sewer.

Sixth

Now, this dreary space looks more like a huge, condemned one room school house. A hundred adult-sized desks in rows of ten. We'd collect our trays and take the next available seat until the hundred people who made up Meal Period Three were present and accounted for. I hit the ergonomic chair with a disappointing thud, although I feel like I crashed into it like lightning on the side of a mountain. At least the food's alright; all sides of the food ocatogon represented. Half pound block of protein (depending on your gastrointestinal preference), daily vegetable, daily fruit, etc. You try to eat at a good pace because, eventually, you're faced with the dessert.

The Brownie. With a smell that could make you want to just put your face into it to sloppily masticate like a starving animal and the texture and taste of a brick dipped in shit. With a menu that is more than tolerable most of the time, the brownie is the our keepers reminding us that nothing gold can stay. That our next transgression against their unnatural order will lead to more than just a misleading dessert.

She takes her seat on my left. I look over, our eyes meet, and we share a smile. A short conversation takes place in the body language the people here have developed in the enforced absense of our voices. She thinks that the guard for her work area hasn't been taking his vitamins. He had been ogling her again, she says, but the pencilneck wouldn't have the nerve topside and certainly doesn't have it here. My face signals a surpressed laugh and her's follows suit. I let a few HA's slip into my fist and dig into my slab of beef. Swan Lake is playing on the big screen at the front of the room and her face replaces the face of every twenty-foot tall dancer as all nine girls rise together en pointe. I bet she was a dancer in a past life.

Fifth

"Purged" was a term Corinne, a member of my think-tank, had come up for what they do to us. It's not cleansing, like a shower is suppose to be. Rather, a mass evacuation of undesirable bacteria, smells, chemicals, and the like. It was one of those phrases that worked so perfectly that it wormed its way into the lexicon of our keepers.

Oh, that familiar pattern of burn, freeze, burn. I still dread having to do these three or more times a day. Standing nude with my hands in the big orange circles, caked in the burning antibacterial powder and tensing every muscle while awaiting the icy downpour; I wonder if it gets any easier. My memories betray me as the most vivid picture of my daughter flashes before my eyes. Like a lash from a frozen whip, my skin feels like it's been cleaved from my back with every burst of cold water. The physical pain of being purged overwhelmed my emotional suffering, something I always told Dora never to indulge in. As the searing heat jets shoot my internal body temperature back to normal, I try to picture my baby girl and that this sudden rush of warmth is her doing. It works for an instant, but fades as quickly. I put on a fresh basic uniform and head to the mess hall.

The mess hall used to be lively before they made all the changes. The doors would open and the people would be talking, laughing, complaining, roughhousing, necking, and being human. It didn't matter who you'd sit next to because you had everything in common with everyone. Take a heaping spoonful of whatever they were serving that day and ask the person sitting across from you what happened to the; what got them to this horrible state? Talk about your families, how well your sports team was doing before you had to report to serve your time, about that great dinner your husband used to make when you were having a bad day, how good your wife looked in that little blue thing your last night as a free man. On your birthday, you'd get a cupcake with a candle and the whole room would explode with that old tune. To celebrate anything was a big deal; to the point where people were pulling out the birthdays of relatives they only knew by name just so that we could have a cheer.

Fourth

All that talk was useless. Escaping is useless. Our keepers wouldn't chalk that kind of loss and they'd find someone else to finish your time. She's here because her husband escaped, processed in less than a few hours after he hit fresh air. At least, that's what we like to think happened.

I'm snapped to attention by a short, but jarring shock running up my leg. A voice that sounds like a man shouting with his mouth wrapped in tinfoil begins speaking. He's asking about my progress. It takes a minute to get my bearings, one of the filters on my mask must have clogged up and now the dizzying fumes of the sealant must have sent my mind elsewhere. In that sixty or so seconds that I do not respond to the master’s calls, I am given three increasingly painful shocks to get my attention; the disembodied voice getting louder and angrier. I finally respond and explain my situation. For some reason, the microphone embedded in my leg-box works better than the speaker, but I get the picture. Sixty seconds out of contact means sixty minutes they won't acknowledge toward my total. This happens once in awhile and it gets slightly easier to deal with as time passes. What are a few measly hours when I'm going to be here for another fourteen years?

A pinging noise and the dim glow of the flashing pink light by the entrance that signals a meal time is my next distraction from the task. My sigh of relief lifts a ton off my back and a gracefully glide through the sludge. I move toward the entrance with a deep hunger in my gut, which overwhelms the feeling of a withering soul. I pull myself out of the manhole and, after removing my gear and tossing it haphazardly down the sterilization chute, I walk into a nearby room to be purged.

Third

Today, I'm patching holes in the sewer system. I'm given a bucket of some horrible smelling industrial gunk that acts as a sealant, a pair of cover-alls, and a pair of yellow stained rubber gloves to handle the sealant. The acidic content of the sealant has corroded the gloves and the sealant touching the skin feels like a thousand knives stabbing you in rapid fire succession.

I'm alone on this particular mission. I certainly don't prefer it this way, being by myself in this rank lead coffin; up to my ankles in the collected waste of a hundred thousand inmates and few thousand employees. I can normally deal with the smell and the solitude, but the day’s move so much faster when you can look into the eyes of another person and remind yourself that it will be okay and someday this will all be over. The comfort that we were all in this together made us strong. It made me feel human, when our keepers do everything they can to make us feel like livestock. Those fleeting glances are the only good feeling they'll allow us and today they've taken it from me. As I patch up my first dozen cracks, my mind attempts to wander, but finds itself as chained to this dank place as I am. I squat against one of the walls and grab the tracking device that they've bonded to my bone; making its removal impossible.

When we were allowed to socialize, I was a member of a small group of people who would gather as a think tank; to find a way out of our dilemma. We theorized as to how it could be removed without breaking our legs. We weren't even sure how they would even go about doing something like that, so anything we came up with was hear-say. The old timer, the one who finished his sentence last year, was thinking it could just be twisted off. "Might hurt like a dozen Hells, but you'd have it gone" I remember him saying.

Second

Your uniform for the day's tasks arrives through a slot in the wall. Everything our keepers provide us with comes from that slot. They are considerations from our ruling caste arriving with the whispering whirring of machinery. Food, water, and clothing; that which is essential and nothing more. They took away books in the first month of my sentence after "Lord of the Flies" started a riot. Human Resources liquidated their "Approved Reading" department and that was the end of it.

The far wall of the cube, the one facing the walk way, opens. Some rush onto the floor, others drag their feet. Like the cattle we are, we file out and navigate the corridors toward our appointed tasks. The small noises that signal the presence of humanity are all that pervade the circulated air. We used to be allowed to socialize freely, now barely a yawn or annoyed grunt can be heard as the herd is steered toward our labors.

As if to humiliate us further, under the guise of wanting to avoid confusion, we are branded with a geometric shape. Follow the direction the shape is pointing and you'll always reach your destination. You want to move with haste, they're holding every second you're not toiling against you. From the opening of the cube wall to your position as a cog in the great machine, your nose is pressed to the grindstone. Our keepers are owed their dues, like the devil himself, and they will have every cent of the blood money with interest. It's a constitutional right.

First

I woke up with a start about ten minutes to six, roughly five minutes after they stop pumping the chemicals through the ventilation system that conk us all out. Our keepers prefer us all on a rigorous schedule. It's a horrible feeling, that miserable haze, looming over all my senses until I get the chance to fall asleep for real. The worst part is the instant recognition of the sensation, the painful familiarity and realization that I'm still here. At least, it doesn't last long. Now, I have a chance to dream; my only freedom in this box, the happiness for me in this place is to dream and to dream of her.

The first wake-up alarm is a pleasant violin piece played at a reasonable volume. What you're supposed to do is to first get off of your plank. It's called a plank because the only similarity it shares with a mattress is shape. Next, you take the four steps across the cube to two orange circles on the wall and place your hands inside them. This activates a subroutine which retracts the plank into the wall, dumps a cleansing solution on you, and blasts you with a jet of freezing water. Vents open up in the floor to collect the water, followed by a burst of hot air that would scorch the hairs off your nethers if you had any. You don't. Apparently, our keepers are of the belief that hair is a privilege. We don't get any of those. Just a plastic rectangle, three meals, and a fifteen minute break every three hours.

If it were up to our keepers, we'd just have a tube pumping nutrients into our bodies while we widdled away our time. The Government, the useless puppetocracy, told them it was too harsh a punishment for our crimes against them. The smiling face that represents the will of our keepers graciously agreed on his masters' behalf to allow us to "keep our humanity and dignity intact". Rubbish. It was a show of mercy for the public that was already scared to death of how the definition of democracy had changed so dramatically in a lifetime and how the value of human life had been reduced to nothing. My humanity has been stolen, my dignity has been used for a toilet, and my continued existence is an affront to God. Just existing is "too harsh" and I still have quite a ways to go. So does she.