Choke Collar: Positron, Episode Two Read online

  A couple of nights ago she tried something new. Of course, since she seems to have the codes for everything in Consilience, she can open the pink locker in the cellar where Charmaine stores her clothes while she’s in Positron. Jocelyn went into that locker and switched the contents with those of her own purple locker. Then she rummaged around in Charmaine’s stuff and found a nightgown she could fit into. It had daisies on it, and bows—very far from Jocelyn’s functional style, but maybe that was the point.

  Mercifully, Jocelyn is in the habit of sleeping in the guest room, where she also keeps her “work,” whatever it is; but last night, after lighting a scented candle, she’d woken him in the middle of the night. “Surprise,” she’d whispered. Her mouth was dark with lipstick, and as she pressed it down on his he’d recognized the cherry bubblegum scent. It was the scent of the lipstick kiss on the note he’d found by accident under the refrigerator so many months ago: Darling Max, I can hardly wait till next time. I’m starved for you! I need you so much. XXOO and you know what more—Jasmine.

  Like a moron, he’d fallen for an illusion: this sultry and purple-mouthed Jasmine, the complete opposite of naive Charmaine. After he’d read the note, that was all he wanted: Jasmine, Charmaine’s Alternate, who slept in his bed when he wasn’t there, who showered in his shower, who rubbed her body with his towels, and who was having torrid sex with his own Alternate, Max. He’d fantasized about her endlessly; he’d stalked her, bent on seduction; he’d planted an illegal tracker in the pink-and-purple scooter that he’d assumed she shared with Charmaine. If only he could have gotten his hands on her, she’d have melted in his arms like hot wax. Finally he’d lurked in the garage once Charmaine had left on switchover day, waiting to pounce on Jasmine as she approached their shared house. One touch, then ecstasy. That’s what he’d thought.

  What a mirage! Then, what a disappointment. Jasmine is Charmaine, he knows that now; just as Max is Phil. And he is an idiot. And now Jocelyn wants to be who? Dragged out of sleep, he was disoriented; for a moment he didn’t know where he was, or who was now pressing herself against him. “Just imagine I’m Jasmine,” she murmured. “Just let yourself go.” But how could he, with the texture of Charmaine’s familiar nightgown under his fingers? The daisies. The bows. It was such a disconnect.

  But he did let himself go. Or almost. Or as much as it took.

  How much longer can he go on starring in this bedroom farce without losing control? He can keep himself fairly steady during the day, when he’s working at the scooter depot. Solving mechanical problems levels him out. But as the workday nears its end, he feels the dread building. Finally time runs out and he has to get onto his own scooter—or rather the scooter that’s his to use at Consilience—and motor back to the house. His goal is to get a few beers into himself, then pretend to act busy and competent by concentrating on yard work before Jocelyn turns up.

  It’s risky to combine beer fog with power tools, but it’s a risk he’s willing to take. Unless he numbs himself, he might find himself doing something really stupid. Jocelyn is high up on the Consilience/Positron power ladder; she must have every one of her snatch hairs monitored, with a SWAT team ready to spring into lethal action at any threat. Stan would surely trigger some alarm while making even the most innocuous move against her, such as roping her up and stowing her in Charmaine’s pink locker—no, not the pink one, he doesn’t know the code; in his own red locker—while he makes his getaway. But get away to where? There’s no route out of Consilience, not for those who’ve made the dick-brained mistake of believing the Consilience PR and signing themselves in. Signing themselves over. DO TIME NOW, BUY TIME FOR OUR FUTURE.

  He finishes the hedge, switches the trimmer to Off, clambers down from the stepladder. In his ears, Patti Page is exuding “With My Eyes Wide Open I’m Dreaming.” The Singing Rage, that’s what they called her then. “Detour” is maybe his favorite of Patti’s. It has the word bitter in it.

  Here comes Jocelyn now, in her darkened, softly purring spook vehicle. Now it’s drawing up to the house. She has a driver, she always has a driver, she must have one, because she exits from the backseat. Unless there’s something about those cars that he doesn’t yet know and they’re driven by robots or a set of handheld controls. Over at Positron they’re said to be working on a bunch of new tech industries that are supposed to help this place pay its way. Some guys in the scooter depot have heard they’re developing a line of sexbots, for export. So why not a bot driving the car? He has a wild impulse to sprint over there with the hedge trimmer, turn it on, threaten to shred both Jocelyn and her robot of a driver unless they take him to the main Consilience gateway—right now. What if she refuses? Then he’ll be sitting on the street in a stalled car full of electronics and body parts.

  But if it works, he’ll make her drive him right through the gateway, into the crumbling, semi-deserted wasteland outside the walls. He’ll jump out of the car then, make a break for it. He won’t have much of a life, picking through garbage dumps and fighting off scavengers, but at least he’d be in charge of himself again.

  Though maybe better not to try. She can probably activate the alarm system by flexing her toes or something. Not to mention her fast moves. Those Security types must take training. Learn to crush windpipes with the sides of their hands.

  Now she’s getting out. Shoes, ankles, gray nylon. Her legs are good. A little muscular, perhaps, but good. Any guy seeing those legs would have to be turned on. Wouldn’t they? They would.

  Hang on to that, Stan, he tells himself. Stay in the moment. Things could get much worse.

  * * *

  On switchover day, January 1, Charmaine is told to stay behind at the prison. She has a sinking feeling right away. Do they know about Max? If so, she’s in trouble, because how many times were they told it was absolutely not allowed to fraternize with the Alternates that shared your house? You weren’t even supposed to know what they looked like. Which was one of the things that made seeing Max so thrilling for her. So forbidden, so over the line.

  Seeing Max. What an old-fashioned way of putting it! But then she’s an old-fashioned girl—that’s what her husband, Stan, thinks. But her sightings of Max have mostly been close-ups, in half-light. An ear, a hand, a thigh. Oh please, let them not know, she prays silently, crossing her fingers. They never spelled out what would happen if you disobeyed. But Max had reassured her. He’d said it was nothing much: they just gave you a little hand slap and maybe changed your Alternate, and anyway she and Max were being so careful. None of those old houses had spyware in it, he had that on the very best authority. But what if Max was wrong?

  She takes a breath: now she must be sincere. She smiles, showing her small, candid doll teeth. What’s the problem, what has she done? she asks, her voice higher and more girly than normal. Is it something about her Positron job, her position as Chief Medications Administrator? If so, she’ll go over things, she’ll learn how to improve, because she’s always wanted to do the very, very best job possible and be all that she can be.

  She hopes it’s only the job that’s the issue. Maybe they’ve been monitoring her there in the Medications Administration wing, Procedures Department, in ways she hasn’t understood. Maybe they’ve noted that she ignores the surgical-mask protocol, maybe they’ve decided she’s being too nice to the subjects during the procedures. The head strokings, the forehead kisses, those marks of kindliness and personal attention just before she slides in the hypodermic needle: they aren’t forbidden, but they certainly aren’t mandated. They’re flourishes, grace notes—special little touches she’s added because it makes the whole thing a more quality experience all round, not only for the subject of the procedure but for her as well. She does feel strongly that you should keep the human touch: she’s always been prepared to say as much in front of a tribunal if it came to that. Though she’s hoped it wouldn’t. But maybe now is the time it will.

  Oh no, I’m sure it’s nothing, they say. Just an administrative form
ality. Someone must have keyed in the wrong piece of code, you know how such things happen, it can take such a long time to unsnarl them. Even with modern technology there’s always human error, and Charmaine will just have to be patient until they can trace what they can only assume is a bug in the works.

  She nods and smiles. But they’re looking at her strangely (two of them, now there are three, behind the checkout desk, one of them texting on a cell), and there’s something odd in their voices: they aren’t telling the truth. She doesn’t think she’s imagining that; she isn’t paranoid.

  “If you’ll wait in the Chat Room,” one of them says, indicating a door to the side of the counter. “Away from the checkout process. Thank you. There’s a chair, you can sit down. The Human Resources Officer will be with you shortly.”

  She turns away from the departing group of her fellow prisoners, who’ve shed their orange prison boiler suits and are already in their street clothing or their guard uniforms. As she is: she’s wearing a lacy white bra underneath her new cherry-colored sweater. She chose these items a month ago to be special for Max. “What’s wrong?” one of the other women calls over to her.

  “Nothing, really. Some data entry thing. I’ll be out later today,” she says, as gaily as she can. But she doubts it. She can feel the sweat soaking into her sweater, underneath her arms. That bra will have to be washed, pronto. Most likely the cherry color is leaking into it, and it’s so hard to get dye stains like that out of whites.

  She sits on the wooden chair in the Chat Room, trying not to count the minutes, resisting the urge to go back out to the front desk and make a scene, which will not—definitely not—be any use. And even if she does get out later that day, what about Max? At this very moment he must be scootering toward the empty house where they’re supposed to meet—he told her the address last time and she memorized it, repeating it to herself like a charm as she lay in her narrow bed in her Positron cell, in her poly-cotton standard-issue nightgown. Max likes her to describe that nightgown. He likes her to tell him what torment it is for her to lie there alone, wearing that scratchy nightgown, tossing and turning and unable to sleep, thinking about him, living every word and touch over and over, tracing with her own hands the pathways across and into her flesh that his hands have taken. And then what, and then what? he’ll whisper as they lie together on the dirty floorboards. Tell me. Show me.

  What he likes even better—because she can hardly bring herself to do it, he has to force it out of her word by word—what he likes even better is to have her describe what she’s feeling when it’s Stan who’s making love to her, not Max. Then what does he do? Tell me, show me. And then what do you feel?

  I’m pretending it’s you, she’ll say. I have to, I have to do that. I’d go crazy otherwise, I couldn’t stand it. Which isn’t true really, but it’s what Max likes to hear.

  Last time he went further. What if it were both of us at once? he said. Front and back. Tell me …

  Oh no, I couldn’t! Not both at once! That’s …

  I think you could. I think you want to. Look, you’re blushing. You’re a dirty little slut, aren’t you? You’d do the midget football team if there was room for them. You want to. Both of us at once. Say it.

  At those moments she’d say anything. What he doesn’t know is that in a way it’s always both at once: whichever one she’s with, the other one is there with her as well, invisible, partaking, though at an unconscious level. Unconscious to him but conscious to her, because she holds them both in her consciousness, so carefully, like fragile meringues, or uncooked eggs, or baby birds. But she doesn’t think that’s dirty, cherishing both at once: each of them has a different essence, and she just happens to be good at treasuring the unique essence of a person. It’s a gift not everyone has.

  And now, today, she’ll miss the meet-up with Max, and she has no way of warning him that she can’t be there. What will he think? He’ll arrive at the house early because, like her, he can hardly restrain himself. He lives for these encounters, he longs to crush her in his arms and ruin her clothing, ripping open zippers and buttons and even a seam or two, in the haste of his ardent, pulsating, irresistible desire. He’ll wait and wait in the empty house, impatiently, pacing the stained, mud-crusted floor, looking out through the flyspecked windows. But she won’t appear. Will he assume she’s failed him? Dumped him? Blown him off? Abandoned him in a fit of cowardice, or of loyalty toward Stan?

  Then there’s Stan himself. After the month he’s just spent as a prisoner in Positron, he’ll have turned in his orange prison boiler suit at the desk and put on his street outfit, his jeans and fleece jacket. He’ll have left the men’s wing in the Positron complex; he’ll have scootered back through the streets of Consilience, which will be thronged with people in a festive mood, some streaming into the jail to take their turn as prisoners, others streaming out of it, back to their civilian lives. Stan too will be waiting for her, not in an abandoned building dank with the aroma of long-ago drug parties and biker sex but in their own house, the house she thinks of as theirs. Or half theirs, anyway. Stan will be inside that house, in their familiar domestic nest, impatient but not in a sexual way, expecting her to turn up at any minute and put on her apron and cook dinner while he fools around with his tools in the garage. He may even be intending to tell her he’s missed her—he sometimes does that—and give her a casual hug.

  She relishes the casualness of those hugs: casual means he has no idea what she’s just been doing. He doesn’t realize she’s returning from a stolen hour with his Alternate, Max. She loves that expression—stolen hour. It’s so—what? 1950s? Like in the romantic movies they sometimes show on Consilience TV, where it comes out all right in the end. Though stolen hour doesn’t make sense, when you think about it. It’s like stolen kisses—the stolen hour is about time, and the stolen kisses are about place—whose lips go where. But how can they be stolen? Who does the thieving? Is Stan the owner of that hour, and of those kisses too? Surely not. And even if he is, if he doesn’t know about the missing time and the missing kisses, how is she hurting him? There have been art thieves who’ve made exact copies of expensive paintings and substituted them for the real ones, and the owners have gone for months and even years without noticing. It’s like that.

  But Stan will notice when she doesn’t turn up. He’ll be irritated, then dismayed. He’ll ask the Consilience officials to do a street search, check up on scooter accidents. Then he’ll contact Positron. Most likely he’ll be told that Charmaine is still inside, in the women’s wing. Though he won’t be told why. Charmaine sits and sits on the hard little chair in the Chat Room, trying to keep her mind still, twisting her fingers. No wonder people used to go nuts in solitary confinement, she thinks. No one to talk to, nothing to do. But they don’t have solitary at Positron anymore, do they? She and Stan were shown the cells, though, during the orientation tour, when they were making the big decision to join the Consilience plan. It seemed like the answer to their problems—the on-and-off jobs, the evictions, the vandalism and gangs that were roaming around more and more, the piled-up debt. Consilience just wrote your debts off if you signed, and it was such a light feeling when they did that, such a relief. At first it felt so safe, to be inside.

  The former solitary cells had been refitted with desks and computers—those were for the IT engineers and also for the robotics industry they were going to build. Very exciting possibilities there, said the guide. Now, let’s go and see the communal dining room, and then the livestock and horticulture—all our chickens are raised right here, and we plan to be self-sufficient in vegetables very soon—and after that we can look in at the Handcrafts Studio, where you’ll be issued your knitting supplies.

  Knitting. If she has to stay in Positron another whole month, she’s going to get really fed up with that knitting. It was fun at first, sort of old-timey and chatty, but now they have quotas. They nag. They make you feel like a slacker if you don’t work fast enough.

  Oh, Ma
x. Where are you? I’m scared! But even if Max could hear her, would he come? Stan would. He appreciates it when she’s scared. Spiders, for instance: she doesn’t like those. Stan is very efficient with spiders.

  Finally a woman with a clip tablet enters, in a guard uniform but with an identity badge pinned to her breast pocket: AURORA, HUMAN RESOURCES. Charmaine’s heart sinks. Human Resources. The worst.

  Aurora of Human Resources smiles mirthlessly, her eyes like sleet. She has a message to deliver, and she delivers it smoothly: Charmaine must stay in Positron for another month; and, in addition to that, she’s been relieved of her duties with Medications Administration.

  “But why?” says Charmaine, her voice faltering. “If there’s been any complaint filed …” Which is a dumb thing to say, because the subjects of her medication administrations all flatline five minutes after the procedure—or that’s what people usually do when their hearts have stopped beating—so who is there still walking around on the planet who could file a complaint? Maybe some of them have returned from the afterlife and criticized the quality of her services, she jokes to herself. Suppose they did, they’d have been lying, she adds indignantly. She’s justly proud of her talent, she does have a gift, you can see it in their eyes. She executes well, she gives good death: those entrusted to her care go out in a state of bliss and with feelings of gratitude toward her, if body language is any indication. And it is: under the tutelage of Max, his almost choreographic movements, his carefully calibrated technique, she has totally honed her skills in body language.

  “Oh no, no complaints,” says Aurora of Human Resources, a sliver too carelessly. Her face barely moves: she’s had work done and they went too far. She has pop eyes, and the skin of her face is wrenched back as if a giant fist were squeezing all the hair on the back of her head. She most likely went to a practice session at the cosmetic school in the Positron retraining program. Retraining is supposed to retrofit you to fill the needs of the Consilience community. “Be the Best You in the You-Niverse,” “New Skills for a New You in a New World,” “Surf the Wave, Top the Charts, Wave at the Serfs!”—those are some of the slogans. They do a good wall display: symmetrical faces and bodies, whitened teeth, beaming smiles that suggest pill-induced happiness. Looking at all that airbrushing, you can almost believe in the whole Consilience package. As Charmaine herself used to. Though right now, today, she’s having a doubt or two.