The third and final installment of The Seventh Day. Readers, please don’t let this world come to pass!
* * * * * *
Marge didn’t speak Thursday morning, and Joe had never been one for starting conversations, especially one-sided ones. The soysynth cooled in their mugs, untouched. On the eighth chime, Laurel materialized.
“Citizens, I know you are disheartened by losing your work. The Minister of Psychology made it clear to myself and the Cabinet that, even though our new system is better for the country, many of you value yourselves primarily by what you do. Now, I’d welcome a vacation, myself.” Pantomime of golf swing, invisible laughter. “But all clowning aside, after careful consideration we’ll be introducing an anti-depressant into the soysynth supply. The experts agree this will help you, all of you, in this transition.”
Marge picked up both mugs and poured the contents down the sink. She didn’t return to the breakfast nook, just stood there looking down the drain.
“The mass-introduction of anti-depressants will require monitoring, which leads me to Phase Five of New Genesis. At one second past midnight tonight, Eastern Standard Time, our clean and efficient super airtrams will transport each and every one of you to Central Housing. Don’t pack a thing, everything will be provided for your comfort . . .”
“For the love of God.” Joe slapped his hands on the tabletop, rose, and thrust his face toward the holo. “You can’t make us leave our home! I broke my back paying for this place . . .” He felt Marge’s hand on his shoulder.
“What’s going to happen to us, Joe? They’re treating us like cattle!”
Joe felt cold in the pit of his stomach. He’d been amazed when the majority of Americans voted to abolish the judicial branch in 2032, and appalled when the same thing happened to the legislative branch in the last election. Fifty-one percent of Americans had grown so gullible they’d pulled the trigger on themselves, but who could have imagined . . .
That evening they sat on their porch, rocking in the cool April air. Joe tried to memorize the sway of his old chair, the one that went back as far as Great-Grandpa Miller. Marge distractedly knit on a sweater she’d started for Alice and Joe Junior’s little boy. The porch light was good enough so Joe could see she’d dropped a stitch. Or two. Finally she gave up, tossed the project into the basket alongside her and said, “I still don’t know how we’re going to find them. Our own kids, Joe!”
“These Theocrats are organized,” Joe said. He reached over to pat her hand. “I’ll bet they have some sort of directory.”
They rocked, not speaking, until midnight began to strike.
An airtram appeared at the intersection of Acorn Street and Prosperity Boulevard. It stopped first for Hal and Angie Bascomb. They advanced down the rose-bordered walkway hand in hand, ignoring the bot escort waiting for them at the sidewalk. The bot followed close behind them. Then the Castles with their youngsters, and the Royces, and house by house until the airtram was one stop away from Joe and Marge Miller.
Phyllis next door screamed and kicked when the bots loaded her into the airtram, her grandmother’s prize teapot clutched to her chest until a mechanical hand gently pried it away and set it on the grass. “You’re making a mistake!” She struggled fruitlessly to twist free of the metal arm wrapped around her waist. “I’m precinct committee person for the Theocratic Party!”
“All the same. You go.” Joe heard a faint hydraulic sound emanating from the robot. Phyllis collapsed into the machine’s arms and was lifted aboard the airtram.
A twin of Phyllis’ escort whirred up Marge and Joe’s walkway. “Miller, Joseph R. and Marjorie J., 821 Acorn Street,” droned the bot. It made an angular gesture with one arm, beckoning them toward the airtram, then wheeled back far enough to let them pass. Joe ran his hands along the arms of the rocker, storing one last memory. He stood and took Marge’s hands, steadying her as she rose. A tear streaked down her cheek.
“I don’t want to leave, Joe. I don’t want to leave our home.”
He squeezed her hands and tried to smile. “It’ll be okay. We’ll keep it all, every bit of it, in here,” he said, pressing one of her hands to his heart.
Her arm around his waist and his around her shoulders, they walked to the airtram. They climbed two metal stairs, walked past the guard bot posted near the door, and claimed the first pair of empty seats halfway down the aisle. Automatic safety belts slithered across their torsos. Joe glanced across the aisle at Phyllis, propped up against a window, unconscious. The driverless tram continued collecting passengers to the end of Acorn Street, turned around in a vacant lot where Joe Junior and the other neighborhood kids used to play softball, and floated back to Prosperity Avenue, then to the Interstate.
The vehicle sped at, Joe figured, twice the posted two hundred miles per hour limit, but what did that matter without the traffic of aerocars? No way to measure time since his watch had been absorbed by the nanobots on Tuesday. He could see the moon out the window, a full one, and estimated two-and-half, maybe three hours had passed by the time the tram pulled off the Interstate. It parked amongst more airtrams than Joe could count in front of a vast rectangular building with no doors or windows. The structure was maybe twelve stories high but the lack of exterior features made it hard to figure. Certainly it was bigger than any hospital or factory or prison Joe had ever seen. Groups upon groups of people were being shepherded by security bots toward the edifice.
“Looks like a goddamn slaughterhouse!” Hal Bascomb said.
“All Citizens please to stay calm.” The nearest security bot whirred down the aisle toward Hal and Angie, syringe rising from the end of its metal arm. “Bascomb, Harold Q., not to blaspheme. Please to stay calm.”
“Goddamn torturer!” Hal said, struggling with the arm that was many times his strength while Angie shrieked. The injection was effective immediately. Hal sagged like deadweight onto Angie. She shook and sobbed a few seconds before she, too, was injected. Three pairs of bots, each pair with a floating stretcher, emerged from the seamless building from an opening that simply appeared – – no doors, just blank space where a wall had been. The bots boarded the tram and removed Phyllis and the Bascombs, laid them on the stretchers and returned from whence they came. The wall reappeared, filling the blank space behind them.
The remaining passengers were herded by the security bots to a second opening, about the size of a single garage door, also created by a dematerializing wall. Parents carried small children, older children huddled close to their families, couples held hands or wrapped their arms around each other, a slow, silent procession from outer to inner world. Joe turned to watch the portal transform to a wall. He gazed at the ceiling, no more than eight feet high. A narrow corridor ran into infinity both left and right, with numbered doors set every ten feet or so in the walls that bound it.
“Welcome to New Acorn Street,” a disembodied voice said over an unseen public announcement system. “Please advance to the door bearing your former street number.” The message repeated several times, neutral, calm, a contrast to the muttering, uncertain crowd. “This is the five hundred block,” Marge said, tugging Joe’s hand, pulling him left. The knot of people began to dissipate, some to the left, some to the right. Joe stilled the impulse to turn around when he heard doors slide open behind him, heard soft exclamations and warnings, the quick shuffling of feet out of the corridor, the hiss of doors sealing shut.
“Here,” said Marge, stopping in front of door 821. She looked at Joe with an expression he hadn’t seen in years, since the day her father had announced he was terminally ill – – stunned, questioning, but understanding no other choice was offered.
Door 821 slid open, revealing a room about ten feet wide and twice as deep. An opaque wall divided a small bathroom, complete with shower, from the rest of the unit. Furniture was sparse and built-in, a double bed and small dresser at the far end, a “living” space including table, two padded chairs, and the inevitable soysynth fabricator in the middle. The chairs faced a large wall-mounted broadcast screen. All furniture and fixtures were dull beige, like a low-end motel.
Marge entered first. Joe followed, gritting his teeth as the door hissed shut behind him. Would they be free to come and go? Was there any place to go? Marge pulled open one of the dresser drawers. “Jumpsuits – – mine,” she said over her shoulder, followed by, “jumpsuits, yours,” when she peeked in the other drawer. She collapsed onto the bed. “I’m beat, Joe. What time do you suppose it is?”
“Gotta be four in the morning, at least.” A wave of exhaustion smacked him. “Nothing to do, nothing we can do,” he said, as he lay alongside her. Smaller bed than he was used to, but not bad, not too soft not too hard . . .
***
Joe, exhausted and mesmerized by the second-by-second update of the digital clock on the bottom of the video screen, missed a few of President Laurel’s opening platitudes at 8 AM.
“ . . . and hope that you are enjoying your new living quarters. We at Theocratic Republic HQ put in a lot of overtime designing the best housing that economics would allow, to see you through the next five years.”
“Five years?” Joe looked away from President Laurel’s refrigerator-sized face and stared at Marge, who stared back at him, her jaw slack.
“Now I will announce the final phase, Phase Six of the New Genesis economic plan. Effective one second past midnight Eastern Standard Time, April twentieth, the Year of Our Lord twenty forty-one, the Theocratic Republic of the United States of America will become the only peopled nation on Earth.”
Joe dropped his mug of soysynth and leaned forward. “What in the – -”
“Citizens, there will be no more war, just as you requested in the 2040 survey!” Invisible applause while the image of Laurel beamed, then masked itself in humility. “We will deliver on this mandate with full economic accountability, just as you insisted we should. The most efficient and economical way we, your leaders in the Theocratic Republic, can guarantee no more war is to remove all possible enemies. At one second past midnight, we’ll release an agent into Earth’s atmosphere that will create a Super-Plague.”
“He’s insane! Joe,” Marge grabbed his arm, “we’ve got to get out of here! We’ve got to warn the rest of the world!” She dashed to the door, pounded on its sound-deadened surface, burst into a sob. Joe went to her, wrapped his arms around her while she shook. “It’s too late, Marge,” he whispered as he stroked her hair. “It’s already too late.”
“. . . will run its full course and die out in an estimated three-point-seven years, but we’re rounding up to five, to be on the safe side.” Invisible chuckles. “But on a serious note, Mrs. Laurel, the Cabinet and I would like to thank you, the citizens, for your support, and to express how excited we are about meeting you on the outside, five years from now, when the only nation on earth will return to the American way of life that we love and value above everything and everyone else. Thank you for your confidence in the right and righteousness of the Theocratic Republic! And best wishes for a well-deserved Seventh Day – – five years of rest!”
-END-
