The Year of Storms – Xperience Fiction

The Year of Storms – Xperience Fiction – by Liam Sweeny.

Rust and iron. Piss. Shit. Vomit. The cries of the incarcerated. Clanging metal. Endless disembodied voices bouncing off of hopelessness.

But there was none of that, unless Cellie counted an old television series that was playing on the wall panel. Everything, save that, was a sterile dream tinged with an industrial lemon scent.

The intake officer was dressed in a white jumpsuit, immaculate. Her nametag was stainless steel, emblazoned with one word: Miller. Last name, perhaps. Cellie had heard it before, but she didn’t know where it came from. Scandinavian, maybe. Fuck if she knew or cared, in honesty, because the woman spoke with the careful pronunciation that all Municipal workers had to master before being allowed to talk to the public.

She slid her finger down her pad. Cellie watched as a map illuminated in the glass of her desk’s face.

“Not bad,” Miller said. “Any special meaning to the air refinery? Political, anything like that?”

“Nope,” Cellie said. “Just a nice surface.”

“Convenient, too.” Miller didn’t look up. Cellie waited for her to explain why it was convenient. She didn’t.

“What do you mean, convenient?”

Miller swung her finger across her desk, and even though Cellie’s view was upside down, she could see that Miller had pulled up the selfie from Cellie’s phone.

“It’s not private property, so no civil cost.” Miller tapped the desk again. “It’s on public infrastructure, but it’s on a Grade 3 structure. Not sabotage, hell, they may not even bother to clean it up. And it’s a Priority 3 neighborhood.”

“So that’s good, right?” Cellie said. “Or is it bad?”

Miller pulled a nebulizer out of her pocket. Cellie didn’t know anyone so bad off as to need a nebulizer for Go, and she couldn’t think of anything else they were used for.

“Do you want to play games?” Miller said. “Like I don’t know what you were doing? We got enough real criminals without having to deal with day-trippers clogging up the system. You want to up your ExP rank, you can go base-jumping or play chicken on the highway. Smoke Emeny. Be a prostitute for six months. Stop getting arrested for nuisance crimes.”

“I’m an artist. I swear. An underappreciated artist.”

“Clearly. And if I drive by and see you taking care of that air refinery twenty years from now, I’ll hop out of my hearse and apologize. But if someone walks free because you want to go up a spot on the board and you’re taking up their cell, maybe you can cash in the guilt you’ll feel over whoever they go kill.”

“I’m just an artist.”

“I don’t care if you tell me the truth or not,” Miller said. “You notice how clean it is in here? How sanitary? How quiet?”

Cellie didn’t answer. Her arms were wrapped around her. She didn’t expect to like jail. But this was worse.

“Real jail is terrible,” Miller said. “But you’re not going to real jail. You’re going to a special facility for people just like you.”

“I’m not going to jail?”

“You’re still in detention. Try to walk off and you’ll be locked in a dull room. And trust me, that’s not the kind of ExP you want.

Miller became downright cheery after that. Which was the point. She was babying Cellie, robbing her of the experience of being incarcerated. She even brought out herbal tea, which she explained was a drink popular before the Collapse. It was bitter, but not altogether bad.

Miller walked out to get Cellie’s jail uniform. She was bummed, because being stripped searched and hosed off like a diseased animal was a big part of the experience. If she had known they were going to skip that, she would’ve stuck an entertainment pod up her rear end.

Miller came back with a faded peach jumpsuit, and pointed to a door, a changing room. Cellie went in and discovered that, surprise, surprise, it fit. In fact, the whole process was diabolical in its design to be average and comfortable. This was going to be a waste of a weekend.

Miller called her back to the desk.

“Cellie, you could’ve done a hundred different things to get in here. One broken window would’ve got you a week in the real hotel. So why go through all this trouble?” She tapped the desk, the selfie. “I’m supposed to be a hardass, but this is really good. And don’t tell me it was for your ‘show’. You’ve got two million fans; you don’t need this.”

“Thanks. That the real punishment, huh? Be disappointed in me all weekend?”

“I’m saying you have better ways to up your ExP. Your ranking isn’t a life path, or shouldn’t be, anyways. Some of the biggest assholes in jail are just banging out the dark half of their ranking, and the only thing they can trade with their ExP now came in up someone’s ass. Don’t be that.”

“I know you mean well,” Cellie said, “but ranking is everything. This whole city is run by Movers, and you only get there through being top ranked in your feed for six months.”

Miller glanced side to side. “I don’t see too many Movers that have come through these doors,” she said. “If it means that much to you, maybe you should give your strategy a rethink.”

“Guess you’re right.” The inside door opened without a sound, and a guard dressed just like Miller stood there waiting. Cellie got up.

“Thanks,” she said.

The man took her through silent hallways to her cell, which was far more spacious that she would have assumed. It had a bunk bed made of mid-grade kinematic foam and a blanket that wasn’t too soft or too rough. The cell reminded her of a story she found in her Pre-Collapse Mythology course at Anchor-Alpha. It was about a young woman that trespassed on the home of three bears, and, having tried food that was two hot and too cold, and beds that were too hard or too soft, she finally found food and a bed that were just right.

But the bears came back. She couldn’t remember if they let her go or not. In fact, she didn’t get the point of the myth. But myths ran the world back during that time.

She looked out a window that would’ve offered very little resistance to freedom. Maybe all those old myths still ran the world, but in secret.

 

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