Prisoners -- Fiction; Prisons -- Fiction; Science fiction; Short stories
"Code One," said the voice, relapsing into a sing-song drone, "Section
A, 1, (a): Internal, closed circuit broadcast of instruction and
entertainment. Broadcast is continuous, daily from 0500 through 2300.
Music and entertainment material, 1800 through 2300. Custodial wards
are urged to listen to instructional material provided by the State
for their benefit. Failure to listen to a minimum of seventy-two hours
of said material weekly shall result in penalty, four credits for each
hour of short-fall. Code One, section A, 1, (b): Care of home-room
facilities...."
The voice droned on. The hell with that noise. The man got up and
pushed irritably at the button under the speaker. It faded out in a
faint, protesting whine. A lawyer. The damned voice had said a lawyer
would come on Sunday afternoon. And this was Sunday. This afternoon
then. He should be out by dinner time. He ... he was thirsty again. He
got his cup from the foot of the bunk and drained the cool water with
luxurious satisfaction. Plenty more where that ... never mind that. He
closed a door of his mind with determination. Then he used the toilet
hurriedly and flushed it three times. The lawyer, his lawyer would
come. He lay back down on the bunk. Nothing to do but wait.
* * * * *
"Say! Say there, boy. Up, up! Nothing to do but sleep? Eh? Up, up. My
time is valuable." The voice was harsh, rasping, but with an unsubtle
touch of educated superiority in it.
The man in the cell sat up at the second "say," and was at the front
of the cell clinging to the bars before the voice paused.
"What?" he asked, "What, what, what?"
What? It was still daylight. Still jail, too, no doubt about that. This
must be the lawyer then. He blinked and stared through the bars; it
was hard for a moment to focus in the grey light. The figure outside
the cell looked something like ... what? A wheel chair? A man in a
wheel chair? A ... now what in hell kind of a so-called lawyer was
this? There was no man in the more or less wheel chair out there; only
hardware, piled and assembled in a very roughly human shape. At the top
were two lenses, eye-like except for being in a vertical line, mounted
in a rounded, metallic container with a speaker and, presumably, sound
receivers. Under that was a big, square, torso-sized, faintly humming
black box. This rested on a--uh--conveyance, not unlike a wheel chair.
Under the box was an electric motor and a reel of black wire. Attached
to one side of the main box section was a single metal arm, a sort of
skeletal framework of steel rods, jointed and with an arrangement of
tiny wheels, pulleys and belts.
"Now what, for God's sake...?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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