The professor decides he must play the part of the Secman, Samson Candell, to survive until the Wish Machine ends the episode.
“Sergeant Candel, here,” I said with more certainty in my voice than I felt.
A harsh unemotional voice spoke back.
“Sergeant Candel, I have a report that you did not say your prayers this morning.”
That took me a few seconds to make sense. What the hell was the speaker saying to me? Prayers? While I tried to find meaning in his charge the whiny voice continued nonsense.
“Sergeant Candel, Number 483911, I am required to direct you to ask forgiveness of the Lord and of our Leader Smithson for the omission. According to regulation 478B of the Civil Code you are assessed three demerits on your record. In the future do not neglect your prayers.”
Someone had been eavesdropping on me. Then I looked at the wall television; it was on. It was always on in this world. Turning it off was a class three felony. I remembered a book I had read once, “1984,” by George Orwell. Hello, Mr. Orwell. I held the receiver to my ear, stupefied.
The caller gave me the rest of the message. It was giving me an order of some kind.
“Sergeant Candel, there’s a disturbance in quadrant 17 NW, Sector 16. It is an F.I.R. Take care of it.”
“F.I.R.?” In the next instant I knew what the acronym meant; it was a Food Insurrection Riot. Rioting over food was a common occurrence in this world. With matter transporters why was food so scarce that it was rationed?
As quickly as I had asked the question an entire sequence of facts and events unfolded in my mind; Candel, a member of C.L.E.P., was one of the favored few. The split between the rich and the poor was enormous. An American middle class no longer existed. The United States was a welfare state. All necessities were doled out as the rulers decreed. The man, Smithson, to whom the police dispatcher had referred to as the “Leader,” was a religious fanatic. A dictator had usurped the powers of the President.
It was hard to believe. Yet I knew it was true. America was in the grip of a never ending war with the terrorists. The Islamic world had launched a full-scale, no-holds-barred religious Jihad against America. It had been going on without any clear victory for 50 years or more. Americans in their fear and frantic desire for security had scrapped the Constitution. Any breath of criticism of the government or the war was unpatriotic and punishable under the 28th Amendment to the revised Constitution.
As a lawman I knew that was a result of that added amendment to our once noble document. My doppelganger, Secman Sam Candel, had arrested many persons that voiced criticism of Smithson and the religious theocracy. Candel and other men in the State Security Forces had sent them to one of the many local “Interrogation and Rehabilitation” centers.
I shivered. The very term, Interrogation and Rehabilitation Center, conjured up a place of misery and death. It was a phrase and a place never mentioned aloud … except out of necessity. I knew now what most Americans of Candel’s world only dared think about in their most terrible nightmares. The work of the interrogators was one of torture and execution for offenses, which in my world would be hardly misdemeanors or no crime at all. The least of the interrogation methods was the dreaded water boarding.
Water boarding was a refined method of drowning the suspect with excruciating slowness over a period of hours. He (or she) was securely strapped to a board and a cloth tied over their face. Water dripped continuously on their mouth and nose. Each tortured breath caused an unhurried and leisurely strangulation. The Jihad had won.
Next episode: Sam discovers this world is worse than the cruelest of Sufi Moslem Jihad’s, the soviet Gulags, or the Inquisition of the fifteenth century. He was soon to find out how bad it was.
Gene Paleno is an author and illustrator living in Witter Springs.
