BUDDHA'S REVENGE
- by Jon Rollins
I step off the bus with everything I own. It's not much. They put me in some ratty jeans, floppy sneakers, and entirely too formal pin-striped, button-down shirt with a suspicious brown stain over the left breast. Nice. My best guess is, these were randomly pulled from lockup inventory--the jeans, sneakers, and shirt off three other schmucks like myself only different. At least our fashion sense is different.
At least I think so.
There's also a UZENET ID chip somewhere inside my head. The whole world is chipped these days. It ties us to the government grid--to our bank accounts and our jobs and identifying us anywhere and anytime. You can't live without the UZENET chip, and everyone gets one. Only ex-cons have them embedded in our skulls, I guess because it's too tempting to saw off a limb or start digging into your guts late one night with a steak knife and nothing better to do. I guess some schmucks like me would do just about anything--short of splitting our own skulls--to erase an identity.
But this time, I think maybe someone has already done that for me. This time feels different, though I'm not sure how. Just ... different.
Anyone with a handheld scanner--which is everyone these days--can read my chip and learn I have exactly five hundred credits to my name, deposited today as part of my release processing. I think there's still cash floating around out there somewhere, but I haven't seen it in a long, long while. They'll want to know exactly where and how I spend it, "they" being whoever runs this show from behind the nameless, faceless safety of our giant government curtain.
They. Them. Whoever.
No cash for the damned. I think that would have bothered me once. But today feels different. Today feels funny.
I think maybe they've changed my mind.
They can do that, you know. It's supposed to be illegal, or so I've heard. Then again, I've seen so much twisted up shit that I'm honestly a bit fuzzy about what's legal or not. But damned if I could tell you specifically what it is I've seen. It's kind of like a ship lost at sea, how the memory is floating around in there somewhere, fragmented, disconnected from the mainland. It feels like I should be able to remember what I've seen, but there's a lot of empty, open water where memories should be. That's the way it feels.
Yeah, I'm sure they've changed my mind.
The bus depot reeks. Too many stinking vagabonds and druggies and mindless lunatics glare and mutter curses as I make way to the bathroom. Even these scum recognize a Type 3 felon. They always use the same REPRINT image for Type 3 schmucks like me. I think they do it to hobble us, physically and psychologically. Plus, it helps the general population steer clear of us undesirables. Funny, the vagabonds and druggies and lunatics steering clear of me. But all the glaring doesn't bother me, not after the hell I've been through.
They REPRINTED me into a dung beetle. I do remember that.
There are no paper towels and the water only drips from the faucet, so it takes me a while to rub a clean spot in the mirror. I know the face reflected back is a Type 3 felon, but it takes a few minutes of slack-jawed staring to finally accept that the face belongs to me. I only served one year this time, but my face is old. Nobody looks this old anymore. I look ancient. They did this to me on purpose.
I wonder what rehabilitation means to them. I wonder what justice means.
Now there's a word that gets the bells ringing. Justice. Oh yeah, those seas are stormy, but I can just make out one tiny troller way out there in the ringing gales of my turbulent mind. There's a memory coming slowly into port. And it's fueled by justice.
They've changed my mind, but maybe I can change it back again.
My case has been assigned to Getty Grant. It's hard to say why, but I shudder every time I hear his name. There's a shudder when I read it too, off the card they handed me back at the pen. Getty Grant is my parole officer, my PO, and I have twenty-four hours to report in. Otherwise, the UZENET chip's GPS signal is traced and back I go into a cell, or in my case maybe it's a jar.
They REPRINTED me into a goddamned dung beetle. A dung beetle!
I'm not going back again. But Getty Grant's name makes me shudder. I think he was my PO before. I think maybe he's a sonofabitch.
There's one working pay phone nested among all the stinking and scowling and ironically judgmental bus depot scum. I ignore them while the phone handset detects my ID chip and auto-deducts the cost of a call from my five hundred credit balance. The tiny scanner can also read the QR code from Getty's card and call him for me, if I want. But I'm not ready to talk to Getty just yet.
A lost ship has just come to port.
I punch in the numbers from newfound memory. That battered, greasy phone handset has seen better days, but still, it manages a scratchy reproduction of a familiar voice on the other end.
"Hello?" she says, and in a blink I remember something else.
Her name is Alice.
I don't care if the vagabonds and druggies and lunatics can see my tears. Fuck them. There's nothing to do about it anyway, because the waterworks come on hard and fast. Her name is Alice, and I speak it back to her through the handset, only it comes out all choked up. Still, she gets it. And she knows it's me, because she gets choked up too.
"Jojo?"
They changed my mind. They tried to make me forget Alice. I'll kill them for that.
We talk a little while. She asks why I didn't call from the pen, says she would have driven out to pick me up. I just say the bus ride helped clear my head, leaving out how they changed my mind and made me forget. And when she asks to see me, I catch a glimpse of my hand holding the phone, how frail and wrinkled it looks. I want to reach back into the past, to a time before all the shit went down, when I know she and I were the happiest couple on Earth and nothing mattered to me except making her happy. I want to go back and relive the good times I know we must have had. And just then, her face comes to mind and--oh, my sweet, sweet angel--I can see that beautiful smile and the kindness in her eyes.
It's the face of love, and I remember it so clearly now, better than my own face. Not this wrinkled old mask, but the face God once gave me.
But dammit, I don't remember the rest of it, everything we must have shared to make me love her like this. I don't remember us. So the tears start up again, but this time I manage to control my voice, which must sound different to Alice in this REPRINT, but she doesn't let on. So I tell her there are things I need to do first, before coming back home.
And the pause on her end tells me I forgot something else. I can read in her silence that my home hasn't been hers in a very long time.
"Are you gonna go see Vince?" she asks, mostly to break the silence, I think. But the name triggers more bells, another ship drifting in from that distant stormy sea.
At last, I find the strength to say goodbye, allowing Alice to resume whatever life she's been living without me. This is the best and last chance to make her happy. I hang up the phone thinking abstract thoughts of things like karma, reincarnation, and soul mates.
Getty Grant's card stays in my back pocket for now--his time will come. I abandon the phone, somehow knowing Vince wouldn't answer even if I could remember the number to call. A smoky vague hint of that slowly returning memory tells me Vince and I are not on the best of terms. I'm pretty sure he's even afraid of me. That means he's crossed me somehow. And that means Vince owes me a favor.
I leave the bus depot stench behind and set out on foot. As Vince's memory boat slowly comes into port, my sense of direction improves and I'm turning the corners with confidence. Somehow, I know he'll be right where he was one year ago to the day, when I was sent off to prison.
Getty Grant can wait a few more hours. The arthritic bones of this old REPRINT seem to creak with every step, but it's the shudders I can really do without. And just what the hell is it about this PO that creeps me out so much? Maybe Vince can help me fill in the blanks about Getty. Good old Vince.
We'll see.
#
They've changed my mind, but I haven't forgotten the little everyday things we all know, like which side of the street to drive on or how to read a clock (just over 19 hours left to visit my PO, by the way). I also remember how these downtown streets were a gangland turf war battleground once, long ago. Now, they bustle with pedestrians in all shapes and sizes. I mean literally all shapes and sizes.
Once they're done with childbearing (REPRINTS can't have babies--probably a good thing), everyone wants to go through a REPRINT. Some end up with perfect human proportions, looking like supermodels--or at least what supermodels looked like before they started REPRINTING. Others go enhanced, with unusual height or maybe alligator skin or a third eye or some strange mix of genitalia--sky's the limit. And then some don't even look remotely human anymore. In any case, to keep the masses playing nice, every REPRINT requires a license application and only government-approved ICBET images are allowed. I can't help chuckling to myself as they pass me by in my Type 3 felon REPRINT, all of them thinking I'm the freak. It's a real gas, I tell ya.
Not all the ICBET images are legit. Just ask Getty or Vince--
Wow! I'm not sure where that came from or what it means, but maybe I'll do just that. Maybe I will.
Anyway, the streets are packed with pedestrians. I'm thinking it's partly because every available downtown surface is lit up with DIGIWRAP. It's on the walls, the windows, and the street posts. It's even on the sidewalks, which is pretty damned obnoxious because all the touch-sensitive ads keep shouting and flashing up at me with every single step I take. So with all these colorful lights and sounds, everyone here must feel like they're walking in a spotlight. I sure as hell do. The loud, flashing bright DIGIWRAP-decoupaged cityscape is one thing I didn't miss as a dung beetle.
Also, everybody knows there are dozens of city surveillance cameras watching every block of all major cities, streaming recorded video back to the data processing silos for evaluation and automated search indexing. These days, most criminal trials play out on big DIGIWRAP courtroom screens like reality shows, so bring your popcorn, ladies and gents. When you factor in our UZENET GPS trackable chips, those golden olden days of “He Said She Said" witness-based trials are all dust in the wind. In short, it's a very bad time to be a criminal.
And yet, here I am, hobbling along down Main Street in my Type 3 felon REPRINT.
Things quiet down a little as I move into the warehouse district. At least the sidewalks stop shouting up at me. And I know I've arrived because the thinning pedestrians pay me no mind. Here, I'm just one of them. Oh, the cameras are still streaming away, but local smut-peddlers like Vince pay good money to ensure the footage never reaches a data silo--
Ah, sucker-punched by yet another recovered memory.
They've changed my mind. Fuck them. I'm changing it back.
Outside Vince's place, it looks like just another deserted warehouse, all corrugated steel and rust. The small parking lot is empty. But everything’s fenced up and the light over the callbox is on, suggesting maybe there's more here than a casual glance might reveal. He's in there all right, just like old times.
Just like I remember.
I hit the buzzer and hear the click of an open mic, but no one speaks. Without considering why this feels so natural, I announce my name--nothing more than a name. And nothing happens for a minute or maybe two, except for an occasional flicker of that callbox light.
Vince is in there somewhere, so I wait.
Still no sound from the callbox, but suddenly a hum and clackity rattle draw my eyes to a growing gap in the ramp gate, stopping just wide enough for me to walk through before it rattles shut again.
I close the thirty yards from gate to side door with the slow, cautious shuffle of an old man--an old man REPRINT. The path is shadowy and my body is brittle. It wouldn't take much to trip and fall, maybe break a hip or worse. That's probably why Vince buzzed me in.
They've changed my mind and the details are missing, but I do remember he and I have unfinished business.
He's standing there when I open the heavy metal side door, and watches how I strain with the effort. But Vince is all smiles, all the time--another new recollection--and this time is no different. He looks me over, then gives me a hug, nearly snapping my withered spine with his massive bear-like arms.
"It's been a long time, Jojo."
He waits for a response, but I can wait longer.
"So, how have you been, old friend?"
I shrug and reply, "For the last year, I've been a dung beetle."
Vince laughs long and hard, stooping and slapping a knee.
Like it's a joke.
Only it's not.
Still, I manage a fake smile and he seems to buy it.
After the laughter ends, he gestures and I enter, following him down a mirrored hallway--two-way glass, I suddenly recall. Armed sentinels are somewhere behind the mirrors, silently watching us.
The hand carved gold-leaf trim and cherub fountains and obscene wall art remind me this is a heavily fortified palace only pretending to be a warehouse. It's his home. And if allowed to explore all the nooks and crannies of his home, one might begin to understand the true depth of Vince's depravity. But that won't happen today.
"We have unfinished business," I tell him, once we're seated in his office and tipping back bourbon-filled glasses.
He sighs and says, "I know, old friend." Then Vince apologizes for something he vaguely terms a "stolen car mix-up." I realize I've heard these words repeated so many times that I know them by heart. I could join him in some kind of tuneless karaoke duet if the spirit moved me.
It doesn't.
He explains how, yes, he bought his way out of that mess, but never meant for it to be pinned on me. He has the audacity to apologize for our nation's judicial bias against people of color, suggesting this "mix-up" prison sentence was some kind of racial hate-crime disguised as a court proceeding.
I've heard it before.
Even though Vince is doing all the talking, he still downs two bourbons and pours himself a third.
Then he tells me a joke about how I was the athlete once--I remember a scholarship--and he was the wimp, but take a look at us now. He laughs long and loud while I realize this giant Russian balooka stereotype isn't the Vince I once knew. He's had himself REPRINTED. Of course he has.
I manage a weak smile at his bad joke.
Then I patiently wait through the excuses about how I could have recovered from that small infraction, if only I'd been a good convict and served my sentence without killing anyone. Oh sure, a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do to survive, but he rhetorically asks if I had to be so damned good at it. It occurs to me that maybe these words are scripted. Maybe he's taken the time to put them in writing, a preparation for the next time I come knocking.
I shrug, tossing one back and feeling it burn my esophagus on the way down, then it burns my belly.
So he continues, and we finally get to that part--an hour and four bourbons later--where Vince offers me a job. It’s his way of compensating my misfortune. But yes, this too I've heard before, and then I remember what the job is. Then I remember who this man is.
I recall our days in high school, when his father bought their first full-size 3D printer--latest social trend of the day--and some of the toys Vince made with it down in his basement. That was a sign we all missed, especially me. We were buddies back then and I’d played it off as his version of eccentric.
But as the print technology progressed and more exotic materials were introduced into production, his experiments moved further into nightmarish extremes, until my reactions prompted him to hide his creations from everyone, including me. Whatever he was printing down in his basement, I didn't know or care to find out. That growing gleam in his eye was unsettling enough.
Then in our college days, I was so caught up in my own all-star endeavors that I’d failed to notice his exhaustive efforts to gain employment on campus, in their maintenance department. Hell, I didn't know what advances they were making with 3D printing back then ... with organic materials in various fields of biology. But Vince had known, and eventually got hold of the science lab keys. And their printers.
I had a gruesome glimpse of the future by accident one night soon after.
Our friendship ended with that glimpse … of the thing in his dorm room closet.
Still, we've somehow ended up here. And more than once. Only this time, in the guise of a tired and defeated old man, I accept his offer.
After all, a job is a job, right?
Wrong.
#
They changed my mind.
Then Vince changed it again. I knew he would.
But experience taught me the first time, I can change it back. So I say, fuck them all!
And I will.
The UZENET chip is gone, destroyed when they liquified my prison-issue Type 3 felon REPRINT. But first, Vince had me scanned and they used the mind print from my ICBET (which I now recall means "Instantaneous Computed Bio-Electronic Tomography") image. My mind print, after that sonofabitch Vince changed it, was grafted into this new REPRINT. It's a black market operation, so the government standards and licensing don't apply here.
Lucky for me.
Oh, I remember Getty Grant too, how he also dabbles in black market REPRINTING and earns himself a little extra scratch managing underground "dog-fight" events. I turned down his job offer and it landed me back in the pen.
As a fucking dung beetle.
Old Getty and me, we have unfinished business too. Yes indeed we do.
Getty is one sick and bloodthirsty bastard. But Vince is sicker. I mean, Christ! Just look at me! Vince dreamed up this REPRINT in all its sick and twisted glory. He only needed some poor schmuck like me, someone with no other options on the table, to volunteer. Enter yours truly.
Sure, you can REPRINT all sorts of bio-models, but without a soul to drive them, they just lay around waiting to die. Or, you can use an AI implant that pretends at life but falls miles short of the real McCoy. The thing in Vince's dorm room closet definitely had an AI implant.
It had to be AI. Not a real soul.
Otherwise, how could I see that thing and just walk away? How could I ever live with myself?
Maybe as a dung beetle, and karma's a bitch.
Yeah, good old Vince is a real piece of work. I mean he’s king of the creeps. That's why I'm standing here today in his warehouse, surrounded by all these lights and cameras. This is Vince's idea of a porn shoot. Oh, most of the actors in porn these days are REPRINTS with all kinds of mods, although none are anything remotely like me. In fact, I think the girl stretched out and bound so enticingly there on that crusty old blood-stained mattress, well, she might be the very first "original" I've come across--since my initiation into the business that is.
She smells like a real girl.
She sure as hell screams like a real girl--and I’ve heard snuff film connoisseurs can tell the difference just from the screams.
Yeah, Vince changed my mind. Luckily for her, though, I've managed to change it back again. Otherwise, I’d be wondering quite obsessively just what a real girl tastes like.
But instead, looking around the set, I'm wondering what Vince will taste like.
Obsessively so.
And there he is now, watching me. I wonder if he can see the glint in my eye from all the way over there.
The glint of human intelligence.
Vince changed my mind, but now I've changed it back again.
Doesn’t matter. I'll give him a real good look in the eye, up close and far more personal than he'd like. And if the camera angle is just right, then maybe the whole world will see Vince's greatest dream become his final nightmare.
A rumbling, ground-shaking chuckle gives me away, but I simply can't resist.
And if he thinks dog-fighting REPRINTS are scary, well, just wait’ll old Getty Grant gets a load of me.
End
Bio: Jon Rollins is a writer hobbyist, short story enthusiast, and editor for Wicked Works Magazine. His written works have appeared in Down In The Dirt Magazine, DailyScienceFiction.com, Abyss & Apex Magazine, and a book of spooky road trip tales called Bumps In The Road, among others. He resides in Colorado, but occasionally hops on his motorcycle and rides off in search of the highway’s end. He also vacations in the Twilight Zone, where he one day hopes to retire. Look for him there and in future publications.
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