September 30, 2004

Broken Shell, Rotten Egg

By George K. George

The day began as any other in the biostasis prison. The day had several chances to begin for the prisoner in stasis. The red, blurry daybreak speck throbbed to life in the prisoners’ field of vision, zipping lazily back to the center of focus with his eye movements. If the processor received enough anti-wakefulness feedback from the prisoner by way of electrochemical signals or eye-shutting impulses, the speck would disappear, he would return to sleep, and his connection to the system shell will be severed for several minutes. Eventually, the prisoner was forced to be wakeful. After all, he must do his time.

Prisoner 40-3D liked to squint at, and thus trick, the red speck when it first appeared every morning. As it was fading, and he felt a forced relaxation and numbness in his calves, he’d open his eyes wide. This caused the speck to refract, fade, grow almost as large as his simulated field of vision, and change shape. Feeling surged back into his legs, a jolt was felt in the back of his neck, and he would be fully conscious. The speck would then linger for a few seconds, and was again a window to shutting down his connection to the system shell. He’d squint and start the entire routine again until he lost the rhythm and wakefulness was irreversible.

In the state of biostasis, all muscular movements were bypassed, so Prisoner 40-3D only felt as though he was squinting and opening his eyes wide. Slight sensation feedback was wired into the system, but most of the signal produced from the movements was routed to circuitry that ran programs for controlling interaction with the impressive, but agreed boring, simulated environment.

The speck glowed brightly as 40-3D stopped toying with his state of consciousness. It throbbed once and changed its appearance from a speck to that of a thin, horizontal line. 40-3D sighed, or rather, felt a mild sensation of sighing. Morning had little meaning in biostasis.

It was evident by the patterns in the daily roster that prisoners slept at different times. That is, they may choose to stay awake for longer intervals, and thus be asynchronous to others’ schedules. Time done in a biostasis prison was measured in minutes of wakeful time, not by months or years, as in the distant past. Over the actual time it took to complete a sentence, the prisoners’ schedules ended up varying greatly from those of free citizens with a sun and moon to guide their sleep.

Sentences were generally shorter in biostasis prisons in absolute time spent under and in time spent interacting with the simulated environment, while minutes of the actual punishment were ticking down. They were shorter than in what were called, before their extinction and passing from memory, live-locks. It was justified that because joys of life such as eating a meal, showering, and of course engaging in any sort of sexual act, were taken away for the duration of the prisoner’s time there.

The red line spread more lines downward, toward the bottom of Prisoner 40-3D’s field of vision, creating a vision of perspective. The original line served as a horizon, while the closer lines trailed into the distance. A pink graphical cube appeared, drifting just over the horizon. The prisoner had two pending messages. One was blinking stridently, signifying importance.

The prisoner crossed his eyes in order to play with the interface further. He didn’t see a double image or blur of what seemed to be in front of him. It was when he tried to bobble his eyes upward and downward that he saw triple and sometimes quadruple images of his display. Rather, when the signal reached the processor that he was no longer attempting to cross his eyes, the display vibrated slightly, and he heard a gentle sound through the audio bus attached in the array of electrodes on his shaved head. This entertained him for a moment, but soon he began maneuvering a crosshair by a method of trying to, though not actually succeeding in, moving his eyeballs in the direction of the cube. Once the cross hair was jiggling accurately over the important message, the processor received a message that he was attempting to blink his eyes in order to activate it.

The message was from the governing board whose judge had sentenced him to the biostasis prison for several months in punishment for using the identities of three people to gain access to their credit accounts. The prisoner reflected on his crimes. In acquiring all traces of the victims’ activities, financial and personal, he grew a curiosity toward each one. Picture galleries, home movies, scans of marriage licenses were all viewed. Much of what he found was used in finding password and account name information, but it intrigued. Not a divorce was found, and it seemed these lives were flawless, picture perfect and modeled after a romantic drama. This may have been true, but they were being invaded and taken advantage of by him. It was because of this that he enjoyed the deviousness in siphoning the funds for their glass submarine cruises and trips to the moon.

He maneuvered the crosshair over the controls on the left side of the cube in order to open the message’s content. The cube zipped front and center in his field of vision, text bigger than life. Having practiced reading documents for detail in his criminal schemes, he read slowly. He found a short message explaining that his sentence had been reduced to only another forty-eight hours following the break of his next “morning.” The prisoner had heard of this sentence-shortening phenomenon in the banter between prisoners in the text communication rooms that could be accessed for one hour a day. Apparently, a shortage of biostasis chambers in the prison was causing a rapid turnover of new prisoners for ones who had fulfilled the greater portion of their sentences. This news did not affect the Prisoner 40-3D much. He enjoyed the simple graphical games he was allowed to play for several hours per day in the simulated environment of biostasis, but he mostly enjoyed cheating by screwing up his eyes. He enjoyed communicating with the other prisoners, and never was without a new story about his crimes committed. Although, he had a wife and two girlfriends on the exterior.

The prisoner hadn’t noticed it before, but the countdown display in the lower right of his vision now read forty-two minutes, instead of seven months, three days and some-odd minutes as it had yesterday, when he had severed his connection to the system shell and had fallen asleep last. So it was true. The display ticked down to forty minutes as the prisoner just stared, absorbing the idea of freedom in less than two days.

Communication between himself and those on the exterior, those in freedom, was allowed. The second message was addressed from his wife. He sighed again, or rather felt as though he was sighing. He shrunk the cube with the message from the governing board to a small speck with a caption and placed it just below the red horizon. He then maneuvered the crosshair, after some entertaining eye crossing, to the one from his wife. He blinked to open it.

His wife had been informed of his premature release from the biostasis prison, and promised to greet him at the gates of the immense complex at the time he was revived.

Prisoner forty-three-D’s mind swam with the images, smells and sounds he associated with the woman with whom he lived and despite two girlfriends who were a mystery to her, whom he loved. He the maneuvered the crosshair in his field of vision to menu where he opened image files, sound files and smell files pertaining to his wife, which he was allowed to keep in limited amounts. The actual sensory icons of her reinforced his imagination. He played a movie clip of his wife standing before the levitation rail of a transcontinental magnetrain on her way to visit family. What a weekend with Rosa, his primary girlfriend, that was, he thought. His wife Elise smiled and waved. It was a silent clip of video. The prisoner blinked, or rather tried to blink, and she was gone.

The prisoner weighed his options for what to do next. As part of having less than a day left to his sentence, the message from the governing board had informed him, he was allowed to contact via live text communication anyone he wished. He thought of Rosa, his primary lover outside his marriage. He maneuvered the crosshair and soon a notification was sent to Rosa’s eyepiece. She was comparing prices of hydrogen formula at a roadside fuel cell charge station when a speck in the upper right of her eyepiece began to throb with light. She blinked in its direction to see what it was about, and actually did blink. Text appeared, “Federal Prisoner 40-3D: hello” Her eyes lit up. Typing via eye movements was something that the entire populous had become accustom to. A century earlier all had barely mastered typing with nine keys on portable communication devices. Most who enjoyed the luxury of the communication eyepieces had mastered flicking their pupils around on a red-light keyboard in the lower portion of the transparent viewing area in order to spell out what they wished to say, but usually with a horrendous amount of errors. Prisoner forty-three-D had much practice with his fellow prisoners, however.

“Rosa M: helo!

40-3D: i’m getting out today

Rosa M: how is that possile?

40-3D: i don’t know for sure.... cutbacks i guess

Rosa M: are you excited

40-3D: eh

Rosa M: when?

40-3D: in less than two days

Rosa M: i got fired ive go nothing to do ill pick you up”

Rosa stooped to check a price tag, and her eyepiece fell off, under a customer’s shopping cart and was crushed. The communication was severed. The shell came up with a message.

* Communication severed by other party *

So, both his wife and his primary girlfriend would be there to meet him. It was only the end of his marriage. He should be happy. He’d be in Hell as a free man. He tried to contact Rosa again and again, but the connection was refused.

The prisoner noticed a light flashing in the upper right of his field of vision. He blinked on it, or tried to anyway. It was Sally, his secondary girlfriend, coming through in text.

“Sally P: i head your getting out

40-3D: how?

Sally P: it was a headline. you name was listed

40-3D: wow

Sally P: i have to tel you something

40-3D: what is it

Sally P: i’m pregant i got checkd and it yours”

He was sure she meant “pregnant.” His stomach turned over, a new sensation for him in biostasis. Another light flashed in the upper right. He blinked on it, or tried to, and opened the text window. It was his wife. Maneuvering between two text cubes was easy enough for him, but still a bit of a precise activity. Then, Rosa had found a terminal. The light flashed in the upper right and he blinked, or tried to blink, on it. He now had three text windows open, all active with these three women wanting to know the details of his release.

Rosa, ignorant to his wife, Elise, or his other girlfriend, Sally, insisted she meet him at the gates. How could he tell his wife he didn’t want her to meet him? He wasn’t sure what to say to Sally about the pregnancy. He had only been under biostasis for two months, so he believed that although the pregnancy went unannounced to him prior, the child could be his. With his eyes flicking this way and that in order to speak to the three women, a level of franticness rose in him. He paused for a moment and screwed up his eyes a great deal, rolling them around in circles and trying to blink in frustration. The display piped in through the electrodes jumped and shivered, but returned to normal—except that in the process of screwing up his eyes he began a function in the his branch shell. He had selected a command to which all text communication cubes activated would combine into one. In all the rolling of his eyes, he had also moved the control panel cube, needed to close or separate the cubes, all the way into his peripheral, and he could not get it back to where it was visible in time.

Soon the women began typing their next phrase, and then they all began to see one another’s name on their viewing apparatuses. Prisoner 40-3D closed his eyes hard, or rather, tried to do so.

© copyright 2004 george k. george