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Carmiel returned to his office on the third floor of the east wing. He sat behind his desk for several minutes, thinking. As he swiveled his chair, he pressed a button on the chair's arm. The ceiling to floor drape parted behind him, revealing the rose garden below. After several more minutes, he turned back to the intercom on his desk and flipped a switch.
"Please have Stephin come to my office."
A few minutes later, a young, well-muscled man dressed in business attire stepped into Carmiel's office, his hair so blond as to be almost white, in sharp contrast to his deeply tanned complexion. "You wanted to see me, Your Eminence?"
Carmiel leaned back in this chair and sighed. "I want you to go to this address," he turned one of his computer consoles so the young man could read it, "and wait for Jason Joval to return." He pressed a key on the console, and Jason's picture flashed on the screen. "Follow him. Do not let him out of your sight. Call me at once if he starts to go anywhere other than the Gambling Zone or his apartment. Take three other men to assist you."
Stephin nodded. "As you wish, Your Eminence."
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TEN MINUTES AFTER JACKKNIFE had left the bar, a tall, slender black woman dressed in a silver jumpsuit that highlighted her athletic body tapped Jason on the shoulder, then, as Jason turned, folded her long arms around his neck and gave him a kiss that lasted close to a minute.
"Honey, it's been too long," Leona said when she finally let him come up for air and slid into the seat next to him. "I understand you've been looking for little ol' Leona."
Jason wiped the ruby red lipstick off his face with his handkerchief and smiled. "I have a job for you, if you're interested."
––––––––
AFTER RETURNING FROM the Down & Under, Jason spent the next twenty-four hours in his apartment. He muted the vid and holo-screens and covered them with sheets. He needed time alone to try to sort out what he had recently learned. He spent most of the time lying on the couch in his living area, staring at the ceiling. My entire life has been a manipulation, he thought. He wasn't sure how Carmiel had done it, but it was clear he had been manipulated from the moment he had stepped into the Lottery Building and walked up to the Number Wall. He supposed if he had chosen any other way of picking his number, the same result would have been produced. It had all been rigged for him to draw a high number.
Even the gambling had been a setup. Well over half of the sixteen-year-olds played at least part of their lottery winnings, especially if they were lucky enough to draw high. My entire life has been a setup, Jason thought. The anger mounted until he could taste it in the back of his throat.
Why be angry? he argued with himself. Everyone else on the planet has been manipulated as well. At least you got a decent life out of it. Imagine what it's like for the millions who subsist in the Commons, their lives completely dictated by the system with most of them too asleep, too resigned to even know or care.
An idea suddenly popped into Jason's mind. He jumped off the couch and grabbed his jacket. It was time to pay a visit to the Commons.
––––––––
AS JASON CLIMBED ON the shuttle that would take him from the Gambling Zone into the outer reaches of the MED known as the Commons, he tried to remember the last time he had made the trip. He had grown up in the Commons, at least the time from four to sixteen when he had lived in a Ward. He wasn't exactly sure where his mom's apartment had been, but he remembered it as a place more upscale than most of the areas around the Ward had been. The kids he grew up with in the Ward used to joke about their neighborhood being the most common of the Commons, meaning it was one of the lowliest districts under the Dome. Jason wasn't sure that was true. In the last several years, he'd heard people who now lived in the Gambling Zone speak about their old neighborhoods, and he had begun to believe his neighborhood hadn't been so bad after all.
Today, Jason headed towards the Yellow District. It was a forty-five minutes shuttle ride and would take him into the heart of the Commons. It had been nearly twenty years since he had taken such a ride in this direction. It was rumored that the Yellow District had been one of the first areas to be built under the Dome and actually might have been built before the Dome existed. Jason had never considered the statement more than an exaggeration passed around by its inhabitants until now, as the shuttle pulled into the Yellow District station.
As he filed out of the shuttle with a dozen or so other people, his senses were assaulted by the dirt, debris and cloud of depression. People really lived here? No, he answered his own question. This is just the shuttle station. Surely the living quarters had to be in better shape. Still, it felt like the station had been abandoned despite the people wandering in and out and the occasional arrival of a shuttle. Everywhere he looked were piles of trash that smelled like it had been left there for weeks. Layers of graffiti covered every wall, many of them elaborately etched obscenities. Over half of the overhead lights had been broken out, with shards of glass still clinging to the twisted outlets. As Jason walked towards the exit, he noticed that one of the piles of trash a few feet from him moved. On closer inspection, he realized it was a man in tattered clothes, his dirty grey skin showing through the many holes of his shirt and pants.
As Jason neared the exit, he realized that several of the lumps he'd thought were trash were actually people either asleep or dead. Dregs. Dregs of a system that was overburdened by the press of humanity. A system operating from the basic belief that there was not enough to go around. And since there wasn't enough, you just had to do the best you could, knowing it would never be enough. With a shudder, Jason climbed the steps that had once, probably years ago, been an escalator, now broken beyond repair.
The next level up was only marginally better. People packed the streets, obviously preferring to walk to their destinations rather than contend with the depression of the shuttle. Jason joined them, stepping into a current of humanity and being swept downstream. Where were all these people going? Jason wondered. He glanced at his watch—3:00 in the afternoon. Hardly a time you'd expect a rush of people leaving work. He glanced over to a dowdy woman walking beside him at a similar pace.
"Where is everyone going?" he asked in as non-threatening a voice as he could muster.
The woman ignored him at first until he asked the question a second time in a louder voice. Finally, without turning her head, she replied. "Going? Going? What makes you think anyone is going anywhere?"
"But surely people must be headed somewhere. Otherwise, why would they be out here walking?"
The woman finally glanced in his direction, looking up and down at his clean clothes and polished shoes. "You're not from here, are you?" Before Jason could answer, she continued. "There's nowhere to go. If we don't walk, we don't eat." She pointed to a large clock at the end of the street. "It's our time to walk. We've another twenty minutes. Besides, it beats being stuck inside those rat-infested apartments."
"And after the twenty minutes are up, what then?"
"Why, the next rotation starts, of course."
After ten minutes of walking, during which Jason couldn't get so much as two words out of anyone else, he decided to duck into one of the few shops not boarded up that lined the streets. Finally finding one that was still open, he attempted to enter, only to be stopped at the door by a burly man who resembled a miniature Jackknife, but who smelled as though he'd been sleeping in the shuttle station for weeks.
"Where's your pass?"
"What pass? What are you talking about?” Jason pointed to his earring. "I've got this on."
"Of course you do, idiot. Everyone has one of those." The man pushed Jason in the chest. "No pass, no entry. You know the rules. You think all those people out there wouldn't like some time in here? Of course they would, and they'll get it, if’n they win a pass. Now get outta here."
The man pushed Jason again so stumbled back and found himself swept away by the crowd on the street. How long had he been in this hellhole? It felt like days. He glanced at his wrist to check the time, only to find his watch missing. Had the bouncer at the shop taken it? Who knew? No doubt there were many talented pickpockets on the street as well. He dug his hands into his pockets and was relieved to find his credits still there. He transferred the ones in his right pocket to his left, deciding it would be best to keep his left hand in the pocket until he left the Commons. He was ready to leave right then.
––––––––
IT TOOK JASON OVER two hours to find his way out of the Yellow District and back to the Gambling Zone. Returning to his apartment, he pulled his clothes off, tossing them on the floor as he rushed straight to the autowash. He felt filthier than he could ever remember, more so even than when he'd returned from the Pipes or after an especially long Blitz. This filth went far deeper than the surface dirt; it seemed to seep down into his soul. He slowly rotated in the wash, where he stayed for forty-five minutes. At the end, he still felt unclean, but realized the autowash wouldn't remove the kind of dirt that remained.
Dirt of the soul, he thought as he pressed the auto-dry setting, thinking of the thousands—no, correct that—millions of human beings who barely subsisted in the Commons. The mass of humanity walked to qualify for their monthly food ration and because it was their turn. Otherwise, they sat in their tiny, overcrowded apartments, most of them glued to the holo-screen watching other puppets gamble their lives away.
What's the point? Jason thought as he pulled himself from the autowash and flung himself on the bed. Seattle had been right when she said that all of humanity was being massively manipulated, but it went far deeper than the Patriarchy. Even the bureaucrats were just more puppets to a much larger, more sinister force—the Universal Life Church, Holy Mother Church herself.
Jason finally rose from the bed and dragged himself to his closet. He dug into the back of it and pulled out an old chest. He'd hauled it around with him for decades. It had been the only vestige left over from his mother. He opened the wooden chest with the tarnished brass hinges for the first time in almost two decades and dug through the old pictures, remnants from a past he could barely remember. At the bottom of the chest, he found what he had been looking for.
It was ancient. He'd seen only two others like it in all his years; both had been on display as relics. His mom had called it a pistol, but the two he'd seen had been labeled revolvers and had been a bit larger. Still, they had more in common than differences. He held the small pistol in his hand and opened the chamber—still loaded. Would the bullets be good after so many years? He closed the chamber and cocked it.
He turned towards the bed, took quick aim at one of the pillows and pulled the trigger. The blast in the small apartment deafened him; his ears rung with the shock. The bullets could still do their job. Six bullets minus one, Jason thought as he spun the cylinder several times. In his youth, he remembered reading in one of the databases on gambling about an ancient game called Russian Roulette. He couldn't recall how the game had gotten its name, but he still remembered the simple rules. It was one of the few games of chance Jason had never played.
He spun the cylinder one last time, automatically calculating the odds in his head. Neither the Patriarchy nor the ULC, not even Archbishop Carmiel, could manipulate this game. Jason held the muzzle of the gun up to his right temple and cocked the hammer again. He closed his eyes...waited for the rush, the spurt of adrenalin and the lightheadedness. Nothing happened. He tightened his grip and pressed more firmly on the trigger. Still nothing.
Come on, damn it! He berated himself. You're about to die. You're about to have your brains splattered across the room. Feel something. Some remorse, some charge. Something. This may be your last second on Earth.
Nothing.
"Good riddance," Jason shouted as he pulled the trigger. The explosion was deafening.