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Site content may offend. Content includes horror, murder, torture, lawlessness, military carnage, Anglo Saxon crudities, occasional adult incidents and George Bush |
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It was another six hours before Roy was granted release. By then, all his students had been discharged from the Plastic Infinity Corporation's Product Development Unit, and were either home or on their way home. "We're sorry about the delay," said Geoff Hangolin, smooth spokesman for the Corporation. "But we had, uh ... a glitch." "You mean you were warming up Marilyn," said Roy. "Say what?" "One of my students," said Roy grimly. "Marilyn. The child of Mr and Mrs Monroe. She got hypothermia." "Oh, I know it might have felt cold on Bear Mountain," said Geoff, "but there's no possibility that the girl - the, uh, young woman - suffered any physical damage." And, try as Roy might, he could not get Geoff Hangolin, or anyone else from the Corporation, to confess that there had been the slightest bit of physical danger. Roy's duty was plain. The product was defective, and, if the defect was not corrected, someone would be killed. "You can talk to me or you can talk to the media," said Roy. "Take your choice." "You want to be a whistle blower?" said Geoff Hangolin, softly. "Well, let me tell you something, Roy. You blow a whistle, every dog in the neighborhood's going to come running." A plain threat. But Roy was unimpressed by it. So he went to the media. The newspapers, radio stations, tv - he talked to them all. Two days later, he was arrested. The charge was rape. "Rape!" said Roy. "But that's ridiculous!" "I have to tell you, Roy," said Ashley Belno, Roy's portly lawyer, "you've admitted you got naked. Got naked, crawled in her sleeping bag. You said that on prime time tv. That's, uh, a breach of a tribal taboo, I think we could say. Teacher and student, naked in a single sleeping bag." "It was that or see her die," said Roy. "So," said Ashley. "Guilty, but with an excuse." "I tell you, she was going to die!" "Yes, but, Roy ... nobody believes that. This mind-body link, it's just your theory. Lots of people have used virtual reality by now. You fall off a virtual cliff, you don't break bones for real. But we'll do what we can." "Oh! You can't possibly think a jury would find me guilty! I mean, there isn't even an accusation!" "Not from Marilyn. But the Virtual Crimes Act lets other people accuse on her behalf." Indeed. The Virtual Crimes Act, framed in haste by a furious Congress after the torturer Scambler walked free, made it possible for someone to be anonymously accused and hauled into court without even been presented with a proper bill of particulars. It did away many of the protections usually accorded defendants. And, when Roy finally walked into court to stand trial, Janet Narlo made the most of the powers that Act granted to her. "So you were naked with her?" said Janet Narlo, the prosecutor, a brunette in a severe grey outfit. "Naked in her sleeping bag?" "It's the approved method for saving lives on the mountainside," said Roy, unemotionally. Despite all that had happened - despite the uncomfortable awareness that he had offended against propriety by breaching one of the taboos of his tribe - he still believed, in an abstract Euclidian sense, that what he had done was right. Survival in the great outdoors was his thing. He was an expert. He said as much. "Only," said Janet Narlo, "this wasn't the great outdoors. This was just the classroom in another form." "But, the link. The mind-body link." "Which we've heard all about, and which is nonsense," said Janet. "There's no evidence for it. It's a figment of your own self-justifying imagination." Geoff Hangolin, now not just the spokesman for the Plastic Infinity Corporation but its expert witness as well, took the same line. "We don't model the insides of the body," said Geoff. "People have their own bodies, and, besides, only schizophrenics and that kind of crazy are interested in their own innards." A questionable statement, that - ever been to San Francisco, Geoff, and listened to people making dinner table conversation about their bowel movements? - and it raised a point which Janet Narlo needed to clarify for the jury. "Yet the body is modelled, up to a point," said Janet, "and my question is, does the modelling permit rape?" "Well," said Geoff, a PR type who was uncomfortable with any approach to life's gritty details. "We do model the, uh, seagates, as we call them in the trade." "Seagates?" "The, uh, portals. You know, a cold day, you want to feel cold air coming in through your nose - not that, uh, that subjective impression could have any objective significance in the, uh, biofeedback mode." "So?" said Janet. "Pardon?" said Geoff. "The question," said Janet, losing patience, "is not about the nose. The question is about the vagina. Does a virtual woman have a virtual vagina?" "Well ...." "Your answer is affirmative or negative. Yes or no." Yes. Saying it, poor Geoff looked as if he was going to have a heart attack. But Janet was not finished yet. A hard-nosed prosecutor of kidnappers, killers, rapists, arsonists, war criminals and common torturers, she was afraid of nothing, least of all of description. Before they were through, actual models of a virtual vagina and a virtual penis had been produced in the courtroom, and their functions described in detail. And the internet audience went wild. The slavering excitement of the mob - Roy tried not to know about it. A Colloseum mob. Somewhere, Saint Augustine writes about a friend of his who went along to the arena in Rome to see the gladiators fight. The friend - let's call him Dave, though that was his real name - thought he would be able to watch the blood and gore yet stay aloof from its attractions. But, on the day, the raving roar of the crowd broke through to the innermost core of Dave's sanity, overwhelmed his sanity, and left him a willing slave to the insane attractions of the theatre of murder. (So what happened to Dave? It had been a long time since Roy had read Augie's "Confessions", so he wasn't quite sure, but maybe these days Dave lived in a beat-up trailer out the outskirts of Sioux City, Iowa, where he spent his days drinking Buds, watching ice hockey, and fooling around on the internet). "The thing about the screen saver," said Roy. "It's not true, is it?" But it was. Someone had designed a screen saver showing Roy masturbating over Marilyn Monroe's decapitated head, which was impaled on Zinger's penis. The head, tearstained, begged for mercy. Finally, Bean punted it into an anomalous crocodile swamp. Cheerleaders with candyfloss skirts and white cotton panties re-ra-rayed in the background. Someone else had written a confession in Roy's name and spammed it across the internet. (Sample: "She started to beg. I grabbed a handful of earth, filled her mouth. Ground it in good. Made problems later, when I needed that mouth. Ever fucked your flowerbed?") "The problem is," said Ashley Belno, "that Bear Mountain is effectively imaginary." "If you can call a computer model imaginary," said Roy. "What I mean," said Ashley, "is that it's a domain the public's mind can play with. A domain of the hidden. It doesn't have any limiting factors. Central Park, there's a limit to what you can imagine happening there. But, Bear Mountain, that's like someone's dreams. Speculating on someone's dreams." And the truly appalling thing was that the kids were increasingly being dragged into that arena of speculation. Particularly Zinger and Bean. "It is true, isn't it," said Janet Narlo, "that you chose to take a drug addict on this trip?" "Objection!" roared Ashley. But Janet argued that the facts were important to show Roy's approach to Roy's approach to his teacherly duties. And it came out that Zinger, who had been on probation, had failed two drugs tests, had narrowly avoided getting jailed as a consequence, and yet had been allowed to come on the trip to Bear Mountain. ("I hearby order the suppression of all the young man's personal identifying details," said Judge Vockery, but those details were all over the internet in half an hour). "And can you tell us why?" said Janet. "Can you tell us why you allowed this drug absuer to participate in this privilege?" "As soon as we start looking on education as a privilege," said Roy, "we can say goodbye to the younger generation." His emotion came through. We are the tribal elders. To educate the young is our duty. It is a necessity. I'd like to take them all into the mountains. The real mountains. Give them a real challenge and see how they shape up. Tell them: Hey, guys, now you're responsible for your own survival. And you're responsible for the group, too. Your strength is our strength. We need you, we've got to all hang together, don't let us down. That's the dream. And, maybe I was wrong, but I thought that Bear Mountain would give us that, would give us at least a shadow of that. "So, okay," said Janet, "can you tell us how a holiday on the mountains counts as education? Or - no, let's take another tack. Tough love, Roy. Ever heard of tough love? Here's a kid who did something wrong. He took drugs. Twice. Yet you gave him a holiday. Is that your philosophy of life, Roy? Hey, don't worry about the law, Roy Pajelva's in charge, it's lollipops all round." "I'm running a high school," said Roy."Not a federal penitentiary. There's a difference." There was? The jury looked as if this was news to them. And Roy wanted to tell them how it really was. He wanted to tell them: Hey, guys, with kids like Zinger, it's an uphill battle just to get them to stash their nines someplace and walk on in through the metal detectors. With kids like Zinger, you're winning big if they're coming to school as much as three days a week. But he couldn't tell them that. Fact was, the school system was strapped for cash. And there were problems out there in the real world. Problems which could not be kept out of the classroom by some magic make-believe quarantine. Put those two facts together, and you had a bad-news situation. To go on teaching, as Roy had, for year after year, you needed faith. Faith in your kids. This kid can be someone - okay? Even Zinger. Maybe especially Zinger. Don't write him off. Roy's conception of his teacherly duty was that he had to embrace the world. If it walks in through the classroom door, I'll teach it. But his jury had a schism mentaliity. Them and us. Nobody on the jury lived in a gated community, but, given the chance, none of them would have said no thank you. Lock them out. Lock them up. Divide them - and this is one of the essential acts of Creation, isn't it? - into the good and the bad. Roy was in a court. Courts exist to create categories. And Zinger was a bad-news kid. That was his category. Zinger broke the law, and Roy rewarded him with a trip into the mountains. "The Lollipop Teacher," sneered Janet. "Break the law and Roy gives you a lollipop. Oh, and while we're on the subject of law, isn't it true that you told your students that statutory rape is not necessarily a bad thing?" Deathly silence in the courtroom. "I did not such thing," said Roy, finally. "You told your students," said Janet, "that in New Zealand it is possible for a girl of 16 to get married." "Provided she has the consent of her parents," said Roy. "But sex with a girl under the age of 18 is statutory rape, isn't it?" said Janet. "New Zealand is a different country," said Roy. "The law is different there." "And Bear Mountain," said Janet. "Is that a different country?" At that, Ashley was on his feet. Right then and there, he asked the judge to declare a mistrial. Not that he had any hope of getting one. But he wanted his client to be given a breathing space. And he wanted, also, to somehow convey to the jury the notion that Roy was being shafted. None of this did any good. "The fact remains," said Janet, "that you don't accept that society's morals are absolutes. Do you?" "I accept," said Roy, "that there has to be a line. We have to draw a line. Between children and adults." "But you think that line is arbitrary." "I didn't say that." "But you're quite happy if the line is shifted back to age 16." "That's not for me to decide," said Roy. "That's a decision for a society, not for an individual." "So it's okay to have sex with an underage girl," said Janet, "just as long as everyone agrees it's okay. Is that your philosophy, Roy? Oh, and by the way - you took a holiday to New Zealand once, didn't you? Mind telling us what you did there?" "I went skiing," said Roy. The court room dissolved into laughter, and, hearing that laughter, Roy didn't fancy his chances. "So you went on a skiing trip," said Janet, "and you came back with these weird ideas about sex. And you thought it right to discuss those ideas with your class?" "They're almost adults," said Roy. "In fact, biologically, socially, in many ways they're being called on to function as adults. They can't legally drink, but, if we were at war, we'd pretty soon be drafting the kids." "That's strange," said Janet. "Sometimes you call them children, sometimes you call them adults. Which is it, Roy? There seems to be a little bit of confusion in your mind." Back and forth they went, back and forth, grinding into the jury's mind the one key fact: this is a man who has called into question the taboos of the tribe. After Roy: a parade of witnesses. All were asked the same question: What happened that night? Zinger: "I don't remember." Bean: "I don't remember." Marilyn: "I can't remember." Did he touch you? I can't remember. Did he ask you? I can't remember. Did he hold you? I can't remember. Did he rape you? I can't remember. "How many times did he rape you?" "He didn't rape me!" "But, Marilyn - you've just told us you don't remember!" At that, Marilyn collapsed into tears. Weeping hysterically. Reduced, by long weeks of interrogation - family, friends, doctors, lawyers, psychologists, psychiatrists, reporters and the police, they had all been in on the act - to a state of absolute raw-bone exhaustion. The weeping female victim. The perfect finishing touch. Time for the lawyers to make their final presentations. "The defence will tell you that there is no evidence," said Janet. "Nobody remembers anything. But that's exactly what the evidence is. The evidence of things unseen. Roy ended up in Marilyn's tent, but he can't remember how he came to be there. Someone told him to go there, but he can't remember who! He can't remember how he got there, Marilyn can't remember what he did there, but, in my experience, two naked bodies don't spend all night in bed without doing something. You're entitled to conclude, beyond any reasonable doubt, that an act of sexual intercourse took place, the age of the girl necessarily making this an act of statutory rape." And, while Ashley hammered the innocent-until-guilty line, the fact was that Roy's defence was hard to believe. He was keeping her warm? Oh, come on! In the jury room, they took their time. Went over the facts. Fact: Roy Pajelva was naked with Marilyn Monroe. In a sleeping bag. How do we know that? He confessed. Told us himself. Ever been in a sleeping bag with someone? It's a tight squeeze. Skin to skin. Sweaty breath. Naked melons. Hairy catalogue parts. The skin magazines don't photograph that kind of thing because there's nowhere to put the camera. Okay, then. Roy was in Marilyn's sleeping bag. In Marilyn's tent. The logical corollary is that he went to Marilyn's tent. For some reason. Question: What reason? He tells us he went there because one of the kids told him Marilyn was cold. But which kid? He can't remember. Is that reasonable? He's a high school teacher, these are his kids. Roy's lying. Roy doesn't choose to remember and Marilyn can't bring herself to remember, she's too ashamed to come right out and say what happened, but something must have happened otherwise we wouldn't be here, right? Right. The prosecutor must know something she can't say in court. All those picky laws of evidence. They've got hard evidence but they can't tell us in court, illegal search, you know, the judge was drunk when he signed the search warrant or something. Convinced that Roy was lying - and quite reasonably, since Roy had indeed perjured himself - the jury brought in a verdict of guilty. "Okay," said Ashley Belno. "Here's where we go from here. The two jurors, that's our grounds for appeal." The two jurors had consulted with the world via the internet. Innocent or guilty? The world's opinion: guilty. Consequently, Ashley was a hundred per cent certain of getting a new trial. All he had to do was ask. "We appeal," said Ashley. "And, this time, dig a little deeper into your memories of how you came to be in the tent." "I can't remember," said Roy. "Sure you can," said Ashley. "Roy, this is the crux of the whole matter. Somehow, you ended up in Marilyn's tent." "One of the kids told me she was cold." "Yeah, sure, Roy, that's what you say, and I believe you, but the problem is, you somehow don't remember which kid. Now, that just isn't credible. You were lying up there - right? You were lying, the jury knew you were lying, they formed an assessment of your credibility based on the fact, the patent fact, that you were lying." "So I'm screwed," said Roy. "I can't remember now, they'd have me for perjury." "Of course you can remember!" said Ashley, explosively. "People forget and remember all the time! That's how the brain works! Sure you remember. New trial, new jury. I ask you: Roy, how come you were in the tent? And you tell me: Oh, one of the kids told me Marilyn was cold. And I say to you: Which kid, Roy? And you give me a straight answer: Zinger." "I never said it was him," said Roy, shocked. "Aha!" said Ashley, realising he had drawn blood. "So it was him, was it?" "I didn't say that." "Roy, Roy," said Ashley. "What are we going to do with you? Do you have some - I don't know, some kinky desire to be a martyr? Well, of course you are! You're working as a high school teacher! What more do I need to say? So - is that what turns you on? Martyrdom? Roy Pajelva as Saint Sebastian? Mouth open - begging for it?" "They're my kids," said Roy stubbornly. "Yeah," said Ashley, exasperated, "that's it, Roy, they're kids, they're juveniles, the law goes easy on them. So it comes out that Zinger was in Marilyn's tent. Well, hell, so what? Maybe he went there to say hello, who knows? He's not on trial, and, even if he was, the law is merciful." The law is merciful, yes, but the public is not. Roy was painfully aware that he had a choice. Someone was going to suffer. It could either be Roy or Zinger. Question: Who is the stronger? As a teacher, Roy was all too aware of the vulnerability of his charges. Of the child just a skin beneath that adult facade. Whatever was coming, Roy knew, in his bones, that he had the adult strength to handle it. But - Zinger? Put in Roy's place, subjected to the same crazy transnational gossip craze, who knew what would happen to Zinger? "I need to think about it," said Roy. "Think?" said Ashley. "What's there to think about?" "I can't say it was him." "Why not? You took a sacred vow of silence or something?" "These are my kids," said Roy, simply. "I'm their teacher." "Yeah," said Ashley, "and I'm your lawyer, means I can't let you do this to yourself." But Roy was unmoved. He was not going to betray Zinger. "Okay, then," said Ashley. "After you get yourself convicted a second time, we go to the Supreme Court. The Virtual Crimes Bill is unconstitutional, the whole thing, all it needs is a test case, the Supreme Court will say so." Then Janet Narlo came to them with the offer. Roy could plead to a charge of virtual lewdness, and, by way of punishment, go to work for the Plastic Infinity Corporation as one of the volunteers for the new Alcatraz trial. (A neat concept, this Virtual Prison: physical bodies stashed in maintenance cubicles, virtual bodies in Alcatraz, playing chess and handball, or whatever it is that prisoners do to pass their time). "It's a sweet deal, Roy," said Janet. "This way you're out on the street in six months, and, who knows, the Plastic Infinity people might even give you a job as a janitor or something. Certainly you'll never work in a high school again." To bolster her case, Janet had even brought along a publicity brochure. While the real Alcatraz sat in the bay off San Francisco, the Plastic Infinity's version would be sited near Bear Mountain in the upland wilderness of the Country of the Mind. "You'll even have a view," said Janet. "Pine trees and all. Could be worse, Roy. I don't have to tell you about real prisons, do I?" Ashley's advice: Say no. We fight this. We can win in the Supreme Court. We can overturn the Virtual Crimes Bill, have it declared unconstitutional. But - "It's a deal," said Roy. The longer this went on, the more damage would be done to his kids, particularly to Marilyn herself. Marilyn, Zinger, Bean, and Clean Start House itself - the best thing he could do, both for his kids and the school, was to vanish. And so Roy was delivered into the tender mercies of the Plastic Infinity Corporation and was placed into a maintenance cubicle. Darkness swallowed him. When it became light again, he expected to see the walls of Alcatraz around him. Instead - Bear Mountain. It was winter, and cold. Roy was standing, lightly dressed, on the snow-strewn site where he had camped with his kids. Nearby was a huge snow drift, evidence of the viciousness of winter. He was already freezing cold and he had barely been there ten seconds. Far away in the icy distance - the walls of Alcatraz. The prison. Could he get there before he froze to death? Clothes. Totally inadequate. Summerweight hiking boots, tracksuit pants, T-shirt - he was dressed as he had been on that long-ago school trip. He was even wearing the same Daniel Boone bowie knife, not that that was going to be any help to him. "You were right about the mind-body loop," said Geoff Hangolin. Turning, Roy saw Geoff standing in a business suit. Geoff was floating in mid-air. From the warmth of Geoff's smile, Roy guessed that Geoff was not plugged into the same subjective reality. Geoff was here as a voyeur, not as a participant. "Individual susceptibility varies," said Geoff, "but, yes, the subjective experience of cold can make the body cold for real. In certain cases this can be lethal." "Well," said Roy. "You can't hide the fact. You're going to have to tell the world, you know." "Oh, sure," said Geoff. "As soon as we've got this problem licked, we'll discover it. Yes, folks, we've discovered a problem, a real bad problem, but, not to worry, the cure's right here." "What's wrong with now?" said Roy. "Now?" said Geoff. "Are you crazy? The banks would pull the plug. Our investors are already running scared. You've done us just so much damage, Roy. Why, we've even got a US senator coming to the prison tomorrow, he wants to interview you." Yeah. Great. That would be Senator Mikan, finally showing an interest. You left it a bit later, senator. "And so?" said Roy. "For our convenience," said Geoff, "you're going to die tonight. Our tame pathologist will certify it was an aneurism. Poor Roy. A blood vessel popped and he died. No way to save him." "So how are you going to kill me?" "You're going to kill yourself, Roy. When it gets this cold, the mind-body loop will kill anyone. If you feel cold enough you'll be cold enough." "Why are you doing this?" said Roy. But Geoff, having had his fun, merely laughed, and disappeared. His smile lingered for a couple of moments, dentifrice-white, then it, too, vanished. "No need for an answer," muttered Roy. The "why" was obvious. Experimental data. Roy was a guinea pig. His death would kill two birds with one stone: end the public relations nightmare for the Plastic Infinity Corporation while helping them explore the parameters of the mind-body loop. "Okay," said Roy. "How are we going to get out of this one?" Night was coming on. If he tried to walk to Alcatraz, the night would shortly swallow him. Lost in the darkness of the snowy wilderness, he would have no hope for survival. It was necessary to spend the night right here. "The subjective is the objective," said Roy. Yes. If he could keep up his subjective body temperature, then he could stop his objective body temperature from dropping. Experimentally, he did a few jack-jumps. Result: he was still as cold as ever. On Bear Mountain, exercise did not make you warm. But, somehow, he had to survive. |
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