Here's the latest installment of my current dark scifi project. This is chapter 7. If you're just tuning in, consider starting with chapters 1 and 2. Be advised that this work considers difficult subjects, including suicide. If you're in crisis, please seek help. Help is available here.
Having been identified as a probable carrier of 321 Syndrome, 19-year-old Horace Gomez was in a math class at his community college when police came in and brought him to the Cook County Jail to be treated for his illness. There, in a cell block with thirty beds and forty cell mates, he was made to line up for a dose of antipsychotic medication on a daily basis, and to submit to invasive searches twice as often.
When Horace first arrived, he'd been coerced into signing a paper admitting that he had 321 Syndrome. "Sign the paper or we'll put you in gen pop where you'll be raped," were the exact words used by the corrections officer. So Horace had signed, not fully realizing how many of his rights would vanish as a result. But now, after three weeks of food that may as well have been garbage, his mind clouded by meds he didn't want or need, he was starting to put together what was really going on.
"Shit, man," Horace said to his new friend Tim. "This is all about Strike 25. I did an interview about helping to organize the strike here in Chicago and a week later I'm in here. Those motherfuckers. Lock me up and call me crazy for demanding fair rent. They wanted me out of the way and now my whole life is ruined."
"Strike 25?" asked Tim. "25 percent rent and no more? Shit, that was you?"
"Me and tons of others," said Horace. "Maybe millions, by now. My mistake was that I went big. I spoke at a rally, passed out lit at school, got on tv. Of course they came for me. Just like what happened to my uncle in El Salvador. Locked up and drugged. Made to sign papers. Fuck, man."
Horace heard his name shouted by a corrections officer then, so he went to the front of the cell and was told he was being discharged. Cuffed, he was walked through a maze of corridors and left alone in a small white room with no furniture. Eventually, an officer entered with a man in a corduroy jacket. "Hi Horace," said the man. "I'm Dr Winston. I'll be taking over your care. Please come with me."
"My ... care?" asked Horace.
"That's right," said Dr Winston. "I think you'll find my approach to treatment to be a better fit for your needs than what you're getting here."
"Whatever," said Horace. "You say you're getting me out, I'm in."
Once they'd left the facility, in Dr Winston's car, Horace felt a brief moment of panic, wondering if he was about to be disappeared. Dr Winston said nothing until they were driving on city streets. Then, at a red light, he let out a great breath. "God, I can't believe that worked," he said. "We've been trying to get you out since they took you. Christ. What do you need? Real food? Real medical attention? Should I just shut up and bring you home?"
"Who is we?" asked Horace, trying to process what was happening.
"Strike 25," said Dr Winston. "You see, there was no way rich people would ever let their kids be subjected to what you just had to endure, so when the new order was written, there was a loophole allowing private doctors to assume responsibility for treating 321 Syndrome cases. I got to you as soon as I could, but the system claimed to have no record of your whereabouts until three days ago."
"Motherfuckers," said Horace, putting all of this together.
"Just so you know, I am an actual doctor," said Dr Winston. "If you want to talk about your experiences, just to process, I'm here to listen."
"You know what I want?" asked Horace. "I want pitas and dolmas at my girl Domonique's place. She should be working right now. Head north, it's just off of Belmont."
When they reached the small restaurant under the Red Line, Dr Winston offered to park and go in. Horace told him not to worry about it, but accepted a hundred dollars and a business card before getting out of the car. Inside, Domonique sat in an otherwise vacant space, sipping her favorite mint tea from a steel cup. "You look like shit," she said, smiling broadly. "Get over here!"
They talked over food, with Domonique getting up now and again to see to customers. As they talked, she became even more outraged than Horace felt. "Can we find out the names?" she asked finally. "The names of every person who put you through that? Every cop and corrections officer and attorney and doctor? I want to know who they are. I want to kill them."
"Yeah," said Horace. "It'd be cool if all those fuckers died. But you can't be the one to do it. I love you too much to lose you over trash like that."
"Baby, you don't even know how big this thing is getting," said Domonique. "If I don't go after those fuckers, someone else might. Strike 25 is everywhere. So is the new 321 police state. It's like everyone finally drew lines in the sand and said enough. No more work without fair treatment. No more paying rent we can't afford. We're all just done subsidizing the rich. We're done! And now you're our hero."
"I don't want to be a hero," said Horace. "Being a hero got me locked up, forcibly medicated and assaulted by cops, all that shit. No, I just want to keep my head down and try to get back on track with school after this."
"Oh shit, you probably haven't heard," said Domonique. "After you were taken, your teachers started protesting the school's policy of cooperating with 321 measures. All lessons have been suspended. So technically, you might not have missed any class after all."
"Seriously?" asked Horace.
"There's more," said Domonique. "You know that reporter we like? Tom Wilkins? He contacted me about doing a show about you. He wanted to interview me, but now that you're out, he'll totally want you."
"Holy shit," said Horace. "I mean, aren't there a million better people he could interview about this?"
"A couple of other reporters were asking about you too, but he's the only one I trust," said Domonique. "He says he wants to put you on the air with a representative of a big property management association. To have a public conversation with an opposing perspective, I think is how he put it."
"You know what?" said Horace. "After all this, why the fuck not?"
"Really?" said Domonique.
"One thing the last few weeks gave me was time to think," said Horace. "Yeah, I was drugged and surrounded by predators just looking for an opening, but there was still space to get clear about a few things. And do you know what I realized? I realized that I was dehumanizing the opposition. Not like they dehumanized me, of course. Not physically, with cages and drugs and all that. But still, I couldn't see them as human beings. And I thought, how sad. How sad for me, and for the movement. Like, what are we even doing if we can't see each other as human beings?"
(Feature image from Pixabay.)
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