The Heart Goes Last (5 page)

The guy begins by saying they should call him Ed. Ed hopes they’re now feeling comfortable, because they know – as he does! – that they’ve made the right choice.

Now he would like to give them – share with them – a deeper peek behind the scenes. It was a struggle to get the multiple permissions needed to set up the Positron enterprise. The powers that be did not decide easily; more than one policy guru’s ass was on the line (he smirks a little at his own daring use of the word
ass
), as witness the howling when the scheme was first announced in the press. The spokesmen, or rather the spokespersons – Ed glances at the woman, who smiles – have braved a lot of indignant screaming from the online radicals and malcontents who claim that Consilience/Positron is an infringement of individual liberties, an attempt at total social control, an insult to the human spirit. Nobody is more dedicated to individual liberties than Ed is, but as they all know – here Ed gives a conspiratorial smile – you can’t eat your so-called individual liberties, and the human spirit pays no bills, and something needed to be done to relieve the pressure inside the social pressure-cooker. Wouldn’t they agree?

The woman in the suit glances up. What’s she looking at? Her gaze sweeps over them, calm, cool. Then she turns back to her cellphone. Without a phone himself, Stan feels naked: they’d had to turn in their cells at the beginning of the workshop. They’ve been promised new ones, but those will work only inside the wall. Stan wonders when the new ones will be issued.

Ed lowers his voice: serious stuff coming up. Sure enough, on comes a PowerPoint with a slew of graphs. The financial big guns have concealed the true statistics to avoid panic, he says, but a shocking 40 percent of the population in this region is jobless, with 50 percent of those being under twenty-five. That’s a recipe for systems breakdown, right there: for anarchy, for chaos, for the senseless destruction of property, for so-called revolution, which meant looting and gang rule and warlords and mass rape, and the terrorization of the weak and helpless. That is the grim prospect staring everyone in this area right between the eyes. They’ve already noticed the symptoms for themselves, which is – he is sure – why they saw the desirability of signing in.

What can be done? Ed asks, wrinkling his brows. How to keep the lid on? Which it was in the interests of society at large to do, as they would surely agree. At the official leadership level, ideas were running out fast. There is only so much manpower and tax revenue that can be devoted to riot control, to social surveillance, to chasing fast youths down dark alleyways, to fire-hosing and pepper-spraying suspicious-looking gatherings. Too many once-bustling cities are stagnant or derelict, especially in the northeast, but other regions as well where long droughts have taken their toll. Too many of the disenfranchised are living in abandoned cars or subway tunnels or even in culverts. There’s an epidemic of drugging and boozing: suicide-grade alcohol, skin-blistering drugs that kill you in under a year. Oblivion is increasingly attractive to the young, and even to the middle-aged, since why retain your brain when no amount of thinking can even begin to solve the problem? It isn’t even a problem, it’s beyond a problem. It’s more like a looming collapse. Is their once-beautiful region doomed to be a wasteland of poverty and wreckage?

At first the solution was to build more prisons and cram more people into them, but that soon became prohibitively expensive. (Here Ed flicked through a few more slides.) Not only that, it resulted in platoons of prison graduates with professional-grade criminal skills they were more than willing to exercise once they were back in the outside world. Even when the prisons were privatized, even when the prisoners were rented out as unpaid labour to international business interests, the cost–benefit charts did not improve, because American slave workers couldn’t outperform the slave workers in other countries. Competitiveness in the slave labour market was linked to the price of food, and Americans – who remain goodhearted despite everything, stray puppy-rescuers every one – here Ed smiles indulgently, contemptuously – weren’t ready to starve their prisoners to death while working them to the bone. No matter how much the prisoners were vilified by the politicians and the press as filthy dregs and toxic scum, still, heaps of stick-legged corpses can’t be hidden from view indefinitely. The odd unexplained death, maybe – there has always been the odd unexplained death, says Ed, shrugging – but not heaps. Some snoop would make a phone video; such things can escape despite the best attempts to keep things under hatches, and who knows what sort of uproar, not to mention uprising, might result?

Stan feels a small prickle at the back of his neck. That’s his brother Ed could talking about! Or maybe not Con specifically; but he’s pretty sure that if Ed got a close-up look at Con, he’d file him under toxic scum. It’s fine for Stan to use names like that, it’s within the family, and it’s not that he approves of whatever it is Con is probably doing, but. Is this the kind of rumour Con’s been hearing? That Positron is hardcore repressive on the subject of sticky fingers? One strike and you’re out?

He’d like to phone Conor, talk to him some more. See what he knows about this place really. But he can’t do that without a phone. Wait and see, he tells himself. Give the place a chance.

Ed opens his arms like a TV preacher: his voice gets louder. Then it occurred to the planners of Positron, he says – and this was brilliant – that if prisons were scaled out and handled rationally, they could be win-win viable economic units. So many jobs could be spawned by them: construction jobs, maintenance jobs, cleaning jobs, guard jobs. Hospital jobs, uniform-sewing jobs, shoemaking jobs, jobs in agriculture, if there was a farm attached: an ever-flowing cornucopia of jobs. Medium-size towns with large penitentiaries could maintain themselves, and the people inside such towns could live in middle-class comfort. And if every citizen were either a guard or a prisoner, the result would be full employment: half would be prisoners, the other half would be engaged in the business of tending the prisoners in some way or other. Or tending those who tended them.

And since it was unrealistic to expect certified criminality from 50 percent of the population, the fair thing would be for everyone to take turns: one month in, one month out. Think of the savings, with every dwelling serving two sets of residents! It was time-share taken to its logical conclusion.

Hence the twin town of Consilience/Positron. Of which they are now all such an important part! Ed smiles, the welcoming, open, inclusive smile of a born salesman. It all makes sense!

Stan wants to ask about the profit margin, and about whether this thing is a private venture. It has to be. Someone’s got the lucrative infrastructure and supply contracts, walls don’t build themselves, and the security systems are top grade, from what he’s been able to observe at the gateway. But he stops himself: this doesn’t feel like the right moment to ask, because now a great big CONSILIENCE has come up on the screen:

CONSILIENCE = CONS + RESILIENCE. DO TIME NOW, BUY TIME FOR OUR FUTURE!

Stan has to admit that the PR team and the branders have done well; Ed obviously thinks so too. Positron Project had changed the name of the pre-existing prison, he tells them, because “The Upstate Correctional Institute” was dingy and boring. They’d came up with “Positron,” which technically means the antimatter counterpart of the electron, but few out there would know that, would they? As a word, it just sounded very, well, positive. And positivity was what was needed to solve our current problems. Even the most cynical – said Ed – even the most jaundiced would have to admit that. Then they’d brought in some top designers to consult on an overall look and feel. The fifties was chosen for the visual and audio aspects, because that was the decade in which the most people had self-identified as being happy. And that’s one of the goals here: maximum possible happiness. Who wouldn’t tick
that
box?

When the new name and the new aesthetic were launched, Positron hit a popular nerve. Credible stratagem, said the online news bloggers. At last, a vision! Even the depressives among them said why not try it, since nothing else had worked. People were starved for hope, ready to swallow anything uplifting.

After they’d run the first TV ads, the number of online applications was overwhelming. And no wonder: there were so many advantages. Who wouldn’t rather eat well three times a day, and have a shower with more than a cupful of water, and wear clean clothes and sleep in a comfortable bed devoid of bedbugs? Not to mention the inspiring sense of a shared purpose. Rather than festering in some deserted condo crawling with black mould or crouching in a stench-filled trailer where you’d spend the nights beating off dead-eyed teenagers armed with broken bottles and ready to murder you for a handful of cigarette butts, you’d have gainful employment, three wholesome meals a day, a lawn to tend, a hedge to trim, the assurance that you were contributing to the general good, and a toilet that flushed. In a word, or rather three words: A Meaningful Life.

That was the last slogan on the last slide on the last PowerPoint. Something to take home with them, says Ed. Their new home, right here inside Consilience. And inside Positron, of course. Think of an egg, with a white and a yolk. (An egg came up on screen, a knife cut it in half, lengthwise.) Consilience is the white, Positron is the yolk, and together they make the whole egg. The nest egg, says Ed, smiling. There’s a final picture: a nest, with a golden egg shining within it.

Ed turns off the PowerPoint, puts on his reading glasses, consults a list. Practical matters: their new cellphones will be issued in the main hall. At the same time they’ll receive their housing allocations. The details are explained more fully on the green sheets in their folders, but in brief, everyone in Consilience will live two lives: prisoners one month, guards or town functionaries the next. Everyone has been assigned an Alternate. One detached residential dwelling can therefore serve at least four people: in Month One, the houses will be occupied by the civilians, and then, in Month Two, by the prisoners of Month One, who will take on the civilian roles and move into the houses. And so it will go, month after month, turn and turn about. Think of the savings in the cost of living, Ed says with a smile.

As for purchasing power, always a hot topic: each of them will be given an initial number of Posidollars, which can be exchanged for items they may wish to purchase at the Consilience shops or from the internal-network digital catalogue. The sum will be increased automatically every payday. Objects purchased to individualize the living spaces may either be stored during prison time or shared with Alternates; in case of breakage, the Alternates will of course replace such items, using their own Posidollars. There is a maintenance staff that will take care of such things as plumbing and electrical issues. And leaks, Ed says. The roof kind, not the information kind, he adds with a smile. This is supposed to be a joke, Stan guesses.

He takes a quick look at the green sheet. Single people will live in two-bedroom condos, which they will share with another single person and the two Alternates. Detached houses are reserved for couples and families: good, he and Charmaine will get one of those. Teens have two schools – one inside the prison, one outside it. Young children stay with the mothers in the women’s wing, equipped with supervised play schools, kindergartens, and toddler dance classes. It’s really an ideal situation for young children, and so far the parent satisfaction index is very high.

Each dwelling unit has four lockers, one for each adult. Civilian clothes, which may be selected from the catalogue, are stored in these lockers during the months when their owners are doing a prisoner shift. The orange prisoner garb is kept at the Positron Prison, worn while in prison, and left there for cleaning.

The prison cells themselves have been upgraded, and though care has been taken to maintain the theme, considerable amenities have been added. It’s not as if they’re being asked to live in an old-fashioned sort of prison! The prison food, for instance, is at least three-star quality. He himself enjoys nothing more because it’s amazing what care and a top attitude can add to simple and wholesome ingredients.

Ed consults his notes. Stan shifts from cheek to cheek: how long is this windbag going to go on? He’s got the picture, and so far there’s nothing to freak out about. He could use a coffee. Better, a beer. He wonders what they’ve been telling Charmaine, over in the ladies’ workshops.

Right, another thing, says Ed. From time to time a film crew may arrive to shoot some footage of the ideal life they will all be leading, to be shown outside Consilience as a boost to the helpful work they are doing here. They themselves will be able to view those results too, on the closed-circuit Consilience network. Music and movies are available on the same network, although, to avoid overexcitement, there is no pornography or undue violence, and no rock or hip-hop. However, there is no limitation on string quartets, Bing Crosby, Doris Day, the Mills Brothers, or show tunes from vintage Hollywood musicals.

Fuck, thinks Stan. Granny junk. What about sports, will they be able to watch any games? He wonders if there’s any way of picking up a signal from outside. What’s bad about football? But maybe not try anything like that too soon.

A couple more things, says Ed. There’s a sign-up list for preferred jobs, in prison and in town: they should number their three top choices, with ten being the most preferred. Those who’ve never driven a scooter should sign up on the yellow sheet; the scooter classes will begin on Tuesday. Scooters are colour-matched to lockers, and all individuals must take personal responsibility for their scooter while it is in their care.

He, Ed, is sure they will all make a great success of this revolutionary new venture. Good luck! He gives a wave of the hand, like Santa Claus, then leaves the room. The woman in the dark suit walks behind him. Maybe she’s a bodyguard, Stan thinks. Powerful glutes.