Читать книгу Euth Camp - A.W. Trenholm - Страница 13

8. Reggies

“WHEEEEEEEEE!!”

The terrifying blast of the curfew siren always made me jump. It was just another irritating reminder that we were considered subordinate citizens who at a certain time of day had to be reminded we should be off the streets. Only the registered or reggies, as was the common term for them, could stay out and move about freely after curfew. They had to pay an extra fee for that privilege, but since they were all e-tagged with transponder chips, it was easy for the collection scanner to identify them and transfer a few credits from their labor accounts. These extra perks and privileges remained popular because the funds raised were supposed to go to good causes like cancer research and whatnot (which they did not, and instead were used to fund the oppressive system). But it made people feel good and fashionable about using their privileges to support these state-sponsored scams.

We non-reggies were always setting off identity-check alarms and zone violation buzzers, and FR scanner alerts. FR stands for “facial recognition” scanners. As I was forced to walk around a lot in order to visit all the government offices required and fill out endless forms, I spent a lot of time in front of the copcams explaining to some unseen bureaucrat in an office somewhere why I was where I was and what I was doing.

Woe to anyone who was a non-reggie if they were caught out during curfew. Things could get nasty for us very quickly. And those smart cameras were everywhere. There was no hiding from them. They could spot a newcomer or a non-reggie in an instant. And you couldn’t try to hide anything under your clothes. They could see right through clothing. But the worst devices were the MPS machines: the mind-probing scanners they had in airports and government offices and other high security places. They could literally read your thoughts and tell instantly if you were lying or not.

Life during this time of the new beginnings was far from the promised utopia we had expected after listening to the Global Guardian’s enthralling speeches. It was amazing how much our lives were controlled by money, and that whoever controlled our money controlled us. Our present government had pretty much taken control of every aspect of human life. You could be sure that anything you did or could imagine doing had a law or an ordinance governing it. Needless to say, the legal system was completely snarled up by clever fellows pulling laws out of a hat, while the confused masses kept trying to muddle their way through a maze of rules and regulations that sometimes applied and sometimes didn’t, depending on what your standing was in this new social order.

There wasn’t much real food any more since Satano Supplies, a global seed company, had captured the world food market through its diabolically clever scheme of selling its genetically modified patented seeds. Then Satano went broke, and that wiped out most of the productive farms of the world through lack of seeds.

With food supplies so short, the Ministry of Abundant Living cut the monthly food credits in half for all unregistered elderly persons during its “Food for All” campaign. The rationale for doing this, they explained, was to give people like us higher self-esteem by making a personal contribution to those less fortunate. This deprivation, however, did nothing to modify my status or mollify my presumed failure for having to live on state charity, especially since we knew that our food rations had been cut to provide for the Global Guardian’s coalition armies who were fighting for the freedom of the oppressed people of Syraq (the new region formed after the obliteration of the former countries of Syria and Iraq). Most of us elderly lived in government facilities and had to try to make our rent each month. During winter, I had depleted my tiny reserves just to keep warm; the central heating in my building had long since given up the ghost.

The whole system of government assistance appeared to be based on some kind of mathematical formula, where our expenses each month always exceeded our income. I was convinced this was done just to keep us non-reggies in a constant state of anxiety and poverty. But this cut couldn’t have come at a worse time for us, as we all had fixed bills—which usually kept us struggling.

I was walking along so distracted by the weight of my daily concerns that I failed to notice a gaping crack in the sidewalk, tripped and nearly fell—which would have been a disaster for me had I fallen and broken my arm. For non-reggies, the state-sponsored free medical program was painfully difficult to access, time consuming and posed a real danger to your health should they find that you had organs that were compatible with those needing organ transplants. Non-reggies did not own their own bodies, but they technically belonged to the state. So stripping bodies of their vital parts for use by others deemed more worthy was quite common, particularly in the free public hospitals.

The deteriorating sidewalks and the boarded up shop windows were indications that I was at least nearly home. The government subsidized housing I lived in was really just a bunch of old apartments that the owners could no longer afford to keep; their land taxes and utility payments had often exceeded the value of the property. But the government granted them special tax breaks, and gave them generous food and fuel credits, as well as access to the privileged inner city housing units as a reward for turning them over. Some of the names on these rundown housing units were now almost laughable: Ivory Towers, Thornington Heights, Tranquility Manor.

In our area, access to the inner city was very restricted. You needed a special pass even to work there, but the jobs were all of the menial labor kind: cleaning houses and yards, sweeping streets, cooking and preparing meals for the privileged, gardening, or maintaining their hydro mobiles, which were very small cars that ran on water and solar power. They needed special permits to drive them outside the city, and the permits were outrageously expensive. Those who chose to go outside the city did so in the full understanding that they would likely get car-jacked and be beaten or killed in the process.