Surviving Minimized: A Novel Read online

  Cribbie was trying to drown out the holobum’s sermon, but he was only making things worse. Cribbie’s plans for revenge against Eckle called for Zert to play a major role.

  “We’ll sneak out,” Cribbie said. “And when we get out of here …”

  Impossible. After this, his father would never let him out of his sight again. He’d be stuck inside the apartment in the back of the store for the rest of his life.

  But Cribbie had tried to save him from the trampo, and for that, Zert was in his debt—big time. Zert put his head in his hands and breathed in the smell of trash.

  Cribbie said, “We’ll cover Eckle and his gang with the stinkiest, ripest trash ever.”

  This hard metal bench had him in its grips all right, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as being stuck between his father and his best friend.

  The guard, a slight man, limped by their cell.

  “Can’t you turn the tube off?” Cribbie yelled as the guard passed by.

  The guard looked as though he had just drunk a bottle of PeopleColor. Like the ad said, “Turn your skin any color you want it to be,” the guard’s skin matched his blue law enforcement uniform. The uniform was covered with pockets and compartments that held a stun gun, magnetic handcuffs, a zapper, water tablets, buttons to activate a camera, a heart rate monitor, and a laser light bomb.

  “My friend’s sick of listening to that holobum,” Cribbie said to the guard.

  The guard wrenched his neck in a quick twist, and Zert watched his forehead light up in red script: Shut up.

  “PLEEEEZZZZ, SIR, PLEEEEZZZ,” a kid’s voice called out from the cell next door.

  The guard marched down the length of the hallway with his foreboard facing the prisoners. As he passed each cell, the kids quieted.

  “Next, I stole a few identity chips,” the bum whined. “They didn’t magnet me up in Teen Jail that time.” He paused. “That time …”

  Zert shuddered, dreading what was coming next.

  The bum started coughing. The sound was so real and viral sounding that Zert’s own throat tingled with imagined moist lumps of phlegm. The bum seemed almost as sick as that poog had been.

  Kids in the cells groaned and sighed in unison.

  Doctor GoodHealth had drilled the symptoms of Superpox into everyone. Red, itchy blisters, almost too small to be noticed, popped up on the victim’s hands or arms. The blisters swelled into welts. The welts erupted into boils. By the time the victim developed a hacking cough, the boils would be bursting.

  Zert took advantage of the light from the holo-imagetube to push up the sleeve of his shirt and view the patches of freckles on his arm. Some freckles looked like couples hugging. Others like colonies of ants. One bloated one resembled a cloverleaf.

  He checked his hands. His thumb was wide, perfect for pushing the toggle sticks in zoink ball, and his fingers were long and skinny enough to also play the deflector position. If he got lucky, he might be able to get a scholarship to stay in school. If he got out of this scrape.

  “You can blast Eckle with some good ol’ Italian trash, and I’ll flatten him with some spoiled meat,” Cribbie said. “We’ll stake out his place until he leaves. OK, Old Man?”

  Old Man—Cribbie’s nickname for him because over their long friendship of two years, once or twice Zert had refused to go along with one of Cribbie’s daring plans.

  “OK, Cribbie,” Zert said. He wasn’t sure who he hoped would shut up more: Cribbie or the bum. At least the bum wasn’t interactive, demanding promises he couldn’t keep.

  Footsteps sounded in the hallway. Steady, familiar footsteps. Footsteps that didn’t rush. Footsteps that demanded respect. And as bad as his cell was, those footsteps meant that his life was about to get worse.

  Before he could decide which excuse to use, his father was there, walking down the hallway toward the tightly spaced bars.

  It would be easy to pretend that he wasn’t related to Jack Cage.

  His dad’s face was all angles, unlike his own, which was round. His father’s nose was pointed, while his refused to grow beyond a stub. His father’s eyes were the blue of glacier ice he’d read about in books; his were an ordinary brown. Not only that, his father’s skin was spotless, while daisy-chains of freckles crossed Zert’s cheeks and nose, traveled up his fingers, and—he’d been told—laid a train track on his back.

  “That’s him,” his father said through clenched teeth. He had on his blue jeans with the broken front loop and his red T-shirt with the Cage & Sons’ logo.

  “I told you so, Mr. Cage. Our DNA testers don’t make mistakes,” the guard said.

  His father didn’t answer. He just narrowed his eyes and glared at Zert through the bars.

  Zert looked down at his shoes, polka-dotted with specks of garbage. He waited for his father’s lecture.

  “Don’t we have enough problems, Zert, without you making more?” his father asked from the other side of the bars.

  “We just snuck out for an hour,” Zert said.

  “I don’t want to hear your excuses,” his father said. His voice was weary in a way that made him sound … old. His shoulders, usually strong and erect, were slouched. “What you did was dangerous.”

  “But there haven’t been any cases of Superpox for weeks and weeks,” Zert mumbled.

  “You know the epidemic isn’t over yet,” his father said.

  Boy, did he know. The memory of that poog flashed in his head.

  The guard pulled a thin black cylinder out of his pocket. It was the guard’s identity wand containing his DNA, World Council Identity Number, blood type, and who knew what else. He waved it over the lock and it clicked open.

  His father started to step into the cell, but the guard motioned for him to stay where he was.

  The guard bent over Zert and waved his identity wand over the magnetized belt. It opened and fell softly onto the bench with a metallic whisper.

  The guard turned to his father. “How about the other one? The Vermin kid. Do you know where his parents are?”

  Cribbie usually beat up kids who called him vermin, but magnetized to the bench, he could only growl. “Not vermin. Vimen.”

  Zert’s father shook his head. “Glorybeth Vimen, the boy’s mother, isn’t around much, but there’s an older brother …” The guard turned his back on the cell, and the two adults began conferring.

  Glorybeth Vimen didn’t have a job. She didn’t buy chips for Cribbie and his brother, Roal, to eat. She didn’t do anything a mother was supposed to do.

  Zert stood up and shook his butt to get the feeling to return. He stopped when he saw Cribbie snickering.

  “Dead Jell-O,” Cribbie said.

  “Exactly,” Zert said. Uh-oh. He was about to leave, while Cribbie had to stay. “Roal will be here soon,” he told him.

  “I’m not worried, Old Man,” Cribbie said, staring at the back of his hand. He started scratching it.

  The guard escorted Zert and his dad through the open jail door. Zert looked back at his friend, then down the long hallway.

  Freedom.

  4

  A BITE OF THINGS TO COME

  There was nothing else to do but press his forehead against the warm glass of the front window.

  Across the street, seven holostatues of liberty stood as tall as the rooftop. Their green bases were as wide as the trunks of the “Instant Trees” that grew a few meters every night. If only he could run through those holostatues of liberty and feel the dense light invade all his brain cells.

  But it was day 123 of this Q—the third quarantine in his lifetime—and he was stuck inside. He might be trapped in the store forever.

  He glanced over his shoulder at his father. Stubble covered the bottom half of his face. He was hunched over his net worth calculator, as if he expected only bad things to happen.

  It wasn’t only their looks that were different. His father was definite and clear about everything in life, while Zert could count on one hand the things he knew for sure.
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  One: He missed his mother.

  Two: He wanted to be a veterinarian when he grew up.

  Three: Snow Blakely was the cutest girl at St. Lulu’s.

  Four: His father was all he had.

  “Dad, I’m sorry I snuck out,” Zert blurted out. “Please, say something.”

  “Maybe if I sell the store,” his father mumbled to himself, “I can raise the money for an attorney. But …” his voice trailed off. Sell the store? Zert glanced at the sign on the window.

  CAGE & SONS

  Ultimate Xtermination Service

  Family Owned and Operated since 2020

  His great-grandfather had started the store. Both he and his father had been born here. It was a part of who they were.

  Felony vandalism. That was the charge against him. No way could his father afford to get him a good lawyer. But his dad would try anyway. Jack Cage, fourth generation owner of Jack’s Ultimate Xtermination Service. Army sergeant during the Antarctica Wars that pitted China and Russia against the old United States. Professional worrier. Miniature wolf breeder. All-around nice guy.

  Turning away from the window, Zert walked over to the corner and bent down next to a row of cages against the wall. Only one was occupied.

  Chub, a miniature wolf the size of a rabbit, got her name from her soft belly that seemed to beg for a tickle. She pressed her white chest against the cage and poked her snout through the bars.

  As a side business, his father used to buy twenty of these designer animals from the factory every month and sell the lot, but his father hadn’t restocked since the Quarantine, and now, Chub was the only one left. She was just supposed to be merchandise, but Zert loved her anyway.

  He uncoupled the magnets and the cage door flew open.

  Chub tore out and ran circles around him.

  “Hi, girl,” Zert said. “I’m happy to see you too.” He paused. “Sit,” he said.

  Chub sat on her haunches with her tail wagging from side to side. Her ears stood tall, and she looked expectantly at him. Her hair was fluffy, and she smelled like the mint soap that he’d washed her with yesterday.

  Miniature wolves had a reputation for being harder to train than dogs, but Zert had never had any trouble. “Good, Chub. At least you love me.” He rubbed her head. “Let’s go feed Okar.”

  As Chub followed at Zert’s heels, the sound of her claws clattering against the floor mingled with the clicks of his father’s net worth calculator.

  Zert passed the shiny boxes of their best-selling products: the Xterminators. The Xterminators were just vacuums on wheels that sucked up roaches and other insect pests—as long as the insects weighed less than a couple of spools of thread. The Xterminators were cheap and the city was overrun with roaches, so they sold well. Or they used to before the Quarantine.

  His father didn’t even look up when Zert walked by.

  His father didn’t understand what it was like to be a prisoner. He had gotten vaccinated in the old days when the vaccine was cheap. He could come and go as he pleased.

  His uncle’s voice floated down from the attic. “Plenty of holo-imagetube coverage for sure … It’s a go, all right. I’m trying to figure out an exit strategy. But I might use doubles …” He paused. “Sure. I’ll let you know. Later.”

  “Going on another adventure?” Zert called up to Uncle Marin. He hadn’t had a chance to talk to his uncle last night. Zert had been too busy pretending to be asleep so he could sneak out.

  “Yeah,” his uncle’s voice boomed down from the attic. “I’m trying to convince your dad that you two ought to join me.”

  “How crunchy would that be?” Zert said. Chub heard the excitement in his voice and howled, a miniature version of a real wolf howl.

  His father looked up and gazed at Zert.

  “I’m sorry, Dad,” Zert moaned. “I understand we don’t have the money to go anywhere.”

  “We need to talk, Zert,” his father said. “But before our appointment with the judge, I’ve got to figure out if we have any options. Give me another hour.” He looked back down at his net worth machine.

  “Yes, sir,” Zert said. The sight of his father working so hard might have made him feel hopeful. If only the bank loans weren’t past due.

  Zert passed the table stacked high with unsold boxes of roach perfume. “Perfume your toilet bowl and watch them drown.” He murmured to Chub, “Quiet,” and began tiptoeing toward another line of animal pens.

  The cage for ypersteroid rats was floor to ceiling and the width of Zert’s arm span. It boasted a brightly colored rat city, a trampoline, a wheel, and a lookout tower. “If you want to sell Xtermination services for rats, you’ve got to make people afraid of what they can do,” his father claimed. Large enough for fifty rats, the cage held only one now: Okar.

  Zert had named Okar after the inventor of dense light, Okar Accomody. His science teacher called Okar Accomody “a visionary.” Even before dense light was used to make the first lifelike hologram, Okar Accomody understood the important role that light-based beings would play in the world.

  A visionary like his namesake, Okar always sensed when Zert was coming to feed him and waited by the door. Today was no different. The rat squatted near the door and peered up at him through the bars of the floor-to-ceiling cage.

  Back when they had fifty ypersteroid rats in the cage and appointments for thirty Xtermination demonstrations a week, Zert had written the sign that now hung on the front of the cage: “Blowout sale. Buy one treatment. Get one free.” It seemed like so long ago, but it was just before this latest quarantine had ruined Jack’s business and put Zert’s life on hold.

  Peeking out from under the worn sign, Okar didn’t look like a rat superstar. He was no bigger than Zert’s hand. But his perfectly formed and toned body could actually do amazing things.

  Zert could recite his father’s spiel by heart. “Ten years ago, a pharmaceutical company began the illegal dumping of chemicals, and these ypersteroid rats began to plague Low City DC. The chemicals they consumed gave them unusual powers.” And so on and so on. But one part of his father’s pitch really scared customers: “These rats will eat anything. Your clothes. Your wiring. Your silver … Your parakeet.”

  Not Okar, though. Okar was sweet.

  Zert took a broom and dustpan off the peg in the wall, stepped inside the rat’s cage, and breathed in the smell of wood chips. He closed the door behind him so that Okar wouldn’t escape.

  Chub pressed her nose against the door to the cage and pawed the floor.

  “I’ll brush you in a minute,” Zert promised as he dropped a handful of pellets into Okar’s blue bowl.

  Okar, a flash of brown fur, raced toward him and stuck his head in his feed.

  Zert began sweeping up the leavings. He opened the lid on the wall and dumped the contents of the dustpan into the g-pipe. Swoosh. It sucked up the trash and transported it to one of the nearby recycling centers. Their g-pipe was a silver tube bracketed to the wall, not like the kind in newer buildings that was embedded into the wall so it couldn’t be seen.

  Okar crawled onto his trampoline and bounced upright. From there he jumped onto the watchtower and hung by his tail from a pole. To show off, he swung back and forth like a pendulum.

  Zert stood on tiptoe, reached up, and rubbed Okar’s nose. “Good night.”

  Okar opened his mouth to reveal his pearly teeth. Zert had no time to pull back before the rat lunged at him. It was like someone had snapped him hard with a fat rubber band. He winced.

  “Ouch!” Zert yelled, backing out and slamming the door of the cage.

  “What’s wrong?” his father called.

  “Okar bit me,” Zert said, looking down at the red blood trickling out of his cut.

  “Really? He’s never bitten anyone before,” his father said.

  Zert stuck his throbbing finger in his mouth. “He just did.”

  “I guess Okar’s in a lousy mood. He’s penned in and all alone,” his father said,
“like someone else I know.”

  Righting himself, Okar glared down at him from the platform circling the pole, as if they weren’t friends but strangers who lived in different worlds.

  Little did Zert know that just one week later, he’d be in a different world. And in that far-off place, rats weren’t anybody’s friend.

  5

  LOCKED UP FOREVER

  “On,” his father ordered the holo-imagetube.

  Theirs was a discount model. It wasn’t disguised as a chandelier like the fancy ones. It was just a black box with tubes dangling from it. “Local justice channel. Interactive mode,” his father told the holo-imagetube.

  Zert sat next to his dad on their purple couch. When his mother bought the couch at the bargain store a long time ago, it had been covered in pink balls of puffy fabric. But over the years, the balls had fallen off and the springs had pushed through the upholstery. Now the couch looked like it had Superpox. Still, he wouldn’t let his father give it away. He could still catch a whiff of her scent. Maybe. Yes, he could. He could smell flowers—that was her name—and pickles—her favorite snack.

  From the ceiling in the dark corner of the room, a beam of light rayed down from the hololaser tube. Zert drummed his fingers against the arm of the couch, waiting for the tube to turn on.

  “Local justice channel. Interactive mode,” his father repeated.

  A man wearing black robes lit up in the corner of the living room. He had straight white hair and bright blue eyes, eyes that inspired trust because their size, shape, and color had been engineered to do that. Zert knew that the judge had not been born with that appearance; his facial features were a favorite design of judges, lawyers, and politicians. Black lights on his forehead flashed his name—”Gorightly”—and a message—”Justice for All.”

  “World Council vs. Bezert Cage. Will the defendant please announce his presence?” Judge Gorightly said in a deep voice.

  Zert stiffened, trying to sit straight and tall like his father. His father elbowed Zert and whispered, “Remember, plead guilty.”