Rachel & the Captain

Rachel couldn’t move voluntarily because every muscle in her body was so tense that she shook.

“Have you been drinking tonight, ma’am? Do you have any weapons? Is there anything illegal in here that you want to tell us about before we find it? Do you have pencils or paper in the apartment?”

The Captain and the Soldier rifled through or touched every item that Rachel owned. It wasn’t much. Life was cheap in the walled city, but plastic was expensive. There were only two punishments for even the smallest crimes; fine or death.

“Do you know why we’re here, ma’am? Is there anything you want to say in your defense?”

The people who have passed say that in your next life you don’t remember the way you died only the way you lived. They say it’s impossible to form a memory of your last moment. 

While others say that after being uploaded into a new body from an impression of yourself taken on your last birthday or whenever, the echoes of a brutal death bleed through like unclaimed trauma, a karmic palimpsest of powerful emotion. 

Rachel’s birthday was several months ago; in June and she was not ready to find out which side was right.

“It was just water!” She yelled toward her living room. “I only wanted a drink of water!”

“Keep your hands where I can see them, ma’am.”

In her living room there was a Tech who had pulled her living room cam from a hole in the wall, though it was still attached by three thin cables—like veins pulled from a chest.

“You live here by yourself?” the Officer asked.

Rachel didn’t respond.

“Listen, this will go a lot easier for you if you cooperate.”

The other two people in Rachel’s living room were police. A Captain and a Soldier. A Judge and an Executioner. A Comedian and a Straight man. Laurel and Hardy. Penn and Teller. Jay and Silent Bob.

The Captain, or Officer, asked the questions. The Soldiers were called Grunts ironically enough because they made very little sound. Both men treated her things like she would not be around much longer to enjoy them.

“This is my partner. He doesn’t say much,” the Officer told her.

“Does he have to touch everything?”

“I ask the questions. You answer them.”

“I disobeyed an order to remain in my bedroom, and that’s why you’re here.”

“You don’t remember me do you?”

“Should I?”

“No,” he said abruptly. “I’m just doing my job. If you Citizens would learn to follow rules, there would be no need for me… for us.”

Rachel47, the forty-seventh of her line, was not in a hurry to become forty-eight. She was not keen on losing the last four months of her memory, and she was not looking forward to a brutal death scene, echo or no.

The Citizens of the walled city were virtually immortal women but suffering and the memories of suffering might also be forever, stored like generational trauma in the dna.

“You make it sound like I’ve done something like this before. I’m a good girl.”

“That’s an oxymoron.”

“What?”

“Good girl.”

“Word of the day calendar?”

“Dictionary.”

“Nothing can stop a man with a dictionary. Look up the word misogynist while you’re there.”

There were only about eighty of the Captain class and two thousand Soldiers in the walled city. They were outnumbered by the Citizens ten thousand to one.

Each Soldier was identical, grown from a single template. And all of the Officers looked the same as well, but they had personalities. It was believed they may have been biologically accurate as well but that was probably a rumor built from erotic fan fiction.

“Hey, rookie. This guy thinks he’s a comedian. What do you say to that?”

The Soldier grunted. The Grunt soldiered. He was done tossing her bedroom, kitchen and living room. He stood behind his Captain at attention. 

“Not the conversationalist,” Rachel commented.

The Soldier in black riot gear was finished tossing Rachel’s apartment. He had turned over every piece of furniture Rachel owned and emptied her freezer onto the floor. He put nothing back.

The Officer in a black uniform motioned to his partner to join him in the bedroom.

“Are you done?” Rachel asked. “Are you pleased with yourself? Are you pleased with how you’ve destroyed my things?”

“You have the right to remain silent,” the Officer told her, and it sounded like a threat.

If Rachel was going to survive this encounter, she would have to appeal to the Officer’s humanity. Which would only work if he were human and not just a biological machine quoting police procedurals and old movies that were used to reprogram him for his new job.

“I’m getting too old for this shit,” the Officer muttered.

“You’re wrong,” Rachel said. “I think there are good people left… in the city.” Rachel was thinking of her friend Caroline when she spoke about good people but gun to her head she couldn’t think of another.

“Good people follow the rules. You know who doesn’t follow the rules?” the Officer said, answering his own question. “People.”

The Captains were heroic, driven and focused. As long as they were given an adversary or a problem to solve, they would give it one hundred percent of their attention until they had finished or it had finished them.

Other features of the Officer class were compulsion, ego and libido. When they didn’t have a problem to solve or a war to fight, they were prone to compulsive self-love. Biologically accurate or not these men were in love with their reflection.

“You’re lucky you’re cute because you’re a bigot.” Rachel told him.

Every Rachel iteration has wondered, at one point, how the previous ones died. Rachel was a rebel in every one of her lives. Rachel’s ten through forty had all been killed in earlier rebellions against the Corporate Authority.

Rachel forty-one was found suffocated in her bed. It was thought to be a crime of passion by her partner. A murder-suicide. Rachel and Julia died side by side.

Both came back to life, but they didn’t come back together. It could have been sweet. An eternity spent killing each other. Obsession and its victim. Isn’t that romantic? Or do some divorces last beyond the bardo?

“Let me do my job, ma’am. I’m here to serve you. Help me help you. Is there any reason why this iteration of you cannot follow orders?”

Rachel number forty-seven, the woman who feared for her life, stood up on the grass of her bedroom floor and began to cry into her hands. It was a performance.

Rachel cried and as soon as she teared up, the Officer became noticeably rattled. It was a good performance.

“I don’t want to die,” she said.

“This isn’t a capital offense, ma’am.”

“Please. My name is Rachel,” she offered. “Stop calling me ma’am. It’s disgusting. You’re probably older than me for god’s sake.”

“Rachel,” he agreed. “And you can call me Cap.”

“I didn’t know you guys had names,” she said, looking up into his eyes. 

Someone in her gaming circle had told her to use flattery on police. She said the Officers would flip like kittens getting their bellies rubbed. 

Rachel was instantly more at ease now that capital crime stuff was off the table. She figured she’d just get a bill for their time.

“We’ve been trying to come up with ways to…” He tried to think of the right word. “Differentiate ourselves. I thought maybe I’d call myself Cap. What do you think, Rachel?”

“But aren’t you all Captains?”

“Yeah,” he said disappointingly. “Maybe I didn’t think it all the way through.”

It was surprising to Rachel how charming the Officers were, considering how quickly they could order a woman to be put to death, a sentence carried out so mercilessly by their Soldier counterparts who could not be reasoned with.

“I like it.” Rachel smiled at him. They were pleasant-looking enough, the Officers. They had facial symmetry and nice features with curly black hair and deep tans. It was not hard to flirt with them.

“You have a nice smile, ma’am,” he said thinking, I will win this flirting. He was committed to win. “When you’re not breaking the law,” he added. He smiled at her for exactly three full seconds before saying, “I’m going to have to bill you. I really don’t want to, but it’s my job.”

Bill. He said bill. And that was a better word than kill.

“That’s bullshit,” Rachel argued. “You’re an intelligent, good-looking…” She searched for a word. Clone was too scientific. Officer was too formal. And dog was insulting. “Captain,” she decided. “You’re a good-looking Captain. And you don’t have to be a slave to your job. You can do whatever you want.”

“I’m gonna let you off with a warning. Consider yourself lucky. I don’t wanna see your face again. If you step out of line, I’m gonna take you down.”

“Yes. I understand.”

There was a theory that Citizens were more than their memories. That they were consciousness. And that maybe the memory upload did not upload the same consciousness into the same body. Perhaps the consciousness traveled from dead body to new body on its own. And maybe sometimes it got lost on the way.

“See. You’re just trying to get out of a ticket,” he explained her motivations to her like she was transparent. “You don’t really like me. You’re still afraid of me.”

“No, no, no, Cap, I think you’re very good-looking. That’s not a lie. You know that.”

“I… um… I…” he stammered. He was blushing uncontrollably.

The first rule of combat was to know your own weaknesses. To Officers, competition was everything. It was what they were made for. Losing annoyed him. He did not like it. He became suddenly serious and professional as he read the charges to her.

“Failure to Obey an Order, Trespassing on a Government Work Site…”

“My living room,” she chided.

“Your living room…” he continued. “Twice,” he reported. “This is going to cost you twenty-four hours on the bike.”

“Twenty-four hours? You’ve got to be kidding.” She pleaded. “I don’t have any credits saved. It’ll take me a month to save up that much time.”

Rachel spent eight hours on the bike purely to pay for the privilege of living in the capital complex. Any extra minutes went to buying food, lemon water, butter cake, block cheeses, and strawberry wine.

“Then the handbook recommends the death penalty, ma’am. I don’t know what to tell you.”

“So there’s no middle ground? And we’re back to ma’am? Is this because of the flirting?” She asked. “I’m sorry. I really do find you attractive but if it’s making you uncomfortable…”

“No. It’s worse than that.” He looked into her green eyes for some clue to her feelings. “I like you too… It’s just because I like you and I don’t trust my judgment around you.” He looked away. “That…”

She finished his thought for him. “That… you decided to overcharge me because you…” She continued wishfully. “Wanted to cancel out your desire to not charge me at all.” She tried to get him to smile again, with a smile of her own.

“You are way too good at this for me,” he remarked.

“But seriously, Captain, I don’t have twenty-four hours. I have about forty-five minutes saved up, and I don’t want to spend the next month working off this bill.” She looked down. “I’d rather you just killed me,” she joked. “At least that way I get to keep my forty-five minutes when I wake up in three days.”

She was lying. She looked up at him and noticed he didn’t get the joke. “Oh my God. I’m just kidding,” she insisted. “I don’t want to lose recent memory. I just finished a good book. Let me save my progress first. I don’t want to have to read it again.”

“But if it was good?”

“It wasn’t that good.”

“Sixteen hours,” he offered, but she wasn’t finished.

“And I don’t want to forget meeting you either,” she said sheepishly. “Cap?”

“Okay, eight hours,” he insisted. “But you drive a hard bargain.”

“Yeah, yeah. Tell your story to the judge. I think you can do better.”

Rachel walked across the grass and approached the Officer slowly. She kissed him softly on the cheek and then gently on the lips.

“I can’t go under four hours, Rachel,” he said. “I have a boss.”

At least we were back to Rachel, she thought.

“I have to justify the time and pay for the energy for both me and my silent partner here.” He laughed. “Not even if you offered me a blow-job.” He beamed. He didn’t know what the word meant. Not really. And it became clear to Rachel that he was toying with her.

“You’re fucking with me,” she said.

The Captain grabbed the Citizen’s portable off her dresser, touched his badge to the screen, tapped it four times, and handed it to her. 

It read: Citizen charged Two Hours for a Failure to Comply.

“Yes,” he admitted without sounding smug. “I was.” He was happy to resolve the situation and leave her alive. He wanted her to remember him this time. He wanted her to think he was good at his job. 

The Tech in the front room replaced the cam and finished up by collecting her tools. It was Bio-tech and it was illegal to touch or tamper with. It was living technology and it did not like it. 

Then the Tech shouted something unintelligible that sounded like “We go” or “Hey yo” or something, toward the two clones and walked out of the apartment without having once made eye contact with the resident.

Cap motioned to the Soldier, who hadn’t moved or made a sound the entire time he stood at attention. When he turned to leave, Rachel noticed for the first time that the Grunt had been gripping the handle of his baton behind his back, waiting for a kill order that never came.

He was so calm. Rachel realized that had he beaten her to death, he would have remained… calm. He would have calmly killed her. The Captain turned to leave with the Soldier on his heels.

“You guys were nice,” Rachel called after him sarcastically. “You’re not like dogs at all. More like puppies.” She practically giggled as she went to shut the door behind them.

“Yes, ma’am,” the Captain said. “But please don’t tell anyone. The only respect we get in this town is from fear. If you tell someone, we’ll have to come back and kill you.”

Rachel froze. The smile disappeared from her face. He said that so calmly it gave her chills.

“Now, I’m the one who’s kidding,” Cap joked, relieving tension.

Rachel turned beet red with a smile so wide it almost hurt. She really liked this clone. A clone? A man. She really liked this man. She really liked this man-clone. But no one needed to know, especially not him.

Cap was the last to step outside. He gave his badge a tap with two fingers, and Rachel’s cams came back online. Her living room terminal came to life and she was caught up in the static once again. She followed the crew on her terminal making sure they kept walking away. 

She was still amped from all the flirting and the danger, and wanted a little more to be honest. She suddenly realized how the others had died. She was addicted to danger, and she was not finished.

Cap paused for a moment, turned to the camera down the hall, knowing Rachel was watching. He leaned in close, and whispered two words into it. They were his two favorite words. 

He said, “I win.”

Rachel47 rode on her bike for the next two hours to work off the charges. The sexual charge in her body and the bill for her policing. She was still a little drunk off the flirting and the strawberry wine. She was grinning like a schoolgirl because she was happy, but her fear never subsided. She had never stopped shaking. ||