07.29.2002
I was in my cell listening to the television that the guards had playing over by them when I could help but to chuckle. It was illegal of course, but then, I was already locked up so it didn't really matter. They couldn't charge me with yet another crime they weren't going to prosecute me for.
"Shut up in there," my realignment officer, a big hairy Italian, bellowed at me. My teeth shook at his volume and I remembered the way his rug of chest hair would quiver, instantly feeling sick at the thought.
"Sorry," I managed to mumble as I held back my gag reflex. I may not get my day in court, but that didn't mean that I wanted another in the Machine.
The President was on the tele and he was mad. Rightly so perhaps – after all, we were at war. I'd been following the war in my cell via the guards television. I wasn't allowed one of my own, a radio, or a newspaper. We got a daily newsletter that was printed out from the computers connected to the Presidential Press Office that was read by all of us in for realignment and the rest of the patriotic citizens. I longed for a copy of the New York Times, like I used to read before I was detained but considering how hard they were to get in the city after they went underground, I figured it was beyond any reasonable expectation to think that one might be snuck into my cell. According to the daily sheet, Congress was trying to step on the President's authority again. Something about congressional oversight.
"Where do they get off," I said to the guards.
"I told you to shut up," my realignment officer said again.
I slumped back against the wall and fumbled around in my pockets for a cigarette I'd picked up in the mess hall over breakfast. It wasn't the smartest thing in the world to smoke during the day, when the guards were around, since smoking carried with it a penalty of time on the Machine, but my three smokes a day habit was calling and I couldn't tell it to wait.
"A time of war is no time to try and limit the President's authority," the President reiterated on the tube. "Now, when we're discovering more and more operatives on even our own shores, is the time to make sure the Presidential Office has as much power as needed to defend this great country."
I inhaled deeply and let it out with great satisfaction as the President spoke soothingly to me via miles of wire and through a box. It was with those expanded powers that I was nabbed, perhaps rightly so. I knew I'd go onto the FBI's watch list for attending the city college, a known haven for Liberals and Terrorists, and I should have known that I could be held indefinitely for aiding terrorist causes.
"Who's smoking in there," the guard bellowed.
"That'd be me," I answered. If I didn't, the whole row would have had to have been realigned. "Sorry."
"Sorry's not good enough Ponte," my realignment officer said as he approached my cell. "You know what the penalty is."
"Come on," I pleaded. "It's one cigarette, I'll put it out."
"One cigarette means one more bomb the terrorists can hit us with," he said. "You know that as well as I do." He backed away from the cell door and pulled his Billy club from his belt. "Open thirty-five," he said. My door opened. "I guess you haven't had enough time on the machine."
"Seriously, seriously," I said. "It's not like I was reading a copy of the Daily News or anything. It was just one butt."
With his club in hand and raised, he entered my cell and grabbed me by the arm and pulled me out and down the aisle to the machine.
"You're a repeat offender Ponte. There's no slack for repeats."
"But I committed all my crimes in here," I begged, feeling tears well up at the thought of another minute on the machine.
"That's why we keep you here. No point in letting you out if you're just going to do it again," he said. He pushed me up against the wall as he reached for the large stainless steel ring of keys that hung from the front of his belt like an enormous pair of testicles and unlocked the door to the Machine's room.
"All I did was not vote for the guy," I mumbled, my lips pressed against the cold white painted iron of the wall, slurring all the words. My realignment officer flipped me around and slammed me against the wall which I had been kissing moments earlier.
"Yeah," he asked.
"Yeah," I said.
"So you think that in the middle of a war we should give the terrorists an advantage by changing leaders?"
"I just figured six terms was enough for one guy."
He moved close enough to me that I could bite his nose. I refrained. As he spoke, my face began to be covered in a thin layer of his spit. "It just goes to show that you haven't learned anything you little slug. But that's okay," he smiled. "Because we've got a solution for you. You remember your old friend?"
He whipped open the door and pulled me around so I could see the machine. The very sight of it made my legs go limp but he held me up. When I tried to look at the floor, he grabbed my chin and held it so I couldn't help but to look.
"Do you remember," he screamed into my ear.
"Yes," I said, barely managing to get it out. Fear had made my tongue go limp and I prayed he didn't ask me any more questions I wouldn't be able to answer.
"Well, the Machine remembers you Ponte, my boy," he said as he gave me a shove, following me in and slamming the heavy steel door behind him. It was getting to be near dinnertime and I remember being able to hear people in the Machine's room as clearly as if they were next to me and it sapping my appetite. I hoped that I wouldn't be as loud.