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Pods
It wasn’t her fault. She had been telling him this in reasonable tones for the past half an hour, in a variety of ways, with examples. He just looked at her with his cold eyes and neutral expression, and carried on with his accusations. If she had had the opportunity, she would have presented graphs, tables, pie-charts, and an entire slideshow to prove that it wasn’t her fault. Of course, she knew that everyone said the same thing. Everyone stood in his office after a mission, with Mutant X still on the loose, with powerful New Mutants still not podded, with their support team in the hospital, and said that, yes, the mission had been a disaster, but somehow it just wasn’t their fault. And then he calmly, rationally explained to them that it had been, to the point that some of them nodded and agreed, and went silently to the pods.
Martine Johnson, Genetic Security Agent, second class, was not about to go silently anywhere. Yes, she listened to his patient explanations of her wrongdoing. Yes, she heard him describe in great detail how her specific actions had led to the injuries of her team, the infiltration of Genomex, and had put the entire world in jeopardy. She nodded. She agreed.
“But.” She said. Immediately her hand flew up to her mouth. Had she really said that out loud?
Mason Eckhart’s eyes swiveled up from the report he had been consulting, and looked at her in curiosity. “Yes, Miss Johnson?”
Martine swallowed. “Well, um…”
“Yes, Miss Johnson?” Eckhart asked, a little exasperated.
“Well, it wasn’t my fault. Sir.”
Eckhart sighed and put down the report. “Do you mean to say, Miss Johnson, that your overwhelming ineptitudes are solely my responsibility?”
“Er…”
Eckhart shut the report and flung it onto his desk, hitting the ‘call’ button as he did so. With a look of sheer pity at Martine, he spoke to the guards waiting outside the room.
Martine felt a sudden wave of indignation sweep over her. “Now look here!” She yelled. “You can’t do this! I have rights!” She heard the door of the office swoosh open, heard the booted feet of the guards. Martine gasped as they grabbed her, lifted her off her feet, and marched back outside. “And besides…” She screamed just before the doors closed. “It wasn’t my fault!”
Silence. The glass covering most of the pod is too thick for any noise to pass through. Unless there’s a massive explosion nearby, she doesn’t expect to hear anything ever again. The best she can hope for is that her career-long enemies, Mutant X, finally do destroy Genomex and, through an act of mercy, set all the poddees free. Perhaps they wouldn’t even care if she used to be a GS Agent. Maybe she could claim that she was deliberately inept. She was trying to bring Genomex down from within. Yeah, that might work.
Silence. After the guards had taken her away, there had been noise. She just hadn’t participated much. They had injected her with a sedative and a muscle relaxant almost immediately, probably to stop her distracting the workforce with her pleas. She had heard them discuss football as they shaved her head, and that slimy doctor Harrison checked her life signs. A technician would use them later to customize the pod so she wouldn’t die. Martine had never got a satisfactory answer as to why the GSA didn’t just kill its wayward agents. Perhaps there was hope – perhaps Eckhart would let them go after a period of time, their punishment fulfilled. But she had been at Genomex for three years, and had never heard of a single poddee being released. If the wait had an end, it would be an eternity away.
Silence. As they closed the pod, the air changed, and she felt she was suffocating. She felt she was dying. But, after several minutes, she saws life continuing outside the pod, and she realized she had to still be alive, albeit having to adjust to living life horizontally, in a 7-foot by 4-foot space. Perhaps she should have mentioned that she got claustrophobic.
Silence. There was nothing to do. Even watching life outside the pod was difficult. Work at Genomex was unbelievably mundane, and she couldn’t hear anything of what the workers were talking about, or what the announcements from Eckhart to which they stopped to listen were on. Maybe he was telling everyone of her fate. She suspected there would be a lot of maybes in her life from now on. She couldn’t even see a time display.
After forty-five minutes of podded life, Martine Johnson made a conscious decision. She would go mad.
After an hour, she thought she heard someone singing. She was happy. The plan was obviously working.
Fifteen minutes later, she heard a voice. <Hi there.>
Martine inwardly frowned. She tried to evaluate whether she was insane enough to have an imaginary friend. <Er, hello?> She thought back. The muscle relaxants were now constantly pumped into her system, so actual talking, or doing very much at all, was now impossible.
Silence. Martine was disappointed. She couldn’t even manage to be properly insane. Thousands of people managed to be stark raving mad even when they weren’t incarcerated in a glass coffin with near-total sensory deprivation, so why couldn’t she? Outside the pod, the light-level was changing. A day at Genomex was over, and the night-shift had started. There were even fewer people to observe. Martine felt a rumbling in her stomach. She needed some food, but her thrice-daily cup of coffee would do just as well. She knew she was imagining the hunger – the pods were designed to sustain life, and pump her full of nutrients – but there was something necessary about food and drink other than basic nutrients.
It was at this point that she realized the sheer horror of her situation. She would never have chocolate again.
<Ziggy played guitar… Jamming good with Weird and Billy, and the spiders from mars… he played it left handed…>
<Oh, shut up!> Martine said irritably.
The singing paused, and for a second Martine rebuked herself for succumbing to insanity again, but then it resumed, in a chastened hum.
<That wasn’t very nice of you.> A male voice said clearly in her head. <You’re not the only one who’s bored, you know.>
Martine held her breath. Or she would have, had the pod not forced her to keep breathing steadily. <What did you say?>
<I said that wasn’t very nice.> The voice continued. Martine thought that she might recognize it from somewhere. <We were all going to throw you a welcoming party, but since you’re so rude, we might just let you stew.>
<Uh, no!> Martine said in a sudden panic. She didn’t want to be left alone. <I’m really sorry. I didn’t realize…>
<Hmph.> A female voice entered the conversation. <Well, I guess we can forgive you once. But you’ve been warned!>
<OK, OK.> Martine responded quickly. <But who are you?>
<How dumb are you?> A male voice muttered.
<Shut up, Berkley.> The female told him. <Now, what’s your name, dear?>
<Martine. Martine Johnson.>
<Martine, we are exactly like you. We have all been podded by Eckhart.>
<That asshole!> Berkley muttered.
Martine was puzzled. <Wait, you’re all in pods? How can you talk to me?>
<Eckhart made a big mistake.> The first male told her. <He’s podded too many psionics. Using their powers, we can all communicate – those of us who aren’t totally mad or brain-dead, that is.>
<Wait.> Martine was puzzled. <But I thought mutant powers couldn’t work inside the pods.>
<No, they can work inside the pods. They just can’t be transferred outside. That’s why we can’t just mind-control a technician and get him to release us all.>
<But all the pods are linked together, so we can connect to each other.> The woman said. <It’s really quite cool.>
<OK.> Martine tried to take all of this in. <So what’s the plan? How do we escape?>
Berkley burst out laughing. <You dumb broad. There’s no way out.>
<We’re all locked in here until the pods malfunction and no one notices until it.> The first man explained. <I know it’s hard to take at first, but soon you’ll just get down to a daily schedule as you would in real life. The good thing is that there are so many of us – you’ll never lack conversation.>
<When the kids had killed the man I had to break up the ba-a-and!> The singer had resumed his enthusiastic wailing.
<And you get radio courtesy of Calvin.> The female explained. <He messes up the words sometimes, but at least we get to hear the news.>
<Radio?> Martine was confused.
<Eckhart set up his pod so he could still use his mutant power of super-hearing. It was a kind of punishment. Unfortunately constant exposure to overwhelming sound seems to have driven him insane.> The woman considered this. <Well, more insane.>
<Wait, Calvin? Calvin Porter?> Martine made the connection. <I remember you – you almost brought down Genomex by messing up the deal with that Martes Incident disc. Oh, and Berkley! I remember you!> Martine felt she was on a roll. <I thought you were dead!>
<Yeah right.> Berkley responded. <Takes more than a bit of poison to kill this dog.>
<So who are the rest of you?> Martine asked eagerly. <What did you do to get podded?>
She was met with a frosty silence.
<You know.> The woman said finally. <It’s not really polite to ask that.>
<Oh, go on Kendra.> Berkley urged. <Tell her about the time you groped Eckhart. You know you want to.>
<I did not grope Eckhart, Berkley. Stop spreading malicious rumours.>
<You so did. Everyone talked about it for weeks.>
Martine was astonished. <Kendra MacEvoy? I thought Eckhart demoted you. You did some good work.>
<Apart from the groping.> Berkley sniggered.
<Yeah, well.> Kendra sounded embarrassed. <Being in a pod is one kind of demotion, right?>
<Oh. I’m really sorry.> Martine said.
There was a silence. Martine looked outside of the pod for any activity. It was dark. She knew that somewhere there were technicians working, servicing the computers, and maintaining the pods. Somewhere there were guards. And somewhere in the bowels of Genomex was Eckhart, doing whatever it was that he did at night. Martine imagined him lying somewhere in that plastic skin. She thought about what it would feel like to be released from the pod, to pick up that screwdriver she could see lying on the floor at the bottom of her pod, and sneak into his living quarters. She could look into his cold eyes, and tear his skin apart. He would know what she felt like right now, being half alive, with no hope and no future. Perhaps, Martine thought as she tore herself away from demonic thoughts, he already did.
<What’s your name?> Martine asked the first male who had spoken to her.
He didn’t answer.
Kendra chuckled. <He’s a secretive one, our fearless leader.>
<Is he a GS Agent?> Martine asked. She couldn’t remember ever hearing his voice before.
<Who knows?> Kendra responded. <I have no idea who he is. But he’s powerful. He’s one of the reasons we can all talk to each other.>
<Yes.> The first man said forcefully. <And I can take away that privilege as well, so just watch your mouth, Kendra.>
Berkley sniggered. <Just call him Number One.>
<Do you know who he is, Berkley?>
<No.> For the first time, Berkley sounded serious. <And I don’t want to, either.>
<So.> Martine asked. <What do you do for fun around here?>
There was a brief silence.
<Well, it’s been fun, kids, but I have work to do. See you later.> Number One fell silent.
<What does he mean by ‘work’?> Martine asked, puzzled.
<Don’t ask.> Kendra replied. <I’m going to try and meditate. See you tomorrow.>
Martine wondered what to do, and had resigned herself to trying to remember her own meditation classes from years ago, or possibly her more recent torture-resisting classes, when Berkley piped up.
<I spy with my little eye something beginning with P.>
Martine supposed that this was about the extent of the canine feral’s intellect, but decided that she had nothing better to do than play along. After several hours of this, punctuated with discussions about how much he hated Mutant X, Eckhart, and some woman called Danielle Hartman who Martine had never heard of, she sank into a kind of waking sleep. In this sleep, she dreamed of sticking pins into Jesse Kilmartin, of Eckhart offering her some pizza, and of Berkley playing fetch. She was almost relieved to wake up.
<Martine! Martine!> Kendra’s psionic shouts were almost like a physical assault. Martine knew that Kendra had no psionic powers of her own, but that she must be using the ‘open channels’ of other psionic mutants.
<What?> Martine asked irritably. She took a look outside her pod. It was now daylight (or at least, the daytime lights were on), but there was a curious lack of activity.
<He’s gone!> Berkley yelped. <Number One’s gone!>
<Gone where?> Martine still wasn’t entirely awake. She needed that coffee more than ever.
<He’s not in a pod.> Kendra reported. <The psionics can’t detect him. He must have been…>
<Released!> Berkley crowed. <They’re letting us out!>
<Really?> Martine felt a glimmer of hope.
<No, not really.> Kendra replied. <Shut your mouth, Berkley. You know that Number One was a special case. They probably de-podded him just to finally get rid of him.>
<To kill him?> Martine asked with a flicker of panic.
<Maybe.> Kendra said.
The poddees were in a state of terror. Even Calvin had stopped singing, and was glumly reporting the news broadcast in a monotone. No mention of anything happening at Genomex, of course, but why would there be anything about it on the national news? The GSA was more secretive than the Pentagon. After a while, even Calvin stopped.
Martine didn’t know what to think. Was death coming sooner than she had thought? Was this a good thing? Was it better to be executed than stuck in a pod forever? Had Mutant X taken over the facility? Where was everyone? And, more importantly, where was Eckhart?
She was pondering these thoughts when, suddenly, a group of people came into view. She saw Harrison immediately, and wondered if he was there to take care of them when they were depodded, or to administer lethal doses. Then she saw Eckhart – but he was not his normal self. He was being held by both arms by unfamiliar people, and was visibly shrunk into himself, trying to get away from the human contact. What was happening?
With them was another unfamiliar man – tall and handsome, with dark hair rolling onto his shoulders. His manner was confident, his smile charming. Martine wondered who he was. His gaze drifted over to her pod, and he walked a few steps away from the group.
<Ah, my friends.> Martine heard the voice of Number One again. <How nice to finally see you all.>
<What the hell?> Kendra asked.
<It’s Number One!> Berkley said excitedly. <He’s free!>
<Indeed.> Number One replied. <And I will free all the mutants imprisoned here. Even some of the GS Agents.>
Martine was excited. Finally, hope!
<But,> Number One resumed. <A few must stay. I have a final job for all of you.>
<What are you talking about?> Kendra demanded. <We’re in pods. We can’t do anything! Let us go at once!>
Number One smiled, and returned to the small group assembled by one of the empty pods. He told his guards to release Eckhart, and then somehow forced the GSA chief into the pod, using telekinesis.
<Oh man oh man oh man.> Berkley muttered, excited beyond belief.
Number One left Harrison to complete the closing of the pod, and looked once again at Martine. <I said you have a final job. I know that many of you have for years wished you could get your hands on Mason Eckhart, and punish him for what he has done to you. I’m giving you this opportunity. And one day, my brothers, we shall all rule the world together.>
<But…> Kendra stuttered. Her dreams of freedom were shattered.
Number One left, followed by Harrison and his minions.
Martine didn’t know what to think. What would they all do now? Why hadn’t Number One just killed Eckhart? Was there any hope of escape? As she thought, she caught a thread of unfamiliar thoughts on the psionic waveband the poddees shared. She found fear, and anger, and…
<Hello Mr. Eckhart.> Martine said sweetly. <Remember me?>
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