Not Mine

This is another by Isaac. I may have messed up the paragraph structure, it wasn't separated. If something looks wrong, it is, and try to ignore it. I may make this better when I have the time.

Citizen 1010370
"Attention all autonomous units: entering phase four: mandatory compliance. Level One sector sweep. Judgment wavier in effect. Capital prosecution authorized. Shield. Inoculate. Contain. Surgical strike units: cauterize, pacify."

The muffled words of the City Protection Dispatcher and the sirens of the Terror Police helicopters thudded through Richard Armstrong's groggy ears. He didn't want to wake.

"No, five more minutes—No, I really don't want to—Aww,—"
Richard swore reactively as consciousness grabbed him by the head and wrested him from his drunken stupor. With a groan, he swayed to his knees. Bright lights—too bright—swum in his blurry vision. Ah, ah ha, ohh…. Flashes of his surroundings. A tunnel, stretching into infinity. Coldness, wetness, and a million pieces of broken glass. Too much, it was much too much. Richard rolled over and vomited over the side of the small ledge he was on.

As there were no apparent duties for him, as far as he could see, anyways, Richard allowed himself to think and talk freely.

"Wow," he said to the tunnel at large, getting up shakily. "What a doozy."

Staggering to his feet, he looked down and saw an empty bottle in his hand. He dropped it, and wished he hadn't, as it crashed with the echoing sound of a ball-peen hammer striking a church bell. It added to all the glass around him, and Richard slowly began to piece together why he was hung-over. That, at least, was obvious.

"Notice, free-radical terrorist still at large. Extra units injected to assist sanitization." the dispatcher said, echoing dimly from corroded tunnel speakers.

Poor guy don't stand a chance, Richard thought morosely. The Terror Police would find everyone they were looking for, and they would pay in the end. But there was no reason Richard should feel anything. Under the New Constitution, Richard wasn't required to think anything at all. He was a good citizen. But how'd I end up here?

He looked around. From the left to the right, the tunnel stretched on into pinpoints. Sheet metal bolted to the walls had rust smeared down its sides. Fluorescent lights buzzed dimly at irregular intervals. The tunnel looked derelict.

Richard saw a piece of paper on the ground, looking like something ripped from a phone book. Richard picked it up, and recognition flickered dimly in his brain.

"Level two, singularity imprint negative. A note to all citizens: inactivity is conspiracy or coercion. Antiperson Number One must be sterilized. Vaporization vehicles dispatched. Seal arteries. Inoculate, pacify. Ongoing sector sweep. Stand by."

The voice of the dispatcher was female, clinical, and cold as iron. Richard knew on the surface that the voice was his friend, and the friend of all good citizens, but deep down he wasn't so sure. Richard read a bit of the paper he picked up. It looked like a piece of a diary. There shouldn't be any diaries! Writing was illegal! The discovery shocked Richard, but on the inside he felt strange. His conflicting sides were getting worse, and their divergence made him feel nauseous. He didn't even know what the side was.

Richard slumped against the wall of the tunnel. He still didn't know what he was doing here. He was getting the feeling that he may have been kidnapped. But what kidnappers—who were terrorists, as were bank robbers and people who refused to recycle their garbage—would bother to supply him with more than ample drink? His unease grew.

The Dispatcher had started another monologue: "Level Three Sector Sweep, engaged. Attention populace: Antiperson One Physical Attributes: Male, brown optical pigmentation, brown hair—"

That registered a little in Richard's brain, as he smoothed back his russet widow's peak.

"—unshaven, unwashed, clothed in unremarkable, unkept garments, mechanical vision enhancements—"

A growing sense of restlessness came over Richard as he straightened his glasses, which were slanting over his nose.

"—hooked nose, highly athletic. Assumed combat efficiency: level ten. Alert: May be armed and is highly dangerous. Has rejected identification number 1010370, has reassumed born name Richard Armstrong.

Richard jumped a foot into the air, hitting his head on the curvature of the wall. Vertigo taking him thoughts swirled around and around in his head like a tornado. He had a lot to deal with, and he wasn't good at dealing with even little things. And it was all hitting him at once like a twenty-pound sledgehammer. He had kept a diary, he remembered. He had wrote and edited and published an uncensored news pamphlet, he remembered. He had rejected the new totalitarian doctrine from the start of the ghastly, titanic empire. He had run an underground railroad once Metropolis had announced its sovereignty from the United States and flew the standard of the Iron Crown. He had killed the Terror Policemen that came to amputate him from the populace. He had found his way down here, and he had tried to forget, and in failing that, tried to die.
He was not a good citizen. He wasn't even a thought trespasser, which could be forgiven. He was a law breaker, a terrorist.

"No. No, no, no no, no, no NO!" Bending and feeling positively awful, Richard straightened up screamed at the tunnel, shaking and perspiring in the echoes of his shout as five years of indoctrination fought for a commanding place in his mind.

From far away, the Dispatcher was beginning again: "Level Four sector sweep. Attention, all autonomous units: echoreceptor devices detect vocal patterns of the Malignant, sterilization units: engage on sight. Repeat: Permanently amputate Anitperson Armstrong from the Organism Metropolis."

Richard could hear the throbbing engines and alien sirens of the Terror Police Evisceration Engines sounding down the tunnel. Hearing them, his brain, his programming, told him to stay, told him to lie down on the ground to accept capital justice. It would bleed adrenaline from his own body to prevent escape from prosecution. His motor system would collapse, and his brain would shut itself down last, pending escape. His own body would become his enemy.

He ran. He knew that would be the right thing to do. He was fed up and going crazy with his city, the oppression, and the endless voice of the Dispatcher in his head even when the public speakers were off. He had been thrust from the brink of death into a place he couldn't understand, and it wasn't fair. He was being torn apart by his thoughts and memories and chemicals in him that he never even knew about. Right there he made the decision to die in the open air as a free man, and not as a number and citizen propaganda tattooed on the inside of his skull.

He took off.

Luckily, he was a great runner, a superb athlete. Astonishing amounts of alcohol wasn't enough to erase that. He ran past a hundred subsidiary tunnels as the Dispatcher said, "Antiperson Armstrong, compliance is subsumed in beneficial citizen conduct. Comply, submit, comply, submit, comply, submit…."

That voice drove him up the wall. Voices should have emotion; Richard always thought that when he heard it before. Voices should belong to people, people with faces and thoughts and feelings, who's purpose was not to uncover and destroy. Richard felt this very strongly.

He ran on and on. On and on through the endless tunnel. Onwards into the pinprick of light in the distance, pounding the narrow concrete miles that stretched on and on into freedom. He made it to the end, eventually, somehow, amazingly. He turned the bend in the tunnel and burst through into the night air. He was dismayed to find himself inside the city limits. The smokestacks and refineries of Metropolis spat fire into the air behind him, poisoning the green world. In five-foot neon letters the New Constitution was written, suspended above Metropolis by rusting cables:

All Citizens Shall Have Freedom From Thought, Freedom From Speech, Freedom From The Written Word, And Freedom From God.

He hated the words and everything they stood for. Richard felt awful knowing he wouldn't be able to bring them down in his lifetime. He wanted to be on the other side of the fifty-thousand volt fence surrounding the city. He could see a sheep grazing in the distance.

He liked animals, he remembered that. He liked how they were curious, how he could gain their trust by standing still. There were no animals in Metropolis. He heard the Eviscerators behind him, and this time he didn't run. He was exhausted in every way possible to be exhausted, and he had nothing left.

The last thing he saw before they took him was the half moon, hanging over the green hills like a watchful lantern.

"Check him," said the Terror Officer, looking down behind a black facemask from the cockpit of an Eviscerator.

"NW-001—gone."

"Good."

Three Months Later: Citizen 1010370 stood in line for mandatory sustenance rations. No one talked, and no one grew impatient. Citizen 1010370 wore a polite smile, looking five inches to either side and no more. There were no windows in the building, but the citizens didn't care. Citizen 1010370 was to receive extra rations for his good work amputating three terrorist who were trying to emigrate out of Metropolis. His scalp itched were they had operated the bad citizen out of his head. He would not be afflicted by the virus again. A piece of writing paper fluttered by, and Citizen 1010370 felt something, something different—but no, the voice in his head told him. It was probably another piece of ash that escaped the factories. Yes, that had to be it. After all, no one wrote anymore. It was illegal. Good citizens obeyed the law, and Citizen 1010370 was a good citizen. He would obey whatever he was told, because the voice would never make him do anything wrong.