Black Glass by John Shirley Read Free Book Online

guard, Benson, stood officiously behind him, fumbling with a digital clipboard. “Hold on, I got it here ...”
    The rain on the dim back-street had muted to a drizzle. The asphalt steamed outside the download pen’s exit door. Halos quivered in mist around the streetlights. A desolate palm tree, nearly dead from the erratic weather and herbicide fall-out, seemed to dip its brown head against the rain like a pedestrian without an
umbrella. Wind picked up, carrying a sweet chill and then sighed to a limp, damp breeze.
    Candle took all this in with pleasure, feeling light and only slightly unreal, as Benson read the release disclaimer.
    “Candle, Richard A., Convicted of Software Piracy, case 499 9876098887654443232565666888675453 dash ...” He squinted at the digital clipboard. “... dash ‘B’ ... and further convicted of ... fuck it, let’s skip that ... uhhh ... okay: in accepting this release you hereby indemnify the OverSight Corporation penitentiary authority and its board of directors and stockholders and the State of California against any unforeseen side effects of the Mental Downloading Process, otherwise known as ReMinding, and any further physical responsibility for you on any level. Sign here and here ... Okay, you are remanded to probation on, lemme see–”
    “Benson—tell me again. How much time did I lose?”
    As Candle asked the question he was looking at the miserable palm tree but also watching the car and the van out of the corner of his eyes. Someone sitting in each vehicle; two people blurred by windshield mist in that van. They could be waiting for another prisoner. He could make out just enough to be sure none of them were Danny.
    He hunched deeper into his brown leather flight jacket—an antique, nearly a hundred years old—as Benson shot him a look of irritated authority and went on, “Remanded to probation–”
    “How much fucking time?”
    “Four fucking years!” Benson shot back. “You don’t remember your own fucking sentence?”
    “No. Yes. I don’t know. I thought ...” Candle shrugged. “... Thought it was more. Four doesn’t seem so long. Maybe it was more. Maybe someone cut me a break, somewhere.”
    “Ha, yeah, that’s funny. Four years is what it was. You’re lucky you got out—considering who runs this prison. Here ... sign this.”
    Candle signed the digital clipboard with the attached pen.
    “Oh look,” Benson said, “Candle can sign things without arguing. Here, take this. Got all your info. Now get the fuck out of here.”
    “I’m supposed to get a buy-card.”
    “Oh yeah. Here.”
    The guard handed Candle a generic buy-card. Candle’s touch activated the card’s nano-read window: 97 wd . “A heart-warming ninety-seven world-dollars. I can survive, what, three days on that?”
    “Maybe twenty-four hours if you’re careful. Inflation, since you been down. Count your blessings, asshole, and your money.”
    Candle stuck the card in a shirt pocket and walked into the drizzle. The mist felt good on his face. Four years out of the weather—but it felt like he’d been outside yesterday. He’d known, somehow. On some level, when you were UnMinded, you knew you were captive. Even if the part of you that knows about freedom is asleep—it knows somehow. A sleeping man in jail, he thought, knows he’s in a jail cell even while he’s asleep.
    Still—the last thing he remembered before the UnMinding today—
    “No, you idiot,” he reminded himself in a mutter, “that wasn’t today. That was four years ago.”
    It felt like today. That he was lying down on a table, and someone was saying “this won’t hurt a bit”, as people always do right before they do something bad to you, and then brain sensors were taped to his shaven head ...
    Candle put a hand to his head. They’d let his hair grow out just enough. The thin rain felt good on his face.
    He breathed deep. Mineral smells released by rain; another, smell, too, that he remembered vaguely from