Surveilled
By Susan Savage Lee
On the sidewalk of the family housing area on the military base, two kids played catch in the cul-de-sac, their movements unnaturally synchronized, as though staged. A teenager threw a Frisbee to a robotic dog, which leapt into the air, twisting as it caught the toy’s plastic edge. Next door, a sprinkler sprayed the evenly cut grass, making rainbows in the air. Jack Wilburn admired the scene, the early afternoon so tranquil and balanced—almost eerily perfect.
He grinned broadly as he spotted the mailman pulling up in front of the mailbox. Jack spun around with a neat, orderly step, heading outside to see what news had come to him from the Federal Empire.
“Afternoon, Jack,” Norman, the mailman, said as he handed over what looked like a couple of flyers sandwiching one envelope. A new hologram entertainment unit was opening in two days––the bright red flyer exclaimed––on July 4, 2075.
“Afternoon, buddy,” he replied, taking the mail from Norman, who nodded, and then headed around the rest of the cul-de-sac filling mailboxes, his old truck sputtering with each tap of the gas.
Commander Hayes, for the most part, liked antique cars and customs on the base. Too much technology kills, he was always telling Jack, his voice accompanied by a plastic smile and a ramrod-straight spine.
Jack’s attention returned to the kids playing catch, their voices echoing off the sides of the houses. The sprinkler had stopped, and a verbal notification alerted the absent homeowner to this fact. The teenage boy and his robot dog had tired and gone inside. Uncertain what to do with the rest of his day since he didn’t have any training drills, Jack debated sitting outside on the porch. He could watch the afternoon pass lazily by and maybe crack open a beer.
Yet, he remained still, fixed to the spot in front of the mailbox, feeling a little off, as though he were underwater. He tucked the flyer into his back jeans pocket, thinking he might try out that new hologram place if he didn’t end up lounging around. Then he slowly slid his finger underneath the flap of the envelope. It was strange that there hadn’t been a return address or even a Federal Empire postmark on the front, as if the letter had been deposited directly into his mailbox without being officially mailed. He was certain Norm had handed him all the pieces of mail, not just the flyers, though. Besides, Norm wouldn’t break the law like that. Not when there were such stiff penalties for doing so.
Laughing to himself at the apparent failings of his middle-aged memory, he pulled the thick white paper free from the envelope. Sunlight reflected brightly off the blank page, which had one solitary line printed in black: You can tell they aren’t one of us because of the bees.
Jack blinked rapidly, feeling as if the world in front of him had shifted like a camera being adjusted. He shook his head, squeezing his eyes shut, clutching the piece of paper until it became a torn, crumpled mess. When his eyes popped open again, the world returned to its rightful place with a single shift. Yet, now, the street was deserted, and the sun seemed to hang in an entirely different position than before he’d opened the letter.
A moment later, he saw Travis Brooks, another member of his special unit, jogging around the cul-de-sac. Jack remained rooted to the spot, unable to move, though he was beginning to feel an incredible thirst after being outside for so long. How long, he didn’t know. When Travis noticed him, he stopped to talk, jogging in place to keep up his heart rate.
“Hey, buddy! Looks like you’re getting burned,” Travis informed him, beads of sweat covering his forehead. Each word was punctuated by his feet hitting the ground. “How long have you been out here anyway?”
Jack was aware of his tired muscles and the aching burn of his skin, but he couldn’t move. As Travis gave him a deeper, more concerned look, a bee settled on his head, unbothered by the man’s jaunty movements.
Jack’s throat went dry, his words barely a whisper. “You have a bee … there.” He couldn’t move his eyes away from the insect, which remained unnervingly still on Travis’s head. To distract himself from the feeling of the thick air closing in on him, he tucked the crumpled letter into his other jeans pocket.
“A bee? But I’m allergic!” Travis waved his hand around his head, his fingers seemingly passing through the bee’s still body. “Have you been drinking?” he asked, laughing nervously when he couldn’t find the insect.
Jack was no longer paying attention. He had started backing up, trying to put as much space between himself and Travis Brooks as he could. Once inside, he closed all the drapes and sat down on the couch in front of his monitor, the room now cool and dark. Jack could feel the items he’d shoved into his back pockets bulging there, but he didn’t bother to pull them out. He could play Crimewave, he thought, though the idea of that made him shudder. Instead, he turned on the monitor to watch a government-developed sitcom––something that would tell him everything was right with the world. As the first image sprang to life, Jack flinched, pressing his back firmly into the couch as if he’d found himself on a plane that was about to crash.
On the sitcom, a woman teased a man about how he never helped her at home, her hair curled into ringlets, her hands covered by oven mitts––the quintessential woman from the ‘50s––the Federal Empire’s favorite kind. Jack squeezed his eyes shut as tightly as he could, hoping the image of the bees covering the actors’ faces would disappear. But when he slowly opened them again, the lashes gently pulling apart with the movement, the image was still there, leaving a powerful imprint behind of people made faceless by dozens and dozens of bees.
***
Two days later, Travis Brooks sat at his kitchen table reading the newspaper while his wife, Amanda, banged pots and pans behind the kitchen counter, complaining that the chip giving her instructions was no longer working. Travis was secretly glad the system was experiencing a glitch. Maybe Commander Hayes was correct––too much technology kills.
Returning to his search for the story, he eventually found it. Though it wouldn’t make the national news, it had been good enough to appear in Army Lives, a propaganda rag dedicated to describing life on the base to generate more recruits. Rather than portray a less than perfect outcome for a soldier, the writer claimed that Jack had died from natural causes. Travis learned the real story after five minutes in the mess hall after training.
“I can’t believe I just saw him two days ago,” he told Amanda who didn’t bother looking up.
She was organizing the kitchen, claiming to be “exhausted” by the lack of help like many women on the base.
When she still didn’t acknowledge his statement, he raised his voice just a little bit higher. “Honey? Can you stop that for a minute? A man killed himself.”
Amanda reluctantly paused, before placing her hands on her hips.
“Well, plenty of people who have terminal diseases would give anything to be alive and this guy goes and offs himself like an ingrate,” she replied with a tight-lipped mouth. “If we had a hologram entertainment unit on base like everywhere else, then he could’ve blown off steam in there. That’s what normal people do.”
Travis shook his head and gazed down at the newspaper, though he wasn’t reading it anymore. When she got like this––putting her opinions in front of her empathy-–there wasn’t a point in arguing. He had learned that ten years ago when the Federal Empire took over their devices––something Amanda claimed would make their lives “easier”—-though all the effort had accomplished was to eliminate users’ privacy and control.
Still, he found himself wandering through the rest of the day, questioning what would cause someone like Jack Wilburn to kill himself. Out of all the people he knew from the special unit––a group carefully chosen by Commander Hayes to ensure members’ extreme dedication to the Federal Empire––Jack was the kind of guy who had to overachieve in everything, including his masculinity. He was the epitome of the type the Federal Empire advertised on their monitors––quick on his feet, athletic, and unquestioning––something Travis was painfully aware of, given that he secretly questioned most everything. Born in the wrong time, he always thought. When he really focused on the last time he’d spoken with Jack, he couldn’t help but think of the frightened look in the man’s eyes … and the bee. That’s one of the last things Jack ever said to him, and it hadn’t made a lick of sense––not then and not now.
After tiring of the kitchen noise, Travis went to the living room to watch the monitor. Just as he was halfway bent over his recliner, the doorbell rang––a modern, metallic sound that made him wince. With a sigh, he stood up straight, wondering if there was ever a day in which he could be himself without the Federal Empire occupying his time and thoughts. He could’ve gone into accounting or medicine, but no, he’d chosen to pretend to be something he wasn’t. The whole oppressiveness of his world was beginning to give him a migraine.
“Need your signature,” a delivery man said without making eye contact, before shoving a box and a clipboard on top of it toward Travis.
With an even deeper sigh, he signed the slip, knowing that Amanda had probably gone on another shopping spree they couldn’t afford. He didn’t know why she didn’t just go running like he did––or take her own advice and try out the off-base holograms. He understood the unhappiness and the disappointment of reaching a certain age and not quite feeling ready for what it entailed. After all, there still wasn’t a cure for death, though the Federal Empire kept promising one everyday.
He handed the clipboard to the delivery driver who accepted it with a plastic smile. Looking him up and down, Travis guessed the young man was about twenty—his whole life ahead of him.
Something about this fact bothered Travis enough that he thought he might play his favorite game later––the one where you got points for robbing people or killing them. That was almost as wonderful as the pushback from the pistol he used at the shooting range. At least, there was one thing he could do well—hit his target—even if it was in a make-believe world.
“Oh shit, man,” the delivery driver said, turning back around to face Travis with a bashful grin. “I almost forgot. Here’s your mail.”
“Thanks,” Travis said, feeling guilty like he always did every time he disliked another person for dubious reasons. At times, this back and forth between the two polar opposites of himself—helpful neighbor and comrade versus misanthrope—made him feel so exhausted. If he thought hard enough about it, he could see why a person might … He shook off the idea with a visible shrug.
With the box tucked under his left arm, he flipped through the mail, noticing a letter without a postmark or a return address in the contents. Travis hoped it wasn’t one of those marketing schemes where they make a credit card offer look like an official notification, or he was going to be pissed. The Federal Empire had promised an end to those ten years ago, but they still filtered through on occasion.
You can tell they aren’t one of us because of the bees.
Something inside of him went dark, like the lights turned off inside a hologram unit before the fantasy began.
His mind ran through the scenes from his favorite game––Crimewave. They were so real he thought he was actually there, inside of it, playing without consequence, and forgetting that that other world even existed.
***
The General of the Army, Nathaniel “Nightshade” Rose, looked over the reports meticulously compiled by Commander Eli Hayes. With each new development of the experiment, he looked up, his bushy salt-and-pepper eyebrows giving his face a severe look.
“And how many soldiers received the letter?” Rose asked, his chair squealing beneath his robust body. At one time, he had been the epitome of health and fitness, but years of administrative jobs had made him gain weight––something that was frowned upon by the Federal Empire in their quest for perfection, resilience, and a return to more traditional values from the previous century.
“Twenty-five, General,” Hayes replied.
For a moment, Rose thought the man might click his heels with each answer. He seemed wound too tight––just like the commanders before him who struggled with implementing Operation Bridges—a fact which had eventually cost them their jobs.
“And how many hurt themselves or any others?”
“All of them, General!”
“And who was the most destructive, in your opinion?”
“Travis Brooks, General. He killed fifteen people before I was able to contain the situation.” Hayes paused, his eyes focused forward like they always did. “His brother-in-law, Barry, blames it on Crimewave, General.” He snickered to himself. “How right he is. At least, partly anyway.”
General Rose leaned back in his chair, tossing the report onto his heavy mahogany desk. Then he rubbed thoughtfully at the crease between his eyes, considering the experiment’s findings.
“And what are your thoughts on Operation Bridges?” Rose finally asked after a long silence.
When the General had first been approached about conducting such an experiment––something that would lead to severe penalties if the public found out about it––he’d been conflicted. While the project could provide an easy remedy—a figurative bridge, so to speak—to dictatorships and authoritarian regimes that had begun to emerge more and more often across the world, at the same time, homegrown soldiers were being sacrificed without their consent to take care of this problem. The scientists had promised that anyone could be indoctrinated into the program by first watching a special film about famous exotic locations across the world. The scientists behind the experiment had even shortened the video so that it could be more like an ad––displayed on electronic billboards, before movies, and even when streaming shows. Anyone who watched it and then played Crimewave would be triggered by the unique message they later received from a mailed letter. They would then commit acts of violence either against themselves or someone else as a result of the trigger. Over time, the scientists had learned that middle-aged soldiers seemed to be the most susceptible. In theory, Operation Bridges would save money and the lives of the Federal Empire’s future soldiers going forward, while keeping current regimes in check. For now, though, there would be casualties.
“Well, General,” Hayes began, licking his lips with the nervous flicker of his tongue. “If it saves more lives than it kills, how can it be all wrong?”
General Rose didn’t know and had never known the answer to that question. When he leaned forward, he picked up his stamp of approval and pressed it down hard across the top page of Hayes’s report. Someone else would have to investigate morality claims because it wasn’t going to be him––not if he wanted to survive this new world and its expectations.
About the author
Susan is a professor of literature and Spanish at Webster University. She has published articles and reviews but is returning to fiction after a long hiatus. Her preferred genres are literary fiction and literary horror. She says her object is to engage readers from different backgrounds