Sunday Stories: "The Controller" By Bark M.

This week, we lined the seventy-eight prisoners up in the old football stadium. More for practical reasons than anything else; there were a lot of relatives involved and we needed to make sure they saw what happened before they, in turn, were sent to the camps. I think it was the first time that it had been used since the sport was banned by my predecessor a few decades back. The drifters that live there now were a nice touch. Added a sense of desperation to the whole event.

From my perch at the top of the official grandstand, I watched them as they were paraded by on the way to the Execution Platform, just like I always do. There were the usual young, skin-tinted, rebellious twenty-somethings. The typical Midwestern nutjobs who still clung to their cars and their outdated, backward belief systems. Unfortunately, this time there was a kid. No more than fourteen. Probably a result of a failed clone job, homeless, doing Pay Drives in the cities, trying to earn a fast dollar. I really hate it when we have to kill a kid, even if he was a D citizen. It’s probably more likely that he was an Unclassified. Never authorized to have been born in the first place, which meant that as far as decent people were concerned, he was already dead.

It’s still hard for me to understand why the “Drivers,” as they’re called, risk it. When I banned all automobiles at the beginning of my term as Controller, I did it for the good of the people. The synthetic gasoline costs were out of control, and the cartels that controlled them were escalating their power daily. I imagine that my ancestors thought that dealing with Venezuela and the Saudis was tough (hence their rush to get the gasoline-from-waste-plastic productionized all those years ago), but the chemical cartels were even worse. Crime was so bad in places like Miami and El Paso that we literally declared those cities “lost.” Even The People’s Army commanders refused to send in troops.

Plus, the price of cars had gotten so high that even driving one made you a target for all sorts of violent crime. When the revolution happened, people had thought that the economic disparity would simply disappear. They failed to remember the lessons of the October Revolution nearly two hundred years before: the money and power never goes to the people. So the “one percent” were dragged from their homes and killed. Their possessions were divided among the mob. And nearly overnight, a new “one percent” was born, but this time it was made up of the openly violent and ruthless. The disparity not only continued to exist, it got worse. Much worse. So the same unrest still existed, it just got redirected toward the new elite, who had proven themselves that violence was an acceptable means of continuing the national conversation. Just by driving a car, you were making yourself nearly twenty times more likely to be a crime victim.

So, yes, at the onset of my term as Appointed Controller of Upper America about ten years ago, I wrote the decree that no automobiles of any type could be bought, sold, manufactured, or driven, except, of course, by authorized law enforcement and government employees. The punishment was, and still is, death. Crude, yes, but in this day of state-supported Atheism and the disappearance of the afterlife myth, it’s a good deterrent. It was widely lauded as a popular move, except in the most distant parts of the Federation where, remarkably, they were still using actual tractors to farm actual food. Crazy, right?

We went door to door and we crushed the cars — right there on the spot! The KrushGroove, designed and built specifically for the purpose of mobile car destruction, was capable of recycling everything from the urban three-wheelers to the Massive People Movers. The Level AA and A citizens were compensated (behind closed doors, of course), but the B, C, and D citizens received nothing except an ID card that allowed them unlimited use of public transportation for the first three months. The C and D citizens supported the move, of course. Most of them didn’t even have a car, unless they had been able to somehow get sponsorship, and they still got the ID card! Naturally, we had to mandate that they all buy a card after that, otherwise the system wouldn’t have able to sustain itself.

But then the Driver Phenomenon started happening. At first it had been AA citizens driving the exotic automobiles they had squirreled away during the Great Crushing, but those quickly fell into disrepair and disappeared from the remaining service roads. Frankly, I had been inclined to ignore it and write it off as wealthy playboys getting their kicks. And, obviously, I’m not really all that excited about executing AAs. It’s tough enough to get them to keep appointing me even if I don’t punish their hobbies with death. No, I had really almost expected that to happen.

The real problem was when we started catching people driving the old cars. I mean really old. The ones that had been cheap, yes, but most importantly, they were uncomplicated and easy to repair. Even the D citizens, with their most basic implants, were able to scan them and fix them. Suddenly, they were seemingly everywhere. The car gangs formed in the bigger cities. That’s when I knew we would have issues. That’s when I knew we had to start making the executions public.

At first, it was really hard. Strictly speaking, we’re in the business of empowering citizens to live their most vibrant lives, free from the twin evils of judgment and hypocrisy, not killing them. I mean, I had gotten used to the post-delivery abortions. We all had. The science supported it. But the first time we put a bag over the head of an eleven-year old girl for driving a truck on one of the communal farms and shot her in front of her family, it was impossible to keep the vid from going viral around the world. We raided every house where we saw the checksum appear over the wire, and they responded by changing it over and over again, doing high-speed stegano. It put me in a very bad light with the other Controllers. Even the Global-C was concerned. I got a very terse and sharp message from her on my retinal screen: “So we’re executing kids now?”

I quickly got my Crisis Team together. I had them put together a fake bio for the terrorist in question. We made her a problem child. Created a false birth certificate that made her the daughter of a sex worker. Gave her a criminal record including speaking out against the state. And it worked. Public opinion turned back in my favor. It’s a good thing I control the news.

The number of executions has seemed to vary with the seasons. Virtually none in the winter months, astronomical in the summer. But seventy-eight in one week? That was a record by nearly twenty. Part of it was due to my latest decree which banned the possession or manufacture of any fuel that could be used in a car, but still. That had only accounted for seven. It worries me. People apparently don’t value their lives as much as I thought.

Regardless of the number, regardless of the age, regardless of the brutal nature of the executions, I am and will continue to be unyielding on this. Cars nearly destroyed our society. If we were able to solve the gun issue, surely we can solve the car issue with the same tools. The secret to ruling the masses has always been this: Take positions that were previously unthinkable and make them mainstream. Use the media. Use the pundits. Take advantage of the fact that the general populace still thinks there are two sides. Shout down the critics. Over time, the ridiculous becomes sane.

But the cries haunt me. The faces of the rebellious children. The desperate mothers clinging to their loved ones before they are hauled off to the work camps to be punished, themselves. Even as I stand at attention, proudly saluting the Federation flag with each gun shot, I have to guard against the tears. The vids are ruthless. Can’t show any weakness. It’s tough.

Thank goodness I still have my Ferrari. Nothing helps chase away the ghosts like a little jaunt around the race track with the other Controllers. Marquez from Lower America has been talking a lot of shit since last month’s track day in Monterrey. We’ll see who’s faster on my home track. Oh, shut it. The difference between a few leaders sprinting around a road course and the unwashed billions carbon-fouling the air is self-evident. Plus, I need this. I need the release. You have no idea how difficult it is, being responsible for all of you. I’m doing this for your own good. You need me, even if you don’t understand why. After all, I am the Controller. The most reliable of narrators. Because even when I lie, I can make it true.