Chapter One
Snootbook
The Social Mouse
Snootbook followed
the underground electrical wires that led to the Z-9.
Once there, he found the air vents open
enough to squeeze his tiny body through, get around the protective shield, and
dip beneath the space underneath the steel plates.
He was then face-to-face with it: The
big and nasty Z-9.
He sniffed around at first; didn’t
like its looks. Didn’t look anything like the pretty computer he loved at
BestBuy. To Snootbook, this hunk of steel-brain looked not only unfriendly, but
downright mean. So Snootbook crawled into the wired mesh next to the black
storage unit and wiggled himself up onto the motherboard.
* * *
Edward T. Boswick stared at the Daily News.
Not
worth a buck, Edward thought, moving his lips in line with his thought processes. He
wondered why he kept buying the worthless piece of tree. That’s what Edward
called it, a worthless piece of cut up tree.
They should have let the tree alone, standing there in the forest at the
Pennsylvania Grand Canyon, not hurtin’ nobody.
Edward marveled at the thought
processes he got at 3:53 in the morning, Philadelphia Standard Time. Except for
one corner lamp at the back of his office, it was dark and quiet. Office? he thought, this ain’t no office. This
a tiny room where I stay when I’m not eyeballing the guests. Sure, the fancy
computer room in the facility’s main security complex is maintained 24-7 by
guards who watch the outside building and the halls and cell rooms via 9
monitors — backed up by a special power system if electricity fails. But real security
was up to human inspection, every thirty five minutes.
Edward T. Boswick inspection.
On the night shift, Edward makes the
rounds in wing B at the Oxford Juvenile Correctional Facility in the Northeast,
a stone’s throw off the boulevard, a mile or so from his North Philadelphia
home. The ‘rounds’ consist of a walk-through checking each cell room to make
sure no one escaped, hung himself, or was filing away at the steel door latches
in preparation for Edward’s arrival. Once the latches were filed down, the door
could be opened and Edward could be hit on the head and a guest could escape
down the corridor — that is if the guest was invisible and not highlighted on the 9 monitors
downstairs in the security center, thus gaining superstar status on the Dumb Bunny Reality Show.
Edward has had no invisible guests
lately.
But let’s just say there was a flash
of lightning and the security monitors had a few seconds black-out, preventing
the guards in the security center to miss the Dumb Bunny Reality Show. Not very likely, but let’s pretend. When
Edward failed to return to his office within the eleven minute round-time and
punch the locked mechanism signifying he was back, all-bedlam would break loose.
Police would be converging on the juvenile center like the MOVE folks were
commencing to shoot MOVE II, The Sequel.
Although surely no bombs would be dropped on the roof of the Oxford Juvenile
Correctional Facility, thus cheating Edward T. Boswick out of his pension and
social security income that he’d work for all these years.
That’s how much time Edward got to
make his rounds, eleven minutes. It was barely enough considering that Edward
was 58 years old with arthritis in both hips and one knee and moved about as
fast as a SEPTA bus on Chestnut Street in holiday season rush hour; which are
two more topics that Edward addressed in his ‘thought processes:’ Rush hour, as
in, why the heck they called it rush hour
when it’s exactly the opposite. Should call it slow hour. And, holiday
season? What they really mean is spending
season. Spending season when you
ain’t got nothin’ to spend.
*
* *
Packer Richardson yawned and
stretched out his feet. He and his partner Toshan Higbee were nearly on their
way to the 47 bus that took them back home to North Philly. They lived four
blocks apart. When Toshan was out of work, it was Packer, who told his high
school buddy to apply at the juvenile facility.
“Got to work your way up, Toshan,”
Packer, employed at the facility for the past 15 years, told his buddy. Toshan
did work his way up and soon got the night shift alongside Packer in the
security room eyeballing the guests. After Toshan went through a six month
training program he became proficient in manipulating and analyzing the nine
monitors on the wall that ‘scoped’ the hallways and rooms of the juvenile center. Coffee and a good smoke — at lease for Toshan
— kept them ‘sane’ during the long, dark hours of the shift.
“Got to go have a smoke, Packer,”
Toshan announced. “You gonna watch things?”
“I keep telling you Tosh,” Parker
said, “them things gonna kill you some day, you know what I’m sayin’?”
Toshan got up and got his butts out
of the drawer where the nighttime security guards keep personal stuff and stuck
a smoke in his shirt pocket, then put the package back into the drawer and
closed it. He didn’t answer the ‘kill
you lecture’ he gets each and every time he goes out for a butt. Just ignores
it. Sometimes if Tosh is in a bad mood and gets the lecture, he’ll strike back.
“That right, Pack?” he’ll say, “you
mama and papa both died of cancer, correct me if I’m wrong.”
“You know you ain’t wrong, now don’t
you,” Parker would say.
“So how come they pushin’ up daises
and they never smoked a day in their lives, buddy? Maybe they should have been
puffin’ once in a while. Maybe they still be around today.”
If Packer ignored him, Tosh went for
the kill.
“Say listen, Pack, what you got the
long nail on your little finger, for?”
Pack sat up in his chair. “What you
mean?
“Look, that long nail on your little
finger, don’t hide it, you know what I’m talkin’ bout.”
“Openin’ stuff, you know,” Pack
said, “like mail and stuff.”
“Now you an me both know that’s bull
crap, Pack, that ain’t why you got that long nail,” Toshan would counter.
Packer wouldn’t answer.
“You got that nail to pick your
nose, now don’t you.”
Packer laughed and shook his head.
“You know that’s why you got it, you
got it to pick your nose, don’t you? I might go outside for a smoke, but I
ain’t picking my nose.”
Packer was still laughing, “Go, bird
brain, go and out kill yourself, go on, I be watching things here.”
It goes around and around on then
night shift. Little conversations about stuff. But on this morning — things weren't normal.
“Hey, wait, you see that?” Packer
said to his co-worker and friend.
“See what?” Toshan said.
“The monitors, they went black for a
second and then came back on.”
“That ain’t stoppin’ me from havin’
my smoke,” Toshan said. “Good try.”
“Ain’t about that,” Packer said,
“why’d those screens go black then come back on? Never seen that before…never.”
“Don’t know,” Tosh replied, “maybe someone foolin’
round with things at the round house. Maybe the electrical current gulped or
something. How do I know? Well, ole buddy, you know what they say, first time
for everything. I’ll be back in five.”
As Tosh left for his outside smoke,
Packer fooled with the monitors, turning the focusing knob and improving the
contrast on each one.
Darn, he thought, never saw that happen if 15 years.
* * *
The
security room at the juvenile facility was a high-tech system of a unified security platform, one that integrates cameras,
devices, sensors, and alarms into one manageable command structure. The system,
known as the powerful Z-9, relies on the main ‘activator computer’ hidden at
the base of the security room’s foundation and encased in steel, thus
preventing damage or shut-down from a bomb or fire. The Z-9 advertising
information boosts that the system is made for law enforcement officials and it
is “human proof.” In other words, it can’t be taken-down, hacked-into, or over
ridden, common industry terms meaning the Z-9 will survive just about anything.
Anything, that is, but a mouse. A
mouse with a computer virus.
*
* *
Rats and mice are related to a
common ancestor that lived millions of years ago. The rat, of course, is
larger, but is similar in appearance, with a snoot-like-looking face and beady
eyes. But in many ways, mice are able to get into places that rats cannot
because mice are smaller. Like the mouse that lived inside the wall next to the
computers at BestBuy on the boulevard. This mouse, called Snootbook, came out
at night after the store closed to tinker with the computers. Snootbook didn’t
know about computers, but he liked to move the computer mouse to see the colors
change on the monitor. Snootbook fell in love with the computer mouse. At night
he would sneak up to the one computer the store-humans left on by mistake — it
being on a separate circuit. He’d push
the computer mouse with his nose and watch the computer screen light up with
sparking colors.
Snootbook’s heart thumped with joy.
Once, the technicians at BestBuy
left the back of a partially repaired computer open, and Snootbook squeezed
inside it to nose around. He climbed over the motherboard and up over the video
and sound cards. Stretching his body out over the RAM, he managed to pull
himself up over the hard disk drive; he sniffed around the CD-ROM. He spent half
the night inside the computer trying to figure out what made the pretty colors.
Finally, he crawled back out.
The next day, in fact, for the next
several weeks, Snootbook didn’t feel well. He was sluggish and wasn’t playful.
There are no doctors in the rodent world, but if there were, Snootbook might
have been diagnosed as having a virus. A computer virus.
Soon after, Snootbook
became a social mouse, and loved forming mice networks. He’d have meetings in
the basement at BestBuy and send the mice out into the Northeast to form other
mice networks. The networks provided all the mice with information about what
cats were in the area and identified homes with hidden rat poison behind the
stove and in the drain lines of the basement. In fact, one mouse could tell
another mouse about something, anything, and through the network, that
information would get passed around to all the mice.
Yes, Snootbook was some kind of
special mouse. He didn’t know why he became a social mouse, he just loved doing
it. He just loved getting friendly with as many mice as he could. Eventually
Snootbook had over two thousand mouse friends, all around Philadelphia.
Snootbook’s reputation as a social mouse grew so large that it caught the
attention of Buster the Philly rat, who actually paid a visit to Snootbook at
BestBuy, which, in mice and rat ways, was highly unusual. Snootbook wanted to
give Buster a tour of the computer, but Buster was too big to get inside. Plus,
Buster, being a senior rat, didn’t want much to do with computers. Later, when
Buster needed this one favor from Snootbook, he called on the mouse to come to
the Oxford Correctional Facility in the Northeast and bring his friends, all
two thousand of them.
The mice came down both sides of the
boulevard hidden in darkness at a time when most humans were asleep. They
entered the correctional facility from every which direction, into plumbing
ducts, doorway holes, rain spouts, underground sewer drains, and broken
bathroom water pipes—the mice from the diaper factory were sent through the sewage lines---through broken windows, and many got into the duct work and
piping of the building. They lined up along the network wires that send signals
from the main computer room at police headquarters at 8th and Race,
to the Oxford correctional facility.
And then
they waited for SnootBook to arrive. At
3:33 AM, Snootbook entered the correctional facility through a broken connector
box on the north wall and made his way quickly into a space below the AMP boxes
that control the power for the 9 monitors in the security room — on which
guards watch the hallways and the cells that held 223 sleeping youthful
offenders.
Chapter Two
‘Dead Fore
You Hit the Ground’
It didn’t take
Toshan Higbee long to go out through the special security door, the one he
opened by punching in a code only he and his mate Packer Richardson knew. He
stepped out into the cool night air, took a deep breath, and reached for the
Salem in his shirt pocket, then felt for the Bic lighter in his pants. With a
quick snap of his thumb, Toshan lit the Salem, sucked in the smoke, then
breathed it out into the night air in a long, funneled trail of smoke, adding
to the already polluted Philadelphia air.
Damn
I needed that. Mmmm, mmm. Nothing like a good smoke. Should have brought some
Pepsi with me to wash it down, he though.
Damn, forgot the Pepsi. Ain’t that Packer too much? Gonna get cancer. Nobody
know what causes cancer. Could be anything. Could be the air we is breathing in
from the cars and stuff. But they got to pick on smokin’ cause they don’t know.
Could be stuff we eat, or drink. Yea, maybe it’s the water all along and they
be pickin’ on smoking’. That figures…
He took another deep drag and lifted
his chin up and blew out the smoke again, this time in a more narrowly-funneled
puff, straight up and out into the glare of the bright outside lights. It gave
Toshan comfort to watch the grey-white smoke disperse into the glare of those
lights, so bright that if any of the guests did get out, which Toshan knew was
impossible, they’d be lit up like…but he never finished his thought.
Toshan froze. He turned, throwing the butt away from him, like it was doused in some kind of explosive liquid and at any minute it would…. The butt hit the ground about ten feet away and it shot sparks out that Toshan never noticed. He looked up, panic on his face; he looked around and over his right shoulder. His mind was telling him what he saw, but he couldn’t comprehend. He turned his body toward the security door that he just came through. He didn’t speak it, or shout it, but it exploded out in his mind.
Toshan froze. He turned, throwing the butt away from him, like it was doused in some kind of explosive liquid and at any minute it would…. The butt hit the ground about ten feet away and it shot sparks out that Toshan never noticed. He looked up, panic on his face; he looked around and over his right shoulder. His mind was telling him what he saw, but he couldn’t comprehend. He turned his body toward the security door that he just came through. He didn’t speak it, or shout it, but it exploded out in his mind.
“What
the…the blasted outside lights are out.”
*
* *
Eleven minutes.
Edward T. Boswick had eleven minutes
to make a round checking on the guests on his corridor, moving down the 100
foot hallway fast as a SEPTA bus on Chestnut Street at slow hour in spending
season. At each cell door, he would gaze through the square opening about chest
high, thick with iron mesh, but separated enough for Edward to eyeball the room
and check the guest; then take his little key and push it into the weird round
slot in the door, recording the time and day in the juvenile center’s computer
system, backed up by the system at police headquarters. It also kept the alarm
in Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey’s bedroom from sounding off and
alerting the Commish that a guest was loose.
And
Charles H. Ramsey does not like to be woken from a good night’s sleep for any
guest at the juvenile center. Double murder in Manayunk? Maybe. But, no, not
the juvenile center. The Commish get’s cranky real fast over small stuff.
Besides, if the Commish gets up, that means Louise gets up too, making things
double-worse. If Louise gets up for anything less than a double murder, she
gets testy and won’t make the Commish’s favorite breakfast: egg in a cup.
Instead, he has to make his own — usually stale Cheerios and the heart-healthy nonfat
milk Louise buys, even though he says it tastes like white-water. Stale
Cheerios and white-water, washed down with instant coffee, and Charles H.
Ramsey comes to work an unhappy camper.
Then Edward was off down the
corridor to check on the next guest and the next and the next, finally
finishing off his round at the last cell door and walking back to his office in
exactly nine minutes, 29 seconds. Well ahead of the allotted time. He did it so
often, he could work his ‘thought processes’ as he looked, punched, and moved
to the next guest-door. With a slight waddle, pulling his right leg along and
turning his hips to avoid the stiffness and pain, and favoring his left knee,
Edward did his cell checks in exactly nine minutes and 29 seconds — every time.
This gives him time to think about things, like Troop 112
.
.
Eddy
Boswick was a tenderfoot in the Boy Scout Troop 112 at Bright Hope Baptist
Church in North Philadelphia. Had the used merit badge book and looked at it
every day. He couldn’t decide which badge to shoot for. The scouts sold candy
bars and had car washes — buck fifty, no drying — to earn a bus trip to the
Pennsylvania Grand Canyon and stay at the Penn Wells Hotel in Wellsboro; visiting
up there with them white people.“Don’t
go near the edge, Eddie, you’ll be dead fore you hit the ground,” Scoutmaster
Willie Benson said. Eddy stayed back. “Be dead fore you hit the ground.” So
many trees. Scoutmaster Benson said there are more trees in the Grand Canyon
than folks in Philadelphia. Far as your eyes can see…trees. Eddy loved the Boy
Scouts, but never went for a merit badge. Never tried to be an Eagle Scout.
Didn’t go for the Order of the Arrow at Camp Delmont. “Dead fore you hit the
ground…far as your eyes can see…more trees than folks in Philadelphia…”
So on this day, at
3:33 in the morning, he got himself up and unlocked his large, round key ring
clamped to his left hip, as he made his way toward to first cell room. All in
one motion, he looked in and fumbled for the weird key that fit the round slot
in the door. Only this time he couldn’t come up with it and it made him angry
and he cursed and shifted his weight to look down at the key ring. It was the
first time he had to look down at the keys in 27 years.
This got Edward T. Boswick upset.
He shuffled the key ring looking for
the key that had been there all those years, minus of course, weekends,
holidays, vacations, and a week closing of the juvenile center when the kids
went on a hunger strike. He shook the key ring again and again, but it wasn’t
there. It just wasn’t there.
How
could it be not there? Impossible.
Eddy’s gout was startin’ to act up.
Confused, angry, and scared, Edward T. Boswick focused on the key ring looking
for the weird key. Sweat began to bud on Edward’s forehead and on the strip of
skin between his nose and upper lip. Small little buds of sweat that you don’t
notice at first. It isn’t possible to lose that key because as soon as it
breaks contact with the large round key ring with centrifugal-electrical power
clamped onto Edward’s left hip, two separate beepers signal its separation: One
in the security room of the juvenile center where Packer and Toshan sat
watching the 9 monitors, and another in the police control room at Eighth and
Race. Those signals would immediately lock
down the juvenile center and police from all over the city would converge on
the center.
“Beep,
beep, beep, beep, beep, beep…” Sort of like that. A soft, high pitched alarm-sound.
But there was no signal or beep, therefore, impossible for the key not to be on
Edward’s left hip. Edward now grabbed back at the key ring with both hands — it
wasn’t there. Where the heck was it? his
mind screamed.
He turned and looked down the middle of the corridor. Sweat now began to roll down his puffy cheeks. The big African American with the broad shoulders and the limp-like walk was in trouble. He was at the first cell room and had no key to check in. Where the heck is the key? Breathing in short, wind sucking breaths, he again looked down the corridor, his eyes wide with fright and focused.
He turned and looked down the middle of the corridor. Sweat now began to roll down his puffy cheeks. The big African American with the broad shoulders and the limp-like walk was in trouble. He was at the first cell room and had no key to check in. Where the heck is the key? Breathing in short, wind sucking breaths, he again looked down the corridor, his eyes wide with fright and focused.
That’s
exactly when all of the facilities’ lights went out and Edward was left in
total darkness.
Woooooffffff.
Just like that.
