Memoirs of a Citizen

[Aligned Planets]

Stardate 41503.30

I guess that's how they were able to do it, in the way they did, all at once, without anyone knowing beforehand. If there had still been portable money, it would have been more difficult. It was after the catastrophe, when they shot the President and blew up the Federation Council and the Fleet declared a state of emergency. They blamed it on the Thranguil fanatics, at the time.

Keep calm, they said on the newswire. Everything is under control.

I was stunned. Everyone was, I know that. It was hard to believe. The entire government, gone like that. How did they get in, how did it happen? That was when they suspended the Federation Charter. They said it would be temporary. There wasn't even any rioting in the streets. People stayed at home at night, watching the broadcasts, looking for some direction. There wasn't even an enemy you could put your finger on.

Things continued in that state of suspended animation for weeks, although some things did happen. The Federation News Network was censored and some outlets were closed down, for security reasons they said. The planetary blockade around Aligned Planets was the first to appear, and then the outer colonies fell silent. Identipasses became common place but everyone approved of that, since it was obvious that you couldn't be too careful. They said that new elections would be held, but that it would take some time to prepare for them. The thing to do, they said, was to continue on as usual.

The Drug-and-Drops were shut, though, and there were no longer any ShagStop vessels and FunMarts orbiting the planet. But I wasn't sad to see them go. We all knew what a nuisance they'd been. It's high time somebody did something, said the woman behind the counter, where I usually bought my NarcoSticks. It was on the corner, a newsstand chain: e-papers, candy, cigarettes. The woman was older, with grey hair; my great-grandmother's generation. Did they just close them, or what? I asked. She shrugged. Who knows, who cares, she said. Maybe they just moved them off somewhere else. Trying to get rid of it altogether is like trying to stamp out mice, you know? She punched my FedCred card into the till, barely looking at it: I was a regular by then. People were complaining, she said.

The next morning, on my way to the shuttleport to work for the day, I stopped by the same store for another pack, because I'd run out. I was smoking more these days, it was the tension, you could feel it, like a subterranean hum, although things seemed so quiet. I was drinking more coffee too, and having trouble sleeping. Everyone was a little more jumpy. There was a lot more music on the radio that usual, and fewer words. When I got to the corner store, the usual woman wasn't there. Instead there was a man, a young man, he couldn't have been more than twenty.

She sick? I said as I handed him my card. Who? he said, aggressively I thought. The woman who's usually here, I said. How would I know, he said. He was punching my number in, studying each number, punching with one finger. He obviously hadn't done it before. I drummed my fingers on the counter, impatient for a cigarette, wondering if anyone had ever told him something could be done about those pimples on his neck. I suppose I remember him so clearly because of what he said next.

Sorry, he said. This number's not valid. That's ridiculous, I said. It must be, I've got thousands in my account. I just got the statement two days ago. Try it again.

It's not valid, he repeated obstinately. See that red light? Means it's not valid. See? he said, with a fed-up smile, as if he knew some private joke he wasn't going to tell me.

I phoned from the office, but all I got was a recording. The lines were overloaded, the recording said. Could I please phone back? The lines stayed overloaded all morning, as far as I could tell I phoned back several times, but no luck. Even that wasn't too unusual...

[Aligned Planets]

Stardate 42009.10

What month was this? I suppose it must have been September.

I went to pick my daughter up from scchool. There was a School Pool that was supposed to pick them up, but for some reason I'd wanted to do it, I was getting worried even about the School Pool. No children walked to school any more, there had been too many disappearances. I drove with exaggerated care. By the time James got home I was sitting at the kitchen table. She was drawing with little felt pens at her own table in the corner, where her paintings were taped up next to the replicator.

James knelt beside me and put his arms around me. I heard, he said, on the car radio, driving home. Don't worry, I'm sure it's temporary.

Did they say why? I asked. He didn't answer that. We'll get through it, he said, hugging me. You don't know what it's like, I said. I feel as if someone cut off my feet. I wasn't crying. Also, I couldn't put my arms around him. It's only a job, he said, trying to soothe me. I guess you get all my money, I said. And I'm not even dead. I was trying for a joke, but it came out sounding macabre. Hush, you know I'll always take care of you, he said. He was still kneeling on the floor. I thought, already he's starting to patronise me. Then I thought, already you're starting to get paranoid. I know, I said. I love you.

Later after she was in bed and we were having supper, and I wasn't feeling so shaky, I told him about the afternoon. I described the director coming in, blurting out his announcement and sending us all home. It would have been funny if it wasn't so awful, I said. I thought he was drunk. Maybe he was. The army was there, and everything. Then I remembered something I'd seen and hadn't noticed, at the time. It wasn't the army. It was some other army.

There were marches, of course, a lot of women and some men. But they were smaller than you might have thought. I guess people were scared. And when it was known that the police, or the army, or whoever they were, would open fire almost as soon as any of the marches even started, the marches stopped. A few things were blown up, post offices, transporter stations. But you couldn't even be sure who was doing it. It could have been the army, to justify the computer searches and the other ones, the door-to-doors.

I didn't go on any of the marches. James said it would be futile and I had to think about them, my family, him and her. I did think about my family. I started doing more housework, more baking. I tried not to cry at mealtimes. By this time I'd started to cry, without warning, and to sit beside the bedroom window, staring out. I didn't know many of the neighbours, and when we met, outside on the street, we were careful to exchange nothing more than the ordinary greetings. Nobody wanted to be reported, for disloyalty to the Federation. We'd all seen the public executions...

[Aligned Planets]

Stardate 42008.47
Earlier that day

About two o'clock, after lunch, the director came in to the Holo-Imaging room. I have something to tell you, he said. He looked terrible; his hair was untidy, his eyes were pink and wobbling, as though he'd been drinking. We all looked up, turned off our machines. There must have been eight or ten of us in the room.

I'm sorry, he said, but it's the law. I really am sorry.

For what? somebody said.

I have to let you go, he said. It's the law, I have to. I have to let you all go. He said this almost gently, as if we were wild animals, frogs he'd caught, in a jar, as if he were being humane.

We're being fired? I said. I stood up. But why?

Not fired, he said. Let go. You can't work here anymore, it's the law. He ran his hands through his hair and I thought, He's gone crazy. The strain has been too much for him and he's blown his wiring.

You can't just do that, said the woman who sat next to me. This sounded false, improbable, like something you would say on television.

It isn't me, he said. You don't understand. Please go, now. His voice was rising. I don't want any trouble. If there's trouble the files might be lost, things will get broken… He looked over his shoulder. They're outside, he said, in my office. If you don't go now they'll come in themselves. They gave me ten minutes. By now he sounded crazier than ever.

He's loopy, someone said out loud; which we must all have thought. But I could see out into the corridor, and there were two men standing there, in uniforms, with phase pistols. This was too theatrical to be true, yet there they were: sudden apparitions, like ghosts. There was a dreamlike quality to them; they were too vivid, too at odds with their surroundings.

Just leave the computers, he said while we were getting our things together, filing out. As if we could have taken them.

We stood in a cluster, on the steps outside the library. We didn't know what to say to one another. Since none of us understood what had happened, there was nothing much we could say. We looked at one another's faces and saw dismay, and a certain shame, as if we'd been caught doing something we shouldn't. It's outrageous, one woman said, but without belief. What was it about this that made us feel we deserved it?

When I got back to the house nobody was there. James was still at work, my daughter was at school. I felt tired, bone-tired, but when I sat down I got up again, I couldn't seem to sit still. I wandered through the house, from room to room. I remember touching things, not even that consciously, just placing my fingers on them; things like the holo-imager, the sugar bowl, the replicator in the living room. After a while I picked up the cat and carried her around with me. I wanted James to come home. I thought I should do something, take steps; but I didn't know what steps I could take.

I tried phoning the bank again, but I only got the same recording. I poured myself a glass of milk - I told myself I was too jittery for another coffee - and went into the living room and sat down on the sofa and put the glass of milk on the coffee table, carefully, without drinking any of it. I held the cat up against my chest so I could feel her purring against my throat. After a while I phoned my mother at her apartment, but there was no answer. She'd settled down more by now, she'd stopped moving every few years; she lived across the river, in Boston. I waited a while and phoned Kathryn. She wasn't there either, but when I tried half an hour later she was. In between these phone calls I just sat on the sofa. What I thought about was my daughter's school lunches. I thought maybe I'd been giving her too many peanut butter sandwiches.

I've been fired, I told Kathryn when I got her on the phone. She said she would come over. By that time she was working for a women's collective, the Holo-News division. They put out publications on birth control and rape and things like that, though there wasn't as much demand for those things as there used to be. I'll come over, she said. She must have been able to tell from my voice that this was what I wanted. She got there after some time. So, she said. She threw off her jacket, sprawled into the oversize chair. Tell me. First we'll have a drink.

She got up and went to the kitchen and poured us a couple of Scotches rather than going to the replicator, and came back and sat down and I tried to tell her what had happened to me. When I'd finished, she said, Tried getting anything on your FedCred Card today?

Yes, I said. I told her about that too.

They've frozen them, she said. Mine too. The collective's too. Any account with an F on it instead of an M. All they needed to do is push a few buttons. We're cut off.

But I've got over a hundred thousand Credits in the bank, I said, as if my own account was the only one that mattered.

Women can't hold property anymore, she said. It's a new law. Turned on the Holo-Imager today?

No, I said.

It's on there, she said. All over the place. She was not stunned, the way I was. In some strange way she was gleeful, as if this was what she'd been expecting for some time and now she'd been proven right. She even looked more energetic, more determined. James can use your FedCred Card for you, she said. They'll transfer your number to him, or that's what they say. Husband or male next of kin.

But what about you? I said. She didn't have anyone.

I'll go underground, she said. Some of the gays can take over our numbers and buy us things we need.

But why? I said. Why did they?

Ours is not to reason why, said Kathryn. They had to do it that way, the FedCred Cards and the jobs both at once. Can you picture the spaceports, otherwise? They don't want us going anywhere, you can bet on that.