I stumble out of the transport blitzed out of my mind on clauster gas. I inhaled way too much. I did it on purpose. It’ll smother my conscience for the next five hours and damage the memories of what I’m about to do. That way they can’t be recalled and used in a trial against me. The Reductionists Penalty Board will still be able to prove that I tampered with the vote but my inability to give them any evidence for their mind scanner will keep me from being eligible for the death penalty. The clauster gas that I took will also help with future sleepless nights when I’m not allowed to induce sleep with drugs anymore. Sleepless nights caused by faces, begging and bloodied faces – most of them innocent faces. I don’t want to see those faces while lying on a cot staring at the bars for the rest of my life. Lucid thought for a guiltless brain filled with chemical mush seems like an even trade off at this point. I know that my memories going forward will seem like a movie that I once watched but can’t quite seem to remember and I’m just fine with that.
Ernie, the camera man that the Big World Network (BWN) has now placed on the transport for better coverage runs behind me lugging his heavy equipment on his shoulder. Instead of the all black body armor that we wear he wears cobalt colored protection with yellow lettering that spells BWN PRESS on his chest and on his upper back. There’s a stiff fine if any of us get careless and shoot Ernie. I like Ernie well enough. I hope he doesn’t get shot. Before I left the transport another man that worked for BWN held up a small box with a pin attached to it and told me that it was something new that displayed your vitals and that I’d be wearing it today for added television entertainment. I nodded as he attached it to the back of my neck.
Smoke bombs are launched from behind me and music blares from our transport in an attempt to confuse as we move in on them. I pull my gas mask over my face. Bunched together, running toward them, we must look like a swarm of bizarre insects. My senses distort from the effect of the clauster gas so that the ground looks tasty, and I can feel the bass of my heart beat deep inside my chest. I know exactly where we are for the first time on one of these missions because, as I stated, I tampered with the ballot system and forced this destination to be chosen. My parents once took me here on vacation when I was a kid, before the travel lockdown, back when people moved among the states freely.
The people here had no idea we were coming. Just as they never do. These people were the big losers last night. When I tampered with the ballot process I made sure of it. This was their first time, their first reduction.
What was about to happen would’ve been the top story on the evening news ten years earlier, considered a trajedy. The nightmarish slaughter of thousands of innocent people. Now it’s brought live and in color straight into America’s living rooms so that everyone can gawk and point and complain – complete with a panel of psychiatrists to have a round table discussion afterwards, to talk us down from our giddy horror, from the travesty we’d just witnessed. Talking heads that agree with the law will point out that we are reaching critical mass and something had to be done about it, while peaceniks will argue a morality now becoming archaic, a respect for human life. What was once considered a horrific slaughter to the masses is now considered a universally acceptable solution to a growing dilemma. As long as it isn’t their city.
I go to work. I run out into the middle of the panicking crowd and take aim on an old woman and shoot her in the back. She tumbles to a stop, her legs folding beneath her, somehow managing to stay in that position – like a neat little ball. I admire this odd fluke and wish that I could make all of my kills look so neat. She sizzles and shrinks into a smaller, drier ball. Easy to lift and carry. Clean of the harmful toxins that a decaying body would normally produce over the next several weeks, and ready for transport. Next I train my gun on a young twenty something male in a blue suit and sunglasses. He is athletic. Difficult to keep in my sights. I drop the scope attached to my helmet over my eye and follow him with it toward the house. He is a good mark to hit early. Fat and old people are slow. Those people you can come back to – catch up with them more easily. I shoot blue suit in the back. He sprawls across the lawn like a kid diving into a pool for a swim. Then he shrivels up too.
I already knew that the man that lives in this fine home is here today because I made certain he’d be here when I arranged the visit. I could still hear blue suit sizzling as I eagerly bounded the stairs three at a time. Even though I know that it’s wrong I also am aware that I love this job and I’m going to miss it. It was the first thing in my life that I was ever truly exceptional at. I know that it makes me a sick person to admit that but all that runs through my mind is that it’s a shame that it’s all going to have to end. They just had to corrupt the numbers and lock their target on Minneapolis, and in the district that my parents had lived. I still remember vividly the day my best friend recruited me. Soon that will be in the distance.