Hell is Empty

Three

Three

This time, when Commissioner Wilman received the flashing yellow urgent call, he wasn’t annoyed. He answered it immediately.

“Report from Texas, sir,” Cole said quickly, getting straight to the point. “We’ve zeroed in on his location. He’ll be in custody within the hour, sir.”

“Good,” Wilman said impassively. “Yes. Very good. Anything else?”

“Uh,” Cole said, struck wordless. He expected more of a reaction. “No, nothing yet. The ground team was just dispatched—”

“Okay,” Wilman grunted, annoyed now. “Tell me when there’s a real development. Don’t call me every single goddamn time we get a Warden report from Tucson.”

Wilman hung up and brooded. Momentarily, that ancient, haggard, wrinkled-up face filled his mind. That dour old authoritarian bastard who, in the military days, had taught Wilman so much and simultaneously inspired a spectacular amount of hatred.

I guess he taught me well, Wilman thought.

---

“Look, not to be rude,” Jim started as they walked down the hall to Ellen’s apartment, “but do I know you? I have the strangest feeling I’ve met you before.”

Ellen laughed. “I hang out at Joey’s a lot. You’ve probably seen me there once or twice.” She was smiling like an old-time friend. It was weird – apart from her physical aesthetics, that smile was the only trait that remained from his former surrogate life. Short, slender body, blonde hair, green eyes, and that smile. But not much else; she was a new Ellen Weaver.

“Yeah,” Jim agreed, returning the warm smile. “Probably so. Sorry, Ellen. My head feels like diarrhea right now.”

“Here we are,” Ellen said, unlocking the door to apartment 2351-e.

When Ellen flicked the light on, the first thing Jim noticed was how clean the living room was. It was almost eerie in its austerity, more so than most apartments. Most people kept art and posters in their apartments, or at the very least, kept it cluttered and messy. Most people had something. Not so for Ellen.

Jim stood in the middle of the bare apartment as the rusted gears of his mind grinded noisily, ungracefully, as though badly atrophied. Ellen – this Ellen, anyhow – apparently took no part in the practice of decoration. Manifestation of personality; it was strangely as though she had none.

The whole thing was some attempt, Jim reasoned, for people to find individuality in tenements that were worse than the former People’s Republic of China. According to the HV, the new Chinese republics were no better than the old Communist regime. Just like in the United States, the old government fell at the end of the catastrophic Anglo-Chinese War (and ultimately the Second Cold War) in 2066. So far since then, the lives of the Chinese and Americans and Europeans had only worsened. And to think, the spark that ignited the devastating war that ended the modern world was a political dispute over fresh water…

Water, Jim thought suddenly as his mind wandered among vague concepts. Water. He felt thirsty and incredibly exhausted. He thought of the ocean and felt sick to his stomach.

Could I get a cup of water? Jim tried to say but somehow couldn’t. His torso was cramped with agony beyond the point of paralysis. His guts were twisting within his body. He was sweating. He felt feverish. He wanted water. But he kept thinking of the ocean. And his stomach churned harder.

Water. People in Arizona Province, Texas, seldom thought of the ocean. It was riddled with hundreds upon hundreds of garbage gyres that irreversibly poisoned the entire sea, leaving it so polluted that the only surviving remnants of sea-life were microscopic organisms that struggled in vain to retain existence. The ocean was literally dead; everything that resided in it was extinct.