Fighting Chance(10)

In this case, the hearing might have been closed because there was something peculiar about it, or because Martha Handling wanted her hearings closed so that nobody would know what she was doing, or because all juvenile hearings were closed. Janice didn’t know.

She was very well versed on the ways of adult courts and hearings, but until now, she had never taken much interest in juveniles. There was something about juvenile law that always seemed to her to be squishy and unsatisfying, even when she knew it was a prime example of oppression. It was really incredible how many prime examples of oppression there were in the world.

The corridor was empty. All the corridors leading into it or out of it also seemed to be empty. Janice could not hear anything she thought she should—like footsteps or talking. She had no idea how she had managed to get to where she was, or what she was supposed to do now that she was here.

First she was at the little desk in the front. That’s where they had taken her cell phone and searched her bag and sent her through a metal detector. Then she had gone to the second desk right outside the hearing room. Then she was arguing with the guard about coming in. Then another guard was called, who was probably somebody of higher rank. Janice couldn’t tell. The other guard had been adamant. Janice had stalked off to pace.

That was it. That was all Janice could remember.

“Idiot,” she said out loud, just to hear noise in the corridor.

She felt as if she were deep underground, although she didn’t think she was. There were no windows anywhere, and no doors to offices or closets. It was a strange place, made even stranger by the complete lack of sound.

Superstition was a tool of oppression; she knew that. So was the belief in ghosts and goblins and God and all the rest of the supernatural universe. When people believed in those things, they also believed in their own powerlessness. They believed that their lives were controlled by a ghost in the sky and that they could do nothing to help themselves.

That was why you had to be so careful all the time. Those ideas had been instilled into all of us as children. They could come back to haunt us even when we thought we had purged them completely.

Up above her head there was a security camera, and there was something wrong with it. She couldn’t put her finger on what it was. The best she could come up with was that the thing looked flat. She was sure it wasn’t supposed to look flat.

She kept moving along the corridor, looking from one side to the other so that she could spot all the cameras. There were millions of the things. They were everywhere. Welcome to the surveillance state.

All of them looked just as flat as all the others. She kept squinting at them. They just sat where they were. They didn’t move. They didn’t tilt and follow her when she moved.

She got to a bend in the corridor and began to wonder if this was the way the cameras were supposed to be. But just as she turned the corner, she saw something else.

One of the camera lenses seemed to have something hanging from it.

She stopped and stared. The camera was all the way up on the wall at the ceiling. There was nothing she could climb on. The corridor was completely, absolutely, and irrevocably empty.

What was hanging from the camera lens was a little drop of something that looked like coagulated plastic, or maybe paint.

There were a lot of reasons why someone might put black paint over a security camera’s lens. They could want to keep the camera from recording anything definite, without shutting it off completely, which might be noticed. But the act of painting might be noticed, because there were so many other cameras. Even if you were painting the lenses of every one, the others you hadn’t gotten to yet would record your progress.

She made herself pick up speed. She was wearing tie shoes with soft soles, but she could still hear her own steps—slap slap slap, pound pound pound.

She forced herself along, looking at the lens of each security camera she found. They all had that flat look, but now Janice knew that somebody had deliberately put black paint over the lenses of every single camera.

Janice reminded herself that most things that looked like they had been done by the deep forces of conspiracy hadn’t been. That was another way the oppressors kept the oppressed in line. All you had to do was to start thinking you were crazy. If you were crazy, then everything you saw was an illusion. It wouldn’t be just the paint on the camera lenses that was a delusion. It would be everything everywhere.

This leg of the corridor was short. There was another turn, and Janice found herself right at the edge of a long row of doors. She couldn’t remember when she’d felt so relieved.

She strode up to the closest one as quickly as she could. She knocked on the door. There was no answer. She tried the knob and found it turned without trouble. She looked at the nameplate by the door. It said MARILYN ALLEGETTI, but gave no other identification.