2
"Yeah. BE well. Lieutenant Ianto Jones."
A 2042 police car glides along as it passes by a series of austere geometric buildings.
Green, green glass. Blue, blue sky. Cleaner than Disneyland. The future is perfect. More emissionless cars gliding silently by.
"As it is a beautiful Monday morning, and as my duty log irrationally requires it..." Behind the wheel, the mischievously handsome young Ianto Jones. A heads up display announces he is calling Warden JJ. Smithers. The order of business is "Prison Population Informative Query." And future or not, Ianto fusses with his hair. With both hands. The steering wheel is not present at all. "I am hereby querying you on the prison population update. Does the tedium continue?"
Warden Smithers gently reminds her "Incontrovertibly and unequivocally, yes. The prisoners are ice cubes. They do not move. They have no thoughts, they have no feelings... The tedium is permanent, Lieutenant."
.
.
Smithers is striding along, the conversation projected in the air in front of him from the HoloSet he's wearing.
"I find this lack of stimulus truly disappointing... Don't you think?" Ianto asks with a roll of his eyes.
Smithers peers at him almost suspiciously. "I try not to. However, you are young, think all you want. Things don't happen anymore, we've taken care of all that. I'll fiber-op you back after the morning non-parole hearings. Have a peachy day, Lieutenant. BE well..."
The Warden's image poofs out at Ianto's end.
Tugging off his headset, Warden Smithers clacks to a checkpoint wall at the end of the grating. Smithers puts the back of his hand on a screen in the wall.
"Coding accepted. Retina Confirm." The computer asks politely.
Smithers leans into a peephole.
A harmless red laser flickers over the Warden's eye.
The wall slides open and Smithers enters into a ceiling-less space beneath the awesome tiers of cryo-cells.
"Thank you and be well, Warden Smithers." The computer voice drones on.
Smithers grumbles past a barely conscious cryo-prisoner, who is strapped atop a sleek, thin, and uncomfortable "wheelchair." Two Guards flank the hunched over and dripping convict as Smithers plops behind an industrial chic table and flicks on his CompuClipboard.
He starts to read from a prewritten speech with the boredom it is due "Twenty-nine years ago, the parole system, as you know it, was rendered obsolete. Federal Statute 537-29 requires we go through the formality of a hearing for all prisoners incarnated before the repeal of the parole laws. Cocteau Behavioral Engineering, B.E. will continue rehabilitation by altering your behavior through synaptic suggestion during cryogenic sleep. Nightie night. Your hearing is now over. You are to be returned to your cryo-cell immediately... 'Mr. Horace Bateman.' Do you understand what
I've said..."
Eyes half open, the Cryo-prisoner unsuccessfully gropes for a syllable.
"Guards, nod his head for him..." Smithers demands, yawning "Ne-xt."
As the pathetic Cryo-prisoner is wheeled off, the Warden's voice echoes electronically from a steel intercom box on the wall. Two Med Techs load a still unconscious prisoner into another wheelchair. We don't see him. Just a hint of a well muscled black arm and a head still lolling unconscious on a shoulder, with blond hair..."
.
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Jones finishes primping. Hits a button. The dash unfolds, a steering wheel emerges, locks into place. Ianto calls out as he activates his badge. "Jones, Ianto Jones. Coding on."
A serenely annoying voice answers him "No police presence is requested in the city at this time. Report to the station. Good morning, Officer Jones."
Ianto groans "Ahhh..."
"I detect a promoted level of stress in your tone. Would you like me to prescribe a foodaceutical to..."
"No! What are you, my mother?" Ianto barks then; calmer with fake glee "No. No, thank you though."
He rolls his eyes. Waits to see if it's going to scold him again. After letting him sweat it out, the car doesn't.
"All right, I'll be reporting in"
Jones's police car glides by a sedate street. A beat. In front of one perfect building is a small object the size and shape of a coffee can… we find, it's TICKING. We can see the escape wheel ratcheting back and forth. It's very crude, very 1920's clockwork. Four ink-filled quadrants on a wheel inside. The yellow quadrant rotates into position.
A small sharp explosion. Like an ink jet, the yellow ink is flung through a nozzle against the wall in an 8 x 20 foot swath. The red ratchets and FIRES, the blue as well. Now we can see the graffiti bomb has screened a message on the wall - "Life Is Hell." The black EXPLODES. Little Death's Heads are sprinkled around the message. The ink jet machine blows itself up. Pedestrians gather and stare at the message. Mouths open, dumbstruck.
Two shock poles emerge from hidden panels in the side of the building. A sheet of lightning flashes between them. The message turns to ash and falls to the ground. The poles tuck back into their boxes. A small rabbit-sized vacuum sweeper emerges, ZINGS along on its own power and SUCKS up the ash.
Near the chaos, we discover this whole thing's been a diversion. Up from a manhole comes a strange-looking pipe. A crude periscope. Watching as a food delivery truck pulls up to a loading dock. Food pallets are unloaded.
"All right, that's it." Payne calls out "Twelve hours there'll be another..."
Thomas Payne, a young wild-haired madman in some kind of ancient mechanics coveralls watches through the periscope. "... These assholes are nothing if not predictable."
Two other equally disreputable types are with him. SCRAPS, leftovers from the perfect world above.
Scrap one says "We're not ready."
"Hey guy, it doesn't really matter if we're ready or not anymore." Payne's got things to do, people to see. Takes off down the tunnel. The other two follow. As the periscope ducks back down.
.
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A pair of frosted doors reading S.A. and P.D. slide open to the presence of Ianto Jones. He enters into a police station not of typically bustling pandemonium, but shocking, softly lit tranquillity. Multi-ethnic officers of all shapes and sizes murmur about, monitoring screens with the casualness of the staff at a new age bookstore. No rush, no worries... Ianto strides past an impossible Perky Dispacher chirping into a high tech headset. "Greetings and salutations, welcome to the emergency line of the San Angeles Police Department. How are you?"
A tough looking Cop, sipping a vibrant green juice, sidles up to Ianto. They exchange a non-touching "handshake" that has them each making a circle with their open palms.
"Let me guess, all is serene." Ianto asks with a sigh.
With true shock the cop growls "There was a defacement of public
buildings. Walls smudged."
Ianto is shocked as well "Really? Brutal. Why wasn't an all cars notified?"
He's cut off by his by-the-book superior, Chief Eric Stamos "Because there was no need to create widespread panic. Lieutenant Jones, I monitored your disheartening and distressing comments to the warden this morning. Do you actually long for chaos and disharmony? Your fascination with the vulgar Twentieth Century seems to be affecting your better judgement. You realize you're setting a bad example for other officers and sworn personnel..."
"Thank you for the attitude readjustment, Chief Stamos. Info assimilated." Ianto turns and walks through his open office door, making a face out of sight and curses almost silently under his breath as he enters "Sanctimonious asshole.
A Morality Box on the wall picks it up. "Ianto Jones, you are fined one half credit for a sotto voce violation of the verbal morality statute."
Lettering appears on the face of what appears to be a block of solid marble. A thin sheaf of paper slides off the front with the reprimand.
The contrast between everything we have seen so far and his office is staggering. Her quarters are filled with framed and faded nostalgia pieces of the 20th Century. Posters of violent movies, books, magazine covers, ad signs, artworks and framed newspapers, all of a dark nature. A hopelessly weird officer, Owen Garper, sits in the middle of the room shaking his head "Whew... That was tense."
Ianto gives him a deadpan glare "That was tense? Tell me something, Harper, don't you get bored codetracing perps who break curfew and tell dirty jokes?"
"Actually, I find my job deeply fulfilling." Owen huffs looking around "I just cannot swallow the reality of this office, Ianto Jones. You're still addicted to the 20th Century high from its harshness, buzzed by its brutality. Holy smokes, is there anything in here which doesn't violate contraband ordinance 22?"
With a sweet smile Ianto replies "Just you, Owen Harper. Don't you ever want something to happen?"
"Goodness. No."
"I knew you were going to say that." Ianto sighs "What I wouldn't give for some action."
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defrosted confusion. Locks eyes with the warden. The look he gives Smithers is chilling.
"Mr. Hart, one of our first and most illustrious members. Let's get this one over quick..." Smithers is unsettled. Hart is far more awake than the norm. "Twenty-nine years ago, the parole system..."
Echoic; no logic yet as Hart repeats "Twenty-nine years ago, the parole system..."
Smithers speaks firmer "... was rendered obsolete."
Hart is also firmer "... was rendered obsolete.
Smithers sighs "Do you have something to say in your behalf, Mr. John? (beat) I thought not."
Hart is bemused "Yeah. Yeah, I do. (it puzzles him, but...) Teddy bear."
With a loud buzz, the electronic manacles around Hart's arms and feet fly open. Hart knows a good thing when he sees it. Immediately panthers up for a savage kick into Guard One, doubling him over. Hart tears from Guard One's holster an air-injection syringe that is filled with the luminescent blue liquid. He fires the syringe right into a charging Guard Two's forehead. Turns and approaches slowly and menacingly at Guard One.
The first guard is just able to breathe again "How did you know the password to the cuffs?"
Laughing with pleasure John replies "who cares. Too much talking from you."
Hart smashes Guard One in the neck. Left handed. Crushes his larynx. The Guard falls dying to the ground. Smithers crawls over his table, breaks for the door. Hart effortlessly latches out to his fleeing neck and pulls him face-to-face as the Guards behind them shiver into rigidity. Grins at him. Plucks a sharp pen from the warden's pocket.
The harmless red laser again flickers across Warden Smither's now bulging eyeball.
The conference area wall slides open, revealing John Hart, elegantly holding the warden's detached eyeball.
"Access granted, Warden William Smithers." The computer purrs.
"Hart flicks the eye away and struts forward. The wall shuts."
"Thank you. And BE well." The computer asks politely.
Hart glances at the speaker. The future is fucking weird "Yeah? You too."
And he's gone...