Chapter 9 -- The Life of one Indentured Servant
MORE ADVANCED JOURNALISM
Lena had breakfast with Neck Wallace that morning before he drove her to the New Orleans airport. She had been careful to erase and cover any sign of her meeting and tryst with Deputy Seele.
The sex had been welcomed even if it was very dangerous. More importantly, Seele had confirmed many of Lena's suspicions about the Free States. Lena also had learned from Seele that he had a few contacts who were also discontented with some things going on in the Free States. He would tell her nothing about these contacts. "The way to keep a secret is to keep it secret," Seele said.
They had made plans for Lena to meet Seele at the airport in Memphis on her way out and for Lena to receive data on women questionably convicted of crimes and sent to the sex boats, but Lena would not see or communicate with him until then.
Neck had suggested that they have sex in his room before breakfast, but Lena could not see any advantage to having sex with Neck now. "Ah, come on," Neck said after she declined, "the way you are carryin on, the next time I have sex with you, it will cost me a bundle of hard cash."
Lena wondered if Neck was going to turn her over to the law. She did not think so. Neck does not like simple treachery, Lena thought. When he leads a woman astray, he wants something complicated and at least partially consensual that leaves the woman involved feeling like she asked for it. Something like his paintball gunfights. It would not hurt, though, to plant the idea in Neck's head that he has something to lose if something happened to her.
"Mr. Wallace, you better hope I do not have reason to believe that you did anything to cause me not to make it home as planned," Lena said. "And if I should somehow be delayed, you had better do what you can to get me back to Hamburg. I may have more cards to play than you know about."
"Oh, I'm sure that's true, sweetie," Neck said in a cheerful, patronizing manner.
The Free States refused to build any trains because they were seen as socialist and promoted unhealthy levels of mixing. Air travel in 2045 was very expensive, but Lena had a big budget from Kultur, Sex and Sport and no interest in driving across Louisiana and Arkansas, which she had been told stank almost everywhere because of the huge number of animal feeding operations growing chicken and hogs for meat for the Asian market.
After the short flight from New Orleans to Little Rock, Lena checked into the new Orval Faubus Hotel. The first thing she did was get some more proper FASUG clothing, but to buy it a size or two smaller than a proper FASUG woman would buy for a woman her size. Lena was going to try to stay away from anyone who knew her. She planned, though, to use her charms to learn much and obtain the letter from the woman on the low-end boat that Tom Schnupper had told Lena was coming.
Lena located the censorship office in the Dixieland Security office, which was located where the William J. Clinton Presidential Library used to be. A historical marker outside the building dated "2034" stated that many had wanted to just tear the building down but that it was decided to re-purpose the building while keeping a room with a small exhibit in memory of the many victims of the Clinton Administration and the period of Godless degeneracy it nurtured. Lena appreciated this sign of Errinerungskultur (Culture of Remembrance), although she questioned its direction.
There were guarded access points to the parts of the building in charge of intelligence, counterintelligence, preventing immigration, stopping drag shows and monitoring heresy. Fortunately for Lena, there was not much security in the part of the building where the censorship office and the museum on the Clinton crimes were. Except for maybe a copy of Hamlet or To Kill a Mockingbird, a Clinton bumper sticker or Mrs. Clinton's emails, there was nothing to learn or steal in the censorship office, or Clinton Horrors exhibit.
Lena pretended that she was looking for the Clinton exhibit when she went into the censorship office. She had been lurking around for hours, waiting to see how deliveries came to the office. A few minutes after she saw a currier go in, she followed.
The male behind the counter, in his 30s and the courier, maybe 25, were sorting packages of things to be reviewed by the censorship office as Lena sashayed in looking as hot as a woman could legally look in the FASUG.
Putting on a terrible phony French accent that would have embarrassed Walt Kelly, Lena said, "Excuse me, Messieurs. I, a tourist from sinful land, want to see how things are done in a land of good, God-fearing people. Could you direct me to the exhibit on the wicked Clinton time of long ago?"
The accent was good enough to arouse interest and throw the guys off the trail of Lena's real nationality. The men appraised Lena carefully below the neck long enough to decide they did not care where she was from. The man in charge of receiving packages said, "Ma'am, the exhibit is pretty small. Most of us here in Arkansas are trying to forget those days, but if you want to see it, it's down the hall and in the back of this office."
"What do zou do in this offeece?"
"Oh, we go through various writings to make sure they don't contain anything evil and make sure that people aren't harmed by seeing them. The news media in the Free States all know what they can and can't discuss, so we don't have to review that stuff. We mainly review letters from Free State prisons and from indentured servants working in certain entertainment facilities. Generally, the prisoners and servants are just writing harmless things to their relatives, but some of the prisoners are very evil, and many of them don't understand what they can't write about. Can't say as I blame the women much for not knowing what they can write about because, well, let us say, they are exposed to a lot of harsh talk, and their lives ain't very ladylike."
"Zat's very interesting. Zou are doing very important ding. Zou have to review much?"
"No, most of the prisons are run by the individual Free States. There are only two central Confederate government prisons that send letters to us for review and 12 boats on the rivers and Gulf, but the folks in the prisons and the boats don't write a whole lot. Few of the prisoners are real big writers, most of them haint got a relationship with their families no more, and the women on the boats are pretty busy with other things except when they are sleeping.
"See here, there is a mail slot for each prison, and each boat and more than half of em are empty because we got nothing from them today. Anyway, at the end of the day, we deliver all the envelopes to the guys in the back whose job it is to read all these letters and make sure they don't contain anything unholy or conspiratorial. After deleting whatever they need to delete, they just send the letters back to the private service stamped that they've been reviewed, and the edited letters can be delivered."
Turning to the currier, Lena asked, "Zou drive to all of those prisons and boats every day?"
