Cages and Those Who Hold the Keys

10

We passed through the office and made a left, going through the same doors to the vending area that Dash had taken earlier, only now the cafeteria was empty. Daddy Bliss moved toward a set of weight-activated doors at the far end. They hissed open as soon as his wheels touched the mat in front of them.

We entered a long, brightly-lit concrete corridor.

“Our family album,” said Daddy Bliss. “Feel free to stop and look at whomever catches your fancy. We were forced to eschew the traditional bound albums some time ago, for reasons I’m sure you’ll come to understand.”

Every inch of wall space was covered by hundreds (if not thousands) of framed photographs, each one more gruesome than the one before; a car split nearly in half by the tree it had slammed into, the body of the driver splattered across the windshield; a head-on collision between two SUVs, the vehicles so demolished it was impossible to tell where one began and the other ended, their drivers’ bodies little more than pulpy smears; broken bodies of passengers who’d been thrown free, their shattered remains glistening with blood, sometimes covered in one another’s internal organs…it was a photo essay of a slaughterhouse.

“As they were when the Highway People came to them,” said Daddy Bliss.

“Why keep such…gruesome reminders?”

“Because each of us must never forget our beginnings. Neither the Highway People nor—more importantly—the Road would approve.” He said it with such awe and reverence I could see yet another capital ‘R’.

I looked at him. “The Road?”

He gave a short nod of his head. The wires in his skull stretched as he did so. “The Road demands its sacrifices, as any self-respecting god would.”

“God?” I said. “So that would make you…what?”

He smiled. “Think of me as the high priest.” He began turning the chair around. “Shall we, then? Get on with it?”

I stood my ground. (Not as heroic or brave as it sounds—I was still scared as hell.) “What exactly are we getting on with?” He stopped, sighed, then turned back toward me. “Why must you try my patience so early on in our relationship, Driver?” “I wasn’t aware that we had a ‘relationship’.” “Oh, we do, Driver. That we do.” “What’s going on? What are you planning to do with me?”

“That is for the Road, and not me, to decide. I am only your guide—and you’re making it dreadfully difficult for me to discharge that duty. What the Road decides, it decides between midnight and dawn. We have only a few hours remaining before your options run out. Cooperate, and you may just be on your way back home come first light. Continue to be difficult, and here you’ll remain for the rest of your days.” He rolled closer, glaring at me. “Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes sir.”

“Again with the ‘sir’ business. I could get used to that.”

We continued down the corridor toward a set of heavy iron doors. As we neared them, a security camera mounted over the top of the doorway made a soft whirr, a red light clicked on, and a set of locks within the doors disengaged.

“These doors usually require a card-key,” said Daddy Bliss, “but since I have no arms, for me they will open once visual identification has been made.” He looked up at the camera and smiled.

The doors opened, and I was immediately assaulted with the sounds of a factory floor at full production speed. The smells of machine grease, metal, warm plastic, dust, and a hundred other scents put my sense of smell into overdrive, and I remembered how both my parents used to smell when they came home from a hard day on the line.

I followed Daddy Bliss through the doors into a cage-style elevator. When the iron doors closed behind us, the back wall of the elevator dropped into place and the whole contraption began to rise. I reached out and grabbed two of the bars to steady myself. “Afraid of heights, am I correct?” asked Daddy Bliss. “Ever since I fell out of a tree in our backyard when I was five,” I replied. “You needn’t worry, Driver. This elevator is perhaps the safest one in the country.”

It continued to rise like a roller coaster car clack-clack-clacking up the tracks toward that drop that you just knew was going to send your balls up into your throat, and a few moments later the elevator stopped, shuddered, made a clack-clack-clacking of its own, and shifted forward, the top mechanisms connecting with an overhead track and pulling us forward.

“There will be a bit of a lurch in a moment,” said Daddy Bliss. “It’s nothing to be concerned with.”

“Uh-huh.”

The elevator lurched, dropping down about a foot as the whole shebang left the safety of the platform and hung suspended thirty feet above the factory floor. Once my initial panic was over, I realized that both the moving mechanism and the overhead track were solid. The ride was smooth. Daddy Bliss grinned at me. “Better now?” “Yes, thank you.” “Then I’ll ask you to step over here and look down, please.” 0“I’d rather not.” “The heights business again?” “The heights business again.” “I assure that we are perfectly safe. Now, come here.” I moved toward the side, not once lifting my feet. Somehow it felt safer if I slid toward him.

Below us I saw three separate work areas, each one crowded with equipment and machinery that dwarfed those people working the line. I had no idea what I was looking at, what these machines were called or what function they served. I did recognize a lathe press because Dad used to operate one, and an area near one of the walls was used for wiring small circuitry chips—this I knew because Mom used to do the same thing, only she wired chips for all-night banking machines. These two things aside, I couldn’t tell you what was what or what purpose it served.

The only thing that was obvious to me was that each line started with some part of a trashed automobile; a door, a dashboard, steering wheel units, under-hood components, instrument panels, floor pedals, and other parts both external and internal that I couldn’t place because they’d been removed from whatever it was they’d been attached to in the first place.

The cage glided over the factory floor as the workers continued with their labors. I couldn’t see what parts of the workers had been repaired from up here, save for a few people who—like Dash—had large sections of their skulls replaced with metal plates.

Daddy Bliss said, “Now here is where we see whether or not you’ve got half a brain, Driver. Take a good look at what’s going on down there, and see if you can spot the one thing that all this busy bee-like activity has in common.”

“Is this part of whatever test it is you’re giving me?”

He sighed. “You mustn’t think of this as a test, it will add far too much pressure on your nerves. Think of it more as an assessment, an evaluation, a review.”

“In other words, a test.”

“Have it your way, then. Now, take a good look and see if you can answer the question.”

I studied the activity, though from above it was impossible to see any detail work. It wasn’t until I saw one of the workers use a pair of industrial shears to strip the covering off of a control panel that I knew the answer.

“Plastic,” I said. “They’re removing all the plastic from what’s left of the cars.”

Daddy Bliss smiled. “Bravo, dear boy, bravo—though I feel compelled to point out, for the sake of accuracy, that it isn’t precisely plastic. It’s polypropylene, a form of thermoplastic. Did you know that the average car has 245.5 pounds of plastic? The ever-increasing use of plastics in automobiles helps reduce vehicle weight, thus improving gas mileage and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. A total of 4.19 billion pounds of plastic will be used in North American autos and light trucks this year, increasing to about 5.63 billion pounds within the next decade.” He laughed. “All that wonderful raw material, recycled over and over again.”

“Is this where you make the parts for people to be repaired?”

“Hm? Oh, goodness gracious me, no. The Repair facility is located about a mile away—in fact, I think Hummer drove by it just so you could see the place.”

I remembered the worker and his tail-light eye and went cold. “Yeah, I saw it.”

“Excellent. Here is where we manufacture our goods. We produce a limited, specialized line of products here.”

The cage was nearing the farthest end of the factory floor. Below us, I could see several rows of molds arranged inside shelves that were built into the walls. There was something like a large oven, and another huge contraption that looked like some kind of cooling unit, and then an area where the melted, molded, and cooled final product was cut into shape. “Jesus…” I whispered. They manufactured custom-made HO-tracks and cars. I looked at Daddy Bliss. “Is this where Miss Driscoll got her track and cars? From you?” “Her name is Road Mama, Driver, and, yes, we make every piece of track and every car to specification.” “And all of it’s made from the polypropylene taken from wrecked automobiles?”

“The track is made from the polypropylene. The cars are made from whatever is left over from the raw materials—the automobiles—once the polypropylene has been taken. Not one piece of raw material goes to waste. It is in this way that the cycle of production and purpose keeps turning, pardon my lapsing into pathetic poeticisms.”

“And alliteration,” I said. “That’s the second time since we’ve met that you’ve done that.”

“Is it, now? I shall have to take care to watch my tongue.”

The cage slowed, then shuddered once again as it moved onto another platform, disengaging from the overhead track as the front-most door rose up automatically and another set of iron doors opened before us.

We entered another brightly-lighted hallway, this one with a highly-polished off-white floor and walls the same color. The iron doors closed behind us and the stink of the factory was replaced by the sharp, antiseptic smells of a hospital. I moved alongside Daddy Bliss. “And this is…?” “The Pre-Repair Unit.” All of the doors were closed, and there were no personnel working the floor. We paused by one of the closed doors. Daddy Bliss jerked his head to the side, gesturing. “Why don’t you take a look through the observation window there?” I did. I wish to hell I hadn’t.

All I can for certain is that the person lying in there was female; she could have been 17, she could have been 52—it was impossible to tell. Her massive facial injuries rendered her features almost unrecognizable as being human. Her lower body was covered by a sheet. From the ceiling there extended down a pencil-thick cable that spread out at the bottom like the wires inside an umbrella, each one attached to one of the spark plugs implanted in her skull. She jerked underneath the sheet as if in the midst of a seizure, arms and legs twitching as the sparkplugs lit up in a precisely-timed sequence. Her eyes were held closed by two heavy strips of medical tape. A clear plastic tube ran from her throat into a large glass jar set on a metal table beside the bed; with each jerk, dark viscous liquid crawled through the tube and oozed into the jar. With each sequence of sparks she bit down hard on her lower lip, breaking the skin and dribbling blood down the side of her face. Finally, one of the convulsions was so violent that she ripped the sheets from over her body, exposing the metal rings that encased her torso from the center of her chest down to her knees. It looked as if she were being tortured.

I looked away, took several deep breaths to stop myself from vomiting, then looked down at Daddy Bliss and said, “Where are the nurses and doctors?”

“There aren’t any. All of the medical care here is automated. The girl you saw in there is recovering from an emergency procedure. Her body rejected its new torso, so a new one is being made for her. Hopefully, we’ll have better luck this time.”

I looked through the window again, this time seeing that what I’d mistaken for metal rings were actually grooves in a massive cylindrical chamber encircling the center section of the bed.

“It’s holding her organs in place,” said Daddy Bliss as if I’d asked the question out loud. “Some of her bone structure remained intact, but not nearly enough.”

“How long can you keep her alive in that condition?”

“Indefinitely. She’s a stubborn case, that one. She’s insisting on the full Repair, no matter how long it takes. When her Repairs are complete, we shall name her Pinto, and love her as a family should love a new member.”

Next to the door was a small framed black and white photograph of a young woman that would have looked right at home in the center of a roadside memorial wreath. “Is this her?” I asked, pointing at the photograph. “That is how her family chose for the world to remember her, yes.” “Was this taken from a memorial?” “Of course. That’s always the second step in the Repair process.” I stared at him for a moment. “What’s the first step?” “I’d think that would be obvious—taking the soul from the shell before the body dies completely.” I looked back in at Pinto. She shuddered once more, and so did I.

“I don’t…I don’t understand how this is possible,” I said. “How do you get their bodies? Rob the graves after they’re buried? What if they’re cremated?”

Daddy Bliss rolled toward me. “The bodies left at the accident scenes are of no use to us—besides, the survivors have to have something grieve over and bury, don’t they? We’re not quite that heartless. No, the soul is the key. The soul, as it turns out, is a curious thing. In the initial stages of Repair, the soul’s identity is still tied very closely to the individual’s self-image—how they think of themselves, physically.

“At some point in everyone’s life, they lock onto an image of themselves—how they looked at 27, or 32, or 45—as being, for lack of a better way to put it, the best they will ever appear, and it is this image that ties itself to the soul’s memory. Depending on how quickly the soul is retrieved, much of that physical identity remains easily accessible, so it’s not difficult to convince the soul to bring forth that physical identity once again.” He smiled. “You’d be surprised how easy it is for a just-taken soul to summon flesh from the ether.

“The difficulty lies in how long it takes to have the soul delivered to us. In most cases, the Highway People deliver them here in a few seconds, but sometimes, when the Road has been particularly demanding on certain nights, it may take as long as two minutes before they are brought to us. When that happens, the soul has already begun its process of ‘letting go’ of the physical identity, and so what flesh is summoned from the ether is, well…incomplete. When that happens, we are forced to improvise with whatever materials are on hand.”

I pointed toward the picture hanging outside Pinto’s room. “Why the photos?”

“Consider them a way of checking the quality of our workmanship. Luckily, those friends and family left behind inevitably choose a memorial photograph that was taken of their loved during this ‘ideal’ image time. When the soul has forgotten too much of the physical identity, we take the photograph and use it as our blueprint.”

“But how can you be sure that…that you’re Repairing them correctly?”

“Not to oversimplify, dear boy, but Road Mama and I decided long ago to use only three basic body types as our Repair base: endomorph—the larger and fleshier body; mesomorph—the more muscular type, and ectomorph—the slender or lean body type. These three types rarely show up in pure forms, but rather in numerous but finite combinations. Once we have what flesh the soul remembers, and the photograph, it’s not difficult to discern which body type—or combination of body types—is required for the Repair process. Would you mind showing me your watch?”

The sudden change of subject caught me off-guard, but I did as he asked.

“Ah, how time does slip away,” he said, looking at the hour. “Not that I’m not thoroughly enjoying our talk, Driver, but we’re on a bit of tight schedule this evening. Come along.”

He moved on down the hall.

I almost looked in at Pinto again, then knew I couldn’t; another glance at her condition, and I might start laughing, and if I started laughing, I knew I’d never stop.

So I followed him.

I did not look through any more observation windows or at any of the memorial photographs hanging beside the doors.

We turned right at the end of the hall and moved toward a door with frosted glass window with the words Control Center #1 stenciled onto the glass. A security camera mounted over the door tracked our every move.

When he reached the door, Daddy Bliss once again looked up and smiled at the camera; once again, the door automatically unlocked and swung open.

We entered a medium-sized room that was taken up by expensive computer equipment. There must have been a dozen high-end machines working away in there, all of them with 25- and 40-inch LCD monitors, and all arranged on a series of wall-mounted shelves so that the sole person working the room could roll her office chair from unit to unit without banging her legs against anything. And it appeared that Ciera—the strawberry blonde girl who’d been collecting the roadside memorials—was very busy, indeed. Daddy Bliss gave her a quiet, loving look. “How are things going, my dear?” “Just fine, Daddy. You’re just in time for Lexington.”

“Oh, excellent.” He rolled forward. “You should see this, Driver.”

“Is it going to be like back there with Pinto?”

Ciera stopped what she was doing and sighed. “Oh, Daddy! I wanted to show him Pinto.”

“My apologies, dear, but it couldn’t be helped. We were in the area and it seemed a pity to waste the opportunity.” He moved closer to her. “All right—how angry are you?”

“I’m not angry,” she said, pouting. “Just…disappointed.”

“Well, this will not do, will not do at all. I can’t have my favorite girl feeling this way, so here is what I propose: if the Road decrees as I think it will, then you, my dear, will be given the honor of starting the festivities.”

Ciera’s eyes grew wide, and then she squealed in joy and threw her arms around Daddy Bliss’s neck. “Oh, Daddy, I love you so much!”

“As I do you, dear Ciera. As I do you.”

This was the first time I got a clear look at what had been done to her arms, how the elbows had been replaced with hood hinges, her veins and remaining cartilage woven around and through the metal. No wonder they hadn’t looked right earlier, even though she’d been wearing a sweater; they were each roughly six inches longer than a normal human arm was supposed to be.

She saw me staring at her, then—giving Daddy Bliss a quick and affectionate kiss on the cheek—stood up, stretching out her arms, then crossing her legs and tilting her head to the side in an imitation of the Crucifixion of Jesus. “Be honest—do these make me look fat?”

Both she and Daddy Bliss exploded with laughter.

I was still busy replaying Daddy Bliss’s promise about her “…starting the festivities”, so it took a moment for me to realize that, once they stopped laughing, both of them were staring at me.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I drifted off for a moment.”

“You’re cute,” said Ciera. “I kinda hope you get stuck here.”

“Now, now,” said Daddy Bliss. “No flirting—at least, not right now. I, too, think the pair of you would make a handsome couple, but that’s neither here nor there.” He looked up at one of the wall clocks; there were several of them, covering different time zones. “I believe that Lexington beckons us, does it not?”

Ciera blew me a little kiss, ran her tongue quickly over her upper lip, then sat back down in her chair and rolled over to one of the computers with a 40-inch monitor. “About one minute.”

“I still get goosebumps” said Daddy Bliss. “Imagine that. After all this time, and I still tingle when this happens.” He looked at me. “You need to see this, Driver.”

“I’d rather not.”

“But I insist, really I do.”

Not wanting to find out what happens to someone who refused his insistence, I moved over, the three of us clustering around the monitor.

“Can you split the screen?” asked Daddy Bliss. “I don’t know that Driver will be able to follow otherwise.” He looked at me. “No offense intended.”

I said nothing. It seemed the smart thing to do.

Ciera typed in a single command, hit the return key, and the image on the screen split in two; on the left side, a schematic of a section of highway (presumably somewhere in Lexington, Kentucky); on the right was a live feed from a camera mounted atop what I assumed was a light somewhere along the same highway shown on the schematic.

“Okay,” said Ciera, turning a smaller desk-top monitor toward us. Its screen showed a middle-aged man sitting in his living room, running two HO-scale cars around a large track that was an exact replica of the schematic. Beneath this image was a series of changing numbers and the words Bloomington, Indiana.

The man onscreen stopped for a moment, looked at the clock, then carefully placed two more cars onto the track at different locations; after that, he picked up a second control handset and squeezed the triggers on both. The cars on the track began moving, and at the same time four blinking lights appeared on the schematic, each one following the same path as its counterpart on this man’s track.

“You might want to step back a little bit,” said Ciera. “The idea is to take all this in at a glance. It’ll be easier for you to see everything if you move back a foot or two.”

I did as she said, and watched as Bloomington, Indiana increased the speed of the HO-scale cars.

As he increased the speed, the blinking lights on the highway schematic began moving faster.

As the blinking lights on the schematic moved faster, two cars became visible in the distance from the live-feed camera.

Daddy Bliss wasn’t looking at the screen any longer; he was watching me. “I do believe that our Driver has figured something out.”

“Oh, God…” was all I could get out.

When it happened, it happened quickly.

Two cars approached the camera, a Ford Explorer and a Chevy Corvette. They were one lane apart, both going at roughly the same speed. As they drove closer to the camera, two cars traveling in the opposite direction on the other side of the concrete divider zoomed into view; a Pontiac Bonneville and a Saturn Ion Sedan. The Pontiac and Saturn were going well over the speed limit. The Pontiac veered into the lane directly behind the Saturn and flashed its brights. The Saturn increased its speed, as did the Pontiac. I wondered what the hell the Pontiac driver was thinking, what he (or she, I couldn’t tell) thought was going to be accomplished by this. Maybe the Saturn had done something to piss him off, and the Pontiac driver was just acting on impulsive anger. Or maybe the Pontiac was trying to get in the Exit lane and the Saturn driver was just fucking with him.

A few moments later, it didn’t much matter.

The Saturn suddenly hit its brakes (or had its brakes hit for it). The Pontiac slammed into the back of the Saturn, crumpling its own front end and upending the Saturn, which flipped over the divider just as the Explorer came up from the other side. The Saturn landed on the hood of the Explorer, crumpling it and forcing the Explorer to slant-skid right and side-swipe the Corvette, causing the driver to lose control and spin out, the rear of the car smashing into the divider and sending the thing spinning even harder, coming to a screeching halt a second before the Explorer slammed into its side and the Saturn came off its hood to smash squarely onto the Corvette’s roof. It couldn’t have taken six seconds. The man on the smaller monitor dropped his handsets and walked over to his HO tracks, examining the four smashed, piled-up cars. The schematic showed a single blinking light now, this one bigger than the others, and flashing a bright red.

The live feed showed only a mass of smoking, twisted, smashed, bloody metal and glass. The Saturn had run halfway up the divider after rear ending the Pontiac, and looked like a sick beast trying to climb over a rock.

After a moment, one of the Saturn’s doors opened and a woman who was nothing but blood from head to heel fell out onto the highway. A moment later, several bulky shadows dislodged themselves from the night and swam toward the wreckage. I couldn’t watch any more. I turned away, closing my eyes. A few moments later, I felt a hand on my shoulder. “It’s okay now,” said Ciera. “It’s over.” I opened my eyes and saw Daddy Bliss moving toward me. “So,” he said, “you’ve some idea now?” I could barely find my voice, but somehow managed to do so. “One question.” “Of course.” I pointed toward the screens. “Is this…do you…” “Take your time, Driver. Take a deep breath. There you are. Now, once more?”

“These accidents…they’re not accidents at all, are they?”

Daddy Bliss sighed. “I think the answer to that should be obvious, dear boy. But that’s not your real question, is it?”

I looked right into his unblinking eyes. “Is it just certain accidents like this one, or is it all of them?”

“Ah, direct and to the point this time. Splendid. Allow me to return the candor, Driver.” He moved closer to me. “It is all of them. It has always been all of them. All of them.” “…oh, God…” “So you believe?” “…yes…”

“You’ve no idea how much that pleases me. It will make the rest of this so much easier.”

I looked at the destruction on the monitor once more. “Says you….”