Don't Touch My Junk

It was the middle of August when next I found myself in New York, nearly four months after the Copper Knight incident. Once again it was on official business for the Challenger Foundation, but this time I was accompanied by Pete Halstein, the man called Bulwark. He was visibly agitated about our mission, thrusting out his plinth-like jaw and shaking his head like he was going to hold forth, only to fall silent just as it seemed like the angry words were about to come rushing out. He had no need to articulate why he was upset; I knew perfectly well. All the same, I wasn’t in a mood to commiserate with him; it was too early and I had a hangover.

We were riding an open-air access lift from the Harlem River docks to the secured portion of the Marble Hill Island Correctional Sanctuary. Marble Hill was originally attached to Manhattan before the war (the Big One, last century), but was cut off by the construction of a canal during New York’s first try at being a Free City. Over time, most of the residents moved out and the place was converted into a prison, only it was the sort of prison where you put people who were too smart or productive to let waste away in a cage with brutes. At the Sanctuary, the inmates all lived in pleasant A-frame domiciles complete with their own kitchens, bathroom and bedroom privacy, tidy patio gardens, and Grid access. They could stroll around the island as they pleased, entertain approved visitors, and dine at several small restaurants and cafes. The only signs of incarceration were ambiguous: the security gates, the polite perimeter guards with submachine guns, the poles festooned with surveillance cameras — very little that would have seemed out of place at many private gated communities on Long Island. Marble Hill was prison mainly in the same sense that the cookie-cutter lots of suburbia were a prison, only the inmates at the Sanctuary couldn’t hop in their cars or flitters to get away for the day. This sort of comfort and dignity was afforded the inmates so that they could spend their sentences contributing their labor and creativity back to society, partly to pay for restitution to their victims and partly to finance the facility itself. I thought it was rather enlightened and a better deal for all involved than the self-evidently failed penitentiary system. My stone-hearted companion didn’t share this view.

“This place is pretty friggin’ nice,” he rumbled as the steel security gate rolled back and a smiling, jumpsuited guard waved for us to come down the thoroughfare to his checkpoint. “Nicer than any place I ever lived.”

“Really?” I said, slurping my coffee. “It’s not nicer than any place I ever lived. Uh, for more than a week or two, anyway.”

“This molly-coddling criminals. It’s obscene! Turn forty people to stone statues and get to live better than an honest working man. It eats at me,” Bulwark said.

“I noticed.” I pushed my sunglasses up the bridge of my nose and waved the mobi on my wrist at the guard. He checked something off on his slate and wished us good morning by name.

“Welcome to Marble Hill Sanctuary, gentlemen. Miss Cartalucci is waiting for you and we’ll send you right on through, but first I’m afraid I have to conduct a contraband and weapons inspection. So, if you have anything from the excluded list on your persons, please place it in the locker.”

“Nothing like that on me,” I said.

“Wait a minute! You want to search me while these twerps are inside here, living the high life?” Bulwark barked. “My whole body’s a weapon!”

The ever-so-polite guard chuckled with embarrassment and blushed a little. “It’s nothing personal, Mr. Bulwark. We just don’t want anything getting through that may endanger one of our residents, or tempt them into trying to get out a little earlier than scheduled, if you know what I mean.”

He let out a growling sigh then leaned over the guard, poking a stony finger at him. “Don’t touch my junk!”

“If there’s junk touching, I’d like to request a female guard, preferably a dark-eyed brunette with an unzippered top,” I quickly interjected.

“No need to get upset gentlemen, we don’t do pat downs, just a wanding,” the guard said, managing to keep a good check on his undoubtedly mounting frustration. He held out a rounded oblong paddle. And he added in a low voice, “No sultry brunettes either. It’s not like the movies.”

I shrugged and finished the coffee. “Shame,” I said, and spread my arms out for him.

Mary Josephine Cartalucci, magna cum laude graduate of Columbia University, M.Sc Chemistry, Microkinetic and Chemosynthesis Talent, and convicted felon once known as Medusa, stood on the lawn outside of her dorm with two round suitcases in hand. Her braided hair had been turned loose and cut short, the green hair dye long ago washed out. When she saw us walking up the slate sidewalk, she dropped her gaze and muttered, “Shit.”

“So Medusa, we meet again,” I said, smirking.

“Don’t call me that, please. It’s embarrassing,” she said. “I thought the Promethean was coming. I didn’t think he’d send you.” She cocked her head at Bulwark.

“Well, sorry to disturb you, princess! I know everybody’s been workin’ real hard to put you at ease!”

“I told you I was sorry! Geez, how many times do I have to say it!” she protested.

Bulwark roared with outraged laughter. “You’re a real piece of work, lady.”

“We’re almost finished with the neutralization solution! Everybody will be unfrozen by October,” she shrilled. “Probably.”

“Shhh! OK, man with a hangover. Inside voices, please,” I said. I handed her a bundle of papers — court documents. “I hereby acknowledge receipt of prisoner and am taking you into protective custody for the remainder of your eight-year sentence, yadda yadda, welcome to the Challenger Foundation.”

She dropped her suitcases, threw out her arms, and jumped on me. “Yay! I’m so excited! And I’ve been thinking about what I want to be called. You know, like a codename?”

“Why the hell do you get a codename? You’re not a superhero, you’re a convict.” Bulwark said.

“I’m reformed!”

“Not everybody needs a codename, you know,” I said. “It’s getting a little tedious, frankly.”

“I want a codename!” she insisted.

“Alright,” I relented. “What were you thinking?”

She angled her head sideways and looked at me dramatically. “Chemistra, Mistress of Molecules.”