Escape Plus

ESCAPE!
We tell ourselves a lot of lies about prisons. The biggest lie is calling it "the criminal justice system;" it is not a system, it has nothing to do with justice, and if there is anything criminal about it, it's the fact that jails tend to make their inmates lifelong antisocial animals.
I started my writing career on newspapers, and spent a lot of those early years covering the police beat in an upper-middle-class suburban area outside my native Philadelphia. As an investigative reporter (we didn't know that term back in the Fifties, we just called it legwork) I spent a summer probing into the problem of juvenile crime. The eventual result was Escape!, which was published originally as a short novel.
Two other factors went into writing this story; both involved the idea of a "perfect" jail. One was the notion that the lure of escape was the only thing that kept most inmates alive, especially the ones with long or indeterminate sentences. I read somewhere about a prison chaplain saying that if the inmates truly believed that they could never possibly escape from the jail they were in, they would go insane or commit suicide. The other factor was the kind of idea that only a science fiction writer would think of: suppose we made a jail that is as good as we can possibly imagine, a jail that actually works the way we good citizenssay we want our jails to work, a jail that helps its inmates to become honest, upright, tax-paying citizens.
The result was the campus-like and absolutely escape-proof prison in Escape!, with its electronic sentries and all-seeing computer, SPECS. But to make the prison work the way I wanted it to, there had to be a human side to it. The machines can do only so much; the jail with its electronic marvels is merely a box in which to hold prisoners. To make the jail work in a way that would transform those prisoners into healthy, self-reliant, honest citizens required a human mind, a human soul, a human purpose. Thus Joe Tenny entered the equation, and became the main force in the resulting story.
Joe is modelled very closely on a man I knew and worked with for several years. The real "Joe Tenny" was a man of enormous talents and passions, a teacher, a scientist, a man who had worked himself too hard for his own good. He died much too early. The world is poorer for that. A pale shadow of him lives on in this story. That's not enough, but if this story shows you how we can use what's best in us to make the world better, then Joe's vital spark of life is not completely extinguished.
Escape!, incidentally, has generated more mail from readers than any other single story I have ever written. I credit "Joe Tenny' s" indomitable spirit for that; he was the kind of man who made people feel good about themselves.
CHAPTER ONE
The door shut behind him.
Danny Romano stood in the middle of the small room, every nerve tight. He listened for the click of the lock. Nothing.
Quiet as a cat, he tiptoed back to the door and tried the knob. It turned. The door was unlocked.
Danny opened the door a crack and peeked out into the hallway. Empty. The guards who had brought him here were gone. No voices. No footsteps. Down at the far end of the hall, up near the ceiling, was some sort of TV camera. A little red light glowed next to its lens.
He shut the door and leaned against it.
"Don't lem 'em sucker you," he said to himself. "This is a jail."
Danny looked all around the room. There was only one bed. On its bare mattress was a pile of clothes, bed sheets, towels and stuff. A TV screen was set into the wall at the end of the bed. On the other side of the room was a desk, an empty bookcase, and two stiff-back wooden chairs. Somebody had painted the walls a soft blue.
"This can't be a cell ... not for me, anyway. They made a mistake."
The room was about the size of the jail cells they always put four guys into. Or sometimes six.
And there was something else funny about it. The smell, that's it! This room smelled clean. There was even fresh air blowing in through the open window. And there were no bars on the window. Danny tried to remember howmany jail cells he had been in. Eight? Ten? They had all stunk like rotting garbage.
He went to the clothes on the bed. Slacks, real slacks. Sport shirts and turtlenecks. And colors! Blue, brown, tan. Danny yanked off the gray coveralls he had been wearing, and tried on a light blue turtleneck and dark brown slacks. They even fit right. Nobody had ever been able to find him a prison uniform small enough to fit his wiry frame before this.
Then he crossed to the window and looked outside. He was on the fifth or sixth floor, he guessed. The grounds around the building were starting to turn green with the first touch of early spring. There were still a few patches of snow here and there, in the shadows cast by the other buildings.
There were a dozen buildings, all big and square and new-looking. Ten floors high, each of them, although there were a couple of smaller buildings farther out. One of them had a tall smokestack. The buildings were arranged around a big, open lawn that had cement paths through it. A few young trees lined the walkways. They were just beginning to bud.
"No fences," Danny said to himself.
None of the windows he could see had bars. Everyone seemed to enter or leave the buildings freely. No guards and no locks on the doors? Out past the farthest building was an area of trees. Danny knew from his trip in here, this morning, that beyond the woods was the highway that led back to the city.
Back to Laurie.
Danny smiled. What were the words the judge had used? In ... in-de-ter-minate sentence. The lawyer had said that it meant he was going to stay in jail for as long as they wanted him to. A year, ten years, fifty years ... .
"I'll be out of here tonight!" He laughed.
A knock on the door made Danny jump. Somebody heard me!
Another knock, louder this time. "Hey, you in there?" a man's voice called.
"Y ... yeah."
The door popped open. "I'm supposed to talk with you and get you squared away. My name's Joe Tenny."
Joe was at least forty, Danny saw. He was stocky, tough-looking, but smiling. His face was broad; his dark hair combed straight back. He was a head taller than Danny and three times wider. The jacket of his suit looked tight across the middle. His tie was loosened, and his shirt collar unbuttoned.
A cop, Danny thought. Or maybe a guard. But why ain't he wearing a uniform?
Joe Tenny stuck out a heavy right hand. Danny didn't move.
"Listen, kid," Tenny said, "we're going to be stuck together for a long time. We might as well be friends."
"I got my own friends," said Danny. "On the outside."
Tenny's eyebrows went up while the corners of his mouth went down. His face seemed to say, Who are you trying to kid, wise guy?
Aloud, he said, "Okay, suit yourself. You can have it any way you like, hard or easy." He reached for one of the chairs and pulled it over near the bed.
"How long am I going to be here?"
"That depends on you. A couple of years, at least." Joe turned the chair around backwards and sat on it as if it were a saddle, leaning his stubby arms on the chair's back.
Danny swung at the pile of clothes and things on the bed, knocking most of them onto the floor. Then he plopped down on the mattress. The springs squeaked in complaint.
Joe looked hard at him, then let a smile crack his face."I know just what's going through your mind. You're thinking that two years here in the Center is going to kill you, so you're going to crash out the first chance you get. Well, forget it! The Center is escape-proof."
In spite of himself, Danny laughed.
"I know, I know ... ." Tenny grinned back at him. "The Center looks more like a college campus than a jail. In fact, that's what most of the kids call it--the campus. But believe me, Alcatraz was easy compared to this place. We don't have many guards or fences, but we've got TV cameras, and laser alarms, and SPECS."
"Who's Specks?" Danny asked.
Joe called out, "SPECS, say hello."
The TV screen on the wall lit up. A flat, calm voice said, "GOOD MORNING DR. TENNY. GOOD MORNING MR. ROMANO. WELCOME TO THE JUVENILE HEALTH CENTER."
Danny felt totally confused. Somebody was talking through the TV set? The screen, though, showed the words he was hearing, spelled out a line at a time. But they moved too fast for Danny to really read them. And Specks, whoever he was, called Joe Tenny a doctor.
"Morning SPECS," Tenny said to the screen. "How's it going today?"
"ALL SYSTEMS ARE FUNCTIONING WELL, DR. TENNY. A LIGHT TUBE IN CORRIDOR SIX OF BUILDING NINE BURNED OUT DURING THE NIGHT. I HAVE REPORTED THIS TO THE MAINTENANCE CREW. THEY WILL REPLACE IT BEFORE LUNCH. THE MORNING CLASSES ARE IN PROGRESS. ATTENDANCE IS ..."
"Enough, skip the details." Joe turned back to Danny. "If I let him, he'd give me a report on every stick and stone in the Center."
"Who is he?" Danny asked.
"Not a he, really. An it. A computer. Special Computer System. Take the 's-p-e' from 'special' and the 'c' and 's'from 'computer system' and put the letters together: SPECS. He runs most of the Center. Sees all and knows all. And he never sleeps."
"Big deal," said Danny, trying to make it sound tough. Joe Tenny turned back to the TV screen, which was still glowing. "SPECS, give me Danny Romano's record, please."
The reply came without an instant's wait: "DANIEL FRANCIS ROMANO. AGE SIXTEEN. HEIGHT FIVE FEET TWO INCHES. WEIGHT ONE HUNDRED THIRTEEN POUNDS. SENTENCED TO INDETERMINATE SENTENCE IN THE JUVENILE HEALTH CENTER. FOUND GUILTY OF ATTEMPTED MURDER, RIOTING, LOOTING, ATTACKING A POLICE OFFICER WITH A DEADLY WEAPON, RESISTING ARREST. EARLIER CONVICTIONS INCLUDE PETTY THEFT, AUTOMOBILE THEFT, ASSAULT AND BATTERY, RESISTING ARREST, VANDALISM. SERVED SIX MONTHS IN STATE PRISON FOR BOYS. ESCAPED AND RECAPTURED ..."
"That's enough," Joe said. "Bad scene, isn't it?"
"So?"
"So it's why you're here."
Danny asked, "What kind of place is this? How come I'm not in a regular jail?"
Joe thought a minute before answering. "This is a new place. This Center has been set up for kids like you. Kids who are going to kill somebody--or get themselves killed--unless we can change them. Our job is to help you to change. We think you can straighten out. There's no need for you to spend the rest of your life in trouble and in jail. But you've got to let us help you. And you've got to help yourself."
"How ... how long will I have to stay here?"
Tenny's face turned grim. "Like I said, a couple of years, at least. But it really depends on you. You're going to stay as long as it takes. If you don't shape up, you stay. It's that simple."
Copyright © 1984 by Ben Bova