Big Daddy's referred to his wife as Big Momma, although she was neither tall nor large. When house staff addressed her, they did so by lowering their head and saying "Yes, your ladyship." As she had instructed them. Occasionally they'd have reason to say "No, your ladyship." That might be the prudent thing to say if Big Momma had said something to her house staff like – "I can always have you whipped and sent into the fields to work. Is that what you'd like?"
Now, about those dog collars: All workers on the ranch wore electronic devices around their necks. Their supervisors – known as bosses – carried wands that controlled the length and the strength of the electrical charges that the dog collars would send through a worker's body. The younger bosses wore dog collars too during their apprenticeship period.
The collars were manufactured in North Korea and were similar in some respects (pain delivery) to Zzyk's brain-bands. (The Wilizy had intercepted a shipment of these collars and had stored them safely away in case they might prove useful.) This is what Karita wore around her neck too. A dog collar was the equivalent to handcuffs and leg manacles, only the collar didn't get in the way of people working. The collar did stop workers from disobeying, or horror of horrors, from escaping.
As to the whipping: Yes, workers could be tied to a post where they would be whipped in front of other workers. This was mostly to send a message to the other workers. And, let me be frank here. Those workers? That's not what they were. They were slaves, pure and simple. From now on, that's how I will refer to them.
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With access to the Big House denied, Jenkins was unable to continue Karita's language education. Renfrew took over that part of Karita's upbringing. Renfrew didn't actually speak the language Karita was learning, but that was not a serious impediment. All of the instruction could be delivered by bot under hypnosis the same way the dreams were being implanted. The two people whispering in the root cellar that first night of September didn't know that Renfrew was wiping Karita's old memories and replacing them with new memories. They only knew one thing about Karita.
"That child can't stay in the bedroom next to Big Daddy," the female voice said. "You know how he is."
"Last time I looked, I was wearing a dog collar," the male voice said. "So were you."
"The plumbing in the Big House is old and pipes can burst."
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Chapter 15
After watching Dreamer get partially undressed in front of his brothers, Wizard developed a strong hankering to get away from the compound. He decided to see how the kid with the peach farm in Chicago was doing. Wizard had given him peaches in exchange for Chicago pellets that proved very valuable in Operation Dead Man Walking (Book #3). The last time Wizard had talked with him, the kid had plans to plant peach trees as a way of earning revenue for his gang of young boys.
Wizard did an invisible fly-over Chicago first. Since he was on his own, he couldn't take any risks, and the Chicago area had proven to be dangerous to the Wilizy in the past. He found the peach farm easily on the mud flats north of the city. The farm was quite big with perhaps fifty trees in various stages of growth. The boys of the gang were pruning them. He knew they were gang members because everybody on the mudflats had red somewhere on their clothes. Except for the men with the rifles.
Wizard counted six men stationed on the edge of the dry land at the southern perimeter of the farm. They weren't protecting the farm from intruders; they were keeping the gang members working. Wizard did some low fly-overs looking for the Chicago pellet kid. He would have been 13 or 14 years old by now, but the boys on the mud flats were too young to be him. He saw all different shades of skin colour, but he didn't see a teenage boy with a crooked nose. As he watched, some solar cars came out with more boys and the cars took the other boys back to Chicago with leg restraints stopping them from getting out of the cars. The kid wasn't in that group of boys either.
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The students at North Penticton Middle School weren't wearing leg restraints, but they too were being escorted under guard. The first day of school had started with an assembly. Being a middle school, all of the grade 6s were new to the school and needed help to find classrooms and move from one room in the school to another. So in the assembly, the principal read the names of the students in each grade 6 homeroom class. A teacher collected the students, put them in pairs, formed them into a long line, and took them to their homeroom. From there, the teacher marched them to their other classrooms too. Reese was in Mr. Smithman's 6B class. He would teach them Language Arts and Social Studies. They'd go to other rooms for Math, Science, and their electives. Mr. Smithman kept the twenty-seven students in his room orderly on the initial march to his homeroom. On the tour to their other classrooms, he just ignored them if they were talking or goofing around. As they approached one of their classrooms, he'd point and say Math, for example, and then keep walking. For students at the back of the line, this wasn't too informative because he didn't turn around so that his voice could be heard.
One of the reasons for the noisy line was that almost everybody in 6B knew each other already. They had been in the same grade 5 class in their elementary school. For many they were seeing each other for the first time since the end of June and old friendships were being renewed. The point in keeping everybody together from grade 5 was to help ease their transition into middle school. However, for any new students assigned to the class, they were walking into a room where they were the only strangers. Reese and a girl named Annika fell into that category.
NPMS had about 300 students, approximately 100 in each grade with four classes in each grade. The school had been built about ten years ago and sat on a big area of land fronted by Reservoir Road. This was an elevated property with a good view of Okanagan Lake. The area around the school itself had been landscaped with two big playing fields. The property to the southeast of the school had been left heavily forested.
School let out at noon with the students being reminded that tomorrow was a full day and they were expected to show up in their blue/gray uniforms. Reese and Annika hadn't known about that and had arrived in their uniforms. They were the only two students in the school so attired.
As Winnie had predicted, Mathias was not attending NPMS. He had been slated to enter NPMS' grade 7. Yolanda had planned for him and Reese to sling into the forest behind the school and walk out of the forest onto school property together. If anybody asked where they lived, they'd point to the east where a cluster of little farms nestled on the other side of the hill. Their last name would be in the school records as Wiltz. Hank and Yolanda's discussion with Mathias about his school career had been long. It never became heated because Mathias didn't argue back. He'd just say that he already had a job as a pilot and he would do his job. That put his parents into the impossible position of trying to persuade him to be irresponsible and that wasn't going to fly. Mathias was going to fly. And that was the ultimate decision.
Reese was sitting in the same room listening to the discussion as his parents and Mathias hashed out what Mathias would be doing this school year. He saw how strongly his parents tried to convince Mathias that he needed to go to a formal school. He saw how disappointed they were when they couldn't convince Mathias to register at NPMS. When it became his turn to talk with his parents about NPMS, Reese agreed immediately to attend. In actual fact, he didn't want to go.
# # # # # # # #
For the grade 6s, the first full day of school consisted of a barrage of tests in the four core subjects of Language Arts, Math, Science, and Social Studies. The results of these tests would give the teachers an idea of how well the incoming students were equipped to handle their new grade. The students faced no tests when they went to their non-core subjects. Instead, teachers talked about what the students would be doing in their classes and handed out sheets of paper that identified what each student had to bring to class. Since Yolanda had already asked for c
opies of these lists when Reese had registered, he arrived that first morning wearing Theo's old backpack crammed with a full set of supplies. He stored them in his locker.
On the second day, Reese arrived at his homeroom to find the students milling around trying to find a desk with their name on it. There were five lines of desks. The line closest to the window had seven desks. The other four lines had five desks. Reese found his desk at the very back of the line of seven that was next to the window. The new girl was immediately in front of him.
As 6B went from one core subject to the next, they discovered that their teachers had assigned desks in those classes too. Reese noticed that the arrangement of his classmates varied from subject to subject, but he always had the last desk in the column closest to the window, and the new girl was always sitting in front of him.
What Reese didn't know, nor did the other students, was that the teachers of the core subjects had met the previous afternoon to share test results. Plus they had had meetings last spring with the Grade 5 teachers to talk about each incoming student. High on that meeting's agenda had been a request for warnings about students who could pose a behaviour problem or a learning challenge. While each of 6B's core subject had slightly different seating arrangements, there was a common theme. The smartest students in each core subject would be furthest from the teacher's desk. The students who could be butt-aches were at the front of the lines of desks where the teacher would be able to see everything they did and hear everything they said. Three of the front seats in these classrooms were occupied by boys. Two largish girls sat in the other two.
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The same week that Reese was beginning his formal school education, Dreamer was opening Toronto's new Chocoholic Shop. Wizard had bought the lease from the previous owner and that meant that they were in an established shop in the commercial area of Toronto. The sign on the window still said Chocoholic Shop, but now there was a second sign – Under New Management.
Toronto's shop would be an experiment for the Wilizy. Their other retail outlets for chocolate would be in the WC&D stores that had multiple products that could bring customers into the stores. True, they expected chocolate to be a strong attraction in the WC&D stores, and it had a high profit margin, but the amount of money that people would spend only on chocolate was probably quite small. Wizard wanted to see if a separate shop that sold only chocolate could be a profitable business. For previous owners, it hadn't been. But that was because the costs of importing the chocolate were too high.
The Wilizy were importing their chocolate at next to no cost. Mathias brought a jumbo airplane load quite visibly to the Toronto airport where local transport moved the freight to the shop's storeroom. He'd do a monthly run to establish that the chocolate was being transported openly. However they were also keeping the inventory topped up by using overnight express to the Wilizy/Asia that was anchored virtually right above the store. The Wilizy/Asia had plenty of space for storage and accommodation too. Lucas and Theo would run the store and live on the ship. Dreamer would take care of the administrative details and would visit them periodically. When she did, she'd bunk in a ship's bedroom that she had prepared for herself in advance.
Dreamer was in Toronto before the store's opening to work out hours of operation and shifts. Since the store was in the business section of downtown Toronto, most of its customers were the people working in that area. Mondays to Fridays should be high volume sales. On Saturday, they could expect some business from Torontonians coming into the city to shop, but no business from the office workers. Dreamer, Lucas, and Theo agreed on operating hours of 9-5 on Mondays through to Fridays, with both boys working the store and taking breaks as possible. They'd try a Saturday shift as well, but only to see what kind of response they'd get. The store would be closed on Sundays.
One of the underlying reasons why Theo and Lucas were in Toronto on their own was precisely that: to give them the opportunity to be on their own and to learn some responsibility. The directors had made this decision but had said nothing about this purpose to Wizard or to Dreamer. Yolanda and Hank had sent subtle messages to Theo and Lucas about the opportunity for both of them to develop some maturity by living on their own. Yolanda had had a very private talk with Theo during which she had asked him to keep an eye on his older brother. Theo agreed. He had been doing that all of his life anyway. Hank and Yolanda had a third purpose as well: Get Lucas out of the compound and keep him busy so that he couldn't sit around moping all the time.
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Chapter 16
While Reese was finding his way around his new school, Karita was finding herself in a school too. A school where she learned how to clean kitchens. I'll back up a couple of days.
An unfortunate accident in one of the Big House's water pipes meant that Karita could not stay in the large and comfy bedroom she had been given. The old biddy housekeeper had put her foot down. When this housekeeper put her foot down, it stayed down. Since her foot had the weight of an elephant's foot, this was understandable.
(From Wikipedia, 2085: The ELEPHANT is a mythical creature that supposedly inhabited some parts of the world before the ancients destroyed it. People believed that elephants could shoot water out of their noses. In today's society, con artists talk about elephants and their noses to see how gullible the person in front of them is. If they believe the elephant story...)
The old biddy started making comments to Big Momma like: "That water has seeped into the carpet and underlay. We might never get it dried out. Lots of possibility for mold."
...
"Mold is a health hazard. That little girl could develop a life-long susceptibility to asthma."
...
"Keeping the girls in this house under control is hard enough without a little bitty thing like her sleeping in a bedroom the size of a barn while other girls are sleeping four to a room. I can just see one of these vixens taking a pair of scissors to her face one dark night."
"Where would you put her?" Big Momma had asked.
The old biddy's age was now such that she had trouble hearing things. She was sure that Big Momma had asked, "How far away from Big Daddy can you put her?" She acted accordingly.
Pililiani was the old biddy's name. It was a nice Hawaiian name that meant close to heaven. Pililiani's family could trace their recent ancestors to Hawaii. When the Chinese invaded, they had managed to escape to California, and from there, they relocated to Provo, Utah and a cabin on the edge of Utah Lake. One day, Pililiani was canoeing on the lake but didn't return home. Her parents found her overturned canoe but not Pililiani. They were confused by her apparent drowning because she was a very strong swimmer. A few days after she went missing, Pililiani found herself wearing a dog collar and working as a slave in Safe Haven Ranch #4's kitchen. She was a little slip of a thing back then. She started eating everything she could get her hands on after the other little slips told her about Big Daddy.
Since Pililiani's first assignment had been as a kitchen drudge, she had ample access to food. The lowest position in the kitchen, the one always assigned to the new girl, was known as the drudge. She would be given all of the nasty work until the next new 14 year old girl arrived. After two months and thirty additional pounds, Big Daddy's daddy's daddy had lost all interest in Pililiani although that hadn't stopped him from getting her pregnant the first month she was at the ranch. Pililiani made sure that he didn't get interested again. In Pililiani's experience, rolls of fat kept Big Daddy away.
Now in her 60s, Pililiani ran the Big House and all of the slaves in it – the girls as well as the women. Some of her decisions were made with Big Momma's approval. Some were made without Big Momma's knowledge.
One such example was Pililiani's decision to test whether the pipes leading into that big second floor bedroom could take a lot of physical abuse. That test caused an unfortunate water leak that required Pililiani to put Karita into a new bedroom that was created out of an
empty storeroom leading off of the kitchen. This was an undesirable location that any of the other girls in the house would have dreaded because it just happened to be next to the old biddy's bedroom. Plus the little girl would have to work in the kitchen as the drudge. Washing pots and pans. Peeling vegetables. Dumping kitchen scraps into the compost bin. Karita would no longer be a target of envy; pity was more likely.
Pililiani also decided to have a new electrical power switch placed on a wall in her own bedroom. She had observed Renfrew doping Karita's lunches and hooking her up to a machine in her bedroom after she fell asleep. Two hours later, Karita would emerge from her bedroom stumbling, mumbling, fumbling, and bumbling. Pililiani didn't know what that machine did. But obviously it created a safety issue that had to be addressed. She couldn't have a member of the kitchen staff endangering herself and others.
Pililiani reported a potentially dangerous problem with the wall outlet of her own bedroom. That report went from Pililiani to Big Momma, and from there to Boss #24 who was in charge of fixing problems inside the Big House. Only this boss, of all of the twenty-four bosses working for Big Daddy, was allowed to enter the Big House. Once inside, he'd work under the direct supervision of the old biddy who would ensure that he didn't get any romantic ideas about any of the young girls. Both Big Momma and Pililiani were confident that this boss could work in the house without being tempted by the young girls because he wasn't old enough to shave yet.
When this boss had finished repairing the electrical fault, Pililiani had a light switch in her own bedroom that controlled the power outlet on the wall in Karita's bedroom. Every afternoon, after Renfrew left Karita doped up in her shoebox of a room, Pililiani would turn off all power to the shoebox. When Renfrew returned to wake Karita from her drug-induced nap, Pililiani would turn the power back on. Karita's mumbling, stumbling, fumbling, and bumbling tumbled away.
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Chapter 17