The Future: Liberty or Death?

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The Storage Unit


November 1, 2022. Las Vegas
 
While enjoying a nice breakfast of alder smoked bacon, fried eggs, grits, and strawberries, Garrett is listening to the local news on TV. Eye witness coverage. He is suddenly riveted by what he sees and now listens more intently. The young cub reporter, being interrupted at intervals with police bulletins, is visibly agitated:
 
"On the scene here at the Family Attic Mini Storage in North Las Vegas. Police have informed me that two storage units have just been discovered filled with dead bodies. I can hardly believe what they're saying! Hundreds and hundreds of mummified bodies! ... Yes! Okay! Two units, thirty by sixty, unpaid for some reason. The owner cut the locks and got the surprise of his life. Dried bodies packed inside like sardines he says, stacked from floor to ceiling. The same thing by the second door at the far end of both units. The estimate is that if both are packed solid, as they now appear to be, that there will prove to be as many as nineteen hundred bodies in all. What we're seeing here may well be the most tragic peacetime discovery in all of human history!"
 
"Holy Madame Du Flubashaimavitch!" exclaims Garrett. "Would I love to interview that fella. He's one grim and nasty son-of-a-bitch! Must be a man. No woman would ever do this."
 
Updated bulletins continue all day. By evening it's known that the storage units were rented by John Hobart Farris, a white male forty three years of age. This is the same man who owns the bluff overlooking what is now being called the "Wheelchair Massacre."  The police have been wanting to question him, but have not been able to because he had a car accident and has been in a coma for almost a year.
 
The media at first are saying that it appears that the storage payments stopped because of Farris' accident. Not so simple though, because now the mini storage owner is saying that all rent payments since the first ones five years ago were made by another man. He continued to pay for eight months after Farris' accident but then stopped and has not come back or even phoned since. Police don't have a name. Garrett hears all this at dinner, reads for awhile, then retires.
 
Special forensic units have been created all over Las Vegas to figure out who all these people are. Even with the new systems for checking dental records, this will take months. Two thousand and eleven mummies in in all. Not wrapped in gauze like Egyptian ones. Naked and dehydrated with some kind of salt process. The skin cured like fine leather.
 
Doctors continue their usual efforts to wake Farris and after six weeks he finally comes out of the coma. The doctors won't permit interviews for three days. Farris is getting physical therapy and vitamins. Finally the police talk to him, but he says he knows nothing about any of it. A polygraph test supports him.
 
Garrett hears about all this on television. "Anybody with that level of morbid self discipline could make a polygraph sit up and do tricks like a trained seal and most of the detectives along with it" mutters Garrett sourly.
 
Three weeks pass. Farris has now been charged with mass murder because his estranged wife found an architectural drawing with the items his landlord sent her after the accident.
 
The drawing shows a huge room set up like a court with dots representing carefully positioned people. Everything very neat and symmetrical. Not much in itself except that the picture is labeled "The Court of Belated Justice". This is the sole basis for the murder charge because the number of dots in the drawing is the same as the number of bodies, exactly two thousand and eleven. "Doom changes steamin down" thinks Garrett as he reads the story online.
 
After several days of browbeating by the police, Farris decides to plead nolo contendere and is sentenced to life in a super maximum security prison, the Wisconsin Secure Program Facility. No chance for parole.
 
Garrett writes to Farris requesting an interview, promising to publish to the Internet all of Farris' exact words, to use due diligence in promoting the website, and to maintain the material online until the end of his life. About a week later he receives a letter back consenting to the interview.

March 21, 2023
 
Garrett arrives in Wisconsin. At the prison they strip search him and then he meets with Farris. Valdison is struck by the relaxed coolness he sees in Farris and extends his hand,
 
"Howdy John. You never said whether you did it or not."
 
"No, but that doesn't mean I have no understanding of why it was done" replies Farris dryly.
 
"That gets me wondering about who that other man is who paid rent on the storage unit."
 
"The police already asked me about that" says Farris somewhat curtly. "I will speak only about why, not who."
 
Garrett replies "Okay. Fair enough, John. Just tell me what you feel comfortable with. I have clearance to see you again tomorrow at 10:00 AM and can stay two more days. You can sleep on it and still have a chance to tell me more before I leave. Remember, the more you say, the more will be learned for posterity."
 
"True" says Farris. "You seem like a decent guy, but I would like overnight to think. I'll say a few things now though. The bodies were in storage to be placed in a diorama for solemn commemoration at a time when the means became available. The people all deserved to die and were killed painlessly."
 
Farris continues "In each case, court proceedings were to be held after the fact of execution as a genteel formality for the sake of the families with appropriate taped segments sent to each. The only regret here has been the unavoidable delay in doing this last part. People deserve to know as soon as possible. That's all I want to say now."
 
Garrett replies "I'll be very interested to hear anything else you can tell me. Thanks John. I appreciate your time. See you tomorrow."
 
After a splendid meal of baked sturgeon, creamed celery, and little spuds with butter and parsley, Garrett goes back to his hotel. During the night John Farris dies in his sleep from a coronary occlusion as a further complication from the accident. When Garrett gets to the prison and hears this, he is speechless. "The story of the century gone.... like a shadow." he thinks.
 
Garrett goes back home to Las Vegas and spends all his spare time for the next nine weeks reading police reports and looking at earlier living photographs of the mummified people in some vague hope that he might come to understand the basis of these strange events.
 
The more Garrett looks, the more he notices just one thing. Usually it is extremely subtle and not observable in all the photographs of any given individual. In the subtle cases he only notices it after first seeing it in the cases where it is blatant. All of the faces show one thing which Garrett can only now describe most simply as "moral stupidity".