The cleaver hit bone and jammed fast. It was smeared with juices from the meat. His grip slid down the handle, the blade nicking his index finger. He winced. The boy looked up.
“It’s nothing,” he said and smiled.
The boy fidgeted and looked to his sister. She was sewing up the hole in the sack.
“It’s nothing,” said the man again. He was tired. They hadn’t much time. “Get back to work.”
The boy picked up his stick. He had whittled it down to a fine point. A little sharper and it would be ready for curing. He held it up and pricked his finger. A small point of blood appeared, lit by the light of the stove. He licked at the blood. The taste was salty.
His sister was concentrating hard, needle in hand, twine between her lips. He jabbed her with the stick, below the ribs. She yelped, dropping the needle and twine, darting forward with hand raised. The boy scrambled backwards, laughing, dodging his sister.
“Stop it,” said the man. They froze, looking at him, the boy cowering.
“We haven’t much time,” his voice was low with anger and exhaustion. “Stop; if you want to eat tonight.”
It had been days since he had slept more than a couple of hours. He put the cleaver down and leaned back in his wheelchair, resting a moment. Sometimes he struggled, more often now than in the beginning.
He rubbed his eyes and set his grip back firm on the handle. With a thud he brought the blade down, opening up a deep fissure above the thigh. Juices spattered onto his shirt. It had been dirty longer than he could remember.
The boy and the girl were still looking at him. The boy was close to tears.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to…” he said. He had never had children of his own. Even after seventeen months the boy was still scared of him.
“We haven’t much time,” he said. “Let’s get back to work.” He smiled and the girl smiled back. The boy tentatively picked up his stick and began whittling away again.
The man had never been a butcher and the practise hadn’t improved him. Whenever he came up against something hard he hacked around and levered it out. The soft stuff went in the sack. He kept the bones and scraps for soup. It was all they had eaten for months now.
A little while later he took a break. He wheeled himself over to the curtain that hid the window. He had cut it from a carpet. It hung heavy from five large nails he had hammered in. He pulled it back a few inches.
Out in the gloom were the silhouettes of the trees beyond. Behind them the last of the light was dying. They would be here soon.
He let the curtain fall back. It slapped heavily against the wall. The man looked to the children sat by the stove. The boy was watching the girl sewing. She was a year older. The man felt sorry for the boy. He still hadn’t learnt enough. In a year maybe they’d both be ready.
A shrill blast came from outside.
The girl shot him a glance. He wheeled himself over to the table.
“Get the sack,” he said in a low urgent voice.
The girl clambered up. She still had the needle and twine in her teeth. “It’s not ready. The hole’s not closed,” she said.
“Bring it here.”
“But it’s not…”
“Open it up, bring it here,” said the man.
The girl came over, holding it open. “Look, here, it’s still…”
“No, that’s not going to…” the man said, running his fingers over the gap, “come here,” he said to the boy. The boy shuffled over, chewing his lip. The man held the sack open. “You, hold it here, like this,” showing the boy how. The boy placed his hands where the man showed him, “now hold it open, tight. Really strong. You can be strong, right?”
The boy nodded, eyes full of fear.
“It’s important. Hold it tight. You can do that, yes?” said the man.
“Yes,” said the boy quietly.
The girl was sewing up the sides, concentrating hard on the hole she had to close.
“Good. Now you keep on. I’ll fill it up,” he said to the girl. She nodded.
Another shrill blast.
They all looked to the door. From outside came the crunch of snow on the path.
The girl’s voice broke. “Come on,” she said, “they’re almost here.”
The meat glistened on the table top, lit by the fire of the stove. He hurriedly scraped big clumps into his arms, sweeping it into the bag. It hit the bottom of the sack with a thud. The boy held firm. The man swept another armful into the bag. A few scraps spilt over. One clung to the boy’s face. The man flicked it off. It left a stain. The man piled more into the bag.
The crunches came louder and louder up the path. Then, just outside the door, they stopped.
He frantically swept in the last. He held the sides of the gap. She sewed it up tight.
A knock came at the door, deliberate and hard.
“Go on, go on, get it over, go on, be quick…” said the man.
Two more knocks came, loud and quick.
The girl heaved the sack up onto her back. It was soaked through and slipped down.
The boy rammed his shoulder up underneath and they staggered over to the low door.
“Quick, get on with it, quick, before they come in…” said the man, leaning half out of his chair.
They were by the door. The girl’s grasp slipped.
The handle turned. The door opened a crack.
The sack slid out of the girl’s clutch and flopped to the floor. Meat spilled out.
The door opened a little further and a burst of cold air swept in.
“Now. Go. Go. Get it out. Now…”
The boy snatched up the meat that had spilled out and thrust it back into the sack.
Four long fingers with old, purpled, veiny skin clasped the edge of the door. The nails were black.
With a heave the boy shoved the sack up against the opening.
The fingers snatched down. The boy gave a shout. Part of his shirt had been caught.
The girl screamed and darted forward. The sack slipped out through, the boy following. The girl lunged after, grabbed his feet and pulled. With a heave the boy came hurtling back in to the room.
The girl rammed the door home and turned to her brother. He was shivering and crying. The man wheeled over.
“Are you OK?” he said to the boy.
The boy didn’t answer him.
“Leave us alone,” said the girl.
The man looked down, unsure of what to say.
The girl held the boy tight and looked at the man. “Leave us alone,” she said.
The man wheeled himself back over to the table. He picked up the cleaver, examined the handle and brought it down hard, cracking one of the ribs.
Thursday 25 February 2010
Cisplatin Dreams
Three people share the ward with me. In the opposite bed is Mr A. He is dying, nurses hover round him and his breath rattles in his throat. He hardly ever wakes up and when he does the only sounds he makes are agonised groans and deep, gasping sighs. No-one, other than the teams of abrupt doctors who chatter around him and sometimes draw his curtains to hide their poking and prodding, has come to see him.
Mr B is trying to work out what’s going on. I think he is trying to be strong, but he hardly knows where he is, let alone what he is capable of. He wants to be able to take a shit for himself, but the difference between the floor and the toilet is hard for him. In the night he calls out constantly; ‘nurse… Nurse! NURSE!’. They come sometimes, but as soon as they leave he starts again and they ignore him, they have to really. Sometimes he tries to get out of bed, they do come then, to haul him back in. He’ll try a few more times before he goes back to calling for them.
Mr C is middle England personified, a copy of the Daily Mail by his bed he is oddly reassuring. His wife turned up today. I feel like I should laugh at the brown skirt, grey cardigan and severe, librarian glasses, but they are kind, they talk to me about their children in Australia, their marriage. They ask me to fix their computer, I say yes of course, but I know I won’t.
It’s evening already, I held off coming in for as long as possible, so the nurses put the cannula in my arm and start the first drips. It’s odd how your body manages to cope with a needle stuck in your arm overnight, some kind of innate response that tells you rolling over would be a really, really bad idea at the moment. Eventually, despite Mr B’s efforts, I sleep.
We are on a narrow boat that drifts slowly along past fields of grass. The light is a greasy yellow and something is wrong. I wait to find out what, but we just drift onwards, everyone else seems purposeful and resolute and I cannot question them. Eventually we reach a city, belching thick clouds of sulphur into the noisome air. Twisted, gigantic factories sigh with human voices and something draws us down into thick brown water. I cry out and everything stops. They point at me and we are back in the fields, and I forget why I am here.
My friends are sitting in front of me, a million miles away. They chatter about somewhere else, voices occasionally hushed as they remember where they are. One of them is looking at me and comforting, she smiles and turns back to the other. I say something odd, sluggish mind always a few steps behind. A smile tainted by confusion responds, a pat on the knee, pity. Once they have left I haul the tubes of toxins through this hollow, pastel coloured world to a toilet that stinks of disinfectant.
I stand in front of it and glare at my dick, which, against all rational expectations, is hard. Its cause is dripping steadily into my arm, a saline solution flowing cold in my blood. I try to take my mind off it, if I don’t think about it, it might slink away so that I can seize my moment. My mind wonders through the stock images of compromised politicians and Barney Gumble. The erection remains, impassive. There is nothing for it but to angle my body towards the toilet bowl, a half tilt that gives the correct angle for a perfect strike. I am good at this, an art every man who drinks too much must train in, but which I have honed over the past few days. The lovely warm glow of release is marred slightly by the less pleasant warmth of piss on my hands, but mostly I have been on target. I retreat to my bed, knowing that I will be back here in a couple of hours.
On the way back I pass the private room I had when they started my treatment, they’ve put up a whiteboard across the doorway which reminds visitors that the patient is vulnerable to infection, an epitaph in marker pen. In bed I read for a while, I’m not feeling too bad yet, my mind is fuzzy but one or another of the drips and pills is holding off the nausea and there hasn’t been time for the full effects to kick in. My head to the wall, gradually I drift off to sleep.
I am trapped. My hair has grown long over ages of waiting and they have tied each strand to some strange, black device. Slowly, carefully I begin to untie them. The work is exhausting, my muscles have almost wasted away and I can hardly see any more. After I have worked for a few hours, the machine screams at me. The knots are restored and I start again, the same pattern stretching over millennia.
I wake up more tired than when I went to sleep. My body is covered in sweat and my mouth hurts, hard with a thin film of mucus at the back. Breakfast and blood tests come around, and they hook up some new drips. Antibiotics today, they feel hot, tingling under my skin. I try to read, but I can’t focus properly, it’s an odd feeling; detached, out of sync with the world around me.
Mr C tells me he is going to die soon. He was asking about my treatment, I told him short but intense, I’ll be fine. Almost as if it was an aside he told me they think he has six months left. I know I should feel something, but it’s hard to think. I just want to sleep now, although I know I’ll feel like shit all night.
A cold empty plain and a mountain. I walk through tar trying to get to something at the top. It takes days to get there and I stare out at a cold, empty plain and a mountain. I walk through tar trying to get to something at the top. It takes days to get there and I stare out at a cold, empty plain and a mountain. I walk through tar trying to get to something at the top. It takes days to get there and I stare out at a cold, empty plain and a mountain...
I move up though a fog of sleep, sluggish and sick. I try to work out where I am, I feel awful. The taste of yesterday’s Thai red curry lingers in my mouth and I know I won’t be able to eat it again. Fresh, gorgeous, unappetising fruit lies by my bed, brought by mother and uncle yesterday. I wasn’t looking forward to that, thought it would be awkward, full of pity. They are both used to dealing with people who have cancer though and just chatted quietly about architecture and design. Reassuring.
I climb out of my bed, open the curtains and realise Mr A died last night. No-one says anything of course, but the bed is empty and the sheets crisp and new. Later Mr B tells me they took him to one of the private rooms, I ask if anyone came. They did; a small queue by a whiteboard tombstone. I hope the morphine stopped his dreams.
Mr B is trying to work out what’s going on. I think he is trying to be strong, but he hardly knows where he is, let alone what he is capable of. He wants to be able to take a shit for himself, but the difference between the floor and the toilet is hard for him. In the night he calls out constantly; ‘nurse… Nurse! NURSE!’. They come sometimes, but as soon as they leave he starts again and they ignore him, they have to really. Sometimes he tries to get out of bed, they do come then, to haul him back in. He’ll try a few more times before he goes back to calling for them.
Mr C is middle England personified, a copy of the Daily Mail by his bed he is oddly reassuring. His wife turned up today. I feel like I should laugh at the brown skirt, grey cardigan and severe, librarian glasses, but they are kind, they talk to me about their children in Australia, their marriage. They ask me to fix their computer, I say yes of course, but I know I won’t.
It’s evening already, I held off coming in for as long as possible, so the nurses put the cannula in my arm and start the first drips. It’s odd how your body manages to cope with a needle stuck in your arm overnight, some kind of innate response that tells you rolling over would be a really, really bad idea at the moment. Eventually, despite Mr B’s efforts, I sleep.
We are on a narrow boat that drifts slowly along past fields of grass. The light is a greasy yellow and something is wrong. I wait to find out what, but we just drift onwards, everyone else seems purposeful and resolute and I cannot question them. Eventually we reach a city, belching thick clouds of sulphur into the noisome air. Twisted, gigantic factories sigh with human voices and something draws us down into thick brown water. I cry out and everything stops. They point at me and we are back in the fields, and I forget why I am here.
My friends are sitting in front of me, a million miles away. They chatter about somewhere else, voices occasionally hushed as they remember where they are. One of them is looking at me and comforting, she smiles and turns back to the other. I say something odd, sluggish mind always a few steps behind. A smile tainted by confusion responds, a pat on the knee, pity. Once they have left I haul the tubes of toxins through this hollow, pastel coloured world to a toilet that stinks of disinfectant.
I stand in front of it and glare at my dick, which, against all rational expectations, is hard. Its cause is dripping steadily into my arm, a saline solution flowing cold in my blood. I try to take my mind off it, if I don’t think about it, it might slink away so that I can seize my moment. My mind wonders through the stock images of compromised politicians and Barney Gumble. The erection remains, impassive. There is nothing for it but to angle my body towards the toilet bowl, a half tilt that gives the correct angle for a perfect strike. I am good at this, an art every man who drinks too much must train in, but which I have honed over the past few days. The lovely warm glow of release is marred slightly by the less pleasant warmth of piss on my hands, but mostly I have been on target. I retreat to my bed, knowing that I will be back here in a couple of hours.
On the way back I pass the private room I had when they started my treatment, they’ve put up a whiteboard across the doorway which reminds visitors that the patient is vulnerable to infection, an epitaph in marker pen. In bed I read for a while, I’m not feeling too bad yet, my mind is fuzzy but one or another of the drips and pills is holding off the nausea and there hasn’t been time for the full effects to kick in. My head to the wall, gradually I drift off to sleep.
I am trapped. My hair has grown long over ages of waiting and they have tied each strand to some strange, black device. Slowly, carefully I begin to untie them. The work is exhausting, my muscles have almost wasted away and I can hardly see any more. After I have worked for a few hours, the machine screams at me. The knots are restored and I start again, the same pattern stretching over millennia.
I wake up more tired than when I went to sleep. My body is covered in sweat and my mouth hurts, hard with a thin film of mucus at the back. Breakfast and blood tests come around, and they hook up some new drips. Antibiotics today, they feel hot, tingling under my skin. I try to read, but I can’t focus properly, it’s an odd feeling; detached, out of sync with the world around me.
Mr C tells me he is going to die soon. He was asking about my treatment, I told him short but intense, I’ll be fine. Almost as if it was an aside he told me they think he has six months left. I know I should feel something, but it’s hard to think. I just want to sleep now, although I know I’ll feel like shit all night.
A cold empty plain and a mountain. I walk through tar trying to get to something at the top. It takes days to get there and I stare out at a cold, empty plain and a mountain. I walk through tar trying to get to something at the top. It takes days to get there and I stare out at a cold, empty plain and a mountain. I walk through tar trying to get to something at the top. It takes days to get there and I stare out at a cold, empty plain and a mountain...
I move up though a fog of sleep, sluggish and sick. I try to work out where I am, I feel awful. The taste of yesterday’s Thai red curry lingers in my mouth and I know I won’t be able to eat it again. Fresh, gorgeous, unappetising fruit lies by my bed, brought by mother and uncle yesterday. I wasn’t looking forward to that, thought it would be awkward, full of pity. They are both used to dealing with people who have cancer though and just chatted quietly about architecture and design. Reassuring.
I climb out of my bed, open the curtains and realise Mr A died last night. No-one says anything of course, but the bed is empty and the sheets crisp and new. Later Mr B tells me they took him to one of the private rooms, I ask if anyone came. They did; a small queue by a whiteboard tombstone. I hope the morphine stopped his dreams.
Death and taxes.
One of the more regrettable outcomes of the dawning twenty first century has been the unfortunate impact on Death. Throughout the history of human existence Death has been shaped and moulded by the anthropomorphic image of the time. Death of pre-historic times, the flash of eyes and claws in darkness. The scythed middle ages, sweeping all before it in a maelstrom of disease and starvation. But the last three hundred years has seen the most disturbing change in Death's image, and it's the fault of Daniel Defoe. In claiming that nothing is certain but death and taxes, a change of form that's only truly becoming horrifically apparent at the end of this first decade.
There have always been many competitors rivalling Death's position, created through religious necessity and the varying causes which have developed in line with civilisations troubled ascent, most notably the population explosion of the twentieth century. But with Hayek, Friedmen and the first of the detestable Chicago Boys having been ministered to by the final custodian, the concept of the free market leached into the avatar of the destination that awaits us all. Death has gone corporate. Although I cannot truly lay the blame on those free market evangelists of the twentieth century, Adam Smith having sternly lectured Death on the inefficiencies of his market share long before the first closing bell.
But it is no coincidence that DEA was first floated on the Stock Exchange in early 2007, Hayek having taken fourteen years in his arguing with the ghastly spectre and still needing Friedman to finally seal the deal. Regardless of detail, this marked a change from the cottage industry of individual religious choice of your pre-maker meet and greeter. For soon enough Osiris, Anubis and their children were hard at work in processing the details of those passed on, while Cerberus, auctioned at the liquidation of Hades, was employed to keep order in the gargantuan queues of the dissatisfied souls awaiting their destination.
There was uproar in the between place, where such characters ply their trade. And for the most part it was not fear, but jealousy that motivated those who live there. After all it is very few of them that actually meet us at any point that we could impart useful advice to them.
“Fucken' shade, he's always been looking down on the likes of us,” muttered Manannan, whose share of the afterlife had not yet been acquired. He sat by his cauldron, with others, warming himself by the fire. “Fucken' shade”
The teeth sprites, normally darting and glitter, were equally morose. Their role as guardians of the teeth of the children of the world had been subsumed into DeathCorp after a strong legal case had been mounted on DeathCorp's behalf insisting that as former parts of the human body they were due the care and conduct of a more professional outfit. The case had been on a pliers edge until the corporation had implicated a more unsavoury edge to the activities of those bright creatures as they went about their business in the bedroom of children.
In the corner furthest from the warmth, sat Odin, frost hanging off his beard. Age wracks those beings outside of our world when in our world they are forgotten and the former giant of the berserkers was now supplied by the fleeting interest of Primary history and the rustling of academics in libraries.
“In...,” he mumbled, the others pausing in their own thoughts, “...my time, we would. Would. Would have....” and trailed off.
Mannanan opened another bottle and passed it to the banshee on his left. Another victim of the corporation, priced out of the market, hoarsely thanked him.
“You know, I provided a service. Cost me my voice of speaking, but it was a craft. Then...,” as the others nodded as those who'd heard this story already, “...then..,” and spat into the fire beneath the cauldron, “...texts. E-mail. Fucking, fucking facebook! What sort of service is it getting an e-mail that says EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOEEEEEEEEEEOEEEEEEEEEEEEE?. And then the noise complaints, I know that bony fucker was behind them. Environmental protection my spectral shite!”
“Aye lad, we know. Pass that bot....,” .. “WOULD HAVE ROARED ACROSS THE BETWEEN AND DESTROYED...,” Odin shouted, as sprites flitted into the sky and the bottle poured its contents onto the dirt floor, “...would have destroyed them entirely in a fury which would have passed over and put fear into the people of the other place as their sky is torn apart”
And he slumped, and was silent.
There have always been many competitors rivalling Death's position, created through religious necessity and the varying causes which have developed in line with civilisations troubled ascent, most notably the population explosion of the twentieth century. But with Hayek, Friedmen and the first of the detestable Chicago Boys having been ministered to by the final custodian, the concept of the free market leached into the avatar of the destination that awaits us all. Death has gone corporate. Although I cannot truly lay the blame on those free market evangelists of the twentieth century, Adam Smith having sternly lectured Death on the inefficiencies of his market share long before the first closing bell.
But it is no coincidence that DEA was first floated on the Stock Exchange in early 2007, Hayek having taken fourteen years in his arguing with the ghastly spectre and still needing Friedman to finally seal the deal. Regardless of detail, this marked a change from the cottage industry of individual religious choice of your pre-maker meet and greeter. For soon enough Osiris, Anubis and their children were hard at work in processing the details of those passed on, while Cerberus, auctioned at the liquidation of Hades, was employed to keep order in the gargantuan queues of the dissatisfied souls awaiting their destination.
There was uproar in the between place, where such characters ply their trade. And for the most part it was not fear, but jealousy that motivated those who live there. After all it is very few of them that actually meet us at any point that we could impart useful advice to them.
“Fucken' shade, he's always been looking down on the likes of us,” muttered Manannan, whose share of the afterlife had not yet been acquired. He sat by his cauldron, with others, warming himself by the fire. “Fucken' shade”
The teeth sprites, normally darting and glitter, were equally morose. Their role as guardians of the teeth of the children of the world had been subsumed into DeathCorp after a strong legal case had been mounted on DeathCorp's behalf insisting that as former parts of the human body they were due the care and conduct of a more professional outfit. The case had been on a pliers edge until the corporation had implicated a more unsavoury edge to the activities of those bright creatures as they went about their business in the bedroom of children.
In the corner furthest from the warmth, sat Odin, frost hanging off his beard. Age wracks those beings outside of our world when in our world they are forgotten and the former giant of the berserkers was now supplied by the fleeting interest of Primary history and the rustling of academics in libraries.
“In...,” he mumbled, the others pausing in their own thoughts, “...my time, we would. Would. Would have....” and trailed off.
Mannanan opened another bottle and passed it to the banshee on his left. Another victim of the corporation, priced out of the market, hoarsely thanked him.
“You know, I provided a service. Cost me my voice of speaking, but it was a craft. Then...,” as the others nodded as those who'd heard this story already, “...then..,” and spat into the fire beneath the cauldron, “...texts. E-mail. Fucking, fucking facebook! What sort of service is it getting an e-mail that says EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOEEEEEEEEEEOEEEEEEEEEEEEE?. And then the noise complaints, I know that bony fucker was behind them. Environmental protection my spectral shite!”
“Aye lad, we know. Pass that bot....,” .. “WOULD HAVE ROARED ACROSS THE BETWEEN AND DESTROYED...,” Odin shouted, as sprites flitted into the sky and the bottle poured its contents onto the dirt floor, “...would have destroyed them entirely in a fury which would have passed over and put fear into the people of the other place as their sky is torn apart”
And he slumped, and was silent.
Not sure where I was going with this but it suggests a prologue to me. An odd piece
Inheritance
And so we made it.
Talk jostled with earnest faced tinkering and shouts of triumph, followed quickly with bitter curses. The jars, unguents and powders; the half known science and badly translated grimoirs littered a study of shipwood polished by a hundred greasy palms. A laboratory of forgotten instruments and dead end tools, crafted from the rubbish gleaned from every passing ship in the chaotic spice and fishing port Degorat.
Saren was overjoyed when the dockside book-miners presented him his own magnum opus, a tale in 16 volumes, each detailing the sciences and magics of a forgotten age. Beautiful, they were, each volume newly inlaid with whalebone and scrimshawed to relief scenes of baroque beauty. One in every five pages was missing, torn out for tinder, by accident or simply for eating. Sailors are no respecters of a book. Of the remaining pages most were salt stained and ink run. He whispered to me like a man in a fever, gripping my wrist with his webbed hands and murmuring about this being two halves of different runs of print.
I only admired the scrimshaw bone covers. Saren was at a dead end in our venture, tattooed hands shaking as he packed herbs into a clay pipe and pretended his demonology had some sort of relevance. The marsh man had spent himself to far in those fumes and lost more than his precious writings.
Degorat is a miserable rock, fully 300 miles from anything approaching civilisation. The populace tolerated us as the inheritors of the driftwood palace. The coin and trade helped the tolerance to stay fresh. A close people, dark haired in the main, squat speakers of the guttural steppes tongue-albeit with a heavy dialectic variation.
I stepped out of the ‘palace’ that was a paupers tavern to anywhere worth calling itself prosperous, and wound my way down to the dockside, watching each tread on slimed rock cut steps. The Ranking Desire was back, after a two-season absence.
I waited for Jonsz to emerge sporting his flamboyant coat and battered skullcap, gazing up at the driftwood palace perched above the small dock-town like an elephant graveyard. The ribs stuck outwards in a grasping gesture, each fashioned from the accretion of centuries patch-jobs and make do’s. In the centre was the low building we called Lab, almost obscured by mist. Whatever vaulting ambition put a building atop a small island mountain months travel away from trade routes was either suffering hubris or in the flush of Empire.
We know about hubris, we inheritors.
My guidesman was totally uneeded, I knew the island like my own reflection but guidesman is an inherited position. So I paid him his coin as he bobbed an oilskinned head and muttered a benediction in the garbled steppe-doggrel they speak here.
He left me and made his way towards the valley town where the fishermen and sometime-wreckers keep alive epics in taverns with sung verse and then murder each other for a length of rope, or a perceived slight. A sluice opened and swamped the edge of my brown rough spun robe in shit and greywater.
Jonsz was not who met me. Instead I am faced with his first mate, a gap-toothed slight figure in oiled leather sporting a tulwar on his hip. Jonsz never came to me armed.
‘Garet!’
‘Lord Inheritor. We have been from you too long’
I clasped his hand in mine
‘Where is our Jonsz today? Half drunk and balls deep eh?’ I grinned.
Garet looked down
‘Storm outside of the Farseen Straits. He went over, no man reached him quick enough. Your scholars were right though, we found the deposit.’
Jonsz was the most able sailor I have ever met. A man no more likely to be washed over than I was to drink poison.
‘Drowned?’
Garet refused to meet my eye
‘Nothing could be done Lord, y’see’
I saw. Maritime powerplays and skulduggery at sea are not my concern. I had liked the man. A glass in his honour tonight.
‘A sad end. He shall be missed Garet. You have taken command? Then let us speak of coin and haulage’
And haulage it was. Past the fading luminescent fungus that coated the skirts of the driftwood palace and into the courtyard took half the ships crew. Most bargained away fees for a stay in a rib-room surrounded by hot food and warm beds. The rest snatched coin and made their way to the dock town for whores and gambling. Idly, I wondered which of those would not return.
The twins oversaw securing, fussing and muttering as they directed complaining scholars pinning down oiled sealskin over the chests of books and curios. Filed teeth, tattooed faces and a rumoured incestuous relationship. We tolerated each other. Lord Inheritor, inherits what he does. These hedge-witch strangelings were part of the framework when I arrived a lifetime, five years ago. A year on Degorat stretches. Sometimes I dream of the light sunny walks of Tzur city, the heady flower laden air of a morning in Start quarter when the summer is young. My waking hours are in Degorat, shrouded in mist and mistrust and the stink of burnt offerings from the Pentii .
We made it though.
The dream to touch the green orb that showed nightly. The oldest records show it as white, claim with such pride that it was made green and left for us to inherit. And here on Degorat the ancient office of Lord Inheritor waited. An appointment that meant nothing more than watching over half crazed scholars and mendicant preists and sybils of religions I couldn’t care to name all engaged in a fools dream.
This place drew the spicers for the fungal harvest, the trash peddlers and book miners, and the dreamers of a dozen cultures. The latter sought something I had long considered nothing more than hopeless myth.
But we made it.
It was Carris month, on the fifth day, which broke bright, that we really began to unlock the finds of Ranking Desire.
The Little Green Room
The Little Green Room.
San Quentin Prison, California, 10am, November 8 1957.
‘The Little Green Room’, that’s what the inmates there call the gas chamber. They also call it ‘The Big Sleep’, ‘The Time Machine’ and, with grim and dark humour, ‘The Coughing Box.’ The reason for them calling it that is simple. It’s an airtight, octagonal metal room painted apple green, and inmates cough like hell when the gas hits their lungs.
It was supposed to be a routine story for me. Another visit to San Q, another inmate would pay his dues and meet his Maker. It was nothing new at the Q. Executions there, if not weekly or even monthly, were certainly a regular feature in those days and, just as regularly, I’d make the trip up from Frisco to cover them. California State law requires that the ‘gentlemen of the Press’ (‘gentlemen’, now there’s a joke) have to witness and report executions and until then I’d had no problem with doing that. I hadn’t really been exposed to anything especially traumatic, at least I didn’t think I had at the time, it was simply another story for me when I arrived at the prison. Reporters may write the news, but we seldom get to choose our stories, at least not at my level anyway. The news editor called me into his office, told me that Raymond Riley was going for the big ride the next morning and I was going to be there. I’d covered the executions of Barbara Graham, known as ‘Bloody Babs’ and the ‘Tiger Woman’ and her two pals easily enough, so why should I expect anything different today?
When the news editor, one Harry Franks, called me into his office the day before, he’d said more or less the same things. ‘I hear you’ve done this kind of story before.’ ‘Well, Riley goes tomorrow at 10am. There’s nothing unusual or exceptional about his crime, just another stickup artist who panicked and shot some bystander during a robbery. About the only interesting thing about him is his size. He’s a tiny little thing, weighs about eighty pounds and no more than five feet tall, so I don’t think they’ll have too much trouble with this one. Seeing as you’ve got the experience and I don’t have anyone else available, you’ve got the story. Don’t mess it up.’
By ‘experience’ Harry didn’t just mean that I’d done this before. What he really meant was that I’d be able to stand in the witness room without passing out and/or throwing up and leaving him fielding angry calls from the big Kahuna up at San Q, Warden Dickson. I’d met Dickson a few times for various reasons and we weren’t exactly bosom buddies. I knew he viewed me as just another grubby little newspaperman, while I viewed him as a dour, humourless automaton, possibly with even less life in him than an executed inmate. But he had his job to do and I had mine, so we were going to have to be at least professional with each other. It was just routine, that’s all.
Events would prove to us all that we were wrong. And prove just how wrong we could be.
On the drive over to the prison I switched on the radio. The local station was playing some bebop crap when the announcer broke in with a special announcement. ‘The US Supreme Court has just denied a last-minute stay of execution for Raymond Riley, the Sacramento ‘Stickup Artist.’ With no further stays forthcoming, Riley will die in the gas chamber at San Quentin at 10am this morning. And now, back to our regular programming...’
The bebop came back on and I lit a smoke as I arrived in the prison parking lot. As you’d expect for a prison on execution day, everything was locked down as tight as a duck’s ass and nobody was doing anything without the firm approval of the Warden or his guards. The first thing I noticed, aside from the fact that inmates were, to a man, locked in their cells instead of going to work or having exercise time in the yard, was the near-absolute quiet in this, perhaps the toughest prison in California, housing some of the state’s most hardened felons. As I walked over to the entry gate I commented to the guard who checked my press card ‘Pretty quiet today, huh?’
The guard checked my card and then replied ‘Yep. The whole prison’s on lockdown until after Riley gets his, and even if they weren’t locked down then they wouldn’t be exactly chatty this morning. They all know what’s coming just as sure as Riley does. The rest of the witnesses are already over at Death Row being checked in. You’d better head on over if you’re looking to get a good spot by the chamber.’
I hastened across the prison to the Row’s entrance and flashed my press card at the screw guarding the door. He quickly confirmed that I was who I said I was, gave me a thorough frisking for any contraband (most items in jail are contraband, but especially anything like a camera or a tape machine, they like us to write about executions, not film, record or photograph them) and unlocked the door, standing aside so I could walk through into Death Row proper. I immediately hastened over to the anteroom where the witnesses wait until showtime, when we’re herded into the Observation Room. We don’t get to see the inmate’s face as the twin steel chairs inside the chamber face away from the Observation Room, which spares any especially sensitive witness from seeing their faces as the gas takes effect. But we get to see enough and to hear his (or her) final words.
The atmosphere hit me as soon as I walked through the door to Death Row. Not the smells of disinfectant, greasy food or of too many men crammed into too small a place as those are in every prison, but a sense of utter hopelessness, of men warehoused for death with little hope of release other than via the ‘little green room.’ And that kind of parole was one that almost nobody was looking forward to. There’d been a few who had wanted to die and many more who had simply accepted that they were going to, but I’d heard that Riley wasn’t one of them and had promised to go hard, fighting to the last. They often do that, promise it anyway, but more often than not they end up going quietly and quickly, if not willingly. Riley would be no different, I was sure of that. A stunted little creep like him, what kind of trouble could he cause an entire execution team?
Just then I heard a phone ringing in the Execution Room and the sound of muffled voices. I couldn’t hear what was being said, but I doubted it was a stay and it wasn’t long before I was proved right. The Associate Warden came through the door from the Execution Room via the Observation Room and called for silence. It’s not often that a pack of reporters can keep quiet for long, but he had our undivided attention as he held up his hand for silence.
‘Gentlemen, Inmate Riley’s death warrant has been confirmed and there are no stays or further legal arguments before the courts. In a moment I’ll be leading you into the Observation Room and things will happen fairly quickly after that happens, so be ready to move shortly.’
‘You’ve all been searched for cameras and recording devices, so that isn’t an issue, and you’re all expected to keep as quiet as possible and make no comment on what you are about to witness. I see some familiar faces here, so I know you’ll all behave responsibly. Also, smoking is strictly forbidden in the Observation Room, so you’ll have to wait until we’re done before you can have a smoke outside. In the event of any of you becoming ill, feeling faint or feeling sick then notify one of the guards and you’ll be escorted out into the yard. Now, if you’ll all come with me and take your places, we can begin.’
It was 9:55am when I took the short walk through the apple green door into the Observation Room. I saw the chamber first. Octagonal, apple green, with windows so we witnesses could have a clear view as the star of the show was brought in, although we’d only see his back once he was strapped into one of the two steel chairs inside. The heavy iron rail that ran around our side of the chamber, separated as its two halves are by a thick steel wall with only one solid steel door, was to keep anyone from getting too close for comfort and had two guards standing within its perimeter.
It was then that things started to go wrong. Badly wrong. I heard a series of piercing shrieks come through the wall separating our half of the chamber from that of the execution team and I knew at once that this wasn’t going to be pretty. Not that seeing a man choke to death on cyanide fumes is ever pretty, but the times before had at least been pretty orderly and regimented. It seemed as though Riley, the tiny little runt that Harry Franks had thought wouldn’t and indeed couldn’t give the guards any trouble, had been honest when he said he’d go down fighting and in that I was both right and wrong.
Looking through the chamber’s windows, I could see a mass of flailing arms and legs, hear more of those piercing shrieks (like some Irish banshee) and shouted instructions. ‘I don’t want to go like this, oh please, let me go, I’m begging you!’ ‘Grab him! Get him in there fast and get him strapped down!’
The flailing mass suddenly came into view. Riley, twisting, contorting, writhing, shrieking and begging, all five feet and eighty pounds of him, was clearly giving the execution team one hell of a struggle. I could see as they brought him in, not dragging or manhandling him, but physically carrying him with a guard tightly gripping each limb in a series of painful jiu jitsu holds, that he intended to go hard all right, but not as he’d promised with a defiant sneer and ‘You’ll get a real show when they take me in there’ attitude. In its place was a gibbering wreck, reduced by sheer terror to the level of a terrified infant instead of some cocky wannabe tough guy. He went down fighting, nobody who was there can deny that, but he went down as a crazed and cornered animal, not as some fearless and hardened criminal legend.
The guards finally got him into the chamber, still flailing around like a whirling Dervish, and quickly set about the business of strapping him into one of the chairs, Chair ‘A.’ As Riley fought for his life, futile as that struggle undoubtedly was, my attitude towards him began to change slightly. After all, I’m inclined to feel some sympathy for even the worst of people as they meet their Maker, but watching four guards wrestling an 18 year old kid into the chamber wasn’t pretty, especially when that 18 year old kid started puking all over himself out of sheer terror.
The guards finally secured the last of the straps and attached the stethoscope that led from Riley’s shirt outside the chamber, to where the prison doctor could listen to his heart stop and then certify death. Satisfied that he was properly secured, they avoided the traditional advice to Riley to ‘Count to ten, breathe deep and don’t fight the gas’, opted to not to pat him on the shoulder wish him luck and exited the chamber just as quickly as they could. Looking through the chamber windows I could see that Deputy Warden Rigg wanted this over with just as fast as possible. There was no sense in prolonging the agony of either Riley or anyone else. After a quick glance at Riley as he strained to free himself, Rigg raised his hand and was about to give the signal to drop the cyanide eggs into the acid when all hell broke loose.
What the guards thought was a tight set of straps wasn’t, given Riley’s tiny stature, nearly tight enough. The chairs and the straps had been designed for prisoners of normal height and build and Riley was neither. He immediately slipped his hands out of the wrist-straps and, and before anyone could open the airtight door in time to stop him, he managed to unbuckle the rest of them as well. Then the real party started. Riley began running around inside the chamber, banging his hands against the windows and pressing his stricken, sweat-soaked face, with its wild, unseeing eyes and bared teeth, up against the thick, bulletproof glass that separated him from us witnesses. The feral shrieks began to get louder and louder, building up to a crescendo of incomprehensible ravings as the guards, finally managing to unseal the chamber door, grabbed him and physically hurled him back into the chair. While Riley struggled, ranted, raved and did all he could to free himself, one guard actually had to sit on him as the other reapplied the thick canvas straps that would keep him still long enough to throw the lever and start the gas. After a mighty struggle, they finally got him down long enough to get all the straps done up, even tighter than before, and they staggered out of the chamber and resealed the airtight steel door. Now, finally, we could get this over with and he could be put out of his terrible misery.
Deputy Warden Rigg raised his hand again as though about to give the signal to the executioner. As soon as he dropped his hand the executioner would pull the lever that mixes the cyanide eggs with the acid and fill the chamber with lethal fumes. His hand rose, then wavered, then he said ‘Jesus Christ, not again!’
Riley had managed to slip the arm straps again. He managed to get himself free of the chair and this time, rather than run around hammering on the windows, he subsided to the chamber floor as though utterly spent by his physical exertions and mental strain. It was clear to everyone that he had completely snapped and totally lost any idea of what was going on. Riley rolled around inside the airtight box, muttering, moaning and wailing to the guards to spare his life, as though that would make any difference now. With a long-drawn out squeak, the chamber door was unsealed and the same two guards, both pale as ghosts and obviously wanting to be anywhere else in the world at that particular moment, re-entered the chamber and, instead of having to throw Riley down and sit on him, found it much easier to restrain and re-strap him. All the fight, and sanity, so it seemed, had bled out of him. Elvis had definitely left the building and, whatever else happened, at least things couldn’t get any worse than they already were.
Wrong again.
Deputy Warden Rigg raised and dropped his hand just as soon as the chamber door had been sealed shut. One of the guards then pulled the lever that mixes the cyanide eggs with the acid and, with a muffled ‘clunk’ followed by a mixture of bubbling and hissing from the pot beneath the chair, the cyanide fumes began to fill the chamber. It was then that an obviously insane Riley opted for a more passive, but no less horrifying, means to make things just as awful as they could be.
As the fumes rose up around him from the pot beneath the chair, Riley simply sat there, apparently having recovered his self control. Then he played his trump card, almost as though he’d meant to do it all along. The whitish fumes weren’t thick like smoke, so we all had a clear view of Riley as he sat in the chamber. Then he raised his head as the fumes billowed around him, looked around with wild, staring eyes and a massive grin on his face, and started to laugh and cackle like some medieval witch.
‘Hahahahaha...’ ‘Ah-ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, haaaaaaaaaa...’
The end was mercifully brief. With every cackle Riley drew breath and with every breath more of the choking fumes filled his lungs. It was inevitable that he’d succumb and he soon began panting like a dog, writhed around in the chair for a few minutes then slowly, achingly slowly, his manic giggling ceased and he slid into unconsciousness. A few minutes later I could see the prison doctor remove the stethoscope from his ears and give a very relieved nod to Rigg, the Deputy Warden. The execution of Raymond Riley was finally over and, supposedly, justice had been served.
Rigg came through the heavy steel door that separated his half of the chamber from ours and, with a trembling voice that suggested he was about to lose his own set of marbles, spoke to the assembled reporters.
‘Gentlemen of the Press, the execution of Inmate Rodney Riley, inmate number 371958-7642, has been carried out according to the laws of the State of California. The inmate was certified dead at approximately 10:37am. I’ll ask you all to leave the Observation Room now and leave the prison in a dignified and orderly manner. This has been a terrible ordeal for us all and the other inmates must not be made aware of what happened here this morning. That’s all, gentlemen, please leave.’
As I stumbled towards the Observation Room door and out into the bright California sunshine I experienced a definite epiphany. I’d never seen anything that hideous in all my days and certainly hope never to see its like again. As I sat in my car in the prison parking lot, I resolved that never again should anything like this occur, and that my previous indifference to the execution of California’s condemned did, in fact, say just as much about me as it did about them.
Sunday 21 February 2010
The Travelling Circus - Part I
“It'll all be alright, I promise you, I know how it all ends and I know that it'll all be alright. Trust me.”
She let out an inward sigh, trying to suppress the irritation which she could feel manifesting itself across her face. It was stupid to get upset. It was stupid to listen at all to the ramblings of a mad man on the bus but unlike the dull eyed children around her she couldn't help but pay attention to him as the rest sat staring blankly into steamed over windows at the vague blurs of light which seemed to make up the world beyond their steel and glass casing.
She pitied him, the self-appointed preacher; he was obviously ill to some degree at least given his attempts to preach... something to the commuters on an early morning bus. Sane people didn't do that. Normal people didn't do that. And when they did it was her role, or at least the role they all placed upon her with even the slightest of indifferent glances, to either cower in fear or to well up with a soft pity for the unfortunate soul. The assumptions annoyed her. Everything annoyed her in fact and even if she'd wanted to she wouldn't have been able to explain why. She was old, most people weren't, that was enough of a reason to make hate the default emotion in her mind. Why not, after all? Unlike him she really did know, she knew that it wouldn't be alright and that trust was the first step towards disappointment, she'd learnt that through suffering and, perhaps, it hurt her a little to see a man lie so readily to himself and everyone else.
“You're loved, all of you, by me, by each other, by everyone, if you'll just understand it.”
The ragged Messiah was still going, his soft, level voice imposing itself on the suddenly silent bus, growing darker as an embarrassed fug lowered itself over the commuters and rendered his attempts at revelation a cold thing, an obvious lie. The lie gained prominence in her mind, his words drawing her deeper in but inspiring only anger and hate, not as fiery, passionate emotions but as icy, clinical ones. The hatred was consuming her with a methodical inevitability which she could almost feel spreading through her mind. She wanted to laugh at it, to guffaw in the knowledge of her own emotions but never to let go of them because she did hate him and it was something at least, a real feeling, something which would eventually pass and leave only that same empty apathy tinted with irritation which defined her entire life as a pensioner and a ghost amongst a society alien to her.
She wanted to punch the proselytizing figure, to grab and tear at his ageing outfit, to beat him as he lied to her and the rest of them. She didn't even want to stop him, just to hurt him, prove his lies by showing him reality as she lived it. But she was old. Old and weak and useless and implausible in her bubbling hatred.
He was coming towards her, shuffling down the length of the bus to her window seat near the back, she met his gaze as he did so and struggled to force every ounce of emotion into a glare which would force him to a halt, which would make him understand what she saw and the world she inhabited. But he just smiled, smiled and stopped to loom over her, the awkward eyes of the other passengers flicking across him, seemingly paralysed by their own natures, their own stereotypes, hard wired to inaction. She hated them too, for being weak, for the pity they now felt for her in their shamed minds.
He smiled down at her.
“You'll be alright, I'm not lying, you will.”
She could feel herself shaking with an impotent rage, scared to make eye contact with him, although it sickened her that she was. This liar, this worthless idiot, was controlling her, driving her into a corner and turning her hate into a pathetic thing, a helpless burning agony inside her with no cause and no release. But he wouldn't move, he wouldn't blink and she suddenly wished more than anything that she could run away from his torturously neutral presence. She choked back a sob, he smiled.
“You don't need to run, you don't need to ignore me, you're loved and I'm here.”
His voice seemed to harbour a soft threat, it was coated with a benign power which left her frozen, he was scum, sub-human, a liar and a cheat and a madman and a cruel, mocking bully. Tears were flowing down her cheeks, her sobs breaking through and filling the suddenly concrete silence of the bus. And still no one moved, still no one paid any notice, they just silently pitied the broken old lady scared of the malign figure of the preacher. She knew they pitied her, she knew they sensed fear and weakness in her and even more she knew that they couldn't believe her to be anything else. The hatred was all that kept her from falling into their expectations and she clung to it, feeling the patheticness of her resistance. And he just smiled and stared.
“They do care, they're just lonely, like you; don't hate them for being like you, for being human.”
Their eyes met for a fraction of a second, hers tearful and red, his almost unnaturally soft, filled with a superior kindness which hurt as she clung to the certainty of his nature as a liar and a deceiver. She turned her eyes down towards her own lap and clawingly reached out for the bell; she'd get off at the next stop and hide in apathy again. He'd be forgotten, in time.
She let out an inward sigh, trying to suppress the irritation which she could feel manifesting itself across her face. It was stupid to get upset. It was stupid to listen at all to the ramblings of a mad man on the bus but unlike the dull eyed children around her she couldn't help but pay attention to him as the rest sat staring blankly into steamed over windows at the vague blurs of light which seemed to make up the world beyond their steel and glass casing.
She pitied him, the self-appointed preacher; he was obviously ill to some degree at least given his attempts to preach... something to the commuters on an early morning bus. Sane people didn't do that. Normal people didn't do that. And when they did it was her role, or at least the role they all placed upon her with even the slightest of indifferent glances, to either cower in fear or to well up with a soft pity for the unfortunate soul. The assumptions annoyed her. Everything annoyed her in fact and even if she'd wanted to she wouldn't have been able to explain why. She was old, most people weren't, that was enough of a reason to make hate the default emotion in her mind. Why not, after all? Unlike him she really did know, she knew that it wouldn't be alright and that trust was the first step towards disappointment, she'd learnt that through suffering and, perhaps, it hurt her a little to see a man lie so readily to himself and everyone else.
“You're loved, all of you, by me, by each other, by everyone, if you'll just understand it.”
The ragged Messiah was still going, his soft, level voice imposing itself on the suddenly silent bus, growing darker as an embarrassed fug lowered itself over the commuters and rendered his attempts at revelation a cold thing, an obvious lie. The lie gained prominence in her mind, his words drawing her deeper in but inspiring only anger and hate, not as fiery, passionate emotions but as icy, clinical ones. The hatred was consuming her with a methodical inevitability which she could almost feel spreading through her mind. She wanted to laugh at it, to guffaw in the knowledge of her own emotions but never to let go of them because she did hate him and it was something at least, a real feeling, something which would eventually pass and leave only that same empty apathy tinted with irritation which defined her entire life as a pensioner and a ghost amongst a society alien to her.
She wanted to punch the proselytizing figure, to grab and tear at his ageing outfit, to beat him as he lied to her and the rest of them. She didn't even want to stop him, just to hurt him, prove his lies by showing him reality as she lived it. But she was old. Old and weak and useless and implausible in her bubbling hatred.
He was coming towards her, shuffling down the length of the bus to her window seat near the back, she met his gaze as he did so and struggled to force every ounce of emotion into a glare which would force him to a halt, which would make him understand what she saw and the world she inhabited. But he just smiled, smiled and stopped to loom over her, the awkward eyes of the other passengers flicking across him, seemingly paralysed by their own natures, their own stereotypes, hard wired to inaction. She hated them too, for being weak, for the pity they now felt for her in their shamed minds.
He smiled down at her.
“You'll be alright, I'm not lying, you will.”
She could feel herself shaking with an impotent rage, scared to make eye contact with him, although it sickened her that she was. This liar, this worthless idiot, was controlling her, driving her into a corner and turning her hate into a pathetic thing, a helpless burning agony inside her with no cause and no release. But he wouldn't move, he wouldn't blink and she suddenly wished more than anything that she could run away from his torturously neutral presence. She choked back a sob, he smiled.
“You don't need to run, you don't need to ignore me, you're loved and I'm here.”
His voice seemed to harbour a soft threat, it was coated with a benign power which left her frozen, he was scum, sub-human, a liar and a cheat and a madman and a cruel, mocking bully. Tears were flowing down her cheeks, her sobs breaking through and filling the suddenly concrete silence of the bus. And still no one moved, still no one paid any notice, they just silently pitied the broken old lady scared of the malign figure of the preacher. She knew they pitied her, she knew they sensed fear and weakness in her and even more she knew that they couldn't believe her to be anything else. The hatred was all that kept her from falling into their expectations and she clung to it, feeling the patheticness of her resistance. And he just smiled and stared.
“They do care, they're just lonely, like you; don't hate them for being like you, for being human.”
Their eyes met for a fraction of a second, hers tearful and red, his almost unnaturally soft, filled with a superior kindness which hurt as she clung to the certainty of his nature as a liar and a deceiver. She turned her eyes down towards her own lap and clawingly reached out for the bell; she'd get off at the next stop and hide in apathy again. He'd be forgotten, in time.
Saturday 20 February 2010
Suicide Cafe
Suicide Café
For those who didn’t wish to partake of the items on offer at the various suicide cafes, or wish to drive off mountains or off bridges. They could make their way to Death chambers to see off their final days.
Giles Pederson was heading for his own death chamber, he was 29, he knew his time was near, many of his contemporaries had already gone. He knew no one who had survived. This disease, virus, or whatever it was, was killing people at 30, and his birthday was real soon. He said his goodbyes to his younger friends, he shed tears, they shed tears, he left. He wanted one final road trip, one last journey while he still had the strength. He chose an open top car for his last drive, he wanted to feel the wind in his hair one last time.
He sat in his car, felt the roar of the engine, and took off without looking, if he died, so what. He didn’t though, there was no one around. He got onto the M4 and headed for Newbury, in a village nearby would be where he waved good bye to all of this. Traffic was light as he sailed over Hammersmith on the flyover, he watched in his mirror as London disappeared for the last time, he’d loved the city in the before days, now he was leaving behind the struggle to live, and the struggle to love. He reached the Newbury turn off in under an hour, and pulled in at a service station, still open. I’ll have one last cup of their shitty coffee he thought to himself, wave good bye to all of that too. He sat in a corner, smoked a couple of cigarettes. He felt tired, really tired, the last few weeks he had felt the energy draining from his young body, he knew his time was up. There was plenty of information about the end. He knew enough, he didn‘t want to read any more, he knew he would become more and more tired, that eventually he would find it difficult to move, that he would lose interest in food and just want to sleep, and that eventually he would just not wake up.
He left the service station and walked towards the car, he caught the last rays of the day’s dying sun. How many more sunsets would he see? maybe a week or so, before his last sun rise, his last sun set. He knew with his luck it would probably be overcast on his last day so he stood a while watching the sun slowly sink out of sight.
The sun gone, he got back in the car and drove the last 10 miles of his last road trip. He saw the lights of the house as he drove over the brow of the hill. There was a welcoming committee, he had rung ahead and a group of 3 women stood outside. All of them were in their 50s, they had devoted themselves to making the last days of their residents as comfortable as possible. He didn’t know how they funded it, it was all free to him. He left them what he had, which was basically his car and his clothes. He guessed they got their funding from the new world which retained some sort of guilt about shutting out the young, the immune paying a guilt tax He parked the car and got out, left the keys in the ignition, he had no need for them any more. The three women greeted him, embraced him , kissed him tenderly, he felt at home. This was a good place to die.
He followed them in to the house, there was no unpacking to do, what was the point in packing anything when you were never going to leave? In the living room were seven other young people, a few of them were nearer the end. Two lay in sofas, duvets over them, looking pale and very tired. They managed weak smiles when Giles was introduced to them, the other 4 were nursing cups of tea. He sat on the spare chair and accepted a mug of hot tea from one of the carers, she looked a little like his mother, who was living in a fortified community and contacted him via text. He had texted her that day saying he was on his way, telling her he loved her and that he was throwing away the phone so that she wouldn’t be able to call him. He waited until she texted him back, she said she loved him and hoped he wouldn‘t suffer. She offered to come to the home and be with him at the end. He didn’t text her back, just took out the sim card, and threw the phone out of the window as he drove away from the service station, another chapter ended. He never got the other texts begging to see him for the last time, he had given her number to the carers who would be informing her when he passed away. His mother would stay by her phone for the next week, desperately hoping that he made it through and she saw him again, while also hoping that her baby didn’t suffer.
Giles sat in the living room, nursing his tea, as the carers went through the preparations, they were experienced at this and told him that they knew the signs and could pretty much predict when the time would come. They asked for next of kin information and assured him that they would inform his loved ones as soon as the end came. He still had the opportunity if inviting loved ones to the end, Giles still didn’t want this, he wanted to go through it on his own, apart from the strangers who would now share his last few days in this planet.
There were a series of questions they wanted to ask him.
what music did he want at the end ? Did he want someone to read to him when he became too weak to? Was there a film he wanted to watch at the end? When my final credits are moving up the screen, he thought to himself. Did he want any letters delivered to loved ones? Did he want a religious service? Cremated or buried? Dying was a complicated business, so many things to sort out, maybe the suicide café was a better idea. Well, there was plenty to think about, Giles wanted to spend some time at this and went through the questions one by one.
What song did he want to be the last he heard, how could they be so sure that it would be the last song, maybe they put it on repeat at the end, what if he heard it by chance, before his last moments, would he think it was a sign that the end was coming? At the moment, he wanted “Hurt” by Johnny Cash, a song of regret, he had plenty of those.
He’d like to be read to, it wasn’t something that happened since he was a kid, so he’d go for a classic, a Dickens, his favourite was “A Tale of Two Cities”. What if they didn’t have it ? would he have to make do with what they had ? did they have a massive library? did they loot Waterstones? Then there was a film, he used to live the flicks, what would he like to see again for the last time? Everything was for the last time, he felt sad at this, what did he expect? He didn’t want to watch a movie, again the final credits rolling up the screen was just too sad to deal with. . He’d written his letters, well one letter, to his mother, they could send that. He didn’t care about his bodily remains, he ticked cremation, go out in a blaze of glory, after he had gone out with a whimper. No goods, apart from the car he had stolen, the carers could have that, and the clothes he stood up in. He’d had a lot of possessions once, a flat in the Docklands full of them, he’d left that flat 3 weeks before , full of junk, Religious service, fuck him or her, what deity would let all this happen, what deity allowed all sorts of shit to happen in the world, fuck him and her. Giles completed the form and handed it in, they didn’t read it immediately, I guess it’s one of those things you read out of sight of the client. They showed him to his room, he had a look but didn’t stay there, he had nothing to unpack. He suddenly realised he had no change of clothes, he didn‘t want to go out in smelly clothes, he asked them if they had spare clothes, they smiled, we have a lot of spare clothes, and showed him another room where they had stored them. He picked out a few pairs of jeans, some tee-shirts, pants and socks, he didn‘t need many warm clothes, he doubted that he‘s be going out much. There was a garden if he wanted to hang out there, plus he had the option of dying in the summer house, or with the others at a passing away picnic, a death picnic. What would he have as his last meal, would his last morsel of food be a scotch egg? He was getting tired of deciding everything, he just wanted it over, maybe he should driven off the Hammersmith flyover.
Giles sat in the living room, he wanted to have some last conversations but the other occupants were watching a re-run of deal or no deal, maybe it was the last show they would see, he hoped someone won the £250,000, he’d rather die having seen that than see someone go off with a penny.
Giles passed his days watching TV and reading, as his strength ebbed away, he lay in the couch, there were spare couches now as 2 of his welcoming committee had passed away, he had joined them in their rooms, listening to their last songs, They all sang along to them watching the last breaths of the passer. He knew his time was coming, he didn’t need to prepare, that was all done for him. One day he just couldn’t rise and he knew it was maybe his day, it was sunny. He asked to be wheeled outside, and he lay in his bed, looking up at a blue sky. Around him were his last family, he was holding on to the hands of strangers. As he grew weaker he started to think about his life, as he grew weary, he remembered good things, his childhood, the love of his mother, passing his driving test, his first kiss (which came before the successful driving test but there is no order to these things) the first time he had sex, the embarrassment, the speed at which it was over, the hasty rush to get out afterwards, or was she kicking him out? He remembered passionate arguments in pubs, on message boards, he remembered the fights he’d had, he remembered getting the living shit kicked out of him when he was too pissed to defend himself. He laughed, and enjoyed the sound of others laughing too, this death thing should be enjoyed he thought, the Irish had the best of ideas, the wake, here he was having a wake before he died. He asked for his favourite drink, and someone poured him a large Jack Daniels and held it to his lips. He sipped at it, enjoying the fire.
“I think it’s nearly time” one of the carers said, and kissed him on the forehead, he smiled weakly, and heard Johnny Cash’s voice as he closed his eyes for the last time. It was over.
For those who didn’t wish to partake of the items on offer at the various suicide cafes, or wish to drive off mountains or off bridges. They could make their way to Death chambers to see off their final days.
Giles Pederson was heading for his own death chamber, he was 29, he knew his time was near, many of his contemporaries had already gone. He knew no one who had survived. This disease, virus, or whatever it was, was killing people at 30, and his birthday was real soon. He said his goodbyes to his younger friends, he shed tears, they shed tears, he left. He wanted one final road trip, one last journey while he still had the strength. He chose an open top car for his last drive, he wanted to feel the wind in his hair one last time.
He sat in his car, felt the roar of the engine, and took off without looking, if he died, so what. He didn’t though, there was no one around. He got onto the M4 and headed for Newbury, in a village nearby would be where he waved good bye to all of this. Traffic was light as he sailed over Hammersmith on the flyover, he watched in his mirror as London disappeared for the last time, he’d loved the city in the before days, now he was leaving behind the struggle to live, and the struggle to love. He reached the Newbury turn off in under an hour, and pulled in at a service station, still open. I’ll have one last cup of their shitty coffee he thought to himself, wave good bye to all of that too. He sat in a corner, smoked a couple of cigarettes. He felt tired, really tired, the last few weeks he had felt the energy draining from his young body, he knew his time was up. There was plenty of information about the end. He knew enough, he didn‘t want to read any more, he knew he would become more and more tired, that eventually he would find it difficult to move, that he would lose interest in food and just want to sleep, and that eventually he would just not wake up.
He left the service station and walked towards the car, he caught the last rays of the day’s dying sun. How many more sunsets would he see? maybe a week or so, before his last sun rise, his last sun set. He knew with his luck it would probably be overcast on his last day so he stood a while watching the sun slowly sink out of sight.
The sun gone, he got back in the car and drove the last 10 miles of his last road trip. He saw the lights of the house as he drove over the brow of the hill. There was a welcoming committee, he had rung ahead and a group of 3 women stood outside. All of them were in their 50s, they had devoted themselves to making the last days of their residents as comfortable as possible. He didn’t know how they funded it, it was all free to him. He left them what he had, which was basically his car and his clothes. He guessed they got their funding from the new world which retained some sort of guilt about shutting out the young, the immune paying a guilt tax He parked the car and got out, left the keys in the ignition, he had no need for them any more. The three women greeted him, embraced him , kissed him tenderly, he felt at home. This was a good place to die.
He followed them in to the house, there was no unpacking to do, what was the point in packing anything when you were never going to leave? In the living room were seven other young people, a few of them were nearer the end. Two lay in sofas, duvets over them, looking pale and very tired. They managed weak smiles when Giles was introduced to them, the other 4 were nursing cups of tea. He sat on the spare chair and accepted a mug of hot tea from one of the carers, she looked a little like his mother, who was living in a fortified community and contacted him via text. He had texted her that day saying he was on his way, telling her he loved her and that he was throwing away the phone so that she wouldn’t be able to call him. He waited until she texted him back, she said she loved him and hoped he wouldn‘t suffer. She offered to come to the home and be with him at the end. He didn’t text her back, just took out the sim card, and threw the phone out of the window as he drove away from the service station, another chapter ended. He never got the other texts begging to see him for the last time, he had given her number to the carers who would be informing her when he passed away. His mother would stay by her phone for the next week, desperately hoping that he made it through and she saw him again, while also hoping that her baby didn’t suffer.
Giles sat in the living room, nursing his tea, as the carers went through the preparations, they were experienced at this and told him that they knew the signs and could pretty much predict when the time would come. They asked for next of kin information and assured him that they would inform his loved ones as soon as the end came. He still had the opportunity if inviting loved ones to the end, Giles still didn’t want this, he wanted to go through it on his own, apart from the strangers who would now share his last few days in this planet.
There were a series of questions they wanted to ask him.
what music did he want at the end ? Did he want someone to read to him when he became too weak to? Was there a film he wanted to watch at the end? When my final credits are moving up the screen, he thought to himself. Did he want any letters delivered to loved ones? Did he want a religious service? Cremated or buried? Dying was a complicated business, so many things to sort out, maybe the suicide café was a better idea. Well, there was plenty to think about, Giles wanted to spend some time at this and went through the questions one by one.
What song did he want to be the last he heard, how could they be so sure that it would be the last song, maybe they put it on repeat at the end, what if he heard it by chance, before his last moments, would he think it was a sign that the end was coming? At the moment, he wanted “Hurt” by Johnny Cash, a song of regret, he had plenty of those.
He’d like to be read to, it wasn’t something that happened since he was a kid, so he’d go for a classic, a Dickens, his favourite was “A Tale of Two Cities”. What if they didn’t have it ? would he have to make do with what they had ? did they have a massive library? did they loot Waterstones? Then there was a film, he used to live the flicks, what would he like to see again for the last time? Everything was for the last time, he felt sad at this, what did he expect? He didn’t want to watch a movie, again the final credits rolling up the screen was just too sad to deal with. . He’d written his letters, well one letter, to his mother, they could send that. He didn’t care about his bodily remains, he ticked cremation, go out in a blaze of glory, after he had gone out with a whimper. No goods, apart from the car he had stolen, the carers could have that, and the clothes he stood up in. He’d had a lot of possessions once, a flat in the Docklands full of them, he’d left that flat 3 weeks before , full of junk, Religious service, fuck him or her, what deity would let all this happen, what deity allowed all sorts of shit to happen in the world, fuck him and her. Giles completed the form and handed it in, they didn’t read it immediately, I guess it’s one of those things you read out of sight of the client. They showed him to his room, he had a look but didn’t stay there, he had nothing to unpack. He suddenly realised he had no change of clothes, he didn‘t want to go out in smelly clothes, he asked them if they had spare clothes, they smiled, we have a lot of spare clothes, and showed him another room where they had stored them. He picked out a few pairs of jeans, some tee-shirts, pants and socks, he didn‘t need many warm clothes, he doubted that he‘s be going out much. There was a garden if he wanted to hang out there, plus he had the option of dying in the summer house, or with the others at a passing away picnic, a death picnic. What would he have as his last meal, would his last morsel of food be a scotch egg? He was getting tired of deciding everything, he just wanted it over, maybe he should driven off the Hammersmith flyover.
Giles sat in the living room, he wanted to have some last conversations but the other occupants were watching a re-run of deal or no deal, maybe it was the last show they would see, he hoped someone won the £250,000, he’d rather die having seen that than see someone go off with a penny.
Giles passed his days watching TV and reading, as his strength ebbed away, he lay in the couch, there were spare couches now as 2 of his welcoming committee had passed away, he had joined them in their rooms, listening to their last songs, They all sang along to them watching the last breaths of the passer. He knew his time was coming, he didn’t need to prepare, that was all done for him. One day he just couldn’t rise and he knew it was maybe his day, it was sunny. He asked to be wheeled outside, and he lay in his bed, looking up at a blue sky. Around him were his last family, he was holding on to the hands of strangers. As he grew weaker he started to think about his life, as he grew weary, he remembered good things, his childhood, the love of his mother, passing his driving test, his first kiss (which came before the successful driving test but there is no order to these things) the first time he had sex, the embarrassment, the speed at which it was over, the hasty rush to get out afterwards, or was she kicking him out? He remembered passionate arguments in pubs, on message boards, he remembered the fights he’d had, he remembered getting the living shit kicked out of him when he was too pissed to defend himself. He laughed, and enjoyed the sound of others laughing too, this death thing should be enjoyed he thought, the Irish had the best of ideas, the wake, here he was having a wake before he died. He asked for his favourite drink, and someone poured him a large Jack Daniels and held it to his lips. He sipped at it, enjoying the fire.
“I think it’s nearly time” one of the carers said, and kissed him on the forehead, he smiled weakly, and heard Johnny Cash’s voice as he closed his eyes for the last time. It was over.
Tuesday 2 February 2010
Evil
And there it stands before me; a foul coalesence of turrets and gantries; vanes of rippled steel and orbs of smoke-blackened glass. A building created to terrify and to distort even the empty blue of the sky above. The intricacy and incoherence of the thing leaves the observer in no doubt that there is some devious magnet at its core, a thing wrought in the fires of hell and there given the strength to draw in all the most evil lumps of matter from all the corners of the Earth and bring them together as one single atrocity. The building is more solid than anything around it, yet it seems somehow mutable as well. No mortal will or device could affect it, and yet upon a whim of its fell creator it would surely twist itself into an avatar or a new Tower of Babel immune to divine reproach. There is no sound, only the subsonic tremble of the great engines hidden below ground, those turned by the sweat of the condemned and oiled by the gasping, unrelenting desire for the release of death which is all that now remains of their souls.
“Fuck it,” I say as loudly as I dare, “I’m not going in there.”
“Well you’re not living on my sofa and eating my food a day longer until you start paying me some rent. You can either get in there and sign on or you can fuck off and die in the gutter,” she says, her voice laced with honey-coloured acid.
“Which gutter?”
“Get inside!”
“Welcome to your local Arse4Elbow JobcentreDoublePlusGood,” the monolithic desk-satyr grumbles, “sulphurous lake of true pain and unhallowed tomb of heretics. Damn all who enter here.”
“I beg your pardon?” I croak.
“I said,” a deep sigh, “Welcome to your local Arse4Elbow JobcentreDoublePlusGood, if you wish to make a new claim please carry on through to clerical. Down the hall there.”
“Oh right, thanks very much.”
“Don’t mention it.”
The corridors loom in a way that defies geometry. Vast portraits line the walls, grinning down you to tell you that you too can be as happy and as ethnically representative as we are. You too can be like us, we redeemed, we justified, we saved. Slogans cry out from posters with equally piercing silence:
“Become someone new today!”
“You can succeed!”
And my personal favourite:
“Society has nothing against you personally, it just requires that a certain proportion of the population remains ostracised and impoverished so that everyone else remains suitably afraid and thus suitably compliant. But it’s not unheard of for one of you lot to switch places with one of the valid humans out there, so keep your chin up eh? You could be leaving Greggs behind and eating pasties from the Marks and Spencers café before you know it.”
The forms are simple enough. Bank details, address, reason your parents gave you when they got divorced, reason they actually got divorced, partner’s name, name of person you gave up on when you settled for partner, shoe size…DNA sequence. I don’t actually know my DNA sequence off the top of my head, but thankfully there’s a footnote:
If you do not know your DNA sequence then Arse4Elbow ltd. can retrieve it for you at a cost of £42.10, payable by cash or debit card. By agreeing to the sampling procedure you agree to give Arse4Elbow ltd copyright control over your DNA sequence data for a period of 50 years, regardless of the customer’s survival or otherwise over that period. Arse4Elbow limited waives all responsibility for any cases of hepatitis A, B, C or any as-yet unknown strain contracted as a result of the sampling process. Claims cannot be processed without a valid DNA sequence.
I hand the clerk my completed form, £42.10 almost entirely in change and my left arm. The clerk doesn’t seem to realise that this last item is still attached to me, and he hauls it across the room to some sort of console before shoving it gracelessly into an oddly-shaped apeture wherein it is assaulted by a selection of needles in rapid succession. The whole procedure takes maybe three seconds but leaves me feeling like I suddenly have an awful lot less blood inside me than I had before. I can’t help but wonder whether a DNA sample is actually any use if you neglect to leave any DNA behind to compare it with. I am shown to a waiting area where a handful of simillarly delirious claimants sit on itchy and unyielding sofas. Shortly after I sit down a man with crutches is summoned by a head appearing from behind the door marked ‘disability allowance claims’. The man hauls himself upright and teeters towards the door. A comforting hand beckons him inside and the door closes behind him. The muffled sound of a gunshot is heard moments later, followed by a sound which might be considered simillar to that produced by a pair of crutches falling to the floor. Nobody else seems especially troubled by these two sounds so I take my lead from them and calmly read the jobs page of the local paper seventeen times before I am called in for interview.
“Well, you’re an educated man. We shouldn’t have any trouble finding you something to do. Have you had any experience as a Recruitment Consultant?”
“Can’t say that I have, no”
“Marketing Executive?”
“Afraid not.”
“Right…err…Team Leader, Sales?”
“That’s not even a sentence.”
“Network Taxonomist?”
“Artichoke Elucidate?”
“You must have had some sort of job.”
“Yeah, for twelve years I worked in a steel mill.”
“I’m sorry, a what?”
Eventually I am given my personalised action plan, which involves joining up with some community service people and some prisoners on day release and fishing hypodermics out of the canal for 39.5 hours a week in exchange for my £46.31 per week unemployment benefit which I will almost definitely be paid within eight weeks of my initial claim. If I do not show that I have spent at least 39.5 hours each week actively seeking work my benefit can be stopped and I can be made to repay any benefit payments made prior to the date of this sanction. If I am late for any scheduled appointment it is a simple matter of proceed directly to Siberia, do not pass go and most certainly do not collect £46.31 this week or any other. There are a lot of clocks in this building, all keeping identical time, all mysteriously fast when compared to the time shown on my radio-controlled wristwatch.
A security guard stops me as I am about to leave the building. With no explanation he escorts me to a small, dark room lined with screens. A small, dark man peruses the screens, one of which has my face on it in freeze frame. The image has a time stamp in the corner, indicating that it was taken mere moments before the security guard apprehended me.
“You see this?” the little screen man enquires, tapping my image with the end of his biro.
“Yes, it’s me.”
“According to my software, your face in this image indicates that you are only 21% hopeful of finding full time work within a period of 4-6 weeks.”
“Do you have software that tells me how likely I am to find full time work in that period?”
“Yes I do actually, based on your work history, educational attainment and history of godless cynicism you’re currently reading around 18% likelihood”
“So I’m more hopeful than I should be? Is that a problem, being 3% deluded?”
“Well of course it is. A 3% deulsion coeffecient isn’t nearly high enough. We’ll have no freeloaders here you know, we want to see you determined to succeed. I’ll have to make a note of this incident on your file I’m afraid.”
“Will that affect my claim?”
“Impossible to say.”
Eventually I am allowed to leave. I stagger out of the building weighed down with helpful leaflets and dread. I check to see if I have enough money left for a cup of coffee. I don’t. Had the DNA test been 10p cheaper I’d have been alright. I light a cigarette. Another security guard, bigger and uglier than the last one, grabs me.
“That’s copyright infringement that is,” he growls.
“You what?”
“Mutagenic init? You’re tampering with the intellectual property of Arse4Elbow ltd., Data Supremacy Division.”
“Why do they even care?”
“You’re an asset now sunshine, a resource. Can’t have you dying of cancer can we? You signed the forms. That means we can pay you a quid an hour and you can sit there and like it. Unless,” he laughs at this point, “unless you find full time employment of course.”
“Fuck off, I don’t belong to you.”
“No, but unless you wanna try living on no money you might as well.”
“So you people don’t want me to find a job? You make more money if you can force me to work for next to nothing and keep the difference?”
“Makes no odds either way mate, if you do get a job we get a big cheque from the government for finding you a job. Whatever happens, we win. All that really matters is that you come back to us as soon as possible if you do find work, but we’ve got that sewn up as well. It’s in the small print of our contracts with the big employers that they’re to let people go after they’ve been there six months. It has to be six months or we don’t get the big cheque you see. Rules is rules and you can only bribe so many of them out of the way before you’re out of pocket on the whole thing.”
“You seem to know a lot for a security guard.”
“I’m not a security guard, I’m the chief executive,” he replies with a grin.
“Then why are you hanging around outside the front door?”
“Can’t smoke inoors can I?”
“I feel your pain friend, I feel your pain.”
“What,” I groan, collapsing onto the sofa from the effort of doing so, “a fucking nightmare.”
“Well at least it’s done now,” she says as she callously neglects to make me a cup of tea and give me a hug.
“I have a horrible feeling the fun is only just beginning. You really wouldn’t believe what it’s like in there. I could barely believe it myself. Look, they even made me wear this wristband to make sure that nobody calls me an ambulance if I get hit by a bus. Who would’ve thought we’d come to this? I wonder if anyone would’ve imagined, back at the start of the decade, that everything would be so heinously fucked up by now?”
“Well given that this decade only started six months ago I suppose someone must’ve had an inkling.”
“Fair point.”
“Fuck it,” I say as loudly as I dare, “I’m not going in there.”
“Well you’re not living on my sofa and eating my food a day longer until you start paying me some rent. You can either get in there and sign on or you can fuck off and die in the gutter,” she says, her voice laced with honey-coloured acid.
“Which gutter?”
“Get inside!”
“Welcome to your local Arse4Elbow JobcentreDoublePlusGood,” the monolithic desk-satyr grumbles, “sulphurous lake of true pain and unhallowed tomb of heretics. Damn all who enter here.”
“I beg your pardon?” I croak.
“I said,” a deep sigh, “Welcome to your local Arse4Elbow JobcentreDoublePlusGood, if you wish to make a new claim please carry on through to clerical. Down the hall there.”
“Oh right, thanks very much.”
“Don’t mention it.”
The corridors loom in a way that defies geometry. Vast portraits line the walls, grinning down you to tell you that you too can be as happy and as ethnically representative as we are. You too can be like us, we redeemed, we justified, we saved. Slogans cry out from posters with equally piercing silence:
“Become someone new today!”
“You can succeed!”
And my personal favourite:
“Society has nothing against you personally, it just requires that a certain proportion of the population remains ostracised and impoverished so that everyone else remains suitably afraid and thus suitably compliant. But it’s not unheard of for one of you lot to switch places with one of the valid humans out there, so keep your chin up eh? You could be leaving Greggs behind and eating pasties from the Marks and Spencers café before you know it.”
The forms are simple enough. Bank details, address, reason your parents gave you when they got divorced, reason they actually got divorced, partner’s name, name of person you gave up on when you settled for partner, shoe size…DNA sequence. I don’t actually know my DNA sequence off the top of my head, but thankfully there’s a footnote:
If you do not know your DNA sequence then Arse4Elbow ltd. can retrieve it for you at a cost of £42.10, payable by cash or debit card. By agreeing to the sampling procedure you agree to give Arse4Elbow ltd copyright control over your DNA sequence data for a period of 50 years, regardless of the customer’s survival or otherwise over that period. Arse4Elbow limited waives all responsibility for any cases of hepatitis A, B, C or any as-yet unknown strain contracted as a result of the sampling process. Claims cannot be processed without a valid DNA sequence.
I hand the clerk my completed form, £42.10 almost entirely in change and my left arm. The clerk doesn’t seem to realise that this last item is still attached to me, and he hauls it across the room to some sort of console before shoving it gracelessly into an oddly-shaped apeture wherein it is assaulted by a selection of needles in rapid succession. The whole procedure takes maybe three seconds but leaves me feeling like I suddenly have an awful lot less blood inside me than I had before. I can’t help but wonder whether a DNA sample is actually any use if you neglect to leave any DNA behind to compare it with. I am shown to a waiting area where a handful of simillarly delirious claimants sit on itchy and unyielding sofas. Shortly after I sit down a man with crutches is summoned by a head appearing from behind the door marked ‘disability allowance claims’. The man hauls himself upright and teeters towards the door. A comforting hand beckons him inside and the door closes behind him. The muffled sound of a gunshot is heard moments later, followed by a sound which might be considered simillar to that produced by a pair of crutches falling to the floor. Nobody else seems especially troubled by these two sounds so I take my lead from them and calmly read the jobs page of the local paper seventeen times before I am called in for interview.
“Well, you’re an educated man. We shouldn’t have any trouble finding you something to do. Have you had any experience as a Recruitment Consultant?”
“Can’t say that I have, no”
“Marketing Executive?”
“Afraid not.”
“Right…err…Team Leader, Sales?”
“That’s not even a sentence.”
“Network Taxonomist?”
“Artichoke Elucidate?”
“You must have had some sort of job.”
“Yeah, for twelve years I worked in a steel mill.”
“I’m sorry, a what?”
Eventually I am given my personalised action plan, which involves joining up with some community service people and some prisoners on day release and fishing hypodermics out of the canal for 39.5 hours a week in exchange for my £46.31 per week unemployment benefit which I will almost definitely be paid within eight weeks of my initial claim. If I do not show that I have spent at least 39.5 hours each week actively seeking work my benefit can be stopped and I can be made to repay any benefit payments made prior to the date of this sanction. If I am late for any scheduled appointment it is a simple matter of proceed directly to Siberia, do not pass go and most certainly do not collect £46.31 this week or any other. There are a lot of clocks in this building, all keeping identical time, all mysteriously fast when compared to the time shown on my radio-controlled wristwatch.
A security guard stops me as I am about to leave the building. With no explanation he escorts me to a small, dark room lined with screens. A small, dark man peruses the screens, one of which has my face on it in freeze frame. The image has a time stamp in the corner, indicating that it was taken mere moments before the security guard apprehended me.
“You see this?” the little screen man enquires, tapping my image with the end of his biro.
“Yes, it’s me.”
“According to my software, your face in this image indicates that you are only 21% hopeful of finding full time work within a period of 4-6 weeks.”
“Do you have software that tells me how likely I am to find full time work in that period?”
“Yes I do actually, based on your work history, educational attainment and history of godless cynicism you’re currently reading around 18% likelihood”
“So I’m more hopeful than I should be? Is that a problem, being 3% deluded?”
“Well of course it is. A 3% deulsion coeffecient isn’t nearly high enough. We’ll have no freeloaders here you know, we want to see you determined to succeed. I’ll have to make a note of this incident on your file I’m afraid.”
“Will that affect my claim?”
“Impossible to say.”
Eventually I am allowed to leave. I stagger out of the building weighed down with helpful leaflets and dread. I check to see if I have enough money left for a cup of coffee. I don’t. Had the DNA test been 10p cheaper I’d have been alright. I light a cigarette. Another security guard, bigger and uglier than the last one, grabs me.
“That’s copyright infringement that is,” he growls.
“You what?”
“Mutagenic init? You’re tampering with the intellectual property of Arse4Elbow ltd., Data Supremacy Division.”
“Why do they even care?”
“You’re an asset now sunshine, a resource. Can’t have you dying of cancer can we? You signed the forms. That means we can pay you a quid an hour and you can sit there and like it. Unless,” he laughs at this point, “unless you find full time employment of course.”
“Fuck off, I don’t belong to you.”
“No, but unless you wanna try living on no money you might as well.”
“So you people don’t want me to find a job? You make more money if you can force me to work for next to nothing and keep the difference?”
“Makes no odds either way mate, if you do get a job we get a big cheque from the government for finding you a job. Whatever happens, we win. All that really matters is that you come back to us as soon as possible if you do find work, but we’ve got that sewn up as well. It’s in the small print of our contracts with the big employers that they’re to let people go after they’ve been there six months. It has to be six months or we don’t get the big cheque you see. Rules is rules and you can only bribe so many of them out of the way before you’re out of pocket on the whole thing.”
“You seem to know a lot for a security guard.”
“I’m not a security guard, I’m the chief executive,” he replies with a grin.
“Then why are you hanging around outside the front door?”
“Can’t smoke inoors can I?”
“I feel your pain friend, I feel your pain.”
“What,” I groan, collapsing onto the sofa from the effort of doing so, “a fucking nightmare.”
“Well at least it’s done now,” she says as she callously neglects to make me a cup of tea and give me a hug.
“I have a horrible feeling the fun is only just beginning. You really wouldn’t believe what it’s like in there. I could barely believe it myself. Look, they even made me wear this wristband to make sure that nobody calls me an ambulance if I get hit by a bus. Who would’ve thought we’d come to this? I wonder if anyone would’ve imagined, back at the start of the decade, that everything would be so heinously fucked up by now?”
“Well given that this decade only started six months ago I suppose someone must’ve had an inkling.”
“Fair point.”
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