by Mark Reece
“Thanks for coming today, it’s been very informative. What I think needs to happen now is that we’ll come up with a plan of attack then meet again to go over the finer points and set some deadlines. Eth, I’m going to send you a few files that go into more detail about what we’ve been talking about today. Have a look through them and draw up terms of reference about the areas you think we need to look at. We’ll have a chat on Friday about how to proceed after that. Pete, I’m sure we can release another member of staff to help with this?”
“Erm…”
“We’ll talk about that before I go. Okay?”
“Yeah…”
“Thanks for coming today, Eth.” Daniel nodded at him then gestured for him to leave. Ethan felt awkward walking back to the office with Peter.
“So… this is exciting then. DIA, Icks, and all that.”
“Yeah, yeah, it’s great. What do you want me to do about my other cases, ’cos it sounds like Dan wants me to work on this full-time?”
Peter scratched his few remaining strands of hair. “Erm… what have you got on again?”
“Just the stuff you sent me while I was away. I finished everything else before going off.”
“Okay… erm… leave it with me for now. I need to work some other stuff out before I decide on that.”
“Right.”
“So… did you enjoy your time off? Did I ask you about it?”
“I mentioned it briefly, about going away with Ash’s parents.”
“Oh yeah, yeah, sorry. Did you enjoy it then?”
“It was fine…” Ethan was relieved when they reached the office. “I’ll have a look at what Dan sends over and start on the terms of reference. One of the cases I’ve been assigned is marked as mid-priority so that’ll have to be done first. I’ll let you know about the timeframes so you can have a look at the staff situation Dan mentioned.”
“Yeah, good idea, thanks.” Peter carried on looking at him as if not knowing what to do next until Ethan turned away.
When Ethan got back to his desk, Mohammed was leaning back on his seat, sucking a pen.
“Come on then, big shot, what was all that about?”
“Just something that’s come from up high. I’ll tell you about it later.”
Mohammed sat forward, frowning and smiling at the same time. “No, tell me now. What’s this, you think you can keep secrets from me?”
“I couldn’t keep anything secret from you. You’d be the first to know if I was getting a filling. I’m making an exception with this though. You’re not missing out on much, you can sleep easy on that score.”
“Fuck me, this is nice. You’re going to be making the tea for the rest of the week.”
“Fine.”
Mohammed grinned.
Ethan thought about whether he could ask for someone on another team to be seconded to the project, before deciding that that would cause too much trouble.
When he looked at his e-mails, he saw that Daniel had already sent him the material he had spoken about in the meeting. There were twenty attachments and he opened one of them to see a two-hundred-page report explaining efficiency statistics in different types of power plant. Another document had the DIA logo at the top and bottom of each page, which comprised a red dagger stuck through a pillow. It was titled: ‘The Hammer Project: a guide for SDMA practitioners’, and contained a description of the known structure of the Iklonian cult, and case studies that demonstrated how it was linked to famous Sleep Code breaches. That was five hundred pages long. The Friday deadline was going to be a nightmare. Ethan sighed when thinking that he would not be able to even start most of his assigned cases until the following week.
The most frustrating thing about doing anything with the DIA was that he had to learn their take on whatever was being researched, which often ran counter to his practical experience. For example, one of the documents gave a ‘potted history’ of the Iklonians, which detailed how they had grown out of protests by the judiciary after the Subversion Act was passed. Ethan had heard that story before and had always thought that it seemed highly unlikely. He had been involved in many investigations where subversive literature had been seized, and like many such organisations, the Iklonians often made vaguely left-wing claims about ‘fighting the commercialisation of bedtime’, to use the phrase that had recurred in the Smith case that Ethan had finished before going on leave.
The DIA was of course right that the Iklonians had emerged at the same time as the SDMA. However, Ethan had always thought it far more likely that they were driven by a mixture of criminal elements on the one hand, who needed the freedom to sleep whenever they felt like it to maximise opportunities to commit other offences, and the natural tendency of the undisciplined to resent any limitation on their ability to do whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted. Add into that the vacuous thrills of sneaking around in a ‘secret society’, threatening people and property, and it was hardly a mystery why some people might get sucked in.
At the end of the Hammer Project report were pages of symbols and code words used by the Iklonians, recovered from their safe houses and through interrogation. Skim reading them gave Ethan the impression that he was looking through designs for children’s stickers. The one that recurred most often was lightning encompassing an ‘I’. There were dozens of variations in design, the meaning of the differences in colour and shape being described as ‘unknown’. There were some secrets that no Iklonian would ever compromise, no matter their situation and what punishment they were subjected to.
Aislin had said that she was going to come over after work that night, so he decided it would be best to let her know now. Seeing her was out of the question because of the security checks he would need to complete to move floor. He accessed his landline by entering his agent number and a password, then holding his index finger against it at such an angle that the blood sample was taken in a different place from that morning. All the work landlines and computers were security locked to their owner, who had a duty to record whenever anyone else used their equipment, and was responsible for what was done with it. The security protocols were the only reason why the SDMA continued to use landlines. Needless to say, the policies were widely flouted.
“Hello, Personnel department.”
“Hello Personnel department, I want to talk about some personal stuff.”
“Hi Eth. I only spoke to you four hours ago, can’t get enough of me?”
“You know that’s true. You okay to talk?”
“Go on.”
“Have you checked your e-mails yet?”
“You mean about the airport? Yeah, it’s good.”
“This is why you should start doing the training again. Standards have gone down since you resigned from it.”
“Yeah. Maybe. It’s something to think about.”
“You’re the one who got the situation under control, I hope he makes that clear. Look… sorry to do this but the boss has come down today and he’s given me a massive project to do. I’m going to have to stay late this week.”
“I thought we’d agreed about this. Why do I bother arranging anything?”
“Ash, I’ve got no choice. You know the score.”
“Do I?”
“You know that I’d much rather be with you. All this work stuff is very inconvenient.”
“Is that everything then?”
“Look, what have you got on at the moment?”
“Just audits.”
“Is that that stuff you were telling me about where you’d made all the changes to the system?”
“That’s it.”
“You never know, this might be the thing that gets you your promotion. I’d promote you if it were up to me.”
“I’d better be off then…”
“Hang on, I was just going to say that if you didn’t mind staying late to
night then we could go for a meal instead. On me.”
“I’ve only got twenty hours on my card, a few extra never hurt…” Her voice was such that Ethan could not tell whether she was joking. He laughed with the confidence as if he were certain, “… I’ll wait for you tonight, I’m not doing it again though. There’s no point going on holiday if you kill yourself the moment you get back.”
“Yeah, that’s fine, I know what you mean. I’ll try to get away for eight. See you later.”
“Bye then.”
“Bye.”
Mohammed looked up when Ethan put the phone down. “I tell you what, you’re slick. ‘I’d promote you if it were up to me’. That on top of her mum saying about marriage. It’s a one way track…”
“That was a private call.”
“It’s like what they say, ‘no communication made using office equipment can be considered private’. Remember that?”
“I know what the policy says.”
“Is she pissed off?”
“She’s all right, she just forgets that things come up in this job sometimes.”
“You know what would make her feel better? A ring.”
“Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer to work in a different building?”
“You love it, don’t pretend you don’t.” Mohammed unwrapped a sweet and threw it into his mouth. “Want one?” His voice was muffled by a slurp of his tongue.
“Go on.”
Mohammed threw a bag of them over his side of the desk. “They were giving ’em out last week. There must have been hundreds of ’em. I do like a good suck in the morning.” He grinned, showing Ethan the sweet balanced on his tongue.
“Nice.”
Ethan unwrapped one of the sweets and played with the wrapper. There had been several goody bags distributed since the IT department had been subcontracted. The SDMA’s ‘official sponsors’ were listed on the bag alongside their various logos, above the PSH. When he laid the wrapper flat, he saw what appeared to be the same information printed there – pointlessly, given that it was far too small to read.
Ethan stretched, sleepiness coming on so suddenly that it overwhelmed him for a moment. He knew that despite what he had just said, Hypnos was likely to last months, and he did not know how he was going to mollify Aislin for that long. She had always been very firm about wanting to get her promotion before starting a family, and had worked for the SDMA long enough to know what that meant. She doesn’t understand the consequences of committing to things, that’s why she gets angry. He considered the problem for a moment before re-opening the documents Daniel had sent him.
Working at that level of exhaustion was like swimming in a dream. He had moments of heightened lucidity followed by a feeling of drifting as he made notes of the points likely to be relevant to Hypnos. Sometimes, he remembered where he was with surprise; at other times, he found himself at the end of a notebook without remembering when he had started writing. He had missed this life. While he had been away, he had often found himself at a loose end, lacking a sense of responsibility and urgency. He flicked between the various reports to check how they complemented or contradicted each other. Time passed quickly and everything fell away except his awareness of his work. The enormity of his task had consumed the reality of all else.
Two
At five o’clock, Ethan realised that he was alone in the office. He had had enough of DIA reports and thought that he may as well look at the SC cases he had been assigned. He opened the secure intranet and gained access to his jobs by re-entering his agent number, password, and blood. The ten cases Peter had given him were listed against Ethan’s name, together with their priority, a space for their section code, which represented the part of the Sleep Code that had allegedly been breached, a space for their level, which represented the seriousness of the breach, and the case status, which for the ten were all listed as being ‘in transit’, meaning that they had been assigned to him but he had not yet viewed them. The top case was shaded orange, as it was graded medium priority, whereas the remainder were green, for low. When he clicked on the top case, its status turned to ‘open’.
The file progression pages had numerous folders where different types of documents could be stored, although only a few were generally used, as Peter did not understand the system so did not make full use of it. In this particular case, I839186D18, there were two reports attached, both in the wrong section, one from a doctor, the other from someone calling themselves ‘the office manager’.
Ethan read the medical report first, knowing from experience that it would contain the crucial information. There was a lot of padding at the start, as there always was, which he skim-read until coming to a section that detailed a series of appointments that the subject, ‘Kerry Holloway’, had had with her doctor. Ethan committed the dates to memory: the first concerned her high blood pressure, the second was when she was worried about a mole on her breast that had turned out to be just a mole, the third was when she had wrongly thought she was pregnant. Nothing relevant, but possibly interesting context. She had to be reasonably well off to be able to afford to visit the doctor so often.
During the fourth visit that year, Holloway had told her doctor that she had left work early after feeling ill on two separate occasions, visiting a facsimile fish and chip shop near her home address both times to purchase cod substitute. On the later date, she took the food home and put it on a plate, as she thought keeping it wrapped in paper was unhygienic, but immediately fell sick after eating. Being ill had made her tired, so she had gone to bed early, falling asleep around five o’clock in the evening on the first occasion, and six o’clock on the second. In both instances, she had gone back to bed after her alarm clock had gone off, meaning that she was late for work the following day. There followed more padding, and Ethan skipped to the end to confirm that the conversations had been recorded by the practice listening devices, and ‘are available if required’.
There was no indication of why the case was listed as medium priority, and Ethan started to feel annoyed as he thought that Peter had got it wrong again, until he read the office manager’s report, which told him that Holloway worked in the Civil Service, carrying out administration for the Ministry of Defence. A case relating to anyone working for a critical government department was marked as a higher priority as a matter of course.
Holloway’s manager was even wordier than the doctor, going into inappropriate detail about the high quality of her work and how widely liked she was by her colleagues. Eventually, he confirmed her absence on the four days in question, stating that the mornings she had arrived late, Holloway had claimed that her car had had ‘engine trouble’.
Despite that the case was medium priority, given how straightforward it was, no additional reports were required unless the subject disputed the evidence. Ethan checked Holloway on the SDMA ‘Mirror’ system, which showed that she had never previously been accused of an SC breach, was of no interest to any police force or the DIA, and had never changed her name. She had some financial flags, including three occasions of more than four months’ unemployment, but nothing out of the ordinary. She had thirty medical notifications. None of them suggested sleep related disorder, and given the reports he had just read, she seemed to be something of a hypochondriac. There was nothing else of note.
Ethan had started his career just as Freedom of Information legislation had been modified in a way that made Mirror possible, and he had felt lucky to join the organisation when he did. It incorporated data about SC cases, referrals from the DIA, the police, and members of the public via the PSH (the majority of all information came from the latter source). Further sections contained information from other state organisations, and from a selected number of the SDMA’s ‘private sector partners’. It was one of the most useful tools at an agent’s disposal, possibly too useful, as Ethan had seen colleagues carry out an investigation purely by researching the
system, without even interviewing the subject.
He also checked her manager, and was disappointed that there was nothing incriminating in his file, as that meant that there were no grounds to pursue anything in relation to him. He did, however, add a note linking his name to I839186D18, stating ‘possible sympathy with person investigated for 4x SC breaches. See report attached to file, pp13–14 and p17’.
Ethan could have completed the investigation summary form in his sleep, and had in fact dreamed of them many times. He wrote his investigation notes and gave recommendations as to the section and level that the case should be considered at. Given its simplicity, the only evidence he would need was to interview Holloway. Ethan strongly believed that interviews should be carried out as soon as possible after a case had been assigned, to improve the efficiency of the organisation but also for the sake of the subject, who would not be helped by being under investigation for long periods of time, with the restrictions on their employment and movements that that entailed. He had often argued with other agents when he had found out that subjects had not been interviewed for months after an incident, which had led him to write a report that had resulted in draft guidelines on the length of investigations being issued to agents nationally. Not that they were followed, of course.
Ethan checked whether the interview room was free, which naturally it was at that time of night, and booked himself a half-hour slot. The other thing that annoyed him about interviews was when agents compelled subjects to come to an SDMA building – not only did that delay the process, but it also unnecessarily compromised their identity; it only happened because some agents could not be bothered to learn how to use the intranet. His efforts to improve that part of the process had also been unsuccessful.
The interview room adjoined his office, and he shut the door, switched off the lights, and switched the computer to its covert setting, meaning that his face and voice would be distorted, all background noise suppressed, and the area around his face would appear black. Furthermore, the IP address of the computer would be encrypted and therefore untraceable. Ethan re-read his notes before ringing Holloway’s number. Her face appeared on the screen a few seconds later. She stood by an oven in a kitchen, red faced.