by Mark Reece
“Kerry Holloway?”
“Yeah.”
“This is the SDMA, are you available?”
“Yeah.”
She held a work surface with both hands. Without thinking, Ethan had adopted the monotonous tone he always used when speaking to the public.
“I’m Sleep Investigator number 202154T. I need to speak to you about the case you’ve recently been involved with. We’ll probably need about fifteen minutes.”
“Erm… okay.”
“The first thing I need to tell you is that you’re not under arrest and you can terminate this call at any time. However, you will not be given any other opportunity to dispute your guilt in relation to this matter. You’re not legally compelled to answer any questions I ask you. That means that not answering any question does not constitute any further breach of the Sleep Code, a criminal offence, or any offences under the Subversion Act. However, refusing to answer, or silence, demonstrates a lack of a substantive defence and so is equivalent to terminating the call. Is that clear or do you want me to explain it again?”
“No, I… it’s clear.”
Interviewing more educated people was always easier, as with some street level infractions, even explaining the opening principle took a long time.
“Good. Kerry Holloway, there is unanswerable evidence that you are guilty of four breaches of the Sleep Code, section one, subsection one: ‘any act of unlawful sleep that results, either by the act itself or as a consequence of the act, to hinder the effective or efficient management of a workplace, as defined in the code.’
The details are that firstly, on the first of April 2040, you wilfully left a workplace in order to sleep outside your designated shift, which is therefore unlawful sleep. Secondly, on the second of April 2040, you wilfully slept beyond the time allowed by your designated shift, which is therefore unlawful sleep. Thirdly, on the eighth of April 2040, you wilfully left a workplace in order to sleep outside your designated shift, which is therefore unlawful sleep. Fourthly, on the ninth of April 2040, you wilfully slept beyond the time allowed by your designated shift, which is therefore unlawful sleep. You do not possess any type of sleep licence, meaning that you have no lawful excuse to be asleep outside the permitted hours of twenty-three hundred hours and oh seven hundred hours.
“I’m going to further inform you that case law has identified the Civil Service, where you were working on the days specified, as a workplace. On the four dates I’ve just specified to you, do you remember your actions, or do you need me to summarise them?”
“I didn’t leave because I was tired, I—”
“Ms Holloway. Do you remember your actions on those days?”
Her shoulders slumped and the question seemed to deflate her. She looked at the floor. “I remember.”
“Good. There is unanswerable evidence of breaches of the Sleep Code on those four days. Do you have other evidence that would countermand that case?”
“I didn’t feel well them days before I’d left, I didn’t leave because—”
“Ms Holloway, any matters relating to your health are points of mitigation and not defences. It is incumbent upon everyone to be aware of policy. It is incumbent upon everyone to follow policy. The Sleep Code supersedes all other law. Do you have any evidence that would indicate that you did not breach the Sleep Code on the days I’ve indicated?”
“No.”
Her word was more like the yowling of a cat than human speech.
“Thank you for your cooperation today, the results of this investigation will be sent to you in short order. Goodbye.”
Ethan disconnected the call and saved the recording of the interview before e-mailing it to himself. His interviews had become more concise as he had gained experience. The main problem was that people did not understand the difference between being not guilty, and having mitigation. Everyone had mitigation, but no one was not guilty, and he had come to realise that an agent had to explain the difference between the two as brusquely as possible, otherwise the interview would never end. Holloway was a case in point. If we took illness and the rest of it into account, there’d be no point having the Sleep Code. Everyone knows that before it came in, we were sleeping more in a day than the average Chinese works, and that situation couldn’t go on forever. But now, everyone thinks that an exception should be made for them. Ethan chewed his cheeks as he went back to his desk.
He unlocked his computer and attached the recording to the file before updating the status to ‘concluded’. That would generate an e-mail to Peter, who would (or should), read the file and decide whether anything more needed to be done. Ethan had scored the case as being level ten seriousness, meaning that it would be sent to the Sanctions department after it was agreed by supervision. The likely punishment would be a fine (and dismissal with permanent removal of vetting status, obviously). Levels one to three, as defined by the code, had to be referred to the DIA for consideration for subversion charges that would be pursued by DIA security courts. Levels four to six were dealt with as criminal matters through what was known as ‘special service’, meaning that they would be tried by specially vetted judges, where the agent’s conclusions would be made available to a court, presented by an SDMA representative, to maintain the agent’s security. Appropriate defence counsel could produce evidence of alibi, but not challenge ‘fundamental facts’, as defined in the Subversion Act. Levels seven to ten were usually dealt with through the civil courts.
When Sanctions received a file, they would assess the conclusions before either completing the necessary administration and sending it to a civil court, return the file to the investigator for it to be re-graded, or reverse the finding of guilt. In reality, Sanctions rarely challenged an investigator’s decision because of the bureaucracy that caused, and Ethan had the strong impression that most of the time, they rubber-stamped the investigation summary form. He had never had a file returned.
When Aislin called, Ethan was looking out of his blacked-out window, thinking that he would have to tell Peter to process the file the next day. Ethan should not have to, of course, but the system tended to fall down whenever he had to rely on anyone else. What was the point of keeping Holloway hanging on at this stage? Her job needed to be advertised apart from anything.
“Finished?”
“Yeah, almost. Where are you?”
“Look out the window.”
“I am, I can’t see anything.”
“You really can’t see me?” She spoke in an ironic, high-pitched tone, and he did not know whether or not she was being serious.
“I’ll be down in a minute, let me just switch my computer off.”
“I’m in the car park. Hurry up.”
The office had automatic lights and was in darkness except for his space. The different sections lit before him as he walked as if someone were highlighting his movements. Working in the office alone always felt strange, as if the rest of the city had been abandoned.
He stumbled over a folder when he neared the door, there still being an abundance of paper everywhere despite the tidy-up that morning. The moment he had stopped working, tiredness encompassed him in its familiar embrace. He could not imagine what it would feel like not to be walking on the verge of dreams; exhaustion was like a drug, he could not have said whether he would take the opportunity for extra sleep even if it were possible. There was a constant pressure on his head and feet, as if they were being held in a strong grip, and he seemed to be always running up steep steps. Twenty per cent of Sleep Code breaches were committed by either shift workers or students, who worked at times contrary to their internal body clocks, and from personal experience, Ethan knew that lack of discipline in putting up with the necessary discomforts of the working day had to be the underlying reason for most of them.
Exhaustion induced in him a sensory mania in which periods of lethargy were followed by excessive sens
itivity. As he walked along the corridor, he knew only the sensation of his feet hitting the floor and had only the vaguest awareness of what was around him. He would not have noticed if he had stepped over a corpse.
It was only when he saw Aislin’s car that colour returned to his vision. She beeped her horn and he stooped to get inside before kissing her. She shook her head to remove strands of her long red hair from the gaps in the steering wheel. He wished that he’d brought his car that morning. Driving always made her bad tempered. The biggest car she could afford was still so small that the steering wheel stuck into her ribs – given how expensive petrol had become in the last decade, most cars, apart from those used by the extremely rich, had been designed to carry as little unnecessary weight as possible. The corollary was that they were crammed with safety devices that relayed data to insurance companies and the police.
“That’s the second time you didn’t see me in half an hour.”
“My mind must have been elsewhere… You know that I could never ignore you…”
There was a momentary silence and Ethan held his breath.
“I suppose that’ll have to do. Where are you taking me then? Or let me rephrase myself, where am I driving us so that you can take me out?”
“How about a curry? I want something that I won’t have to wait long for.”
“Okay.”
“Your engine has been switched on for three minutes without—” the safety monitor said.
“Fuck off,” Aislin replied. However, the car continued to tell her about how much petrol she had wasted until they had reached their destination. Ethan could not help but notice the graphs on the dashboard that showed that she had terrible fuel efficiency. She must waste a lot of money, although he decided not to mention the fact at that moment.
They had been to their favourite facsimile Indian restaurant so many times that they recognised some of the staff who worked there, although Ethan and Aislin had never said anything to them other than giving their order. The high price of meat and long working hours had led to the closure of many restaurants. However, in recent years, the development of meat substitutes had allowed the creation of the various facsimile restaurants, known as ‘facs’.
Ethan had found this one when taking a diversion after driving home late one night. The walls were filled with holograms of India that served as lights, and pictures of smiling men with turbans and beards. The images had a blue tinge that flickered periodically, making them seem like balloons being inflated then deflated. In contrast, the staff were all white, sullen, and wore green uniforms. Nevertheless, they used the best lamb facsimile that Ethan had ever tasted.
The room had an insubstantial smell that prompted them to unconsciously take deep breaths to try to work out what it was. As they waited for their order to arrive, Aislin said, “I’ve not told you about the latest chapter in the scarf saga.”
“Not this again. Did your dad talk about anything else while we were there?”
“You’ve not heard anything yet. Apparently, he was on the bus this morning going into town, and he sat next to some bloke and told him about it as well. Dad must have talked the entire way there, ’cos you know how he likes to repeat everything. He got to the part when he started saying about how it was made in the traditional Irish way, going on about all that stuff, when the bloke told him to get lost.
“Dad’s never gonna let that go, obviously. So he starts up again, saying about how he was only telling him about his scarf, and what bad manners it is to swear in public. That’s what he said happened anyway, so he probably had a go at him for ages. In the end, the bloke must have lost the plot and tried to grab him, or push past him or something. Whatever he was doing, somehow, his hand got caught up in the scarf, and when dad stood up, the other guy fell over and dad stood on his shoulder and gave him more advice before getting off! How mad is that?”
“Is he all right? What do you mean, he grabbed him?”
“I don’t know really. I tried to ask but he kept going on about how it’s a lucky scarf now. I spoke to mum and she doesn’t think he was hurt. He hasn’t been to Ireland since he was ten but you’d think he was the biggest patriot out listening to him. Do they even make scarves in Ireland? What the hell’s a traditional Irish scarf?”
“No idea. A green one?”
“Probably. If he weren’t my dad, I wouldn’t know what to think.”
Ethan smiled and looked across the fac to see an old man resting his head against a wall. There were so many wrinkles on his bald head that they looked like a tattoo. He was still in the way that Ethan recognised all too well as the manner of someone who was about to fall asleep. Failure to report an instance of sleep disorder was a disciplinary offence for any SDMA worker, and in some instances could be a Sleep Code breach in itself. He took out his work mobile and set the video to record, before the man shook himself and sat up.
“You’re not still working are you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Come on. That’s your work phone.”
“No no, I was just… checking something.”
Aislin licked her top lip then picked up the menu. “I sometimes think that I’d like to live closer to him. I’ve got the feeling that he’s not going to improve. Do you know what I’m saying?”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“I’ve never said that to mum, but I’m more sure every day.”
Ethan nodded and shuffled in his seat. The old man had reverted back to leaning against the wall, as if toying with Ethan.
“You’re not even listening to me, are you?”
“I was listening.”
“What did I just say then?”
“You were talking about your dad… Ash, I was listening. I know how important the situation is to you. Why don’t you stay at mine for a few days? Then it’s only twenty minutes if you need to pop over.”
“Erm… okay then, thanks.”
She put her hand on his and Ethan felt relieved that he had done something right for once. When they had met at university, she had often said how much she admired his ambition and ‘intensity’. He could not understand what had changed.
They held hands on their way to her car. As they went, Ethan saw the figure of a smiling man holding naan bread that was etched into a window. Despite the fluorescent colours, there was subtle shading beneath his eyes, as if he were tired. It was so faint that Ethan was not sure it was real.
He was still thinking about it when Aislin had driven off and was telling him about how her manager had caused mayhem in the office that day by not understanding the processes around the audit.
She had stayed at Ethan’s house many times before and kept various essentials in his spare room.
They went to bed as soon as they got in that night.
The following morning, his alarm clock made him jump as abruptly as if his bed sheets had been torn away. Ethan had different feelings of tiredness depending on what point in his sleep cycle he was woken. Sometimes, he felt sluggish lethargy that weighed heavily on his feet, making every movement a struggle and meaning that he had to force himself to get up; on other instances, such as that moment, he had a strong sense that a dream had been interrupted, although he could not remember it. He tried to summon up the images while brushing his teeth, but it was futile.
The sound of his alarm always remained with him for several minutes, as the SDMA-approved model was designed to do. It was a very efficient alarm clock, the regularity of the tone having been calculated to destroy serenity, such that it was impossible for anyone to remain asleep or even in bed after it had gone off.
The part of the Sleep Code that dealt with alarm clocks was one of the most complex sections of the Subversion Act. All alarm clocks were required by statute to be manufactured to only go off between eleven in the evening and seven in the morning, that was, during a period of lawful sleep. They cou
ld only be modified by the use of a code possessed by the owner of a shift or other sleep licence. Tampering with an alarm clock, such as by changing the set time to get around the security (the most common method), would invariably be dealt with as at least a level six breach. An alarm clock could only be lawfully altered by SDMA technicians, who would require proof of the relevant shift licence, and upfront payment of an administration fee. When the Subversion Act had been passed, much had been made about how many of its sections were ‘unenforceable’. However, they had all been enforced. The legions of disaffected neighbours and ex-partners of SC offenders had guaranteed that.
Ethan’s personal mobile received an automated message from the SDMA. Members of the public could register their mobiles to receive free alerts and information. The service had proven very popular, and thousands of people had signed up on the first day, crashing the SDMA website. The message gave an updated list of the characteristics typical of sleep offenders, all of which were extremely vague; his favourite was ‘often appears confused and distracted’. Perhaps I should put in a report about Pete. Despite being useless for any practical purpose, Ethan found it interesting to compare what he knew against what was released to the public. He spent a few minutes reading through old SDMA messages; he had saved every one since the service began.
Ethan lay on a sofa while Aislin had a shower, and switched on the Multi-View (MV). The MV provided a combined package of television channels, games, the Internet, and a variety of other amenities, depending on the level of access the user paid for. It was the only way to use many government provisions, such as registering a birth, although most mobiles could connect to an MV remotely.