by Mark Reece
He put the news on using the controller, unsure of the extent to which he was seeing his repressed dreams. A bomb had exploded inside a rubbish bin in Central Zone, and there were swarms of police and black uniformed figures behind barriers. The screen cut to a computer generated image of metal shards striking passers-by, causing them to collapse in pools of blood.
Ethan pressed a button and his lounge was filled with holograms of the scene, making the walls glow. The picture shimmered, throwing off pieces of light, before the fragments were pulled back together. After more shots of police with technical-looking equipment, a reporter interviewed an old man who a bar identified as ‘Bob Culvert’.
“I was just getting my milk like I always do when there was a flash and I couldn’t see anything for ages. I thought I’d gone blind. When I could see again it was horrible, like a war zone. There was a woman with her leg… all cut open. It was horrible.”
The screen returned to the reporter. “Detective Superintendent Coley, who is leading the investigation, has refused to speculate on the motives of the attack, and has said that all avenues of enquiry will be explored, including whether it is linked to the Iklonian cult.”
There was an SDMA technical station near the explosion, which could have been the target of the attack. A series of them had been damaged six months earlier, which had stopped agents updating their security cards. Guards had had to check them manually for weeks.
“Did you hear that, Ash?” Ethan shouted.
“What?”
“Bombing that they’re saying the Icks might have done.”
“Right.”
“It might be a busy day again today.”
“Just finish up as soon as you can.”
“Yeah.”
Ethan wished that she worked opposite him. She could have been a good agent if there had been a vacancy when she’d joined. If only she could see what the world was really like, rather than the HR fantasy land, then she’d understand.
“I’ll drive!” she shouted.
He did not know why Aislin had not changed departments before now, as few people joined the organisation to go into personnel. He had encouraged her to sign up by showing her publicised cases. Ethan’s career had been unusual in that he had become a Sleep Investigator straight away. More typically, a new recruit would be placed into a low-grade position out of the way somewhere, where they would have to demonstrate their trustworthiness and aptitude. He had managed to get the job on the strength of his interview presentation where, using only material in the public domain, he had been able to describe the amount of SC breaches in the scenario he had been given, and how he would investigate them. After that, twelve hour days did the rest.
Being a car passenger while exhausted was a subtly different sensation from driving while exhausted, or travelling on the train while exhausted. In his hazy state, the outside world seemed to be a series of colours created by his own agency. There were as many varieties and effects of sleep deprivation as there were dreams.
As soon as they passed the boundary from Midlands Central (where Ethan lived) to Central Zone, there were roadworks every few minutes, as there had been for years. Ethan could not remember the last time he had seen any workmen. The closer they moved to the city centre, the more unfinished it became.
Ethan thought that they should have got up early to go running together, as although it would have made him sick, it would have put Aislin in a good mood by making her laugh as he trailed behind her. As he shifted on his seat, he noticed a white van in the side mirror that he had first seen as they had turned into a main road near his home. The VRM plate started ‘AA’, with the remainder being obscured by mud.
“Bastard!”
Ethan looked up as Aislin honked the car’s horn. “What’s going on?”
“He indicates then sits there. I wave him through and he doesn’t do anything. Then I start to go and he goes. Idiot. I’ll be stuck behind him all day now.”
“People like that shouldn’t be on the road.”
“Excessive use of the horn can result in a fine or an increased premium.” the safety monitor said.
When he looked in the mirror again, the van was gone. Ethan’s personal mobile went off and he saw a message from his friend Terry. Ethan tried to understand the first sentence before skim-reading the rest. It referred to the bombing, and rambled about the links between the monarchy, the media, politicians, and the mafia, before asking him what he thought about it. Ethan sent a non-committal reply before deleting the message, thinking that it was incriminating in some unspecific way, which was the worst way to be incriminating.
“Who’s that?”
“No one.”
“That’s it, you obviously can’t be trusted.”
Aislin frowned at him before sticking her tongue out.
“I can’t have a moment’s peace, can I? It was Terry, just saying hi.”
“What’s he up to these days? Is he wearing tin foil now so the aliens can’t get him?”
“Not just yet. Still the same really, working at the shop and everything.”
Aislin shook her head in a way that Ethan found irritating.
She parked as near as she could to the SDMA building, which was a fifteen minute walk away. Listening and replying to her as they walked forced him to concentrate to overcome the heavy feeling behind his eyes.
When they were passing the shops, a man neared them, looking determinedly at the floor. Suddenly, he grabbed a handful of posters from a wall before running off. Ethan spun round, but to his frustration, the man had ducked into an alleyway before Ethan could start moving. He ran after him for a few steps and asked a nearby woman if she had seen where he had gone, but she only shook her head, her face as full of fear as if he were holding a knife against her throat. Ethan examined the wall to see chipped brick in the space where the man had vandalised the display. The posters were all of the same design, showing an old fashioned couple looking at a sunset over a farmhouse, above the words ‘Our Vision for a Beautiful City’.
“What are you doing?” Aislin asked.
“Didn’t you just see that?”
“I’m not blind.”
She put her hands on her hips. Ethan felt annoyed with himself that he had not been paying attention to what was before him. Not only was defacing public information a criminal offence, but there had been a case five months earlier where Iklonians had been suspected of defacing building sites. As always, they had never got to the full truth. With utmost reluctance, Ethan started walking.
There had been much internal debate about posters within the SDMA, which had focused on their perceived old-fashioned nature and expense. Ethan had always strongly favoured their use and had said so numerous times on the forums that had been set up for staff to give their views on the subject. To his mind, their advantages over electronic mediums was their visual impact, the fact that they could not be instantly deleted, and that they could be deployed in places where people had no choice but to look. And in any case, the organisation was given a budget to spend on increasing security, not to sit in bank accounts. In the end, the management had decided to continue using posters as part of its communications strategy of ‘total media dominance’.
When Ethan and Aislin reached the lobby, he said, “I’ll see you later then. Don’t wait ’cos I don’t know how long I’ll be. I’ll grab something to eat after work then get the train back.”
“All right. Do you still want me to stay over? There doesn’t seem much point in driving back to an empty house.”
“Yeah, I do want you to stay. I’ll tell you what, when this lot’s out the way, I’ll think about applying for a transfer to somewhere nearer home that’s less busy. Anyway, we’ll talk about it later.”
“You’d do that? Is that in your contract? How would you even go about it?”
Ethan froze, as he had spok
en in the spur of the moment without thinking. “Well… it’d be Dan, I suppose. He might let me, I don’t know. He’d have to look at all the legal stuff.”
“Let me know how it goes.”
“Yeah, will do, have a good day.”
“And you. Love you.”
She kissed him and went ahead, the dots dancing over her back. Ethan sighed and rubbed his eyes. There were always problems. Sometimes, his life seemed like a gigantic puzzle, always one wrong move away from disaster. He pressed his security card against the giant lip barrier, and when it opened, thoughts of what he needed to do that day seeped into his mind until he had forgotten everything else.
In the endless walk along the tenth floor corridor, Ethan contrasted the issues he had had to deal with when staying with Aislin’s parents to what he would have to do about the bombing. He was happy with his own arrangement; he had moved far enough from his parents that it was only convenient to visit them during special occasions. Although he had got on fine with them since moving out, he found that a weekly call was enough.
When he reached his office, Ethan moved around a pile of papers but when he tried to take another step, he tripped over a phone cord that had been stretched taut, only just managing to force his hands out to avoid banging his head against the desk.
Mohammed roared and Ethan struggled to his feet, rubbing his leg. “Back of the net, buddy, back of the net.” His laughter went through every possible modulation.
Ethan logged into his computer, blood dripping from his finger.
“Oh man. I’m glad I work with you. You had a good night then, dude?”
“Yeah fine, Ash is staying over for a few days.”
Mohammed’s head darted up. “That’s it, it’s all over. You’re in the marriage club. You want me to help you pick out a ring? Come on, you may as well go along with it. It’s inevitable. Inevitable.”
“I don’t know about getting married but I’ve already got a kid.”
A few minutes later, Peter walked into their section and stood by his desk. Ethan knew that he was waiting for him to say something, but the way that he hung around was so annoying that he ignored him.
Eventually, Peter said, “Hello… hi…”
“Sorry, didn’t see you there.”
“So… are you okay then?”
“Fine.”
“Good, good. I just wanted to talk to you for a minute about… you know…”
“What?”
“You know… the thing we were talking about yesterday.”
“Give me a few minutes and I’ll come into your office.”
“Okay.”
Peter stood there a moment as if not understanding what had been said before stumbling over the phone cord and leaving without another word. Ethan picked his fingernails then looked at Mohammed. “Who the hell put him in charge?”
“God knows.”
“I mean… actually, I’m not going to go on about it, I’ll just irritate myself.”
“You should apply next time there’s a vacancy.”
“Can you really imagine me doing his job?”
“Yeah, I can.”
“Maybe in a parallel universe.”
“We’ll see.”
“By the way, have you got a lot on at the moment?”
“Plenty, but I’m getting by. Why, what’s up?”
“Nothing major, it’s just that I might need help with something. I’ll tell you about it later.”
“Is it about that meeting you went to with all the bigwigs?”
“How long have you been waiting to ask about that?”
“Since you came out of it yesterday.” Mohammed grinned.
“Let me see what dweeb wants and I’ll tell you about it later.”
Before doing anything else, Ethan logged into Mirror and wrote an entry in the ‘miscellaneous non recordable incidents’ section describing what had happened outside the shops that morning, giving as full a description of the suspect as he was able. Material entered into that section was sent to Investigative Support, which decided whether new intelligence needed to be investigated by the SDMA, forwarded to the DIA or the police, or filed. Ethan had always had a strong suspicion that they filed everything for the sake of an easy life.
Ethan walked into Peter’s office to see him wiping the leaves of a pot plant behind his desk. The top half of the back wall was blacked out window, filling the room with shade. There were cabinets in each corner with nothing in the centre, which gave the impression that the room was enormous, although it could not have been much bigger than Ethan and Mohammed’s workspace. Peter’s desk was covered by pictures of his wife and daughters, who hugged each other and smiled in every one.
“What did you want to ask me about then?”
“Oh, hi, Ethan. Take a seat.” Peter seemed flustered and finished with the leaves before sitting opposite Ethan.
“Right, I think we need to talk about that job Dan gave us yesterday. My thoughts are that we’ll need to get some of the others to help you with parts of it, otherwise you’ll never get it done with how many cases there are.”
“What about security though? They seemed very hot on that yesterday, which makes me think that the fewer people who know about it the better.”
“Dan rang me last night. He said that we can give tasks to others so long as we don’t tell them the whole picture, and we agree it with him first.”
“Right.”
“So, do you want me to—”
“Why don’t I make a list of all the things we’ve got to do, then we can see how much there is and what other people can help with?”
“Yeah… yeah, good idea.” Peter tapped the arms of his chair.
“I’ve done the necessary on the mid-priority you gave me. It just needs signing up before it can be processed.”
“Oh… okay… that was quick. Yeah, I’ll try to have a look at it later.”
“Can you get it done today? She’s in a sensitive job so we can’t be seen to muck about.”
“Right… okay… Where was it again…?”
“The MOD.”
“Oh right. Well, I’ll definitely try to have a look then. Yeah.”
Ethan caught Peter’s eyes before looking away, and he knew that he would have to check the system later to make sure it had gone through.
“And the other thing is, what about the bombing? That’s not going to be a quick job.”
“Well… Dan spoke to me about that as well… It’s been assigned to someone else…”
“Someone else? What do you mean? Who?”
“Dan said that Hypnos has got to be the priority, so I’ve given it to Alfie to have a look at…”
“He’s gonna ‘have a look at it’? Hypnos is only just getting off the ground, I could have easily started another case.”
“I’m sure you could, but Dan was specific on that…”
“Right, fine. I obviously need to speak to him.”
Ethan went back to his desk, licking his lips as soon as he was out of Peter’s office. He rang Daniel’s landline. When no one answered, Ethan tried his work mobile. That number was not on the contacts for the senior managers on the intranet; Daniel had given it to Ethan when they had worked together on the Smith investigation.
“Hello?”
“Hi Dan, it’s Ethan. Are you all right to talk for a minute?”
“Yep, if it’s a quick one.”
“It is. I’ve spoken to Pete this morning and he wanted to arrange for other people to help with the stuff we were going over yesterday. I know you said that you wanted to be told before anyone else was brought in, so…”
“Pete rang yesterday, and I said that as long as he told me exactly who was doing what, and that you only told them what they need to know and not the bigger picture, then that’s fine
.”
“Okay, great. I thought he would have but I wanted to check before I started anything. It’ll probably be Mo who helps me out but I’ll let you know the full details later.”
“Fine, thanks for keeping me in the loop. I’m just about to go into a meeting, so I’ll be in contact to see how you’re getting on…”
“Sorry, I did need to ask something else. Did you know I’ve been cut out of the bombing enquiry?”
“Yeah. That’s what I told him to do.”
“Right… is there any reason because it looks like it might be an important job…?”
“Ethan, you know what political projects are like. If we’ve got to put a deadline back and they find out you’ve been doing something else, they’ll say we’re not committing to Hypnos. I’ve sold it to them that we’re giving it full priority and that’s how I’ve got to keep presenting it. That’s the decision. I’ve got to go. I’ll speak to you later.”
“Okay. I’ll see you then.”
When he put the phone down, Mohammed leant over the desk. “Pete sent an e-mail round about that, didn’t you get it?”
“No.”
“Too important now you see. You don’t have to know about the minor stuff.”
“Forward it to me would ya?”
He did so, and Ethan read it to discoverer that everyone in the office would be expected to help Alfie with the research that the organisation needed to carry out around ‘this potentially significant enquiry’.
“He’s given it to Alfie. Christ.”
“Keep it down, will ya. Have you forgotten that he works here?”
“Well, he’ll liven things up I suppose. He’ll be good if he’s got to do a presentation. He’d probably put a few pictures of bombs in for a laugh.”
“How loud are you talking? If you read the e-mail to the end, it’s crap anyway, just a bit of background research. The DIA are doing most of it.”
Ethan nodded. There was more he wanted to say on the subject but Mohammed did not seem to want to listen.
Three
Ethan spent the rest of the day planning the methodology for Hypnos – what aspects needed to be considered, and how long each of them would take. By the time he had finished, his draft terms of reference was ten pages long. His schedule estimated that it would take around three months.