The Dreams of the Eternal City

by Mark Reece

  He knew that he sounded fake but thought it best to brush over everything that had happened. Most people cannot stand much reality, but for some, even a glimpse is too much.

  “Yeah, we got here.”

  “Cool. Good. What’s the plan for today then?”

  He looked at Aislin, thinking that he had done enough for her not to be upset with him. She was wearing a blue dress and her hair was tied in a ponytail, which she had not done for awhile. He wished they were alone.

  “We’re just getting ready actually. We should be back here for eleven, then we’ll drive to mine in the morning. I’ve booked a few hours off so I don’t have to go in until later.”

  “Okay. Well, make yourselves at home then. Sorry to be rude, I’ve got to get something to eat. I’m starving, I’ve not had anything all day.”

  He smiled at them both with a generic expression that could be applied to anything from an unwanted birthday present to a picture of a cute animal, before going to the kitchen, acutely aware of the possibility of Aislin testing him by leaving him alone with her.

  He remained there for several minutes before thinking that he needed to maintain an appearance of cooking. Aislin came in as he was peeling carrots.

  “I’ll see you later then, Eth. I’ll meet you at work tomorrow ’cos there’s some stuff we need to talk about.”

  “Fuck!”

  He had been compulsively rubbing the peeler against his forefinger, and when she had said they needed to talk, he had forced his hand up.

  “What have you done, are you okay?”

  “Nothing, sorry, it’s fine. Sorry… what were you saying?” He held his hands behind his back.

  “Just that I was going to meet you tomorrow. I’ll call at lunchtime.”

  “Is something wrong?” Ethan’s voice was high pitched. Aislin seemed serious in a way that worried him. She couldn’t have found anything out, could she? If Mo noticed, perhaps it’s obvious. His mind raced through everything they had said to each other throughout the week, analysing the conversations for clues.

  “I’m fine, I just think we need to talk about some things, that’s all. Sorry, I’ve made it sound like a big deal now. It’s just about the job and that, it seems like I haven’t seen you for ages. Anyway… we’ll talk tomorrow.”

  “Okay, enjoy yourself then…”

  He kissed her cheek and smiled. They held each other’s eyes a moment.

  “See you later, Daisy.”

  He heard her mumble something back, and hoped Aislin would think that he had made an effort.

  He stood in the kitchen for some time, hearing a constant clack clack clack before realising that he was tapping the peeler against his leg. He examined his finger to see what looked like black blood dripping to the floor. The amount seemed disproportionate to the length of the cut. Drip, drip, drip.

  Ethan felt aching soreness in his shins that always presaged exhaustion. It was as if he had been kicked with steel-toe-capped boots, and the temptation to lie down was overwhelming, as if sirens were calling him.

  The terrible thing was that it did not feel as bad as the first time; he knew that having given in once, he would inevitably do so again, that his previous actions had created a grove that he was now compelled to walk along. It was as if invisible hands were holding his shoulders, such that even before he moved, he had lain on the sofa several times, telling himself that he was only resting, that he did not have to sleep, that relaxing for five minutes would give him the energy boost he needed. For a moment, he even believed himself.

  Ethan felt excitement dart around his stomach and limbs. He slowed his steps before reaching the lounge, his attempts to dissuade himself only increasing the anticipation. His mobile went off and he rushed towards it, hoping that it was Aislin. It was an automated message from the SDMA. He switched it off without reading it.

  I can’t lie here again. Someone’s bound to see me, it’s poking fate in the eye. I’ll be one of those who appear on a video, who people laugh at before saying to their friends that they can’t believe anyone could be that stupid. An idea popped into his mind that he at first dismissed, but the more he thought about it, and the more his legs ached, the more sense it seemed to make, until the invisible hands pushed him into the next inevitable course of action. He switched off his house alarm.

  As he dragged boards from his shed, Ethan thought that he must look incredibly suspicious, that he was drawing attention to himself in exactly the way he was trying to avoid. He dropped the wood on the grass and put his hands in his back pockets, doing a bad impression of being casual. When he had convinced himself that no one was watching, he picked up a stone and threw it at the patio door.

  It made a clang and Ethan blushed as he tucked the boards under his arm. Not only had the glass not shattered, but the sound had been very feeble. At least no one would have heard. He thought that he had not caused any damage, but when he approached the house, he saw thousands of thin lines that turned the glass into a multitude of hexagons. It was the best possible result, as it provided an excuse to put the boards up while not making a mess or making the house freeze at night. On an afterthought, Ethan kicked the stone back on the grass.

  His hands fumbled as he fitted the boards over the glass. Pain ran through him like electricity as splinters were forced into his cut. By the time he finished, he was breathing heavily. He went into the house, threw his shoes aside, and drew the curtains.

  When he lay on the sofa, he was fearful for a moment, as he did not feel tired anymore and wondered whether the exertion had washed away his exhaustion. However, as the intensity of his thoughts faded, he started to relax, until the sensation of nestling his head on his arms felt like an incipient dream. He was safe now, the boards and curtains hiding him from prying eyes. His sleep very deep and he dreamt only of colours…

  Ethan was woken by something so loud that he sat up and waved his arms as if swiping wasps, until realising that it was the front door opening.

  “Hi Eth.”

  Replying seemed impossibly complicated, and when he put his hands on the sofa to lift himself, he immediately had a headache.

  “Ethan?”

  Aislin sounded annoyed and her voice cut through his grogginess, feeling like fog slowly clearing so that he could see two metres ahead instead of one.

  “What’s happened?” His heart froze when she dashed into the room. “Are you all right, Eth, what’s the matter?” She stroked his face, looking closely into his eyes, “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, yeah, fine.”

  He felt very heavy.

  “What’s all this, what’s happened?”

  “It must have been those kids again. Look, it’s broken…”

  He pointed at the patio door with a feeble gesture, his arm barely lifting from his side.

  “Show me your hand. Shit…”

  She scrunched up her eyes as if something had been sprayed into them. Ethan felt awake for the first time since she had come back.

  “Don’t worry, it looks worse than it is. It’s nothing really. I just slipped when I was putting the boards up. I’m going to wash it in a minute. Seriously, it’s nothing to worry about.”

  He hugged her with his free hand and she pressed herself against him. Ethan felt sick. “I’m sorry for scaring you, I was just cleaning up when you came in. I was hoping that I’d have got things back to normal by the time you got here.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, I wasn’t scared. I’m just fed up that it’s something else to deal with. Perhaps it’s time to think about moving if things like this are going to happen all the time. It’s getting rough round here.”

  “We’ll talk about it in the morning; it’s late now, you’ll be knackered tomorrow. Have you enjoyed yourself?”

  “Yeah, yeah…”

  Aislin sounded as if she were talking in her sleep.
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  “I’ll take the sofa tonight if you want to go upstairs…”

  She pulled away from him. “No, it’s okay, we’ll stay at mine. We’ve got back earlier than I thought.”

  “Aislin…”

  “It’s fine.”

  Ethan suddenly lost the will to argue with her.

  “Come on then.”

  He walked out the room with his arm around her, imagining that Daisy would be annoyed to see them like that. The one sure way to cure my addiction would be to live with Aislin. I only go mad when I’m alone. Why’s she so emotional at the moment? She never normally gets this flustered. Ethan felt worried when remembering the tone she had used when saying that she wanted to talk to him the next day.

  “You enjoy yourself, Daisy?” he asked as they went into the hall, not being able to prevent his voice from being breezy.

  “Yeah.”

  “Good.”

  They walked past her into the kitchen, where Aislin picked up her bag.

  “Are you sure you’re all right?” he asked.

  “Why wouldn’t I be? It’s just that… I don’t know, you’ve been very distant lately.”

  Ethan thought that she was not making any effort to lower her voice.

  “You’re right, I’ve had things on my mind… Anyway, you need to get off now. We’ll meet up at work tomorrow like you said and we can talk about… everything.”

  “Okay, love you.”

  She sounded as if she were asking him a question.

  “Love you too.”

  He kissed her and she examined him with an artless smile, such as he remembered from when they first went out at university and he had walked her to the train station. He had been unsure how well it had gone and so whether or not to kiss her, but knew what to do when seeing her face. That moment had set a benchmark for how he measured beauty.

  He thought she was going to say something else but she only shouted “See you tomorrow!” from the hall before leaving.

  Ethan stared at the floor, thinking about how much trouble Aislin would be in if anyone found out what the Iklonians had done to him. She wouldn’t be able to carry on working. Even if they didn’t find something to pin on her, it wouldn’t be long before a stolen pencil was found in her bag or her performance mysteriously went downhill. There’s always a way of getting rid of someone. The organisation becomes efficient very quickly when it needs to. I wonder how many SDMA people make it to retirement? It can’t be many. Promotion is the only sure way to security.

  She’s in an impossible situation. What would she have done if she’d come in and found me asleep? It would have hurt her so much. Ethan was surprised to find himself crying. I’ve not thought of her since this started. The intrusive nature of exhaustion tends to obliterate all other considerations, but even so… they really are bastards, they don’t care about any of this. He vowed that he would force his sleep patterns to normal by a supreme effort of will. That’s all it takes, how long have I been carrying on before now? If I can just guarantee myself six hours a night, everything will be fine.

  When Ethan went back to the lounge to sort out the mess, he saw that it was eleven and realised that he must have been in the kitchen for over an hour. I should be in bed. I can’t give them a chance. What happens to missing sleep? It must swirl around in the sky just out of reach, always threatening to be absorbed into rain clouds.

  His movements gained impetus as his limbs started to ache. I won’t be able to claim on the insurance because there’s no way they’d believe my story. I’d have to report it to the police, and that’s just asking for trouble. So a few hundred quid down the drain. As he tidied the lounge, he calculated how many hours he would have worked to get the money to repair the glass. A good way to spend my overtime.

  When he went to bed, he thought through his situation until it seemed inexplicable that he had acted like he had. Ethan had a sense of regaining control over his life and felt like an adult for the first time in weeks. How long would it have taken me to get a grip if Ash hadn’t come back when she did? He felt very animated until suddenly becoming aware that he had lain there a long time and was tempting fate again. He closed his eyes and tried to block out everything, but his mind was buzzing. After what seemed several hours, he turned and went over everything he had already decided, his fervour increasing even though he was only repeating himself.

  He slept fitfully that night, as if he had a fever. Being woken by his alarm clock felt like being slapped in the face while talking, and it took several seconds for him to remember where he was.

  Up until the point when he got to work that morning, Ethan was filled with the sensation of renewing an old routine. In the same way as when getting back from holiday, he had a sense of inexplicable excitement. He was overwhelmed by long-suffering irony, a futile knowingness that made him want to laugh hysterically.

  Ethan tried to remember what his usual hours were; his life had lost order in the last month, with time no longer fitting his days; night no longer allocated to sleep, work having no limits, in-between moments attacked by invasive thoughts… Mohammed was in the office when he got there.

  “All right, mate?”

  “Hi.”

  Mohammed glanced at him and Ethan knew that he wanted to ask why he looked so tired. He laughed.

  “What?” Mohammed asked.

  “You, the look on your face. We could be sitting here in a hundred years time and you’d still have the same expression.”

  “We probably will be here in a hundred years. You don’t think we’re going to get a pension do you? The only pension we’ll get is throwing ourselves in the sea so that no one has to pay for a coffin.”

  “What’s got into you? You’re a rebel now, are you?”

  “I just watch the news.”

  Ethan smiled, trying to understand the import of his mysterious comment, before thinking it best not to say anything. The organisation was very sensitive about changes to pensions. That was one of the reasons why unions, or any other form of ‘combination’, were banned in the SDMA.

  “Yeah right, I bet it’s nothing but cartoons in your house.”

  “What’s wrong with cartoons?”

  “Nothing. I’m just saying that I don’t believe you watch the news.”

  “It’s nice to count how many ways I’m being screwed over. But forget about that for a minute. I might have figured out why Si is still off.”

  “Go on.”

  “Jo was looking depressed yesterday so I got her some cake, you know, for comfort food, and she told me that she’d overheard dweeb talking about him on the phone.”

  “And?”

  “Well, the rumour is that he’s had to have an operation. You know. Downstairs.”

  Mohammed looked at his knees portentously. Ethan shook his head and rolled his eyes.

  After everything that had happened, Ethan’s work had faded into the background of his mind, despite the hours he had put in, and when he opened the Hypnos files, he felt as if he was looking at the project for the first time.

  However, as the morning passed and he became more confident, Ethan relaxed and rubbed his shoulders, realising that they felt sore because he had sat hunched forward as if ready to spring to his feet. Whenever he was working particularly well, like that day, he would watch himself thinking, counting the lines on the screen while typing and estimating the amount of words. He was energised.

  He had made good progress on the project and started work on another theory, which was that in addition to disrupting the power supply, the Iklonians were trying to damage food distribution in Central Zone. By dull and painstaking research, he had compared the amount of various types of SDMA investigations against the movements of known Iklonians and unsolved attacks on infrastructure. That gave some evidence of a pattern of small-scale sabotage and SC breaches in particular suburban ar
eas, which resulted in SDMA resources being prioritised there. After around a month, there would be an attack on a weak point in the power infrastructure, not necessarily at a place that would cause significant damage, but in locations that would be unlikely to be immediately detected, such as pylons in isolated areas. Spikes in SC breaches in poorer zones would be accompanied by shortages of basic foodstuffs with an apparently disparate set of causes, from illegal strikes to warehouse fires.

  The upshot of everything he had learnt was that the Iklonian attacks were organised in some unidentified way. Needless to say, the DIA would never release any intelligence reports that gave more detail about the internal mechanisms of the Iklonians, if, indeed, they knew that much about them, which Ethan doubted. All the DIA agents he had ever met were the same: always asking for information but never releasing any in return, making veiled comments about the extent and reach of their intelligence networks but not knowing the answers to specific questions. However, if the system worked, they would be able to overlay his report with any information they had, and perhaps even do something about it.

  Despite the progress he had made, Ethan thought that he was missing something, that if he fitted some other factor into the puzzle then the patterns would become obvious and his theories would be proven. Perhaps there’s something significant around SC breaches relating to companies that supply agricultural plant? Testing that idea would require a very long and boring search through the records, as the SDMA did not record information in a format that would make such esoteric searches easy. However, now that he had had the idea, he had to see whether it was true… he opened the intranet and started the long trawl.

  As he worked, he wondered whether he could get away with not telling Daniel the whole story during his next update. He had not misled him last time, but had concealed the inferences he had drawn. Now that his research was more advanced, it would be very difficult not to say more. The problem was that if he told him everything then Daniel would inevitably ask dozens of questions and want to take the matter to his superiors immediately. He would then require a draft version of Ethan’s report, which would mean taking out the incomplete sections and re-checking what he had already done, stopping him from researching anything new and keeping him from his cases.