The Dreams of the Eternal City

by Mark Reece

  “Sounds like a nightmare.”

  “It is, mate, I’m glad to come here to get away from it sometimes.”

  “It’s probably just a phase she’s going through.”

  Mohammed nodded then looked at his screen.

  “Maybe. But before all this, she’d speak to you normal, almost like we’re talking now. You know, I had to apply three times to get into the job. When I got it, I thought that meant that I was out of the shit. But if it’s not them at work who are after your soul, then it’s the fuckers at home. You need a stick to keep them all away sometimes.”

  Ethan felt his collar stick to his neck and knew that he needed to end the conversation. “You couldn’t, I don’t know, take her out somewhere, use up some leave? Perhaps if she gets out the way of her parents a while, she’ll be able to relax.”

  “I’m not sure about that ’cos she’s been obsessing about leave, working out a schedule about how long it’s going to take to do the decorating and whether we can fit everything in before she goes on maternity.”

  “Well, why don’t you have a few days off on flexi? Then you can have some time together without having to do anything.”

  “Problem is, I’m not like you, I don’t do hundreds of hours over every month. I always go home at four.”

  “The policy says that you can go ten hours under as long as you clear the deficit in a month. Tell you what, I’m having a meeting with dweeb tomorrow, why don’t I tell him that you’ve had a family emergency and you won’t be back till Wednesday? He’ll never be brave enough to ask what’s happened, never mind check your hours.”

  “You think?”

  “Well, let’s have a look. How many hours have you got?”

  “Hang on… okay, I’m eight hours over.”

  “I don’t know what you’re complaining about then. That falls within the parameters. I think you should do it. You’ll be able to take her out somewhere, all that blah.”

  “All right then. You’ll sort it with dweeb for me?”

  “Yeah, I’ll mention it last thing tomorrow. No problem.”

  “Okay, cheers, mate. I’ll do it.”

  Ethan made a note to remind himself. Needless to say, he had no doubt that he would be able to order Peter to do what he said.

  Despite having wasted half an hour chatting, by the end of the afternoon, Ethan had not only finished the presentation for the next day but also sketched out the framework for the remaining Hypnos sections. He had made such progress that he was actually able to estimate an end to the project. He thought that if he worked at the same pace, it would be finished in a month. That would mean that he would be able to use Aislin’s goodwill when she returned by staying late for a week or so, before surprising her by being true to his word and concentrating on looking for houses. That was when she would understand the importance of overtime payments.

  Ethan saw that it was four o’clock. He heard Mo packing his bag and thought that as he had little to do on his remaining cases, having completed all initial enquiries on the outstanding low priorities, he may as well leave on time.

  “Hang on a minute, I’ll walk with ya.”

  “What?”

  “I said wait there and I’ll walk out with ya.”

  He concentrated on locking his paperwork in his cabinet so that he would not have to look at his incredulous face.

  “Come on then.”

  As they walked across the office, Alfie shouted “Oi”, making Ethan’s heart skip a beat, although fortunately, he did not jump, otherwise he would never have heard the end of it. Alfie held still a moment to watch him before laughing and banging his head against the desk.

  “All right, calm down. Very good.”

  “The end is nigh, that’s what this means. There’ll be an earthquake tomorrow now, you just watch. We’re doomed, we’re all doomed!” Alfie jumped to his feet and waved his arms around, causing laughter to ripple around the office.

  “When you going to start looking at houses?” Mohammed asked when they were out of the room.

  “I’ll do it when I can. There’s other things I’ve got to sort out first.”

  “What do you mean? You’ve seemed very distracted lately.”

  “Bits and pieces, nothing much…” Mo looked at him but he resisted the temptation to say any more.

  “I’ve warned you about Dan, it won’t do you any good in the long run to do his stuff instead of sorting out your life.”

  “We’ve all got to do our duty. There’s no choice about it.”

  “It’s a choice everyone else makes.”

  “I only have to justify my own choices, not everyone else’s.”

  The direction the conversation had taken made Ethan wish that he had started the next section after all. He was half inclined to go back out of principle. This is the last time I leave early. There’s always more to do. There are always ways to improve.

  “So where are you looking to move to?”

  “We haven’t discussed it properly yet.”

  They walked outside and Mohammed slapped him on the back, almost knocking him over. “Have a good ’un.”

  “Bye.”

  When Ethan got home, he opened a letter from the organisation to read that they were changing the pensions again. A booklet was enclosed but he could not be bothered to read it as the general situation was plain. ‘Reform’ and ‘change’ always meant that things were about to get worse.

  He ate dinner while watching the MV. An eerie sense of normality hung over the house; he could not remember the last time he had eaten that early.

  He spent an hour researching properties on a website, feeling that he was doing a chore. Ethan saved some of the descriptions on his MV so that he had proof of what he had done. He then watched a film, but by the time it finished, it was only half eight and time seemed to stretch endlessly before him, as if he were looking along a motorway. He rang Aislin but her mobile went to answerphone.

  He wanted to stay up all night, to see whether he could go without sleep at all. It was as if he wanted to punish himself for still being rested from the previous night, as if he wanted to be exhausted, that he could not exist in any other state. Like a sleep bulimic, he had to hurt himself in an ever more damaging cycle for reasons he could not explain.

  He eventually went to bed at twelve after doing every odd job he could think of and wasting hours messing around on the Internet, thinking how ridiculous he was the entire time.

  As he lay in bed that night, he worried about what would happen when they moved in together. Whenever Aislin had stayed over, they were like excitable children taking pleasure in each other’s company. What would she do when she realised how disordered his sleep patterns were? I don’t know whether I’ll be able to change just like that. The subject was too painful to think about.

  Ethan categorised what he had left to do for Hypnos, and how he was going to carry out his presentation the following day. Needless to say, Daniel would do most of the talking, but there would be questions to answer, there always were, and he would have to spend the morning preparing.

  By the time he stopped worrying, Ethan was exhausted and was able to sleep with a clear conscience.

  Ten

  When he got into work the following morning, Daniel was sitting at his desk.

  “Oh, hi Dan… I wasn’t expecting you first thing.”

  “Ethan. Good to see you…” he twirled to his feet and shook his hand, “… I popped over early to let you know the running order for today and to ask for a few changes.”

  “Right, okay.”

  “Let’s go through to the conference room.”

  Ethan followed him there, wondering whether there was a meeting he did not know about, as there was no one else in the office.

  “Firstly, thanks again for all your hard work. What you’ve found has
got the DIA interested and I’ve heard they’re going to send over one of their regional directors. He calls himself Jones but I doubt that’s his real name. It’s all very secret with them, you understand, he’s probably got a five barrelled name…” Ethan smiled. “Anyway, I asked for a few facilities from the top floor – a bigger screen and a faster computer, so we can show your work to its best advantage. Can I just ask please, and I apologise for not asking sooner, can you put the main points on some slides, so we can put them up while going through the draft?”

  “Well… I’ve already done it. I guessed that you’d want that.”

  “Why did I bother asking? I mentioned your name to our director the other day, as he’s following the progress of Hypnos as well now. It’s not going to be long before you move seats, Ethan. It’s a good team here, but there’s some things I want changing. Start having a think about how we could improve.”

  “Okay.”

  “On this subject, when was the last time you saw Simon?”

  “Simon? It must be, I don’t know, at least four months, well before I last went on leave. Isn’t he on long-term sick?”

  “That’s a good question, Ethan. Our excellent financial contractors tell me that he’s been paid overtime for the last six months although they only decided to let me know yesterday. He’s not put a sick note in so it looks like he’s stopped coming to work and no one’s done anything. This is why I need someone to get a grip of the department.”

  Ethan looked at the table. Daniel never told anyone anything, let alone confidential information, without some purpose.

  “So… how are we going to go through the stuff then? Are you going to read the slides…?”

  “I’ll go through the headline points. We’re not going into the detail today, they just want to start getting their heads around what you’ve found. They might have some questions though so I want you to come to the meeting.”

  “No problem, I’ll go and get it ready.”

  “Thanks.”

  They went back to the office, which had filled up since they had left, and Ethan e-mailed the presentation to himself so that he could open it in the conference room, while Daniel chatted with the others. Ethan thought that what he had said about the SDMA director was almost certainly untrue, and wondered why Daniel imagined that he would have been impressed by the lie.

  Little work was done that morning, Daniel’s presence giving everyone except Ethan the opportunity to chat about everything and nothing. At one point, Peter came out, and when seeing Daniel talking to Jo, he rested against a partition and smiled. Ethan watched him a moment with pleasurable scorn before re-checking the presentation.

  Needless to say, the meeting started late. Senior management and DIA officials were never on time, and as the morning went on, Ethan thought that bringing them together might prove impossible. Eventually, Daniel came over to his desk and said, “They’re on their way, Eth. Can you set up the computer?”

  “It’s ready to go. You just have to enter the password I sent you this morning.”

  “Okay, great, let’s go and see how it works.”

  He smiled and rolled his eyes self-deprecatingly. Ethan knew that he had a comprehensive knowledge of computers and only wanted to check that everything was set up correctly.

  They went into the conference room and Daniel asked to use Ethan’s account, which meant that he had to give a blood sample for the fourth time that morning. The others arrived a few minutes later. The DIA Regional Director was the highest ranking official Ethan had ever met, and he wasn’t sure what the proper protocol was or how he should address him.

  “Sir,” Daniel said, and Ethan nodded at the man who had come last time. The new figure with him had to be Regional Director Jones, whose sharp, angular features were amplified by his suit. His slicked back black hair made him look like a stereotypical DIA agent.

  “Good to meet at last, Mr Lee.”

  “This is Ethan, who’s done all the research around the report.”

  “Pleasure,” Jones said, his handshake cool.

  They sat around the conference room table, Ethan by the computer, at which point, the purpose of his presence became clear to him. Peter burst in, clutching a notepad to his chest. All the seats at the table were taken, so he sat in one of the corners. Daniel looked at him with blank faced disapproval that was all the more obvious for being suppressed. No one else marked his appearance in any way.

  “The Iklonian threat increases as it becomes less visible, not least because its lower profile weakens public support for counter subversion measures…” Jones said, slowly casting his eyes around the room with the indifferent confidence of someone used to being listened to. He seemed to focus on everything at once. “Strategic planning must be built into our daily work, whether as part of regional projects such as this one, or as synergised stratagems that employ lean prioritisation for maximising potentiality. As the Italians say: ‘At the end of a game of chess, both the king and the pawns go back in the same box’.”

  He raised his eyebrows at Daniel, who in turn nodded at Ethan. He clicked on the first slide. Listening to Jones had made him worry that he would be asked a question he did not understand, which would undermine everything Daniel had said about him.

  Although he had summarised the draft of his report as much as he could, it still encompassed over a hundred slides, and no one seemed in any hurry. Daniel read the material and Jones asked him questions; the other DIA agents took notes on everything that was said, even when they told a joke. Ethan moved to the next slide when prompted.

  When they reached the section on the links between attacks on energy companies and SC breaches, Jones said, “What’s the position regarding the Strategic Management Board?”

  Daniel looked at him a moment then said, “Ethan?”

  Ethan shifted on his seat. He had resigned himself to sitting and listening for a few hours and had hardly registered the question. “Sorry… in what sense?”

  “I’m afraid that it’s not acceptable to carry out research in isolation. The SMB develops policy using the data sources you’ve looked at, and some others. It can’t simply be ignored.”

  Ethan nodded, feeling himself go red.

  “We’d best move on.”

  The subordinates scribbled furiously. Ethan noted the point, feeling unsure of himself when seeing how much the others were writing; one of DIA officials started a new notebook, slickly moving from one to the other with deft flicks of his fingers without wasting a motion. They were evidently recording more than was being spoken, as they could not have written that much if they had transcribed the meeting verbatim. Peter looked on like a child who had been excluded from a game, and when Ethan saw him crossing and uncrossing his legs, he felt humiliated that Peter had heard what Jones had said.

  In one of the following sections, Ethan had conducted an analysis of the amounts of different types of SC breaches recorded over the timeframe of the report. Daniel was reading one of the bullet points when Jones said, “That is not a recognised definition of subversion. This is intolerable. We’ve got to use our own terms correctly, otherwise how can we expect anyone else to?”

  “Yep,” Daniel said, making a quick note. Ethan only stopped himself from speaking with extreme effort. It was obvious that the description he had given in that slide related to section one breaches, not to subversion in general! Dan must know that too. He’d highlighted the point in bold, for fuck sake. What’s the matter with everyone?

  They continued relentlessly, testing what Ethan had thought were his unlimited powers of concentration and ability to push through boredom. He heard his stomach rumble several times, although only realised how hungry he was when Daniel motioned for him to move to the next page and the screen went blank.

  “That’s it then, sir.”

  “When are we expecting to finish the final draft?”

&nbs
p; “We’re still talking with our partners for access to some of the information. I’d estimate about a month.”

  Ethan was amused that no one had asked him that question, given that he was the only one who knew the answer. Jones chewed the inside of his cheeks before saying, “Good, that will fit in with the timeline around the Strategic Impasse and Review meeting at the end of October.”

  Daniel nodded and everyone was silent, waiting for the great man to conclude the meeting.

  “Gentlemen, there are clearly a few matters to clear up. I appreciate your time here today.”

  He made a circular gesture as if about to start another speech, before standing and patting Daniel’s shoulder then shaking Ethan’s hand without looking at him. Jones and his retinue left the room.

  Ethan switched off the computer. It was only when he was not looking at the glare of the screen that he realised how dark the room was. “How do you think that went?” he asked tentatively.

  “As good as it could have done. I’ve been in meetings with DIA Directors before and you know it when they don’t like something. You know it then you know it again. We’ve just got to make sure that we do those few extra bits he was talking about and we’ll be in credit with the DIA for a good long time.”

  “Are you sure? He didn’t sound too pleased.”

  “Ignore that. If he were too complimentary he’d make his own people look bad.”

  “Dan, is it all right if I get off? I was supposed to be picking Jan up from swimming tonight,” Peter asked.

  “Yep.”