The Dreams of the Eternal City

by Mark Reece

  “Thank you…” Ethan took it from him and was looking through the index when the man cleared his throat. “Oh, sorry, how much is it?”

  “Fifteen pounds sixty please.”

  The man’s grin seemed to broaden and Ethan felt a hatred towards him that was out of all proportion to anything he had done.

  “Right…”

  He reached for his wallet, and fortunately, he had a twenty-pound note. He handed it to the man, who made it disappear with a skilful sleight of hand.

  Ethan opened the relevant page and sat on the floor to read it. Caville looked much larger than it had seemed on the Internet. When he found the square that Green Lane was supposed to be in, he could not find it despite squinting at every road on the page. He checked over everything again before saying, “Excuse me, you can’t help me with where Green Lane is can you? Is says here it’s supposed to be in E5 but it doesn’t seem to be there. Is it a new road?”

  “No no no, that’s the most comprehensive map there is. Let’s have a look…” The man turned it around and traced out a series of lines with his finger, “… here it is, there’s an abbreviation just above it.”

  He had an air of weary wisdom, as if nothing could surprise him. Ethan looked at where he had pointed to see the letters ‘GL’ written above a tiny road leading into the village.

  “Do you know how I get there from here?” Ethan spoke tentatively and had the impression that the man was going to charge him for the additional information.

  “When you walk out, turn left and carry on for about ten minutes. Right at the end of the road you’ll come to a big car park. There’s a stile at the far end. If you climb over then that’s Green Lane. It runs parallel to a farm down that way.”

  “Climb over a stile? Isn’t there a way you can drive into the village?”

  “Nah. It’s all been pedestrianised around here for ages. It was ’cos of all the accidents you see, ’cos of the state the roads were in. A few years ago, the council decided that the maintenance costs were too high, so everything was shut down. Once things are gone they never come back, so here we are.”

  “Oh right. Well, thanks for that.”

  The man smiled beneficently and looked at him with silent expectation, like a waiter expecting a tip. Ethan walked out of the shop, if that was what it was. He walked back the way he had come. The road was silent.

  When he reached the car park, he followed the instructions the man had given him, and as if by magic, he saw the farm and stile as described.

  As he walked along Green Lane, Ethan could hardly believe that it had once been a road. It had become little more than a dirt track, broken up in places into scrub. Not that the ‘farm’ was any more accurately described, as after he had walked a few steps from the stile, he saw that the neighbouring field was filled with weeds of all shapes and sizes. They had even knocked the fence over in places and spilled into the path.

  When he reached the end of the trail, the ground before him dipped in a steep incline and his vantage point offered him a view of the village. For a moment, he thought that he had gone back in time, matchbox houses and half-tilled fields shimmering under a sea blue sky. Beggars lay in doorways of abandoned houses. It was only the ubiquity of jeans and earphones that gave away the true date. Ethan followed the route to the address he had been given.

  The roads had disintegrated even further in Caville itself, with the concrete pitted in places with bits sticking up, making it look like a pastiche of cobblestones, which must have been what the man from the ‘shop’ had meant when he had said that it had been pedestrianised.

  Given the Arcadian nature of the village, Ethan expected the people there to be inquisitive about a stranger, but happily, Caville was as anonymous as the city. No one paid him the slightest attention, even when he could not find one of the streets and had wandered the length of a lane several times, before finding a signpost on a front garden and working out that what the map designated as a road was now an alleyway between a cottage and an abandoned building.

  After half an hour, he found the Iklonian safe house. It was a detached rundown building; when seeing it, he immediately identified it for what it was by the way it had been extended so that its back half stuck out much further than any other house on the street. One of the windows had three wavy lines on its frame that he recognised from the DIA report he had read when starting Hypnos. It was supposed to mean ‘welcome’. Ethan knocked at the door and looked through a window but could see only shadows inside, as if they had torn themselves from their owners and were dancing in celebration.

  Eventually, he heard fumbling and the Professor answered.

  “Oh… good… you’re here… excellent, excellent, come in.” He smiled like a kindly uncle and pressed himself ostentatiously against the wall to allow Ethan past, before locking the door. “Did you find your way okay? I mean, obviously you got here, but… some people find it a little… out of the way.”

  Ethan nodded. The Professor always sounded false when speaking about inconsequential things.

  “Anyway, come through, come through…”

  Ethan followed him into a room where people lounged on or against sofas, resting their heads on each other’s shoulders. There was a MV in one corner with the news on, although no one seemed to pay any attention to it.

  “Can I get you anything?”

  “No.”

  “You sure?”

  “Why have you got a safe house in a place like this? How many people can you have out here in the middle of nowhere?”

  The Professor cleared his throat. From the corner of his eye, Ethan saw a man sit up on the far side of the room.

  “The safe houses are more about coverage than convenience. The aim is to have one within a twenty-minute drive of anywhere in the country.”

  “If you’ve got that many then how come I’ve had to drive all the way out here?”

  “Well…” The Professor drew in his breath as if about to speak then looked at his shoelaces. “You’re a bit of a special case. But we’re not going to talk about that today.” He bit his lips.

  “Are you going to tell me what you want then or carry on messing about? You’ve got me by the balls, haven’t you?”

  “Well…” The Professor looked away and did not speak for an uncomfortable length of time.

  Someone sat next to Ethan, cutting into his space, his legs crossed and his arms folded. It was the bad tempered youth from the last safe house.

  “I need to talk to you,” he said to the Professor, staring at him sullenly.

  “Erm… okay… yes… right. Is it really so urgent that we need to go through this now?”

  “Yeah.” His voice rose with obnoxious pleasure from the discomfort he was causing. He wore a black leather jacket with a white t-shirt underneath. The Professor turned to Ethan and said, “This is Max, he’s one of our… students here. Excuse me for a moment. Erm… how are things then?”

  “I’ve filled in all them papers. But I’ve got more important things to talk about. I need money. I told you it was never gonna be enough and it’s not been.”

  “Right… okay… this probably needs to be something to talk about another time. The money is an important matter, certainly, and with the—”

  “You’re not getting the papers if I don’t get my money, simple as.”

  “Yes. Of course… you may say that, but… well, there’s no nice way to put it… you see, if we don’t see the results, you won’t be paid for any future projects or have access to our networks. That will be the ultimate sanction, I’m afraid.”

  “I want my money.”

  “Of course. Let me think about it. Do you want… a drink?”

  “Beer.”

  “Fine. Ethan, are you sure you don’t want anything?” Ethan shook his head. “My apologies, let me sort this out, it won’t take long.”
>
  “Take your time.”

  Ethan smiled, making the Professor’s glance wilt. He muttered “Yes”, looked back to see them both staring at him, then moved away.

  Ethan wondered whether Max was going to say anything now that they had established a fraternity of sorts in their mutual antagonism towards the Professor, but after he had left, Max turned away.

  As he looked around the room, Ethan thought that Max looked more out of place than he did. Although a few of the people had long hair and wore homemade clothes, most were entirely unprepossessing. One man even clutched a suitcase as if expecting it to be snatched from him. Ethan felt disappointed, as he had expected there to be a more evident hierarchy. When he had forwarded case files identifying Iklonian links for the attention of the DIA, he had often said that the guilty party appeared to be a senior operative. Now that he understood them a little better, he was unsure whether they were structured at all.

  Ethan looked at his watch several times but the Professor was nowhere to be seen and no one in the room stirred. Ethan started fidgeting. He’s doing it on purpose, it’s some kind of trick. Everything about this place is designed to confuse me. He uncrossed then re-crossed his legs, touching Max in the process.

  “Watch yourself.”

  “Sorry.” Ethan felt annoyed that he had apologised automatically. He stretched, kicking him harder than before.

  “So you think you’re pretty clever, eh?”

  “What are you on about?”

  “You’ve forgot about how you get your money, have you?”

  “What’s that got to do with anything? And what’s it got to do with you?”

  Ethan felt the condescension in his voice but could not stop himself. What’s this little brat’s problem?

  “You’re a Sam.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You’ve never even heard of that before?” Max sneered. “You’re not very ‘street’, are ya? You know, ‘Sam’, one of the ‘SDMA’, the secret police.”

  “Not very secret though, are we? Do secret police forces normally have buildings with their name on them? Do secret police normally advertise on The Guardian website? Come on, do you really believe that crap?”

  Max jumped up and knelt on his knees, and for a moment, Ethan’s heart leapt when he thought that he was going to swing a punch. As he looked down at Max’s reedy features, he wished that he would do so. That would make things so much easier.

  “No no no, that’s not what it’s like these days. It’s normalised, that’s why, the secret police have all been normalised. The secret police can’t go completely secret now like they did in the old days ’cos of the Internet, and you can’t keep everything hidden anymore. So you have to make it sound reasonable, to give out snippets of what you’re doing so that people will accept it. It’s worse than ever now because everyone knows what’s going on – by making it more reasonable, you make more people accept it, that’s all…”

  He stopped, out of breath, his speech so rushed that it must have been something he had been waiting to say since he had first seen Ethan.

  “Right, so it would be better if we were like the Stasi? So that if we were more ‘unreasonable’ then people might reject us? We were set up by the government, who were elected. How do you think it all happened, that we dropped out the sky? We came about because most people wanted it to happen.”

  “No no no, that’s the really obvious way to look at it, you’re not looking at the reality. The government doesn’t just do things, it’s controlled by interests. People don’t know what they want anyway.”

  “And you’re in the pimply vanguard are you?”

  “Okay okay okay, well… how many people voted for your alarm clocks then? All the surveys show that they would be got rid of tomorrow if anyone were ever asked.”

  “How many people voted against alarm clocks and specified waking times? Nowadays, people only vote if you hold knives to their throats, and some don’t even then.” Ethan saw the Professor watching them nervously with a beer in his hand.

  “People will wake up eventually, then you’ll see. Don’t get too comfortable at your desk.” He made an explosion sound and gestured with both hands. “It won’t be long before we get to you. Them spikes at the front won’t protect you forever.”

  “Now we’re getting to the truth about what you’re interested in.”

  The Professor stepped between them and gave the beer to Max. Ethan realised that everyone in the room was staring at him with blank, doll-like faces. His limbs felt weak, as if he had lost a lot of blood.

  “Everyone knows… I’m ruined…”

  “No no… that’s not true… I should say that I didn’t tell Max, or anyone. It’s just… how can I put it… it’s very difficult to keep things like that a secret. And, well, your background is quite… obvious, I’m afraid, without anyone saying anything.”

  “I don’t look any different from anyone else in here.” Ethan sounded whiny, like a child. He realised that it would be easy for them to kill him without anyone ever knowing what had happened. Only the Iklonians’ eyes moved. He felt as if he were surrounded by wax statues.

  “It’s not your appearance I’m referring to Ethan, rather, your manner, the words you use, your… views on things. They’re all quite explicit I’m afraid.”

  “Why did you bring him here?” Max asked. “You’ve compromised us. You’ve polluted us. He’s seen my face. You’ve told him my name.”

  The Professor looked down on him and made a sweeping gesture, like a priest granting an absolution. Max sneered then stood and elbowed his way through the crowd. As if on a signal, the other Iklonians starting moving again, talking to each other in low voices.

  “Don’t let him wind you up, Ethan. Max is very… tetchy at the moment. He’s going through a… a radical stage where he’s looking for confrontation. His views are marginal. Nowadays, at any rate. That’s why I assigned him to the natural sleep patterns experiment. Our tests have confirmed the historical research about the unnaturalness of sleeping in a single block a day.

  “After two weeks of a natural cycle, most subjects see a decrease in anxiety and an increase in all positive indicators of health, not to mention concentration and mental abilities. Our current obsession with trying to get all our sleep at a set time is quite unnatural, I’m afraid. It goes against our circadian body clock. I was hoping Max would calm down the same as the others, but apparently… well, I didn’t factor in the pecuniary issues, if I can put it that way…”

  Ethan nodded, feeling numb. Everything the Professor was saying went against what Ethan had understood and lived throughout his life, but the fight had gone out of him after his depressing loss of control. Suddenly, he remembered that he was there to gather intelligence. He moved closer so that the others would not hear.

  “Why was he upset that you told me his name? Doesn’t everyone he speaks to know it?”

  The Professor laughed distractedly. “You would think so, wouldn’t you? He prefers to go by the ‘revolutionary name’ he gave himself. He likes to be called ‘Morpheus’, or ‘M’.” The Professor rolled his eyes. “I’m afraid he’s not quite understood that the organisation has changed from when it was an underground movement. We don’t have assumed names anymore. There are too many of us, apart from anything, there wouldn’t be enough to go around.”

  “Except for you.”

  “Well… that’s a slightly different matter. I think that it’s… too late for Max. He’s not understood that ultimately, everyone is an Iklonian now. But anyway… I think we need a little more privacy.”

  Ethan nodded then followed him, stepping over those lying on the floor. As he left the room, he heard a bang and turned to see pictures of yet another bombing on the MV. A woman shook her braid and Ethan’s throat felt blocked as if he were about to be sick when he saw the side of her red
face. She looked like Daisy. She’s always hated us. It has to be her. The bloody images on the screen felt like a threat. He hurried his steps.

  The Professor led him into a side room with cream coloured walls with almost indistinguishable patterns on them. When Ethan looked closer, he saw that they were clouds. There was a table and two chairs in one corner, whereas on the other side of the room was a bed with linen the same colour as the wallpaper. Above it hung a crib mobile, comprising figures of animals.

  “I know this is difficult for you… it would be hard for anyone. We brought you here today to help us with a simple matter. I’m sure you’ll be able to do it in a few minutes. I just want you to tell me the layout of the floor you’re working on.”

  Ethan nodded and thought over his request, trying to work out why they would want the information and what harm there would be in providing it. There was nothing apparent, which made him suspicious.

  “Right.”

  “Ethan… you know… we’ve explained what will happen if…”

  The Professor looked away and Ethan despised him for the weakness of his veiled threats. He seemed to want to intimidate him without being rude. The possibility of his death was no longer outlandish, and the utter fear it had first engendered had faded. What he could still hardly bear to think about was what might happen to Aislin. His realisation of how little he knew told him that the danger was real.

  “What do you mean, the layout? As in, how many rooms there are? Or are you asking me about the security of the building and what’s in the files?”

  The Professor blinked rapidly as if outraged at the suggestion. “No, no. No. Nothing like that. Only the general plans of the building, as in, what it would look like if the roof was taken off.”

  “So, where the offices are in relation to the toilets, stuff like that?”

  “Yes, more or less.”

  Ethan weighed up his options. Put in that way, the request seemed reasonable, even banal. “I can tell you everything I know now, then there’s no need for me to come back.”