The Dreams of the Eternal City

by Mark Reece

  Ethan went to his bedroom for a piece of scrap paper to copy the reference number onto. The report continued:

  Subsequent to the above mentioned events, the following risk assessments were carried out:

  The rest of the page, and three subsequent pages, comprised a series of tables filled with arrows, letters, and numbers. Ethan’s eyes slid over them and he read the next few sentences before thinking that he would not understand the rest of the report if he didn’t work them out. He flicked back to the first table and forced himself to concentrate, picking his nails until they bled.

  The letters at the top of the columns cross-referenced with a key at the end of the tables, which went on for a page. However, it did not make the meaning any clearer, as the words the letters represented had nothing to do with anything Ethan knew about the Professor or the DIA. For example, several columns were headed with the letter ‘O’, below and to the side of which were a series of numbers and other letters. The key defined ‘O’ as meaning ‘Octave’ in most circumstances, although ‘Orange’ when followed by one-five, except four.

  After several minutes, he sighed and moved on.

  The subject demonstrates some considerable intelligence and was able to speak knowledgably on a number of sleep related security matters. The subject’s reliability is confirmed by their lack of…

  Ethan turned the page to see a series of short paragraphs, each starting with a reference number, the format of which he did not recognise, followed by place names with some of the letters mixed up. After a moment’s thought, he realised that they had to relate to the pictures. He wanted to know what the subject ‘lacked’, but the next paragraph did not follow on. He skim read the report but could not find the end of the sentence.

  To his surprise, Ethan suddenly felt tired. Perhaps it’s reading that does it. He clasped the papers to his chest and added the idea to his canon of superstition about exhaustion. The MV staves it off, reading increases it. He was about to go to bed when he thought that he needed to hide the report. The easiest and safest thing would be to destroy it, of course, but he could not deny himself. Vague impressions of conspiracies swirled around the edges of his thoughts; menacing figures looking out of windows from offices far away. He could only imagine what was happening as generalised evil, the elusiveness of the feeling making it all the more real.

  Ethan slept sporadically for several hours and when he woke in the night, he was alert for what seemed a long time, his senses crisp. He could hear the pitch of wind outside and discerned which direction it blew from the impact it made on the windows; his eyes were attuned to the slightest change in the shadows and how they leapt between the blinds.

  Eventually, he drifted into hazy semi-consciousness in which he had a strong impression of himself but did not know where he was.

  When Ethan realised that he was underwater, he screamed and salty water filled his mouth. The pain was so real that he felt both the sensation of drowning and his body jolting in his bed. His vision was bleary and he could sense the water dissolving his eyes. Darkness was worse when he closed them. He thrashed his arms to move in tiny increments.

  He was there for years, for lifetimes. Everything went dull, then his senses were acute again. He saw the pink tendril. He forced himself towards it, swallowing more water. His vision reduced to mere impressions of colours. The orbs stung his hands as he climbed, digging into his flesh like a series of tiny drills. He gripped tighter the worse it got.

  When he came to the surface, water poured from his eyes. He rubbed them ineffectually against his shoulders. He opened his mouth and air tasted acrid in the back of his throat. He pulled the tendril, which continued boundlessly into the air, and the world rocked, the sea shifting places with the sky, crashing against his back. Ethan was a creature of pure instinct and continued to pull himself along, deeper into the ocean…

  He jumped when woken by his alarm clock and was surprised to find that his room was light. Nagging exhaustion kept his legs fastened to the bed. Ethan imagined that if he slept for another twenty minutes, he would be perfectly rested. However, that missing twenty minutes was like a jigsaw puzzle with a single lost piece – the absence enough to ruin the image in a horribly obvious way.

  Twelve

  After struggling through that morning, working as hard as he was able, Ethan ate his sandwiches at his desk.

  “Have you even been to the basement?” he asked Mohammed.

  “I’ve never been on any other floor, except on my first day when I was getting my pass and everything. Why?”

  “I need a few references for some of the things I’m saying in the report.”

  “It’ll say what you’ve got to do on the intranet.”

  “I know. I’ll have to get dweeb to sign a form, that won’t be a problem. It’s just the hassle, that’s all.”

  After having spoken, Ethan thought that Mo might volunteer to get the information for him.

  “When do you need it?”

  “As soon as possible really.”

  “There must be a fast-track process, what does it say you have to do?”

  “Hang on, let me just check something.” Ethan went to the relevant section on the intranet and did not mention the subject again.

  Later that afternoon, he printed the form, filled it in, then went into Peter’s office.

  “Hi. I need you to sign this, it’s for access to stuff in the basement. It needs your authority.”

  “Yes, I, yes… I was going to speak to you in the next few days. It’s good that you’ve come in, you’ve reminded me. I think we need to review what’s going on to make sure that… The workload is affecting the rest of the office, you see…”

  “Yeah, fine, it’s almost done now anyway. Can you sign this then so I can do what I need to do?”

  “Yes, the… Why do you need to do this exactly? What’s the—?”

  “If you remember, Dan said that Hypnos was going to have priority over everything else. Are you going to sign this or do you want me to ring him?”

  Ethan realised that he had raised his voice. However, his awareness of how unreasonable he was being only further irritated him.

  “Ethan… give it here but I will need to speak to you next week. I’ll arrange a meeting with Dan to go over what I think the issues are.”

  He signed the form and gave it back to him. Ethan checked it, feeling chastened. He had hoped that he had signed in the wrong place or ticked the wrong box, but he had no justification to do anything other than mumble ‘thanks’ before leaving the office ill at ease.

  He went through his report and compiled a list of the information he needed from archived material. The next step was to arrange for a porter to escort him.

  There was a section on the intranet where the contact details of SDMA and some DIA workers could be searched by name or job type. Ethan searched for porter and was surprised when only two records came up. They must never leave the building. Entries for most members of staff gave their name, floor, office designation, a landline, and a job title, but the entries for the porters only gave a mobile and a title of ‘one’ and ‘two’. Ethan did not know whether that represented a rank or was only a way to differentiate them. In case it was the former, he copied out the mobile for ‘two’.

  He worked late that night, not wanting anyone to overhear his call. There was no logical reason for his fear, as now he had the signed form, he had a legitimate reason for what he was doing and no one listening would be able to tell any different. However, even so, he was not prepared to take any chances where the porters were concerned.

  He read his checklist many times. When Mohammed stood to leave, Ethan was about to make a joke about him working part time before seeing that it was six o’clock.

  “Don’t stay too late.” Mo smiled wryly.

  “All right, see you tomorrow.”

  “Bye.”


  His concentration was broken and he waited for the overhead lights to flicker off. However, two sets of desks were still illuminated twenty minutes later, and Ethan was first annoyed then suspicious, as it was rare for more than one team to stay late.

  Ethan typed as if attacking his keyboard.

  He worked until his stomach rumbled, then saw that it was eight o’clock. The other lights were still on. He stood in the walkway, where he heard whispering and pages being turned. There was nothing wrong with the lights; his colleagues were still there. He decided to go home.

  When he went through the security lips on his floor, he thought that he did not know how big the building was. Of course, he had looked up at it before entering many times, but had never even seen it from the back. With the amount of paperwork they stored, never mind the amount of staff who worked there, it seemed impossible that it was only fifteen storeys tall. The other floors seemed like enchanted forests, containing the wild magic of the organisation. There had to be unique colours and machines hidden within secret passages, which were only stumbled upon occasionally, perhaps once a lifetime, yet were very real.

  When the train arrived, he sat in a group of four seats. A man wearing a Stetson sat opposite him and opened a broadsheet newspaper. A moment later, he peered at him over the top of it. Ethan stood and sat as far away from other passengers as he could.

  He jolted when hearing his stop being called and looked around in alarm, unsure whether he had been asleep. The train was almost empty. There was no one close enough who would have been able to see what he was doing. After he had obsessed over the situation, Ethan felt sure that he had been daydreaming. I would’ve known, I’d have slumped on the seat. I definitely wasn’t asleep. Definitely not.

  When he got home, Ethan thought that his life had been paused; the only important thing now was to follow up the lead he had been given. Feeling refreshed after his journey back, he read the remainder of the file while eating biscuits for dinner:

  Subject H-Alpha has an unexpected ability for leadership and organisation, as illustrated by their involvement in the REM/125T41/24 incident. The inability of subversive groups to commit to a sustained strategic plan has long proven problematic; by example, and by the evidence of their success, Subject H-Alpha has the ability to change this.

  Subject H-Alpha has also shown a distinct aptitude to instil discipline within section five through decisive action. Most notably, the removal of M-Alpha has ensured that all actions undertaken by section five go through agreed channels. Furthermore, alternative, more radical sources of leadership in the section have been seriously weakened (REM/126Z53/26 refers).

  The following list identifies all other cases that Subject H-Alpha has been involved with since being initialised:

  REM/125T41/24

  REM/126S41/24

  REM/128T41/24

  REM/129A41/24

  REM/131C41/24

  REM/134H41/24

  REM/135I41/24

  REM/135JT41/24

  The organisational cascade following the introduction of disciplined methods has led to SC breaches increasing by 35% in Subject H-Alpha’s sector since their introduction and 3% nationally. Other subversion events increased by 10% in Subject H-Alpha’s sector and 2% nationally.

  There is further significance in the research carried out by Subject H-Alpha beyond its correlation to the level of subversion events. This will be summarised here – full details are available in the archive under reference D50034A/24.

  There followed a series of abstracts written in italics, describing experiments to determine the effects of various scenarios on sleep patterns, including manipulation of temperature, levels of sunlight and artificial light, the type and amount of food consumed over different periods of time, and many others.

  Ethan struggled to understand them, as much of the language was highly technical, with several words that he could not find the meaning of on the Internet. Also, some of the report was given over to statistical analysis that was poorly presented and difficult to interpret. He found his attention wandering and only read on because he thought he should, his eyes flicking over the words without recognition.

  After he had finished, he went to his bedroom, stretched, then meandered to the kitchen and poured himself a glass of water. The sense that he should be doing something remained very strong in him; he thought that he should have found a way to ring the porter, even risking using his personal mobile. Although it was late, he did not feel tired, and it was only by supreme effort that he forced himself to return the file to its hiding place in the airing cupboard.

  His mobile rang and Ethan was surprised to see that it was Terry, as it seemed so long since they had last met that he had assumed their friendship had run its natural course. “Hi. How are you?”

  “Listen, I’ve got no time for small talk. Listen…” he paused until Ethan said “okay”, “… there’s something gone wrong, badly wrong. I’ve upset some seriously bad people and I don’t know what to do.

  “Right, listen to this. I’ve started doing my photography again, I’ve got pictures in magazines and everything, it was going really well. The problem is, I was doing some landscapes in this place I know round the corner and some dodgy people were in the shots. I went back the next day and they were doing the same thing. They were plotting something, definitely. So now, it’s not landscapes, it’s… action pictures, you know, action. I don’t know what they were up to. They must have been burying things…”

  “Right, erm—”

  “I’ve got to go, I’m going to lock the door. I’ll call you back in a few days. Think about it. I need some advice on what to do next.”

  He hung up and Ethan looked at his mobile before switching it off. Terry sounded as if he had been drinking. He hoped that he would not ring back. Ethan realised that the SDMA had changed him too much for him to be friends with Terry anymore. Perhaps too much to be friends with anyone.

  He was hardly aware of what he was doing the following day, as he thought about nothing other than calling porter two. He heard different combinations of his colleagues going to meetings at various times, although maddeningly, there was never a point when they were all away at the same time.

  At five, Mohammed asked, “How long do you think you’ve got left on that thing?”

  “What?”

  “That thing you’ve been working on since just after you were born.”

  “Oh right… I don’t know.”

  “Well… don’t forget all that trouble you had with Ash about your hours. You don’t want to start an argument with her as soon as she gets back.”

  Ethan looked up in surprise. “Yeah, yeah, I know what you’re saying.”

  “Anyway… I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Yeah, have a good one. See you later.”

  After Mohammed had left the room, Ethan raised himself just enough that he could see over the dividers, to discover that the same two spaces from the previous day were again illuminated.

  He knew what information he needed off by heart by now. Ethan was considering whether his colleagues would be able to hear him from where they sat when he heard shuffling. They said goodbye to him a few minutes later.

  Now that he was on his own, Ethan thought over what he was going to say, and the awareness that he was scripting a telephone call made him feel awkward. He picked up the receiver and his thumb slid off the end, slick with sweat. It took him three attempts to give his blood sample. He rang the number from the note he had taken the previous day. It was answered with silence after a single ring.

  “Hello? Hello, is that porter two?”

  “Who is this please?”

  “Hi. This is agent Ethan Thomas, from the tenth floor? I needed some help with a floor visit.”

  “This might be a wrong number. What’s your number please and I’ll call you back.”


  Ethan gave him his landline, feeling confused, then hung up. He looked at his screen and after a few minutes, he checked the number he had called, first on his notes then on the intranet. It was definitely the right one. He was about to try it again when his landline rang.

  “Hello, tenth floor, Ethan speaking.”

  “Can you state your full name and designation please?”

  It was the same man he had spoken to before.

  “Ethan Thomas, tenth floor. Sleep investigator. Office 12 slash 91T.”

  “And your reference?”

  “202154T.”

  “Are you in your office now?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Hello Ethan, this is Two, how can I help you?”

  “Thanks for ringing me back. What it was… well, like I said before, I need to arrange a floor visit to the basement to look through some files. Is that something you can help me with?”

  “You have, of course, got the necessary security clearance?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. As a matter of fact, a gap in the schedule has arisen in three hours’ time. Is that convenient?”

  “That’ll be great.”

  “Excellent. You were fortunate; the next gap is in five weeks and two days. You will be picked up from your office, by One, of course. You have been allotted one hour, including the time it will take to move between floors.”

  “Thanks, that’ll be plenty.”

  “Good.”

  He hung up and Ethan thought about how disapproving he had sounded when saying that One would escort him, as if he had discerned the reason why he had contacted Two. Nowhere in the policy had it stated which porter needed to oversee a visit, but listening to him for a few seconds had convinced Ethan that he would see through any attempt to explain himself.