by Carl Neville
Who’s overseeing?
Barrow. He was the lead investigator in Stockholm apparently.
Any reason why we were all in Stockholm?
No idea, she says. Barrow’s been brought in from retirement.
Katja looks around the room, a few chairs over by the far wall, static-y blue carpet, a threadbare patch over by the door.
So, what are we supposed to be doing? I just got a message to come here as part of my induction itinerary.
I am supposed to be giving you an overview of the governance structure of the PRB. She waves a couple of sheets of paper between them.
Maybe we can skip it. It’s just printed up off the ROD anyway. You can just sign at the bottom to say you read it. I am pretty sure you know it all already anyway.
Rose
And so, yes, she is restless, troubled, anniversaries everywhere, many happy and unhappy returns, but it’s not just that, not just Crane — don’t try to fool yourself. It’s the person you gave birth to, your, well, say the words Rose, say them to yourself — your child, your daughter.
A week ago, sitting at her desk, back from her check-up, sunk in a slowly thickening miasma of dread and disbelief, thinking that finally now she would take that return trip to northern Japan that she had always promised herself, she suddenly had the sense that something tremendous was about to happen — the silence breaking in unexpected ways, time crystallizing, taking on a sharpness she felt pricking at her breast.
And he looked in at the window…
Was she imagining things? She swivelled in her chair, listened back through the empty rooms where nothing moved, old papers and scattered clothes, antique furniture, the incremental dimming of the daylight. Beyond them the door. Is it locked? Has she detected it being gently pushed open? Is someone standing now on the threshold, poised, lips dry and heart galloping? A charge, something electromagnetic, like the penumbra of a storm, tightened the air, gathering to a silent crescendo at her back.
Oh, you coal black smith
A maiden I will die.
Then the moment ebbed. The warm flow of blood in her veins, time splintered and ticked on. What was that? A cloud across the low sun, the room grew a little darker still.
Then the ROD beeped. There it was, a generic message from Firetrace telling her that it was twenty-one years since she gave birth, and that their services were now available to her. Commence Search? Soft blow and phase shift. Ah, that was it then, a birthday, an anniversary gone uncelebrated, pressuring her to remember, to be allowed to break out of its half-life, the sad, neglected cycle, to be let into the light and warmth, acknowledged.
I exist. Love me.
She had intended to get ready quickly but became distracted with the Urkive, there were files to be uploaded and information revised, new contributions to be checked and queried. The day ticked past, ashtray full, a thin film on the pot plants, the teapot gone cold, the light in the window almost gone, the room lit by the Passocon’s greenish glow. Late, seven already. Barrow has booked her in at the Union Hotel, but she finds it rather sterile. She searches on the Passocon and finds that the old flat is empty from tomorrow; fitting accommodation, close to the South Academy, convenient for the conference next week, all the vibrancy of the area, the Enthusiasm, away from the hubbub of the Games. She can get it for the week at least.
And Barrow? There are things she would like to discuss with him — if he has regrets, if it’s possible somehow to start again — but she knows he will be absorbed in his work. He has tried to live differently, but SSF is where he belongs, and it was inevitable that he would return. His family were more committed than hers: radicals, agitators with a long history; a family tree where many branches ended in the hangman’s noose. He claimed it could be traced back to the Civil War, the first Civil War, he liked to say sometimes, again only half joking. He had a turn of phrase, Barrow. Something curt, compressed, an occasional flash of wit that came cutting through. She’ll miss that.
Meet to make love for a last time, perhaps? She’ll miss that too. The burned skin on his back, a long irregular rhomboid that came up from under his belt, crenelated pink and white troughs, like a mountain range seen from space. She had dug her nails into it one of the first times they made love to see if he reacted. It’s dead, he said later, no sensation, a dead patch. She licked it sometimes, watched up close as the skin glistened in the light, straddled him and rubbed herself against it, moistening the furrows as though something might germinate in them. Perhaps she sought instead to deaden herself. I am yours, I belong to you, and you are mine, she would say, my man. Those half-forbidden words, as she ground out the heat from her own wet and livid woundedness against him.
Well, she lights yet another cigarette, might as well now, why not? She plays the tape again and finds she is still sitting, inert, treading water, as currents from the past pull at her.
ROD GUIDE TO THE PRB
INSTITUTE: INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION
CATEGORY: HISTORY
SUBCATEGORY: PROJECTS AND MOVEMENTS
SSC. CULTURE/HEALTH
The Fire/Stone Project
Taking its name from a poem by the radical feminist playwright and author Sheila Hampson, The Fire/Stone Project was an act of revolutionary giving in which from the 1970s onward biologically female (see Controversies here) citizens of a number of countries within the emerging Co-Sphere were encouraged to offer their children up to be raised collectively in a variety of institutions closely connected to the post-communist and post-capitalist movements of the time. Children were made available for institutional incorporation immediately from birth.
The principles that underlay the project were; to relieve women of the burden that often arose in conventional forms of family organization and to raise a new generation of un-alienated subjects, the nuclear family structure having been long identified as instrumental in producing a host of subjective distortions (see Controversies here). The Fire/Stone Project reached its peak in 1997, with 2,000 infants inducted into the programme at birth, after which the numbers began to decline as other more local and extended surrogate family structures began to develop based around Community Childrearing Initiatives and the overall reduction in work hours lead to a reorganization of child-rearing practices. The programme has never been officially wound down, though in practice it is no longer active.
Session 1176
Subject: Jonathan Barrow (PRB 221119)
Analyst: Frith
Repository: SSF1 Department of Psychology
DreamArchive here
I dreamed an old dream. They were still alive. Had never died. We were in the old house, in Deptford. The kitchen. As it was, I suppose. My mother was talking to us, the door open on to the garden, we had a little garden then, they loved it, spent many hours there, toiling over making things grow, live. As if having three children of their own wasn’t enough life for them. The dog, the cat. My father, always bringing people back to the house.
She was explaining to me that they had decided to step back from political activity, from agitation, as we used to say, that they felt too great a responsibility for John, Andrea and me. Despite their convictions, their children had to come first. I was arguing against them, with all the stridency of youth, and yet that was the opposite of what happened at the time. I wanted them to be less openly opposed to the State, to its agents, formal and informal, once they clearly became targets. I was frightened, I suppose. A boy. My siblings were committed, only I argued against it. And then to be the only one to survive. My mother was saying to me, when you are older you’ll understand, and I had a sense that they were right, and I felt relief that they were deciding to step back. And when I woke I was happy, comforted to think that they were still here, and that I would be able to see them.
In this moment of waking, Doctor, I supposed that the world was not what it is now, that the Autarchy had not happened, that we were still a country in which exploitation reigned and yet for all that I was relieved that at lea
st these few people I had loved were still alive. I kept my eyes closed a little longer than usual, Doctor. I did not want to enter this world, this better world they were prepared to die for and did, and never saw. Nor did I wish, Doctor, to return to the stream of my own history, swelling in a great, dark bottleneck at my back. I really felt myself to be between two worlds and believed I might awake into either of them. Would I rather live in this better world, with the loss of my loved ones and the things I have done, the blood on my hands, Doctor? How that weighs on me… Or a world of greater oppression, lesser freedom, in which my loved ones were still with me, struggling, in which my hands were clean?
Katja/Tereza
As she waits for the next stage of her orientation she doodles on the back of the floorplan she has been provided with. It’s ten minutes past the time the presentation was due to start already and rather than strike up conversation with Tereza, tapping away at her Passocon beside her, she allows her mind to drift. Someone in the corridor goes past speaking Russian, she has heard a lot of it, groups of PCSDF milling around in the building, and she feels that part of her brain instantly activate, that constellation slowly unfurl and take on form, colour, shape, she subdues it: stay in English, still the majority language in all its varieties here. There was a group on the platform in Central interchange today speaking a combination of languages, all tumbling and rolling over each other, interpenetrating, filling semantic gaps and capturing shades of meaning, and she could follow some of the dialogue, Russian, English, German, Mandarin Chinese — all standard languages of the Co-Sphere expected to be spoken to proficiency — plus another she couldn’t identify, and on asking them in Russian what the additional language was they told her Swahili, and she nodded back a little apologetically. However sophisticated and — she glances at the clock, fourteen minutes late now — better organized they were elsewhere, perhaps they still had some catching up to do in other parts of Europe, whereas here in the PRB at least one True Commonwealth language was obligatory.
Ah, here he is! One of the colleagues from SSF3 has come in to give them an overview of the current situation in the PRB. She hopes it won’t be too long. He looks a little nervous though she can’t imagine why, a break-in is hardly a major incident. There’s just the two of them, and Tereza, already familiar with the situation, is not even looking up from her work. He pokes at his Passocon, turns on the overhead projector, clears his throat.
Slide 1 [Image] Title: [The background]
• How did London end up being chosen for the Games?
• Why specifically the east of London?
• Contestation around the selection process
Slide 2 [Image] Title: [Breakdown of potential threats]
• Domestic groups known to have opposed the Games through legal means (demonstrations, petitions, drafting proposals, etc.)
• Groups known to be ideologically opposed but who have shown no overt opposition
• Ranking of groups both overt and covert with organizational capacity to carry out break-in
Slide 3 [Image] Title: [Non-PRB/Co-Sphere agents]
• Anti-Co-Sphere and cross-Partition subversion within overt and covert groups, both Governmental, Private Sector and Grey Zone public/private interface activities
• The Games in their IR context. Olympics, Spartakiada, Games-rival visions (?) and the breakdown of co-hosting
• Ranking of non-domestic groups with organizational capacity to carry out break-in
Slide 4 [Image] Title: [Threats residual and emergent]
• Methods and aims of overt/covert/internal/external groups during the “Hot Peace”
• Recent developments in bio-subversion; Stockholm/Kabul and the nano/biological arms race
Any questions?
A voice from the back of the room. Katja turns in her seat, and sees a middle-aged man, dark hair cut short, leaning back against the wall, arms folded. This must be Barrow.
Thank you for that overview. What was the weight of the vote, how did it break down nationally and regionally, what about in the area itself?
Straight nationally, 54 percent in favour of holding the Games, of nominated cities 34 percent went for London, of nominated areas 28 percent went for east London, and 52 percent went for the south east.
Thin margins. Any increased activity among the groups we have identified?
Nothing unusual. Meetings, rhetoric, petty vandalism, occasional public order offences from the royalists, all checked by informal community networks. There are a number of groups which feel that the Games have been forced on them because no other city wanted the inconvenience, the influx of people and the additional work
Has additional work been mandated for citizens in the area?
No, people have come in from outside generally — enthusiasts, or people who have been around for the more trivial and general labour.
Any other disgruntled sectors?
There are objections to Bewes having been appointed to oversee the Games and the nostalgic tenor of the opening ceremony. Stanhope and the Great Parades, the old Unions and Party men and so on. This is mostly the South Academy people objecting. Too old-fashioned, too retrospective.
So someone could be looking to disrupt it.
Possibly.
Well, Barrow says, addressing himself to Tereza and Katja, I believe we are all due to officially meet in one of the Canteens in an hour or so. See you there.
Two Conversations: Conversation 1
ROD No 3542783d./27659h
Open Cache
Audio file
Time 19:34 GMT 08/04/2018
Location: 51.5045° N, 0.0865° W/South Bridge Canteen.
Barrow: You were in Stockholm. On the B team.
Abhishek: Yes, that’s right. I stayed on there until an assignment with SSF came up. They are still cleaning up really, but most of the hard work has been done now.
Barrow: I haven’t read the follow up reports.
Abhishek: You had a period of leave.
Barrow: I retired. But of course one never retires.
Abhishek: Well, for someone who had just entered service, Stockholm was a trial by fire, indeed.
Barrow: Another drink?
Abhishek: Yes. The same. So the I in IPA now stands for Internationalist Pale Ale, is that correct?
Barrow: Is this your first time in the PRB?
Abhishek: For any sustained period, yes. I have visited many times. My family have close ties, old military connections.
Barrow: I see.
Abhishek: But they have retained a very friendly attitude to the PRB. They are very sympathetic.
Barrow: And you studied at?
Abhishek: I studied at a military academy in Bangalore, the engineering and infrastructure department, Digital Forensics, then I was actually in Stockholm itself for further cross-disciplinary studies with the pharmacology and biotech departments in wetware and molecular antivirus programming. The Cybiota Initiative.
Barrow: I am not sure I am as up to date on this as I could be.
Abhishek: Would you like the “executive summary”, as the Americans say? We are in the upswing of a phase of innovation and technological escalation. It’s the dangerous phase when we don’t really understand what we have created, its long-term effects, how things might cross-pollinate or mutate, the whole emerging ecology. And our information about what the other side or even certain actors on our own side might be doing is very limited and possibly false. Stockholm they think was just the start — there will be many similar incidents. If you want the ideological background you will have to talk to Tereza, I am mere technical support!
Barrow: Thank you for helping to organize the team. I don’t fully understand myself why we are so short of manpower.
Abhishek: Internal investigations I think. All very hush-hush.
Barrow: Post the Vote?
Abhishek: Yes, SSF1 are battling over that result.
Katja
With an hour or so to kill an
d no strong desire to spend more time in the office or chatting to Tereza, she goes out for a stroll, crossing the bridge by the Central interchange and walking along to the big roundabout. She becomes distracted, there seems to be so much going on, even out on the periphery of the Enthusiasm, all the noise and colour. She threads through the market stalls, booths, makeshift buildings, displays, and judging by the number of lenses she sees in people’s eyes she wonders whether they are wandering through the same landscape at all. Someone offers her a blister pack of pills and a lens as she goes past. Want some Everlasting Yeah, sister? he asks, and she smiles a decline. Later on, perhaps, when she doesn’t have SSF protocols to fulfil. She feels a small flutter of excitement in her stomach. This is a different world to the seriousness and rigour of the PRB end of the Nordic belt, its grids and manicured spaces, the geometry and flow, she thinks, weaving through the flotsam and jetsam and bric-a-brac of numerous worlds sunk into each other and partially overlapping.
ONEIRIC DISJECTA is written on a large banner that seems to mark the entrance to an empty space delineated on the disused roadway in which a group wander and interact with something she cannot see.
She is tempted to head south into the heart of it, but instead turns back towards the blocks of flats and into the old shopping centre: it’s calmer, cooler, but equally bad for her chances of getting back to the Canteen on time. She spots a bookshop with a number of maps on display in the window, Tlön Books, gives in to impulse and goes in. There is a whole wall display made up of individual photocopied pages stuck together around another display of a book with a skull on the cover staring back at her, an oblong of blue paper that’s attached that says CRANE’S A-Z.
She scrutinizes the wall display. It’s London, isn’t it?
The person behind the counter looks up, smiles.