by Carl Neville
Katja/Lewis
The openness of the bar the view night low-rise buildings greenery London’s twinkling extensity mirrored in the sky the waves of energy rolling up from the Enthusiasm a light unlike any they had seen the colour of coral and shot through with seams of phosphorescence extreme intensification of detail the corners sharp with significance densely unfolding washed in silver from the full moon intricately refracted and she looks at Lewis exquisite in her haloed glittering beatitude cross-legged in a corona of ectoplasmic light light of her being light radiating out from the overhanging wisteria and the concrete cubes stacked up around her takes her hand leads her to the edge of the roof there is music playing she notices so low that at first she didn’t hear it a series of pebble coloured flutterings that swarm around her in shoals and which for a second she reaches out to touch then gazes down into the Enthusiasm the scratchcard is supposed to be mild but she feels a series of almost concussive insights reverberating through her perhaps it is the Enthusiasm itself flooding the area around it with something disorienting de-worlding the whole vast unmappedness the flowing intermingled unabridged world rolling out in all directions around her and the slow helixing depth work of burrowing through the earth to create a passage way a whirlpool dust and debris wraith-like billowing cosmos flecked with stars this demi-paradise someone behind them says the glow of the rods like so many suns spiralling through their dim constellations and at the centre an ingress into another dimension as Lewis watches it seems to her that the traces of light undulate serpent-like sees mother Medusa her hair come streaming out of the gap cut incision between worlds they are trying to pull her out from some deeper chthonic realm from her cave where the past entombs her and she glimpses her rising up phantasmal above the city eyes shining her coiled tail a whirlpool both pulling them in and spinning out filaments that are slowly threading their way into the fabric of this world weft and warp the gaze that turns dead matter into flesh the vision that transforms imbues sentience animates the cold clay she understands the gorgon as an earth mother she does not turn the flesh to stone in the way that they have always understood but rather her gaze makes man understand that he is just matter that he is of the same flesh as stone the continuity the imbrication the indivisibility of man and mind mind and matter she has known it since she was a child together they will go into the Enthusiasm to be all forms of life hewn and winnowed in the convulsive mineral ecstasy of the cosmogorgonic
Franklin 12/04/2018
Interrogation Room 32
SSF Headquarters
So his jaw’s not broken anyway, and they have pressed something against it that has made the swelling go down. Shame they can’t do the same thing for his balls, shame that hot Welsh mamacita isn’t ministering to him anymore and instead he’s looking at some skinny old guy with obviously dyed blonde hair in a 1920s suit who is addressing him as Mister Franklin, no less. What a freakshow.
I am Squires, you are officially, the old blonde says.
Sure, Franklin interrupts. I know the procedure. A) Get me some Dev to clear my head. B) Let me establish my credentials so we can get moving on this.
Some liquid Dev, sweet, Blondie’s personal stash, comes out of the musty suit pocket and is passed across the table. A couple of pumps of the nozzle.
Full circle:
OK. Let me lay it all out for you.
Long story short, I am sitting around in Paulo flats, nice little condo I have out there…
Barrow 13/04/2018
Union Hotel
07:20
Barrow wakes thirsty, disoriented. For a moment he thinks Rose is beside him, then for a second imagines it is Katja. Have they? But he’s alone in the flat, faint impress of some Arcadian dream still on him, white net curtains streaming in the breeze, ivy straining out from the wall in long questioning tendrils, a woman’s cool shadow, salt from the curling waves on his lips and tongue.
Where was that?
His ROD is telling him he needs to take the morning off and he immediately picks up the phone and dials through to SSF4 to find out if this is mandatory: they tell him it is, PQS, Patch and Quant Services, have identified a need for continued Rest and Rehydration and another compulsory care package has already been despatched.
The situation will remain the same as it was the evening before: until the patch readout is greenlighted he will have no access to the building or his SSF protocols.
He finds last night’s package on the table of the living room, swallows the first course of pills, swills down a sachet of salts and starts on his mandated two litres of water. The patch is bleeping that it is unattached, and he straps it on then sits trying not to be impatient, raise his blood pressure or cortisol levels. The sooner he gets the all clear from PQS and he can get back into the office the better.
His ROD clicks yellow, noticing that he is at least Compliant, giving him partial access to messages. He sees he has been temporarily suspended from the investigation pending full suspension after a departmental review.
The report is attached: Squires.
Internal Report SFF1/Evaluation
13/04/2018
Subject: Jonathan Barrow PRB 221119
Status: Urgent/Interim
Squires/Waterston
General:
Serious concerns around erratic behaviour and procedural anomalies.
Specific:
Focus while correct re activities at Games, misses larger area of concern. Utilises scarce person-power and resources in pursuit of relatively trivial misdemeanours.
Physical health and mental state result of refusal to conform to patch prompts mean unorthodox overseeing/conducting interrogation of suspects.
Lack of coordination of SSF2 team result in wasted person-hours and oversights in potentially crucial issues of national security. Delegation to juniors in violation of accepted protocols.
Repeated attempted violations of recently implemented SSF1 information security protocols. Personally rather than investigation driven use of SSF1 database/records.
Additional:
Question of long-term issues resulting from psychological distress caused by Stockholm/possible exposure to nano-biological or other agents during investigation: disappearance post-Stockholm means no full Bi/Psy audit performed between leaving SSF1 and re-admittance.
Action:
Rapid expansion of operation from routine/domestic to investigation with profound international relations implications means Barrow unsuitable. Request therefore Squires assumes control/enlists additional Co-Sphere assistance.
Katja
She succumbs and goes for a pot of the Special T, still half warm, groggy from only a few hours’ sleep in a back room converted into bedroom. She wonders whether the patch is such a good idea, hard to get into a rhythm, seems to cause particularly strange and vivid dreams and as she takes her first sip she wonders which of her memories of the night before might be real, tries to reorient herself. She has a faint twinge that she slept with Barrow but realises it must have been a dream, they were down by the coast somewhere and she was…
He has a scar on his right side, a square almost of seared pink and white flesh like the hide of something tougher and more primitive has been partially exposed. Is that right? If it is, how can she know that?
Well, no, none of that happened. She went to the pill bar with Lewis then the two of them came back here to sleep, or was that also a dream? Leans back against the sink and sees that her ROD has finally locked into her departmental feed. Barrow is on mandatory R and R. Squires has taken over interrogations of the suspects from the stadium. Barrow’s enforced R and R looks suspicious, he has been violating patch protocols and he was a little wobbly at the stadium last night but what’s most in question is his state of mind rather than the state of his health. She thinks he will be undergoing discreet psych evaluation of some kind especially if, as it seems from the internal bulletin, they have spoken to the suspects from the stadium and discovered nothing.
&
nbsp; She still has ten minutes before the work allocation starts, sips her tea, closes her eyes and feels it clear up the static and lag, boost her cognitive functioning, feels it interact with the patch and start to modulate and monitor her. Well she understands it has its uses and that we have a responsibility, an obligation to be as healthy as possible to limit the cost on society as a whole, yes, the tea and the patch reducing the friction, reintegrating her into the way the world functions.
Her ROD buzzes. Barrow.
Barrow
Barrow clicks the link he has been sent, the cover of one of the American daily newspapers, the previous night’s events already a propaganda victory ahead of Altborg’s visit. There is a photo taken from somewhere toward the upper edge of the stadium, the old boys from the unions marching around the arena, their great banners aloft, crimson, bucolic and covered in slogans, heavy with the felt weight of history and patient needlework, the UAVs effortlessly suspended above their heads, the three luminous green shards hanging in the air. Across the middle of the image, bisecting the frame they have printed the headline: “Divided Republic”.
The article profiles radical groups from the South Academy, suggesting that these are the groups that have pushed forward with the Vote and represent younger citizens and critics of the “regime”, bored of the “enforced mediocrity of communistic living” the “chaos and disorganization of the so-called democratic system” and the drudgery of the low-tech PRB’s obsession with “the environment” and the “mandated subsistence labour of care and repair”.
The embedded video clip they have got hold of somehow makes the scene even more eerie, the parades in all their proud military discipline suddenly stalling and fragmenting, bumping into each other, beginning to pool and mill, the bands still playing, brassy regimentation growing more discordant as the monoliths float overhead shrieking out a single, ear-splitting tone, imperious, alien.
All this looks to have been fully prepared some considerable number of weeks, months, years in advance. And Barrow has facilitated it. Has he been duped?
He sends a message to Waterston.
[number*Waterston*]
On Comp R+R/ Sq recommend suspension. Waterston supervene?
{number *barrow*}
Then sits on the sofa practicing breathing techniques and gulping water until his patch flashes that he is drinking too quickly.
Message back. It seems Barrow is to continue on the case but with much closer oversight from Squires, “effective interrogation strategies even if threat mis-identified” “level of experience necessary to wider conclusions”. A compromise with the proviso that he come in for a meeting with both Waterston and Squires at 1:30pm, some interdepartmental wrangling.
Better than nothing. Waterston knows he has suspicions and approves. Squires knows he has suspicions and wants him out of the building, to stop him asking related questions about locked files. He sits back to drink the rest of the water, finds he is drumming his fingers on the desk, wishing the patch would hurry up and recalibrate all his hormone levels.
Rose must be speaking at the conference at the South Academy today. Perhaps he will get to see her soon. Should he send a message?
The patch sends a soft tingle through his arm and he checks the ROD: activity green lighted. He dresses quickly and within fifteen minutes is back in his office.
Katja
The nervous young man from SSF3 is back to keep them updated.
So, what do we know about the deceased subject?
PRB 191273 Name: “Julien”. Age: late forties. He entered the pre-PRB as part of a Pan-African Support delegation, through the Freeport of Liverpool, was involved in training camps in and around Leeds and Sheffield, and later demoralization campaigns in London during the Breach.
He is, was, a long term off-gridder from what we can ascertain, some affiliations to a host of groups around the south of the city, some affiliation to the bookshops and community centres in the Castle, a broad variety of associations including both anti-American and Co-Sphere critical groups, the Militant Anglo-Catholic Extropian current, even some groups connected to exploring alternate economic theories, Hungarian versus Austrian schools.
Barrow
What has the post-mortem scan revealed?
A pause, the young man glances across the room to a woman standing against the far wall, Sylvie isn’t it, the one who met him at Squires office door.
As an off-gridder, unpatched, outside the regular check-ups and scans through the ministry? He was riddled with viruses and biohacks, all kind of junk bioware. Some of which may have been picked up outside the PRB, some of known provenance, some of which are new to us and probably some we can’t even see.
What was the cause of death? Barrow asks.
Another glance. Unknown at present. A pause: Questions? A longer pause.
Then onto his partner, this is PRB 975391. Until January 2016 he was undertaking mandatory work allocation in the SSF Records Department and he was relieved of those duties after files went missing and appeared to have been leaked into the public domain. We have a photo, which is part of the document that has been sent to your RODs.
After that he is off grid and information about his movements is limited, though he seems to have been moving in the same circles and affiliated to the same groups around the south of the city as the deceased.
Which files went missing?
That’s confidential, Sylvie interjects.
Only for another week, Barrow says. Crane’s file?
Something in Sylvie snaps. Yes, actually, she says as the young man’s jaw and hands clench slightly, bracing himself for a moment, powerless to intervene, Crane’s among others. She rotates and addresses herself directly to Barrow.
Including yours.
There’s a long pause in which the young man takes a sip of water from his mug, so…
We have the suspect, we have a number, PRB 975391. We have a face to put to that and so we can track his movements through grids and recording devices we have access to. We think he may have had access to Bewes’s site-specific records.
How is that possible? someone in the front row asks. He would need extraordinary complex hacking and decrypting tools. If he has them, has the detainee suggested where he might have got that level of equipment from?
The young man continues regardless. We also have a UAV attached to him, it’s damaged and the area that it’s giving us is a very broad swathe of the south of the city, no indication yet that he is moving east.
Why is he just sitting there, not moving?
Maybe he knows he’s tagged and he’s waiting for the UAV to run out of power, so he can move undetected.
That implies he’s got time.
Well that gives us time. We need to sweep the area that the UAV’s indicating. First, we need to make sure he cannot enter the arena, second, we need to make sure he doesn’t have access to any vantage points, rooftops, etc. Third, at street level, we need people. We also need to find out who in the stadium might facilitate his access.
Well our immediate priority needs to be that we have a highly skilled agent running around in London, certainly with a very powerful weapon and the capacity for who knows what.
Who is coordinating onsite security, who is coordinating the security on the transport networks?
We are mostly dependent on sensors and citizen volunteers, Tereza says.
All volunteers need to be checked, fully checked.
Lewis
Lewis has taken a Dev to kill the pain from her ankle, a consequence of the roundhouse kick that subdued the suspect and is resting with her leg up on a chair as the room fills up.
The colleague from SSF3 is up on the raised section at the front of the room, no presentation, just a bunch of papers in his hands, alongside Tereza and the suspect she has brought in. She scrutinizes him. Interesting, what’s wrong with him? Something she can’t quite put her finger on.
This is PRB 975391.
Perhaps just the drug
s leaking out of his system, making him sweat more.
We have a photo which is part of the document that has been sent to your RODs.
She opens the file.
The man from the bookshop.
After that he is off grid and information about his movements is limited though
Catch you later, sister, he said.
Franklin
He’s cuffed to a heavy chair that looks like it has been teleported in from the seventeenth century, so much wood. He smirks. His own problem, until recently, thankfully that seems to have lowered its ugly head, he feels less delirious than he did half an hour or so ago, faintly ashamed of some of his more direct hitting on that girl who’s been monitoring him. But hey, they all understand it was the chemicals talking, right?
The other girl/boy thing that kicked him in the face is sitting in the middle of the room. Sorry I shot your dog, he’s about to shout, but thinks better of it.
While the room gets updated on Tobi and Julien his mind drifts, in twenty-four hours he will be out of here, full co-operation, the embassy has already applied for his repatriation. This time, really, this time he’ll make it right. They were young when they had her, shit they were kids themselves, can’t have three people in a household all growing up together, he was too hungry back then, too hungry for money, for success, and there’s always some time to make it right that never comes because, well, why is it so hard to ask for forgiveness? Rather fly all over the world shooting motherfuckers and slinging all kinds of illegal substances, rather die on some bullshit crusade for some glory than have to sacrifice his own life for the sake of another or than he would just sit…
Why is he just sitting there, not moving?
Maybe he knows he’s tagged and he’s waiting for the UAV to run out of power, so he can move undetected.