by Pera Barrett
Brigitta’s smile dropped. Her eyes halted in disgust at a train parked on a track of its own. ‘KILL THE MACHINE’ was spray painted in a patchy black rush against the grey riveted steel. Then, on the next carriage down, ‘DONT BELIEVE THE LIES. DREAMS MATTER’, was written in thick, dripping and straight-lined letters, as if a paint roller had been dipped in a bucket of white paint and pushed up, then sideways, then up, and sideways, until the words were done. She glared at the carriage, then sighed and kept walking.
The central station forecourt was always a bustling scene. Hundreds of little people going about their little lives, ignorant of their part in the bigger production. Today there was an extra actor on the stage. A small girl with brown pigtails and a red dress sat on a bench seat against the station’s wall. A yellow notebook stickered with ‘This Diary Belongs to Lisa’ lay on the bench beside her, she was holding a brown toy horse in both hands. She stared at it for a second, huffed, then slammed it into a black barrel rubbish bin to her left. It banged and bounced down the bin’s aluminium sides. Brigitta looked up at the giant windows above the girl. The shape of a single black bird was just visible on the edge of the windowsill. It was perched in the shadows and blended into the blackness, nearly out of sight. But Brigitta knew it was there. She knew where all the winged things worked. She nodded in the direction of the bird and the shape extended its wings like a crucifix being stood upright. Brigitta smiled. “Don’t worry my little pet, the night will be here soon enough, then your presence will be harder to ignore.” She breathed in one last whiff of the station and continued walking.
Brigitta found him on the final stretch before her office. He was leaning against the poster-plastered wall with a well-used guitar cradled in his arms. He started playing as she approached, unkempt hair moving in time to the strumming.
A busker.
She shook her head in disgust. Buskers are the worst example of idle. Dirty, unorganised, lacking direction, and more often than not, entirely devoid of output. A commercial musician is a moderately acceptable vocation. Advertising and marketing need music, it makes for effective engagement with consumers. But busking? Why it is simple self-indulgence at its worst. She took note of the location. So close to her own office. The gall is as disturbing as the act itself. They seemed to be getting bolder and bolder, she thought.
————
Brigitta arrived at her office, closed the door behind her, and picked up the steaming coffee waiting on her desk, exactly where it should be. As bare as all other eighty-two offices in the building, hers was nearly identical to the rest. The white plastic lamp, the up-to-date, but, not-cutting-edge computer, this month’s inspirational reminder on work ethic framed on the wall. The requirements on her to work and therefore the tools needed were the same as everyone else in the company, so there was no need for her office to be any different, regardless of her position. Uniformity breeds compliance, which is needed for control.
She stepped into the next room at precisely 8:15 AM, just like she did every day. Along both sides of the room were giant map sections. Each one had a dozen red pins sticking out of different locations. Each pin had a neatly written note beneath it with a photo of a factory, or in some cases a giant chimney pumping productive and poisonous smoke into the sky. Between every few maps was a column of coloured graphs.
Brigitta took her coffee in both hands and walked alongside one of the walls, stopping at each map as if she were admiring postmodernism in the metropolitan museum of art. She raised the white porcelain cup to painted red lips at every stop.
Step, step, raise, sip.
Step, step, raise, sip.
Over to the other side of the room and back along its length.
Back in her office, David arrived for their 10:15 AM, three minutes early as always. As expected.
He was dressed in a smart but unexceptional suit. His black hair was shiny, not over-styled, but well-groomed — just right for a man of his position.
“Here you are, Ma’am.” he handed Brigitta a printed report pack with black and white lettering on the front. “Reasonable day yesterday, the —”
“Reasonable, David?”
“Sorry, Ma’am. The results were above average in our key areas.”
Brigitta smiled. “Much better, reasonable means nothing.”
“I know, sorry, Ma’am.” David stood straight. His hands were clasped in front of his suit jacket, and he breathed in through his nose. “The Shannon City and Kapiti Lake factories were both finished yesterday, so that’s three new set ups this month, eight new workers trained, and just over two hundred Cog turns made. That’s a six percent increase week on week. A nine percent increase month on month, and we’re on track for eleven percent annual growth. So, all graphs are showing the trend they should.”
“Brilliant, thank you, David. Upward towards progression. Upward towards greatness.”
David turned to walk out of the office.
“Oh, David?” Brigitta said. “One more thing, please. I need a relocation fulfilled. There’s another busker on Featherston Lane, see to it immediately would you?”
“Of course. Right away.”
David closed the door behind him and Brigitta turned to stand in front of the window. Arms behind her back, she waited for the scene to unfold.
4 REDEMPTION SONG
“Bro, I’m telling you. I used to dance every day, just like that, better even. Where did the years go? And where did those moves go?
I’m not that old, am I?”
- Huia Brown, 37 years old.
————
David’s mind was clear as he approached the corner Brigitta had directed him to.
Two years ago, on his first relocation run, he had been a bundle of nerves and conflicted emotions. He remembered his palms sweating and the prickly red moving up his neck at the first exchange of words with the skater he had been sent to move. It had escalated quickly from an uncertain conversation to a convincing exchange of blows. Swinging the first punch had been the hardest: the fleshy slap that sounded as his bony knuckle hit the unsuspecting face. The man’s shocked look was still scratched into his memory — ‘man‘ was being generous, that skater can’t have been older than nineteen. David had interrupted his peaceful afternoon with violence, anger, and fists.
Beating a fellow human till they bled, and forcibly moving them from where they wanted to be, was not what he had signed up for. But now it was often part of his day, and when he reflected on it later, those emotions and nerves had been wasteful. The only thing he wondered now was how long it was going to take, and if he was going to get blood on his cuffs. He always took his jacket off and left it in the parked car a few metres back — a lesson learned from his second time around. The dry cleaner hadn’t asked any questions.
He was nearing the corner and had finished rolling his sleeves up. Fold by fold, each one representing another step towards readiness for what needed to be done.
He wondered if this one would change on him, if it would transform into an ‘Inspired’. More and more of them had done so recently. He wasn’t worried. But he was thinking about how much longer it usually took when they did, and how that might affect his list of afternoon tasks. Would he have time to re-run the latest batch of regional reports for Brigitta? Yes, it should be fine. Oh and he really should get the projector in Meeting Room Sixty Seven looked at, the bulb was nearly gone.
No, he was far from worried about the busker changing. The ones that changed were much stronger. But David had noticed the same becoming true of himself, he seemed to be getting tougher with each run he went on. None of these bums could outsmart or outfight him. He was damn near Brigitta Spinks’s right-hand man. They were right to fear him. They were right to panic.
He rounded the corner and ‘it' came into sight.
Leaning back with one foot pressed against the wall, the busker strummed its guitar and sang something about freedom, a 'redemption song'. They usually sang about that. It's all they ev
er had. Surely the freedom market was beyond saturated by now.
There was a bicycle propped against the same wall. The steel cage on the front was filled with apples, bright red and green peeking through the steel mesh.
The busker was dressed in a dark woollen coat that went down to his knees, the kind that David imagined soldiers had worn in the Great War. What looked like a bus pass poked out of his breast pocket, and his left shoulder strap hung unfixed from the button it should have been fastened to. His eyes hid behind a pair of silver aviator glasses. They often hid. Scared to admit to the world that they were adding nothing, contributing to naught but their own self-indulgence.
What had once been pity and guilt in David had hardened over the last year to a justified sense of right. He felt his temper rising like a swarm of bees in his chest. The non-value add must be moved.
The busker lifted his strumming hand and lowered his glasses. He looked over the frames straight at David. And David knew he was about to change.
The man’s head shook erratically as if convulsing in a fit, the ragged tendrils of black hair waved slow and out of time with the movement as if his head were underwater. Then the mop settled in tidy order, parted to the left with no hair falling over his eyes, completely different to the mess that had covered the unkempt face just seconds before. What had been a scraggly, five-week beard now looked like three-day stubble.
The busker took the glasses off and threw them into the open guitar case in front of him. They hit the orange velvet lining without a sound.
A few metres down the road, a breakdancer was spinning on his helmeted head. His legs whipped around like a helicopter’s blades. A single crow sat unmoving on a shop roof above the dancer. The bird’s black pin-head eyes watched the body spin in silence.
David continued towards the busker, he knew from experience that a polite request to move was pointless. Once an Inspired changed, there was no telling them anything. He strode straight in with a right hook aimed at the man’s temple. The busker ducked and lifted his guitar like a shield, catching David’s fist neatly in the sound hole. He pulled the guitar down with his body weight, and David went with it, crumpling to the ground. He spun as he fell and hit the ground with his back, staring up at his foe.
The busker sneered and pulled his combat boot up, then pushed his weight down, the stomp aimed at David’s face. But David caught the boot in both hands and twisted it sharply so the busker had to move with it and turn away from David’s vulnerable position, barely keeping his balance. The twist would have torn something in an ordinary ankle. But a busker, inspired, was not that.
David jumped to his feet and pulled the short nightstick from his pocket, then jerked his wrist downwards extending the black telescopic shaft to its full, intimidating ninety centimetres.
Cliiiick.
It locked into place.
He swung at the busker’s right knee, one of his favourites. He enjoyed the unexpected pain that showed on their worthless faces when the steel hit cartilage.
Thwack.
The busker faltered, stumbled, then fell. Surprise. Pain. Then, realisation of defeat and the end.
Good, that had taken less time than David had factored in.
He knelt down and pulled the cable-ties from his pocket.
He looped one around the busker’s wrists and pulled it tight. Quickly, while he was still stunned.
Ziiiip.
Then another around those stupid combat boots.
Ziiiip.
The busker struggled and kicked in a useless last attempt at defiance, his two legs tied together in one doubly-thick stump. David put one arm under and behind the back of the busker’s knees, and the other around the neck, lifting its weight as he stood.
Ca-caw, ca-caw.
A dozen more crows had swooped down and joined the one on the roof. The army of black feathered watchers erupted in a chorus of applause.
David strode to the shiny black sedan with its already popped boot, unceremoniously dropping the body in its place. He would throw it out in the abandoned park with the other bums. The ones who knew their place stayed put in that no-man’s land, and civilised folk stayed away. Another waste of air would return to take his place next week, or the week after. And David would move them on too. That was his job. That’s what he did.
————
A breeze came down over the concrete, passing over and into the grazes on David’s knuckles. He smiled at the pain, it was a cool, sharp acknowledgement of a job well done.
5 THE UNASSUMING SWING
“You’re right, I know it’s silly. It was a little girl’s dream, but I’ve got adult responsibilities now, I get it. I’ve thrown the acceptance letter away.”
- Wendy Leafa, 35 years old.
————
The Old Man and I stood in my kitchen. My hands were wrapped around my second cup of coffee, his, around his second cup of tea. We’d talked the night through, and Saturday’s stars had retreated hours ago.
“To understand why so many dreams are falling, we need to examine those that have,” The Old Man said. “We need to find the island. I have a small degree of certainty where it is, more of a hypothesis I suppose, but it won’t be easy to find.”
I thought his plan sounded flimsy at best, and insane at worst. But it was the sort of crazy that Sundays are made for.
And on that reassuring note, we stepped out my door and through the porch. Past the lemon tree that juiced my annual whitebait fritters with tang. Along the path through the feijoas that hid in the grass and turned green to brown, undisturbed.
We walked my cul-de-sac and The Old Man started talking. “I should apologise for my earlier emotional display I suppose. So, forgive me, Matthew. The fresh air and open space are making me feel a bit less... frazzled.” He ran his hand down his tie. “My idiosyncrasies are usually limited to the sphere of sleep.”
I didn’t quite get it, but I nodded anyway.
“I was and indeed still am, very concerned,” he said. “Hence my outburst. Outbursts. I’m afraid I’m not as used to being around people as I once was. It’s been a long wee while.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Don’t sweat it. But I have been wondering... you said I knew that the dreams had been falling, but how could I know that? I thought dreams were just dreams, sometimes we have them, sometimes we don’t.”
He closed his eyes and nodded. “Ah yes, that was a poorly thought through accusation. You can’t be expected to know. But that horrible sensation when you’re in bed and your body feels as if it was falling? That’s an un-done dream dropping.”
I wrinkled my face in disgust. “I hate that feeling.”
“Yes, it is not the nicest sensation in the world, nor should it be. Of little use, however, if you have forgotten what it means.”
I had one last night, I thought, without saying. He looked like he had enough on his mind.
Our walking had picked up to a hurried pace.
“Every time a dream falls, it leaves an opening for the lady in grey to attack,” The Old Man said. “Her marketing machines spit out their lies, and her recruiters pull the people away from their hopes and dreams, piling them into those awful, mundane, Cog Teams of theirs. They are a cancer to the creative, an opportunistic bully's pin for the little girl and her bundle of ballooning hopes.”
“She doesn’t sound nice,” I said, aware it was an understatement.
We reached the end of the cul-de-sac and crossed into the park.
I followed The Old Man past the park’s sign and onto the path through the chipped bark grounds. ‘Grasslands Park - no dogs allowed.’ More birds than usual stood watching us from the trees on either side of the track.
We stopped at the frame of an old swing set. Its red paint was chipped, and its seats sat perfectly empty, perfectly still.
Hands stuffed in the pockets of the light blue jacket my mother had given me one Christmas, I wondered again what I was doing. I was with a crazy man I’d ne
ver met before. He had broken into my home, berated me for not paying enough attention to my dreams — I think — then he’d somehow convinced me to travel with him to an island. Then, just to put the sugar on the Weet-bix, he'd told me he didn’t really know where that island was. Maybe not the best thought out plan.
“Ah-ha. And there it is, the unassuming swing.” The Old Man had his pen extended in his hand and waggled it at the swing. “Tell me, Matthew, do you know from where this most common of children’s fascinations was born?”
I looked up, pretending to consider the question. “Umm, I don’t think I’ve really thought much about swings since I became too old to play on them.”
“And therein lies the problem.” He shook his head. “Too old to play on them indeed.” He waved the pen like an orchestra conductor holding her baton. “A little boy called Charles. He was a brave explorer. He took an idea and grew it into the marvellous thing that swings before us today. He had spent his childhood swinging on a plank of wood hung from his father’s apple tree. And he loved every push of wind on his face as he swung. So the dream of making parks where other children could do the same was quick to take root and grow.” The Old Man looked up and ran his hand through his hair, his eyes were wide and shining.
I carried on chewing my gum. He looked like he had more to say.
“That’s the key you know,” The Old Man said, “good dreams need good soil to grow. Young Charles, though I suppose he’s not so young now, was excellent soil. His father was away fighting for most of his life so his mother raised him in her image. It was a fascinating time of restrictions, prohibitions, and long uncomfortable dresses. She painted and wrote. She played with words and pressed them impolitely into poems, which she pushed into the world without apology.” The Old Man pressed his first two fingers and his thumb together like he was folding a page. “She wasn’t too bored to imagine.” He looked off to the side. “She wasn’t too content to create.”