by Frank Tayell
As Ely looked in through the window a worker glanced up. It was hard to read an expression underneath that mask, but Ely knew what it was. Frustrated anger at the waste of labour Ely represented.
The supervisor, alerted by the sudden drop in productivity, hurried over to the worker. The citizen returned his gaze to the piece of circuitry on his conveyor belt. Then it was the supervisor’s turn to glare at Ely.
Ely shifted his helmet, trying to find a position where its new dent didn’t pinch the back of his close-cropped head. It would only take a few minutes to print a new one, and barely longer to transfer the visor and other electronics from the old one, but he would have to wait until the requisition was approved. If it was approved.
Every joule of energy, every minute of labour, now had to be accounted for. More and more workers were needed at the launch site, and that meant fewer and fewer people in the Towers, yet the workload remained the same. Ely knew it and secretly shared the frustration of that worker - that he, as a Constable, was nothing but an extra mouth to be fed.
For sixty years everyone in all three of humanity’s remaining cities had been striving towards the same goal, the evacuation of the species to Mars. The focus had been so intense that few workers had given much thought to the struggles that would face them once they arrived. There, survival would be reliant on the technologies developed long ago, before the Great Disaster.
Those, Ely knew, had never been tested outside of the lab. Terraforming, agriculture, mining, and so much more besides, it would all have to be experimented with, and it would all have to work. There would be no room for failure. Nor could there be any delay in departure. The water levels were still rising. The City had no more than ten years left.
The situation had not always been so desperate. Fifteen years ago, whilst Ely had been a student in that classroom, the sun had shone outside. But it had shone on a barren lifeless land, plagued by the stray winds that brought toxic gasses with them from the old battlefields to the north. Thanks to the solar panels, no matter how inhospitably desolate it was, energy had been abundant.
Then the rains began, and the solar panels failed. The sea levels rose, and the tunnels connecting the Towers, rarely used since the years immediately after the Great Disaster, were flooded. The transport pads became the only way to move people and supplies between the Towers and Cities.
There was an energy crisis. Workers from Tower-Thirteen were re-assigned to construct a giant tidal barrier to hold back the sea and harness the power of the waves. Most of them died in the process but the barrier was built and the sea kept at bay, for a time. It had begun to rise again, and it was estimated that within a decade the barriers would fail, the Towers would be swamped, and everyone would die. Mars had become humanity’s only hope.
Ely moved on, pausing at the empty break area where workers spent their statutory fifteen-minute lunch break. He checked. It had been six hours since his last meal. He was eligible for another. He took out a cup and placed it under the dispenser. A thin, gloopy liquid poured out of the nozzle. He downed the gruel in one gulp. Unlike some of the citizenry, he saw no reason to savour it.
Cornwall had been responsible for extending the break time to a quarter of an hour. Ely sometimes thought that the man’s policies were coloured by the time he had spent as a worker in the Factories.
Looking down the long corridor at door after door, Ely decided he was wasting his time. He returned to his paperwork. Once he was finished, he could sentence Grimsby then go and get his four hours sleep.
Unlike the workers, Ely didn’t have much free time. Civic servants didn’t work a shift pattern, but spent fourteen hours on duty. He tried to fit in six hours of Recreation each day, he felt that at least that way he wasn’t a net drain of energy on the Tower. It wasn’t always possible.
That only left four hours for sleep. Though the workers were told that six hours per day was needed, Ely knew that only four hours of the machine induced lucid sleep was technically required. Technically.
He liked Recreation. Like everyone else, as he peddled away turning calories into electricity, he had his eyes glued to his display, lost in the movies, reading the books, and scanning the archives that had survived from the old world.
Ely had seen every one of the four hundred and ninety-eight films that had survived often enough to know every line that each actor spoke. He’d found it odd that since all their technology came from the old world, and that all the screens in the Tower had colour displays, no one had thought to make colour movies. It was equally odd that none of them portrayed the technology that he was familiar with. He had a theory about that, connected with the old world’s strict censorship during a time of war. He hoped, some day, that he’d find time to write a paper on it. All the successful political candidates had contributed pieces to the archives in Tower-Thirteen. He sighed. It wouldn’t be anytime soon.
An alert came up on his display. The shift was about to change. Ely moved to the side of the hallway. Doors opened, the workers filed out, and headed towards the ramps.
The Tower had ten elevators, each capable of carrying fifty workers at a time, though they only ever carried most of them up from the ‘homes’ to the Assemblies, ‘farms’ or classrooms at the beginning of the shift. Around the lift shafts at the centre of the Tower were the commuter ramps. It was down these, during shift-change, that the workers walked, queued, and waited for the previous shift to move on from rest to sleep. They talked, they joked, and they ignored Ely. He stood there, silently, his hand moving to check boxes, clicking yes or no, as he filled away a dozen more reports.
When he’d become a Constable, nearly five years ago, there had been no patrolling. Life then had been exciting, though he’d not thought so at the time. He and Tower-One’s other two Constables, under the gaze of their supervisor, Arthur, would pour through the other-net, seeking out sedition and recidivism. There had been an arrest a week, sometimes two, always resulting in deportation to the launch site.
That had gone with the election of Councillor Cornwall and the Chancellor’s adoption of his policy of Re-Organisation. Two Constables from each Tower, along with dozens of Instructors and nurses and other civic servants, were sent to the launch site. Arthur was forced into retirement on Level Seventy-Six, and Ely was left to patrol the Tower alone.
Work, rest, repeat. That was life for everyone in the Tower, and it was the same for every worker in every Tower of each of the three Cities left on Earth. Three hundred thousand souls, all following the same routine, all dreaming of the day that—
A light began flashing on his display. There was a disturbance outside a hab-unit down on Level Six. No, Ely reminded himself as he brought up the camera feed from the corridor in question, they were called ‘homes’ now. The image from outside the ‘home’ showed two couples arguing, with two sets of children loitering disinterestedly behind them, lost in the worlds behind their displays
It didn’t look serious, and though all had elevated heart rates, the system suggested there was a low probability of violence.
Mentally, Ely cursed. During shift-change the elevators were to only be used by the workers. That was another one of Chancellor Stirling’s edicts, one Ely suspected she had directed at him personally. He could use the long winding commuter corridor, but he didn’t want to endure the baleful gaze of all those citizens. He walked over to the nearest access ladder and began the long climb down to Level Six.
Chapter 1 - The First Murders
Twenty-four hours before the election
“All right, move along, move along,” Ely called out when he rounded the corridor. Other family groups, all the same two-parent, two-child variety, were lingering outside their allocated rooms.
“Go on, get to your beds,” he said, pushing a woman towards her hab-unit. “An hour’s lost sleep is an hour’s lost production.”
The trite slogan, one of Chancellor Stirling’s that Ely disliked on principle, had the desired effect. The crowd began to
move, not into their ‘homes’ where they would miss out on this latest piece of entertainment, but close enough to the doors that they could bolt inside should the threats be directed at any of them personally.
“So,” he said, reaching the group at the centre of the disturbance, “what seems to be the trouble?”
“Constable. Finally! Can you tell these people that Wisteria Lodge is our home?” The man spoke in clipped tones, every other word punctuated with scornful impatience. According to the tag on Ely’s display, he was Mr George Winchester, an assessor in one of the Assemblies. His wife, Mrs Georgette Winchester, was an overseer in the same Assembly. Their two children, a boy aged twelve, a girl aged eight, stood to one side.
In front of the doors to the unit in question, with their children loitering to the side, stood another equally exasperated married couple. Ely’s display tagged them as Mr Alfred and Mrs Alfreda Durham.
“Look, please,” Mrs Durham said. “We’re tired. We’re all tired. We just want to go to bed.”
“Well, what of it?” Georgette Winchester snapped. “So do we. And we can’t, because you won’t let us into our home.”
“But we keep telling you,” Mr Durham said. “It’s our home this shift.”
“He’s right,” Mrs Durham agreed. “It is. It’s ours!”
“Quiet. All of you,” Ely barked. He was tired. His throat felt sore after all the shift’s shouting. His head still throbbed from the blow that had dented his helmet. Above all, his pride was bruised from the conversation with Chancellor Stirling.
“And the rest of you,” he said, addressing the workers dawdling further along the corridor, “get to bed. An hour’s lost sleep is an hour’s lost production. Anyone still out here in five seconds will be fined a point for that lost hour.” This time the workers fled into their units.
“As for you,” he said addressing the two sets of adults, “stay quiet or I’ll charge you with disturbing the peace.”
They glared but stayed silent as Ely tapped a command onto his wristboard and brought up the hab-unit allocation for that shift.
“Unit 6-4-18 is allocated to the Winchesters,” he said, imbuing his voice with finality. Both sets of adults looked at him blankly. Ely stared back for a moment, then he sighed. “I mean Wisteria Lodge,” he amended.
“See?” Mrs Winchester crowed. “I told you.”
“The Durhams are assigned to…” Unit 6-4-17. “Sea View. Next one down,” Ely said, and closed the file.
“Yes, yes.” Mr Durham made no attempt to move. “I know that’s what it says.” He waved his wrist at Ely. “But that door won’t open. It says it’s already occupied. And I know how it works. If a ‘home’ is occupied, everyone moves down one. That means that this one,” he tapped on the door, “is ours.”
That wasn’t how it worked. Units were sometimes unavailable because a pod had to be replaced, a printer reset, or the plumbing fixed. It was rare, but it did happen, and when it did the ‘home’ was removed from the night’s roster.
According to the records on Ely’s display, Unit 6-4-17 was meant to be available for that shift. He checked the data. There were no signs of life from inside. The room had to be empty. He assumed it was a glitch. There had been a few of those recently, though none so great as this.
“You two, get out of the way,” he snapped at the Durhams. “Now! Or…” He tried to think of a threat. “Or I’ll dock you a point each for every minute of the Winchesters’ sleep that you disrupt.” He lowered his hand to hover over his wristboard. The couple moved.
Ely turned to the Winchesters, “Go inside. Go to sleep.”
“Finally!” Mr Winchester sighed. He waved his hand down the scanner. The door opened, and the family traipsed into the room. None of them offered a word of thanks.
“This way,” Ely said to the Durhams, and walked the dozen feet down the corridor to Unit 6-4-17.
“Look, Constable. It’s pointless. The door won’t open.” Mrs Durham swiped her hand down the scanner. A small red light flashed. Ely was able to see the message on her wristboard-display that read ‘home occupied’. She swiped her hand down the panel again. The message changed to ‘Please check your assignment’. On Ely’s display a different message came up ‘Attempted unauthorised entry to Unit 6-4-17’.
It was definitely a glitch. A big one. More hours of production would be wasted whilst it was fixed. He checked the time. It was twenty minutes past shift-change. The family inside would already have left.
“Control, come in.”
“Constable?”
“We’ve a malfunction on Unit 6-4-17. It’s registering as in use. Can you check on the location of the previous occupants?”
“Sure. That was… the Greenes. Alphonse and Finnya, and two children, Simon aged eleven and Beatrice aged nine. The children are both logged as having had breakfast and are on their way up to school.”
“And the parents?” Ely asked.
“They’re…” He had to wait whilst she ran a scan of the Tower’s occupants. “They’re not showing up. Anywhere. That’s odd.”
Ely frowned. It was more than odd. As far as he knew, it was impossible. He tapped out a command, bringing up the image from the camera inside the unit. The screen was blank.
“Control,” he began, but Mr Durham interrupted him.
“How long is this going to take?” the man asked.
Ely glanced over at him and his family.
“We need our sleep,” Mrs Durham said, then almost as an afterthought added, “Our children need their sleep. Like you said, an hour’s lost sleep is an hour’s lost production.”
Ely regretted having used that slogan. He thought quickly. Grimsby was still up in the infirmary. The Carlisles, with no children were still allocated to the ‘Apartments’, so was Lundy, and with those three now on their way to Tower-Thirteen, that meant four pods had suddenly become vacant. He tapped out a command, double-checked he was correct, and allocated those pods to the Durhams.
“I’m assigning you to Units 7-15-4, 7-18-6, 7-20-2, and 7-21-3,” he said.
They looked at him blankly. He’d forgotten, again.
“Pine Lodge Apartments. Here.” He tapped a command onto the screen at his wrist. “Follow the lights on your display.”
“Apartments? We’re a family. We’re entitled to a family room,” Mr Durham said.
“It’s just for one night,” Ely said then, remembering one of the Chancellor’s recent edicts on ‘civility and civic duty’, added, “I do apologise.”
“Just come on, Alfred,” the daughter said. “I’m tired.”
Interestingly, Ely noted, though she looked as if she was engrossed in her display, according to the system, it was switched off. He checked. She’d not turned it on since she’d left the classrooms. Ely flagged her details so the system would monitor the girl more closely. Deviation from the norm in youth was usually a sign of criminal recidivism in later life. He’d read that in one of the papers in the Tower’s digital archive.
The parents relented and the family headed off towards the ramp that would lead them to the level above.
“Control,” Ely asked, when they had gone, “can you give me a remote override on the door?”
There was a click as the locks disengaged. The narrow door slid open by half an inch. Ely pushed it into the recess in the wall.
The space inside was dark.
“Lights.”
Nothing happened.
“Control. Lights.”
“What? Oh sorry,” the Controller, Vauxhall said. “I got distracted, there’s a—”
“Just turn the lights on,” he interrupted.
The lights came on. Unit 6-4-17, just like every other family ‘home’, was twelve-feet wide by ten-feet deep by ten-feet tall. On the left, stacked one on top of another, were the ‘beds’, a double pod for the parents, and two individual ones for the children. All were seven-feet long and three-feet high. The two individual pods were three-feet wide. The double was sev
en-feet wide. The moment that an occupant’s head hit the small metal contacts in the cushioned pillow, a carefully modulated six and a half hours of lucid sleep would be induced. To get in or out the pods would lower and rotate according to the pre-programmed rota of who was scheduled to wake first, thus reducing congestion with the unit’s basic facilities.
Ely had entered through the night-side door. Directly opposite was the day-side door. Workers always entered through the night-side, where the corridor lighting was subdued. They always exited through the day-side, where the corridor leading to the elevators was always bathed in a soft yellow-white glow. To the right of the door were the shower, the toilet, the food-bar and the printer. The unit the Winchesters had gone into, ‘Wisteria Lodge’, was the mirror opposite but otherwise identical.
‘Pine Lodge Apartments’, to which he’d just sent the Durhams, had six individual pods per room. Those were modulated for only six hours of sleep per shift due to the extra demand on the shower, printer and toilet. That extra half an hour of sleep was one of the benefits of having children, one that he personally thought was offset by having to share that pod with someone else.
“A place to sleep, not to live,” was how Arthur described it. “Living’s a luxury for the future, and our job is to make sure there’s a future generation to enjoy it.” For now people worked, and work should be enough.
The children’s pods were empty, as Ely had expected. Neither had been sanitised. He glanced at the wall. A series of digital frames still showed the Greene family. One, a very popular picture at the moment, showed the four of them, all with fixed grins and glazed eyes, set against a reddish-dusty background of Mars. Underneath was a split frame. The right hand side showed a boy, Simon, sitting in a row with two dozen, much older children. His eyes obscured by a visor, his hands frozen in mid motion. On the left side of the frame was a piece captured from a newsfeed. ‘11 year old wins National Diligence Award.’ There was a lot of text underneath, but it wasn’t important. The pictures wouldn’t change, nor would the pods be sanitised until a family, the whole family, had vacated the room. Ely thought he knew what had happened.