Jeremiah flexes his bicep again and sights down the long barrel. The eyes upon him are grateful. He is one of them, one of the few holding back the hordes pressing at the Wall.
‘And I think that you, sir, have those qualities.’
There is a hush around him. It feels like applause will break out.
As he looks down the barrel for a third time, Jeremiah imagines home invaders queued in the living room, advancing toward the bedrooms. Part of him wants them to. So he can bazooka them back to the holes they crawled out of.
‘I’d like to try it on the range.’
‘You won’t be disappointed.’
The promised applause breaks out as Jeremiah respectfully returns the weapon.
The young female junior representative, red-cheeked and blue-eyed under her black Magnus cap, lifts the barrier in the stall and steps out. ‘This way, sir.’
‘Way to go, J-man.’ His shoulder is slapped. It’s Venture Group’s HR manager.
‘Thanks, Charles.’
And he realises he’d forgotten about Consolidated again.
The gun kicks hard and a sizeable hole is blown close to the wooden target’s heart. The Magnus girl says something. He removes the earmuffs. He activates his screen, selects ‘Hearing Enhancer’ and unmutes it. ‘Pardon me?’
‘You’d better cover that ear with the earmuff, sir.’
‘Bionic,’ he tells her. Other shooters and staff stop what they’re doing and watch. The Magnus girl fixes her steel blue eyes on him again and tells him he’s their ideal customer. I am, he thinks. The gun is perfect for me. Yet while it shifts the weight of the impending judgement and condemnation of Venture Group’s shareholders, it doesn’t quite clear it. After five rounds, the Magnus girl asks him if there’s a problem.
‘No, not at all. The gun is great.’
‘What do you do?’
She obviously suspects that the gun’s price is the source of his dissatisfaction.
‘I’m a lawyer—a corporate lawyer—for Venture Group.’
‘Uh. Would you be interested in an endorsement deal?’
‘Yeah,’ Jeremiah says as casually as he can, ‘I guess I would be.’
His last shot takes the target’s head off.
Waiting outside a classroom transformed into a temporary Magnus office is a senior black-uniformed, middle-aged man, tall and muscular, with wiry grey hair. He and Jeremiah recognise each other as kindred souls; men able to bench-press more than 250 kilograms. The shake is very firm.
‘Jeremiah Bradford, very pleased to meet you. I’m Jake Radcliff, head of sales and marketing for Magnus New Zealand. Let me say that you’re exactly the kind of man we want in our Magnus family. More than that, you’re a genuine Magnum Opus man, the real deal, and we need a flagship consumer for our premium product. Now, I know you’re a lawyer and will expect compensation for your time and image, and you’ll have ideas about the parameters any endorsement will take, so at this stage we’ll go through the standard firearm security procedure before taking things further, in whatever direction that might be. However, as a gesture of goodwill, I’d like to present you with the gun you’ve tested, free of charge, courtesy of Magnus New Zealand, whether or not we come to any kind of business agreement down the line.’
‘That’s wonderful, Jake. Thank you very much.’ They shake again.
Jake slaps Jeremiah’s shoulder. ‘Talk soon, buddy.’
The Magnus girl ushers him into the security office, where an elderly policeman sits behind a desk with a secure screen. Jeremiah sits in the ‘hotspot’, the seat rigged to various sensors which will be used to aid the firearm application process.
‘See you soon,’ the girl breathes, and closes the door.
‘Good morning, Mr Broderick.’
‘Good morning, sir.’
The lightness of the policeman’s voice immediately betrays his considerable age. Jeremiah examines his face. It’s often very hard to assess chronological age, particularly when the person is fully clothed, but this policeman’s voice and face indicate he is one of the super-plus elderly. There aren’t many on the Mount. Most of them live in the Wairarapa, in the Golden Gate. His skin has a wet softness about it, in which his polite smile of welcome remains imprinted for a moment before it subsides. It’s a little disconcerting, but vastly superior to the drum-skin facelifts the lower classes resort to.
‘Full name, please.’ The policeman sucks a minty lolly.
‘Jeremiah Kevin Isaiah Beresford Broderick.’
‘Will you be accepting delivery, or taking your weapon home yourself today?’ A tiny pause mid-sentence betrays the policeman’s diminished lung function—always a weak point with the super-plus elderly, even the seven-pointers.
‘Accepting delivery.’
‘How will you be paying?’
‘I won’t be. The firearm is a gift from Magnus. They’re interested in my personal endorsement of their product.’
‘It’s a sweetener?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘What kind of endorsement deal?’
‘We haven’t hammered that out yet.’ The last 15 minutes have had a dreamlike quality. Jeremiah wonders if he’s up to negotiating terms with Radcliff today. Perhaps not.
‘Are you a celebrity?’
‘No, sir. I fit their aspirational consumer profile for the Opus .50.’
‘Congratulations, young man.’ Another slow-fading smile, oddly sustained, like an energetically repeating echo. Jeremiah’s heard that the doughy expressions of the super-elderly are due to dropping expression rates over time. It’s muscle atrophy through underuse rather than failure, and stems from the fundamental problem the super-elderly have: over-familiarity with the stimuli of life. Two hundred smiles a day is the prescription, but the super-plus elderly have a low success rate with repetitive self-imposed physiotherapy. The mental components of extreme ageing are proving difficult to medicate against.
‘Thank you, sir.’ Yes, Jeremiah thinks, the super-elderly policeman’s right: congratulations really are in order. It’s wonderful. His personal brand will soar as a result of this endorsement deal and will be the deciding factor in his favour regarding the Consolidated fiasco. They’ll be much less likely to fire him if he has a Magnus endorsement. They’ll appease the shareholders by extending his probation instead. It strikes him how perfect the timing is. The endorsement has come along just when he needed it. Made him a pin-up for core Inner values.
So great is his kindling happiness that he feels like a drink. Lots of drinks! On the Cliff again, overlooking the water, like last year, talking long into the night about the world’s troubles and travails and how ‘fortunate’ they are (they all know that luck has nothing to do with it) to be Inners in Wellington, New Zealand, the most desirable country on Earth. But the celebrations will be even better than last year because of this great gift the gods have bestowed upon him: a Magnus endorsement. Man! To be exclusive already amongst the exclusive. The Golden Gate next? The impossible is a real possibility.
The nimbleness of the policeman’s fingers on the keyboard indicate complete joint replacement. He may well be 120 plus, at the very top end of the scale. He’s only a sergeant, which indicates a recent career change, either out of boredom with a corporate career in which he was most likely a CEO, or some kind of personal crisis, perhaps the death of a spouse and/or friends/colleagues. Whatever his reasons for conducting firearm security vets at 120 years old, it won’t be for money.
Jeremiah waits patiently, knowing his heartrate is being monitored and his brain scanned for abnormal activity. The policeman will be performing a detailed personal history check, drawing on Unobtrusive Security Surveillance from the last three months for changes in routine and behaviour, because there is a clear correlation between life-change at the point of firearm purchase and subsequent homicide(s) and/or suicide.
Consolidated rears its revolting head again. What an appalling blunder! It would be good to talk about it with someone. H
e has a bike ride in the Hutt Valley with Le Stratton tomorrow, in a secure police-escorted peloton. They don’t talk much when exercising but have a policy of being straight with each other when they do. The Magnus endorsement will enable it. A triumph will allow the admission of a failure.
The policeman’s tapping subsides and Jeremiah focusses.
‘Look, Mr Broderick. I’m afraid this transaction…’ the policeman puffs, ‘won’t take place today, for security reasons.’
‘Pardon?’
‘There is a precautionary… six week stand-down in place. Please apply again in six weeks. I’m sure you’ll be fine.’
‘But…’ His heart begins to trip. His face flames.
‘It’s just a standard… precaution, Mr Broderick.’
‘I’m being denied the gun?’
‘It happens a lot more… than you might think. I strongly recommend… you try again, in six weeks.’
‘Is it physiological? Am I about to be diagnosed with something?’
‘You’re a very healthy young man. You’re fine.’
There is a list of personal circumstances that preclude gun ownership: divorce, separation, loss of legal access to a child, loss of property, loss of a loved one, loss of job, loss, loss, loss…
His voice comes out thickly. ‘On what point am I denied?’
The old policeman shakes his head. ‘You know I… I can’t tell you that.’
‘Is it to do with my job?’
The policeman stands very abruptly, explosively, like a jack-in-the-box, shakes Jeremiah’s limp hand and looks over his shoulder at the door, like Gully did when Jeremiah had stood dumbly in his office on Friday night, unaware that their meeting was over.
9
After pulling hard on the handbrake, Jeremiah sits in the car in his internal garage in silence. Similar dead air awaits him in the flat. He’s not used to it. It’s been six months since Karen’s last vanishing act.
Her explanation for disappearances, to parties or shows outside the Wall, was that he would stop her going if they talked about it. While there was some truth in this—he didn’t feel security at late-night Flux events was adequate, particularly with complimentary supermarket-special wine and cheese attracting the truly desperate to openings and launches in Outer Wellington—at the end of the day she was and is a prime target for kidnapping. Especially in a bitchy industry like fashion. So rather than arguing with him, Karen would just disappear, take off, and sometimes stay at a friend’s for the whole weekend. It was only Mandela, Jeremiah increasingly felt, who brought her back.
The one time she disappeared with Mandela, Jeremiah called the police. For some reason Mandela’s personal GPS transfer was dead and he just happened to be wearing clothes that weren’t chipped for GPS. Hardly any of his clothes are unchipped. Karen’s screen wasn’t only off but disabled. The police didn’t conduct an official search (she hadn’t violated a travel requirement, only a travel warning, which is a security violation without legal consequences, despite what most Inners think), but with her being an Inner, an informal high-priority CCTV scan was conducted. Karen and Mandela were located within an hour at a dinner party in Wadestown. Jeremiah happened to have the host’s number. When he rang it, Karen activated her own screen and yelled at him. She’d just lost track of the time, she claimed, and intended to return home shortly. Mandela’s transfer had gone flat because there was a problem with the charge panel. His clothes, she said icily, were chosen at random. He didn’t believe her. He asked the police to bring Mandela home. They needed Karen’s permission for that. She didn’t give it. He took a taxi to the address in Wadestown, where his knocking went unanswered. A police car showed up; there’d been a report of a prowler. ‘I’m not a prowler!’ he yelled in a strangled voice barely recognisable as his own. Tears flooded his eyes. ‘My son’s in there and I need to take him home.’ This, the police could facilitate. But when the door was finally opened to them, Karen and Mandela had already left (by a back entrance?). Her screen was off again and disabled, untrackable. He returned home empty-handed, humiliated and furious. An hour passed. Another. He called the police again. They told him to call back in the morning. He didn’t sleep. When Karen and Mandela returned at 8 am, Karen was not contrite. She said he had humiliated her in front of important people at a business meeting. She had a shower and went out again—crucially, not with Mandela. She returned a day later, defeated, angry and tearful. It took a while to find out why. Friends told her she was pushing her luck with her visits and that the wrong people had noticed; there were rumours of a kidnapping. Daytime visits would be better, they insisted, and only occasionally, so as not to establish any kind of routine. It was around then that she began to take medication. There haven’t been disappearances since then.
This time Jeremiah knows exactly where his wife is: at a bar on the Cliff above Oriental Bay with Mandela and Malcolm and other happy Inners. While Jeremiah was getting a drive-through burger in Miramar and driving in circles around the seawalls, almost daring a car-jacking, they were wining and dining al fresco in the marvellously calm weather. He knows that the terror of the shooting will be transformed, alchemised by alcohol and privilege into a celebration of good fortune, and he wishes he were there with them, with the Magnum endorsement under his belt and the security of knowing he has a good job to go to on Monday morning. But it’s not to be.
He activates the personal transfer on his right forearm. His wife and son are yellow circles on the holoscreen, at a bar on the Cliff named Casey’s. I must resign myself to this, he tells himself. This is how it will go, being apart from them and their happiness. Watching dots on a screen.
He brings up the Home Comfort screen, turns on the lights upstairs and cues the most recent episode of King Arthur. Music to microwave and shower to? Something Karen likes. Something at random from her playlist to make things feel normal. The track selected for him is ‘Treat Me’.
The garage remains dark and silent. The only changes he can make to this particular environment, from where he sits with his screen, are the opening and shutting of the roller door and the switching on and off of a light. On. Off. On. He knows, knows, that the gun licence was denied because he won’t have a job on Monday. Off. Darkness. Mr Gully simply let him leave the building on Friday night to spare everyone the unsavoury sight of security escorting him out. His desk will be clear when he goes in—not that he’ll get past security to see it. ‘Ah, fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck-it!’ It’s so dismal, the prospect of his humiliating eviction from work followed by life outside the Wall again, returning to the gale-ravaged wastelands of Newlands or some other northern crime-ridden outpost in the extreme wind zone, and finding a menial peanut-paying job among the hunched and flabby. Worst of all will be the battles with Karen over access to his son.
The tawdriness of Outer life, as Le Stratton puts it. It’s true. They merely exist out there. Scraping what little pleasure they can from their screens and drugs as they spiral down the vortex of historical old-age disease and self-inflicted obesity.
I was wrong, Jeremiah thinks. Thought I’d made it to safety in the gilded cage of the Mount, but no, I was always just on parole. I’m being sent back to where I came from. To endure, until death.
Shit, he thinks. Sitting in the car in the garage, just like the old man used to. Jeremiah remembers how the cooling combustion engine of his father’s car used to tick, and how his father would occasionally remain sitting in the car in their garage upon arriving home with Jeremiah from a school or sport pick-up. ‘There goes the time bomb,’ he’d say as the car ticked, a comment that Jeremiah understood as a child to be a reference to the science fiction his father read and watched—it was all his father really did.
The man I called Dad, Jeremiah thinks, and sighs. A classic model of lower-class endurance in the face of failure. Ageing into diminishing employment opportunities due to health problems and changing technology. And me, Jeremiah thinks, his ungrateful only child, who believed that
my mother’s constant criticisms were basically accurate. Though in later years, the time-bomb references his father made when they pulled up in the garage came to be a countdown to an argument with his mother waiting inside, and he had felt sympathy. Not everything she said was fair or reasonable.
Not long after Jeremiah had left home to attend university in Wellington, Dad gassed himself in the garage. Jeremiah felt partly responsible for not being there to prevent it, and also partly relieved that his father’s relentlessly hen-pecked and directionless life was over. It was complicated. At the funeral, his mother repeatedly pointed out that his father hadn’t run a hose from the exhaust pipe into a cracked-open window, but simply left the engine on and the window wound down and waited until the entire garage filled with fumes. There was nothing Dad could do right.
Jeremiah studied harder than ever and earned enough money from part-time work to keep living away from home. Then a year after the suicide, to the day, his mother had a breakdown from which she had not fully recovered when cancer took her 18 months later.
‘Well,’ he says to himself, and turns the garage light on.
Cars don’t tick or emit poisonous exhaust anymore, but people, he thinks, still kill themselves in garages, in these detached, easy-to-clean spaces, with ropes and guns. No, he corrects himself, not people: men. Men commit suicide in garages—violently; women commit suicide in bed—peacefully. They take pills and slip away, reading, for example, Pride and Prejudice, like his colleague’s mother did last month. It struck Jeremiah as very strange at the time, to choose to die reading a book, yet his father might have done the same thing with Dune, but didn’t, because he was a man. He sat up and faced the fumes. To commit suicide reading seems a worse kind of escapism. Double escapism. To choose a book like Pride and Prejudice, which he hated in high school, seems triply bad. Yet Karen loves the novel too. It seems an enduring key to the female mind. Money, Jeremiah remembers, plays a central part in it. The women are like parasites desperate to leech on to wealthy men. Yes, Karen will leave if the job is lost. His money is the glue that binds the family. She will disappear for good next time and take Mandela with her. Because deep down, he thinks, she’s like Jane Austen and simply doesn’t want to work.
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