The Transition

by Luke Kennard

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Plenty of worse places.’

  ‘They’re safe?’ said Karl.

  ‘I’ll check up on them. Of course they’re safe.’

  ‘But won’t they get blamed for the breach?’

  ‘Well, it was their fault,’ said Alice. ‘They’ll be fine.’ She slipped her tablet back into her jacket.

  On the way to the city Alice stopped at a petrol station and said that she would buy them both the worst breakfast ever. They watched her walk across the floodlit forecourt and waited in silence until she emerged with three square pastries, tossing one each into Karl’s and Keston’s laps.

  ‘It contains everything,’ she said.

  As they drove around the corner from the petrol station the valley plunged into total darkness and Alice flicked on the full-beams. The pastry was too hot to eat, so Karl checked his tablet to see if Sumita had responded.

  ‘Oh, hello, what’s this?’ he said.

  The screen displayed a large blue-bordered message, pulsing gently.

  PLEASE READ

  ‘What?’ said Alice.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Karl.

  ‘Karl? What?’

  Karl read the message out loud.

  A glitch in the system occurred last night which temporarily flooded your tablets with unnecessary data in the form of every single protégé’s journal from the past decade. This appears to be the work of a hacker and, while motive is unclear, of an essentially harmless ‘nuisance’ nature. We are happy to confirm that none of your personal data was compromised and that the surplus data has been removed. We would like to clarify that all journals are available for your perusal under the Freedom of Information Act should you wish to consult a specific document. In the interest of full disclosure, we will allocate twenty minutes of next week’s general meeting to any concerns or issues arising. In the meantime we would like to thank our security team for heading off the issue before any damage was done.

  ‘That was quick,’ said Keston.

  ‘Oh God,’ said Alice. She punched her steering wheel and the horn emitted a brief, pathetic meep.

  ‘This is bad, isn’t it?’ said Karl.

  ‘Oh God,’ Alice said again.

  ‘Is it that bad?’ said Karl. ‘All for nothing?’

  ‘We’re all going to die,’ said Alice, speeding up. ‘I’m just going to drive us off a cliff – it’s simpler that way.’

  ‘You can drop me at the, uh,’ said Keston.

  ‘Fuck,’ said Alice. ‘Fuck. Do you think anyone saw the redacted files before they got taken down?’

  ‘That guy in Albuquerque?’ said Karl. ‘Trouble is, you need to read quite a lot of them before you realise the pattern is systematic. And that must have been, what, twenty minutes?’

  ‘Gah,’ said Alice. ‘You’re right. It’s completely fucked.’ She crunched the gears.

  ‘Thing is,’ said Keston, ‘the B-streamers, as I see it … I mean, nobody wants that, right, but what makes us think we deserve any better than most of the world’s population throughout most of human history?’

  ‘Ha!’ said Alice.

  ‘Isn’t the real lesson here that we’re not very nice and we don’t give a shit about each other?’

  They drove on in silence for a few minutes and then Alice pulled into a lay-by. She got out of the car, leaving the engine running, and walked to a low railing, bathed in its headlights. They watched as she took her head in her hands.

  ‘Well, this is an enjoyable interlude from all the things I urgently need to attend to,’ said Keston. ‘Sorry. You must be disappointed.’

  Karl lay back so that his head touched the cool glass of the bubble car’s rear window.

  ‘I’m just sorry for wasting your time,’ he said.

  ‘One way of looking at this,’ said Keston, ‘is that I could potentially get an awesome girlfriend called Alice, who works in PR but also makes computer-generated art, which I kind of always wanted. So thanks, Karl.’

  ‘I’m very happy for you.’

  Karl saw Alice check her tablet, stand and walk back to the car. She got back in and rearranged her hair.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ she said. She turned around to face Karl. ‘Your mentors are looking for you. I’ll drop you off.’ She spun the steering wheel.

  Karl blinked his eyes in time to the passing lamp posts. Riding in the back seat always made him regress.

  ‘It’s actually not that bad,’ said Alice. ‘We’ll rethink, regroup. Roderick will be gutted. But we’ll get them. T.D.F. Like in chess. Trap, dominate, fuck.’

  ‘Are you just going to carry on working for The Transition like nothing’s happened?’ said Karl.

  ‘I know you wanted to do this to help Roderick bring The Transition down completely, Karl, but you might have noticed my position on it isn’t quite as simple. It does a lot of good work, a lot of things I’m very proud of. What it really needs is a regime change. Get back to its roots.’

  ‘You mean radical population control?’ said Karl.

  ‘I mean helping people realise their potential,’ said Alice. ‘It doesn’t have to be the exploitative social-engineering experiment it’s become. I’m finding enough people who want to turn it around.’

  ‘Your ex-husband,’ said Karl. ‘Jonathan. Did he get sent away on the B-stream?’

  ‘God knows where he ended up,’ said Alice, quietly. ‘I’d rather not talk about him if it’s all the same to you, Karl.’

  They drove in silence a moment.

  ‘You’re not worried about them tracing the leak back to you?’ said Keston.

  ‘They won’t. They trust me. And Roderick’s always said he’d take whatever flak comes our way. He’s a sweetheart. A weird old socialist crank, but a sweetheart.’

  ‘This regime change,’ said Keston. ‘Would it involve some measure of power going to you?’

  ‘Me?’ said Alice, indicating left. ‘I suppose I hadn’t thought that far ahead.’

  ‘Little old you,’ said Keston.

  ‘Well,’ said Alice. ‘If it does happen, you want in? You’re already well thought of.’

  She pulled up outside an industrial estate.

  ‘We’re about a mile away from Janna and Stu’s,’ she said. ‘Best this way, if you don’t mind the walk.’

  She and Keston got out of the car. Karl’s seat belt stuck in the socket and it took him a moment to join them. Under the white glow of a security light Alice took his shoulders and gave him a kiss on the forehead.

  ‘I’m really sorry about what happened with Genevieve, Karl,’ she said to him. ‘I’m sorry about everything. What you experienced, what all protégés are experiencing now – it’s not what The Transition should be. I know you probably think I should abandon it, stop trying to work from the inside. I know Roderick probably thinks so too. I expect there are debt collectors who think they’re going to bring down the system from the inside right after they’ve broken down the next door. But this is honestly the best chance I have of changing things.’

  ‘Karl,’ said Keston. He was looking at the half-moon. ‘Remember when I first met you, you hadn’t even eaten blue cheese.’

  ‘What does that have to do with anything?’ said Karl. ‘Are you drunk?’

  ‘Only place you’d ever dined out was a Little Chef,’ said Keston. ‘He’d never had blue cheese,’ he said to Alice, who was already getting back into the driver’s seat.

  ‘I’d eaten it,’ Karl protested. ‘I just didn’t like it.’

  ‘And I said, what did I say?’

  ‘You said I had to like it.’

  ‘I said you have to try it, Karl. I said you were probably eating it wrong. I put some on an oatcake, I ordered you a port.’

  ‘I think this was maybe more meaningful for you than it was for me.’

  ‘And what’s your favourite food now?’

  ‘Keston,’ said Karl. ‘Nobody’s favourite food is blue cheese.’

  ‘Tell Genevieve hi from me,’
said Keston.

  48

  A SINGLE GOLDEN high-heeled shoe had been placed in the middle of Janna and Stu’s coffee table. The two-inch heel was snapped and lay to the side, thin as a cigarette.

  ‘She was getting out of control,’ said Janna. ‘It was all a bit sudden.’

  It felt like a hospital waiting room. Nobody could make eye contact. Either Janna or Stu had put the Goldberg Variations on quietly in the background.

  ‘She was like a complete stranger, mate,’ said Stu. ‘Never seen anything like it.’ He blew, as if extinguishing a candle, and almost smiled.

  ‘What have I been saying,’ said Karl, ‘the whole time you had me shut in the basement? What did I tell you?’

  ‘We understand you must be upset,’ said Janna.

  The shoe’s patterning had the suggestion of alligator skin and the finish was iridescent, even under the warm side lights of the living room.

  ‘But you’d decided I was holding her back. As if that never occurred to me before. Of course I’m fucking upset. I’m very good at worrying. It’s one of my core skills.’

  ‘She’s safe now,’ said Stu. ‘I mean obviously she’s not well enough to face the consequences, and getting a doctor’s note was fairly important there. But you don’t even want to know how long I’ve spent defending her today. To levels of management I’ve never even met before. You don’t want to know some of the things they’ve said to me and Janna.’

  ‘She caused a lot of trouble,’ said Janna. ‘And it’s been very expensive undoing the damage.’

  ‘I don’t give a shit,’ said Karl.

  ‘No, well,’ said Stu.

  Karl was no judge of shoes and it could either have been from a European catwalk or a fancy-dress shop, but he suspected the former, and that Genevieve had borrowed them from Janna for her night out with the foreign contingent. The buckle, for instance, looked as robust as a miniature horseshoe, but had the elegant shape of a hatpin.

  ‘I’m curious,’ said Janna, ‘and please don’t think I’m prying, but what kind of support do the two of you have, out there? How did you manage?’

  ‘We get a psychiatric appointment every four months,’ said Karl.

  ‘Karl,’ said Janna. ‘Are you honestly telling me that you don’t have medical insurance?’

  ‘You’re honestly asking me if we have private healthcare?’ said Karl.

  ‘But how can you …’ Janna took a sip of her coffee and frowned at the shoe. ‘You can’t put a price on your health,’ she said. ‘You can’t put a price on your wife’s health.’

  ‘Well, somebody did,’ said Karl. ‘The vast majority of people can’t afford to go private. We’re part of the vast majority. We always have been. Most people are.’

  ‘And what we’ve been offering you,’ said Stu, ‘all we’ve ever been offering you, is a chance to escape that.’

  ‘A chance,’ said Karl, ‘to live out the delusion that we’re in some way special, that we deserve better than everyone else. Why?’

  ‘Because you are,’ said Janna. ‘You do.’

  ‘Karl,’ said Stu, looking up, ‘you have the voice of someone who just stepped out of a Spitfire. Don’t tell me you’re worried about being a class traitor. If there’s a broken system you try to improve yourself so that it no longer applies to you.’

  ‘That’s rich,’ said Karl, ‘considering you were in the process of estranging me from my more promising spouse and marooning me in a distant land with a bucket and mop. Do the B-streamed protégés get healthcare? Share options?’

  ‘They’re well looked after,’ said Janna, slowly, looking at Karl for the first time and narrowing her eyes. ‘Who have you been talking to?’

  ‘The diaries all appeared on my tablet last night,’ said Karl.

  Stu massaged his face hard and groaned.

  ‘Probably the worst security breach we’ve ever had,’ he said. ‘It’s just as well we own several PR firms. Alice was working through the night. You met Alice, right?’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  They listened to the piano a while.

  ‘Why did you take my photo of Genevieve?’ said Karl. ‘I mean, what the hell?’

  ‘It’s a very lovely photo,’ said Janna. ‘I’ll get it for you.’

  ‘We have to inspect the possessions that come with protégés,’ said Stu. ‘That’s just how it is. Security. It fell out of a book. I picked it up.’

  ‘And you took it. And it’s mine,’ said Karl.

  ‘We didn’t think you’d notice,’ said Janna. ‘And then, of course, you did, but naturally you didn’t say anything. I thought that …’

  ‘This idea of sexual ownership is very dated,’ said Stu. ‘A consensual expression of your sexuality needn’t be any more emotionally complicated than going to the gym or reading a book. It’s an optional, but I think actually pretty important, part of being honest with yourself.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Karl. ‘Whatever. You’re swingers.’

  ‘Ugh,’ said Janna. ‘That’s such a horrible word. We’re not even a couple, Stu and I, the way you understand it.’

  ‘No, I understand,’ said Karl. ‘You were engineered by The Transition.’

  ‘Who told you that?’ said Stu.

  ‘It’s nothing controversial,’ said Janna. ‘The Transition encourages couples who are in good partnerships, relationships which nurture and inspire, but sometimes it’s the case that there might be another person who makes a better match for you. A better mentoring partner. A better business partner. It depends. And if that’s the case, this is the ideal scheme to find them on.’

  ‘Transition-funded studies into social and sexual well-being have shown that people having frequent, high-quality sex with similarly enlightened partners are more productive and higher earners, so it’s actually—’

  ‘Look, if we thought you were both game and we misread, that’s a pity and I apologise,’ said Janna. ‘When someone goes through your underwear drawer and spies on you through a keyhole it’s easy to get the wrong idea.’

  Karl blushed.

  ‘Of course, it’s also unethical and legally questionable to take and keep an intimate photograph of someone without their knowledge in the first place,’ said Janna. ‘If you want to moralise.’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ said Karl. ‘I’m a pervert and a creep.’

  ‘You’re not, Karl, that’s the point,’ said Janna. ‘Bloody hell.’

  ‘So if a situation had arisen where you might have needed to blackmail me,’ said Karl, ‘or cause more friction between me and Genevieve, the photo could have been useful.’

  Janna laughed.

  ‘Didn’t cross my mind,’ said Stu.

  ‘The Trapeze,’ he said. ‘You took my copy of that, too. Why?’

  ‘It’s a book of nonsense,’ said Stu. ‘Harmless, really, but there are some disgruntled former protégés who use it as a calling card. We didn’t want you falling in with them. Who gave it to you?’

  ‘Nobody,’ said Karl. ‘An old friend – they happened across it.’

  ‘We wanted you to have a fighting chance of not screwing this up, Karl,’ said Janna. ‘It was your own actions that put you in the basement, that separated you from Genevieve and that, eventually, eventually made us start to think that perhaps you weren’t really cut out for The Transition after all.’

  ‘What we’re going to suggest is this, Karl,’ said Stu. ‘You move back into your room, forget the basement, you carry on with your work until Genevieve’s back to herself again. I mean obviously we can’t really let her back on the scheme in an official capacity. But she won’t face charges.’

  ‘You’re dropping her?’

  ‘Pardoning her.’

  ‘B-streaming her?’

  ‘She can live here, of course.’

  ‘Essentially a clean slate,’ said Janna.

  ‘God,’ said Karl. ‘I’ll ask her. But I was thinking more along the lines of never seeing you again.’

  There was
a silence in between tracks 20 and 21.

  ‘There’s no such thing as leaving The Transition,’ said Janna. ‘We’ve never, ever let anyone down.’

  ‘Or go?’

  ‘It’s a broadhead contract,’ said Stu. ‘You know that. The most we can do, Karl, is to grant a leave of absence, B-stream both of you, then, once we can’t roll the leave on any further, keep appointing and firing you from an endless succession of jobs we won’t expect you to turn up to for not turning up to them.’

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ said Janna.

  ‘I’ll do the paperwork myself,’ said Stu.

  ‘Yes, okay,’ said Karl. ‘As long as Genevieve agrees, it’s a deal.’

  ‘But, mate, where are you even going to live?’ said Stu. ‘You’re honestly choosing to be homeless. Are we – is the whole thing that bad?’

  ‘I’ll stay with my sister for a while,’ said Karl.

  ‘And Genevieve?’

  ‘She can join me when she’s well enough. She’ll go back to teaching or she’ll do something else. Whatever she wants.’

  ‘You’ve made up your mind.’

  Karl was surprised to hear that Stu’s voice was thick and almost tearful and felt a rush of affection for them both.

  ‘When I was a boy I remember my dad started a business,’ he said. ‘It was a good idea and he was going to be self-employed. It was to do with funerals. Burials. All the people who died with no insurance, no plans, whose families couldn’t afford a proper send-off. From a variety of different traditions and religions – that was where his expertise came in. It was dignified. He’d applied for charitable status. He worked on it at night, after he’d finished his marking, his lesson plans, after he’d read us our stories and we were all asleep. He stayed up most of the night working on it. But something went wrong. The numbers were out. Or one of the backers dropped him at the last moment. He’d already quit his job in good faith. But he lost a lot of money. We defaulted on our mortgage. We had to move.’

  Karl looked at Stu, who shrugged, then at Janna, who seemed to perch weightlessly on the sofa.

  ‘It’s actually a really good idea,’ said Stu. ‘I mean, shit, Karl, it’s something you could have pitched to The Transition as your start-up. You still could.’