The 2084 Precept

by Anthony D. Thompson

  A waitress brought in more coffee and biscuits. Good. I had eaten all of the others, it happens sometimes when stuck in non-smoking territory. And was this normal service or a Jeremy message, who knows? I could go out for a smoke of course, but I prefer to hang on, the sooner this meeting finishes, the better.

  "Now we mustn't forget," Jeremy continued, "that Mr. Delsey has no reason whatsoever to assume that I am a lunatic. There are no events or occurrences of any kind to support such a view. Certainly, he knows that I am an ex-mental patient. But my recuperation was officially and medically certified. No…for him, the concerns at the moment have to be either fraudulent activity or perhaps criminal activity of a more evil kind. But he can't act. He has nothing to act upon."

  "But after your computer-hacking, we will have the scenario you just outlined."

  "Yes, but as I have said, I will be able to deal with that. The most important thing in your first meeting will be to convince them that you have a matter of untold importance which can only be discussed face to face with the prime minister. Let us not fool ourselves: our tricks will not achieve that. But they will hopefully be sufficient to convince him and his superiors to pull in a politician or politicians of a certain level for a second meeting. And for that reason alone, you must not mention that I am an alien. Or rather, that I say I am an alien."

  I was chewing away on the remaining biscuits. Easy enough, I thought to myself. I wouldn't have to disclose the topic for discussion, the hacking tricks are persuasive enough to convince even hard-boiled cynics to arrange a second meeting, and I wouldn't have to mention Jeremy's delusion that he is an alien. What a way to earn a stack of money. And the whole thing would eventually fizzle out anyway, what else? I saw no pitfalls. It was like having a solid position in a chess game; impossible to lose…unless you make a tactical error.

  "O.K. But what I don't understand, Jeremy," I said, "is why don't you do all of this yourself directly? Why do you want to involve me?"

  "Because it has to be the human race itself which does it. I have to see whether the human race is capable of changing itself. I couldn't do it anyway, any more than you could tell your ants not to invade your terrace, or your wasps to stop stinging you. Only your species itself can do it, and then only if it wants to. What the only solution is and how you have to implement it is something I will explain once we get the world’s leaders together. And even then we have to discover whether your species is capable of agreeing to try instead of disagreeing. And if it agrees to try, then we have to see whether it is capable of turning that decision into reality. And you are the first link in this process, the human being who will hopefully start the ball rolling. I have to detect a willingness here, I have to detect some kind of desire in you and your fellow beings to actually want to mutate and irreversibly modify your civic traits and social behavior. I am admittedly prepared to assist initially by introducing fear as a helpful driving force, by explaining the mechanics of the solution, and by paying you personally more money, but that is it. And if I see no signs, I shall abandon the attempt and the Governing Committee will take whatever decision it decides to take without the benefit of any further examples or additional input from myself. That is why."

  If this were a real situation instead of an impossible Jeremy Parker delusion, that would really be putting me on the spot. But in either event I would be doing it because of the money, wouldn't I?

  "Fair enough, Jeremy. I understand. It makes sense."

  It made sense alright. Another €400,000. Possibly, at least.

  * * * * *

  Off I headed on a long walk, a beautiful day. I didn't feel like lunch, too many biscuits. I bought myself an ice cream instead. I headed into Hyde Park, nobody following me as far as I could see, not that I was really checking, it's the other way round now, it's me who wants to contact them. I found a place under a tree and sat down. One of a thousand others doing the same thing, everybody grateful for the opportunity to absorb the life-giving warmth of their star's nuclear reactions—with the deadly effects of the attendant radiation being nicely deflected by our planet's magnetic fields of course. For which thank you very much. I finished my ice cream, took out my mobile, and dialed the Tom Delsey number.

  "Delsey." The tone of his greeting was of the kind a corpse might give to an undertaker.

  "Peter O'Donoghue, good day to you, Mr. Delsey."

  "Ah…Mr. O'Donoghue, and good day to you too."

  "My apologies for calling you on a weekend, Mr. Delsey, but something has come up. Would it be possible for us to meet at your early convenience?"

  "Certainly. Always a possibility. Got some information for me, have you? The Parker thing?"

  "Yes, I have. Quite surprising information; not what you might think."

  "Now that sounds interesting enough. Is tomorrow soon enough?"

  "Tomorrow is Sunday," I said.

  "Yes, well…I'm with the family today but tomorrow I'm on the road again. Nevertheless, if it's awkward for you, we can make it Monday. Or if it's extremely urgent, I can fix it for today of course. Nothing the wife hasn't had to put up with before."

  "Tomorrow will be fine," I said. "What time and where?"

  "How about your hotel? 10 o'clock suit you?"

  "Yes. See you then, Mr. Delsey. Goodbye and enjoy your Saturday."

  "And the same to you, Mr. O'Donoghue, the same to you."

  I called Jeremy on the alien phone. Told him the time and place of the meeting with Delsey. Fast work Peter, he said. He would be waiting for my call or calls.

  I stretched out on the grass and lit a cigarette. I felt good. What a weird way to be making money. I can't get over it. It isn't real. But, and you can believe me, I'd give up every cent in exchange for being able to have Céline, even if it turned out to be only for a few months. I must check my messages when I get back to the hotel.

  Man, is it warm. Swimming is never on my agenda for the U.K. But who cares, just to think that in a couple of weeks I will be in Spain, pre-summer time, water temperature in the pool around 23 degrees, not too warm, not too cold. And in Mallorca I know exactly which hotel I will be staying in initially, a favorite of mine, into the sea off the rocks, too expensive to have any screaming kids running around—not their fault, kids scream, you screamed and so did I, but no way do I want them cluttering up my space, no apologies for that; leave all the stress and the shit (both metaphorical and literal) to the players in the reproduction game—and waiters all over the place, all of whom have had some kind of training and who actually want to pay attention to you.

  And in this contented fashion I just dozed off. It was early evening when I resurfaced. I took a stroll down to the Knightsbridge tube station, picked up the Saturday IHT, had an early meal in a Lebanese I know, played backgammon over coffee and cognac in the back room with the owner—he is a mean backgammon player, but then so am I—and wandered out again into the still warm evening air and back to the hotel.

  Yet another new girl was at the reception desk, not particularly attractive, not too good a figure, kind of a longish face and red-haired. But she was pleasant enough. It's just that red-haired women are without exception precluded from my catalogue of female prototypes. My interest in red-haired women has always been zero for reasons we don't need to enter into here.

  I booked a small conference room for tomorrow morning’s meeting with Delsey and took the elevator to my room.

  No message from Céline, not good. See what happens tomorrow. I finished reading the IHT, same things every day, only the death count varies, spent some time on the chess column and polished off the Sudoko.

  I gave my neurons some work regarding tomorrow’s meeting, mapped out what I thought would happen, decided on a couple of preventive steps. Picked up a late sports program on the television—my only use for television is sport, and then only on a Saturday, and then not always—and disappeared into the land of dreams.

  DAY 17

  Except that I didn't dream. Morpheus was c
learly away again on one of his nefarious nighttime pursuits. His father Somnus was in charge and I slept peacefully and well and so did my neurons. I shat and I shaved and I showered, I went down to breakfast, I timed it to finish at five to ten, and I sauntered leisurely along to the lobby.

  Tom Delsey was already there. He was wearing an open-neck shirt and a sweater of the kind only purchased by the inhabitants of certain types of U.K. suburban settlements. It was a cheap knit, it had a ghastly crisscross design, and it had a blend of colors which brought eggs and bacon to mind. But, to be fair, and one always tries to be fair, it did serve to disguise his beer belly by about 20%.

  "Good morning, Mr. O'Donoghue," he said. "Pleased to meet you again."

  He didn't look pleased to be meeting me again. He looked as morose as ever and his left eye was still halfway through a wink. This is in no way a criticism of him, or of his person because, to be fair again, if you or I had a face as pockmarked as his, we would probably be morose-looking ourselves.

  "Good morning, Mr. Delsey," I said. "Thank you for coming."

  "Ah…" he replied. "Hmm…er…I have three of my colleagues with me and I wondered if they might attend also. One of them is my direct superior by the way. We are seriously puzzled by the mysterious Parker and are therefore more than interested to hear anything you might have to tell us. But if you prefer not, then we'll do it one on one and I'll fill them in afterwards."

  Great. Four of them to witness the magical tricks. That should get things moving. But first let them think that I am doing them a favor, that I am a nice cooperative guy.

  "Well, Mr. Delsey, that is not what I had in mind, if you don't mind my saying so. The subject of our discussion is going to surprise you in the extreme. Just you and I would probably be better. As envisaged."

  I looked at him, gave him the stare. He looked at me, giving me his half-wink. He was still hoping. But please don’t worry too much, old chap, in the end the nice Peter O'Donoghue is going to provide you with some of his one-eighth Irish cordiality.

  “If that is the way it has to be, Mr. O’Donoghue. Unfortunate, but there we go, I assume you have your reasons.” And he looked at me like a dog hoping I would change my mind and throw him a small piece of that nice, forbidden steak he could smell on my dinner plate.

  Well, I did allow him to suffer for another ten seconds or so and then, agreeable bloke that I am, I made his dream come true. "Well, Mr. Delsey," I said, "it does seem as if it's important to you to have your colleagues present. And I can understand that, your boss being among them. So O.K., we'll do it your way. But I warn you, they are all going to be as surprised as you will be."

  He was happy to hear this, very happy, and the talk about a surprise had clearly whetted his appetite as well. He actually smiled briefly. "Thank you, thank you," he said, "I'll be back in a minute or two." And off he went out through the hotel entrance, down the steps, and turned left. I followed him out, stood on the steps, another beautiful day, our star steadfastly continuing to burn up its hydrogen in full sight high in the sky. Good to have a star like that, I thought to myself. You can rely on it, no risk at all. For another 3 billion years at least, before it starts its prolonged death throes. And if we're still around of course, which we won’t be, Andromeda is coming. And I wondered what, if our star had the power of reason, it would be thinking about what our terrible species was doing to its most beautiful planet.

  But I had no more time for further philosophical perusal, as Tom Delsey appeared around the corner, accompanied by three others. We greeted each other on the steps and I led the way through the lobby to the room I had hired. We sat down at the table and I poured myself a coke, and they poured themselves some coffee while presenting their identification for my inspection. They looked like genuine warrant cards, if that's what they're called, not that I would be able to tell if they weren't, and not that it mattered much anyway. I didn't catch any of the names or any of the titles, not interested.

  In true civil servant fashion, no-one sat on my side of the table. That was fine by me, I had my space. Delsey and two of the guys sat facing me and the other one had taken a seat to my left at the head of the table. Or at the tail-end of the table, depending on how you view these things.

  I regarded them all in what one would refer to as a calm and collected fashion, and I cogitated—in what a cynic would describe as a mildly captious manner—on the fact that in a few decades my visitors would possibly all be women, as by then the women would have achieved the power necessary to prevent us men from hindering them in their career choices, as we do at the moment. They will also be building factories and houses all over the place and also sports arenas to house their female boxing tournaments.

  "We appreciate your invitation," said the guy at the head of the table, "at such short notice." He, like the others, was dressed casually. He had a thin face, sandy hair, and looked a bit younger than Delsey. But he was probably Delsey's boss, judging by where he sat and by the fact that he had spoken first.

  "Well, there was no notice at all, so it couldn't be short," I said, "but no problem, my pleasure." I gave him a smile, one of my pleasant ones. Make sure he knows it's my meeting. Also that I am an agreeable guy, oh yes.

  "Quite," said the boss and smiled. Smiles all around. Except from Delsey, but then that's just his way. Maybe he's got eight kids at home, or maybe ten, or maybe he has complications because he has more than one mistress, which I doubt, what with his face and his wink and his belly, but you can never tell in these licentious days.

  "Gentlemen," I began, "I have no doubt that in the course of your duties, you have from time to time been present at some very strange meetings. But rest assured that this one will rank among your very strangest. A silver or even a gold medal meeting. And there is no point in my beating about the bush. So I will go straight ahead."

  I opened a bottle of Coke and took a swig. "You are interested in the activities of a certain Jeremy Parker, based on certain comments you have received from a certain young lady. And you know that I am a business consultant performing an assignment for one of his group’s companies. Now investigate as you may and as you no doubt will, the only conclusion you will ever be able to provably reach is that he is a perfectly normal and successful businessman. Take my word for it, which you won't, at least not until you have consumed a lot of your time and wasted a lot of your resources."

  "I don't think you can call him normal," said the guy sitting next to Delsey. He also had sandy hair. He had what one calls a fully-fleshed face and he wore black-framed spectacles. "The young lady's comments were believable and consistent and there was also proof of a very large payment."

  "None of which Mr. Parker would deny, I believe," I replied. "A business agreement was indeed reached and the young lady broke the contract without even starting the project. Certainly, in my view, Mr. Parker should never have made such a payment in advance. A peculiar mistake for an experienced businessman, no doubt about it. But that's it."

  There was silence. They knew of course that they had nothing to go on. One good thing, though, Delsey and his boss were clearly good listeners. They would probably keep their comments to themselves until I had finished saying whatever it was that I had to say.

  "Mr. Parker's business activities have brought him into contact with certain matters which can only be considered as being of extreme importance to national security—correction, to international security. These matters are of such import and sensitivity that they may only be discussed directly with the prime minister. And he has charged me with achieving that meeting, although—and I want to make this extremely clear to you guys—I personally am unaware as to exactly what those matters are at this moment. But I am happy enough to make the attempt. I am being well paid for it."

  No way was I going to let them think that I knew anything, that could really result in some troubled times for me. On top of which, come to think of it, one of them might even be recording this meeting without my knowledge. A nast
y trick, but they are humans, so you never know.

  "Mr. O'Donoghue," said the other guy on Delsey's side of the table, a dark-haired person with remarkably tiny ears, starting to go grey (the hair, not the ears), probably the wrong side of forty, "do you realize how many requests the prime minister, or rather his office, receives every month from both people and institutions wanting to meet with him?” There are hundreds, and for all kinds of reasons—official ones, serious ones, trivial ones and insane ones. I think you are going to have to forget about that idea. All the more so since you are not prepared to, or cannot, say what it's all about. You know how these things work, Mr. O’Donoghue. Be reasonable."

  "I understand your reaction. It couldn't be otherwise of course. No offence taken. But I am sure you will change your minds. You see…these matters of national and international security include a specific telepathic power—I use telepathic for want of a better word—which constitutes, potentially anyway, a huge and colossal threat which I doubt any country has the means to successfully counter, or even contain. And," I continued, "I am going to demonstrate this to you right now and leave it up to your imagination as to what unbelievable events could be unleashed anywhere on earth. Or, indeed, everywhere on earth."

  I detected a significant quantity of skepticism. What else? But a cautious skepticism, they were going to witness a demonstration of something or other. Good Sunday fun, is what they must have been thinking. The same as I did a couple of weeks ago. And, in fact, the same as I was doing again today. I wondered what kind of experiment they were going to choose.

  "This is what we will do," I said. "You are going to choose a person or persons whose minds you would like to influence. You can even choose yourselves. Or animals. Or anything, in fact, with a brain. You are then going to tell me what you would like them to do. I will transfer your requests on my mobile and all you have to do is watch. Please make sure it is something harmless and please make sure that, whatever it is, it is something which is going to convince you—fully."