“Am I wrong?” she asked, or stated; no one in the room could tell.
“Nobody could have predicted how fast they grew, Mam. This is not anything that any of us could have envisioned. It’s…”
“It’s absurd,” she said.
“It’s absurd,” they all agreed.
“Have I not met each and every one of my promises?”
She was stopped now and staring out the window at the tens of thousands of protestors below her window – a number which had already grown to dangerous proportion and which grew in scores with every passing second.
“Mam, the people aren’t interested in the good you have done and in the promises you have kept. They’re only concerned about the ones you haven’t, and in their eyes, those failed promises are to blame for the conditions and outcomes of their lives which are out of your control. You’re the reason they have no money in the bank; not because they’re reckless and ignorant in how they spend other people’s money or in how they reward themselves for great things that they have yet to even start. Right now, at this fever pitch; the fault is not in the banks for lending them money and it’s not in their bastard employers for making them work so much to pay it all back. No, the fault is entirely yours and because of your moderate policies. They blame you for everything. They blame you for the state of their affairs. They blame you for the way that they look. They blame you for ageing and they blame you for being too damn young. They blame you for their cheating husbands and they blame you for their disinterested wives. They blame you for their jobs; their uneven haircuts; their disobedient children and in the end, they blame you for their laughable lives. They blame you for all the decisions they have made that have absolutely nothing to do with you or your policies.”
“They wanted everything to change overnight. They thought that,” she said, staring straight down at her foe who was cursing on his podium and looking right back in her eyes. “Look, it takes time for change. Why the hell can’t people get that?”
“It’s been six years.”
“And?”
“Well, I think people are asking...How long will they have to wait?”
“How long is a piece of string?”
“You do understand their frustration, though, Mam?”
Her aide waited for her response.
“I know too well,” she said, her eyes falling upon a building across the street; one whose sign was barely visible from the plumes of black smoke the poured out from inside it.
“At the end of this, in the ideal era, who will be changed? What will be different?”
The Administrator turned sternly to her aide.
“We will. All of us. We will be better. We will be improved. The human race will be improved; and because of it, so too will everything that we touch or encounter.”
She turned back to the window.
“I can empathise with their frustrations,” said The Aide, though he looked in the opposite direction. “We were them. They were once moderate, like us. And it’s true, they did vote in this change. But that’s it, you see. Up until now, the change hasn’t been about them, has it?”
“The change has been for them.”
“Yes, but it hasn’t been about them, and it hasn’t been to them. They haven’t been a part of it. The Literal Party grew out of our well-intentioned absenteeism. We were the mother and father who were there, but never there.”
“Don’t go to such tragic analogy.”
“How would you feel if all the money in the world was being spent to change all the people in the world into someone that was just like you? All of this money, time, and attention on everyone else; everyone except you. That’s why they’re angry. Their pockets are still empty, just like they were before. Their bellies are just as bloated – stuffed on sugar and flour. Nothing about their lives has changed in the last six years – in the last fifty even. It was religion that ruined their lives in the first place. We can’t forget that. It ruined their fathers and their forefathers, and it ruined a lineage of humankind – until six years ago. These people who voted you in; they are the example that we have set for humanity.”
“What kind of example is that?” she said, pointing at the masked youths, rolling cars onto their rooves; and setting fire to anything that would accept the challenge.
“How would you feel, though, if it were you?”
“It is me. And it is you. It is all of us. You don’t think I’m not bearing the brunt of this too? You don’t think part of me wouldn’t just like to say fuck them; they fucked the world, they fucked our city, the fucked the human race? You don’t think I can’t feel that way too; that I wouldn’t like to just scrap the deprogramming and build another city somewhere else – leave this crumbling shell for the very bastards who tore out every damned brick. You don’t think I feel this way too?”
“They blame you.”
“They do.”
“Because of your policies.”
“That’s true.”
There was a degree of cold silence as they hovered over the truth.
“They hate you for the single reason they loved you.”
She and The Orator stared one another in the eye.
“They didn’t vote for me based on my policies, did they?”
“No,” said The Aide. “They most certainly did not.”
“And they didn’t vote for me because of my background.”
“No.”
The Administrator did not flinch; not for one second.
“You’re a woman,” said The Aide – quite obviously.
Still, The Administrator didn’t flinch. Her eyes locked on that of her foe.
“They loved you for it. They thought you would change the world. They thought they would wake up in different beds with different wives; in different jobs, with different friends and different kids and different lives. They thought all of their problems would vanish overnight. You – the first woman administrator. What an incredible thought, and an incredible thing to be true. But a horrible thing to find out then that you did not work with miracles, and that a woman was indeed no different to a man.”
“I did not hold myself in this way. I did not paint myself in this light. They were supposed to be rational people. They are rational people. So why did they expect so much of me? Why did they treat me like some kind of a fucking….”
“Saviour? Messiah? A God?”
“Where is their rationale?”
Outside the window – at the steps to City Hall and all along the surrounding streets - the rising unrest of the now swarming mass looked as if the railings that kept them at breach might break at any second, and whatever rationale was conserving this mass’ moral and abiding temperament, might very well break with it.
“What rationale?” said The Aide. “Desire is the itch upon which only belief can reach.”
“God has been extinguished.”
“But what is there in the absence of God?”
“Enlightenment,” said The Administrator. “There is science. There is absolute and explicable truth. There is knowledge; and there are road maps, signs, and answers where once there was only folklore and superstition.”
“The absence of God is as divine as God itself.”
And just as the words were spoken, so too did her eyes careen into the trapping stare of The Orator down below; unable to pull away. And it was not out of weakness; it was out of something far more troublesome.
“Was I the right person? Should it have really been me?”
“You’re the only one who can be you. It couldn’t have been anyone else. This may all go to hell in a handbasket tonight. Everything we’ve built might be stricken with onerous blame and burned to the ground. But that doesn’t mean that any of it was wrong or should have been done differently. And it doesn’t mean that you were not the very best you could have been.”
“What does it mean?”
“The kind of change that they expect is not rationale. This change is not probable; no
t yet anyway. It takes time – decades; a century even. The first children born into the new era are now only six years old. They are children. The change that they represent is invisible behind dismissive condescendence. Nobody notices children, and so they fail to see the change that has already taken place. All these rational people are intellectually and emotionally linked to the past. They all remember what happened. Some – if not most – still bear the physical scars; let alone the psychological toll. The fact is, as far as this new era is concerned, they – as the moral and philosophical example – have not changed. And it’s not necessarily the change they crave, it’s the attention. The absence of God is no better or worse than God itself. This irrational change that they hold onto in their minds; it has taken the place of God. And the further you take them from their delusions of idealism, the more emotional they will become – regardless of their intellect or of their chosen profession. Six years might as well be sixty.”
“What would you do?”
The answer was plain, but that doesn’t mean it was easy to pronounce.
“You know what they want? If you serviced this one request, all of this would quieten down. If you gave them this one thing, they would give you your sixty years without any quarrel.”
The flames in the building across the road were now visible as they crept out from beneath the black smoke. In the distance, sirens roared as fire trucks raced towards the city centre; but they could get no further than the protestors would allow. The firemen fought the best that they could; turning their water cannons with precision and agility, but the endless barrage of bricks and explosives was too much for three small trucks to contain.
“What they want is murder?”
“They want what is just. They want what is fair.”
“They want retribution. That’s not just. That’s not fair. If we punish The Monotheists for what happened, then it’s not for the betterment of our society; it’s just to gratify their vengeance. No good can come of that. Rehabilitation is a vital part of our change, and it’s only temporary. Why can’t they see that?”
“Then centralise them. Have one clinic, and move it out of the city – out of sight, out of mind.”
“The point of this was so they wouldn’t be ostracised; so they could ease back into society.”
“The point of this…” said The Aide, pausing to address the tumult on the steps below. “The point that led to this is exactly because they weren’t ostracised. You have invited the very wolves that wreaked havoc in their pen to sleep beside them at night on the proviso that one day they too will lay eggs. And you have taken food from their plates so that you can feed and domesticate the very wolves that to this day, still cough up the feathers of their young chicks.”
“Centralised. You mean like a prison.”
“It would be a start to reconciling and it would buy us more time.”
“It would be an end of our philosophy.”
“It would pale in comparison to what they intend to do.”
III
The Old Man struggled to make his way to the bar. The room was dark, and it was loud and crowded too – on the far side of capacity. He could hear it in the pounding feet upon the dancefloor; and he could smell it in the warm, humid air that reeked of vodka, sex, and drug-laced perspiration. But those kids weren’t the problem. As stoned and as salacious as they were, they were polite enough to let the old buffoon pass without so much as a nudge or a mean-spirited stare. No, the problem wasn’t youth. He didn’t stumble about blindly on their accord. And it had nothing to do with music, flashing strobes or orgies; no, for The Old Man, the problem was age. And of that he carried plenty.
“Excuse me, lad,” he said, finally getting to the bar.
It was little use. Not only could he not be heard, but the barman refrained from eye contact with anyone. The Old Man, though, had his hand up like an eager schoolboy, tucking his left hand into his armpit to extend his reach even further. In the tips of his two farthest fingers, he clutched a hundred dollar bill which he flapped about like a hoisted flag.
“Young fella,” he said as the barman slid past him.
But there was nothing going. The barman didn’t notice; either that or he didn’t care. He did stop at one point, though - right in front of The Old Man. It was long enough for him to take an empty glass by The Old Man’s hand before he disappeared to the other side of the bar to serve someone else.
The Old Man hit his fist on the table. He was getting frustrated now and he could see a pattern developing. The bar was a semi-circle that stuck out into the dancefloor like the edge of a continent. On one end there was an exit which may or may not have been blocked by a stack of crates and containers; and on the other end were a toilet, a crack room, and the manager’s office from which he had just come. To The Old Man, it seemed like the barman was serving only one side or the other – never at the bend where he stood.
“Bugger it,” he thought, leaving his place and hobbling along to the far end of the bar, finally settling in under the green, neon light. “Young fella,” he shouted, this time with the vigour of a man half his age – yet still twice as old as the nearest veteran in the room. He had his arm outstretched just as far except this time he clung to a handful of bills from a rainbow of denominations.
Still – nothing.
The barman now served that exact spot that he had left and then he was off again, moving from one side of the bar to the other like some inanimate pendulum; his eyes never lifting further than the palm of his hand.
“That’s no good here,” said a girl sitting beside him.
She barely made eye contact herself – that seemed to be a recurring theme here. But she was speaking to him, and from underneath her long, knotted fringe, she could see the silly, old bugger waving his money around like a maniac. He looked lost, desperate and confused; and that was a pretty terrible combination no matter how old you were.
The Old Man sneered at The Girl with the full of weight of his insulted pride. Were they dogs, he would have bitten at the neck of whatever male was closest; and he wouldn’t have stopped until there was either a great deal of blood; or from her, a vocal and public apology.
“What’s your poison, old timer?”
The Old Man sneered once more. She meant no foul. It was just an idle expression – a term of endearment. But for The Old Man, it was more like an insinuation or some kind of mocking threat.
He looked at her – leaning over a dozen full glasses o spirits, cocktails and warm frothy larger; and between them, a handful of fluorescent shots that looked more like a scientific experiment than they did harmless entertainment. They looked as if they could cool a jet engine, or shrink a tumour. He stared at her and then at the drinks; and then back at her again. Her eyes – he thought – looked cold and hollow as if their contents had leaked away over many sorrowful salutations. They were not abuzz like the rest of the patrons. They looked like they might fall out of her head at any second and dissolve like a sugary treat into one of her many drinks. And then he stared worryingly at her belly as if it were packed with explosives.
The Girl eyed the little blue ticket clutched in The Old Man’s other hand.
“Yeah, I wouldn’t do that either,” she said.
The Old Man followed her eyes to the ticket in his hands. He might as well have been holding an unpinned grenade – such was the weight of her caution.
“I wouldn’t if I were you. The food here is utter shit. People don’t come here to eat. They’re doing blow out of each other’s assholes for fuck’s sake. They come here to drink, fight, and fuck; and to dance too. Nobody comes for the food.”
The Old Man stared at his ticket once more.
“Seriously, I’m doing you a favour.”
She pushed her many drinks slowly got up from her stool.
“Come on,” she said, “let’s get something to eat. I know a good place not far from here.”
The Old Man stared at her.
“You know i
t’s rude to stare, don’t you?” she said, cheekily. “In a place like this it can mean one of two things, and neither of us is in that kind of shape.”
The Old Man smiled – he let down his guard.
And then a bomb exploded at the back of the club.
IV
The ringing in his ears was loud, but the screams from terrified boys and girls were louder. The endless ringing and the screaming, and the sound of falling rubble too, they were loud – they were deafening - but that horrible music, it was louder. The air was thick with dust and concrete and when he wasn’t choking on bits of the wall and ceiling, The Old Man was suffocating on hot plumes of black smoke. But that horrible music would not let up.
Someone screamed, “Run!”
The word, though, seemed foreign. The Old Man understood what the person meant but for whatever reason, he did nothing about it. No one did. They all lay there, crumpled beneath the ruins and scared to death - even the person who said it. The far end of the bar was on fire and the rooms behind them, they were reduced to a pile of rubble and dead bodies. The thought of escape hadn’t even entered The Old Man’s head.
Fight or flight, my arse.
The first bit of light to break through came from the tip of a fireman’s axe. It spilled onto The Old Man’s feet and it grew larger and larger as the axe chopped through the exit door. Then came the first sound that wasn’t ringing or screaming or that poor excuse for music. It was the sound of capacity, spilling out over itself – like a belt being undone, or air being let out of a tire. It was the sound of tragedy being met with shocked curiosity in the early morning air. It sounded like absolute silence - the kind of silence that said more than words ever could, and that was met with pain-numbing adrenaline. It spoke of the most gruesome kind of injury and fatality, and it echoed of sheer disbelief. It was the kind of silence that drowned everything else out; even the ringing in one’s ears. It was the kind of silence that for a mere second was like a blanket on the direness of this predicament.
London When it Rains Page 2