The Shift of Numbers

by Warrington, David

  “I find it hard to believe that you didn’t have a chance to incapacitate the subject. Did you not have your gun?”

  “Well, yes… I hit Carl with it. But the lights went out before I could get a bead on Richard.”

  “And you’re sticking to that story, I suppose? Carl, again quite interestingly, heard a woman’s voice in the corridor just before he lost consciousness. Any ideas?”

  “No.”

  “I’m sure you’re aware the CCTV cameras were damaged in the power outage so I can’t prove anything… but the desk sergeant let someone up to see you just before all this happened. A known associate of the subject…” She let this information seep in before she continued. “ …Now, tell me what really happened? And I can see to it that you don’t spend any time in the interrogation room.”

  “I’m not really sure what you’re getting at.” Tim became fully aware of what he had done, replaying it over and over in his mind, looking for ways that she could catch him out. After he had watched Richard run out of the fire escape, he spent the next moments trying to calm down Richard’s fiancée as she had slipped in the ever-growing pool of blood next to Carl’s foot. She must have thought it was Richard’s, he mused. As the lights came back on, she screamed once, then fell silent, all the while clinging to Tim. He briefly remembered the smell of her hair. Then, the beast awoke. Carl’s foot twitched and he groaned. Not really knowing why, Tim pushed the scared lady towards the fire escape, silently mouthing the word ‘run’ over and over.

  “You know what I’m getting at… Are you listening to me?” the Director said slowly, her voice taking on a rabid, piercing quality. Tim looked up, expecting foam in the corners of her mouth.

  “I don’t really know what more I can say. I’ve told you exactly what happened and, if there’s nothing else, I would very much like to get back to the case. The subject is - after all - still out there, and I would very much like to apprehend him. And have a chat with the desk sergeant.” Tim’s voice remained neutral and he tried to put over an air of honest professionalism.

  The Director almost laughed. “We are nowhere near finished. There is someone…” A frenzied knock on the door broke her off mid-sentence. “WHAT?”

  The door burst open and the assistant, looking more than a little ruffled, interjected, “It’s upstairs. He’s coming down.”

  “What, now?” The Director’s eyes widened.

  “Yes, NOW!” Shutting the door rapidly, the assistant retreated. The Director slumped in her chair.

  *

  “What are they doing in here, too?”

  Pain, uncomfortable but strangely manageable pain, was dulled and held back by some unknown fluffy force. It felt like a pent-up beast, managed and made tangible by his mind. It scraped and scratched behind a wall somewhere inside his head, forcefully reaching for the pain centres in his brain and missing. It was worse at some point in the past, but the concept of time seemed incomprehensible. At some point he had discovered a metallic taste but was unable to find its source as his consciousness moved around its limited world.

  “There’s not enough room.”

  It was the first time he remembered hearing anything or having a true awareness of self. He didn’t recognise the voices or have any feeling, apart from the creature behind the wall and its desire to hurt him. He was, for all explanation and intent, a disembodied entity with no memories, body or emotions. He reasoned quickly that emotion must come from memories or pain, and there wasn’t that much pain.

  “It’s the power cut, lots of patients, sorry.”

  “You will make sure he gets all the care he needs?”

  He heard a clicking noise, which was followed by a strange gasping and breathing. Sometimes he felt like he was above the sounds, then below; sometimes they were inside him. For the first time in his brief history, he sensed something, heaviness in one of his hands. Hand, the concept, rushed into his mind followed by an increase in weight. It seemed so far away; almost too far, like his arms had been stretched into space. Now came panic. He tried to pull back his fingers as wave upon wave of unrelenting, unyielding terror gripped him. Soft white light filled his consciousness, followed by thin black wriggling lines, each one overlaid onto another, moving more violently and uncontrollably than the last. His mind vibrated, slowly at first then more quickly and less controlled, accompanied by a growing hum. His mind screamed…

  “He just moved. He just moved, nurse. NURSE.”

  Clip-clop, clip-clop, creak, bang.

  “He…he moved his hand, then gurgled…”

  “That’s quite normal. I’ve just given him some more pain relief, so he should be more comfortable.”

  The lines stopped wriggling and moved out of conscious thought towards nothingness.

  *

  Before Tim could wonder what was going on, the door slowly opened and he turned to see a plump, generous-looking gentleman walk in, softly closing the door behind him. He was wearing a perfectly ironed and tailored suit complete with shiny non-descript shoes and white shirt. What captured Tim’s attention, though, was the tie. Squinting to focus his eyes, he appeared to be looking at a repeating pattern of cartoon cats of various garish colours.

  “A present,” the man said immediately, as if explaining. His accent was lilting and identified him as being from the south. “I was told you have a bit of a gift for finding things that don’t fit.” He smiled then looked towards the Director who stood up quickly. “I see you still have a flair for the dramatic.”

  “Hello, sir,” was all she could reply, clearly flustered.

  “Could I use your seat, please?”

  “Of course, sir.”

  “Excellent. Go and get that chair in the corner and take a seat next to Tim.” As the Director went to get a chair, the man picked up the phone on the desk and, after a pause, said: “10 minutes, thank you,” then carefully replaced the handset.

  “Is everything okay, sir?” asked the Director.

  Seemingly ignoring her, the man turned to Tim and, gazing amiably in his direction, said, “We have not been introduced yet. What can you deduce?”

  Tim did some very quick calculations before replying. “I know that you’re the Director’s superior and the only people I don’t know, at your level, would be those from the top floor. The fact you’re here means something is very wrong. It has nothing to do with what the Director and I were talking about or she wouldn’t have been surprised at your arrival. You need her help. In about 7 minutes there’s going to be a knock on the door and 1 or more people will come in to help you explain the problems to us. 1 of them will be Carl. The other person will have some sort of equipment. On a personal note, you have a daughter who’s about 7 years old and it was your birthday yesterday.”

  The room fell silent for a few seconds. The tension emanating from the Director was bordering on physical.

  With a smile the man replied, “Very good. You’re right. There is something wrong and I am sort of the boss. Explain yourself on the other points, please.”

  “The phone call. You didn’t dial a number, meaning that you were speaking to the Director’s secretary, and he told you how long someone was going to be. I think it will be Carl based on the fact he’s on crutches and couldn’t keep up with you on the walk down.”

  “Correct. Go on.”

  “You came down to this office for the sole purpose of impressing on us how important the current situation is and you will most likely need some sort of prop, hence the equipment.”

  “Again, correct…”

  “Your tie is a gift - as you said - and from a child of a certain age, most likely a daughter considering its content. You wore it yesterday when she gave it you. The small smudge above the 2nd green cat is evidence of last night’s celebrations. You wore it again today to prove to her how much you like it.”

  “Excellent!” he exclaimed. “She’s 6, by the way. You’ve got the job.”

  “Job?”

  “You’ll be heading up
the investigation I have planned.”

  “But… he’s under investigation himself,” said the Director, clearly a little out of the loop and trying to assert some authority.

  “Not anymore. He’s been promoted and doesn’t answer to you.”

  “I don’t have any say in this?”

  “No.” There was a polite knock on the door. “Please enter.”

  What entered was a giant flat screen monitor on shiny steel legs being pushed into the room by a nondescript man in a suit. He left after manoeuvring the screen behind the desk, holding the door open for Carl on his way out. 2 crutches supported Carl’s massive frame, cheap metal ones with grey plastic arm supports. His left foot was wrapped in layer upon layer of bandage, parts of the crisp whiteness stained a yellowy pink colour, like a grotesque Christmas present. Tim’s mind shuddered at the thought of the contents. Half of his face was in the process of turning a deep purple with a large lump over the left temple. If you were to speed up the process or watch his face on a time-lapse camera the bruises would shift and change like continental drift, almost like someone was pouring a thick purple liquid under the first layer of his skin, each gooey dribble taking the path of least resistance, spreading out tendrils of colour like roots.

  All 3 of them, Tim, Carl and the Director were instructed to sit in a semi-circle around the monitor while the other man stood and prepared himself for the lecture he was about to give. The lights were dimmed and all eyes were fixed expectantly on the white glowing light of the screen.

  “Before we start, I need to fill you in on a little bit of history. Some of you may know bits of this already but it is important that we all have the same starting point. You all know what happened 17 years ago in the great debates, when our troubled country was brought back from the brink of disaster. In this glorious new era we have a new currency, the pound, previously, of course, the Kingle.

  “The Kingle became worthless due to inflation and, more importantly, counterfeiting. Some say the forgeries came from foreign powers seeking revenge for the purges. Others say they were produced inside the country by the now redundant political parties. Today, it’s not really important how it happened, just that it did.

  “As you know, counterfeiting in today’s society is still detested by most, some a little more than others. I make particular reference to our wonderful leader. It has become something of a crusade of his, and that is putting it mildly. Why, I ask you, do you think the MSD exists? Those of us who have had the pleasure of meeting him might call it an obsession. He unfortunately spends most of his days poring over lists of numbers trying to figure out if anyone is defrauding the government.

  “I don’t want to speak out of turn,” he went on, “but the man has been crazy for a long, long time. Oh, and if any of you present feel the need to report what I have just said to the enforcement division I will deny that I ever uttered those sacrilegious words and have you facing interrogation within the hour. Understood?”

  The watching group all nodded silently in unison.

  “Excellent. Let’s look at some of the ingenious and downright crazy measures that lunatic put in place to stop the counterfeiters.”

  He pressed a button on a remote control causing the picture on the screen to change to a high quality photograph of a £10 bank note. It was a brightly coloured affair with the bottom half (looking at it horizontally) an intricate depiction of grass in thin pen with swirls and cross-hatching. The green colour faded half way up to make way majestically for the sky: wavy blue lines of seemingly impossibly complex shades of colour made complete by several holographic clouds. In the centre of the note was a circular area of blank space bearing a watermark, the lesser-spotted dualage in flight, a bird hunted to extinction by the royal family associated with the previous government. Its inclusion in the note was intended to signify some form of learning from the past. Rising up from behind the watermark was a cityscape. This element of the note was changed every few months and its content was left to Michael’s discretion. (Michael had been known to joke to his wife that he was the most widely distributed artist in the world and this was, indeed, true.) It was due to this continual updating that collectors avidly sought out new notes to add to their collections. Some early notes had been known to fetch 50 times their face value.

  Overlaying this in the bottom left hand and stretching out past the metallic strip into the watermark was an orangey/yellow impression of the sun. The right hand side was taken up with a classic side-on portrait of the celebrated leader looking a little stern. Strangely, almost no attention was paid to the back of the note and all it contained were some swirled patterns and a map of the country. All denominations of the notes had the same design with the only difference being a coloured rectangle in the top left and lower right, each containing their written worth.

  Taking to his role with gusto, the lecturer walked round behind his audience and turned on his laser pointer. “This is your bank note.” The red dot danced around the screen erratically. “It is produced in a secret location in the city by 1 man called ‘the printer’. It is his detailed handiwork that forms the backbone of the anti-counterfeiting measures. We all know the classics - holograms, watermarks, metallic strips, serial numbers and, of course, the quality of the paper. In particular, in our note, there is the way the yellow rays of the sun change to red as they bleed into the watermark. This effect costs an extortionate amount of money and is the reason the plates have to be changed every few months. It is the most efficient way to discourage replication, by making the process too expensive to set up. But I am digressing.”

  He clicked his remote and a digital map of the country appeared on the screen. The map was covered in little tiny black dots. As he zoomed in to a built-up area of the city by the river, the dots increased in volume and some of them began to move. The man looked into the puzzled faces of his now fully-engaged audience and left them to ponder for a few seconds.

  “I can see that I now have your full attention. Something you will not know is that inside every note - somewhat perversely, inside the eye of our great leader - is a highly sophisticated and undetectable GPS device tracking the precise location of every single note produced.”

  A gasp went round the room.

  “This system has been active for the last 9 years and coincided with the last time the notes took a change of design. Why, you may ask. At least, I did.

  “Lets take an ideal world as a starting point. All transactions are digital and the computers that manage them foolproof. We could track every single point-of-sale. No one could cheat. Take a drug dealer, for instance. His client would come to him and purchase some of his product and a money transfer would take place. But he is selling nothing, has no outgoings on raw materials, no tax record. A flag goes up in the computer, an investigation takes place, and then an arrest.

  “This may seem like a vast over-simplification and you would be right. But, to the computer, every person exists as a spreadsheet, a column of income and another of expenditure, plus or minus their starting worth. We are each connected to others by the moving of these numbers and they, in turn, are connected to us. Imagine a spider diagram connecting all the transactions a person has ever made with others. What a massive amount of data that would be and what fantastic implications it would have for the fight against crime.

  “If we investigate the aforementioned drug dealer, every single person that deposited money into his or her account could potentially be a client; anyone that the dealer sent money to could be the next 1 up in the supply chain. The computer would crunch the numbers, cross-referencing information from police, healthcare providers and education workers. Finally, a number of scenarios are virtually born and each 1 run for a probability match based on the financials.

  “This may seem a far-fetched idea but that was what our wonderful leader was aiming for with the GPS devices. As a demonstration of the power we now have, let’s have a go at solving some crime, keeping it within the confines of our demonst
ration of a drug dealer.”

  He pulled out a keyboard from behind the monitor, sat at the desk and began typing. The screen showed that he was accessing the enforcement database. A woman’s face popped up, complete with details of yesterday’s arrest for possession of a small quantity of drugs.

  “A recreational user, by the looks of it.”

  Her bank records flashed up on the screen showing a string of withdrawals.

  “I’m guessing that she bought the drugs with her last cash withdrawal.” He pointed at the screen. “I’m going to track where that money went in real time.” And, sure enough, the screen changed back to the map with the little black dots, only this time 1 of the black dots had a red circle round it and the date and time at the bottom of the screen showed yesterday, at 12:15.

  “This is 2 minutes before the cash was withdrawn from the bank.” He sped up the clock and they all watched in fast-forward as the red circled dot travelled around the city stopping regularly. He pushed another button and the green-lined buildings on the map came up with tags showing what they were.

  “Watch as she goes into various shops.” The dot moved quicker along a road. “Now into her car.” He briefly brought up details of her driving licence and insurance details on the right of the screen. The dot stopped in a small suburb outside of the town and stayed still.

  “She doesn’t live there. Let’s see who does…” After a brief tap on the keyboard, a man’s face appeared, along with an arrest record for possession with intent to supply. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have our dealer. But let’s not stop there. You may note the lack of money held at the address by the lack of black dots.” He brought up the bank details, showing several medium-sized deposits over the last month and one large cash withdrawal.

  “Let’s track the withdrawal.” At the push of a button, a concentrated black dot with a red circle moved from the high street bank directly, and at speed, along a number of roads eastwards until it stopped in a built-up area of the city. Zooming in on the map as the dot stopped, the tag showed that it was at a disused factory.