The Shift of Numbers

by Warrington, David

  *

  The car tyres screeched a complaint as another corner was taken too fast for comfort. Tim gripped the door handle as ‘Sir’ fiddled with his mobile phone. They were coming up on the Whitehead Bridge, a half-mile long national landmark famed for it spectacular views over the city port and as a suicide ‘hot-spot’. Tim gazed out of the window into the night, glad of a straight stretch of road, the pillars and ironwork beams flashing hypnotically past his eyes. He spotted a few already but this 1 seemed to be fresh, flowers tied tightly with string around an iron strut. Someone had scrawled the words, ‘For Neil’, in white chalk underneath.

  “So…you off on holiday this year?” he said to Tim, more to break the silence than for any genuine interest. They both knew where they were going, and to what end, so it seemed pointless regurgitating the discussion they had had earlier.

  “If I still have a job after tonight, who knows?”

  “You don’t have to come with me.” He said it as a question.

  “I know.”

  “Then it’s not your job you should be worried about. It’s an interrogation room.”

  They travelled the rest of the journey in silence, both appearing to be contemplating their possible fates. Over the bridge and back in the city they made their way quickly to the clandestine government building. The exterior was small, about the size of a small shop, with no indication of its function. It was nestled snugly in between a lawyer’s office and a dentist, sharing a mish-mash of architecture that only a city bombed during a great war could boast. They pressed a buzzer next to an unassuming door and, after showing ID, were let inside and directed to a metal elevator. The journey downward seemed to take an age, taking them deep into the bowels of the earth. They disembarked and walked swiftly in the only direction they could, down a brightly-lit corridor, emerging into a huge circular room with a lofty, domed ceiling. Michael was sat at a desk in the middle next to a lurching mechanical beast that seemed to be ejaculating bank notes.

  “What the hell are you 2 doing here?” Michael said quickly, rising and walking swiftly over to them. “I’m still recovering from our last meeting.” As if to prove the point, he removed a small bottle of pills from his pocket and took 1. ‘Sir’ looked up at the cameras. Tim shuffled uncomfortably.

  “We need to talk. It’s important.” ‘Sir’ winked surreptitiously then looked up at the cameras again, raising his eyebrow to emphasise the point. Michael looked at him blankly until he realised what he was trying to get at.

  “Ah, don’t worry, the cameras don’t record sound.”

  “Still… if we could go somewhere a little more private?”

  “I think I would prefer to stay right here,” Michael said firmly.

  ‘Sir’ seemed to weigh up his options then nodded slowly. “Okay then, fine. We need your help. Let’s start from the beginning. Inside the money you make is a GPS trans…”

  He stopped talking as Michael let out a laugh. “You really think I didn’t know?”

  “Obviously.”

  “So, now you know.”

  “Do you know that the computer is showing an error message?”

  “I didn’t know that…” Michael replied, his eyes losing focus, thoughts shifting around inside his mind.

  “Do you know what’s going to happen next?”

  “I’m guessing that your computer system will finally be brought online. Congratulations.”

  “NO,” he snapped. “No congratulations. Do you have any idea what is going to happen when everyone finds out what we have been doing?”

  “Lower crime rates?” Michael offered.

  “With no other consequences, I suppose?”

  “Like what? A safer society?”

  “Open your eyes, old man. How do you think people are going to react to the fact that we’ve been watching their every move for the past 9 years? Get used to hearing words like civil unrest.” His face grew redder as he spat out the words.

  Michael shook his head. “Pah. You’re overreacting.”

  “Really? I don’t think so.” He turned away from Michael and stalked away, out towards the door, leaving Tim behind.

  Michael smiled and looked directly at Tim, the lines in his forehead creasing upwards. “Do you know why I’m not angry with you? And do you know why I’m at work today?”

  “I don’t understand,” said Tim with absolute honesty.

  “I should be angry with you, the MSD, the world in general. But I’m not and do you understand why?”

  “No idea…”

  “I understand that while some things we have to do are unpleasant they are very necessary. That’s why I’m at work today. I didn’t call up my boss and say, ‘Sorry, I can’t come in today. I was briefly tortured at the MSD.’ No I did not. I haven’t missed a day since I started. I’m here because it’s my place, my job, my duty. I have fought for th…” Tim walked away leaving Michael talking to himself, he could just make out a ‘how dare you’ over the sound of the mechanical clanking.

  He made his way out and up to the car where the man was sat on the bonnet.

  “You change his mind?” he asked with a thin smile.

  Tim couldn’t help but let out a brief hopeless laugh. “No…”

  “Hah, I knew as soon as he said that he knew about the money that he wouldn’t be open to our idea.”

  “Why?”

  “He must know the commander quite well to be privy to that kind of information…I just hope he doesn’t tell him how we just acted.”

  “It’s all right. At least we didn’t ask him.”

  “Yes, I’m quite sure the commander would have frowned upon the head of the MSD asking the printer to ‘knock up’ a few more notes in order to get the books to balance…”

  *

  Bill had called Gordon up to the house. It had been a day of rumours and whisperings among the workers as Bill had called them all 1-by-1 up to the house for a chat. They had noticed that their numbers were thinning out after about the 4th was called for and didn’t return. By mid-afternoon, the remaining men, including Gordon, held out little hope of a reprieve and sat around in silent melancholia. Gordon was the last to enter the kitchen, presumably because he was the last to join the farm, and was greeted by an unhappy-looking Bill. They sat down.

  “I’m afraid I’m going to have to let you all go. The farm is going under. God only knows what the missus is going to say when she gets back from holiday.” He slumped, defeated and tired into his chair. “Everyone’s cut their orders since that news program. There’s not enough cash to pay next week’s wages.” He scratched his head. “I’ve no idea where it’s all gone. I thought we were doing all right… But then I’ve never had a head for figures. That’s always been the wife’s department.”

  Gordon looked at Bill’s sad face, wanting to tell him about the money but at the same time realising that he would have been fired anyway. This way he was fired and a millionaire. Bill’s wife on the other hand deserved no pity. “I need a drink,” he said, at last.

  The pub was quiet with only 2 customers: Bill and Gordon. Even the barman had disappeared, telling Bill solemnly to help himself, and to add it to the slate. The barman’s disposition had indicated that he knew all about the farm and wasn’t expecting the tab to be paid any time soon. Bill went behind the bar and poured Gordon a lager. He got himself a large whiskey and took the bottle out from behind the bar and over to a table.

  Within the hour, Bill was asleep, his arm enfolding the nearly empty bottle. Gordon had just finished his 3rd pint when the toilet door banged opened, bringing with it a fragrant breeze. He cast an eye quickly down the bar, over the worn wooden surfaces and cheap imitation brass fittings. Squinting to focus on the dingy entrance of the loo, he could just make out a mass of white hair and a red nose. At distance, it looked like a cherry bakewell, resting precariously on top of a mound of old brown clothes.

  “Fancy a game of arrows, my boy?” the cherry bakewell boomed, the lights flickering mome
ntarily over his head. Gordon looked on as he shambled into the light of the main bar, holding a smouldering pipe. Gordon waited for the waves of panic to overcome him. The seconds ticked by. The pipe was lit and vast clouds of rancid sickly smoke engulfed him, each breath sucking it further inside him. After a minute, Gordon realised that he wasn’t afraid; there was no overwhelming urge to run, or even faint. Maybe it was the beer, he thought.

  “I said, do yous want a game of arrows?” The speech was broken, softened and slurred.

  “What are you doing here?” asked Gordon evenly, his hand twitching ever so slightly.

  “We’ve got plans to make,” came the hollow, echoing response.

  “I really don’t think we do,” Gordon responded defiantly.

  “Ain’t ya forgetting what I can do, boy?” He took a step forward, unsteady on his feet.

  “Beer not agreeing with you?” asked Gordon with a knowing smile. He reached behind the bar and pulled another pint into the same glass, then took a long swig.

  “Not at all,” sitting on the nearest seat. “I’s fine.” The words were more slurred this time, with less edge.

  Gordon finished the rest of his pint in several large gulps and poured another. “Take a seat, will ya, boy?”

  Gordon stood still. “I’m okay over here. You want a drink?”

  “Shut up and listen…”

  “No. You shut up and listen. I know who you are now, and I know that I’m going to get better… I’m not going to be anywhere near those chemicals anymore and that means, no more you,” pointing a finger.

  “How’d you knows that, then?” he garbled.

  “I just do… We are 1 and the same, after all.”

  “You needs me boy… Nothin’ will ever get done. Mark my words.”

  “You’re wrong.” Gordon watched as the old brown clothes tried to get up out of the seat and failed, surprised by the weight of the portly stomach and its ever-changing centre of gravity.

  “I’ll be seein’ ya,” was all he could manage in reply.

  “No you won’t,” Gordon muttered under his breath as he turned to leave.

  He didn’t feel comfortable any longer, like a story set up for great things but never being finished. The limbo he had created no longer existed. Everything changes and everything ends, sometimes not very well. But now he had moved too far forward to return. A new chapter had been forced upon him, compelling him to let go of his previous way of thinking. There was a shifting of ideas and concepts. Existence was no longer a construct that he spent his time in and got a minimum wage return. Instead, it was abound with possibilities. He smiled at Bill, snoring obliviously on the table, and waved a last goodbye, for he knew now what the communist Santa Claus inside him wanted to do.

  10

  "He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is required of him.”

  Karl Marx

  He had travelled 5 long miles with the estate agent, sat quietly, head against the window, like long trips taken with the family many years before. The journey was interrupted with constant injections of verbosity from the estate agent, extolling the virtues of living in the country, a quiet retreat away from people. If Gordon had been listening - in between coughing fits - he would have been sold already.

  He perked up as the glorious coastline came into view: vast outcrops of rock with waves crashing at their base; dark greens, purples, browns and every shade in between made up the gaps in the iron-grey landscape.

  “Of course, all that turns a wonderful green in the hotter months.”

  Majestic swathes of land reached upwards at impossible angles towards the sky, the tips surrounded in mist, like a higher power was censoring their beauty.

  “Stop for a moment.” He was infinitely grateful that the agent did. To his left, just out of the car window was another rocky outcrop. It was not very big but, at its base, was a body of water, so still, so reflective. It was indescribable, like a giant mirror. His eyes searched for a ripple to spoil the illusion but found none; they just disappeared into its depth. It was a perfect thing, like a colossal mirror placed level upon the horizon line. No, he thought, a mirror wouldn’t be like that; perhaps if the lake were filled with mercury…but then its splendour would only be passing, transitory beauty, while poison leaked into the land, leeching its disease into soil and plant life.

  “We should get going. I can see you appreciate the outdoors. If this property doesn’t tingle your taste buds, I have another similar thin….”

  Unable to shake the image, Gordon gazed back out of the window, the droning voice in his ear forcing him inwards. A man of property, I’m going to be a man of property, how grown up, he thought.

  “…this is the bridge that marks the beginning of the property. Everything on the island comes with the compound. Excuse the description, but that’s what the previous owners called it.” He jumped out of the car and unlocked a rusty iron gate that blocked their way, its disused hinges screeching in protest.

  “Who were they?” asked Gordon when he returned to the car.

  “They were erm… some of those religious types, more of a cult really. Worth saying up front, or you will only ask later on ‘why is there a giant cross on the lawn.’” The estate agent chortled.

  “Why did they move out?”

  “‘Move out’ might not really be the right choice of words, if you catch my drift.”

  “What?”

  “They passed their evangelical expiry date.” This was accompanied by a louder chortle.

  “You mean?”

  “Yep. Mass suicide. About 12 years ago now. Why do you think this place has been on the market for so long? And at this price too. They’re practically giving it away.” He shook his head in mock disbelief. “If you look to your right, you will see the highest point of the island. Lovely, yes?”

  As Gordon digested the information that his dream could be built upon a mass grave, his eyes shifted to the right. Stretching upwards was a craggy hill with a thick patch of trees at its centre. What got his attention though was in the distance. Squinting down the road he could just about make out what looked like a giant wooden fence. As they got closer, it seemed to resemble a military stockade. The estate agent remained silent while they drove up to the structure and parked. They exited the vehicle and walked to the gateway.

  “You will have no problems with security round here. Not with 8 foot high walls and this solid oak gate.”

  “No kidding…” said Gordon under his breath.

  “Before we go in, I have 3 words for you.” He looked Gordon in the eye with as much sincerity as he could muster. “Potential, potential, potential.”

  He pulled out a giant key from his inside pocket with what looked like a dove carved into the big end. Gordon shook his head.

  As the gate swung open, the full extent of the past became clear. In the centre sat a gravel courtyard surrounded by trees. Dead and decaying leaves covered the martyred earth, swirling around in the stiff sea breeze. Nettles and spiny bushes blanketed most of the surrounding areas. In the middle stood a rusty iron monument about 7 feet tall. The rivulets of congealed metal made it difficult to fathom its origins. Moss and mildew encircled the base, creeping upwards, like the earth was reclaiming lost property.

  “Everyone asks,” the estate agent said, flatly. “It’s a likeness of the prophet Harris. You can just make out the dove in his outstretched hand. Useful though - it used to be a water feature, so it’s already plumbed in.”

  Leading off from the courtyard were 5 short paths, at the end of each, a house. Directly opposite the gate stood the largest house. It used to be a pleasant white-washed affair with lots of large windows. Now grey with black grimy smudges running down the exterior, all the windows were boarded up with damp wood, police tape still clinging to the front door knob.

  “This is the main house, possibly a 5 bedroom property.”

  “What do you mean
, possibly?” asked Gordon.

  “Well… like I said on the phone. I’m not going to show you the interiors because there’s no point. They’re all filled with rubble. This is an exciting project for the right person.”

  The other 4 paths led off to smaller homes, about half the size of the main house. The 2 on the left of the courtyard were ruins, the roofs had collapsed inside and some of the walls had crumbled down, weather-beaten by the elements. Those on the right had fared slightly better with 1 still retaining its roof.

  “Interesting story behind these other houses,” said the estate agent with unrivalled enthusiasm. “They are all built from different materials; something to do with the ascent of mankind I’m told.” He pointed to the ruin on the left. “That 1 is made of mud, would you believe? The bricks are baked soil mixed with straw. The 1 next to it was made of wood. Those 2 on the other side are made of stone and concrete blocks. Funny how only the concrete 1’s survived, the least attractive of the 4.”

  “What’s the main house built from?” asked Gordon with genuine interest.

  “Expensive brick - by the looks of it - with some sort of hi-tech insulated aluminium covering. Those dirty black marks are from the rubber beading, probably the only cheap stuff they used on the whole property. Watch this.” The estate agent walked up to the main house with Gordon following, pulled out a tissue, dipped it into a nearby puddle and wiped it vigorously over a small square on the wall.

  “See, look at that.” He stood back and admired a perfectly white square. “You should look at rebuilds or demolition for the others but this 1 just needs a new interior. Follow me.”