Thought Crimes

by Tim Richards

Astrid Mirch: You took their metaphors literally?

  Dana: We never felt Axcel were being deceptive, or trying to foist something on us. They gave us time to make up our minds.

  We knew what we were getting into.

  Michael: Kellie wanted girls.

  Kellie: Two girls. Now we have one of each. Felicity’s seven, and Luke’s four.

  AM: And your elder boy was named after Michael?

  Michael: That’s right.

  Kellie: This is hard … We’ve never spoken about it.

  AM: Take your time.

  Michael: We have photos, but the company doesn’t want us to show them to you. We weren’t meant to take them, but everyone did. Axcel’s fine with that, so long as they’re not published.

  AM: What’s your relationship with Axcel? Do you still feel like you’re part of the organisation, or just people who once worked for it?

  Kellie: Oh, Axcel’s still a major part of our lives. This house … The shares gave us a security we never could have had otherwise.

  AM: Did you understand what you were taking on?

  Michael: How could you? No one knew what to expect … Kellie and I aged twenty years in the eleven years Michael was alive.

  Kellie: We’d hoped to have some time together before starting a family. We were twenty-one when we got married, and ready to go out teaching. And we wanted to travel. But this struck us as a huge opportunity. We could do something for our country … And there was the house and the shares.

  Michael: We got to experience life in a very intense way. That’s the one thing Axcel promised …

  Kellie: They were right about that! We knew we’d still be young enough to start a proper family afterwards. We could have Michael for the organisation, and then the property and money would give us a head start.

  Michael: The doctors and scientists were genuine people, incredibly supportive. If there was a problem, we had experts to go to … We wish we had that support with these two.

  AM: Was Michael your child, or their child?

  Michael: He was always ours … We understood our responsibilities, and it wasn’t easy being his parents … He had a hard life … But he was our boy.

  Kellie: We loved Mick.

  Michael: Much as you tried to hold back, you couldn’t help it.

  AM: But you knew that their interest in the experiments was military?

  Michael: Not to begin with. When we found out, it seemed obvious.

  AM: Did you resent that?

  Kellie: We worried about what we were putting him through, but there was no point resenting anything. The project was about furthering our knowledge, and once it did that, there’d be unlimited possibilities. Sure, the military applications were their paramount concern, but the Axcel people weren’t going to close their eyes to other applications.

  Email from: Astrid Mirch, Marginal Films

  To: Rachel Ingram, Marginal Films

  R, I need you to clarify the legal situation re. photographs and illicit home-videos. Seems perverse to make a documentary about time-lapse reality if we can’t illustrate these concepts. No shortage of this material. Subjects’ reluctance relates to their original contracts with Axcel. – A.

  AM: You haven’t had more children?

  Ed: We never really wanted to have children.

  Dana: Not a conventional family.

  AM: Did that affect your relationship with Philip?

  Ed: Not at all. We adored Philip. But we understood the purpose of the experiments. The acceleration program was about hot-housing a standing army. Philip was designed to live fast and die young. If you let sentiment intrude, you’d foul the scientists’ findings, and everything he experienced would be wasted.

  Dana: We had a duty, and we respected that duty better than some other couples. The doctors told us to be loving and involved, but not to cosset the boys, or do anything that might add stress to their lives.

  AM: Were you concerned about being seen to be cruel?

  Ed: Us, personally? No. We worried that the experiments might be cruel, that the boys were being put through too much.

  Dana: We never thought that we were cruel … Philip had a complete life. His life was very different to the lives we lead, and it was often hard to imagine how he understood life. But trying to make sense of those things was the whole point.

  Ed: It could make you dizzy …

  AM: What was the most difficult thing?

  Dana: College …

  Ed: When Philip was taken away to the academy …

  AM: At two?

  Dana: Just before his second birthday.

  AM: Which was what in terms of his physical development?

  Thirteen?

  Ed: The same as dogs. Each year Philip aged the same as we do in seven.

  AM: Did he seem like a thirteen-year-old boy?

  Dana: Physically … He was big and strong. He’d started shaving and having wet dreams. He went through puberty at twenty months. Earlier than the others.

  AM: Emotionally?

  Dana: There were issues. He knew he was different. Philip saw our surprise and alarm … In some ways, their world moves terribly quickly, but in others, the slowness is excruciating.

  Ed: Philip coped OK … Better than most.

  Email from: Astrid Mirch, Marginal Films

  To: Will McAllister, McAllister & Marr Investigations

  Will, would you please see what you can find about a BERENSON or BARON or BARRAND, James Henry, believed to be living in the inner eastern suburbs of Melbourne. Age circa 80 to 100. Word has it this JHB was participant in a shadowscheme where age-acceleration was halved. Has either ‘escaped’ or been given (services rendered) permission to live out the rest of his days in the community. Treat this with utmost discretion. May be our only chance to speak to a participant. – A.

  Fiona: I kept a diary while Eric was alive. Re-reading it now, it makes little sense. His time keeps confusing my time … The parents were the real subjects of the experiment. Absolutely.

  They were testing our capacity to adapt, seeing whether dealing with these boys would overwhelm us with a sense of our own mortality.

  Eamon: It did. I couldn’t settle for three years after he died … Imagine how chilling it is to see your son as a frail 83-year-old … I was thirty-six or thirty-seven then, and it was like, Take a deep breath, you’ve still got the best part of your life ahead of you.

  Fiona: We’re not over it. We’re better than we were, but we’re still fucked-up. We’d planned to have other children. It’s something we always meant to do. But now, it’s like, hey, not yet, we’ve both been through something massive.

  Eamon: You’d think the money would compensate. There’s no compensation …

  Fiona: You give birth to a normal, beautiful boy. At ten weeks, he’s beginning to talk and walk. At fifteen weeks, you start toilet training. He’s eating. Always eating. Has the energy of seven boys. Runs till he drops, then sleeps like a dead man. At eight months, he’s reading, at nine months, he goes to school. Just after his first birthday, you’re teaching him to ride a bike.

  Eamon: … And growing the whole time. I’m not kidding. You could hear his bones stretch.

  Fiona: The voice breaks, wet dreams, smelly underarms … all that stuff when he’s twenty-one months … And that’s the easy bit. You can find a way to assimilate those things …

  Eamon: Before we knew it, the organisation carted Eric off to boarding school, and we could only see him every term break, which was what? Ten weeks for us, but a year and a half for him …

  Fiona: You’ve just got used to being parents, and your son’s a man of twenty-one …

  Eamon: Physically … But in their heads, the boys were all over the shop. Clinging to their one or two perfect Christmases and birthdays … And blaming you for the shit they’re getting.

  Fiona: They know what’s going on. They know that they can’t have children, that they’re being kept away from girls, though no one ever tells them that girls
will be off-limits till science is finished with them.

  Eamon: Make the mistake of getting seriously ill and they’ll have your organs cut out before you can blink.

  Fiona: Astrid … You’re a mum. Can you imagine being twenty-seven and having a four-year-old son who looks twentyeight? The way that fucks with your brain?

  Eamon: Eric was angry. We’d let him down.

  Fiona: I know what you’re thinking, These two are well taken care of, what are they whinging about? They barely saw Eric between the ages of two and seven … But not a minute passes that you’re not thinking, What have I done to that boy?

  Eamon: And what is he doing to us?

  Fiona: And, don’t forget, I’d be seeing Eamon in Eric. Physically, they were so similar. Through Eric, I’d see Eamon ageing. In six months, our son went from having a full, thick head of hair to having virtually none. Doctors said those six months felt like three years to him, but I don’t believe that.

  Eamon: Altering growth rates and life expectancy and the intensity of your life experience doesn’t mean that all your perceptions of time will automatically fall into line.

  Fiona: Tell me what I was like when I was a little boy. This is a nine-year-old, who looks and moves like a 65-year-old man … Tell me what I was like when I was little. By that stage, I could hardly remember. It went so fast … And he’d beg you to sing one of those songs.

  Eamon: Bananas in pyjamas are coming down the stairs …

  Fiona: … And he’d cry and cry, and bail-up in his room, singing the songs … Nothing can compensate you for going through that. Not when you love them.

  Email from: Will McAllister, McAllister & Marr Investigations

  To: Astrid Mirch, Marginal Films

  A, no hits on BERENSON/BARON/BARRAND, though a BARRETT, James William, aged eighty-six, died at South Yarra eighteen months ago. Neighbours describe a wealthy, nervous man, sometimes visited by younger women, possibly escorts. Also regularly visited by a couple, late-fifties, who were introduced as daughter and son-in-law, but fit parent profile. BARRETT is said to have aged rapidly in the four years he occupied a ground-floor apartment, this consistent with your understanding of a subject hot-housed at 50 per cent. Will continue to seek information re. visitors. Alex has recently met an informant who can put us in touch with a former Axcel doctor, previously WILKINSON, Michele Therese, now living under an alias. Wilkinson is said to have been prominent in policy formation and program assessment at Axcel International for ten years prior to acrimonious departure. Both intermediary and subject request (substantial) remuneration. Doctor would also require strenuous guarantees re. identity-protection. Await further instructions. – Will

  Kellie: They’re torn in two. Is the world too slow, or are they moving too fast? For them, the world seems so permanent. Yet they have this nostalgia for everything they’ve lost. How could you build an army from young men so desperate to cling to their lost youth?

  Michael: Mickey was high-strung … You expect people to gather wisdom as they grow older, to mature emotionally. Mick went the other way.

  Kellie: He was determined not to be mature … Maturity was the enemy.

  Michael: The denial of sexual intimacy was tougher for them than it would be for normal boys … Their passions are that much more intense.

  Kellie: And Mick’s memory couldn’t cope with the information he had to take in.

  Michael: Even as a kid, he was vague. Like he’d been smoking dope. But his brain was broadbanding information, and chemical changes, and fluctuating emotions.

  Kellie: Mick was so spaced. You’d tell him everything three or four times.

  Michael: He could deal with it. But he didn’t want to. Whenever he got the chance, he’d be reading The House at Pooh Corner, or doing scribble-patterns with pastels.

  Kellie: We didn’t know how to help him.

  Michael: They call themselves Sea Monkeys … Add water and they spring to life. No time to get bored with them before they’re dead.

  Kellie: Mickey hated anything old, anything that had been there for generations. Banks, public buildings … And he hated how songs on the radio would never change. They’d keep playing the same songs for what seemed like years at a time … Always the same fucking songs. He hated cricket. The idea that people could be so cavalier with time …

  Michael: Queues …

  Kellie: Queues sent him ballistic.

  Michael: Now, with Felicity and Luke, it’s agonising. Everything seems so slow. We have to stop pestering them, trying to rush them on to the next stage of development.

  Kellie: It’s messed up our sense of time. We’re emotionally confused … Are we giving them too much attention, or too little?

  Dana: We’re out of sync with the rhythms of nature …

  AM: You, personally?

  Dana: Yes, that’s what acceleration exposes … The danger of rushing nature, of competing with time, as if time and nature are in some way separate from, or outside, us … I’m sure the experiments proved the opposite of what the scientists wanted.

  Ed: These hot-house boys are exactly the kind of soldiers you don’t want in an army … Distressed, anxious, impatient, full of unpredictable energies …

  Dana: Homesick …

  Ed: Everything’s always being lost to them, but home is permanent … If you can’t hold onto time, associations become important …

  Dana: Which is counterintuitive … These boys can expect their parents to be alive all their life. So you’d think they’d feel more secure, that the world around them might seem too constant.

  Ed: They’d be a disaster as soldiers … How would you motivate them? … The last thing Philip cared about was making a better world, or protecting values. So far as he could tell, nothing changed except him and his friends. The future, fuck it!

  Email from: Rachel Ingram, Marginal Films

  To: Astrid Mirch, Marginal Films

  Agree that Wilkinson is crucial. Conditions are OK, but her terms are not. US$100K is way high. Offer AU$30K and go no higher than 50 … If that proves unacceptable, we may need to look at co-production arrangements. – R.

  Eamon: The boys are trained to think quickly and decisively … They know, intuitively, that delay, or failure to act, has long-term implications … Which is fine in theory. They do learn quicker than normal boys. They’re not as distracted by shifting environments. But that doesn’t mean that they’re comfortable or efficient … The boys were so spaced-out! … That’s what the scientists underestimated. Growing up fast is hard work … Suppose hothoused soldiers go into combat with a conventional army. They’re engaged for three weeks … Well, you’d want to be close to victory by then, or have back-up resources, because your boys will have aged five months in that time.

  Fiona: Life’s so intense. They find it difficult to reflect. Reflecting on their experience is agony.

  Eamon: I wouldn’t doubt that Axcel obtained useful data … They’ve on-sold the information and the technologies for a fortune. But did it do the participants any good? Were those boys ever happy? … I don’t think so.

  Fiona: Everyone needs to belong. We need to have a sense of belonging to a particular moment in history, and of that history being crucial to something much bigger still.

  AM: A continuum …

  Fiona: That’s right … To feel part of a continuous history … For them, the past’s a slippery eel. Eric knew that he’d never have any investment in the future. Not beyond a sense of personal sacrifice. He was only worth what he was worth to other people.

  Eamon: He saw death charging at him like a road-train on the wrong side of the freeway.

  Fiona: When he was thirteen months old, Eric broke his leg.

  Broke it in two places. A normal boy of eight or nine might have been laid-up for eight weeks, but Eric’s leg was healed in ten days … What sort of miracle is that? It’s amazing. Think of the advantages to a fighting force … But, if a superior said something that hurt Eric, the hurt stayed with him. He
might age twenty or thirty years, but he’d remember any emotional wound like it was yesterday.

  Eamon: Imagine a vast army of Erics clutching their teds and singing ‘Twinkle Twinkle’.

  AM: Did Axcel offer you psychological counselling?

  Eamon: It was mandatory.

  Fiona: Brainwashing.

  Eamon: No. They meant well, but what could they know? Everything they said was made up on the run … They weren’t trying to cause harm, or to make us suffer, but their business was information gathering.

  AM: Are you surprised that you’re still together?

  Eamon: As a couple? Yes.

  Fiona: Yes and no. We thought about a fresh start … But there’s Eric. Who would he have to honour his memory? And how could you ask someone who hadn’t experienced it to understand what it was like? That’s why the parents are still so loyal to Axcel. They put us through hell, but at least Axcel knows what we went through.

  Email from: Dr Magnus Verde, Axcel International

  To: Astrid Mirch, Marginal Films

  We believe that you have been in contact with a former employee of this organisation, Dr Michele Wilkinson. Be under no illusions, Dr Wilkinson was dismissed for medical reasons after a sustained period of erratic, paranoid behaviour. Her testimony will have no value. Further, she is bound by agreements that prohibit public comment. No film containing Dr Wilkinson’s explicit or implicit critique of our operations could hope to survive legal challenge.

  Yours,

  Dr Magnus Verde

  Email from: Rachel Ingram, Marginal Films

  To: Astrid Mirch, Marginal Films

  The lawyers share your view that Verde’s threats are bluff. Of greater concern to me is AI’s knowledge of our intentions. Avoid direct communication with Wilkinson until certain that her new identity can be safeguarded. Alan suggests that you employ a second crew not au fait with the purpose of the Wilkinson interview. Your comments? – R.