by Linda Taimre
Dr. Leena Kitt. Kiah, what have you found?
Harriet had heard of the doctor – anyone working in the department dealing with Paralytic Joe had heard of Dr. Leena Kitt. She was eccentric, sweet, occasionally brilliant though mostly just average, working over at the Gates of Science. Harriet considered the Gates of Science to be fairly unimpressive, though she was one of the few. Most regarded it with the kind of respect reserved for upstarts and young geniuses who were able to prove themselves again and again. Dr. Kitt focused on BX59 and had been a critical source of additional research that Harriet’s department had used many times.
So what has Dr. Kitt come up with this time?
Harriet’s judgmental tone withered when she noticed who Dr. Kitt had emailed: Lord Belliscoe. Now this made it interesting. Even someone as eccentric as Dr. Kitt wouldn’t email a Lord of the Parliament without good reason. Suddenly excited, Harriet opened the report and started to skim through. There was a long introduction regarding the collected data, how, when, where, which patients, why those patients. Harriet glanced at the table of contents and read down until something caught her eye: a chapter entitled ‘It is Growing’. Suitably ominous for my taste. Let’s see what Dr. Kitt means by that.
Harriet skipped ahead to that chapter. She started to read.
I am. I am. I am. I am. I am. I am. I am. I am. I am. I am. I am. I am. I am. I am. I am. I am. I am. I am.
A thought rebounded in an area bounded only by the thin surface of a stretched being. It flicked among atoms, forming and evolving.
I.
Want.
I.
Want.
I. Want.
I want .
I want . I want . I want .
So, the beast is hungry. Belliscoe stared at Dish 20, considering the force contained there.
Leena continued. “The question is, what does Dish 20 eat? And my theory is, it eats us, and it’s that consumption that is The Fading.” Belliscoe wasn’t reacting, and now that she had started, she just had to get the words out. “Given the evidence and severity of The Fading, I would think it wise to investigate any possibility open to us, any lead that may give us a head-start on a cure. With funding, I would be able to start that immediately. I have drawn up several funding options that I’m happy to go through with you right now.”
Belliscoe ignored Leena. She waited, balancing on the outside edge of her shoes. Belliscoe was thinking. On the one hand, yes, yes, he wanted her to follow her instinct and discover the truth. Honestly, I would almost want to be in the lab with her. But the other hand was the hand that fed him, and it could take that food away. It was the hand that could choose to help him or harm him.
“Dr. Kitt.” Belliscoe drew himself up sharply and almost barked her name. Leena started. Crud, she thought.
“Yes?”
“Thank you for taking the time to discuss this with me. I am grateful, given your busy schedule. Now, you say that you haven’t revealed the full scope of your discovery to anyone?”
“No,” said Leena. And I’m starting to think that may have been a mistake.
“Good. I think for now we’ll keep it this way as I can’t see a benefit in letting them know. I can’t confirm the funding for at least another few days.”
“A few days? That’s much faster than I expected.”
“When you’re dealing with something that could potentially save the lives of our citizens, we can’t stand on ceremony. Dr. Kitt, I’ll have to ask you to come with me and present this to the Lords and Ladies.”
“The Lords and Ladies? I understood you represented them,” Leena said.
“I do, I do. With a question this large and important, however, the input of my esteemed colleagues would be valuable.”
Leena didn’t like the idea of going anywhere with Lord Belliscoe. She’d taken to sleeping on the camp bed in her office – she barely wanted to spend more than a few hours away in case something changed. “I would really like to stay in the lab, if possible, to monitor developments, any changes in Dish 20. Could I not simply comms them?”
“I’m afraid that the sensitivity of this issue demands a face-to-face meeting, and my colleagues could never possibly find the time to come down to this lab for a presentation. This point is, unfortunately, non-negotiable.” Lord Belliscoe nodded at Dr. Kitt and let his gaze rest lightly on her eyes.
Leena was unnerved, so she stood silently, considering her options. Finally, she stepped forward. “Alright. I’ll come up to the Spire. When would be convenient for your colleagues?”
Belliscoe sighed as he drew out his communicator to alert the driver. The other hand .
“Now.”
As a senior HR assistant for GrowForth, Kiah was currently on rotation in the redundancies department. Her disposition suited the work: she was compassionate and enjoyed listening to others. People tended to like her big teeth.
“Morning kiddo, how’s it going?” Kiah asked her co-worker, Michael Michaelson.
“Oh, you know, getting on, getting on,” he replied.
“Getting old, getting old, more like,” Kiah countered as she rounded the cubicle she shared with Michael, near the toilets and the fire exit, far from the window and the kitchenette. Jackpot of a location. “Budge over, oh Michael son of Michael. I need to fit in here too. What have we got today?”
“New task. Nothing good.”
Mick, as he liked to frequently remind Kiah, was technically above her in the hierarchy, though only by virtue of him having joined GrowForth a mere four months before her. It’s lucky I like the bastard.
“Nothing good?”
“What we’ve been dreading.”
“Oh shit. The Fading.” Kiah dug her nails into her palm.
“The GrowForth employees that have…” Mick let his eyes flick towards the sky, gesturing an Almighty that he still wanted to believe in.
“Shit.” Kiah sat still for a moment. Dealing with redundancies wasn’t fun. Dealing with the paperwork for the victims of an awful disease… This is going to be horrible .
Mick continued. “Apparently the number of GrowForth personnel affected by The Fading has grown to such a number that they require us to work exclusively on this until further notice.”
“Hadeel told you?”
“Yes.”
“She cry while she told you?”
“No. But then she went to her office and closed the door for 20 minutes.”
Hadeel was the HR Director of GrowForth. An excellent manager, efficient, stern when she needed to be. She took it hard when people started dying within the ranks. And then Suresh, her personal assistant, was put into quarantine and she’d begun crying a lot, resulting in a rarely interrupted river tracking down her face. Her productivity hadn’t dropped much, just the quality of her makeup.
Kiah sighed deeply down to her belly. She’d go and chat with Hadeel at lunch, see how she was holding up. Maybe Suresh will recover. Maybe . She turned back to Mick, determined to be professional and treat the files of these souls with the respect afforded to those fallen in battle. This was a dastardly, terrifying situation and she needed to do her bit.
“So, Mick. Who’s first? What was their name?”
“Sasha Hyo, Electrical, 11 th floor.”
“Sasha Hyo, Electrical, 11 th floor.”
Leena gazed out of the tinted windows of Lord Belliscoe’s parliamentary vehicle. It was about as big as you could get – beaten only, perhaps, by the Prime Lady’s car. It glided smoothly through the streets of South Bank and crossed the river to the centre of the city, guided expertly by a driver that was not needed but employed mainly due to tradition. The old government building reared up over the river, grey-black steel and massive vents. It stood empty, its floors currently planned to be emergency quarantine areas should The Fading enter the protectorate.
Leena stared awkwardly out of the rear window up towards the ceiling of the protectorate. Her skin prickled as her body worked to find the equilibrium between her vi
ewpoint and the direction she was moving. All she saw was the sky, fine and breezy weather with potential rain later in the day. This was how Leena liked her protectorate days – pleasant, with a chance of anarchic rainstorms. She twisted back around and tried to sneak a look at Lord Belliscoe. She wanted to stare at him, examine his fleshy hands and pull at his wrinkly ears. She wanted to check under the skin of this man, this agent of the government who could set her research free. Instead, she looked out of the window and held her hands tightly.
Lord Belliscoe ostensibly stared out his side at the passing pedestrians. Radley Belliscoe had lived his entire life inside the protectorate. Of course, as a member of the Spire, he had a duty to experience life outside to better serve the people he represented. He had fulfilled this duty several times over his 71 years on Earth. He had been to the site of his ancestral home – a disappointing visit, as it now housed a chain Italian restaurant that served middling pasta and did not have proper ventilation. He knew that was illegal, but he ignored it that day, not wanting to further dampen the underwhelming experience. He had also been on a few exploratory trips to the outside sections of the river to be educated on water pollution, and asked to provide more money to ensure the purity of the filtered river bend within the protectorate. Although his position was hereditary, he took his duties seriously and wanted to be a good representative of the people who had not elected him to represent them.
The car slowed its pace when it reached the Queen Street junction. The pedestrianised area of Queen Street stretched before them, home to boutique juice stalls, luxury shops, and a handful of classy restaurants set above the street, with balconies shrouded by palm fronds. The squawks and chatter of bright parrots was a constant soundtrack, the birds having been trained to fly only within the area of Queen Street. Turning the centre of the city into an almost-aviary was one of the aspects of the protectorate of which Lord Belliscoe was most proud.
A cockatoo screeched and Dr. Kitt flinched. Whoever thought it was a good idea to encourage a bunch of shrieking parrots to live in the middle of our city was insane. How can anyone concentrate with this racket? She clenched her discomfort and turned to Lord Belliscoe.
“Is your office near here or are you based in the Spire itself?”
“Oh, the Spire. I just always ask Matthews to slow when approaching this junction. I love to see the birds. “
“I see.” Leena was unnerved by such sentimentality coming from this large, aging man.
“Magnificent,” said Belliscoe. “Matthews. Onwards – the office.”
The driver guided the car out of the resting bay and turned it towards the Spire. The Spire was the home to all government agencies of Queensland. Every capital city in Australia had a Spire, they were all interlinked and shared information seamlessly between one another. The Brisbane Spire housed the Offices of the Lords and Ladies, as well as the Prime Lady and departmental heads. Since the bastardisation of democracy into a system of hereditary leadership, the Lords and Ladies had been considered the representatives of the people despite not actually having been given agency by the people. For the most part, people outside the protectorates had too many worries – like how to get to work without dying of asphyxiation – to question this too closely.
This system had been created in response to the inaction over the worsening climate and the need to deal with the increasing threat of world-wide war. Scared and seemingly without options, the people voted for the institution of the Lords and Ladies as leaders who could make decisions amongst themselves without needing to spend time proposing budgetary alternatives to the public. When the first Lady died, the question of who to succeed her was raised. Almost immediately, her daughter came forward and said that she had been given the power from her mother on her deathbed. There were legal battles, and eventually the young woman was given the title of Lady, thus setting into motion a hereditary system of succession.
Lord Belliscoe had taken the place of his aunt. She was childless and so had to pick someone from all his cousins, something Radley knew since he was 12 years old. Small, twisted thoughts started to pull together into a plan. He spent the ensuing 17 years getting close to his aunt, visiting her as much as possible and sending flowers, presents, video messages whenever she had a stressful day at the Spire. When she died, Radley Belliscoe was named the youngest Lord ever at the age of 29.
A shadow fell across the car. From the ground, it wasn’t clear just how tall the Spire was. Its girth was enormous compared to the other buildings around it, spanning a full city block by itself. This vast base made of black marble and colossal concrete blocks gave the impression of a short, squat box. In reality, when viewed at a distance against the skyline, it was clear that the building earned its name by being genuinely lofty.
Dr. Kitt had always liked the Spire. It was solid. It was strong. It had an efficiency of design. The concrete blocks were grey and gritty, unfinished and perfunctory to serve as cornerstones for the enormous structure. The black marble had an everlasting deepness to it, stretching between the grey in wide panels, black holes in the middle of Brisbane City. The cleanliness of the air and the constant filtration within the protectorate meant that the marble had a depthless shine. The blackwood doors were three feet thick, one in the middle of each side, and each was carved with different designs. One was ornate, roses and brambles intertwining with one another and reaching up to the top of the frame, the details giving a sense that the vines would soon grow off the door and climb up the side of the Spire. One was art deco in its design, soaring arches and straight lines, with a sense of peace and elegance. The third was designed by the Koori people, a collaborative artistic effort in conjunction with the most celebrated artist in the land – it depicted a large snake, swirling outward from the centre surrounded by a carved landscape. On the fourth door was a simple sphere, so each opened side had a semicircle, symbolising the universal value of pi and the idea of perfection in unity.
These doors were splendid and intimidating, standing at 12 metres tall. They were the only obvious ornamentation that garnished the Spire. The doors could close and then withstand any amount of battering, but they actually remained open almost all of the time. The glass security locks that lay just inside the lobby were the real gates into the Spire. The blackwood artworks were reminders of the best of humanity, the best of art and the best of collaboration. They would only ever close in the case of a government shutdown or a national emergency.
Belliscoe’s driver turned down the ramp for the carpark that was housed below the Spire.
“This way, Dr. Kitt. My colleagues are expecting you.”
“Already?”
“They have cleared 20 minutes from their schedules to see you. Your information is a priority and must be addressed as soon as possible.”
Leena’s nerves skyrocketed. Suddenly self-conscious about her grubby doctor’s coat – something she liked to wear almost as a prop – and the fact that she hadn’t showered in 36 hours, Leena tripped over her own laces as she followed Lord Belliscoe to the elevator. She couldn’t possibly be taken seriously.
“Have no concern over your apparel. My colleagues are happy to forgive the lack of ceremony given the need to expedite this presentation. And they are used to scientists having their own dress code.”
He read me too quickly, Leena chided herself. She smoothed her brown skin into what she assumed was a good poker face. She caught sight of herself in the mirrored back of the elevator. Looking like a haughty bitch. That’ll have to do for now.
Where am I. What where am I.
More.
Must have more.
Looking up from her desk, Harriet pushed her glasses back through her tight blonde curls, rubbing her eyes. So BX59 is linked to The Fading, according to Dr. Kitt . She guffawed – none of her colleagues looked over, they were used to Harriet’s odd outbreaks. Did we create The Fading? How could this possibly be true? The report was thorough, though Harriet couldn’t fully connect the dots. Somethin
g was missing.
Suddenly scared, her mind roiling, she stood up from her desk and grabbed the thin disk. She couldn’t let anyone else see this. She strode away decisively, her boots striking the carpeted floor with a confidence that she did not feel. Standing in the lift, she took the 20 seconds of the journey to look at herself in the mirror. Taking a measure of her big nose, big hair, and broad face, she told herself the words her mother wrote on her last birthday card. Sweetheart, you’re a big human being, and that’s never going to change. Do something big with your life and keep yourself happy.
The elevator dinged and opened at the HR floor. Harriet paced towards Kiah’s desk. Pausing at the glass door, she saw Kiah’s head, bent deep over her computer. Kiah had some sadness in her eyes that Harriet rarely witnessed. Harriet watched Mick say something expressively, making Kiah laugh. Good on you, Michael Michaelson. With a name like that you can’t help but be a clown. Harriet knocked on the door as she opened it. “Mick, Mick, twice in one day! Keeping the good name of Michaelson pure?” she asked.
“Strong as always, Harrie. Working hard?”
“Always.”
“And how’s the lovely wife?”
Harriet twinged – Mick didn’t know about Katherine, did he? No, Kiah would have never said anything. He’s just making small-talk, you loser. Answer him. “Lovely as ever. And yours?”