Waiting for the Machines to Fall Asleep

by Waiting for the Machines to Fall Asleep- The Best New Science Fiction from Sweden (retail) (epub)

  "Why's that?"

  "So that you'll get used to it."

  "To what?"

  "To the atmosphere inside."

  Lucas waves a finger to his temple. "Inside the ..."

  "Yes."

  The doctor takes his overall off and hangs it on one of the hangers. He is short and skinny when he stands in only his briefs, and his head seems somewhat too big for his body because of the bushy gray halo of hair that surrounds his half-bald head. But he seems vigorous for his sixty-nine years, which suggests that he's not only been hunched over books and test tubes his whole life.

  Lucas follows the doctor's example, and soon he also stands in just his underwear. He is the old man's opposite physically: nearly two meters tall with a muscular body that doesn't have much subcutaneous fat. On the left shoulder and upper arm, and under the ribs on his left side, long pink scars from knife cuts are visible.

  Kirkegaard reaches out and touches one of the scars with his fingertip. Lucas jerks when touched and takes a step back.

  "Sorry," Kirkegaard says. "But you've obviously been through a lot, and you're standing here. I just got a little more convinced that I made the right choice."

  He turns towards the inner door. "Okay, Christine," he says loudly, "you can open the next one."

  With a mechanical clicking sound from three different spots in the door frame the inner door slides open.

  The next room is smaller than the first. It is equally dimly lit, but with a white sterile feel. The walls, floor and ceiling are covered in a shiny material, and a number of holes are placed at different heights on the two side walls. This room also has a door opposite the first one.

  "Will you close, please?" Kirkegaard asks. Lucas pulls the door shut behind him.

  The doctor claps a few times. Here the sound bounces back with a normal echo.

  "No sound dampening effect?" Lucas asks.

  "No."

  "Why not?"

  Kirkegaard doesn't respond. Instead, he talks straight into the air again.

  "Christine. Shower! "He glances at Lucas. "Better close your eyes!"

  Lucas wants to ask something, when the room turns into an inferno of spouting hot steam that hits their bodies from the holes in the walls. The shower lasts for five very long seconds. Then it stops as suddenly as it started. A couple of dull puffs of white steam residue seeps from some of the holes in the walls. The air has a slightly milky whiteness to it.

  Lucas looks around in confusion while taking a few deep breaths. "Oh, g-god damn ..."

  He looks down, and finds that his underwear is not wet at all. In fact, none of the two are the least bit moist.

  "Dry, saturated steam," Kirkegaard explains, as if he read Lucas thoughts. He looks at him through glasses that don't have a shred of mist. "You've probably never been as clean as you are right now, not even as a baby."

  He turns to the next door and clears his throat. "Christine, next please."

  With three synchronized clicks the inner door opens.

  They enter a room that is almost twice as large as the steam shower. It has the same dim lighting, gray rubberized walls and silent atmosphere as the first separation room. Lucas discovers that he no longer finds the dead silence unpleasant.

  There's a bench with a rubberized top along one wall. On the opposite wall there are hangers with white clothes. Below stands two pairs of white boots – one pair bigger, one slightly smaller.

  "That's yours." Kirkegaard points at one hanger while taking down the clothes from the other and sits on the bench. Lucas feels the clothes; they are very light, the fabric is thin and elastic with a nylon structure.

  "Sisal," Kirkegaard says.

  "Huh?"

  "Sisal. A natural fiber. Where we're going it's important to use organic materials as far as possible."

  Lucas sticks one foot in the trouser leg, which proves to be a panty hose. He sits down to turn the heel of the leg right.

  "It will just be the two of us?"

  "Yes. But in the operating room with the girl, there are more people: the mother, a police officer, a lawyer, an additional therapist and a man from the prosecutor's office. And Christine, of course, in the control room next door."

  "Why all these people?"

  "Whatever comes up during the session, it must be heard first-hand by all parties. A recording would not be enough. The losing party could argue that the recording was manipulated afterwards."

  Lucas gets his other leg into the trousers and twists the heel right. Sees that Kirkegaard is already pulling the shirt over his head.

  "We are going to look for evidence of abuse?" Lucas says.

  "Something like that. A brief recap might be in order." Kirkegaard fixates the hood over his head. "The case is this: we got a five-year old girl, Annelise, who has been sexually abused. Her vagina has been penetrated."

  "There was no DNA?"

  "Not from another person, no. If there was semen or other traces of an offender, they would not have had to remit the girl to us. The medical examination shows that the penetration was made with some kind of tool. It is suspected that the girl's uncle, the mother's brother, performed the deed when he was babysitting the girl in the girl's home. But he denies it completely."

  Lucas takes down his shirt from the hook. Feels the elastic fabric.

  "Can anyone else have done it?"

  "There's no indication that anyone else was in the house."

  "Can the girl have done it to herself?"

  Kirkegaard stops what he is doing and looks at Lucas. "I hope Christine didn't have the intercom on, so that the mother heard that."

  Lucas looks apologetically at Kirkegaard. "Sorry. It's probably still in my blood."

  Kirkegaard nods slowly. "You were a damn good cop, that's why you got the job. However, you're not here to think like a cop, but to make sure that I get in and out again in one piece."

  Lucas pulls the shirt over his head. Sticks one arm in, then the other.

  "Okay. I will try to remember that."

  "Good." Kirkegaard puts his feet into the boots and starts to tie them on. "And to answer your question – because it's not irrelevant – the tool that penetrated Annelise's vagina was too thick. A little girl, or any normal person for that matter, would have fainted from less pain than that. It is simply highly unlikely that it could have happened in any other way than by a perpetrator. The uncle is the prime suspect, and we will find evidence of that. Ready?"

  Lucas corrects the rubber hood on his head. Then presses his feet into the boots.

  "Yes."

  The two men look like smooth white mannequins with human faces.

  "Christine," Kirkegaard says. "Open the last door."

  With a heavy mechanical rattle the door swings open before them, and they walk in.

  The next room is the biggest so far, about four times five meters. The same kind of dull walls and super quiet atmosphere, and it is sparsely lit by spotlights. On the opposite wall sits a perfectly round metal door. The opening behind it cannot be more than one meter in diameter, and it sits about half a meter above the floor. A week ago Lucas would have guessed that it led to a bank vault. Now he knows better.

  "The PSIscanner?"

  "Yes."

  Lucas looks around the room. On the right wall is a one meter high metal cabinet with closed doors. On the left wall sits three black monitors, one above the other, at eye level and next to them a large keypad. Kirkegaard walks over and turns on the monitors. Then he presses a combination on the keypad. On the screens different angles of a sterile white room appear. On one a gurney is seen with a small unconscious girl whose head is resting inside a cat-scan-like apparatus – the PSIscanners other end.

  "Annelise?" asks Lucas.

  "Yes. And there's the mother and the others." Kirkegaard points to the next screen. There, a group of people are seated behind a white wall with a glass window through which they can see Annelise and the PSIscanner.

  "There's Christine." On t
he third screen they see a middle-aged woman in white clothes. Christine waves to the screen. Apparently she can hear them.

  "And there we are." Kirkegaard points to a small screen on the control table in front of Christine where tiny images of Kirkegaard and Lucas are seen.

  "Is everyone in place?" Kirkegaard asks.

  "We are waiting for the prosecutor," Christine replies. "He'll be here in ten minutes."

  "Okay. We'll prepare."

  Kirkegaard walks over and opens the wall cabinet. Lucas stands behind him and looks at the things on the cabinet shelves.

  "This one's for you." Kirkegaard lifts down a two decimeter long tubular container with two claw grips and a hole at one end. "Are you right or left handed?"

  Lucas holds out his right arm. The doctor places the container on the upper side of the forearm with the muzzle pointing away from Lucas and fixes it with the gripping claws. He opens a hatch at the rear end of the container and finds three small cords. At the ends of the cords are tiny needles. Kirkegaard feels with his thumb along the muscles of Lucas upper arm until he finds what he is looking for.

  "This may sting a little," Kirkegaard says and runs the first needle into the arm, followed by the second and the third. Then he activates the container by flipping a switch under a protective cover. A number of red lights lit up along the tubular body and turns green one by one. Lucas feels a warm pulse spreading along his forearm toward the shoulder.

  "It's a –"

  "A stunslinger. I know," says Lucas. "It fires energy bursts. I control it with my nervous system. Been there, done that."

  "At the riots?"

  "Yes."

  "This one is a little different. Weaker. Unlike your previous job you probably won't be using it."

  "Okay."

  "This produces energy bursts ranging up to about four hundred volts. The same strength as in electric shocks. We just want to numb temporarily, not eliminate. This, on the other hand ..."

  Kirkegaard takes down a bag and opens the lid. There are three compartments, each one containing something that looks like small spotlights with feet. Lucas takes one up, finding that it's unusually heavy for its size.

  "The batteries are extremely compact," says Kirkegaard. "Lasts one hundred years. And they are more powerful than your stunslinger: six hundred volts. If we have to eliminate something in there we just place these around it and heat them up."

  Lucas nods.

  "They will last 'til the girl turns a hundred?"

  "Exactly. Then we have these little lighthouses." Kirkegaard picks up a lamp the size of a hockey puck. "They are placed at the starting point. So that we find our way back."

  Kirkegaard straps the bag to his back and fixates it with a second strap across the chest. Then he takes down two small wireless intercom transmitters. Puts one behind his ear and pulls out a cord that he squeezes into the ear canal. He hands over the other to Lucas.

  "Let's test them. Christine ..."

  "Loud and clear." Christine's voice sounds in the ears of the two men. "Lucas?"

  "One two, one two ..."

  "Thank you."

  Kirkegaard walks over to the monitors. Looks at the one with the gathered people.

  "Has the prosecutor arrived yet?"

  "Five more minutes," replies Christine. "You'll have to be patient. And, eh – doctor ..."

  "Yes?"

  "Have you told him about the Damien factor?"

  Lucas looks from the screen over at Kirkegaard. "The Damien factor?"

  Kirkegaard does not meet his gaze.

  "Apparently not," says Christine.

  "I want to stick to the facts at this point," the doctor replies shortly.

  "I think you should tell him anyway."

  "In due time. Now, please check if the prosecutor has arrived. Get back to me when we shall proceed."

  "Will do." Christine turns her microphone off. On the screen they see her reach for the telephone.

  Lucas lets his gaze drift to the monitor with the unconscious Annelise. She looks so small where she is lying under the thin sheet, halfway into the huge PSIscanner. Now he notices that the front part of her head is shaved, and a number of wires are connected to different points on her forehead.

  "How's the loneliness?" asks Kirkegaard.

  Lucas jerks. "Loneliness?"

  "Are you lonely?"

  Lucas gives the doctor a questioning look. "I'm afraid I don't understand the question."

  Kirkegaard looks at Lucas; behind the coke-bottle glasses his eyes contain something that Lucas cannot place.

  "I'm asking because we are about to enter something that can be a bit stressful ..." Kirkegaard explains. "Not everyone is able to literally be inside another person's psyche. The host mind becomes, for obvious reasons, extremely dominant: it permeates the place because it is the place. The guest mind, the one that is temporarily present within it, may experience the stay as overwhelming in a negative way – almost abusive – if it has an aptitude for weaknesses. Like loneliness. The loneliness becomes unbearable."

  The loneliness becomes unbearable.

  Lucas looks at little Annelise in the big machine. Unconscious, victim of a horrible crime.

  There will always be evil acts – those exposed to them, those who perform them, and they who fight against them. Lucas has always seen himself as the latter. That was why he became a cop in the first place. But to enforce the law and to obey the law doesn't always go hand in hand, as Lucas slowly came to realize during his twelve years in the force.

  The breaking point came at the election in 2026, when Ossian Hammarskjöld became prime minister. His reforms meant less funding for police and judiciary, and that killed the spirit in the force a little and, with it, the moral compass of many of Lucas's colleagues broke. Instead of living by the law they had sworn to follow, more and more colleagues fell into the criminals' behavior. The general attitude became: if we can't have the resources to defeat them with our methods, we'll crack them with theirs. As Lucas saw more and more colleagues and friends turn into criminals he made a choice: I let them go on, as long as I don't have to behave in the same way myself. He refused to be corrupted.

  But one day – he should have realized that it would come sooner or later – he found himself standing at the crossroads.

  It started when his colleagues got wind of a major drug deal: a courier would switch a bag of money for fifteen kilos of pure cocaine. The location was a parking garage in downtown Stockholm. The money courier and two men arrived with the drugs. When both the drugs and money were in sight Lucas's colleagues advanced and took the criminals out with their stunslingers. So far everything had gone according to plan.

  Then things took an unexpected turn. Lucas's colleagues had made up an alternative plan without Lucas's knowledge: they simply left the criminals behind in the garage, taking the money and drugs for themselves. With all that Lucas had seen in the force, it was something he could live with, as long as he didn't have to take his share of the haul.

  Then things got really crazy. One of the drug dealers, a burly, one hundred and fifty kilos Romanian, had not been knocked out by the stunslinger burst. When his disoriented mind realized that the bastard cops were taking all the goods he pulled his automatic weapon and started shooting. That's something that cops are always prepared for, business as usual. Lucas's colleagues dived for shelter, weapons drawn, returning fire the second the first burst echoed in the garage.

  The mother with her three daughters in tow, however, did not. Appearing out of nowhere they were caught in the crossfire on their way to their car. Two of the girls died instantly, the third passed away later at the hospital. The mother miraculously survived without being hit by a single bullet.

  Lucas's moral crossroad appeared as a result of this event, in the court of law. Was the death of the three children caused when the criminals opened fire on the police officers that where there to stop criminal business? Or did they die as a result of criminals opening fire o
n the thieving police?

  Lucas had to choose between loyalty and morale. Become a dirty cop, or remain clean. He chose the latter.

  From that moment on his existence in the station was a total vacuum. No one spoke to him, no one wanted to work with him, nobody saw to his interests. He was relegated to internal services where he sat in a room all by himself, pushing papers that meant nothing to nobody.

  The loneliness eventually became unbearable. So he quit.

  He stares silently at the monitor with little Annelise, weighing his words. Then he glances at Kirkegaard. "I have no wife, if that's what you mean."

  Kirkegaard smiles. "You be grateful. I have one, and it's a never-ending nagging. I often say that I wouldn't have been so successful at what I do if I didn't have a wife – I've been here to avoid being at home."

  Lucas smiles.

  "Doctor." Christine's voice sounds from the speaker.

  "Yes?"

  "The prosecutor is here now."

  "Thank you, Christine! Then we can proceed."

  Kirkegaard walks up to the PSIscanners' round metal gate. Picks up two pairs of thin glasses with yellow plastic lenses and hands one to Lucas.

  "Ready?"

  Lucas puts on the glasses. They follow the shape of his head smoothly and make the room around him appear yellow.

  "I think so."

  "Good." Kirkegaard gives the surveillance camera a thumbs up.

  A set of magnetic locks around the PSIscanner port unlocks with a muffled bang that makes the floor vibrate. The round door extends an inch, then smoothly swings open on well-oiled hinges.

  The two men stare into a magnificent luminous nothing.

  "Well then." Kirkegaard crouches and enters the round opening. Lucas closes his eyes for a few seconds before he follows.

  First it's just a gray-white haze without reference points around them. Not even the ground is visible (or is it a floor? Lucas doesn't know, it feels solid but sags slightly). Around their feet a mist seems to transpire right out of the ground, creating a milky atmosphere.

  Kirkegaard walks a few steps in front of Lucas and gets a lamp out of the bag. He puts it down in front of him and stomps on it. Immediately a bright light illuminates the area with periodic flashes.