by Adam Steel
Displacement of Alpha prisoner batches of grade C offences to Beta Wings for containment pending review.
The rest of the papers that outlined the specifics of the orders fluttered to the ground as Clarke’s fingers tore into the sides of the document. The wheels in her mind spun wildly as she absorbed the information. TALOS were taking over Beta Wing. She’d lose her access. Marseilles would be out of her reach after the transfer. All her time was going to go on rehabilitation for Alpha Wing prisoners? She would see about that! She stormed off (wearing an expression darker than her uniform) with the crumpled letter in her hand, in the direction of Governor Taskin’s office.
Taskin’s secretary didn’t even attempt to question Clarke as she stomped past in the direction of the governor’s office. Her salary just wasn’t worth it. It was only the double reinforcement of the glass door that prevented it from smashing as Clarke slammed the door behind her.
Clarke brandished the letter in her right hand like a sabre and threw it down on the desk in front of Governor Taskin.
‘What’s this?’ she demanded: her face full of fury.
Taskin’s copy of the document was spread out before him. He was only halfway through pouring through the specifics of the directives himself.
‘It appears the transfer request last week was only the first stage,’ he said.
He looked very confused.
‘These directives are coming down from Mason Deckler’s office. Mason Henson has also signed off on them. It seems they are taking the running of Beta Wing away from us. Mason Deckler’s sending down one of his TALOS teams to oversee it,’ he tried to explain cautiously, as he turned another page.
Clarke exploded. ‘Are you fucking telling me they’re having me REPLACED?’
Taskin looked up from the document in surprise. Clarke’s outburst wasn’t unexpected but the ferocity of it took him by surprise. He quickly tried to regain his composure and continued.
‘No…no, of course not – nobody is being replaced. We are just being re-assigned to Alpha. It will allow us to focus more on rehabilitating the population. That isn’t a lost cause. We can leave the turnkey tasks to TALOS.’
He glanced over at the latest award that he had been presented with at the Masquerade Ball. It was for his ‘outstanding contribution to the rehabilitation programme’, and he had already had it framed and mounted on the wall.
Clarke slammed her hand down hard on his desk and he jumped and looked up at her furious face. Clarke was turning an ugly shade of plum.
‘NOBODY IS COMING IN OVER MY HEAD AND TAKING OVER MY SHIT!’ Clarke yelled at him.
Taskin stammered.
Clarke looked murderous and for an instant he considered hitting the panic alarm under his desk. Her foul outburst alone would be cause enough for him to dismiss her. Of course that would look bad. Having to replace the Alpha warden during this transitional period would doubtless be ‘most unwelcome news’, in Mason Henson’s offices. ‘Most unwelcome news,’ in Henson's office usually resulted in career decapitations. Usually the first into the head-baskets were the originators of the ‘most unwelcome news’.
Taskin knew that Clarke wouldn’t go quietly, and she could make his life very difficult before she was levered out of the door.
He made a mental note.
“As soon as TALOS is in and overseeing Beta (and the transition and the prisoner transfers are done) I’ll retire her, nice and quietly. From a distance. I’ll have my secretary handle that. Arrange for a day away. Good for me. Good for the prison. Good for the statistics.”
Taskin smiled at her falsely and said as carefully as he could manage.
‘It’s not like that at all. We are still going to be running Alpha Wing and we even get pay rises to go along with it. This is going to make our jobs much easier. It makes sense.’
Clarke was not impressed. She wasn’t interested in the money. Her world ran on suffering and the best suffering was found in the Beta Wing. The Wing, from which there would be no release, no escape from her. The Wing, where she could take her own sweet time breaking the convicts. Convicts like Marseilles.
It was her, own, private playground.
It was her wing.
Taskin took the brief lull in shouting to continue making his point.
‘You will still be having all your duties on Alpha Wing and we now have the exact details of the transfer for Marseilles and the others, which, of course, you’re still going to be handling. It was what you wanted, wasn’t it?’
Taskin pushed a piece of paper across the desk towards her, hoping the confirmation that Marseilles was getting his life term, might placate her.
It didn’t.
The realisation that Marseilles was transferring out of her reach (on top of everything else) brought her rage into new territory.
‘THERE’S NO FUCKING WAY I’M STEPPING BACK FOR SOMEONE ELSE!’ she screamed.
Taskin kicked back in his chair; some of his confidence restored. Mentally he continued to plot Clarke’s dismissal. A few keystrokes on his computer had made it easy to record this conversation. He felt a burst of smugness as Clarke dug her own grave.
‘It’s a direct order straight from Mason Deckler’s office at Arethusa. Mason Henson’s signed it off. What do you expect me to do?’ he finished.
Clarke merely glared back in response grating her teeth.
‘If you have a real problem with it, why don’t you send them some feedback from the suggestion terminal?’
He gestured towards the Info-Com console next to the door where a message was printed on the screen, followed by a helpful flashing cursor.
It read:
“WELCOME FELLOW UTOPIANS.
DO YOU HAVE AN IDEA OR A SUGGESTION TO IMPROVE OUR GREAT SOCIETY TODAY?
WE WOULD LOVE TO HEAR FROM YOU”
Clarke eyed him suspiciously. His sudden flow of confidence had put her on edge. Privately she regretted the last few minutes. She had temporarily lost control and forgotten who it was she was screaming at. The reality began to dawn on her.
‘You can’t control these animals without me Taskin. You know that. You need me.’
Taskin smirked and Clarke caught the meaning. Now the hard cases in Beta Wing were being handled by TALOS, Taskin didn’t need her anymore. She would be made obsolete. Clarke snatched up the transfer papers and turned to leave. She paused at the Info-Com panel and hammered a few keys before marching out of the office.
Silence fell across the room.
Taskin’s personal secretary poked her head around the door.
‘Clarke got the letter then sir?’ she questioned.
Taskin nodded. ‘Yes. Just as well they didn’t send down a directive for a pay cut to go with it,’ Taskin replied.
The secretary caught a glance at the Info-Com screen. The suggestion was followed up by:
“FUVK YOU”
The cursor was still blinking. She tapped lightly on the delete key and quickly wrote out a new suggestion.
It read:
PERIODIC MENTAL HEALTH SCREENING
FOR CURE PRISON WARDENS
She pressed: [SEND]
Chapter 15: The Case of Nicholas Oggwell
Jon Li’s Penthouse: Sector One
Wednesday 11th July
Ellie lay naked between the silken sheets of her bed. It was still warm from where they had made love earlier. She pulled the pillow to her face and breathed in his scent. Jon Li had left to walk the ten minutes that it took him to get to the Fin-Sen building where he worked. Ellie thought of the nights spent with Jon Li making love with a passion and intensity that left her feeling whole again. She treasured every minute she spent with him in the beautiful penthouse. It was as though all of her dreams had come true in the shape of her Mr Right, Jon Li.
Life was good.
She closed her eyes and recalled the Masquerade Ball a few days before. She imagined herself still there in the midst of it all, dancing with him. When she opened her eyes the blue dress
she had worn at the ball was still hanging on the wardrobe door. It was a beautiful reminder of that glorious night. She was wishing that Irene and Bridget had been there as well.
Jon Li had not been exactly right when he had said that she would enjoy telling Irene and Bridget about the ball.
She would have, except the conversations had not quite gone as planned.
Ellie recalled her two phone conversations with her friends.
Bridget had been characteristically chatty and had quickly turned the conversation around from Ellie’s news on the ball into ‘Bridget News’. She had soon broken off into a monologue about some new pay rise she was getting and something about finally being able to escape Doctor Death up at Blair Ridge. She had been going on about it being part of some new shake up at the facility.
Ellie had shuddered at the mention of Doctor Death. She remembered Victor Archer from the tour of Genie. She had had to bite her lip to stop her from agreeing with Bridget about the man. She had also recalled the TALOS warning not to mention the incident when they were questioning her down in the hellish bowels of Arethusa.
Bridget had not acknowledged the uncomfortable silence and had continued unabated into a string of carefully constructed invitations that Ellie must come up and see her in Eden City soon. She was also demanding (in her friendly way) to see Jon Li.
“Jon and Brian will get along so well! Besides a little cosmetic dentistry never hurt to spice things up in a man!” she had yammered.
Ellie had politely deflected the invitations. She had wanted Jon Li all to herself for just a little bit longer before she introduced him to Bridget and Irene. She was already getting sick of the way in which Bridget had (yet again) shifted the conversation onto how impeccable Brian was with his stupid dentistry.
She had politely ended the conversation with Bridget and moved onto Irene. Irene had sounded low and miserable on the phone. Irene had not attended the Masquerade ball party. She had spent the time instead throwing up after a bout of morning sickness. Ellie had suspected that the withdrawal from her anti-depressants and cigarettes might have been a factor – along with Irene’s pregnancy hormones. Ellie had attempted to cheer Irene up with her account of the ball, but it had been useless. Irene had sounded muted – suppressed almost. Irene had taken Monday and Tuesday off work with ‘the pukes’, she had said.
They had arranged to meet for lunch on Wednesday. Irene had declared that she wasn’t taking any more time off. She had added that she was bored. Bored? Ellie had thought after she had hung up the phone. Ellie had never been able to recall Irene ever being bored. She had been worried then, that Irene was heading down the slippery slope of another manic behavioural bout. Now Ellie found herself thinking back to those phone calls, and Irene’s demeanour. She decided that she would try to get to the bottom of what was making Irene sound so sullen.
Ellie got out of bed and headed for the bathroom. She was singing to herself in the shower when Agatha let herself in. Ellie had not heard her come in. Agatha was the cleaning lady who brought Jon Li’s paper and prepared his morning herbal tea. She was a small, thin lady who did a thorough job. Jon Li was pleased with her. He had told Ellie that she did such an excellent job of keeping his penthouse immaculate: just how he liked it. Ellie was getting dry when she heard the vacuum going. She was hoping to avoid Agatha. It was not that she did not like Agatha, but more the fact that she felt a little shy at having just moved into Jon Li’s penthouse and Agatha would see her personal things around the place as well. Ellie got dressed quickly, skipped breakfast and almost ran out of the penthouse before Agatha could begin to have a conversation with her. She caught the words, “have a nice day Mrs Li” as the penthouse slammed shut. Mrs Li, she called me Mrs Li. He hasn’t asked me yet, Ellie thought.
She stopped, as though she had forgotten something, and glanced back at the door. It was elaborately painted with vines and orchids which twisted together. For a split second she thought of the orchids in the reception of Genie and Jon Li’s questions about their origins, genetically bred…
She decided she didn’t like the door design. She would have it changed: when she was more settled.
The vacuum cleaner had stopped. Ellie suspected that the ‘excellent job’, that Agatha was now doing, was sitting on their sofa reading one of her magazines. Ellie shook her head and continued down the corridor to the lift. She had a lot on her mind. Irene was meeting her for lunch that day, and she had promised to bring a scan of, ‘Irene Junior.’
Ten floors down, she stepped out into the lobby and walked towards the porter, whose name was Mr Baginski. He was a fat, untidy man, in his sixties. She did not like, nor trust, Mr Baginski. He was a reformer. She didn’t know what his previous crimes had been, but she had her suspicions that it was something pretty unpleasant. He had worked as a porter for that block of apartments for years, and he knew everyone who came and went. She was thinking that his Polish name did not suit him. The translation from Polish to English was that Baginski meant master. Ellie reckoned that the only thing he was capable of mastering, was the large cream doughnut that he was stuffing into his mouth. He was a lazy man, and she did not like lazy people.
‘Morning Dr Rushford,’ he mumbled, eating a doughnut and looking up from behind his desk.
‘Good morning,’ she replied curtly.
He was reading a copy of the Daily Utopic.
The headline blared out at her:
“BODY DISCOVERED IN DOCKS!”
Ellie screwed up her eyes, cocked her head sideways and tried to read the sub-heading through the creases in the paper.
It read:
“Prominent teacher found dead with knife wounds in Sector 7”
She tried to read more of the article about the male teacher who had been murdered, without Baginski noticing.
He did.
‘Doctor. Do you mind? he said, and shook the paper.
Several bits of doughnut flew off in her direction.
Ellie flinched. Several rude responses came to mind, but Jon Li’s comments (from their brief conversations about Baginski) rang in her ears.
“Reformers should be given a chance to redeem themselves.”
‘Sorry,’ was all she could muster as she retreated away.
She envied Jon Li’s naivety. As far as she was concerned, all reformers had a record for something, and that ‘something’ was never revealed to their employer. It was, in her opinion, worse not knowing what their crime had been.
The news in the paper had surprised her. Murders and killings in Utopia were very rare. Still, she thought. Everyone knows Sector Seven’s a bad area. The Masons will soon get around to sorting that last dirty part out. The teacher was probably up to no good there anyway, most likely looking for a prostitute.
She also suspected that Mr Baginski might have also been out sampling the local talent of Sector Seven, because one day (when he had been away from the desk) she had peeped over to see a card, on which was printed, “Ladies of Leisure…call us anytime. Sector 7”. She had a vague recollection that it was the same place that Irene had been heading to for an interview before she rescued her.
The revolving doors rotated behind her and she stepped out into the bright morning sunshine. The journey to work was easy from Jon Li’s penthouse. It was a short walk, down the elegant street, to the monorail station, and then a fifteen minute journey into work. There were very few cars on the street where Jon Li lived. The few cars that were owned in Utopia, ran on electric batteries, and created little traffic noise. The black solar panels on the rows of office blocks glinted in the sunshine. She had to pass a small park on her side of the street. It was bursting with colour and thriving with young mums, nannies and toddlers. She noted the expensive array of prams and pushchairs, on the wealth parade and imagined Irene going shopping for the best pram that she could possibly find.
When Ellie arrived at the monorail station a train was already pulling in. She hopped up onto the train and sat down in a window sea
t. The Info-Com on the train was showing all of the pictures of the Masquerade Ball and Phoenix Palace. It transported her right back to that night where she revelled in the happy memories. She was still thinking about how wonderful it had all been when the monorail arrived outside her workplace at Plastic Paradise.
Plastic Paradise: Sector Two
When Ellie arrived at her department on the first floor, she could see Edie dropping food into the large tropical fish tank that stood in the reception area.
‘Good morning Edie,’ she said cheerfully.
‘Good morning Dr Rushford,’ Edie replied, very politely.
Edie stared into tank full of brightly coloured fish.
‘I brought a new fish, see?’ Edie said, pointing to an angel fish which was much larger than the others.
‘Very nice,’ Ellie remarked, looking at the fish and thinking, Don’t they bite the fins of smaller fish? ‘Are my clinic notes ready?’ she prompted.
The switch board was flashing and bleeping; a signal to which Edie seemed oblivious. Edie returned to her desk and handed the batch of files over counter, still ignoring the phones.
‘Thank you. Are you going to get those?’ Ellie replied, her eyes looking in the direction of the lights on the switchboard which were becoming more frantic and numerous.
Edie picked up the receiver and frowned. She had guessed that there was no gossip of Irene’s pregnancy to be had today. Her expression soured into one of disappointment.
Ellie shut the door of her consulting rooms and dialled Irene’s number. There was no answer, so she left a message letting her know that she would be in the staff canteen, as planned. Ellie privately wondered if Irene would even remember their arrangement because Irene’s mood swings had become even more erratic since her pregnancy.