Xchange

by Stan Mason

  The warders left the office extremely disgruntled. Their morale had fallen to a very low level... now it was even lower. They all felt that they should be told about their future in the service but the Government didn’t seem to care to tell them.

  Preston sat quite still behind his desk thinking very hard. He knew abut the fate of the pathologist who had threatened to reveal all that he knew to the media... and he had since learned that the Chaplain to his jail had committed suicide. He knew O’Brien well and could never envisage the man taking his own life for any reason whatsoever. The deaths were so related that he knew that someone in the Government was committing foul deeds to safeguard the secrecy of the project. And then his thoughts moved to his own position. Would they also get rid of him by some ingenious method merely because he was regarded as a nuisance to the cause> The fact remained that he was a Governor of a penitentiary that would soon run out of prisoners. What could they do with him when he held such a vital secret? The easiest way would be to dispose of him as quickly as possible. He might be killed in a hit-and-run motor accident, or found dead having taken an overdoes of tablets, or have his feet encased in cement and thrown into a deep river. No one would ask for an investigation. The methods of his demise grew in his mind as he sat there. On the other hand, he might be promoted to handle the exchange programme in which case he would live on in Lancaster jail

  Breakfast was brought to him on a large tray by one of his warders and he sat at his desk eating it. He had only just finished when two coaches arrived at the front entrance of the jail. They contained the many eminent and famous people who would exchange their bodies that day, including a number of past politicians, twelve ex-military personnel, seven teachers, seventeen industrialist, and a few artists and sculptors.

  After having considered his position in depth, Preston wasn’t certain that the role he had to play in the programme was to his taste. He had never aspired to be a prison Governor but the role had been offered to him and he had accepted it. Now he considered that the exchange programme might be too obnoxious for him, feeling that he was sliding down the ladder of success into the murky mire at the bottom.

  ‘How long would this job last?’ he asked himself for the tenth time. It stood to reason that, in time, they would run out of prisoners with life or very long sentences. What would happen then? The project would be cancelled by the Government and he would end up on the scrap heap. All this was likely to happen within the next few months. After all., the number of prisoners available was not inexhaustible! The writing was on the wall for all to see but there was none so blind as those who couldn’t see!

  What was the alternative? If he refused to comply, he would become a danger to the Government and probably end up a corpse. They would have no option but to dispose of him in some ugly way to secure the secret. He soon realised that his future was not one to be envied and he pushed the breakfast tray aside to reach for the telephone receiver. Jordan had promised him a fax message, well he would ring him and press him to send it to him without delay. Then he hesitated and thought about contacting Jeremy Ratcliffe, the Minister of Science. In the end, after a great deal of soul searching, he decided not to ring anyone. He would wait patiently for the fax message to arrive which might help him remove himself from the state of limbo that he was experiencing.

  ***

  The scientists who had worked throughout the night were treated to a few hours of rest in some of the empty cells in an attempt to shuffle off their fatigue. It was not until two o’clock in the afternoon when they awoke somewhat refreshed, ready to start the exchange process with the invited guests who moaned, groaned and complained about the added journey from Lytham St. Annes and the delay. Preston was suddenly faced with a whole host of problems, not least the feeding of all those who had been transported to the jail. The fact that the larder of the prison was practically bare, mainly because there were so few prisoners left, failed to help his cause. Clearly, the Government had failed to think the process through carefully in relation to the facilities for the staff and those invited to be exchanged.

  The role of the Governor as the controller of the exchange project at Lancaster jail started off on the wrong foot. The first invited recipient, Benjamin Green, a well-know industrialist, who had been knighted for his services to the community, was placed into one of the cubicles while a life-serving criminal was installed in the other one. Both men had been injected with the serum by means of a hypodermic needle and had become comatose. The electric current was turned on but the radiome machine still failed to work properly. Subsequently, after fifteen minutes, the electricity was turned off and the two men were taken from the cubicles. However, the exchange had not taken place properly and the two men were exactly the same as they were at the start. The prisoner who was staggering all over the place was taken back to his cell while Sir Benjamin Green saton one of the chair with a blanket wrapped around him. The scientists then turned their attention to the defaulting equipment. When Green recovered his senses fully, he moved the blanket to stare at his aged wrinkled body and exploded with rage.

  ‘I’m still the same!’ he shouted vociferously. ‘Why am I still the same! I paid a lot of money to get a younger body! What went wrong!’

  Preston tried to placate the man, explaining that one of the machines had failed offering to repeat the process with him once it had been repaired. However the fiery industrialist would have none of it. He didn’t suffer fools and he never took prisoners.

  ‘I’m not going to hang around in the nude while you idiots mess with the equipment. How long would I have to wait?’

  ‘About two hours with a bit of luck,’ responded one of the scientific staff.

  ‘With a bit of luck!’ repeated Green angrily. ‘Who’s in charge? I want to see the man in charge!’

  I’m in charge,’ Preston told him calmly, realising that he was going to be reproached for the delay even though it wasn’t his fault.

  ‘I suggest that you get your house in order, sir!’ spat the industrialist irately. ‘If you think I’m going to sit here for two hours with a blanket covering me you’d better think again. I want my mobile telephone immediately to call my lawyer!’

  ‘Your lawyer!’ repeated the Governor somewhat puzzled. He suddenly realised that if the call was made, all hell would break loose because the lawyer would inform the media of the exchange process.

  Preston had to think hard and fast to restore the equilibrium. A decision had to be made immediately to prevent disaster and it had not only to be cogent in its nature but very decisive. He moved to one of the scientists nearby and whispered something his ear. Then he turned back to the industrialist with a serious expression on his face.

  ‘Very well, Sir Benjamin,’ he advanced. ‘I’ll let you make your telephone call but first you need to be inject you with the anti-serum otherwise the toxins in your body will build up and do serious damage to your organs within the next hour.

  Green shrugged his shoulders aimlessly at having been diverted from his aim as the scientist brought the hypodermic needle to his arm. The injection was short and swift... and very effective. Within twenty seconds, Sir Benjamin collapsed and lay dead on the floor having been overdosed with the serum. The Governor rued the fact that he had now become part of an elite group which dispensed death to anyone who endangered the programme, He had now become a murderer in his own right by vicarious liability.

  The body was taken away to be returned to the next of kin which opened the Governor’s eyes to a new problem. No on had thought about the disposal of dead bodies at Lancaster jail. The disposal unit had not been brought from Lytham St. Annes so there was no way they could get rid of them. In the current case, the Death Certificate issued by the Government-appointed doctor would read that Sir Benjamin Green died of a stroke at the age of eighty-four. No one would raise an eyebrow to that declaration.

  The scientists continued t
o repair the radiome machine which eventually was brought back to life again and they continued the exchange programme without mishap. However it was far too late to be of any value to Sir Benjamin Green who was now enveloped in a body-bag. He had paid for eternal youth at the risk of his life but the process had failed and there was no way he could be brought back to this world. At the other end of the scale, he had lived a worthy, busy, fruitful life and could not really complain that death had come to him at the age of eighty-four when many others died naturally at a much younger age.

  ***

  Sky Summers was the kind of woman who liked to be regarded as a ‘female investigator’. She worked relentlessly, a wholly committed career person, for the International Television Authority at their Headquarters in Manchester. The advantage, which she readily boasted over all the other reporters, was the fact that she had a sensitive nose for rooting out news that was either spectacular or of unusual interest. She had worked for the Authority for fifteen years moving slowly up the ladder with impatient ambition, gaining considerable experience during that period of time. Aged thirty-five, she was a stunning blonde with a beautiful face and an extremely slender figure. Few men could keep their eyes off her and she would have made a gorgeous wife but marriage was not in her plans. Ambition drove her almost by obsession so that her main aim in life was always her work. Subsequently she avoided romantic liaisons, flirting, and men in particular. A workaholic, in every sense of eh word, she sat in front of the computer on her desk in her office with her nose twitching sensitively. She could sense that something very strange was happening and that a superlative story was reaching out to her to be discovered. She sat quite still with her back arched in anticipation, determined to get to the bottom of it , rooting out all the ghastly details in due course.

  Her recent claim to fame was unearthing the facts which made a great news item for the Authority. It was a clandestine arrangement by someone in the CIA to provide arms to an enemy of the United States and Britain in order to encourage a war in a country in the Middle East. A whole series of information had been passed to the media by the person involved, none of which related to the main issue. It was given as a ploy to divert the attention of all and sundry from the main plot... especially as the United States Government was funding the operation. This usual was the case when world affairs got into a mess. Unimportant items, which would stimulate the interest of the public, would be submitted to the Press and the media diverting everyone’s attention from the main issue. The impending war in a country in the Middle East would certainly have happened had it not been for Sky Summers who unearthed all the details as well as pointing the finger at the organiser involved. As a result, the operation was closed down in its infancy. She was very proud at having won the Golden Rose Award for Television for her efforts. Now she was sensing something quite different in nature although, at the present, she couldn’t put her finger on it. She had noticed that a lot of people past their sell-by date on the horizon... each of them starting afresh in their fields of operation as though they were still young and full of energy. She recognised that, at a time when they should be thinking about going into a care home, to be tended daily by nurses and doctors, they were actually trying to re-establish themselves, physically going out into the public domain seeking employment of one kind or another. There was one case of a ninety-three year old man who registered his name as a candidate for a bye-election taking place in the Midlands. ‘Ninety-three years old!’ she thought to herself. ‘Now that’s news! What the hell is he playing at? I mean he’ll need to spend days doing the hustings and talking at public meetings every day for months. Where will he get the strength to do that?’

  She took the time to go to the hustings to visit the candidate. He was a very wrinkled ninety-three year old man yet his body language was that of a much younger man and he seemed to be able to cope with the stress that was to come.

  ‘If you were elected,’ she posed, asking him point-blank, ‘how long do you think you could hold on to this seat. You’re ninety-three. I wouldn’t want to alarm you but you could die tomorrow.’

  The candidate smiled at her briefly, his face almost disappearing into the mass of wrinkles. ‘I’ve another thirty years ahead of me at least,’ he boasted wildly in the face of adversity.

  ‘You believe you’ll be around until you’re a hundred-and-twenty-five with all your faculties in place,’ she countered. ‘I hardly think so!’

  ‘Why not?’ he responded amiably. ‘We all live much longer these days than in the past, don’t we... and I’ve a great deal of experience as a politician. I was one for over thirty-five years. I can help put this country back on its feet.’

  She didn’t have any doubt about the candidate’s qualifications, it was his claim to longevity that seemed strange. When she returned to her office, she came across another item which puzzled her, making her more suspicious. Charles Wilkins, an old industrialist in ladies fashions, was reported in the newspaper to have been promoted to the appointment of Chairman to the company which he had passed to his son seventeen years earlier. In his eighties, it was hard to believe that he had either the strength or the ambition to take up such a heavy role. It was yet another case of an old man becoming involved in opportunity in the province of much younger people. If he had been thirty years younger, she would have no qualms about the appointment but he wasn’t, and that caused Sky Summer’s nose to begin to twitch. There was also a newspaper article relating to a Damon Struther, a leading film director who had been renowned in his day, winning an Oscar for one of his films and many awards for others. His name ran off everyone’s lips and Press comments mentioned him regularly. Suddenly, at the age of ninety-two, he had thrown his hat into the ring to direct an epic of the Holy Bible entitled ‘Genesis’. Sky frowned as she read the news. The man was ninety-two years old... his life expectancy was zero... yet he had sufficient strength and ambition to make another movie when he should have been confined to a large armchair and being taken care of by nurses or qualified carers. It wasn’t reasonable to accept that he had any inclination to further his career at his great age. What was happening with older people? Could it be that the world had been invaded by aliens who were using the bodies of people as hosts for their activities? What were they taking that seemed to give them the strength to carry on? Was it some kind of drug the were taking that supplied them with new energy. They certain looked the same... very old! Had they come across something quite extraordinary that gave them a new lease of life? Questions raced through her head even though she knew that she would not find the answers. She would allow them to roll around in her brain voluntarily. She reckoned that she would have to pull out all the stops to get to the bottom of this matter and arrive at the truth. Of one thing she was certain... something odd was happening in the State of Denmark!

  Over the years at the television centre, Sky had cultured a number of contacts, commonly known as ‘moles’. The came from different walks in life, in some cases from ugly quarters and they readily offered her all kinds of information for the reward of a cash payment. The system had served her well of the term of her employment and she sought the help of the moles only when something seemingly important came into line. Now that she had the bit between her teeth, she began to field some of her need to the moles about old people seemingly becoming young again. Usually, they came up with some facts which occasionally sent her down the wrong road,. However this time the seeds fell on fallow ground. To her dismay, a number of weeks passed by with no information at all. Then, one day, out of the blue, she received a telephone call from George Griffin, a driver for Her Majesty’s Government, whose main task was to transport prisoners to the Criminal Courts at the Temple in London and drive them back to their respective jails afterwards He was also employed to carry prisoners from one jail to another when requested to do so.

  It was eight o’clock in the evening when he rang Sky to tell her that he had just been given a st
range assignment for the following morning. His task was to transfer fifty women from Holloway jail in London and drive them to Lancaster jail in Cumberland. Even stranger was the fact that he had been told to take them back to Holloway Prison the same evening. No reason had been given to him for this odd event... it was simply a case of Do or Die. Nonetheless, it was quite clear that something strange was happening. What could be the reason for taking fifty woman from Holloway jail in London to a jail in Cumberland and then bring them back the same day? It didn’t make sense! It seemed very reasonable to contact Sky Summers in order to make a little extra money for the information.

  ‘Come on, George!’ she uttered in disbelief after he had related the story to her. ‘You know more what’s going on than you’re telling me. If it’s more money... ’

  ‘It’s not that, Sky,’ he interrupted. ‘I heard through the grapevine that they’re exchanging the bodies of prisoners who get life sentences.’ he related quietly. ‘They say that about thirty per cent of them die after the exchange takes place.’

  The line went silent as Sky gasped at the information, finding it hard to speak. ‘Go on!’ she said eventually, urging the informant to continue.

  ‘That’s all I know,’ he told her. ‘It’s a bit secret and no one’s allowed to talk about it. I’m serious. If you do... you’re dead! That’s how serious it is!’