Transcripts of interviews with members of the anti-species conspiracy of Lofoten 4a, Arctic Circle sector 111424
Part 4, 4.45–6.00 p.m. 15 August 2153
Second interview with Prisoner 730004, after first phase of rehabilitation treatment
Prisoner 730004, we hope you are feeling better after your treatment.
My mind is deadened and I cannot think clearly. I trust this is the intended effect.
We are working to ascertain your real names and identity numbers and soon we will also know the true identity of Birgitta. With these facts we can better protect you and protect the species from the consequences of your selfish species-endangering activities.
I cannot entirely understand what you are saying. My head is swimming in chemical filth. You have poisoned me. Before – there was a before, I know, before this place. Something before – fresh air. The sea. The great ocean. I remember that. There was something – the island …
Correction, Lofoten 4a, Arctic Circle sector 111424.
Yes, that is what you call it, isn’t it? As if by categorising everything, giving it a number, you can erase the destruction of the planet. It is too late. The Arctic is destroyed, however you number it.
You are wrong, Prisoner 730004. You are ill and tired. You have been starved for some time. During the time you existed in your primitive death cult, you were starving.
I was not starving. I had an abundance of things to eat. My body was enriched by my existence on the island …
Correction, Lofoten 4a, Arctic Circle sector 111424.
I am sick now, it is true. They have dosed me so I cannot think. If I could only think – what was it?
Prisoner 730004, do you want to live?
On the island …
Correction, Lofoten 4a, Arctic Circle sector 111424.
… Yes, if you call it that. On this island you name and number …
Lofoten 4a, Arctic Circle sector 111424.
Will you never let me finish?
We are interested in anything you say.
On this island …
Lofoten 4a, Arctic Circle sector 111424.
It is impossible to speak! It is impossible to think. My brain is doused. This is what I escaped from! I escaped this deadening of the brain. I did escape, didn’t I? Or did I dream? I dreamed of so many things. Was everything a dream? Was Birgitta merely a dream? I think this was her name.
She was not a dream but a real woman who was bound up with your delusions. Birgitta is not her real name but we will shortly trace her and then she will be captured.
My memories are fading in this fog. Where will I be sent now?
You are not entitled to ask questions, Prisoner 730004.
Entitled? What does that mean?
You are not entitled to ask questions. Now we ask you, who was on Lofoten 4a, Arctic Circle sector 111424?
I told you, I would not – I cannot.
You are sick. We accept your words earlier were a product of your sickness. Now we are healing you. It will be better for you if you co-operate.
But you told me you knew. You already know. Did you tell me that? My head is …
We will soon know. We are offering you the opportunity to be helpful. The Protectors are inclined to favour those who acknowledge their mistakes and seek to rectify them.
The Protectors. The Protectors are inclined. The Sexual Release Centre, I remember it said, ‘The Protectors offer you sexual release.’ The Protectors themselves, I used to think. I went there sometimes, when I was young. Of course I did. Everyone goes there. And everywhere, ‘The Protectors offer you food and drink’ at the dining centre, and ‘The Protectors offer you a good night’s sleep’ above your bed and ‘The Protectors offer you an allocated role’ above your desk and ‘The Protectors offer you a crucial role in the battle for species survival’ when you were harvested and closed.
Once again on behalf of the Protectors we must explain that such digressions are not required. Now tell us clearly, who is Birgitta?
In Darwin C she worked in the Sexual Release Centre. She was fucked twenty times a day. Twenty-five-minute sessions, five minutes to wash herself between each person, ten-hour days. A rest day every week. One hundred and twenty fucks a week. No one must see her more than ten times consecutively, lest an attachment develop. She had been working there all her adult life. Her routine was very precise.
Why are you using these base terms, Prisoner 730004?
I was not aware they were offensive to anyone. This is what she did.
We are aware of the procedure at the Sexual Release Centres and how some individuals are allocated roles in this aspect of the struggle for the survival of the human species. We do not require your explanation, unscientific and deliberately emotive as it is.
When we took her away and gradually as she opened up and told us about her work, it became apparent that she was subjected to what – in the old days – might have been called horrible degradation and assaults. That anything was permitted, so long as the client felt sexually relieved by the end. That she was often torn and beaten. That she was not permitted to set any limits at all, because everything was justified as necessary for the survival of the species. For the heightening of morale through sexual release. An important role to be allocated, I believe.
These are lies. The workers at the Sexual Release Centre find their work fulfilling. This has been extensively proven and calibrated. They are aware that the sexual instinct is a basic human urge, and that if it is not required for procreative purposes then it must be fulfilled somehow, and the Protectors in their generosity understand this. The suppliers of sexual release are performing a useful function in our battle against species extinction, as they know. This enriches their work.
I am sure you are right. Perhaps Birgitta secretly enjoyed being ritually raped and abused …
Correction, deployed in the battle against species extinction.
… Perhaps she felt that way she supplied more sexual release than in other ways. Perhaps she felt that way she could best serve the Protectors. Anyway that’s all I know about Birgitta before we escaped together. That she was raped many times a day.
Correction, supplied sexual release.
We do not know which of the rapists …
Correction, seekers after sexual release.
… impregnated her.
Prisoner 730004, it is unfortunate that your delusions have proved so resistant to treatment.
You will not find the drugs to rid me of this conviction.
What is Birgitta’s real name?
I do not know.
You are aware however that Birgitta is not her real name?
Yes.
But you do not know her real name?
No, I do not.
Why was she given the name Birgitta?
She took it from an ancestor of hers. Her great-great-great-grandmother …
Correction, egg donor.
… was a woman called Brigid. So she became Birgitta, to us. Brigid was the earliest ancestor she knew of. Those who lived before are no longer known to us. The name of her great-great-great-grandfather, Brigid’s husband, has been lost.
Correction, sperm donor. Where was this DNA relative Brigid from?
I believe she lived in the former city of London, but that is all I know.
So how did this egg donor’s DNA relatives end up in Lofoten 4a, Arctic Circle sector 111424?
Birgitta’s great-great-grandfather, who was I believe called Calumn, went to the Arctic sector when the climate evacuation protocol was announced in London. He was one of the last to leave the city, before the borders were closed. He was an old man by that stage, and Birgitta’s mother remembered him weeping quietly as they left the house, which they knew would soon be destroyed. He had lived in the house when he was young, and had moved back in there after the death of his parents. Birgitta’s mother told us many stories of how it was to leave London – she was only a small child when they left, but s
he said the experience was scored across her memory …
We are not interested in these stories. Correct instances of ‘parents’, ‘great-great-grandfather’, ‘mother’, ‘child’ for the record. Once more on behalf of the Protectors we ask you to confine yourself to the facts, Prisoner 730004.
Who are the Protectors?
You are not entitled to ask questions.
I am confused and ill but now I wonder – who are the Protectors?
As we said, the nature of your position makes it entirely inappropriate for you to ask such a question.
But if I had another position?
Your meaning is unclear.
What sort of position would I need … my head … I wish I could clear my head … What position would I need before I could ask such a question?
As before, we must emphasise that the nature of your position makes it entirely inappropriate for you to ask such a question.
But I cannot understand. Why are we all here, you too? When we have passions and old desires and once we had lovers …
Correction, partners in sexual release.
… and families …
Correction, DNA relatives.
… parents …
Corrrection, sperm and egg donors.
… we loved, children …
Correction, progeny of the species.
… we loved – we were protected by our parents …
Correction, sperm and egg donors.
… and we protected our children …
Correction, progeny of the species.
… we would have died to protect our children …
Correction, progeny of the species.
… and now we are dependent for protection on – I cannot think it through, it is too clouded … These drugs make me spill out words, and some of them I do not want to say, some of them are drawn from me by your drugs, but others – these others – what is it you are so afraid of, that we must speak your language? That everything must be processed in these phrases. ‘Sperm and egg donors’. What are you afraid of? What menace do the old words hold for you? Why will you not let me use them?
Prisoner 730004, we have explained to you that you are ill and delusional and we are trying, on behalf of the Protectors, to help you, but we cannot permit you to ask questions.
I am merely wondering, though my head hurts and I think they have killed me, have they not poisoned me fatally, it feels as if something is slowly stopping my heart, but I am wondering just why we have to look for protection to these Protectors we do not know and cannot see, who do not hold us or kiss us or tell us they love us they simply offer us protection and a place in the battle and sexual release and food and drink and this is our life this is meant to be a life. Who are they?
On behalf of the Protectors, we assure you that such questions are not appropriate and will not be answered.
Cannot be answered. You do not know. I begin to think you do not know who these Protectors are you work for. You have never seen them? I think – yes, I think it must be true that even you have never seen them. Have they seen each other? Are they bodies and humans or something else? My head, I think you must have killed me. Am I dying and is this where I must die?
On behalf of the Protectors and for the protection of the species, we must advise you that unless you cease such unscientific talk we will be forced to commit you to an Institution for the Improvement of the Reason.
But I have never thought more clearly. Suddenly I see it. All this, everything you believe, it is just a gauze, a film separating you from the real forms of things, and if you could only see, like I am seeing … I am seeing something, I am not sure, but it is so beautiful … If you could only see it … You would understand … You would understand you are deluded and you have never thought clearly yourselves. And perhaps you would despise these Protectors, whoever they are. Whatever they are … You would understand that there was a time when love was the generating spirit of humanity – I believe it, though you have changed everything – that children were birthed in – through – this prevailing love. And you would perceive what is at least clear to me, that the Genetix is an atrocity because it cannot love and deprives every human born on the planet of this love …
Prisoner 730004, for your own protection and on behalf of the Protectors, you must be returned to the medical section and treated.
I no longer care what you do because though I am dying my head is finally clear and …
Take her for her treatment. She will be returned later for sentencing. We do not need to speak to her again.
… Look through the Earth …
Throughout the night, Prisoner 730004 cannot sleep. She paces the floor of her solitary cell and she thinks of how it was on the island, when every night she was lulled to sleep by the waves and every morning she woke to the sound of birds. Simple sounds, which she thrilled to; something within her was stirred by these sounds. And Prisoner 730004 remembers the glowering mutable sky, and the salt sea, and the beautiful wreckage of nature.
*
Now, she is in a city; perhaps she is back in Darwin C, or somewhere else she has never been before. She can hear the whirrs and grinding of the transport system, and the air-processing units throbbing, expending precious energy in their mission to keep the city habitable, and she thinks she hears landing craft whining above. Beyond, the inhabitants are sleeping and at the allotted hour they will rise and begin the day. Through the covered tunnels they will move, from one sun-protection zone to another, and all the time their lungs will be filled with generated air. And their bodies will cry out at the madness of it all, but the cries will be lost, in the pulsing hum of the city.
*
Surely their bodies must cry out, thinks Prisoner 730004. And she is drugged, she knows, and her mind will not work properly, so although she cannot sleep she drifts in and out of lucidity, and sometimes she thinks she is on the island, listening to the sound of waves, the wind gusting through the grasses. Then the coldness of the cell recalls her again.
*
Michael Stone finds he cannot sleep, because his mouth is dry from all the wine he drank, and his head aches. So he rises from his bed, walks into the kitchen, pours himself a glass of water. And he thinks that it does not matter, the dawn will come, he only has to wait. He draws the blinds and sees the city beneath him, the lights shining from successive cars, and the street lights with their sallow glow, and all the diminished motion of the pre-dawn hours.
*
Michael sips the water and thinks of his heart beating. Below he traces ribbons of light and motion spanning from one stone building to the next. He hears the sirens and the hum of the night. He breathes deeply and thinks of the planet turning in space and time creeping onwards.
*
Time will creep, and then it will spring the dawn upon him.
*
Robert von Lucius wakes with a start, and finds he is thinking, ‘But what if it is really true?’ This theory of Semmelweis, he realises he means. He has considered it until now only as an element in the case of Semmelweis’s so-called madness, not as significant in itself. But now he is bolt upright in his bed, thinking, ‘What if he is right, and no one believes him?’ This thought grips him by the throat, so he feels he cannot breathe, and he rises from his bed and walks through the corridors of his house, his footsteps echoing around the panelled walls. To one side his grandfather gazes down at him, a bastion of propriety, a man who attracted neither censure nor praise. Further along, in another portrait, the judgemental stare of his father, a man with a straight back and a chest full of medals. A fine man, a military man, who once saved the life of a fellow officer. Admired by his troops; by thirty-five he had been decked in glory at the battle of – but Robert von Lucius stops himself from considering the battle honours of his father. His thoughts slide once again towards the asylum and the hunched figure of the doctor. The candle flickers as he hurries along. The corridor is draughty, and he draws his collar up. He does n
ot know where to walk, and for a while he meanders, thinking of what he should do. What can he do for this man, he thinks? Then some time has passed; he finds he is in his study, and he takes a sheet of paper and begins to write …
*
Brigid is awake, though she was promised sleep; after the epidural she would be able to sleep, they told her. They took her in a lift to the sixteenth floor, and she lay on the stretcher, merely relieved that she was here. She was rattled on a trolley, along corridors, and she kept her eyes on the ceiling and breathed. The soft tones of the doctors were reassuring to her. She longed so much for release that she didn’t mind the needle at all; she turned her back to the anaesthetist and waited for him to save her. He told her she must be very still when he injected her, and he was about to insert the needle when she felt a contraction beginning. ‘Stop stop,’ she said, quickly, and he said, ‘Just in time, well done.’ They waited – the midwife and the anaesthetist, and Patrick with his hand on hers – while Brigid lay on the bed and groaned – a weary, horrible groan which perplexed her though she couldn’t stop it – and when the surge diminished she made herself very taut and still, and the needle went in. She remembered the sensation from last time – ice-cold liquid coursing down her spine; like last time it was as if she could feel it trickling along, and then she willed the minutes down – ten to fifteen minutes said the anaesthetist and, though that seemed limitless at first, she willed them down. The contractions faded furiously, she didn’t think they would ever submit to the epidural, until finally there was a contraction she only partly felt, and then she found she could breathe normally again. She emerged into an exquisite numbness, her body dulled. The midwife – a new midwife, not Gina, this one in hospital scrubs and with a short bob, less intimate than the other, but kindly all the same – said to her, ‘Now you can get some sleep. If you sleep, you’ll find you get through transition unconscious, which is a very nice way to do it, and then we’ll wake you when we think it might be time for an examination.’ She was eager; she lay on her back and waited, but the epidural sent her into spasms; she began trembling uncontrollably, and every time she thought she might sleep she was awoken again by the shuddering of her body. ‘Nothing we can do, just a side-effect,’ said the midwife, so Brigid stayed on her back, shuddering but not minding it so much. She was simply grateful they had taken away the pain.
The Birth of Love Page 22