by Olivia Joy
In the background of the mirage a shout broke out followed by much background scuffling.
‘Kill the devil!’
Bathsheba Ermez’s countenance did not change. It was as if time had ceased to exist. Xandria let out a rasp of breath. Her own grandfather? Was she hearing correctly?
The Olsens were clutching at their hearts. Nobody moved an inch.
‘People, we cannot kill him. For he had already been Signed Off before we discovered his treachery. That is why his next of kin is on our hit list. ‘
Then her face appeared closer in the mirage until only her eyes and black bushy eyebrows were in view. They were glaring straight at her.
‘Xandria Reinhardt. I repeat, Xandria Reinhardt. You are now the enemy of New America. Your family is a disgrace to civilization and you are the scourge of the Earth. Believe me when I say this, we are going to track you down and mince every odious shred of you.’ Her nose hooked back into view.
‘And on behalf of every citizen whose sanity you have robbed, I would like to tell you that you are never, ever, to set foot here again.’
The mirage emptied.
EIGHTEEN
During the next few weeks the atmosphere in New America ignited. The news that Zebediah Voss was never coming back seemed to tip the already teetering population over the brink. Hysteria was mounting rapidly; more and more Suppressitors were resolutely dysfunctional and their owners were speedily consigned to the previously empty hospitals. It was as if the panic was infectious. Worried citizens would drive their emotional-wrecks of relatives to the nearest hospitals and merely dump them outside wailing and clawing, somehow hoping to transfer the burden onto the government.
In turn, the hospitals were soon bursting at the seams with citizens who were totally unfit to deal with everyday life, as a result of their sudden emotional inundation. The hospitals had never been at full capacity in all their time; the staff had neither the resources nor the know-how to deal with the situation. After a crisis talk where all the bigwigs hummed and hawed from the relative safety of their mirages, it was universally decided to sedate all patients using a drug from the same family as those given to the prisoners.
The trouble was, very soon there were no places left for the multiplying herds of citizens needing hospitalisation. Important people were shamelessly prioritised. The former President Okadigbo was cooped up in the finest hospital in the city taking up several luxury suites, as had been stipulated specifically before he agreed to stand down. That Henry Excelsior was a snitch, he bellowed away to anyone who would listen.
He had been highly peeved and exquisitely reluctant to relinquish the position that he had spent so many years fastidiously working to achieve. Especially to lose it to that stinking woman. She had known what she was doing all along, he was sure of it. Perhaps she had even facilitated his Suppressitor glitch, concocted in that dung-brain behind those beetle eyes. He had called her many choice words before he was carted off that fateful day, but now he was heavily sedated he no longer gave a monkeys.
He spent his days drugged like a mule, his mindset now comparable to that of a small child. Where previously he would have been trying to appear as if he was solving the Suppressitor crisis, these days his most challenging moments came as he attempted to complete menial tasks such as whether or not he was able to lick his own elbow.
The millions of the population who had not managed to wangle their way into hospital were left to their own devices. Frenzied masses of people made their way across the city, their work responsibilities entirely forgotten, bad temper and brawls breaking out between them with alarming frequency. Suddenly there was a catalyst, a meaty cause to get their teeth into. Something they could really direct their newfound frustrations at, and this was Ophelium.
The immediate reaction of the newly emotional swung both ways. Some fervently supported the cause; they were furious at the Reinhardts or whatever they were called for robbing them of their Suppressitors. Even in their highly agitated state they continued to agree with the rest of the country on the subject of the gas. They needed it badly and they all held the general consensus that New America should move mountains, if required, to make it happen.
These people were not the problem, however. It was the opposite faction. The worryingly large proportion of the population who despite being absolutely unhinged, had resolutely swung the other way and decided that the use of Ophelium was frankly reprehensible.
Tens of millions of protestors bombarded the city with relentless zeal. There was no logic as to who would join which side when their Suppressitors eventually broke down for good. Even previously staunch supporters of the cause turned violently on the day they went into irreversible meltdown. Images of the sea of dead animals on the island days earlier were circulated feverishly and only served as fuel for the seething masses. Tears were shed, objects were hurled, people ran blindly across busy roads - kamikaze style - consumed by their newborn passion.
Whether or not they knew what they were protesting about will never be known, but such protests rocked the entire country, grinding it to a spectacular standstill. With nowhere for the police to put the miscreants, they were left to spread their fury further and further afield. In the beginning, the government was reluctant to send these people to prison because they were confident there would soon be a permanent solution to this burgeoning of emotions. There were too many of them besides; the reaction to putting millions of people away was absolutely unthinkable, so a wait and see policy was unofficially yet reluctantly agreed upon.
Alas, with every day that passed, an intangible sense of expectation and foreboding lurked beneath the smooth façade of New America, and soon this would surely boil over.
* * *
In Norway, Xandria had been forced to swallow the ugly truth that she could never go back home.
After the startling revelation from Bathsheba Ermez, she had clattered straight out of the Olsen’s house, clumsily knocking over all manner of antique furniture as she scarpered. Her eyes were brimming with a blurry liquid she was not familiar with. Mrs. Olsen pleaded with Lars to dash after her and stop her, afraid that she was going to hurt herself in a fit of unaccustomed distress. Never mind the news that she had seemingly been housing a fugitive, Mrs. Olsen in her kindliness immediately thought only of Xandria’s wellbeing.
Xandria found herself stumbling down the familiar, well trodden path to the lake, running higgledy-piggledy to escape the thumping heartbeat in her chest which seemed to be following her. Left turn, right turn, sudden turn; she could not shake the adrenaline and dread which was beginning to fill her up and weigh her down.
At the lake’s edge, she stopped and hammered at her Suppressitor as if her life depended on it, but nothing happened. As the fear peppered down upon the existing emotions coursing through her body, she knelt trembling and dipped her hands in the freezing surface of the lake. The shock jolted her. She gasped out loud. To a passive bystander, she was either coming to her senses or losing them, for quite without warning she snatched her Suppressitor from around her neck and yanked it above her head. It was the first time in her life her Suppressitor had ever left her body.
Lars, who had agreed to his mother’s urgent plea and followed Xandria discreetly and light-footedly at a distance, watched uncomfortably from a break in the tree line. It was drizzling.
Xandria held her Suppressitor with both hands high above her head. She eyeballed it deep in thought for a few moments, then as a wave of revulsion and rage smacked her conscience, she let out an angry cry and threw the whole thing fifty feet into the water. There was a satisfying plop.
Lars’ brow furrowed with concern and surprise. He was no expert at Xandria’s gadgetry, but he was pretty sure that she really needed whatever she had just flung into the lake. What had taken place over the last few hours had both stunned and worried him to the core. He was stunned that the woman who had been living with them until now was so prolific in her home country. And he was exceeding
ly worried on two counts regarding what the future held in store for him and his family.
Now that New America was going to use their gas come hell or high water, the Old World was in grave danger of losing everything. He could barely begin to imagine a world wherein the people felt and expressed no emotion. He had tried many times, but his brain could not complete the thought, such a ridiculous idea it seemed to be. Yet he repeatedly had to pinch himself and scream inwardly, for this is exactly what was going to happen.
It was like one of those moments when something so horrendous, something so unbelievably tragic occurs in front of your eyes, and nobody around reacts. The truth or horror of it all is of such a magnitude that the human brain is dulled in disbelief. He, along with the rest of the Old World had buried their heads in the sand for all this time but it was now no longer an option.
Coupled with the fact that New America’s number one enemy was living with them, Lars certainly had much to fear. There had been grumblings of war from Zachary DuPont for a long time but it had been decidedly half hearted. Nobody in the Old World wanted a war. There had not been anything that could feasibly have been called this ugly word for several decades. What would they even have to do?
Now that the new President of New America had confirmed the imminent usage of the gas, it struck Lars that the world would never be the same again. The anxiety made him feel sick to the pit of his stomach. Now was the time to fight tooth and nail for the human race to continue living as they had done for millions of years. This he felt strongly about. He would die for this cause, he decided. If he had to fight with his bare hands for the right to do so, for the right of his descendents to play happily by the lake, by God’s grace he would.
Perhaps in the jagged realisation of what she had done, Xandria abruptly turned and fled back up the path, completely oblivious to a grim looking Lars tucked just out of sight. He remained there for a few moments caught up in his stony thoughts. The rain began to patter with increased regularity. He stared hard at the lake. What he did next he would never own up to, but later that night, as Xandria crawled miserably into bed, she was astonished to find a familiar object on her pillow.
It was her Suppressitor.
* * *
Xandria’s Suppressitor did not appreciate being thrown into the lake so oafishly. She would never know who had kindly fished it out, but seeing Lars much later the day before with unusually wet hair had puzzled her at the time. She put it on again straight away after being reunited with it, but there was not a squeak of life. She briefly wondered whether New America had tampered with it remotely in their vengeance, before she remembered that only Zebediah Voss could have masterminded such a thing.
Her head filled with shame at the thought of him. Had her grandfather really done the unthinkable? She had no idea how Bathsheba Ermez could have found out, but didn’t doubt that she had all the resources she’d required at her grubby fingertips in that new job of hers. Working closely with Henry. She bubbled with a mixture of jealousy and mild longing.
Her grandfather had known Zebediah Voss for many years; they had often spent many hours conversing into the wee hours, seated in the comfort and privacy of Alfred’s study. This continued right up to his untimely end. Xandria had never taken much interest in whatever they were discussing until now. The insinuation that Alfred had unlawfully taken Voss’ life using his own invention as the weapon seemed completely off the mark. Whatever the new President thought she knew, Xandria was dead certain that she herself knew more.
Her mind reverted back to her mother’s words, as painful a memory as it was. She squeezed her eyes shut and recalled her describing that in her grandfather’s final days he stoically turned his back on modern civilisation, realising the great error of his ways. Had Voss been in on his secret? More to the point, had Voss, too, shared his sentiments?
She could not imagine what else they would have spoken about for that long. Now she thought about it, in those final days while she had been too busy trying to gain that coveted promotion at work, her grandfather’s usual stream of eminent visitors had stopped. But why? She was aware he had been an advisor to many figureheads of society. If he had decided that he no longer wanted to serve the civilisation, then why did he keep meeting with Voss?
Concentrating at this great intensity helped to steady her newly unbalanced emotions. She forced herself to recall further back to the time when Voss was first reported missing. It was just after her grandfather had been Signed Off. Her family had not spread the word until the next day because Amethyst and Doric were in a terrible state, dissolving at every possible opportunity. Yet why had Voss not visited that night as he had done for weeks prior to the occasion? He could not possibly have known yet that his companion had been Signed Off.
This would mean that the Vapour had already been administered to Voss, and if Alfred and he appeared as thick as thieves right until the very last day, then surely there was the great possibility that instead of Alfred killing Voss against his will, it had instead been a joint effort. A collaboration.
Her mind was whirring now. She would never have guessed that if anything, her mind worked faster without her Suppressitor. Why would Alfred end Voss’ life? If they no longer saw eye to eye, surely he would have stopped seeing him, as he had done with every other one of his contacts. If he had become angry, then somebody would have heard raised voices, for in the final days Alfred no longer wore a Suppressitor.
It would have done her grandfather no good to Sign Off Voss with malicious intent. Shortly he had been planning to escape to Norway anyway. He had always been a principled man, a man who very much believed in the doctrine of laissez-faire. Xandria very much doubted that he would harbour enough hatred to compromise the country once he had left it. Their way of life was something he knew he could not change. If they liked to live in that way then who was he to singlehandedly alter it?
But most of all, her grandfather would never kill a man against his will. Of this she was completely sure. Despite his life’s work, he had always spoken to Xandria about ethics, about right and wrong. Sure, in New America there was much gray area in these matters, but her grandfather had been one of the few people who still seemed to own a conscience. In his last few years it had grown stronger like a beacon beckoning towards his lost wife, his lost love.
Her brain was beginning to slow down again. She became aware of her surroundings again, aware that her Suppressitor was dead. She braced herself for some heinous wave of emotion but found herself surprised. Something light filled her head, easing her of the burden she had carried until moments before. It was relief. Relief that in her own mind she had satisfied the fact that her grandfather was not a murderer. That if he had indeed Signed Off Voss, it had been the result of weeks of joint `consideration and deliberation.
After all, had it not occurred to anybody that perhaps Voss, also disillusioned with New America, simply did not want to live anymore in that empty life?
NINETEEN
The Olsens were astonished to find Xandria in a pleasant mood. There was something different about her. Her cheeks were flushed and Mrs. Olsen even noted that there was a little light behind her eyes. Even more surprising, she had for the first time been uncharacteristically forthcoming in answering questions about her former life in New America.
Mrs. Olsen and her father had sat her down one day and gently asked if her fugitive status was the reason she ran away.
‘Not at all,’ she had replied calmly, despite her Suppressitor still not working. ‘This business has surprised me as much as you, I’m afraid. I’d no idea my grandfather could play such a pivotal role in the country, even after he retired. I’m really sorry, you know. I didn’t mean to put this burden on you.’
Gabe’s mouth gaped open as he stared at this almost human creature in front of him. What had happened to her? His eyes flickered to her neck and noted that the granite slab was still present. He could not fathom the change.
‘My dear, please do not apo
logise.’ Mrs. Olsen had soothed, feeling pleased inside that Xandria was finally unwinding. ‘You will stay here indefinitely. This is the last place anybody will find you, and I’m sure your grandmother will be watching over you more than ever in this difficult time.’
‘We might have to disguise you a little, though,’ Gabe remarked with a grin. ‘Right now you may as well walk around with a sign screaming out that you’re a foreigner.’
Xandria touched her neck self consciously.
‘I should really take this off.’
Mrs. Olsen reached out to stop her.
‘But are you sure?’
Xandria was not sure at all; she realised this the moment she uttered the words.
‘Let her keep it on for now,’ Gabe had muttered, ‘she can cover it up with clothing. Our clothing, mind. If people come looking for her…’
‘Thanks.’ Xandria said. ‘I doubt there will be many planes between this world and the New now that the gas is going ahead.’
‘Ah.’
There was an uncomfortable silence. It was still an issue nobody knew what to do about. If truth be known, Mrs. Olsen was trying to pretend it wasn’t happening. Otherwise very soon she would have to say goodbye to life as she knew it. The change would last forever. Forever! It was too immense a concept to get her head around, it was better not to think about it.
All over the world there had been riots and protests to get Zachary DuPont to declare war on New America.
‘We need to fight!’ people screamed hysterically, ‘don’t you see? If we don’t fight now, our voices will be hushed forever!’
‘No more living! No more laughing! No more love!’
‘This is the end of humankind as we know it!’
‘Gather all fellows of the Earth and fight for our futures!’
There had been no official word from the usually vociferous DuPont ever since New America’s eerie announcement. It was expected he would make some choice comments to say the least, but days had turned into weeks with absolutely nothing. Insiders had revealed it was not for his lack of caring. Conversely, DuPont and every other world leader had been holed up in one room, pain-stricken, debating the uncomfortable future of the world. If they declared war on New America, they had to already have some vague plan as to how it would proceed. This was the crux of the matter – nobody could fathom a way they could outsmart the world’s most modern nation in a war.