The Book of Levi

by Clark, Mark

  ‘Well go and lie down,’ said Leslie.

  ‘Right you are, doctor Les,’ Nicholas replied with an attempted smile and he moved stiffly towards the door. But just before he reached it, he turned and said, ‘When doors open, walk through ‘em, but always take a good look around as you enter the room.’

  And he left.

  ‘What did he mean by that?’ asked Leslie to himself. But Damien answered.

  ‘I think he means to watch out for me, mate.’ Damien slapped Leslie on the back like an old friend. ‘Come on, I’ll shout you a beer.’

  *

  The view from Scraper 3 was stunning. The rain had abated and left the sky crisp, clean and clear. Damien and Leslie looked out of the window admiring the surrounding scrapers as a small Asian man with beautifully elegant hands played upon a Steinway in the corner. It was middle afternoon and no one else was about.

  ‘So we’re gonna change the world, I hear?’ Damien began.

  ‘Apparently,’ replied Leslie. ‘I wish to hell we had those manuscripts. But yes, I do have some blueprints of my own.’

  ‘Such as?’ asked Damien.

  ‘Well, I think we could manufacture a small electric motor that could be attached to scooters and pushbikes that would give our citizens greater mobility. They might even get as far as to the edges of the wasteland and back without recharging.’

  This idea twigged with Damien as he thought of his factories. ‘Go on.’

  ‘And I’ve been working on a prototype for a long range radio utilising the many satellites still circling the Earth, currently without purpose.’

  ‘We could use those?’ asked Damien, shifting forward in his seat with interest, suddenly envisioning world trade.

  ‘I don’t see why not. There are thousands of them just falling around the planet. We should be able to bounce a signal off at least one of them. Some of them are geocentric, so they’re in the same place above the Earth all the time. I might take a few pot shots at one of those. Trial and error.’

  ‘Trial and error?’ Damien echoed. ‘Mate, if you can really do stuff like that I’ll build whatever you need. We’ve got metal workshops and welding gear and I know where there’s a bunch of mainframe computers in College Street that haven’t been used in a long time - if any of that’s any good to you?’

  And so the conversation drifted into the afternoon; both men enthusing the other with promises of things to come and all to the background strains of the little Asian pianist.

  MONTAGE

  Damien and Leslie burning the midnight oil over a table covered in sheets of paper. There are plans and blueprints strewn everywhere. Leslie is animatedly explaining his designs to Damien who is nodding and offering suggestions.

  A workman opens a huge roller door. Damien guides an old army truck into a massive warehouse. Leslie watches on as tools and machinery are loaded from the truck. He laughs with satisfaction and pats the equally-happy Damien on the back.

  Leslie in industrial goggles hard at work shaving steel on a lathe.

  Damien searching through old industrial bins and throwing any useful raw material onto the back of a truck.

  Elizabeth visiting the men. She is shown a pushbike. Its pedals have been removed and footrests installed. Leslie has attached a small motor to the rear of the vehicle and is demonstrating its speed. Elizabeth beams with pleasure at their progress. She hugs both of them. The two men catch eyes with one another in silent competition.

  Damien pulls back a sheet to reveal a huge computer. Leslie is impressed and excited. Damien reveals another and yet another. Leslie shakes his head in wonder. He touches one of he mainframes as if it is a precious jewel.

  DISSOLVE

  Now the same computers are in full swing flashing and beeping and computing. Leslie points to a map of the world on the wall. He is explaining something to Damien and drawing wavy lines across it. Damien nods as Leslie places three crosses on the map: one above Australia; one above the southern tip of India and one above the U.K.

  Leslie sits alone. It is late and the close light of a computer monitor splashes light upon his face. He speaks into a microphone . . .

  *

  ‘Come in. Can you read me? Is there anybody out there?’

  Leslie was tired. He pushed back his chair from the desk. His face was weary and drawn. The loud sound of white-noise filled the darkened room. Leslie rubbed his eyes, moved across the room and turned on the light. Behind him a heavy, old satellite dish was revealed pointing up through a large recently excavated hole in the curved metal roof directly above it. He punched a series of digits into the mainframe and the satellite dish moved a fraction of a degree to the north, almost imperceptibly. He stared at it for a moment, his eyes glazed with fatigue. He wandered slowly down a long corridor towards the men’s room, stretching his back and neck as he went.

  He rested his forehead upon the wall as he relieved himself into the porcelain. ‘Two weeks,’ he muttered. ‘Two bloody weeks. My head’s full of static.’

  He was washing his hands when he heard a voice coming from the far room.

  ‘That you, Damien?’ he yelled. No response. ‘That you, Damien?’ Nothing.

  Leslie appeared cautiously around the bathroom door. He peered down the corridor and listened. All he could hear was static rasping into the gloom at its far end. He was sure that he had heard a voice, so he looked for a weapon in case of attack. He decided on an old poker that sat in an adjacent room next to a long disused fireplace. Stealthily, he returned into the corridor and, as quietly as he could, crept along it towards the radio room. Slowly, he poked his head around the corner. He could see no-one. The white-noise still spewed from the small speakers, but apart from that, nothing.

  ‘Damien?’ he repeated, hoarsely. His heart was pounding. He held the poker menacingly in front of him. Crime was rife in this city and he was no hero.

  Step by cautious step he entered the room, turning his head this way and that, threatening space with his extended poker.

  Then, to his utter amazement, the static noise suddenly ceased and he heard a voice, an English voice, loud and clear through the speakers.

  ‘This is U.K. 1 transmitting via satellite. This is U.K. 1 transmitting via satellite. Come in, please. Come in. We copy you, whoever you are. This is U.K. 1. Can you read me? Over.’

  For a second or two Leslie couldn’t believe his ears. He stood with his mouth agape and the poker still menacingly before him. He dropped it and raced to the computer microphone.

  ‘U.K 1,’ he spluttered, ‘U.K. 1. Hello. Hello. Over.’ Leslie held his hand to his head in disbelief and he stared at the stars through the hole above him as he listened.

  The voice came again, ‘Who is this? Over.’

  ‘This is Leslie Woodford,’ he replied. ‘From Corporate City. Over.’

  ‘From where? Over.’

  ‘Oh sorry,’ stammered Leslie, ‘from Sydney. Sydney, Australia.’

  There was a moment’s silence and for one or two awful seconds Leslie thought that he may have lost the satellite. But, not so. The operator opened the microphone at the other end and suddenly Leslie could hear cheers and whoops of delight thundering across the globe. He was startled, until the operator’s voice came back to him again, more loudly this time, to keep above the din.

  ‘Sorry, old man! Hold on!’ he yelled. ‘Keep it down everyone!’ and the background party noises quickly diminished. ‘Sorry about that,’ he explained. He sounded very British. ‘But this is our first contact with Australia. Everyone here is very excited. Are there many of you? Over.’

  ‘Several hundred thousand, I think,’ Leslie replied. He was in a dream, but he pulled himself together for a pressing question. ‘Have you contacted other cities? Over.’

  ‘Twenty two. You make it twenty three,’ the voice replied, ‘but you’re the first from the southern hemisphere.’

  ‘Who else do you know of?’ asked Leslie. He was beside himself with excitement. He was the first man i
n Corporate City in well over a century to hear the voice of a foreigner.

  ‘We have Washington, New York and several other cities in the western hemisphere; Baghdad, Teheran and a few more cities in the Middle East; some of the major European centres and quite a few across Asia, including Rangoon, Beijing and Tokyo. Welcome to the world. Over.’

  Leslie was choked up. He had tears rolling down his face. He was besotted with the love of discovery and the greatness of revelation. He yelled out with delight, but he didn’t open the microphone to let London hear his joy.

  ‘Where do we go from here? Over.’ he asked when he recomposed himself enough to speak again. There was a quiver in his voice and his stomach felt like someone had been wrenching it from the inside and was trying to get out.

  ‘Sit tight. Remember the frequency. My name is Sidney. Ironic, yes? We have only recently been able to activate the M61 satellite above Australia and we’re relaying from M65 above Jo’berg, but that’s in motion, so we only have a window of one hour at this time each day. It’s three in the afternoon now, so it would be about midnight there. You can contact us each day between about 11pm and midnight your time. Unfortunately we only have a few seconds transmission left now. But we shall speak again tomorrow. If you have a honcho there get them to the microphone then. Over.’

  ‘Will do,’ Leslie replied. ‘But tell me, before you go - what are the conditions in the other world cities. Over.’

  There was a brief flicker of hesitation before the voice returned. ‘It varies. Let’s just say that some are coping while others are, well, in some trouble.’

  The voice began to crackle and fade. ‘Tomorrow. Over and out.’ And the white-noise returned.

  Leslie slumped back into his chair with the most extreme sensation of satisfaction he had ever known. He felt like Columbus discovering the New World, or Newton when he saw the apple fall. He couldn’t believe it. He actually pinched his arm to check that he was not asleep. He overdid it a bit and bruised himself and every time he rubbed his arm for the next few days he thought himself pretty stupid for that.

  ‘My God,’ he muttered. He stared up, wide eyed at the stars. More tears erupted from him and he stood and punched the air with glee. Yes!’ he roared and his voice rolled beneath the curved metal surface hanging above him.

  *

  The next twenty four hours were, without question, the most delightfully excruciating of Leslie’s life. He determined not to tell the others of his discovery until they could hear it directly for themselves. He wanted to maximise the impact.

  Just after ten forty five in the evening, Leslie welcomed Elizabeth and Damien into his radio room. The weather was kind again, and when the two entered, the stars were still smiling down on the opening in Leslie’s makeshift observatory roof.

  ‘Where is Nicholas?’ asked Leslie, as he took Elizabeth’s full length coat, revealing her shapely form in a red evening dress.

  ‘He’s still very ill, unfortunately,’ she replied sadly. ‘The doctors can’t seem to work out what’s the matter with him.’

  ‘They’re calling it a virus,’ added Damien, placing his jacket on a nearby chair. ‘Then again, that’s what they call everything they can’t figure out, isn’t it?’

  ‘A virus?’ Leslie echoed with disappointment. ‘You mean he’s still sick after, what is it, nearly a month?’

  ‘Yes,’ replied Elizabeth, with a slight shake of her head. ‘Ridiculous, isn’t it? His son’s ill too. The doctors think Nicholas may have caught it from him.’

  ‘I’m really sorry to hear that. I must go and see him soon. I’ve been so busy, I didn’t even know.’ Then, remembering his manners he said, ‘Oh please, come, sit.’

  The three of them sat in the austere room in front of the computer. Leslie produced a plate of small goods, some cheese and a bottle of champagne.

  ‘I see you’ve spared no expense on the décor,’ said Elizabeth with a smile, as she surveyed the Spartan room. ‘We must be celebrating something?’

  ‘We’d better be bloody celebrating something,’ added Damien, taking a flute which Leslie began filling. ‘Otherwise what the bloody hell are we doing in this old place at this time of night?’

  Leslie and Damien shared a smile. Damien knew Leslie well by now. He had a strong sense that Les had had a breakthrough of some kind. Leslie was generally reserved but when something ignited his passion he became as excited as a schoolboy on a cinema date. Damien could see that Leslie was excited now. He was barely able to contain himself. He spilled some champagne whilst pouring, he had a nervous edge to his voice and he was speaking quickly.

  ‘Yes, as a matter of fact I do have a little surprise for you both,’ he said with a sing song ‘I know something you don’t know’ tone to his voice. He sat back and sipped his champagne.

  ‘Well?’ asked Elizabeth after some time of watching him sip champagne. She was intrigued. ‘Are you going to tell us?’

  ‘What time is it?’ Leslie asked casually.

  ‘What time is it?’ parroted Damien. ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

  ‘It’s got everything to do with anything,’ Leslie replied cryptically.

  ‘Sorry, you’ve lost me,’ Damien replied. ‘It’s two or three minutes to eleven. And past my bedtime.’

  ‘Mine too,’ said Elizabeth, trying to guess the reason for Leslie’s obvious excitement. She looked up through the porthole to the stars and then over at the satellite. Then around the room for any clues. ‘I give up,’ she said with a smile.

  She sipped on her champagne with her achingly sensual blue-green eyes piercing Leslie’s soul across the rim of the flute. This was his moment. She would love him for this. This of all things: connection; a wide, wide world; a new age. And he was about to reveal it.

  ‘Lady and gentleman,’ he announced loudly, here is to our health, to the health of Corporate City and to the health of all the world cities. Cheers!’ He held up his glass in salute and the others followed, looking askance at one another as they did so. Damien was about to say, ‘What world cities?’ but only got as far as ‘What worl . . .’ when Leslie opened the throttle on the sound control to his computer and static rasped into the room.

  ‘Do you have to do that?’ Damien asked above the minor din. ‘It’s a tad disconcerting.’

  But Elizabeth had stopped sipping her champagne and was watching Leslie closely. She squinted her eyes and tilted her head in silent interrogation.

  He returned her stare with the champagne flute still to his mouth and with his other hand resting on a button beneath the microphone on his desk.

  A voice invaded the room.

  ‘This is U.K. 1 from London listening for Sydney, Australia. Do you read me Leslie? Over.’

  As far as Damien’s reaction went, the voice may as well have been a bat suddenly flapping in. He stood up in a chaotic flurry, smashing his champagne glass in the process.

  ‘What the hell!’ he bellowed. ‘What the hell?’

  Elizabeth, by contrast, was carved in stone.

  Leslie smirked in triumph as he replied, ‘Yes, Sidney. I’m here again. Over.’

  ‘No. No. We’re Sydney. We’re Sydney. Not him,’ whispered Damien, shaking his hands at Leslie so that he could recognise his mistake.

  ‘That’s his name,’ Leslie whispered back. ‘Now shhh.’

  Damien didn’t know what to do. His eyes were darting about and he had become a bag of worms, uncertain where to squirm to. His heart was beating like ‘Achilles Last Stand’. He was a ball of adrenaline.

  ‘Nice to speak with you again, hopefully at more leisure. Do you have your prime-minister there? Over.’

  ‘No, but I have our president. Here she is.’ Leslie smiled as he handed the microphone to Elizabeth. Timidly, she took it.

  ‘This is Elizabeth Dawson,’ she said. ‘I am president of Corporate City. Over.’

  ‘Hold on,’ replied the voice. And another voice came into the room.’

  ‘Greetings, P
resident Dawson,’ it said. It was a male voice, probably from a man of middle years. It was an odd voice; a little high-pitched and a bit raspy, but it was unmistakably British. ‘This is Prime Minister Green from London. It is a pleasure to speak with you. Leslie may have told you that you are the first city on-line in the southern hemisphere.’

  As Green continued, Elizabeth was incredulous to learn what Leslie had already learned the previous night. Then she asked, ‘Of these other twenty two cities, how many are stable and how many are democracies? Over.’

  ‘It’s about fifty-fifty at this stage,’ replied Green, ‘but I’m afraid that the democracies are faring rather worse over all as far as we can tell. There is civil disobedience in the streets of most democracies. Things are reasonably contained here and in the Eastern seaboard of the U.S.A. and Europe’s okay to the north, but alas, where there is choice there is dissent. In Asia, the Middle East and in the Balkans, dictatorships and juntas abound and it must be said they currently appear to be the more stable forms of government. Although, to be fair, no city in the world can probably be said to be truly stable. How are things down there?’

  So Elizabeth told him of the general stability in Corporate City but was also honest about the growing unrest in the lower class as the classes divided. She explained the basic system that had been adopted for government. She mentioned also that although Corporate City was a democracy, the growing power of some lobby groups would, in all probability, soon lead to punitive action by her government.

  Green and Dawson spoke for the full hour and by the end of it she, Damien, and Leslie had learned that although cities were now in contact with one another, trade was still in its infancy because of the difficulties involved in transporting goods. Most of the democracies sounded like very dangerous places where civil armies jockeyed for control. In the dictatorships too there was the usual bloody revolution every so often but it sounded like some quite big populations, like Beijing, were actually doing reasonably well due to the firm hand of government effectively quelling any disquiet that individuals and their lobby groups might feel.