The Offset

by Calder Szewczak

  The next morning, Miri wakes to find Jac sitting at the end of her bed. She’s in a poor state, her eyes bloodshot and her face almost grey in the dim light. Nevertheless, she is dressed for work.

  “I’m sorry,” says Jac, seeing Miri is awake. “You shouldn’t have seen me like that last night. I got carried away and said some things I didn’t mean.”

  Miri pushes herself up on her pillow. “So you don’t hate Grandma?”

  “Of course not,” says Jac. “But she… she was wrong about a lot of things, Miri. And she wasn’t a very good mother.”

  “What did she do?”

  Jac shakes her head. “It’s too complicated to explain. Maybe when you’re older. But we didn’t have a good relationship. Not like you and me.”

  At this last, Miri feels something squirm in the bottom of her stomach. Jac, catching sight of her troubled face, prods her playfully.

  “Come on, Miri, I’m trying to make you feel better, not worse.” She glances at her watch. “Listen, we can talk about this more later if you want. But I’ve got to get to work.” Her tone makes it clear that the matter is closed and Miri knows better than to argue.

  Jac pushes herself to her feet and starts away from the bed. She has only taken a few steps when Miri calls after her. “I don’t want to die,” she blurts out, the words bursting from her lips before she can stop herself.

  Jac turns back to her sharply. “What did you say?”

  “I don’t want to die,” Miri mumbles, eyes firmly on the bedspread as she tries to gather her thoughts, to find a way to explain the hollow ache in her chest. Before she can say anything, Jac interrupts her thoughts.

  “Why do you think I’m working all the time, Miri? It’s to keep you and Mum safe. To make the world better. You don’t need to worry about a thing.”

  Miri looks up at her mother, who’s already hovering at the door, itching to leave.

  “But we all die one day, don’t we?”

  “It’s so far away, Miri. There’s no point thinking about it now.”

  When Miri says nothing, Jac takes it as a sign that she’s free to go. The door closes behind her with a final click. Miri lies still in the bed and closes her eyes. It is a long time before she can bring herself to open them again.

  35

  Snow. Jac can hardly believe it. In the entire course of her investigation, it never once occurred to her to question the records of atmospheric temperature. If it’s cold enough for snow, then she knows that these, too, must have been tampered with. It stings a little that, even after her careful preparation, she’s managed to get all the way to Greenland without any analogue means of checking the temperature. Well, no matter. A soil sample will serve as evidence enough of the lowered carbon level.

  Her head starts to spin as she clumsily scoops earth into the capsule. She kids herself that it is merely giddiness borne of relief. She has convinced herself that the project was doomed, and now she’s discovered the opposite. The trees’ growth is stunted because the world is healing. The temperatures have dropped such that the project’s estimates will have to be completely revised.

  However, something continues to trouble her about the discovery. She draws a blank every time she tries to come up with a theory as to who might be interfering with the project records and why. Attempting to conceal the project’s failure is one thing; there are certainly board members who would happily do so simply to save face, although truthfully Jac doesn’t think any of them have the expertise to do it. But trying to hide the fact that the world is recovering… that’s surely news to be celebrated rather than suppressed.

  Behind these concerns lingers an unpleasant idea that she cannot quite bring herself to acknowledge; that perhaps the world is healing in spite of her efforts with Project Salix and not on account of them. It shouldn’t matter, one way or another, but it leaves a foul taste in her mouth. She’s given everything to Project Salix, sacrificed her marriage and her motherhood on its altar. And all for what?

  Perhaps the world would have got along just fine without her, perhaps all this would have happened regardless of whether she made it her life’s work or not. For the longest time, she’s feared the project would fail. She told herself that was only to be expected with so many relying on her, with the fate of the world – and her daughter’s future – at stake. Now she’s not so sure.

  Maybe she was never as scared of letting Miri down as she was of proving her right. Call it duty, call it ambition; whatever it was, she let it drive a wedge between her and Miri, something for which she cannot forgive herself. At least success would have meant it was worthwhile. But if her work is and always was irrelevant–

  It’s getting increasingly hard to concentrate. She’s starting to feel weak, and doesn’t doubt that the vomiting and diarrhoea will begin soon. The nausea is already intense and being compounded by a splitting headache. Really, she’s in no fit state for another journey on the NAX. But she has no choice. She has to get back for the Offset.

  She assures herself that at least Miri will have nominated her instead of Alix. Even if Miri had a last-minute change of heart, Jac knows that the news of her having exposed herself to a fatal dose of radiation would’ve quelled any misgivings on Miri’s part absolutely. Yet the Archivist’s phone call to that effect was only ever a fail-safe. While there are so many things Jac does not know or understand about her daughter, that Miri does not love her is one thing of which she is certain.

  For once, this knowledge brings her some comfort. Bitter as it is to be so hated by her own child, it is just as well. After all, she’s already dying. It might take a few weeks, but there’s no doubt that the radiation dose she has received is fatal. Besides, Alix is much better equipped to look after Miri than she is. It is Alix who their daughter will need most in the years ahead. And she has always been prepared for this, always known that on this day, the day Miri turns eighteen, she would be called upon to lay down her life for her daughter. Well, her life has been laid down already – though in service of what, Jac is no longer certain.

  Steeling herself, Jac pushes herself to her feet and then has to stop when the world swims around her and the edges of her vision blur to grey. After a moment, the dizziness passes. With an effort, she lifts her bag – heavy with the weight of the sealed capsule – and begins to stagger down the mountain.

  36

  Miri goes alone to the Gallery. She is not due before noon, and it’s some hours before then, but she wants to get it out of the way.

  The walk over is a blur and all too soon she spies the tall, ancient building slide irrevocably into view. She runs up the steps of cracked white stone that look out onto Trafalgar Square and walks right past where the Offset ceremony will be held.

  At the Gallery entrance, she spots a patch of filterweed at the base of one of the pillars and flinches as the image of a white rat crosses her mind. Then, taking a deep breath, she pushes through the doors.

  She finds herself in a foyer that is sparsely furnished. A bored-looking receptionist sits behind a curving beechwood counter. It has a series of plastic trays running along the front, the kind designed for flyers and leaflets, only the trays are empty. The receptionist doesn’t look up when Miri enters, his gaze instead fixed on the far wall. Miri turns and sees that he is staring at a small circular clock that hangs on a nail roughly halfway between floor and ceiling. It is more than an hour slow.

  Miri clears her throat as she approaches the counter but the receptionist ignores her. Only when she comes to stand right in front of him and says “Excuse me” in a loud voice, does he take his eyes from the clock.

  “I’m here to make a nomination,” she says in response to his blank stare. Without saying a word, he takes a scrap of paper, scrawls out a number and hands it to Miri.

  “Wait over there until your number is called.” His eyes snap back to the clock.

  Feeling distinctly wrong-footed, Miri retreats from the counter. There is a wide upholstered bench in the middle of t
he foyer and she perches awkwardly on one edge of it, picking a spot that means she can keep an eye on the counter.

  For ten minutes she sits in perfect silence, nervously lacing together finger and thumb. No one comes in. No one goes out. The receptionist does not move from the counter. Then, as if prompted by an alarm, he jerks into action, shouting a number and staring around the near-empty foyer.

  Given that there is no one else present besides her, this behaviour seems so odd that it makes Miri think the number the receptionist is repeatedly shouting must belong to someone else, someone either invisible or absent. But when she checks her scrap of paper, she sees that the number is, indeed, her own. She gets up and crosses back over the foyer, handing the scrap of paper to the receptionist, who scrutinises it as if never having seen it before.

  “This seems in order.” Taking a new scrap of paper, he scribbles out a new number that he hands to Miri and then points to a set of doors beside the counter. “You may go through.”

  Perplexed as she is, Miri pushes through to find herself in another waiting room. The best part of it is taken up with several rows of plastic bucket-like chairs, all empty. Along the left-hand side is a series of cubicles. Most of them are concealed from view by a heavy grey curtain drawn across the front, but one has its curtains pushed back, revealing an empty desk behind a pane of glass.

  Clutching her new number tightly, she sits down in the nearest chair and waits.

  There is no clock on the wall here and, in that windowless room, no way of discerning the time. For all Miri knows, the world has come to a perfect standstill. She has no way of knowing whether she has passed five minutes or five hours. With nothing to do but sit, it certainly feels like the latter.

  Finger, thumb, finger, thumb.

  Every so often, she hears promising sounds from behind one of the curtains: the shuffle of papers, the dull scrape of chair legs on carpet, the whisper of a hushed inquiry. Every time she thinks something is about to happen – that one of the curtains will be pulled dramatically aside or someone will come in and tell her what to do next – the sounds die away to silence and she is left waiting with no further idea as to what is going on.

  The sudden rasp of the PA startles Miri so much that she nearly falls out of her chair. Coming to her senses, she realises that it is her number being called over the microphone along with the instruction to present herself to Desk Three.

  Hoping she’s identified the right one, Miri hurries over and twitches aside the curtain. A woman sits beyond the glass; an administrator who is heavily wrinkled, her skin drooping from her cheeks and jaw, and wearing the same bored expression as the receptionist. She looks like she might have been sitting there for all of time.

  “Is this Desk Three?”

  The administrator raises a weary brow. “Number?”

  Miri slides the piece of paper into the tray beneath the glass. The woman draws it out with a single finger. After staring at it for a long moment, she screws it into a ball and tosses it over her shoulder.

  “There’s a scanner to your right. Please place your thumb upon the device so that we can identify you.”

  It takes four goes before the thing works, a little red light flashing angrily each time it fails to identify Miri. At last, it shines green.

  “Miriam Ford-Boltanski,” says the woman, peering at the read-out on her side of the desk.

  “Yes.”

  “What can I do for you?”

  Because the administrator speaks in a flat monotone, it’s a moment before Miri realises she’s been asked a question. As soon as she does, she tersely explains that she’s here to make her nomination. The woman listens impassively and then stoops to retrieve something from a drawer.

  “You need to complete this form,” she says, sliding the sheet of paper beneath the glass.

  It is unutterably simple, bearing only a short statement with a few choice blanks and a place beneath for a signature and date.

  I, the undersigned _________, do hereby nominate _________ to be Offset on the occasion of my eighteenth birthday (__/__/____). I verify that I have come to this decision of my own accord and that all information I have provided is correct and lawful.

  “Is that it?” Miri asks. “Is that all it takes?”

  The woman gives her a blank look and slides a pen beneath the glass. “Take your time,” she drawls, turning her attention back to the document she had been working on before Miri arrived.

  Miri fills out the easy parts first. She puts in her name and birthday, then signs the bottom and adds the date. Then there is only one blank left.

  It is a long while before she finally commits a name to the page. It’s not the name she has, for the best part of eighteen years, imagined writing, but it is, she realises now, the only name that can possibly fill that gap, the only name that is fair, however wrong it feels. She slides the form back through the glass and marvels that her hands don’t so much as shake.

  The woman looks it over and then sighs. Taking her own pen, she crosses out part of Miri’s name where she’s written it in the first gap. Then she passes the form back over.

  “Name needs to match the one you’ll be legally identified by from the date of the Offset. Given the parent you are nominating, please confirm that this will be your name by initialling my correction.”

  Miri looks down at her name. “Ford” is crossed out, brutally cut through with a single stroke. She feels her heart tremor, but there’s no going back. Not now. Gripping the pen once more, she quickly scrawls her initials and pushes the form away.

  37

  A cold front cuts eastward and the sweltering humidity drains from the city. The day becomes clement, the first of the year when it’s bearable to be outside. Bodies fan out amongst the parched sedges of the Barbican rain gardens, welcoming the ragged breeze that catches at loose hair and grazes skin. Bicycles zip up and down the whitewashed streets, picnic baskets groan with the weight of clinking bottles and fragrant soy fruits. The birth of another magnificent winter. And who can say how many more there’ll be before the temperatures soar and the planet burns? All the more reason to seize upon it, drink it in.

  Perhaps it is for this reason that only a small crowd has assembled in Trafalgar Square. Or perhaps it is because word has got around that Professor Jac Boltanski has not, after all, been chosen. Only the hardiest of the anti-natalists have turned up, and even they cannot seem to muster the will, their specially prepared placards lying abandoned and trampled on the ground.

  The sense of missed opportunity is compounded by the paraphernalia in evidence on the platform: nothing more than a rough concrete wall and a row of sandbags. Today’s Offset is by firing squad. Quick, clean. There will be no show, no excitement. Those who have gathered in the Square can’t help but feel they’ve been cheated of a spectacle. The air of disappointment hangs over them like a cloud of gnats.

  When a rickshaw pulls up at the intersection with Charing Cross Road, only the pigsuits seem to notice. They have turned out in full force, their visors gleaming in the sun to obscure the shadow-hollows within. Moving to some wordless command, a unit peels away discreetly from the crowd and makes for the cab. Bracing herself, Alix steps out to greet them.

  She is wearing a simple beige trouser suit, one she picked years ago for precisely this occasion. With some approbation, she notes that her jacket got creased on the journey over and thinks fleetingly that she should have worn something else after all. That seems to be the way things are going today, her plans crumbling beneath the weight of reality.

  It’s not fair, not when Alix has been planning this day in painstaking detail ever since Miri was born. It has brought her some comfort over the years, knowing what it will be like, knowing exactly what she will do and when. Only, when it came to it, everything she’d planned felt absurd and insubstantial, like some sort of futile performance, and all for the sake of what she couldn’t say. In the end, she had done little but sit at the kitchen table, wondering how to kill th
e time.

  Finally, when she couldn’t take it anymore, she called the rickshaw and went outside to wait, stopping only to look herself up and down in the hall mirror. She slicked down a stray hair and stepped through the door without a second glance. Now she’s here. Early.

  The heels of her brown brogues clack on the pavement as she lets herself be whisked towards the steps of the Gallery. With iron grip, the pigsuits steer her onwards. Upwards. Only then does a ripple of attention pass through the crowd. Arms stretch, heads turn.

  Breaking free of her guard, Alix reaches the wall in a few swift steps and claims her position. With a jerk of the chin, she gestures at the nearest pigsuit who obeys her command, stepping forward to tape a mark on the front of her jacket. Alix takes the moment to scan the crowd beyond the platform, searching the faces, half-hoping to catch a final look at her wife or daughter. But she knows, deep down, that neither of them are there. The faces blur.

  Alix knows she should be proud: a soon-to-be-martyred mother, facing the most honourable of Offsets – albeit one that was planned for her wife. She will die so that others can live. Better, in fact; so that Miri can live.

  It’s what I always wanted, she thinks. To be a mother, even if it means dying for the privilege. For Jac to live. For Miri – and the world – to be saved.

  I wanted this. I chose this.

  Finally finished with the tape, the pigsuit straightens. A black X now emblazons Alix’s chest. She glances at the pigsuit and swallows hard when – for just a second – she thinks she sees a pair of bright eyes glaring out at her from behind the visor. But then the pigsuit moves and she realises it must have been a trick of the light, casting her own reflection back at her. She watches as the pigsuit drops back to join the others waiting at the platform’s edge. There are five of them in all, each one clasping a .30 calibre rifle in the empty gauntlets of their hands. They stand motionless, looking for Alix’s sign, the unspoken symbol of assent.