What Mike’s got here is a radical, left-field idea. The central concept is almost too original for its own good. That’s why it needs a generous helping of conventionality slathered over it. He’ll rework it, again. It’s not a prospect that fills him with joy, frankly, but he guesses that it has to be done and he has to struggle on. It’s worth it. He still believes in it. It’s just a dream, but it’s a dream that could be made real and this is the place where that happens. Your dreams – not just of your idea but of your future self, your fortunes – get turned into reality here. He still loves this place, still believes in it.
Mike leaves the bar, goes outside and sits on a bench, watching the ocean, watching the people pass on the tarmac strip and on the sands themselves, roller skating, boarding, strolling, playing Frisbee, just walking.
A girl comes and sits on the bench too. Well, woman. She might be Mike’s age. He starts talking to her. She’s cute and friendly and smart, rangy and dark, nice laugh. Just his type. A lawyer, on a day off, just relaxing. Monica. He asks does she want a drink and she says maybe a herbal tea and they sit in a little café still within sight of the beach. Then they go for dinner in a little Vietnamese place a short walk away. Mike gives her the pitch because she’s genuinely interested. She thinks it’s a great idea. It actually seems to make her thoughtful.
Later they walk on the beach in the light of a half-moon, then sit, and there’s some kissing and a modest amount of fooling around, though she’s already told him she doesn’t go any further on a first date. Him too, he tells her, though strictly speaking that’s nonsense and he guesses that she guesses this but doesn’t care.
Then, in the middle of a tight, embracing kiss, something changes. He feels it happen, and when he opens his eyes the moon has gone, the air feels cooler and the beach looks narrower and steeper and leads down to a sea that’s much calmer than the one that was there just seconds ago. There are islands out there, dark shapes under the stars, covered in trees. He shakes his head, looks at Monica. He starts back instinctively, crabbing away from her on all fours. She’s changed completely too. White, blonde, shorter, face quite different. There are a couple of guys – the only other people on the beach – standing massively about ten feet away, watching them.
She dusts her hands and rises, standing in front of the two men. “Mr Esteros,” she says, “welcome to your new home.”
11
Patient 8262
I have been violated! My worst nightmares have come true. Well, not my worst, but some pretty bad ones. Fondled, grabbed, molested in my own bed. Thankfully I woke in time and was able to defend myself and shout and scream to summon help. But all the same.
It was day; afternoon, an hour after lunch and I was in that state it pleases me to remain in for much of the time now, neither awake nor asleep but lying with my eyes closed, listening a little and thinking a lot. I heard somebody come into my room and though I did not hear the door close I noticed a diminution of the sounds from outside in the rest of the clinic. That ought to have alerted me, but I suppose I had grown complacent.
Since the bizarre turn of events with the nonsense-talking and so on, I have spent less time traipsing the corridors and day rooms of the institution and more time in bed. It seemed to me that the other patients and inmates were looking at me oddly, and a few even tried to engage me in conversation in what certainly sounded like the start of more of that gibberish language, often with big smiles on their faces that obviously meant they were in on the joke and just wanted to join in and make fun of me. I would turn aside from them and walk away with all the dignity I could.
When that fat fellow came into my room a couple of days ago – the one who brought the skinny young man in when I was making words up – I hid under the bed sheets and wrapped the pillow over my head. He spoke to me gently, trying – I could tell from the tone of his voice – to get me to come out, but I wouldn’t. When he tried to lift up the sheets to look in on me in my little impromptu tent, I slapped his hand away and hissed. He sighed heavily, one of those very-much-for-public-consumption sighs, and left shortly afterwards.
The medical staff continue to care for me. They make me get out of bed each day and have me sit by the side of it and once or twice they have insisted that I accompany one of them on a walk up and down the corridor, though I draw the line at entering the day room with them. They seem happy enough that I am still mobile. I suppose I shuffle a little more than I did, not really picking my feet up properly, but that is all part of my disguise as well. The less fit and able and the quieter I appear, the more I seem like just another patient. I fit in better.
The doctors still call in occasionally, and the lady doctor who has shown interest in me before came and sat with me for almost half an hour last week. She talked slowly to me – I understood most of what she said, I think – and shone bright lights into my eyes.
Then today the violation. I did not open my eyes to see who might have come into the room. I felt the bedclothes being shifted and thought that perhaps a doctor was going to examine me, though whoever it was didn’t smell like a doctor. Probably not an orderly or a cleaning assistant either, for the same reason. They sometimes tidy me up if I’ve eaten messily or I’ve slumped awkwardly in my bed. If I’d had to guess, I’d have said it might be another patient, though not one of the more unpleasantly scented ones. I foolishly thought that whoever it was might take the hint that I was asleep or pretending to be asleep and therefore did not want to be woken up, but then I felt the sheets being pulled out somewhere down near my hip. I could feel air enter the warm mustiness of the bed just there. What was going on, I wondered?
Then a hand touched my hip, the fingers seeming to prod at first, then lifting and clutching at the material of my pyjamas as though trying to tug them up. What did they think they were doing? Did they think I was wearing a nightgown? I still did not open my eyes, thinking that whoever this incompetent was it would only embarrass them if I confronted them (one ought always to keep the medical staff on one’s side and so should avoid making them feel awkward). The hand gave up the vain attempt to pull my pyjama bottoms up and reached out over my crotch. And slipped into the open fly of the pyjama bottoms, fumbling for and closing on my manhood, squeezing it once and then reaching down to hold my testes!
I opened my eyes an instant after the light clicked out. It was not afternoon at all. It was dark now with the light out; late evening or night. I felt confused, disoriented. The hand withdrew immediately from my private parts and the shadowy, barely glimpsed figure at the side of my bed rose hurriedly with a grunting, distressed noise and was gone before I could glimpse who it might have been, leaving the door swinging still further open as they ran down the corridor. Slippers. They were wearing slippers, from the sound of it, and they could not run very fast. I thought of getting up and giving chase but it would have taken too long.
I shouted for help instead.
But the cheek, the nerve, the banal sordidness of it!
Is this what I’m reduced to – being the sexual plaything of some drooling, sub-sentient inmate of a benighted cretin depository like this? The shame of it. With my past, my achievements, my status and – I swear – my still unfulfilled promise.
The Philosopher
There was only one occasion on which I intervened when technically I should not have. I used my seniority to take a subject from the operative they had been assigned to. He was, supposedly, just Subject 47767 to us, but I had seen his name and details on the system and had been intrigued. It was partly because of him that I had offered my services to the police and security service when I’d left the army. He was something of a hero to me and a lot of other people. What was he doing in our clutches?
His case file spoke of an assault on a prominent person and suspected membership of a terrorist group or a related organisation. The second part of the charge might mean almost nothing; some wit in our office had pointed out that the law regarding “related organisations” and having s
ome sort of connection to terrorist groups was so vaguely and widely drawn that technically it included us. It was the sort of thing you charged people with when you didn’t know what else to charge them with but didn’t want to let them go, when you just suspected them generally.
This man, 47767, had been in the police ten years ago, when the terrorist threat was just starting to become serious. He’d been in a unit that had captured a couple of terrorists who had been planting bombs in various public places, in litter bins in railway and bus stations and in busy thoroughfares, killing a few people and injuring dozens. When they were picked up there had been some sort of breakdown in communication between different parts of their terrorist cell and detailed warnings had been sent for the latest batch of bombs before all of them had been planted. A quick-thinking officer had sent police to the sites relating to the warnings and both men had been caught, though not before they had already planted at least one other bomb not covered by the original warning.
The suspects were split up, and one was questioned conventionally. The other one, who had been in the charge of the police officer who was now our Subject 47767, had been questioned rather more forcefully by him and had revealed the location of the bomb that he and his accomplice had already planted. Police officers dispatched to the location were able to evacuate the area and prevent any deaths or injuries when the bomb detonated just a quarter-hour later. It was one of the few unqualified successes of those early years.
The identity of the officer who would become our Subject 47767 was discovered by the press and he was acclaimed as a hero both in the papers and by the mass of the public as a man who had done something distasteful but necessary. The means he had employed to produce the life-saving results were also discovered; he had been tearing out the terrorist’s fingernails with a pair of pliers (there was no detail on how many he’d had to remove like this before achieving cooperation). This is one of those amateurish but fairly effective techniques you hear about sometimes.
Despite the fact that lives had been saved and the terrorist himself was still very much alive, certain sections of the press and some politicians nevertheless wanted the man to be prosecuted and thrown out of the police force for what he had done. Eventually, as I recalled, he was hounded out of the force and was charged with criminal assault. He refused defence counsel, saying he would defend himself, then at the trial he said nothing. He was jailed for only a couple of years, but things went badly for him in prison and he spent nearly ten years inside. In that time his children grew up and his wife divorced him, moving away and remarrying.
He had slipped from public consciousness in the intervening decade, filled as it was with so much violence and treachery. He had been released earlier this year and now had ended up in the hands of the police again, scheduled to be questioned. I felt there was an untold story here, and there were puzzling details that I had never heard had been cleared up. I was unable to contain my curiosity and took over the case myself. This was not actually against regulations but it was highly irregular, the sort of thing you could get away with once or twice but which, done consistently, would be noted in your file.
He was an ordinary-looking man. Medium build, pale skin, short receding brown hair and a resigned, beaten look on his face. There might have been some defiance in his eyes, though perhaps that was just my own prejudice. He had been beaten up at some point in the last few days, judging from the bruising on his face. He was still dressed and his hands were handcuffed and chained to the floor behind him, though he was otherwise unrestrained and was seated normally.
I sat in front of him in another chair. I even put myself within kicking distance of his feet with nothing in between, which I would never normally do. A junior officer sat to one side monitoring the recording equipment but took no part in the subsequent proceedings.
I began by asking Subject 47767 if he was who I thought he was. He confirmed that he was. We used his real first name throughout. It was Jay. I asked him why he thought he was here.
He laughed bitterly. “I hit the wrong person.”
I asked who that might have been.
“The son of the Justice Minister.” He gave a sour smile.
I asked why he had hit him.
“Because I’m sick to the back teeth of vicious, ignorant dickheads telling me what a fucking hero I am.”
I asked him if he meant because of what had happened with the terrorist he had tortured to discover the location of the bomb.
Jay shook his head and looked away. “Oh, let me guess. I’m a hero figure to people like you, would that be right?”
I said that many people admired what he had done, amongst them, certainly, myself.
“Yeah, well, you would, wouldn’t you?” he replied.
I asked if he meant because of what he obviously – and correctly – took to be my role.
He nodded. “Because you’re a torturer,” he said. He looked straight into my eyes as he said this. I am well used to staring people down, but he would not look away.
I told him that even if I was not, I would still admire him because of what he had done.
“You and every other idiot,” he said. He said it more with resignation than defiance, thought there was an understandable hint of nervousness too. He swallowed conspicuously.
I asked if he didn’t feel proud of what he had done.
“No,” he said. “No, I fucking don’t.”
But he had saved lives, I pointed out.
“I did what I thought I had to do,” Jay said.
Would he do the same thing again, knowing what he did now?
“I don’t know.”
Why not? I asked.
“Because I don’t know what might have happened differently if I hadn’t done it. Probably nothing would have been any different so I suppose I might as well have done what I did. A few people may still be alive who wouldn’t have been otherwise, but who knows? We haven’t got a time machine.”
What did he think might have happened differently?
“We might not live in a society where people live in fear of people like you,” he told me. He shrugged. “But, like I say, probably it would still all have worked out just like it is now. I don’t kid myself that what I might have done differently would have made any difference.”
I said I thought he was wrong to assume the current state of our society was somehow his fault. The fault lay with the people who threatened our society: terrorists, radicals, leftists, liberals and other traitors – those who would like to tear down the state either through direct action or through using words and propaganda to influence the more gullible sections of the masses to do their dirty work for them.
“Yeah, you would think that, too.” Jay sounded tired.
I told him I thought it was tough that he’d ended up in prison. He should never have been prosecuted in the first place and certainly should never have been found guilty. He should have been given a medal, not sent to prison. That had probably ruined his life. Especially as they had kept him in for so long.
“Here we go,” he said, sounding tired again. “You don’t understand anything, do you?”
If he thought that, I said, perhaps he ought to tell me what he thought I ought to understand.
“I insisted that I should be prosecuted. I demanded that I be prosecuted. I refused a defence because I’d wanted to plead guilty but they wouldn’t let me. They threatened my family. So I had to plead innocent. But then I offered no defence and so I was found guilty. They sentenced me to two years but the correct sentence, the least anybody else would have got would have been nine years, so I made sure I stayed in prison for that amount of time. Having time added is not difficult.” Jay smiled without humour. “And when I got out I told anybody who accused me of being a hero that they were an idiot, and people who said I should have got a medal to fuck off. Finally, when one guy got too insistent about how big a hero I was and how he could make sure that I did get a medal, I hit him. Only it turned out he was
the son of the Justice Minister, like I said. And that’s why I’m here.”
I told him I didn’t understand. Why had he wanted to be prosecuted? Why had he wanted to be found guilty? Why had he wanted to be locked up for nine years?
Jay sounded animated at last. He held his head up. “Because I believe in justice.” He spat that word out. “I believe in the law.” That word too. “I did something wrong, something against the law, and I needed to be punished for it. It was wrong that I was going to be let off for it. Even more wrong that people wanted to give me medals for it.”
But he hadn’t done something wrong, I suggested. He had saved innocent lives and helped defeat those who would bring society down.
“It was still against the law!” he shouted. “Don’t you see? If the law means anything then I couldn’t be above it. Not just because I was a police officer or because my breaking it had resulted in some lives being saved. That’s not the point. Torture was illegal. I’d broken the law. Can’t you see any of this?” He shook his the chair, rattling the chains attaching his handcuffs to the floor. “It’s even more important to prosecute police who’ve broken the law than it is to prosecute anybody else, because otherwise nobody trusts the police.”
I pointed out that the forceful questioning of suspects was now entirely if unfortunately legal, even if it hadn’t been then.
“‘Forceful questioning.’ You mean torture.”
If that was what he wanted to call it. But why hadn’t he made his feelings clear to all these newspapers that wanted to talk to him? Or at his trial, where, of all places, he was guaranteed a fair hearing?
Jay looked at me scornfully. “Do you really think the papers print what people actually say? I mean, if it’s not what their proprietors or the government want everybody to hear?” He shook his head. “Same at the trial.”
Transition Page 27