Work. Rest. Repeat.: A Post-Apocalyptic Detective Novel

by Frank Tayell

  “No, none at all.”

  “So,” he said, “instead of looking to see where they were, just look for who wasn’t anywhere. Do you see?”

  “Okay,” Vauxhall said, as she returned her attention to the screens. “That makes sense. Hang on.”

  “How long will this take?” Ely asked.

  “I said hang on… here.” A list came up on the screen.

  “Who are they?” he asked.

  “That’s all the people who were off-net during the time of the murder.”

  “All of them? But there are so many.”

  “There are forty-seven people,” she said.

  “No,” Ely said. “Forty-seven suspects.”

  He picked up his helmet.

  “Where are you going?” Vauxhall asked.

  “To interrogate them,” he said simply, as he walked out of the door.

  He’d made it twenty paces before an alert came up on his display. He had an incoming call from Chancellor Stirling. Bracing himself, he answered it.

  “Murders, Constable. Murders! Why didn’t you inform me directly?” the Chancellor demanded.

  “Ma’am, I was waiting until I had something to report.”

  “You don’t think this ruinous loss of production was something worth reporting? Do you know how much labour has been lost?”

  “About a quarter of a million hours ma’am.”

  “Our current estimates,” a man answered, “put it at three hundred thousand. It is likely to be far higher.”

  Ely knew that voice as well. It belonged to Councillor Henley, the man Stirling wanted to take control of Tower-One. He was expected to win. His opponent, Chester from Tower-Five, had made some ill-advised comments about population increase ten years ago. There was no doubt as to who had leaked the recordings of them to the newsfeeds. There were no candidates from Tower-One standing. The Assemblies had a long tradition of not wasting workers on something so frivolous as politics.

  “Three hundred thousand hours lost, all from Tower-One,” Henley said. “What do you have to say about that?”

  That it was a matter for Councillor Cornwall, Ely thought. “As I said,” he replied. “I wanted to make some progress with the investigation before reporting in.”

  “Well get on with it,” Stirling snapped. “Why were the Greenes killed?”

  “I don’t know ma’am, but,” Ely added quickly, “I believe it was sabotage.”

  “Sabotage?” There was a sharp intake of breath from the Chancellor.

  “Are you sure?” Henley asked.

  “I won’t be certain until I’ve made an arrest, but at this point that seems the most likely motive.”

  “I see,” the Chancellor said. “You mean it’s a guess. And you are also telling us that you’ve not made an arrest. Do you know who the killer is?”

  “No ma’am. Not definitively. But I do have suspects.”

  “Suspects, plural?” Henley asked.

  “Yes sir.”

  “Well, spit it out, man. Who are they?”

  “I’ve established that the killer had to be someone from within Tower-One, and have eliminated all but forty-seven names from that list.”

  “Forty-seven? You’re not saying they all had something to do with it?” Henley asked.

  “No sir,” Ely said, though now he wondered whether there might be more than one person involved. “I believe the crime was committed by just one individual.”

  “And how do you want to proceed from here?” Chancellor Stirling asked.

  “I was planning on interrogating each of them,” Ely said.

  “No,” Henley said curtly. “That would be too great a disruption and we can’t afford any more of those. Not now that—”

  The Chancellor cleared her throat pointedly. Henley didn’t finish his sentence.

  “It would only take an hour or two per suspect,” Ely said, to fill the loaded silence.

  “I imagine it will take a lot longer than that,” Henley said. “And the election is only a matter of hours away.”

  “But Chancellor—” Ely began to protest.

  “No,” she interrupted. “Henley is correct. We must minimize all disruption. You say you’ve identified forty-seven suspects. If you say they are not all involved, then you must work harder. I will allow you to interview five. No more. In the meantime, I’m ordering all transportation from Tower-One suspended. If we can do nothing else, we can ensure that this killer remains your problem.”

  “And, Constable,” Henley said, “when you do catch this murderer, remember that there is only one possible sentence. A killer is of no use to our society and there is no prospect of rehabilitation. The killer must die. When you find him, throw him out of the airlock. We will not waste the energy transporting him here. If you manage this, though I doubt you will, perhaps it will go someway to mitigating the damage your failures have caused.”

  “Yes,” Stirling said, “I concur. Execute this killer. Justice should be swift, Constable. We’ve seen your logs. Too often you skulk in the shadows. The fault here lies with you. Were you a more visible presence, were you feared, this crime would not have occurred. Nor, had you been in the lounge, would that fight have begun. All these wasted hours can be firmly placed at your feet, Constable. I will remind you, again, that the election has not yet happened. I am in power. If you are unable to perform your duties, you will be removed and replaced. I hope I make myself clear. Productivity must be maintained.”

  The Chancellor clicked off.

  Ely stared into space for a moment. He couldn’t believe it. He’d always suspected that Henley was the power behind the throne, but he’d not realised quite how influential the man was until now.

  They were going to make him the scapegoat. It wouldn’t work. Rather, it wouldn’t be enough to secure Stirling victory in the polls. That was scant comfort. If Ely was dismissed, he would be sent to the launch site. He didn’t want that. It wasn’t the harsh conditions that worried him, but an ignominious dismissal would spell the end of his hopes to one day stand for election himself.

  Ely brought up the list of suspects on his display and began to sort through them as he headed towards the elevator. He needed somewhere quiet to work, but the Chancellor was right in one respect, she was still in charge. He still had to obey her, which meant he had to be seen. He headed up to the lounge.

  Chapter 4 - Children

  Eighteen hours before the election

  “In under two years we’ll be on Mars,” one said.

  “No, in under two years the first of us is going to be on Mars,” another replied.

  “It’s the same difference. We’ll be on Mars, and The People’s City will just be leaving Earth’s orbit, and The City of Rights, well, they’ll be still stuck here on Earth.”

  “Yeah, but what I’m trying to say is that it doesn’t matter which of us gets there first. What counts, what’ll matter to history, is who gets all their population transplanted there first.”

  “Oh come on,” the first one replied. “In a century’s time does it matter who was on Earth last? No, of course not. People are only ever going to remember which nation got to Mars first.”

  “There,” a woman said. “You just said it yourself. First or last, what counts is that there are people who’ll remember. No, no, think about it, I mean really think about it. What matters more, getting to Mars or being the people who write the history?”

  “You’re saying,” another said, “that it doesn’t matter what we do, just what we say we do? Doesn’t the truth matter to you? What does it mean to be British if we aren’t honest with our descendants?”

  Ely cleared his throat loudly, but he didn’t look up. He was trying to be considerate. Debates were allowed, they were encouraged, but this one was straying dangerously close to sedition. Without any audio recordings to analyse and process, the only evidence that this was anything other than a spirited conversation were the increased heart rates and elevated blood pressures. By law, those thems
elves weren’t enough to press any charges. But if he looked up, then his camera would register the individuals concerned, and he would be expected to file a report. He really didn’t want any more paperwork, so he kept his head down as he went over the schematics of the corridor outside Unit 6-4-17. He was trying to be considerate, but the group in the centre of the lounge weren’t making it easy.

  “I, uh, I didn’t mean it like that,” the woman said. “What I meant was that unless we can establish a thriving colony then it won’t matter whether we were first, second, or third. If the colony fails, then there won’t be any more history. Britain will die. Do you see?”

  Ely heard a shuffling of feet. Either no one did get the woman’s point or they were reluctant to agree with her whilst he was sitting so close by.

  “The point I’m making,” she went on, “is that we need to focus on production, not on speed. I’m trying to say it’s not a race.”

  “Oh? And what about civic pride?” Ely recognised that as one of the voices from earlier. He wished he had a way of blocking out sounds.

  “Yes, yes, that’s important,” she said hurriedly. “Of course that’s important, but we can be proud of a good job done. We can be proud of our own work without constantly comparing it to the other two cities.”

  “What she’s saying,” someone else added, a snide tone to her voice, “is that she wants more children.”

  “Oh? Is that it?” the man asked.

  “Well, maybe, but—”

  There was a collective snort from most of the crowd, as if they were finally getting to the root of the debate.

  “You see, that’s the problem,” a man said. “You talk about Production First, but you don’t really know what it means. More children on Earth means more people to take to Mars. That means more trips and that means more energy, which means more people. It would be a never ending cycle, don’t you see?”

  “Without children, there won’t be a future,” she replied.

  “Oh, I’m not against children,” the man said expansively. “I’m just saying there’s a time and a place for them. Once we’re on Mars, then fine, we can have as many as the society can support. But now? Can we really support any more unproductive mouths? Well, can we?”

  Ely thought he felt the eyes of the crowd glance over at him. That, he had long ago decided, was the problem with the Chancellor’s decree that he be seen. It was a constant reminder that the labour of others was being expended to keep him fed. Up until now, there had been little enough crime that he sometimes agreed with the statement.

  Ordinarily, the table in the corner of the lounge was a good place to work. Usually after work and Recreation, workers spent their few off-shift hours lost in the worlds behind their displays. When people did talk it was usually quietly, and these days usually about what life might be like on Mars. But not this shift.

  Ely wasn’t sure whether it was Councillor Cornwall, the Greene children’s Instructor, or the Chancellor herself who had leaked the news about the murders. It didn’t matter, it was Cornwall who’d managed to capitalise on the event first. He had issued a statement clarifying the rumours, and that had begun the debate.

  “A terrible event has befallen us,” Cornwall had said, “Two highly productive workers have been taken from us. They have been killed. This was not natural causes, nor was it an accident. They were murdered. Make no mistake, this madman will be caught. When he is, he will face the only justice appropriate to such a heinous crime. But we must not let this distract us from the great work ahead of us. We must not lose focus. We must continue, together, to strive for our future, our children’s future, and the future of our City, our Britain.”

  Ely knew, well enough, that Cornwall had only wanted to get the statement out before Stirling and Henley. Nonetheless, he felt a small sense of betrayal that he had not been informed first. And who had said the killer was a man?

  What had really surprised Ely was the response from the citizenry. The newsfeeds were already full of articles, written mostly by off-duty workers from the other Towers. They all focused on the implications of lost labour, and had turned the debate to that of productivity. Ely had thought that the workers in Tower-One, being closer to the crime and its inherent threat, would have responded differently, yet they too seemed more concerned with the debate on population increase than the immediate danger.

  Ely tried, once more, to concentrate on the schematics.

  “What if we were to reduce the school leaving age?” The woman’s voice broke through his concentration. “Councillor Cornwall has hinted he’s going to consider it when he’s Chancellor.”

  “If. If he’s elected,” someone else said. There was a general laugh at that.

  “That’s missing the point…” The man began to repeat, and misquote, a speech that Cornwall had given a few days before.

  Ely ignored him. An idea had just struck him. He’d started by reasoning that the killer must have known the Greenes. He refused to believe, and hoped he was right, that the killer had chosen them randomly. So he had begun by getting the system to identify which of the forty-seven suspects had had any contact with the victims. What he’d quickly discovered was that, since the Greenes were on the same shift as the suspects, each of them had come into contact with the victims dozens of times each week. It was after that, when he was beginning to doubt he would find any evidence before the Chancellor decided to throw him to the wolves, that the idea came to him.

  All he had to do was check the schematics, and see which of the suspects could actually get from their pod to the victims unit, and back, within the time they were off-net. Out of the forty-seven suspects, Silas Glastonbury had spent the shortest time off-net. Unlike the Greenes, he was single and had spent the shift in question in a unit on the level below. According to the same record, he had been off-net from 02:58:45 to 03:04:18.

  Ely had looked again at the schematics and decided that whilst it was theoretically possible for the man to have made it to Unit 6-4-17 and back in under five and a half minutes, it was unlikely. Certainly it was unlikely that anyone could do it whilst being so careful that they weren’t caught on camera. Which meant Glastonbury was almost definitely not the killer. At the same time, it was too much of a coincidence for the man not to be somehow involved. Interrogating him should lead to an explanation of what the other forty-six were doing and thus eliminate most of them from his enquiries. At the very least, it would give the impression of action. He stood up and left the lounge.

  As he rode the elevator to the upper levels, he checked the time. It was only ten minutes until shift-change. He considered waiting and arresting Glastonbury quietly as the man left the Assembly, but dismissed the idea almost instantly. He wanted the citizenry to think he was doing something. More than that, he wanted to wreak a small piece of revenge upon Chancellor Stirling. Glastonbury was one of Stirling’s few registered supporters in Tower-One. Arresting him publicly would be the price the Chancellor would pay for her disdain.

  Ely checked the feed from the camera on Glastonbury’s visor. The man sat in front of a section of conveyor belt no different than any of the hundreds of others in the Tower. To his left, a panel rose, and a piece of circuitry moved along the belt to stop in front of him. In Glastonbury’s right hand was a sensor. He moved it down to touch a section of wiring. A light in front turned green. With his left hand he pressed a button. The conveyor belt moved, taking the approved circuitry off, and bringing a new piece in its place.

  It seemed nearly identical to the same dull work that Ely remembered doing himself during his brief time in the Assemblies. It was monotonous, it was repetitive, and it was utterly vital. There would be no way of replacing, nor repairing, a faulty component once the ships were launched. It was why a place on the first ship was so coveted. With each successive journey, the risk of some catastrophic failure increased.

  The elevator stopped.

  As Ely walked along the corridor towards the Assembly in which Glastonbury worked,
he brought up the records for the other workers. There were two teams of six with one supervisor. Discounting the suspect, and a worker who didn’t wear one, that left eleven people with visors to record and upload the arrest. Fortuitously, Ely saw that one of those workers had the fifth most popular newsfeed in the City. Ely smiled. Everyone would know about the arrest before the next shift had begun.

  He hesitated at the door and brought up the view from the cameras inside. The citizens were still working. He waited.

  A few minutes later an alarm sounded, and the conveyor belts rolled forwards empty. The shift had finished. One by one, the workers began to stand up. Ely overrode the clean room protocols – with the components all sealed away, and the drones about to sanitise the room, there was no risk of contamination – and opened the door.

  “Silas Glastonbury,” he said, imbuing his voice with all the menace he could muster. All heads turned to stare at him. Ely was gratified to see the small red lights on the visors come on. They were recording. “Glastonbury,” Ely said again as he walked into the low ceilinged room. “You’re under arrest.”

  And now some of the lights turned green, indicating they were uploading live. Glastonbury stood frozen in place.

  “Put your hands on your head,” Ely said, more quietly now that he had the entire room’s attention.

  “I’m… But my work. It’s vital,” Glastonbury stammered.

  “All work is vital. That’s why I waited until the shift was over,” Ely said. He could see fear in the man’s eyes and he recognised it as the fear of a guilty man, caught.

  “I… but… I…” The man stammered, and he started to back away from the Constable.

  Ely had had enough. He grabbed the man’s right arm, twisted it up and behind his back. “Go on, I’ve questions you need to answer,” he said, pushing the man towards the door. Conscious of the cameras, he didn’t do it gently.

  “What are the charges?” a woman asked. According to Ely’s display she was the Assembly overseer.