Thirty Four Minutes DEAD

by Kaye, Steve Hammond

  As if awaiting an argument, Tavini paused. Some of the assembly wondered whether to engage with Tavini after his primary stage write-off, but all present were curious to know more, and thus silence was preserved. He began again with a sweat already forming on his brow.

  “Our mindsight work was one helluva stage two folks, but the third prerogative humbles this secondary research area in terms of power and control!”

  “ Control?” queried Fearston.

  “ Here me out” was the reply before the continuation.

  “You see everyone, Greg held the cards for the perfect third-prerogative all the time, he started the research way back, but he left without any completion. Before Gregory Vain became an MC-Project member he had pioneered and then discarded neurological research into sections of the brain that he had christened the auto-vendetta vaults. His discovery had located parts of the brain which dealt with negative behavioural responses - anger, revenge, aggression and sorrow. You may feel that to have sorrow is a positive reaction, but in the context of the other three a negative drive can often be the dominant outcome. You shouldn’t have stopped your research, Greg”.

  On this occasion Tavini’s pause for breath was deliberate, beckoning a response from Vain, and Greg took up the metaphorical gauntlet.

  “Yeah, I located the AV sections, like you say Dave, but the deeper my research went the more sceptical I became about delving too deep”.

  Tavini bit back asking why, and so Vain elaborated.

  “I was reasonably sure that the auto-vendetta sections did indeed contain answers surrounding negative behavioural responses, but I didn’t commit myself to practical research because my theoretical deductions presented what I felt were sinister implications for mankind. You see, I became seventy-five percent certain that these sections could be altered, controlled, even obliterated”.

  “The power to obliterate aggression! Why is that such a bad thing, Greg?”

  “Society needs the whole neuro-package, David. Aggression is a pivotal ingredient of our survival mechanism, and man also ‘needs’ badness to establish goodness in his system of converse-determined logic. Purity only seems white when it’s surrounded by pollution”.

  “Losing talk Gregory - nice parallels drawn, but if people have the power to remove these ‘heavy negs’ from society, they should act. It is their duty, their moral role to play! You shut your research down, but left seeds for others to carry it on, and I think you are gonna wish we could have involved you with our third-prerogative. I want you to meet someone, Greg”.

  Tavini left his speaker’s position and sat back down. Then two medical staff entered the speaker’s area, emerging from a screened out section of the assembly hall. They carried a large dolls house and proceeded to place the toy on the small stage just in front of the project audience. A third member of medical personnel followed, gently leading a little girl into the spotlight. The child was smiling sweetly, appearing demure and totally unfazed by the ranks of people that scanned her entrance. As her white blonde hair shone in the fluorescent lighting, she was led toward the dolls house. Her smile seemed to register even more pleasure when she recognised the nature of the toy on the stage in front of her. Tavini walked back to his previous front-line position, making ready to speak again. As the child started to play, he extended a warm glance in her direction and then introduced the juvenile presence who had warmed the hearts of most of those present.

  “Meet Belinda, folks. She’s an example of our prerogative three, born to our project, born through a new mould. Belinda has blessed us with her presence for over four years now. That dolls house has been her favourite toy since we gave it to her on her second birth date. Smash it to pieces, Greg!”

  Vain swallowed hard, not being able to understand how such an evil-natured command could be uttered, let alone condoned by a person. He spat back a reply which Fearston felt paralleled the savagery of the moment.

  “You sick, twisted bastard, Tavini. You need help, you fucking pervert”.

  Tavini didn’t even flinch at Vain’s words. He turned instead to the MC-security cohort that were resident in the room.

  “ Do the honours, Jess”.

  Without a moment’s hesitation, Wheeler reached the stage in five strides. His fist splintered the roof and his boots kicked the structure into a state of total ruin. After ten seconds, he was finished, smiling at Tavini, who appeared to be gratified by his demolition job.

  Belinda was still smiling - at Tavini, at Wheeler, at anyone who caught her gaze! She seemed to be totally oblivious to the destruction that had taken place, and she actually began to chuckle to herself as she started to reassemble the broken pieces of her doll’s house. Her eyes still sparkled. To her life seemed beautiful, unblemished and perfect! To Vain, life had turned irrevocably sour. He stood up and walked toward Tavini, polemically announcing his new found hatred.

  “So this is our prerogative-three is it, fucker? How long has she been conditioned like this?”

  “Life’s been her smile - it’s all she’s ever known, Greg”.

  “What! Are you saying that she was born into this state of complete passive surrender?”

  “Yes, we modified her mind when she was a foetus, Greg. You had laid the ground rules with your initial research program; we had the guts to put your theories into practice. We actually chose the eradication option as far as the auto-vendetta sections were concerned. You see all she knows is bliss, she lives in an Arcadia when you compare her world with ours. Her mother didn’t realise that her scan number three in week thirty changed her daughter’s future. How many pregnant mothers ask any real specifics concerning the gadgetry that scans their developing foetus? All they want to see is the thumb sucking and all they want to hear is the affirmative ‘everything’s okay’ line from their doctor. In Belinda’s case, her mother cried with happiness, while our laser took out her daughter’s AV sections. She had no knowledge of the neurological research that was being incarnated in her womb! Look Greg, you may have bottled out of the program that you set up but you didn’t have a divine seal on its completion”.

  “Robotics, Tavini - that’s what you should have fuckin’ majored in, after all that’s what you’ve created here, isn’t it? You have stolen Belinda’s will to survive and replaced it with an overdose of positive responses. Would you have done this to your own kid, fucker?”

  The two men moved closer to each other.

  “You’ll go too far here if you’re not careful, Vain. I don’t stand around to be insulted on my own, let alone in front of a congregation! What’s your fucking problem? We’re aiming to create a better world here, and Belinda is our first rung. We are just in our test phase, for Christ’s sake. People would think that we’d brainwashed legions, the way you’re burning at me!”

  “You said it yourself Tavini - brainwashed”.

  “Jeez, someone take this creep away from me, will ya. We’ve created a child without a concept of violence for god’s sake, and this guy wants her to suffer in the same shit that the rest of us live in! If we all thought like Belinda in a hundred years time, there wouldn’t be any human violence - got that Vain?”

  “Well allow me to exercise my violence privilege while I’ve still got one, then”

  Vain snapped. The altercation had been building for some months.

  Tavini may have warmed to the verbal sparring Gregory Vain had put in place, but he hadn’t envisaged that his much smaller project colleague would deliver the first blow! Vain launched himself at Tavini releasing a head butt that broke the latter’s Romanesque nose in two places. This element of surprise gave Vain an initial advantage, and he hammered home a series of body blows that his distant years of amateur boxing had taught him. The American countered with a volley of punches that smashed into Greg’s left cheekbone, and after a few seconds of mayhem, the MC security cohort leapt into the action.

  Wheeler took out Vain with a butt that shattered the side of his face that Tavini had severely bruised. T
his attack proved a catalyst for others to join the fracas, and four of the Chinese recruits from the peace conference days pitched in to aid the floored front-line leader. Vain had rightly been promoted as a leading project figure in the media-friendly post-conference days, and the Chinese delegation had seen his work as a motivating force for their entry into the holistic MC Project. They saw Vain as the incarnation of all that was decent in the project and they wouldn’t see ‘their’ hero lying broken on the ground, with a security posse reigning blows down upon him. Several of the Chinese contingents had brought some martial arts expertise with them, and Wheeler’s men started to hit the floor like dominoes.

  The Chinese recruits weren’t the only people to join the fracas on Vain’s side, and Fearston had decided to ‘lend a hand’ as soon as Wheeler had floored her front-line mentor. She hadn’t any fighting experience but she rushed in to pull Greg out of the melee when unconscious bodies started to drop around him.

  Denison had been surveying the scene from his seat, inwardly smiling because he had recognised an almost ‘slapstick’ quality to the brawl in front of him. This perception altered when he saw one of Wheeler’s crew reaching for his firearm. Leif beat him to the draw, firing a blast of his own weapon upward toward the ornate encrusted ceiling. The shots rendered the warring factions into a ‘freeze-frame’ posture, and only Belinda resumed a mode of previous behaviour - laughing at those around her.

  The MC, Project leader chastised his wayward personnel.

  “Don’t spoil the Rochaux party, folks! Look at you! In a few days some of us are going to get a different face - why start now?

  “You may have noticed that I now say some not all, but I have revised my initial edict - it’s my prerogative after all! If a person has caused a big wave in the past, they kinda deserve a new face, but those who have towed the line and remained hidden are due a break. It looks like Greg’s started his own modification work - well fair enough, he is in line for ‘visage numéro deux’ anyway, so if he wants to start now I guess he isn’t changing anything major”.

  Belinda chose that moment to walk amongst the assembled MC Project members, and her steps seemed to cast a spell of uncanny silence on the project ranks for an instant. There was something fragile about the steps, almost like the infant had just left her embryo. As the girl continued to flit through the project ranks, Denison carried on speaking.

  “I know that some of you have been rocked spiritually by what you have seen tonight, but David is actually correct - Belinda is just a test phase. The ideal is beautiful - no one could dispute that, could they, but I agree with Mr Vain too. We judge things by what we know, and right now that means retaining AV negatives to ensure our survival. David is possibly a bit optimistic in referencing a century to build change, but Greg is too ‘head in the sand’ if he feels that our prerogative three shouldn’t embrace the idea of a violence-modified society. Science has to direct us, my friends and our collective duty is to serve science, for the generations ahead of us. Clean up our wounded you medics, thank you”.

  Denison’s last remark had been a bit of an understatement! Vain and Tavini both had broken facial bones and the pair would be confined in the MC medical ward until their Rochaux treatment in a few days time. The project brawl may have been a relatively short altercation, but most of the project members who had entered the fracas had scars to evidence their involvement. Wheeler was an exception. The MC Project honcho had hardly broken sweat in the fight, and although he had encountered a lot of direct physical engagement after he had put Vain down, not one significant retaliation blow had dented his guard. Wheeler was essentially in a different league as far as physical combat was concerned.

  As Vain’s stretcher was wheeled out of the room, Diana Fearston attempted to follow her front-line mentor, but Marcia Levene intercepted this route of loyalty. Levene had the advantage of surprise and her initial words were uttered in a soft tone that was alien to her usual form of sharp verbal delivery.

  “Let them go, Diana. The medics will look after him. We love him for all that he has done for our project, we love him for his scientific brilliance, and some of us love him for his naiveté - Christ I should know! Leif and David were right though, if we arrest progress, we let ‘yesterday’ blight our tomorrows. Nice to see you in the ‘action’ girl, he needs that”.

  The sensitivity displayed by Levene halted Fearston in her tracks, and whilst she didn’t fully trust the woman whose specific project role always seemed shrouded in grey, she had detected genuine care in the words, despite Levene’s predominant sense of duty.

  Gregory Vain had been oblivious to the inter-unit fighting that had taken place after he had attacked Tavini. His rage had made him blank out the American’s ‘return-fire’ but he was totally unprepared for Wheeler’s onslaught, and the butt in question rendered him unconscious for several minutes.

  The MC-Project medical unit tended Vain with great care in the ensuing four days. His shattered cheekbone was reset through a wire mould, despite the fact that surgeons would modify Greg’s face in a matter of days. The MC medics liked the front-line leader, and yet they felt sure that he was going to be a project individual that would have the full Rochaux treatment performed upon him. By wiring up Greg’s face, they hoped to preserve his angular features - it was a small mercy they felt he deserved.

  When Vain was led to the Rochaux wing four days later, his thoughts weren’t true to his name. As far as he was concerned a new face would be an adventure, something that was beyond his control. When his eyes started to close after his anaesthetising injection two issues dominated his thoughts - the robotic reliance of Belinda and the egocentric idealism of Tavini. As Vain started to sink into a medicinal netherworld he voiced a phrase that epitomised his disillusionment.

  “She’ll laugh at your fire.., burn in your fire..., die in your fire...”

  SIXTEEN

  Vain saw the door handle turn. At last he could see his new face! He had been in a state of bondage for the initial seventeen days since his consciousness had returned, being denied a mirror or a verbal description concerning the facial changes that had been performed upon him. His surgeon had promised him that day eighteen was to be his visual revelation. The Rochaux surgeon was going to be true to his word, as Vain could see that an assistant medical officer carried the mirror that Gregory had awaited for, for what seemed like a lifetime. Before Vain was given the mirror, the surgeon Monsieur Garron had some choice words for him to digest. He proceeded in perfect English.

  “Mr Vain, you have endured quite a change. Since my team first started modification work thirty-seven days ago, your face has undergone a series of Rochaux adjustments which were responding to a seventy-percent alteration brief requested by your superiors. They didn’t specify beyond the percentage. We were the decision-makers behind your effective remould. Our work has involved tissue adjustment, bone reshaping and colourised iris modification. We have cut in part, we have tucked to a minor degree and we have utilised a series of plastic toning stratagems to render the finished product. The reshaping was speeded up through our most advanced fixing agents and in short, your new face arrived nine days ahead of our predicted delivery date. We will leave you alone to survey our work”.

  The Rochaux surgeon handed Vain the mirror, and the pair left Vain to contemplate his reflection. Greg had turned the mirror on its face whilst the pair remained in the room, but when they departed he turned it back to meet it face-on.

  A pair of dull yellow eyes stared back at Vain. The selected colour hue had a deep lustre which intensified the blackness of the pupils. The ‘favoured’ bottom lip had been retained, but the top lip had been tightened, cut through to half the previous volume. The cheekbones had been altered after Jess Wheeler’s deliverance, and the Rochaux team had echoed his demolition with contours of gauntness that remembered the suffering and yet retained a haggard attraction. Vain’s dark hair had been kept in spirit, but a jet-black colour modification added a sharper dime
nsion. The hair had altered in terms of texture feeling coarse now, dropping out of symmetrical adherence. The most noticeable alteration feature save the eyes, involved the colour of Vain’s skin. Before modification, Vain had retained a tanned complexion that survived the seasons, but the surgeons had chosen a very pallid alteration. Vain’s skin was now closer to a Scandinavian-white in comparison.

  Vain reflected on his new image. He knew that the changes made to his face were permanent. The yellow iris dye was a ‘living’ pigment that would reproduce itself over time and he also knew that the black hair was fixed as his roots had been tethered by another Rochaux longevity chemical. All Rochaux alterations had been devised to last, and Greg knew that his old appearance would never return.

  Later that evening Vain was allowed to leave his medical unit, and then he surveyed his facial changes in relation to his whole body. He carelessly shed his hospital robe and confronted himself naked in front of a full-length mirror. Whilst the Rochaux surgeons primarily specialised in facial changes, the toned pigmentation change into the neck and chest regions with a receding treatment. In Vain’s case this meant that the ashen white facial skin was modified by reduction from his neck downwards. Because of the sliding pigmentation scale the changes weren’t blatant as far as tonal comparison was concerned. Vain only noticed radical hue difference if he compared his face to the skin colour below his naval region. His surgeon had told him that within six months his tonal skin colour would all be consistent with his face. The new living pigmentation would in time permeate downwards to colour his whole frame.

  Greg was relatively impressed with his avant-garde metamorphosis. He was pleased with his new eyes because he had only met two people with a similar colour in his life thus far, and he subsequently felt that the alteration added a rarefied quality to his countenance. The other changes added a gothic dimension to his character, and although the sum total made him appear a product of malnutrition he felt that a ‘wasted’ rock-star type status had washed over him!