Come, Time

by Richard Jenkins

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Inside my hotel room, connected to the Internet. From the email, I click the link to open the page. The password box demands compliance. I enter "bunker14382" then click enter. The page hangs for a second then continues to load. I am accepted as valid. The page design is basic, a white page showing nothing more than a row of folder icons. The names of the icons include Work, Messages, People, Research, Fucking, and Mother. Seeing the Mother icon, I open it up. A page loads which contains a single video icon named, Birthday. I select the icon, click and play. A video player opens, and a video begins to play. It shows Oakley and his mother in split screen. Both are filmed at computers by webcams. The mother is clearly at home, sitting at her desk in a brightly lit room. Oakley’s surroundings are lost to darkness. His face is illuminated with lighting that looks staged and designed to flatter with a soft, warm glow. He speaks, and his head remains perfectly still, knowingly stuck in the plane of good lighting.

  ‘My, my, mother.’

  ‘Oakley.’

  ‘Can you see me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So here we are. Once again, visible…You’ve read the papers.’

  ‘I have. Has anyone else?’

  ‘Of course,’ he says, amused as if the question was stupid.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘People.’

  ‘Who exactly?’

  ‘People.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘All the right people. The privileged. Just like you tonight.’

  ‘Look at you. I haven’t seen you for so many years.’

  ‘Have you been counting? I didn’t bother. But look at me, haven’t I prospered.’

  ‘Prospered, but into what?

  ‘Into me! Into the right man for me! And you, published your first novel yet?’

  ‘No, but thank you, you’re quite the inspiration.’

  ‘Oh, if only you had the mind to imagine. But anyway, tell me, my work, have I impressed you?’

  ‘Do you need to?’

  ‘Of course. I am human, after all. Let me crave recognition with the rest of them.’

  ‘Then why haven’t you published?’

  ‘Guess. Imagine.’

  ‘Profit’

  ‘Nothing so crude.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘Life, mother! Existence, for all those who matter!’

  ‘We all matter!’

  ‘Do we? How quaint.’

  ‘We do!’

  ‘No, we don’t. A simple truth, but one so many fear to acknowledge.’

  ‘But not you, my son?’

  ‘Your son is a scientist, and as a scientist, he welcomes truth, truth and observation, and believe me, there is nothing your son fears to observe, or to know.’

  ‘And the truth is yours to decide?’

  ‘To discover and accept.’

  ‘If what I’ve read is true you could save the lives of so many people. Your work, it could offer hope to so many.’

  ‘Yes, it could. The work I do, and the work of others. But hope to who exactly, to the desperate? It’s always the desperate! You should be sick of the desperate! It’s always the desperate who need to be saved! How ever much we endeavor, how ever much we invest they never seemed to be cured!’

  ‘Hope to us all!’

  He laughs, contemptuously. Then speaks,

  ‘Us all? Us? We, are all one? In the distance maybe. In fact way back, way back! But now, no! And not going forward either!’

  ‘Who do you work for? For whose benefit?’

  ‘For the greater good. For the bigger picture.’

  ‘And your company? Your organisation? Your institute?’

  ‘Nameless.’

  ‘Nameless?

  ‘How can you know what you can never understand?’

  ‘Then your objective?’

  ‘To offer hope. Hope for the world, and for all those who remain. Hope, which will soon be released. Be grateful you’ll miss it.’

  ‘Who is it you work for?!’

  ‘The future of man.’

  ‘Oh for Christ’s sake! Is this act for my benefit? To make me swoon at your importance. To make me believe your as important as you think you are?’

  He laughs, arrogant, with a sense of victory, then continues,

  ‘Do you remember me as a child, mother? Do you? Do you remember me, your child? Do you remember how my favorite television was always natural history? How I would sit and watch hours and hours, fixed and fascinated? Do you remember telling me I watched too much, that I should go outside and play? I do. I remember all these things. I remember how, even then, you would annoy and frustrate me. I remember me, sitting happy and contented, watching and learning, and you hovering, pest-like, waiting to censor, remote control in hand. I remember you, pouncing as soon as any violence, or sex, was shown. You, censoring what I could watch. You, denying me truth. It’s why I hated history at school. It bored me. It bored me because they didn’t teach the sex or the violence. Now, of course, history isn’t all sex and violence but still, give me the facts! Give me the truth!’

  ‘The truth? And what is your truth, here and now? Who are you?’

  ‘I read an interview with David Attenborough. He recalled a letter he received from a woman, a plainly stupid woman, who after watching one of his programmes, one that documented a pride of lions, felt compelled to write and express her anger, and disgust, at the violent and murderous lions. Her solution, stop wasting money on making such television programmes and instead use the money saved to train the lions to stop killing animals. Can you imagine? I can still taste the hate I felt for her. Let us civilise nature and history. Let us deny the truth of whom and what we are.’

  ‘We’re not animals.’

  ‘No, of course not. We are moral.’

  ‘We? You could offer so much hope?’

  ‘If it is immoral to let a child be raised in poverty, then isn’t it also immoral to give birth to that child in the first place? The world has enough cheap labour, enough commitments to feed and save. Do the math, mother, because we won’t be moving to Mars any time soon.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘To ease the load on our beautiful earth. That, is a moral crusade worth fighting for! What joy for the human race if we could fly away to another earth, but no, we cannot. We are fixed, penned in, and like any herd, it must be managed.’

  ‘I really don’t know you. I have no instinct for you.’

  ‘Instinct, how pathetic. You can’t calculate me! Why? Because you don’t know me. You don’t have sufficient information on whom or what I am.’

  ‘No, no I don’t.’

  ‘Christ, how you bore me. I had removed you from the equation, but you had to come looking. Now, I cannot, I will not tolerate your presence. You’re a nuisance, an agitation. I move in far greater circles than you could ever hope to cope with. The power I can exercise; the power I feel obliged to test, is nothing you could ever comprehend. So, goodbye, mother. You have had you time, and now, I return you to nothing.’

  A human figure steps into shot behind her. He, of course a he, is wearing a dark coloured protective overall suit. As he walks towards her, his face remains off-camera. Oakley watches with a calm, intrigued stare. The mother turns with a jolt of surprise. The figure casually jabs her in the face with a gloved left-fist. Her body folds. He yanks her up by pulling her hair, then contains her struggle with a smothering left arm wrapped around her face and head. Bending down to eyeball the web cam, the figure becomes Phillip. His right-hand brings a meat tenderiser to his forehead, and with it, he offers Oakley a lazy salute. Oakley offers no reply. Phillip drags the mother away. The struggle she offers is feeble, barely whispering defiance. Oakley continues to watch. Even with his mother dragged from the room and out of shot, he continues to silently stare. After ten or so seconds, the video ends, and the clip turns black.

  Proof! I have my proof! I have my innocence to touch and share!

  With a panicked rush, I try and save the v
ideo to disk but the video player has no toolbar, no menu to click and save. The panic intensifies as I scramble to grab the camcorder from my rucksack. I will film the video, film it and flee. Film it and shout to the world, I did not kill her and here is the proof!

  I sit filming and watching. Two people are drawn back into life. A mother and her son, together without touching. What difference between them is there really to know?

  I wanted to understand, I wanted to know why and now I have his answer. He killed her because she was a nuisance, a simple agitation. What path does a man have to travel to allow him so slight an excuse? Who was he? Who were his people? He suppressed his work, as did others, work that could save the lives of people, but why? To save this beautiful earth? But from what? People, too many people? The earth does carry a heavy weight. We have trapped it, caged it and now we bleed it to feast on it. Too many people, god, how I know. I have felt crushed in the flow, but we the people are the most precious resource - assholes, beggars, thieves, the gutless and soulless, we are all still the people. What is the earth without us? How beautiful can it really be?

  To deny the world technology that could save lives? I don’t see why. To let people die? For pleasure? For belief? His work, and the work of others. How many? To what extent and scale? He and his colleagues have the means to save lives but choose purposefully not to do so. So, every day they kill, every day they murder. No news to me, but still, why?

  His stare, all the sickness of man I can see in his stare. Watching him watch his mother being dragged away I actually feel fear. Fear for what is out there. Fear for what it is possible to be.

  The clip, with a second or two to play, suddenly freezes. I try to move the cursor over the play button, but it too has frozen. The sound of the hard drive whirring frantically away tells me some process continues to run. I randomly hit a dozen or so keys, but none causes any action. Have they hacked the laptop? Are they destroying the hard drive? Let them! The proof is taped; the proof is mine!

  They know my location. I must think this way; I must think the worst. I must think that Malta is too small to resist them, that my instinct for England is right.

  I grab my belongings and get ready to flee. But the people, the assholes, beggars and thieves, the good, the bad, the desperate. How many do I walk away from? What hope do I leave uncovered? The science paper, enveloped and addressed, ready to post, but why? For backup, to prove ownership and a date of completion? Print off a copy and post it to someone who knows nothing, just the order to store it, to keep it safe until, well, until now. Rosemary Cassavetes, Rosemary was the name on the post-it note. So, his cleaner or housekeeper maybe? Some one under his control, someone out of the loop. Who would think a cleaner has anything to hide? And if she does, what hope could be mine to uncover?

  Complete, I leave.

  The corridor outside my room is deserted. Hurrying myself along, I rush towards the elevator. As I reach it, the door jumps open. Inside is planted a thick-set man in his mid to late thirties. Dressed as a member of hotel staff, in a suit that looks a size too small, he stands rigidly as if guarding his own importance. His blank, unfriendly stare clocks me for a second then leaves to look at nothing. The sparkle of a diamond studded earring, and the glint of a heavy gold bracelet seal his fate. I launch an untamed punch towards his face. It connects and he drops unconscious to the floor. As the door closes, I search his pockets. The gun I expect to find is missing. His only weapon is the proverbial pen.

  The elevator begins to descend, next stop reception. I fix my stare forward, look beyond all that blocks my way. The elevator slows to a stop. The door opens, and I pounce, out through a blur of people, across reception, to the exit and out. Running, sprinting. No doubt people look and stare, but I pay them no attention and offer no reply.My legs speed me back to the car, which in turn speeds me back to Mgarr.