by Unknown
You could say I’m a copy. A copy of a copy of a copy of a copy—at least in most things.
How redundant this text ends up depends on how long I survive. It’s relative. The more I write, the less original my tale will be.
If I can accept that I am a book, and nothing more than a copy at that, this existence of mine is not intolerable. To accept that I am a duplicate duplicate duplicate duplicate is not so very difficult, though it does oblige me to resign myself to many things, but bearing the unbearable is a tradition in my profession and not such a difficult hurdle. As it is, my colleagues regard me as something of a hedonist.
I have only the greatest respect for my predecessor. To the Director, I’ve been a “dinosaur” for more than a decade. A relic of the Cold War. A sexist. All right, then. I’m a hedonist, but I do have a fusty traditional side. Without it I could not serve Her Majesty and keep from going mad. As long as I do, I shall go on serving Queen and country and struggling to retain my sanity in an era when most countries have cruelly abandoned their monarchs, at least in name.
Yes, I am a dinosaur, always behind the times, but it doesn’t bother me. On the contrary, I’ve chosen to be aggressively out of date. After all, a copy is out of date by definition. Five centuries have passed since Gutenberg. Those dedicated, sometimes obsessed scribes, laboring earnestly to copy endless sequences of letters, disappeared long ago.
The technology that specifies me is less than half a century old, though it is not a “technology” in the conventional sense. It remains pristine, isolate, with no new applications, unsullied by academic elaborations or the touch of capitalism. I wish I could say the technology that specifies me was the legacy of a goldsmith of Strasburg and not the bastard spawn of an occultist, a eugenicist, a physicist, and a psychologist, all working for that runt of an SS Reichsführer. To insist on calling it science is so filthy, smells so rotten, it completely defies logic. This thing they created, a process that besmirches the very word science, was stolen by the Empire in the chaos just after the war. We even kept it from the Cousins, who at a stroke had emerged a new empire themselves. It was from that dark, murky place that they began to write me.
I suppose that would be why they hauled me before the Archbishop of Canterbury—fresh from the operating table, without the slightest consideration for my confusion at finding myself abruptly face to face with the world again, on that sacred day when they initiated the protocol that resurrected me. When transcription was complete and I woke from the anesthetic, I was so astonished at falling into consciousness that I reflexively tightened my jaw, only to find a ball gag in my mouth to prevent my biting my tongue off. I made a crazed attempt to flail limbs that were not my limbs, but naturally they had me immobilized with leather restraints. With the ball in my mouth I could only drool in a very undignified manner as they waited for me to accept this I that was not I. After hours bound and gagged like a pervert, I finally tired of struggling to convey my revulsion at finding myself no longer myself. They stabilized me, dressed me in a tailor-made shirt and suit—Brioni for some reason, not Savile Row—put suspenders on me, tied a bow tie round my neck, and took me to the Archbishop.
As they walked me along the underground passageway and I felt my suit cleaving to my chest, the small of my back, and my hips and thighs like my own skin, it occurred to me that this suit and its preternatural fit, despite the fact I was wearing it for the first time, had been fitted before I became me. What was “my” expression as the tailor wielded his tape to create this lascivious garment? During the fitting, how did “I” feel about the fact that this suit would not be worn by “me”?
I don’t mean to question Her Majesty’s God-given right to rule, but at that moment God was the least of my priorities. God Save the Queen. As a loyal subject, I use this phrase at every opportunity, but I’ve almost never truly asked God for favors. Still, given the fact that I was specified by that “technology,” that abomination created by National Socialists whose very names I hesitate to speak aloud, I cannot be anything but fallen. Original Sin notwithstanding, I was in dire need of absolution from the instant I opened my eyes. I and all those who came before me. All except the one, the Original.
There in Pinewood’s underground complex, the head of the Church of England bade me kneel and began reciting these lines from the Old Testament.
And Joshua the son of Nun sent out of Shittim two men to spy secretly, saying, Go view the land, even Jericho. And they went, and came into an harlot’s house, named Rahab, and lodged there. And it was told the king of Jericho, saying, Behold, there came men in hither to night of the children of Israel to search out the country.
This must be the oldest mention of my profession. I hadn’t the faintest idea how these words absolved me of anything. But everyone present, from the Queen and the PM to the Director, seemed to think them essential to properly operating me. I had heard that the Director herself had opposed further transcriptions, she who went about calling me a dinosaur. I’ve no interest in making an issue of it. The Director does what she must, for Her Majesty’s sake.
This technology that in violation of every natural law set me in motion might seem the answer to the prayers of Philistines obsessed with fears of death. But as far as I know it has never been used on anyone else. When I asked the Director why the technology was not deployed more widely, she answered only, “Because it’s too horrifying.” I thought that was rather harsh, seeing that the horrifying entity she used to exorcise her demons was me.
I am a book. A text, unfolding continuously.
Still, this text that you—I have no way of knowing who you are—have found, and are reading and deriving meaning from, is not me. This text I am writing is separate from me as I unfold continuously, though it is part of me. I suppose that to you this is just a story, but if you think of me as a text writing a text, it would not be altogether wrong to regard me as a frame story. Yes, like the minstrel recounting the Canterbury Tales.
Until very recently I thought I existed only as my own story. I might be a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy, but I was still me. But this was nothing more than blind faith, childish and naive.
Strictly speaking, I am not myself. This simple fact was brought to my attention only recently.
It was a Chelsea-born postmodernist architect—Creation’s most repulsive species—who was responsible for that asinine pile overlooking the Thames at Vauxhall. My CIA friends mock it as Legoland, or Disneyland London. It does look like a castle built by a child out of blocks. I suspect the architect himself intended it as a joke, but for the people who work there, it’s an unbearable mockery. TV-am studios in Camden Town, Charing Cross Station—everything the man designed is all perfectly horrible. In Hong Kong for Her Majesty, I encountered Peak Tower, that repellent monstrosity, a gigantic wok on columnar legs. When I heard it was the work of the same architect, I heaved a great sigh. The mindless optimism emanating from that atrocity irritated me no end.
Viewed from the other side of the Thames, my current place of employment seems to thrust its ridiculous visage out over the river. The Latin cadence of my service’s motto, Semper Occultus, has a grand feel rolled about on the tongue, but the look of our headquarters suggests that the motto should be not always secret but always the buffoon. The Tate’s Clore Gallery, home of Turner’s work, stands on the opposite shore—the work of James Stirling, another member of the postmodernist tribe. Still, compared to MI6 headquarters, the Clore is far more traditional, far less frenetic. Before moving into the new HQ, MI6 was buried in an office complex, disguised as a trading company. I still have fond memories of the cozy building we rented to house me and my colleagues.
Yes, I am a dinosaur. I harbor bitter thoughts because in a sense, I’m stuck. I’ve lived a long time, yet not long enough for the perspective that comes from seeing every new trend ultimately die out. Even in Bilbao, facing real peril, I had the misfortune to be assaulted by yet another wor
k of postmodern architecture. I’d recovered Albion’s stolen funds and was busily evading a swarm of patrol cars when I was brought up short by a gigantic structure shaped like an undulating wave. Back in London I told the Director’s assistant: “Even in Spain I had to bear the sight of yet another horrible postmodernist design.” She didn’t miss a beat: “That’s the Spanish Guggenheim. It’s not postmodernist, it’s deconstructionist.”
Postmodernism to the right of me, deconstructionism to the left of me, appalling is appalling. A historical shell is placed before you, upon which all sorts of experiments are performed, all with some connection to the history of architecture, to different eras and their historical contexts. The architect calibrates the gap between himself and history he is reinterpreting, and the result is a corpse sucked dry of context and substance. A nullity masquerading as history. An awful, depressing emptiness.
As I thought of Turner’s bounty ensconced across the river, I walked into Legoland. Destiny was waiting.
“Someone is killing our children.”
The Director handed me a glass of scotch and a folder. I rolled the whiskey around my tongue and leafed through the pages. Judging from the photo clipped to each profile, the victims were not young—certainly not less than half my age.
“Not exactly children, are they?” I read over the file. “Murder investigations are for Scotland Yard or the Home Office. I’ve never encountered any of these men before. All British subjects under unofficial cover … My, my. Two SAS. One CRW, an SBS. Quite a select group. But if they’ve all been killed in the line of duty, I don’t see what that has to do with me. What’s going on, Mum?”
“All of them were property.” The Director gazed at me levelly. “Her Majesty’s property. Just as you are. If anything happened to you, they were the frameworks from whom we would select your successor. Now four of them have been murdered, all in the last month.”
Frameworks for transcription. When my tale was ended, another would step in to continue. The next copy. My successor.
I scanned the file with new eyes. Lt. Owen and Major MacGregor, Special Air Service. LTJG Law, Special Boat Service. 2LT Bale, Counterrevolutionary Warfare. Each orphaned at an early age, just as I had been. Their later careers showed parallels as well. I was impressed at the committee’s talent for finding men whose lives so closely resembled my own—that is, the life of the man of whom I was a copy. Naturally men in such circumstances were chosen for a reason. A similar nervous system speeds the transcription process.
I asked if there had been a leak. The identities of these candidates must have been a closely guarded secret. Only the candidate himself, the elite Selection Committee, the Director, and the prime minister would have known. Who else? They hadn’t told me, and Her Majesty had no need to know. The source would have been a list of men who had undergone psychosurgery to prepare them for transcription. If an intelligence service or terrorist network had access to such a list, it would hardly be surprising if they started terminating the candidates.
“The investigation has already begun,” said the Director. “Naturally I can’t leave it to MI5. Anything and everything in connection with our ‘operation’ of you supersedes silly administrative boundaries. Everything to do with you is a matter solely for those who know your true identity, and that is a secret the prime minister and the rest of us will take to our graves.”
I noticed that the Director was careful to omit Her Majesty from his inventory. The Queen knew who I was. She knew the grotesqueness of my existence. In fact, she was the only person still in harness who had dealt with each of my predecessors.
I remember my own first visit to Buckingham Palace. I don’t recall clearly what was said during the audience. After I kissed her hand, she smiled faintly, a melancholy smile. Majestic and sovereign. Of course it was just a hint of an implication, nothing to break the serene surface of her dignity. But although the Queen would never betray her feelings, the weight of that smile penetrated deeply. Indeed, for decades she had met a succession of copies that had come to pay their respects, each with a different face and body yet carrying the same name, waiting dutifully to buss the royal hand.
If the mere possibility of becoming my successor were enough for one of our enemies to murder Her Majesty’s properties, would she bestow her mercy on the souls of these men who died for Britain? The thought preoccupied me as I asked my next question.
“Are there others?”
“One survives. He is our last line of defense. I’ve ordered him guarded by a detachment from the Pinewood regiment. I begged Hereford for additional resources, but they absolutely refused. Seems they’ve no one to spare.”
I let Mum’s excellent scotch linger on my tongue. The transcription facility was near legendary Pinewood Studios, heavily guarded, in a bunker deep underground, with vast spaces for the storage of my data and the formatters to prepare the “media”—human flesh and brains—for transcription, all enshrined amid the white vapors emitted by the cooling system. Putting everything underground ensured secrecy and security, of course, but it also confined the area that would be contaminated if the unthinkable took place one day.
That we would need to even consider assigning a guard detachment to Her Majesty’s property meant we were already fairly well cornered.
I was suddenly struck by a sense of the absurd that wormed its way onto my lips. The Director drew her eyebrows together in puzzlement.
“Would you mind telling me what’s going on in that brain of yours? I’ve an excellent relationship with SAS. If you think something’s amiss—”
“Oh no, nothing of the sort. Pardon me, Mum.”
“Then what is it?”
“Well, it did occur to me that no one’s assigned me any bodyguards.”
“Obviously not.”
“But of course. One must look after oneself. The female agent who drags you into bed, then pulls a derringer. Man-eating sharks that attack you when you’re recovering nuclear warheads from the seafloor. Voodoo cults that take a dim view of being infiltrated. Yet, one must soldier on. It’s all part of the job.”
“But you expose yourself to danger in your private life as well, don’t you? The risk of being murdered by your next female companion would be considerable, would it not? Given your proclivities?” She rolled her eyes. I laughed heartily.
“That would be another risk that comes with the job. Let’s call it an occupational disease. Naturally we must guard our assets. But the framework we protect today may someday fall in battle against a terrorist group, without the dignity of a cadaver pouch, without even a tombstone for his name, his body left to rot in some foreign hellhole. Rather ironic, don’t you think?”
She didn’t answer. I wasn’t sure whether she was angry or suppressing a sympathetic smile. Likely the former, based on past experience.
“You are a rock-ribbed cynic,” she said finally.
“Another occupational disease.” I shrugged. “But why did it take four murders to wake us up?”
“Until their time comes, frameworks are merely subjects. Apart from being orphans, the victims had nothing in common, and their deaths were initially treated as simple murder cases. No one noticed the pattern.”
The Director stood at the window and gazed out over the river, leaden under London’s dismal skies, as if she were carrying the weight of those deaths. “In retrospect, it was a first-rate cock-up.”
“Why?”
“Because a month before the first murder, Greville Ackroyd met his accident. At least we thought it was an accident.”
I had met Dr. Ackroyd several times. An angular little man with the face of a beatific reptile, Ackroyd was a member of the Selection Committee. The dealer at the baccarat table where the game was Me. Each card bore a different face, but whichever was chosen had the same value: Me.
Ackroyd also headed the R&D team that managed and refined the transc
ription protocol. His specialties were psychiatry and cerebrophysiology, but the man must have had deep knowledge of many other fields. In my mind’s eye, those eccentric eyes now seemed to flicker with madness. Could Ackroyd’s sanity be verified by the same psychiatric techniques he used to dissect men’s souls?
“A leak, then,” I said. “Someone killed the doctor to obtain the list.”
“Yes, that’s probably it. But Ackroyd’s seat on the committee was itself secret. Who could have known? Or more to the point, who could have known what you are? That is what we must determine.”
“No forensics investigation?”
“None. We all thought it an accident. Project 7 has never had a security breach, even during the years when Philby and Burgess were walking around MI6 as if they bloody owned the place.”
“But the Cambridge Five were already feeding Moscow the crown jewels for more than a decade prior to the first transcription. The project was just getting started. However can you be sure there wasn’t a breach?”
“Those responsible felt limited access was the best defense. A few picked professionals only, toiling away in obscurity. That’s how things remained, and in fact there were no leaks. And precisely because of that, Ackroyd’s death was taken at face value. No one could have had a reason to kill him—we thought. That’s also why there was no warning system in place to alert us to the pattern of killings that followed. It was thought that guarding the project—which by fact of its repellent nature must necessarily never see the light of day—behind a needlessly complex wall of security would simply draw attention, at least in the Cold War intelligence environment. The Soviets would’ve been onto it sooner or later if we’d tried anything elaborate. The point is, no one felt it necessary to change the approach, and here we are in the twenty-first century.”
“Then how did anyone realize what was going on?”
“One of our committee members has a weakness for crime reportage. He monitors the BBC. Happened to see a report on one of the murders. Recognized the victim’s name. Perfectly risible, don’t you think? The man loves attending criminal proceedings, that sort of thing. Stopped going to the civil hearings. Says it’s no fun now the solicitors are wigless.”
