The Paper Eater

by Liz Jensen

  Hannah tried to keep her voice level. Something was thudding inside her, clotting her thoughts.

  – And who are they, these – people?

  – There are five of them, said Tilda. Three adults and two kids – just teenagers, I think. They’re all related. They’re a family. It’s all in the documentary apparently, so I guess all will be revealed. I’ll show you the posters though, look. Tilda hauled herself up painfully and slid open the drawer of the coffee table. She pulled out a glossy printed poster and spread it out in front of Hannah. – That’s them, she said.

  And it was. Five faces. Mug-shots. Distorted, but recognisable. Staring back at her.

  – They’re called the Hoggs, said Tilda. I don’t like the look of them, do you?

  EVIL IN OUR MIDST

  I’m in the Social Adjustment Office on the seventh floor.

  – Sit down, Harvey, says the boy who opened the door, reaching for a pocket scanner and bar-coding the paperwork. He can’t be more than a teenager. – I’m your Social Adjustment associate, Marcus Hooley. Sorry about the heat in here, the air-conditioning’s on the blink, but we won’t keep you long, will we, Georgia? This is Georgia, who’s in charge of downloading the files onto paper.

  There’s a girl sitting splay-legged on a swivel seat by a computer terminal.

  – Hi there, Mr Kidd, she says, smiling. She’s got little dimples like puckered dough. – We’ve processed loads of stuff on you; your caseload’s running to thousands of pages. It doesn’t often get that big, does it, Marco? She giggles.

  – So when’s my trial?

  Marcus Hooley laughs at that.

  – Nice one! The Georgia girl’s laughing too, and swivels a full circle in her chair. You can see from the way she does it, it’s a thing she’s practised. They’re just a couple of kids fresh out of a playground. – Welcome to planet Earth, Harvey, Marcus Hooley goes. OK. I’ll run the formula past you. The Liberty Machine assesses the evidence, see, and makes a decision on how far to adjust you. It’s probably in the system already, but it’s not scheduled to appear till the designated time.

  My mouth sagged open. It hadn’t made sense when Pike’d said it. It’d just washed over me, I guess. I sighed, and slumped further into my seat. There didn’t seem anything more to say. So we waited in silence – him shooting flirty glances at the girl, me watching the clock and wondering when I’d next see Hannah. The minutes ticked by, and then all of a sudden the screen in front of Georgia flashed.

  – Da-da! she said, her voice glittery and bright. Twelve o’clock on the button! Told you! She was addressing Marcus, not me. – We do bets, she smiled.

  Hooley slid over to where the girl was sitting and leaned over her shoulder, one hand sliding round her waist.

  – Looks like I owe you a drink then, he went.

  She gave a little squeal. His eyes scanned the screen, and then he tapped a few keys.

  – Right, Harvey, he said eventually, sucking in his cheeks. I’m afraid you’ve been declared an Enemy of Liberty. He scrolled down further with the mouse. On account of being the financial enabler of the Sect.

  – Sect? What sect? I didn’t get it. – There’s been a mistake, I said. I don’t belong to a sect, I do fraud! Simple honest-to-goodness white-collar fraud!

  – Well, don’t ask me, he said. I only work here! And he winked at Georgia, who giggled. Hooley turned back to the terminal and scrolled up.

  – Fraud isn’t what it says here, he said, squinting at the screen. The girl’s head leaned forward too. It says here terrorism. See? And he pointed. The word was there all right. – Libertycare finds you guilty of multiple terrorist activities, Harvey, he read.

  He scrolled through some more.

  – Uh-oh, he went. Georgia looked over his shoulder, and sucked in her breath.

  – Wow. I haven’t seen one of those in here before.

  – What? I said.

  – You stay sitting down, mate, OK?

  – Why?

  – Cos I’m afraid it’s pretty bad news, Adjustment-wise.

  – I’m kind of prepared for that, I said. They said ten years, max, but I could have it reduced for co-operation.

  And then he told me.

  It all happened in a swift whirl, no time to think, no time for anything to sink in.

  From Head Office I was transferred to a massive holding station, with five or six hundred other blokes. You weren’t allowed to talk, and if you did, you got a blast from a stun-gun. Within the hour we were driven off in a fleet of white transit vans to Estuary Docks, and loaded on to a conveyor belt which shunted us up a gangway on to the Sea Hero. Everyone looked scared out of their wits, and some guys were crying. It was clear that none of us knew what was going on, or why we were there. There’d obviously been a mistake.

  When the mess hall was packed to bursting, the smell of gas-pumped geranium kicked in to fight the stink of sweat and fear. I had a feeling that something unhealthy was about to happen, but I didn’t know what, and the not-knowing was like a horrible itch cloistered deep in my blood.

  Then some twangy salsa-like music starts up, and Captain Fishook strolls in like a stocky little magician. He’s small but dense with energy, as if his blood might be made of mercury. With a startling movement, he pounces on to the raised platform at the far end of the mess, and stands there taking us in for a moment, his hands clasped together as though they’re glued that way. Beneath the peak of his Captain’s cap you can see he’s alert and shiny with his own success. You can picture him, ushering customers on to a roller-coaster ride, or congratulating himself – It was a team thing – at an AGM. Then he adjusts the clip-microphone on the collar of his gold-buttoned jacket and waits for silence. He smiles when it comes. He’s got charisma, so he’s used to this. Achieved it before, in other settings.

  – Hi, folks, he goes, welcome aboard the Sea Hero. I see this as the beginning of a big new adventure for all of us. We set sail tomorrow, for a long voyage, to new horizons. Once we’ve established ourselves on an even keel …

  Blah-di-blah, he continues in the same vein, until there’s a disturbance.

  – Fucker! yells a bloke at the back. You can’t do this to us! I’m a lawyer! This is against all the –

  But an orange-gloved hand has slapped itself over his mouth. He’s still trying to yell as the two crew-members haul him off. One on each side, the lawyer’s legs kicking in the air like an insect’s. It’s so speedy-smooth it might have been staged. Fishook isn’t fazed.

  – As you see, he says, I run a tight ship. Any more mutineers?

  Silence as we get the picture. The bloke next to me, he’s quivering like a frightened squirrel.

  – Sorry, he says in a little whisper. But I’m scared shitless here.

  Me too, but I’m not admitting it. I can feel he wants me to do something sissy, like pat him on the arm or something, but I can’t bring myself to. It’s a tough world, and I decided earlier that I’m not gay. So I just grunt.

  Now Fishook’s making a signal to a crewman in the projection room behind us, and the lights are dimming around us.

  – Before we leave shore, we’re going to join the rest of Atlantica in witnessing a historic television moment, he goes. There’s a special message in it for our Atlantican Voyagers. Many of you – I have this on good authority – are still clinging to the idea that you’re innocent. That everyone but you was involved.

  His words have frozen us for a minute.

  Then – What the fuck –? says a man behind me, and a nervous vibe’s crackling and pulsing through the mess.

  – Well, after this film, goes Fishook, I want you to look into your hearts. Because the truth is in there. He pauses, looks around the room. – Remorse, he says, is the first step in the long journey to freedom.

  Before we can take in what he’s said, the lights have suddenly plunged right off, and the whole hall’s pitch black. The sissy man next to me gives a little whimper, and reaches for my hand. I shake him off. The
re’s only one person whose hand I want to hold, and she isn’t here.

  The screen’s so big it covers the whole wall. We watch as it flickers to life.

  The commentary began over the familiar map of the island.

  Our own Atlantica, said the voice. It was familiar; big and meaty. Where had I heard it before? But there’s another map that you don’t see, a map of corruption that extends deep into the very fabric of society. Of course, I thought. It’s Craig Voice of the Fucking Nation Devon. As he spoke, a tissue of thin red lines began to criss-cross its way out from the cities until the whole map was cobwebbed depravity. Cut to a weeping woman.

  – If I’d known that’s what he was involved in, she sobbed, I’d never have let him out that day.

  Some wobbly footage followed; it showed a small white coffin, a child’s, carried by two boys of about thirteen, who were crying.

  Then a bloke popped up.

  – I had no idea the Sect was behind it. It only dawned on me when it was too late, like. But it was them gave the orders, I know that.

  – There is such a thing as pure evil, said a man in a dog-collar. Even in Utopia.

  I almost laughed. If the customers fall for that, I thought –

  But then I stopped and a huge shiver shuddered its way right up from my feet to my bald patch and down again. I thought of your typical Atlantican. He’s not used to thinking. And to be fair to him, why should he be, with Customer Care second-guessing his urges? Of course he’d fall for it. I was beginning to get an inkling now of what was coming. As the dread sprouted and homunculised inside me, the others seemed to be making connections too. The quivery squirrel-like man next to me had put his hands over his face, but was peeking through the lattices made by his little claws. The Liberty anthem had started up now: the muzaked version you heard in supermarkets and waiting rooms. Over it came the Atlantica the Beautiful shots we’d all seen a hundred times before on promotional videos: the Bird of Liberty flying across a blushing horizon, a family picnicking at Mohawk Falls, a lithe woman in her prime taking a mud bath at a health spa, cheery faces at a sample handout in a twinkling mall.

  We have a system that’s so admired worldwide that the people of the United States are campaigning to have it, went Craig Devon. In the near future, a superpower may finally get the administrative system it deserves, free of human error. If that happens, it will be the dawn of a new era for mankind. An era of peace and prosperity.

  Next, a shot of Earl Murphy, the American hero taxi driver, heading a huge march with banners. Music underneath. Your heart thrilled at the sight of it. You couldn’t help rooting for what they wanted. The people of Atlantica fought hard, as ordinary Americans are now doing, for the high standards we have enjoyed in the last decade, went Devon. His voice sounded as juicy as pork. But what we have fought for is now under a very real and terrifying threat. The sinister music started again – a pulse of drums – but I must’ve blinked or something, missed a beat. Because suddenly without any warning, there was my family. Filling the screen.

  For the first fragment of a second, my reaction was joy; so much joy at seeing them again alive that I caught my breath. I wanted to shout out to them from across the hall, at the top of my voice: Hey, folks, it’s me, Harvey! Look, over here!

  But straight away the joy curdled. Something had gone obscenely to cock.

  – My God, I murmured. And the horror welled inside me like vomit.

  I wasn’t the only one to recoil from the cluster of leering faces. All around me there were groans and gasps of unease.

  – I’ve seen them, whispered the quivery man next to me. I’ve seen them before! I know them!

  From the look of the other blokes around me, he wasn’t alone; they seemed to be experiencing the same thing. How come, I thought. I felt almost indignant: I’m the only one who knows them! They’re my private people! What’s going on?

  This is no ordinary family, went Craig Devon’s meaty commentary. The camera tracked from one grainy mug-shot to the next. These men and women, he went, are the faces of a new evil.

  The terrible thing was that, looking at their distorted faces, you could believe it. It was as though all the goodness in them had shrivelled, and their worst traits – all those little tiny characteristics that barely emerged before had just, well, ballooned. Mum was suddenly mean-looking, superior and spiteful. Dad’s face was all stubbornness and violence. Uncle Sid looked like a slimy pervert. And Cameron: well, he’d always had it in him to be smugly threatening. Even Lola was suddenly – I hate to say it, but she looked like a slag. I shuddered. Are these the people I’ve known and loved all my life? I thought. Is this what they’ve turned into? It horrified me to think that I once counted myself among this family’s members. I was glad my face wasn’t in the portrait, because they repelled me. I guess at that point I wanted to disown them.

  Other people seemed to be having the same reaction, because as the screen faded to black, a low murmur of revulsion ran through the hall. Then there was a guitar twang and we were looking at the dog-collared bloke again. His face was like a St Bernard dog’s: sad and heavy with responsibility. He was cocking his head sideways, his fingers steepled in front of him on a big paper-strewn desk.

  – This is the question, he said, and you trusted him immediately. In Libertycare, we have the fairest people system in the world. Atlantica is rich, successful, and globally admired. So why, why on earth – he unsteepled his hands and spread them wide, imploringly – has this movement developed? Why on earth is it setting out to destroy the very cradle of freedom itself?

  It seemed like a good question.

  The worst part was that some of what they said about the Hoggs was true.

  The documentary went on to show how they’d set up a network of offshore companies, all bogus, that churned out millions per annum, on the backs of the Atlantican taxpayer. It showed the paperwork – my paperwork – on the French vineyards, the Australian paper-mills, the Italian sun-dried tomato industry, the Malaysian tiling factories. I recognised files I’d generated. Deals I’d cut. The Sect has been using this fraud network to fund the sabotage of the cleansing mission, went Craig Devon.

  No! They’d never do that, I thought, they’d never dream of –

  There were shots of the craters, taken from helicopters. St Placid was the worst affected. You could see a huge crack stretching from one corner, and black liquid pooling out. It looked serious. Damage like this was carefully camouflaged at first, and wear and tear was blamed. Then, zone engineers began to blow the whistle on the Hoggs. There was an interview with a craggy-faced bloke in a hard hat, a crater worker. He described how Lola Hogg had approached him personally. She was a very seductive young woman, he said. The camera worked its way up her body and settled lingeringly on her boobs. After outlining her family’s eco-Luddite beliefs, which opposed waste recycling and the principle of reclaimed land, she’d offered him oral sex, in return for his help in an act of sabotage at the purification zone where he worked. Heroically, he resisted, and by a miracle, escaped from Lola’s clutches to tell the tale.

  – But some of my mates, they weren’t so lucky. There were quite a few of them, got involved. And of course there were accidents.

  Surveillance footage showed a small figure falling down a crater. They ran it in slow motion, then stopped it in mid-shot and zoomed in on his face.

  Oh God, Lola, I thought. What have they been making you do?

  Blah, blah, bollocks: on and on the film went, with each member of the family accused of some specific crime by an honest-looking customer. My mind was in turmoil. In my head, I knew it was all lies – but what was going on in my heart and my guts was another matter. What if the Hoggs really had turned bad? I mean, Lola offering that bloke the blow-job – she was capable of it, I reckoned. Sid’s fortune could be channelled into porn, and he had his louche side, I’d always known that. Cameron and Mum might, if pushed to an extreme, blackmail all the pupils at a school for the disabled. Dad had
it in him to break a man’s ribs. When I saw the charity worker on the film talking from his hospital bed, fear in his eyes, low and quiet, I could see he wasn’t lying. He believed it. And part of me did too. The Hoggs had been kidnapped, after all. What had Libertycare forced them all to do, against their will?

  I felt giddy.

  Over recent months, Libertycare has been doing its utmost to keep you informed while minimising customer anxiety and discomfort. But the truth we must now face as an island is that the Sect has infiltrated the purification system, and reversed the filtration and drainage process. Unleashing unprecedented levels of pollution, and putting the island itself in danger.

  I groaned aloud, and the squirrelly bloke next to me jumped in the air with fright.

  Perhaps I should have felt flattered, seeing what they’d done with my family. After all, the Hoggs were my creations, originally. And now they were famous. What more can an artist hope for?

  Except I wasn’t an artist was I, I was just an ordinary bloke.

  A family man.

  As customers, we have responsibilities as well as rights, finished the Voice of Atlantica. Our task is to stay on guard, to protect the system we have fought for and deserved.

  The idea was simple, and scary. It had the capacity to terrify universally.

  I’d underestimated them. Pike, and the Liberty Machine. And Hannah must have done too, because if she’d known what was going to happen she’d never have –

  Would she?

  So don’t think twice. Call the Hotline with your suspicions. Carry your loyalty card at all times. And the spirit of Atlantica will triumph as it has triumphed before.

  – It’s a load of bollocks, I told myself. No one’s going to believe a word of it.