by Gemma Malley
‘Yes, of course, I –’
‘Peter is working for me now,’ Richard interrupted. ‘And when he signs the Declaration and embraces Longevity, the Underground movement will crumble.’
‘He’s signing the Declaration?’ Adrian gasped.
‘Of course he will,’ Richard said dismissively. He hadn’t broached the subject with Peter yet, but he was entirely sure he would convince him. Richard could be very persuasive when he chose to be.
‘But he’s a Surplus. Was, I mean . . .’
Richard allowed himself a little smile. ‘Yes, he was. And now he isn’t. Now he can live for ever if he chooses, and he will choose to, Adrian. Have you forgotten the power of Longevity to seduce?’ he asked softly. ‘Have you forgotten what it is to have temptation put in front of you, offered up on a platter? Peter won’t be able to resist.’
There was a pause. ‘So . . . what’s he doing? Peter, I mean. Where have you got him working, if you don’t mind me asking?’
‘I do mind,’ Richard replied levelly, ‘but since you ask, I have him working with Dr Edwards. He’s going to learn all about Longevity. All about its powers.’
‘Dr Edwards. Isn’t he the one who was moved off production?’
‘He wasn’t able to cope with modernisation,’ Richard said smoothly. ‘But he’s still useful. Still the best teacher at Pincent Pharma. He’s been heading up ReTraining for years now; he loves Longevity more than anyone in the world. If anyone can convince Peter to sign the Declaration, it’s Dr Edwards. He sees the beauty of it. It’s a religion to him.’
‘You make him sound like your Mephistopheles.’
‘Adrian, what I am offering Peter is eternal life, not a pact with the devil.’
‘And you really think Peter will be swayed? It sounds risky to me.’
‘Adrian, you are a civil servant,’ Richard said coolly. ‘Everything sounds risky to you. Trust me, Peter won’t be able to resist the lure of eternal life. People have sold their souls for less.’
‘You still believe in souls?’ Adrian asked with a nervous laugh.
‘What’s not to believe? After all, our job here is to preserve souls, Adrian. Everyone’s souls are now reliant on Pincent Pharma for their very existence.’
Adrian hesitated, apparently unsure whether or not Richard was joking. ‘Don’t let anyone else from the Authorities hear you say that,’ he said nervously. ‘I’m sure they think souls are their remit.’
‘The Authorities think that everything is their remit,’ Richard said, his tone suddenly icy. ‘They’re wrong.’
Chapter Five
Reluctantly pulling himself out of bed, Jude opened the curtains and looked outside. The sky was filled with ugly, dirty clouds; outside, neighbours offered each other half-smiles as they went about their business. What a grim place, he found himself thinking, a prison with no walls, a life sentence that kept repeating itself. No one was happy, no one was anything; they just were. It was really incredibly boring.
He looked down at the road for a few minutes, his mouth curling up in disgust, then he closed the curtains again and pulled himself off his bed, reluctantly replacing his warm duvet with two jumpers and a donkey jacket. Then, heavily, he ambled downstairs. The newspaper was on the doormat and he glanced at it briefly, skimming stories about the growing economy owing its success to the Authorities’ ReTraining programme; about selfish energy-wasters causing a blackout in Manchester the day before; about the new craze for cliff-jumping and the dangers of having inadequate equipment. Nothing about the raid on Pincent Pharma, of course, he noticed wryly. The Authorities would have covered that one up. He might find out more online, though; online newspapers weren’t quite so easy for the Authorities to silence – they didn’t depend on the Authorities for a permit to print, to use up valuable resources. You had to rely on blogs and transient websites for any real information.
He frowned briefly as he read, then noticed a leaflet that had been put through his door. Junk mail. Sighing, he picked it up, scanning it as he walked into the kitchen. The leaflet was cheaply produced and ink rubbed off on to his fingers. In spite of the cost of production, leaflets like this had become more commonplace recently – rabid rants from unhappy citizens on issues Jude cared very little about: longer sabbaticals for the over 150s, heating subsidies for the poor, better transport links. They were generally delivered in the dead of night, but there was very little point to them as far as Jude could see – no action suggested, no public meeting organised. He supposed that wasn’t the point; the point was simply to be heard, which the complainants rarely were, since the leaflets always piled up in recycling bins.
This one, however, seemed to have set its sights rather higher. ‘Longevity is murder’ it proclaimed boldly across the top. His attention caught for a few seconds, Jude read a little more. ‘Cliff-jumping no more than an “official” explanation for the rise in suicides’ the leaflet shouted in large, capital letters. ‘Longevity is killing us. And it’s not just here. All around the world, energy shortages are leading to death and disease because the UK won’t give out Longevity for free.’
Jude frowned at the lack of logic. ‘So Longevity is murder but you still want it given away for free?’ he said dismissively to no one in particular before throwing both leaflet and paper away and opening the fridge, which reminded him silkily that he was running low on milk and other dairy products, and reminded him not to hold the door open for too long.
Closing the fridge and grabbing a banana from the fruit bowl, he left the kitchen and returned to his bedroom, the only room in the house that he really used; once there he turned on his computer. It took only seconds to spring to life; Jude had long ago wiped it clean of any unnecessary programmes, or files that might impede its speed; he could run his computer for twenty-four hours at the same level of energy usage as a low-energy light bulb. He regularly heard news reports that the Computer Age was dead because people couldn’t afford the energy and it always made him laugh. It just reinforced his opinion of old people – that they were stupid and ignorant, that age still rotted the brain, whatever they said about Longevity.
He decided to take another quick look at Pincent Pharma – a week had gone by since he’d witnessed the Underground raid and every day he’d returned to see if there was any new activity, but there was nothing to see, just the perimeter guard completing a crossword, a food lorry arriving with supplies. Was Peter inside, he wondered. Was he standing by one of those many windows, looking out perhaps?
He stared at the image for a few minutes, then, navigating away from Pincent Pharma’s security system, Jude idly began to search for the Underground’s own network. It took him less than an hour to locate it, and when he did he was not surprised to find that it was less sophisticated than Pincent Pharma’s. What did surprise him – and impress him – was that it was more difficult to access, mainly because it was messier, more ad hoc, with strands upon strands and no obvious central holding system. Without questioning his motives too deeply, he started to delve inwards. It took him nearly three hours, but lightly, delicately, he eventually found his way in, deftly overcoming security codes, teasing out hidden pages until, finally, he was where he wanted to be.
And then something occurred to him. He suddenly knew why he was there, knew what he wanted to do. He wanted to be part of it, wanted to show them what he could do. Peter had relied on the Underground’s help all his life; Jude would instead help the Underground. One-nil to him. Yes, he thought to himself excitedly, he was going to offer his services. And they’d be stupid not to jump at the chance of having him. After all, what he didn’t know about security networks wasn’t worth knowing. Allowing a little smile to creep on to his lips, he opened a message page and started to type.
Jude2124: Reporting for duty. See my CV below.
I’m at your disposal. A friend. (PS your security needs an upgrade.)
He didn’t have to wait long for a reply.
Hold1: Jude2124, please explain
your presence here. We have you based in London, right?
Jude was impressed. They were more advanced than he’d thought, tracking him in under three minutes. Unfortunately for them, he smiled to himself, they’d have tracked him to a divert address on the other side of the city.
Jude2124: Not bad. So anyway, I saw the attack at Pincent Pharma the other week. Have it on tape, if you’re interested? I’m sure I could be very valuable to you.
This time he had to wait over ten minutes for a response.
Pip: You have tapes? What do you intend to do with them?
Jude stared at the screen. Was this really Pip or did everyone at the Underground use his name when messaging? Pip was the guy who ran the Underground, the guy who had a huge price on his head. It couldn’t be him, Jude decided. Not really.
Jude2124: Nothing. They’re yours.
Pip: And what do you want in return?
Jude2124: My usual rate’s £3000. You can have them for free. I want to sign up.
Pip: Sign up? What do you mean?
Jude frowned in irritation.
Jude2124: I mean I want to join you guys. You know, fight the enemy, fight Longevity. I want to join the Underground.
Pip: We’ll have to think about that.
Jude rolled his eyes. What was there to think about?
Jude2124: Think? Why? How long for?
Pip: Are you going to be around for the next hour?
Jude2124: Sure.
Pip: Good. Stay by your computer. We’ll get back to you.
Jude watched as the words fizzled away before his eyes, and sighed in annoyance. There he was thinking the Underground were dynamic revolutionaries when really they were as bad as the Authorities with their paperwork and protocols. Paperwork and protocols were all his father ever spoke about when he was alive. Thought they were the most important thing in the whole world. Couldn’t see that they were pointless pieces of crap that only existed to give people like him a job.
Slowly, he stood up and walked towards his window, opening the curtain just a fraction. An hour? He was offering them his services – what was there to think about?
Irritated, he returned to his computer and logged on to MyWorld. In MyWorld there were no Authorities, no Underground, no stupid protocols. Just hot girls, young people and fun things to do. His girlfriend was waiting for him on their bench; he sat down and told her about the Underground.
‘They’re idiots,’ she said, raising an eyebrow flirtatiously. ‘They don’t deserve you.’
‘No, they don’t,’ Jude agreed wholeheartedly. ‘So what’s up with you, anyway?’
He allowed himself to melt into the virtual embrace of his girlfriend, before wandering with her hand in hand across the park.
Jude froze as he felt an arm silently clamp around his neck; he didn’t know how long he’d been lying down on a blanket, allowing chunks of milk chocolate to melt in his mouth. His girlfriend was still smiling at him expectantly on-screen.
‘You wanted to meet,’ a voice said. ‘So here we are.’
‘Please place your palm print on the screen, then move forward to retrieve your tray.’
Peter hesitated, tempted to rebel as he always was when he was told what to do, even by a machine, then, relenting, he did as the tinny voice requested and waited for his tray to appear in the hatch in front of him. It was his second week at Pincent Pharma and things were beginning to feel more familiar.
He reached forward to take his tray, then studied the food contained within it. Today he had salmon with vegetables, a baked potato with plenty of butter, fruit crumble for pudding, and a large glass of unidentifiable liquid. Pincent Pharma’s nutrition sensor was a more sophisticated version of the identi-card scanners, which dictated the food groups that everyone should consume each week. The nutrition sensor went further still; at each meal it analysed employees via their palm print to establish their daily nutritional requirements according to their genetic profile and current metabolic status. Today, just as every day in the past week and a half, Peter’s analysis revealed that he was slightly underweight and that he was lacking in various amino acids and sub-vitamins; those not present in the food were provided via the nutria-liquid. Dr Edwards looked at his own tray with a wry smile – it displayed a smaller piece of salmon, vegetables but no potato, a similar-looking liquid and no fruit crumble.
‘After you,’ he said, and followed Peter into the huge dining hall. Peter disliked this place – his only experience of communal eating on anything approaching this scale had been the far smaller Central Feeding at Grange Hall where the Surpluses had eaten each meal silently, carefully, knowing that any transgression of the rules would result in a beating or some other punishment. And whilst the Pincent Pharma dining hall had no such penalties – employees talked freely, eyes were not cast downwards, and a spill was greeted with sympathy not fear – the hair on the back of Peter’s neck still stiffened whenever he entered it.
Seeing an empty table on the other side of the dining hall, he walked towards it, but as he made his way past all the other tables, something caused him to stop. Someone, in fact. A woman in a lab coat, talking loudly to the people around her.
‘The whole idea of Surpluses having rights is illogical. The most basic human right is the right to life, and Surpluses have forfeited that, so to talk about welfare or other so-called basic rights is nonsense, pure and simple.’
‘Yes, but once a Surplus has been created, is the contravention really its fault?’ a man interjected. ‘After all, it was the parent who made the choice, who contravened the law. I think there is an argument for one of the parents losing their life, and allowing the Surplus to live.’
‘Which parent?’ the woman said dismissively. ‘How could you decide? No, knowingly or otherwise, Surpluses are a contravention of the Declaration and they have to pay for it. I’m sorry, but that’s the only way.’
Peter was standing behind the woman and gradually all her companions turned to stare at him. It took her a minute or so to realise that they were not staring at her, and she shifted in her seat to discover what had attracted their attention.
When she saw Peter, she blushed slightly, then, as if determined to regain her composure, stuck out her chin.
‘It’s Peter, isn’t it?’ she asked coolly.
Peter nodded.
‘Well, Peter. I’m sorry if you didn’t like what you just heard, but these things have to be said. Rules are rules.’
Peter nodded tightly. He couldn’t make a scene, he knew that. He just had to walk away. But he’d never been very good at walking away. ‘Rules,’ he said. ‘Right.’
He was fixed to the spot; he felt Dr Edwards come up behind him and put a hand on his shoulder. Then his teacher turned to the woman.
‘Perhaps these things are a matter of opinion. I’m not sure that Surpluses have any debt to pay. Their existence is not of their doing, after all.’
The woman looked disconcerted by Dr Edwards’ intervention. ‘That’s not what the Declaration says,’ she said irritably. ‘It’s not a matter of opinion at all. You should know – after all, you’re a scientist. Isn’t science all black and white?’
Dr Edwards smiled gently. ‘Ah, but that’s just the thing. Science teaches us that we are rarely right. The whole discipline of science is aimed at proving ourselves wrong, is it not?’
The woman looked at him archly. ‘You’re very outspoken for a scientist who’s been demoted to ReTraining,’ she said coolly. ‘Then again, I suppose that’s why you’re where you are. But all the same, I’d think before opening your mouth if all you can do is come out with subversive rants about your views on Surpluses. Not everyone will be as tolerant as we are.’
‘Tolerant?’ Dr Edwards asked. ‘Is that what you are?’
‘Yes,’ she said thinly. ‘And I notice the Surplus himself isn’t saying anything.’
Peter bristled, and he gripped his lunch tray, barely able to control himself.
‘Peter is not a
Surplus,’ Dr Edwards said quietly. ‘He is an employee of this company, and he deserves a little more respect.’
‘Yes, I know he’s an employee. That’s why this conversation started.’ The woman stared at Dr Edwards for a moment, then her eyes flicked over to the camera in the corner. ‘We all know his mother’s in prison,’ she said, her voice quieter all of a sudden. ‘You know that he’s here because Richard Pincent is his grandfather and felt sorry for him?’
‘She’s not my mother,’ Peter growled, under his breath, moving towards the woman angrily. ‘And I don’t care where she is.’
Dr Edwards grimaced and motioned for Peter to stay where he was.
‘He is here because he has a contribution to make,’ he said, his voice low. ‘Unless you doubt Mr Pincent’s motives? And it is probably not that advisable to go round denouncing his mother. After all, she is Mr Pincent’s daughter.’
The woman’s eyes flickered upwards again, this time towards the bank of cameras positioned along the walls of the dining hall, and she flushed slightly. ‘I was not denouncing her,’ she said, a slight note of stress in her voice. ‘I was just . . . stating a fact. But you’re right, of course. The boy is not a Surplus any more, and I’m sure he’s a very good addition to Pincent Pharma.’ She managed a smile of sorts, then turned back to her dining companions; Peter and Dr Edwards began to walk away.
The woman, though, had not finished. ‘Although you can’t say the same for the other one. The girl,’ she said, her voice quieter, but still audible to Peter. ‘Does she deserve my respect too? We’re getting firm on immigrant labour and then we just allow Surpluses to escape and make them Legal. What’s to respect?’
‘Ignore her,’ Dr Edwards whispered, but Peter barely heard him. Anger was shooting up and down his body like fireworks, propelling him forward until he was right beside the woman.
