Absolute Zero Cool

by Declan Burke

  Buildings scream, beseeching the god of brick and mortar to release them from slavery. Buildings await their Moses, their Messiah, their physical and spiritual delivery from perpetual, angular erectness.

  It is our moral duty to nudge buildings into bliss. Assisting in the process is an obligation.

  If I am to be considered guilty, people, you will need to adapt your legislation to include noblesse oblige.

  It is inevitable, perhaps, that I get a new supervisor. This guy is late-twenties, tall and bony, with sticky-out ears. Viewed from behind he resembles a dart with prematurely grey hair. Nonetheless, he believes he is hip. Hence the black roll-neck sweater, the spectacles with thick brown frames.

  ‘Karlsson,’ he says, ‘as far as I’m concerned, everyone starts with a clean slate. I judge each case on its own merits.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  We are in his office, which is the office his predecessor occupied before him. He is lounging behind the desk swivelling in the orthopaedic chair he has introduced to improve his posture while he works. He laughs, working the solidarity angle.

  ‘Karlsson, my name is Joe. If you call me sir again I’ll have you charged with insubordination.’

  This is irony as he understands it.

  ‘Sure thing, Joe.’

  ‘Good,’ he says. ‘Now,’ he waves dismissively at the papers on his desk, ‘I understand that you and my predecessor didn’t always see eye-to-eye. Any idea why that might be?’

  ‘I’m five-four, Joe. The guy was at least six foot.’

  He har-dee-hars with abandon. This guy, he’s on my side. He gets me.

  ‘Seriously though,’ he says, ‘give me your side of it.’

  I frown in the hope of mimicking low cunning. ‘Really?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  I say, ‘Joe, I’m going to say something I hope you can keep to yourself.’

  This buys me a sitting forward in the orthopaedic chair and a pair of elbows on the desk. He joins his palms with the forefingers brushing his lips, which are also prematurely grey. He moves his joined hands to one side to say, ‘Anything discussed in this room is confidential, Karlsson. Nothing leaves this room.’

  ‘Okay.’ I pause for effect, swallow hard. ‘Joe, I think that maybe I’ve become what they call institutionalised.’ He nods. I cough dryly to convey embarrassment. ‘I don’t know, maybe it’s the way the job can be so impersonal. There’s days when you don’t know if what you do matters, or if anyone even notices you’re there. I . . . ah, I don’t know.’

  He seizes the opportunity. He tilts his joined hands forward until the forefingers are pointing at me. ‘Y’know, that feeling is far more common than you might think. Recent studies have shown that employees in large organisations are more and more frequently experiencing feelings of anxiety directly related to their role in the workplace. The fear of unfulfilled potential is a powerful psychic inhibitor.’

  I smile tentatively and nod him on. He continues in a similar vein for ten minutes or so, during which he perambulates around the office, occasionally breaking off into awkward silences that suggest that he too has experienced such traumas. One such awkward silence stretches out interminably until such time as I realise he has finished his speech. He is back behind the desk and gazing at me expectantly, his eyes wide and prematurely grey behind the ironically thick frames.

  I resist the temptation to applaud. ‘Joe, I’ll be honest with you.’ I stare at the carpet while saying this. ‘If I thought there was just one person who believed in me, just one person giving me credit for the work I do, well, I don’t know. But it’d be something, at least.’

  I look up. He’s nodding. ‘Karlsson, we don’t want anyone to feel they’re on their own. If there’s one person in this building feeling that way, we’ve failed. If you ever get to feeling like that, come see me and we’ll talk. My door is always open. Like I said before, everyone starts with a clean slate.’

  He stands up and reaches across the desk to shake hands. His grip is dry and firm. ‘Here’s to clean slates,’ he says.

  ‘Clean slates, Joe.’

  He is chalk.

  I go through the files I have rescued from premature oblivion in the hospital incinerator. These mute files have stories to tell. Upon my shoulders falls the burden of ensuring they fulfil their potential. A shredded file is an inhibited psyche. A shredded file is a once-smoking gun.

  I pick one at random. It pertains to a surgical procedure involving the removal of a cancerous testicle, highlighting the fact that the wrong testicle was removed during the procedure.

  Cassie sticks her head around the door. She looks at the files spread out on the bed, then frowns when she sees I am wearing latex gloves.

  ‘What’s all this?’ she says.

  ‘Just some shit from work. There’s some new hygiene practice being implemented, we’re supposed to be up to speed by the end of the week.’ I waggle my hands. ‘The gloves are part of it. Kinky, no?’

  ‘Boh-ring.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’ I shrug. ‘It won’t take long, maybe an hour or so.’

  ‘Fancy a coffee?’

  ‘Yeah, that’d be nice.’

  She leaves. I pick another file. This pertains to a stillborn infant buried without its parents’ consent, which was obtained six hours after the infant was actually interred. The main issue here is sequencing. Sub-issues include respect, human rights and dignity.

  Cass comes back with the coffee. She puts it on the bedside locker. ‘Want a hand? I could quiz you on the new protocols.’

  Cassie is quietly delighted that I am engaged in extra-curricular activities that may or may not enhance my prospects of promotion.

  ‘No thanks, hon, that’s okay. It’s a piece of piss, really. But it’d be a big help if you could cook dinner this evening.’

  ‘I think it’s my twist anyway. What do you fancy?’

  ‘I’m not fussed.’

  We decide on spag bol. I pick another file at random. This one pertains to an emergency room misdiagnosis that confused a three-year-old’s incipient meningitis with the symptoms of a twenty-four-hour ’flu bug. These things happen. Doctors get as tired as anyone else when they’ve been on their feet thirty-six hours straight. Doctors are not omniscient. They make mistakes. If mistakes end badly, they are called tragedies. If mistakes end well, they are deemed genius. Evolution depends on mistakes. Mistakes are the false starts that don’t hear the starter’s pistol crack the second time.

  I pick another file. This one is thick. It pertains to a faulty X-ray machine, and cross-references other files that contain information on every X-ray conducted by the faulty machine for the eighteen months or so it took to detect the fault. In theory, this file alone has the potential to bankrupt the Health Service Executive.

  I slip each file into a manila envelope and write each file’s relevant name and address on the front. I stamp them, then go through to the kitchen. Cassie is putting plates on the table. She looks up, surprised. ‘Don’t tell me you’re finished already?’

  ‘Yeah, it was a doddle. I’ll be back in a minute, I need to get some smokes. Want anything from the shop?’

  ‘I don’t know. Surprise me.’

  ‘Fine, I’ll get you a giraffe.’

  I drive across town. At a corner shop I pick up a pack of tobacco and a bar of peppermint chocolate for Cassie. I post the envelopes.

  My line for today is the last request of the noted American labour activist, Joe Hill: Don’t mourn. Organise.

  III: summer

  There being no Family Guy to be found on any of the ninety-four channels available, Cass and I watch a documentary recreation of the latest scandal from the Middle East, which is the assassination of a carload of suspected terrorists by an air-to-ground missile fired from an unmanned drone airplane. An operator, sitting deep in the bowels of a destroyer, controls the drone and launches the rocket.

  ‘That’s complete crap,’ Cassie says. ‘Everyone knows those fucke
rs are sitting in a bunker in Idaho.’

  Either way, this represents a remarkable feat of engineering. This latest requires the identification, targeting and assassination of a carload of human beings from a position hundreds and perhaps thousands of miles beyond the boundaries of the state in which the car motors along. This is trial, conviction and execution by remote control. At least Bin Laden got the human touch.

  This is Philip K. Dick on a bad hair day. This is George Orwell suffering from migraine. This is Stanislaw Lem with a boil on his anal rim. The holiday cruise of the future involves safaris conducted from offshore destroyers, targeting carloads of suspected Muslim terrorists.

  I like to imagine the operator as he sits deep in the bowels of the destroyer twiddling the buttons of his controller. This is the logic of breeding a generation of couch-bound warriors. Some day presidential candidates will be required to clear all twenty levels of ‘Apocalypse Hence III’, in one sitting and without resorting to cheats, in order to establish their credentials.

  When the programme ends we flick over to the news, to see what Jean Byrne is almost wearing tonight while reading the weather report. A PR flunky for Bord Fáilte regales us with a good-vibes story about soaring tourist numbers in the wake of visits by Queen Elizabeth II and President Barack Obama.

  I say, ‘Hey, how about this. We stick all the scumbags on an island, say Inishbofin, all the paedophiles and bankers and Real IRA fuckers.’

  ‘Bertie Ahern,’ Cass murmurs, handing across the spliff.

  ‘Nice. So then we sell charter cruises to tourists, who sail around the island all day lobbing rockets at them. Plus, we don’t give them any food, so they’re eating one another. The scumbags, like, not the tourists.’

  ‘We could film it,’ Cass says, ‘sell the broadcast rights.’

  In the end we decide we want Bertie shot with bullets of his own shite, then left on a hospital trolley to rot.

  Sadly, Jean Byrne is a no-show for the weather report. Maybe she turned up naked tonight.

  The hospital has replaced the Ouroborous. Tendrils of rising hope and imminent annihilation mesh and interweave, colonising each floor like so much invisible poison ivy. The files I have posted spread the mutually dependent diseases of doubt and fear throughout the hospital’s catchment area.

  But still they come.

  They limp, hobble and shuffle, dragging their wasted limbs. They arrive leaking vital fluids, poisoned, corrupted and rotting inside. Hunched and broken, on stretchers, in wheelchairs; blind, unconscious, clinically dead.

  I imagine Christ being airlifted onto the helipad, to be lowered into the hospital through a hole in the roof, thinking wistfully about nails, vinegar and the simplicity of agony. I imagine Him wearily anticipating the physical cost of performing yet another round of miracles. I see him placed with great care and tenderness on a trolley in a corridor.

  But still they come.

  The hospital is a vast, humid Petri-dish in which infection, disease and despair run rampant, cross-pollinating with a gleeful disregard for rules, protocols, hygiene and molecular structure. The antiseptic smell pumped through the air-conditioning is intended as a reassuring placebo. I am not reassured.

  I request a meeting with my supervisor, Joe. I request, yet again, that I be allowed wear a facemask whilst going about my duties. This request is denied, on the unspoken and not unreasonable basis that it would cause the patients, their visitors and most of the staff to ask awkward questions.

  ‘Joe, this place is an asylum for microbes. A hospital is where airborne infections come for a little tropical R-‘n’-R. I have it on good authority that the alumni of the German measles eradication programme are planning their ten-year reunion on the fourth floor next month.’

  But he’s not listening.

  ‘Karlsson, you know as well as I do that studies have shown a hospital to be one of the safest environments in which to work. If you want, I can print you up summaries of those reports. If that’s what it’ll take to set your mind at rest, then I’ll do it.’

  I can tell by his tone that he does not expect me to agree to his proposal, that he anticipates I will accept his word as law.

  ‘That’d help a lot, Joe. I’d appreciate that. Would you mind? Maybe just a summary.’

  He grits his teeth behind an artificially whitened smile. ‘Not in the slightest. That’s my job, to keep you happy.’

  This is PC bullshit run amok. Back in the day I would have received precisely one boot in the hole followed by a warning to never darken his door again, on pain of immediate unemployment and the poverty and starvation that would inevitably ensue. But people like Joe have created the culture of political correctness, equal opportunities and affirmative action, so that people like Joe can wear ironically thick spectacles and not be hurled over the edge of a cliff into a rocky gorge.

  Thus, this: he has made his bed, and so he must sleep in it.

  He is my princess. I am his pea.

  The old man grows frailer by the day. He says the tests are taking it out of him. This is not entirely true. He has surrendered. Instead of being bolstered by the pristine pillows, he has sunk into their depths. In the quiet hum and occasional beep of his private room he has accepted the inevitable. In a civilised society this would represent a state of grace arrived at courtesy of hard-earned wisdom.

  We, however, live in an over-civilised society that celebrates above all else the illusion of perfection. It is inconvenient that old people should die and in their dying remind us of the necessity of accepting the inevitable. Thus we keep old men alive and conduct tests to allow us discover how best to prolong their torture.

  The old man sucks on his Dairy Milk, a crafty gleam in his faded blue eyes.

  ‘Whatever happened about that old woman?’ he says. ‘Y’know, her that died, the one there was all the fuss over.’

  ‘There was an investigation. It proved inconclusive.’

  ‘Is that a fact?’ He peers at me over the rim of his blue-veined fist as he sucks on his chocolate. ‘And what exactly were they investigating?’

  ‘I’m not too sure. I think they thought there was something odd about the way she died.’

  ‘And why would they think that, now?’

  ‘As far as I remember there was no obvious reason why she should have died. They weren’t expecting it.’ I shrug. ‘Maybe they were just pissed off that she died before they were ready to let her go.’

  He appreciates this. ‘When it’s your time, it’s your time.’

  ‘I don’t believe in fate.’

  ‘I’m not talking about fate, son. When the engine claps out, it claps out.’ He licks at his chocolate. ‘Tell me this and tell me no more. Why did they have this investigation?’

  ‘I got the feeling they thought someone helped her to die.’

  The crafty gleam flickers again. ‘I’ve heard about that class of a thing. What’s this they call it again?’

  ‘Euthanasia.’

  ‘Aye, euthanasia.’ His chest rumbles. He meets my eye. ‘That’s a big word for a small enough thing.’

  ‘Not everyone thinks it’s a small thing. Some people think it’s one of the biggest things going.’

  ‘They’re just looking at it from the wrong angle, son. When you’re old you’re looking at the whole world through the wrong end of the telescope. Things that used to be huge, you can’t hardly see them anymore. What do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m not old enough to have earned an opinion.’

  ‘I’m talking about this euthanasia caper.’

  ‘Oh.’ I consider. ‘I suppose it depends. Some people think it’s a civic duty, that the world would be a healthier place if everyone in it was pulling their weight. But it’s a tough one to call.’

  He has finished his chocolate. He sucks his fingers one by one. ‘How would it depend?’

  ‘Well, some people get into so much pain they’d do anything to get out of it. But when you’re in agony, it can be hard t
o care about anything else.’

  He nods and hands me the tub of peach yoghurt. I unpeel the lid and hand it back. He digs in and slurps down a spoonful. ‘Son, I used to care. Nowadays I couldn’t give a tinker’s damn. And I’m not in pain.’

  My line for today is the inscription on the tomb of the Cretan writer, Nikos Kazantstakis: I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.

  •

  ‘How come we’re prolonging the old guy’s agony?’ Billy says.

  ‘He isn’t in agony. He just said, he isn’t even in pain.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘Forget the old guy, Billy. What’s happening with the hospital?’

  ‘It’s all in hand. Don’t worry about it.’

  ‘Listen,’ I say, ‘so far all I’ve heard is a load of bullshit about Herostratus and blueprints being art. And I need to know that––’

  ‘I know what you need. I heard you the first time.’ He shakes his head. ‘Why is this such an issue for you? How come you have such a problem delegating?’

  ‘It’s not that. It’s about the plausibility.’

  ‘Trust me,’ he says, ‘it works. Okay?’

  ‘That’s not good enough.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because everything’s different now.’

  ‘Different how?’

  ‘You don’t see it?’

  ‘See what?’

  ‘It’s too big. Blowing up a hospital, like.’

  ‘Too big for what?’

  ‘To allow Karlsson to just walk away at the end. Once he’s done here, he’s done. No sequel, no series.’

  ‘I don’t follow,’ he says.

  I take a deep breath. ‘In the first draft, okay, Karlsson might or might not have been guilty of euthanasia. And he might have killed Cassie, it was never fully decided either way. But this time? He’s blowing up a whole hospital and making a big deal about it, like he’s some kind of Robin Hood.’