Aijlan

by Andy Graham

  Yes, she’d missed appointments, but it had been accidental at first. It had only become regular later. The more appointments she’d skipped, the easier it had become, and the more creative the excuses had been. She’d come to see it as something of a game, making small bets and rewarding herself when she felt she’d got one over on them. Now, wrapped in the morning-after guilt that was heavier in daylight, those games seemed less innocent.

  The official watched her expectantly. What did she want? Rose thought. She had nothing left to say. “I’m not thinking straight these days,” she said. “I’ve been forgetful, and ill, and —”

  “That’s why you have a physician and automatic memos.” The voice cut across hers.

  A single, raised finger set Rose’s teeth on edge. Letting out the sharp intake of breath, she swallowed the words she wanted to spit across the table.

  “The system has laws. Society has rules. Without these rules there would be no system, no society, only anarchy. The rule of law is there for everyone’s good – yours and mine. We are all equal in the eyes of the law, no matter how famous your father may have been,” the woman stated, her chair rotating away from the table.

  “But you’re talking about murder.” Rose jumped up, jabbing her finger across the table. “Murder sanctioned by the state!”

  “Enough!” The slim woman spun back. Her pale skin was a stark contrast to the oil-black hair and razor-sharp eyebrows. “Sit down, or I’ll have you restrained, and sedated again.”

  The chair creaked as Rose lowered herself back down. Her legs were starting to go numb. Her back ached; it always did these days, especially at night. She hung her head, studying the ridges that ran along her thumbnails.

  “I’m sorry,” she managed. “I didn’t mean to speak out of line. I’m tired, in pain, and nothing is helping. I’m allergic to the standard medication for this type of pain,” she explained, ignoring the tapping on the screen. “And I don’t want to take the risk with the other drugs. I don’t want to be the 1 percent. You’re already looking at a statistical anomaly. I shouldn’t be in this situation – I shouldn’t be here.” She gripped the wooden chair, forcing her palms into the edge of the seat.

  “Possibly,” the official said, studying her. “If, however, you revoke your registration as a Conscientious Objector, we may be able to modify some of the existing products to make them compatible with your genome. You’re basing your decision on opinions that have no medical or scientific training to support them. You’ve chosen not to take medications which have been proven to work. You’re choosing to endure the pain voluntarily. It’s a simple choice, Ms Franklin.”

  Rose glanced up through her fringe. The cold gaze that met hers was marred by the defiant looking mole on the tip of the nose. Slightly off-centre, it made sustaining eye contact difficult, not unlike the noisy, flashing screens in the dry-bars.

  She took a deep breath, rubbing her eyes. “I don’t want pain or martyrdom. There must be another way. There’s always another way,” she added, hearing her mother’s voice shadowing hers.

  She stamped her feet, trying to get the sensation back, and something kicked her gently in the midriff.

  “I was seeing a physical therapist for a while,” she said. “That helped, but then the sessions were stopped from one week to the next with no explanation.”

  Something gurgled and plopped below the drain in the corner, disturbing her thoughts. Rose shuddered to think what had once run through these sewers.

  “As I can see here . . . ” More tapping. The blue eyes glazed over as e-lenses were activated.

  Rose sighed. She tried to ignore as much of the new technology as she could, despite the many conveniences she was apparently missing out on, but it was everywhere - from the suits to the geeks and the insufferably cool. Even the self-styled Phobes were realising that they had no choice. They had proudly flaunted their un-enabled status for years, wearing their suspicion - or was it ignorance? - like a badge of honour. Once held in a kind of mystique, most of them were now just seen as odd.

  “Trials were done, and came up with no lasting benefit. The profession has been reassigned,” the woman said, reading from the document only she could see.

  “Outlawed.” Rose fidgeted, unable to get comfortable. The ease with which her interviewer lounged in the chair opposite only made her feel clumsier.

  “Reassigned, Ms Franklin. It’s called progress.” The interviewer blinked twice to shut down the feed. “Without it we’d still be using rocks to treat headaches.”

  “But it helped me, friends of mine,” Rose said, voice rising again. She stopped with a small yelp and whipped her hand away from the chair, plucking out the long jagged splinter piercing her thumb. She didn’t care if it had been placebo, the sessions had helped.

  The official dismissed her argument with a casual flick of the wrist. Rose fought down the bile in the back of her throat, and kept her voice calm. “Can I stand?” she asked. “Please? I can’t feel my toes.”

  Ignoring the suspicion from across the table, she lurched to her feet. Feeling flooded through her legs, a surge of pain that was verging on pleasurable.

  “Now what?” she asked, linking her fingers under her belly. She rocked back and forth on her feet and wondered how far she would get if she started humming. Maybe the verbal slap-down would be worth it, just to see the woman’s expression.

  “For the pain,” answered the interviewer, “you talk to your physician. That’s their field, which you would know if you had attended appointments as required.”

  “No, not the pain, about the other thing.” Her fleeting attempt at a smile faded. She crashed back down, gripping her hair in shaking hands.

  It had been a shock when they’d first told her. Either they’d missed it on the initial scans, or the digital degradation problem was bigger than they wanted to admit. As a result it hadn’t been caught until she’d passed the official threshold for dealing with this the humane way. They’d been furious, and she was sure that someone had paid for it. Avoiding them had worked for a while, and everyday the bittersweet pleasure about her guilty secret had grown, despite knowing full well that she was running out of time. What she hadn’t foreseen was the nature of their solution.

  On a small desk-screen, a list of her misdemeanours flashed up. Some of them were minor, even in their eyes: walking in high-risk areas rather than using official transportation, not meeting the required amount of daily exercise, and failing to meet the recommended number of feeds on her electronic-vitae. Even her very public refusal to accept their free offer of an online image consultant, known by the Phobes as oiks, had been deemed harmless. She was secretly proud that her penultimate feed had lasted a full evening before being deleted. Her final one hadn’t even made the screen.

  The EV was high on her list of things to axe if she were ever to get into power. The mandatory online account where she, like all normal citizens, was expected to list her history, her daily activities, and opinions rankled.

  She scowled and rubbed the moisture off her cheeks. When had personal privacy and opinion become a competition of hyperbolic exhibitionism? When had life been reduced to a show reel of sound bites and photo ops to play the judging game with friends and strangers? When had primal emotions such as grief and joy become mundane? When had good been relegated to mediocre, and even excellent was not good enough?

  She scooped up handfuls of her jumper, and wrapped them round her wrists like manacles. The woman swivelled back to face her.

  “Now, the wearing of those baggy jumpers was considered retro at first rather than anti-social.” She paused and absent-mindedly twisted her neck; something popped and was followed by a sigh of relief. “However, leaving your swipe behind, not docking in at home and work, and missing appointments with your home appliance maintenance team are a lot more serious.”

  Rose cradled her belly as the words washed over her, wondering if she would ever see her ankles again. She didn’t want to be ogled all the time
, and this skewed balance of information was a constant irritation. She wasn’t interested in politics, procedures, and processes. She wanted to know about the private lives of the people watching her, their bank details, medical records, and phone calls. What were their fancies, obsessions, peculiarities, and search habits? What did they watch and listen to? She wanted to draw her own conclusions, no matter how biased they may be. That was better than being some kind of semi-virtual prey to be dissected, categorised, and turned into a sequence of statistics to be fed back into the machine.

  “You have already had the choices explained to you, but I will state them again so we are clear,” the official said, each word carrying the heavy finality of a headstone.

  Rose forced herself to exhale and tried to smooth the lines out of her face. She knew what was coming; she’d tried fighting it, rolling with it, but nothing had made any difference. There wasn’t going to be any last-minute reprieve. No one was going to leap in from the stories she’d heard from Lenka, her surrogate aunt, telling her she could go home now.

  She stared down at the reflections of the button lights. They danced on the polished surface of the heartwood table as her choices were read out again. Rose recited the options under her breath. Each word cut like a barb.

  “You know the law, Ms Franklin,” the speaker said once the options had been stated. “You only have yourself to blame. What you are doing is forbidden.”

  “So is murder.” She tried to keep her voice level but failed.

  “This is not murder. We do not murder people. We protect our people, but we are unable to do that if there is any ambiguity about who they are, where they are, and what they are doing. If you had not avoided the tests and visits, you would not be in this situation now.” The interviewer sounded almost bored. “I don’t know how you managed to get away with it for so long, nor how you thought this would work out.”

  The e-lenses were double-blinked back on, and the woman leant back into the hissing chair. “You developed a reputation, Ms Franklin. It was inevitable that we were going to check up on you. I was concerned,” she added softly.

  “I have nothing to hide,” Rose said.

  “Make your choice, or we’ll do it for you,” the woman replied. Her eyes twitched as they followed the info stream on the e-lenses, seeing everything except what was in front of her face.

  Rose was trapped. Her travel privilege had been revoked. Even if she could somehow get out of Aijlan, the nearest countries had similar rules to her own, and Reciprocal Parity of Law. And if what she’d heard about the countries that didn’t have such an agreement was only half-true, then they weren’t an option.

  She shuddered, fighting back the tears. She was on her own, and had to make a decision. At least they were giving her the choice at the moment. She was thankful for that small mercy, to have some small degree of autonomy over her own body. Wavy brown hair caught in her hooped earrings, and she shook it free. What was wrong with baggy jumpers? she thought, weaving a chipped fingernail through a hole in her sleeve. They were comfortable, not retro.

  “ . . . cheaper and easier this way . . . shouldn’t have to support those who can’t support themselves . . . ” The high voice sniped at her, pinning her to the chair.

  Rose looked up, gasping for breath, fighting the growing dizziness. The button lights on the ceiling were spinning in ever tighter spirals. Tears burned her eyes, running unchecked down her cheeks, making dark patches on her sweater. Had it really come to this? The moment she’d been running from for the last few months?

  “I’ll do it.” The words blurted across the table into a sudden silence. Rose heard a shuffling in the corridor outside.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’ll do it,” she repeated, swallowing. “But first, answer me a question. Please don’t frown.” She paused. “Could you do it? Make this choice?” She just wanted to know, just to know.

  “That isn’t relevant.”

  A screen was pushed across the smooth table, spinning to a standstill in front of her.

  “Please, Dr Laudanum, I’ll sign your form – just let me know, what would you do in this situation? Woman to woman.”

  Laudanum sighed. “Don’t play the gender card with me, Ms Franklin. Any sense of sisterhood we may have had was lost when you flouted the law. I would not be in this situation. Your question is irrelevant.” She nodded to the screen.

  Rubbing her belly, Rose felt strangely detached. The fire that had been burning within her for all these months had given way to a brooding hollowness. A metallic bang from the door broke the uncomfortable silence.

  “Be part of society. It’s where we all belong,” said Dr Laudanum in a gentler tone. “I know it can be frustrating, but life is better this way. The loss of personal freedoms you rail against is a small sacrifice to pay for the health and safety of us all.”

  She walked round to sit on the front of the desk, moving with an athletic grace that was almost gladiatorial. Rose found herself thinking of her ex-partner. The way he had danced, walked, fought, and loved the first night they had met. The confidence that came with fluid, coordinated movement that had first caught her eye now made her want to gag.

  “The scourges of pre-Revolution society are gone,” said Dr Laudanum. “Crime rates, rape, abuse, corruption, and terrorism are at their lowest levels since current records began. Food banks have been abolished. Centralised health services provide better care and save money, which can be reinvested.”

  Rose gripped her chair again as the woman’s voice became more intense, resisting the temptation to hurl it at her.

  “Genetic technology has heralded a new golden age of medicine not seen since the early twentieth century. Annual vaccines have relegated many diseases to history. The antibiotic crisis that threatened the entire civilised world a few generations ago has been resolved. We have gender specific analgesia. We are harvesting the ocean floors for bacteria that promise to further revolutionise medicine and farming. Even mandatory exercise and dietary requirements have helped reduce illness, and raise life expectancy. It’s better on this side, Rose.”

  Rose waited for the impassioned echoes to die away, and looked up. The official was holding something out for her.

  “Paper?” she asked, startled.

  “Special reserve. Government issue.”

  Dr Laudanum’s pristine white suit swished as Rose took the tissue.

  “There’s not much left, to tell you the truth, and it seems a waste to use it on bodily fluids, but it’s a luxury of sorts,” she said, managing a half-smile. “A perk for having to spend my days down here.”

  Rose felt its graininess between her fingertips, then shrugged and blew her nose. The flimsy tissue disintegrated in her hands. The official passed her another one, averting her eyes as Rose tried to clean herself up.

  She went to put it in her pocket.

  Dr Laudanum shook her head. “It will be recycled,” she said, and motioned for it to be placed on the desk. “And this last exchange never happened.” Her voice softened. “So you’ll sign the form, give your ID voluntarily?”

  Rose sniffed and wiped her eyes, nodding.

  The official leant forwards. “It’s safer this way.” Her voice was almost gentle. “The herd protects; the pack doesn’t.”

  “You’re also able to follow the herd,” Rose whispered, biting off every word. “Monitor it, and record its long, healthy life with no risk of confusing anyone with anyone else. You know everything about it, not just its hobbies, interests, and illnesses, but where it goes, how many steps it takes to get there, and how long it sleeps. What’s in its fridge? What or who raises its pulse or makes it sweat? No problem. You can adjust the automatic memo feed to manipulate the herd into being where you want it to be, doing what you want it to do. Don’t shake your head,” she snapped. “We all know the AM glitches need more to fix than just debugging.” She looked up through her fringe at the official glaring down at her, defying her to interrupt now. Her voice rose, wo
rds beating in time with the throbbing in her head. “Is that the herd you mean? The pack brings independence and freedom.”

  The other woman went back to her seat, her manner icing over. It hissed as she sat down. Rose wondered whether she had chosen that chair precisely because of the noise it made.

  “Different perspectives of the same picture, Ms Franklin. Surely every parent wants their child to grow up healthy in a crime-free country?”

  Rose shook her head, tired of the clumsy attempts at emotional blackmail.

  “And in your own way, you will be making a valuable contribution to the society you claim to support.”

  “And what does that mean exactly?” Rose’s eyes narrowed.

  “We all have to make sacrifices for the greater good, all of us, no matter how big or small, old or young.” Dr Laudanum’s voice faltered for one brief moment.

  Rose felt strangely calm, even though she was as far from being at peace as she could possibly imagine. Somehow, in the fury of emotions and physical confusion that threatened to crush her, she had found a tiny corner of refuge. Quite what that was, or how long it would last, she didn’t know. She’d signed and completed the forms as requested, and left without a word. The relative compassion and understanding she’d heard today had been harder to deal with than the anonymous refusals of the last few months.

  In the corridor outside the office a mop-bot had managed to get its many arms entangled with the thick metal pipes carpeting the ceiling. A sweating technician punched codes into his control unit as more units arrived to clean up the mess. Rose hurried past them, determined not to shed any more tears.

  A growing procession of impassive steel and rubber machines trundled down the corridor, ignoring the dazed figure lurching along in an oversized red jumper. She made it as far as the first corner before the emptiness imploded. Rose Franklin collapsed, tears pooling on the freshly mopped floor.