I remember before White Monday, when places you weren’t meant to go were marked out with concrete walls and barbed wire. Now all the buildings, every building, has blunted-off edges, ‘to reduce wind resistance’ they told us. There was no more barbed wire but it didn’t matter because you didn’t really want to go anywhere.
I check my watch. 8.55 in the morning and everyone’s already trudging into the ‘highrise industrial facility’ towering above the city. You put in ten hours a day of manpower and get out a deep sense of self-loathing and worthlessness. For all I know there might be some by-products. They might even be useful.
High above our heads monorails rattle into the building, full of more people ready for the daily grind. I once heard all the monorails were bought second-hand from what used to be Euro Disney. I also once heard they’re made from old milk bottle tops, and that they run on orphan sweat. This is why I make sure to never trust anything I hear.
Despite the size of the building, the main door is tiny. On a good day it can take quarter of an hour for everyone to get inside. Once I get inside, I take two left turns and a right turn to get to the elevator up to my floor. My floor is one of the floors of offices. I spend my days moving numbers around. After I finish each sheet of numbers I put it through a letterbox in the wall. Nobody knows where the letterboxes lead. Sometimes I imagine what the numbers mean. Maybe if I made a mistake there’d be an explosion or a blizzard or something. Probably not.
Twelve o’clock comes. The letterbox chokes out a food package. I close my eyes and try to eat the meaty paste inside as fast as possible. The meaty paste is actually meat – it was specified in my contract, ‘one free meat meal a day’. The company interpret a lot of things in the loosest way possible.
I pick a splinter of bone out of my teeth.
After I finish my block of 100% former lifeform, I walk out of my office into the most striking young woman – a lithe little thing with a dark pageboy haircut, who could have easily been quite androgynous in a disturbingly arousing way if she hadn’t had a figure that could only be described as utterly feminine.
“Excuse me, I’m looking for…Wallace Smith,” she says, eyes flicking down to her clipboard for a moment. “I’m from Panopticon Security and I need to talk to him about the Clifflands conference.”
Our eyes meet and I know she’s lying. The company could easily be linked to Panopticon. It could well have something called ‘the Clifflands conference’. But anyone who actually worked for Panopticon would be wearing a boiler suit with the little red P logo. She’s wearing black trousers and a black sweater.
“He hasn’t been in for a few days,” I tell her. This is true. Wallace is normally quite vocal about his hernia and it’s been like a holiday recently.
“When he does come in, could you let me know?” she asks, holding out a card. I nod and take it. “Thank you,” she says as she walks towards the elevators. I look at the card. The only thing it has on it is a phone number, printed in black or what might be very dark red. I slip it into my pocket and carry on down the corridor towards the bathrooms.
It’s only now I think about how big a part of life Panopticon is now. I think about the little bracelet of mirrored glass on every lamppost, behind which cameras silently drink in the world. I’ve never even seen any boiler-suited Panopticon people around here.
I stop before getting to the bathrooms. To put it another way, I stop just outside Wallace’s office. I look inside, and to my complete lack of surprise it’s just like mine – the desk, the letterbox, and not much else apart from a layer of dust from Wallace’s sick days.
Sick days are, technically, allowed. People even take them occasionally. But this means forfeiting the month’s pay, largely for the same reasons that the company gives us ‘one free meat meal a day’ instead of a canteen – because they can, and in the case of the pay docking, they’re obliged to. Wallace’s hernia must be terrible. Most likely he has some savings to get by on.
I shut the office door quickly, like I just walked in on myself doing something obscene.
I’m back home. My gin’s right where I left it.
Wallace had never even mentioned Panopticon, but that doesn’t mean anything, I never talk about my work, nobody does really. But Panopticon would never send a woman in an outfit she could have been poured into just to tell someone about a conference.
The door rattles open. I jump, but calm down instantly as Varg walks in, smiles, and puts a steel briefcase down next to the door. Varg is a monster of a man – blond, burly, easily six feet tall and with shoulders that can just about fit through the door – but he walks around like a shadow and has this sheepish little smile that makes him look like an overgrown child.
Varg is Paulie’s - my husband’s - right-hand man. Always that exact phrasing, ‘right-hand man’, never ‘assistant’ or ‘valet’ or anything like that. For all I know it’s just innocent boyishness. I could believe that with Varg very easily.
He points at the steel briefcase, then at the picture of Paulie on the sideboard, gives his little smile again, and walks out. I hear the front door slam.
Carefully, trying to keep my hands steady, I lay the briefcase flat on the ground and open it. Inside are bundles of papers and a little stack of photgraphs held together with an elastic band. I flick through them – they’re of people I don’t recognise, and most of them have red crosses drawn over their faces. The one at the bottom of the stack is of a stunning brunette woman, and has a question mark on the white border. I take it out of the stack and look at it – it could almost be the woman from the office.
If it is, there are two possibilities. Either she or Wallace will be killed very soon. Possibly even both of them. I slip the photo back into the stack. I don’t particularly want either of them to be killed, but if that is what happens, I’m sure there’s a reason.
The gin picks now to hit me a two-fisted blow to the stomach and I stagger at high speed through to the bathroom.
I’m in bed, head twirling slightly too much to sleep. The nights are silent now. No traffic, no drunken conversations. No birdsong or owls. I wouldn’t even mind screams or gunshots that much. I clumsily pick up my glass of water from the bedside table and take a swig.
The front door opens, then shuts. I hear Paulie’s boots clack on the floor, which is strange, because Varg wears the same boots and weighs much more. The clacking stops as he walks through to the carpeted living room.
I hear the slither of his leather overcoat and the soft thump of his gun as they are both thrown idly onto the sofa.
“You gone to bed?” he calls through.
“Yeah,” I say.
“Were you looking through this case?” he asks.
“I thought it was gin,” I reply. He grunts something that might have been ‘oh yeah’. I roll over in the bed and try to get to sleep.
Paulie doesn’t come to bed. He doesn’t need sleep and he doesn’t want children. As I drift in and out of consciousness for the rest of the night, I hear soft knocks on the door, more booted feet walking about, and hushed conversation punctuated by swear words.
