Minus Life

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Book excerpt

A Room With a View

Wilson Frement stood and shuddered as he gazed through the window to the street below. A crisp, chilly day beyond the triple glazed glass, sharp and clear, the leaves on the trees rimmed with white. No rain to spoil the perfect stillness. Nor people. Never any people, not anymore.

A cold, clinical room, white walls aching with the memories of the many who had suffered within the confines of its harsh glare.

Sanitized. Clean and bright. No sound to disturb Wilson.

Except for the screams in his head.

The screams of the tortured and dying. And their faces, twisted, agonised, hands reaching out, begging for mercy. None ever came.

Such images paraded themselves behind his eyes, during the sleeping and the waking moments. Grotesque manikins, struggling to free themselves from strong arms dragging them inside, pinning them against the wall, stripping them naked. There they'd writhe until brutish men attached electrodes to testicles and switched the power on.

Dear God, those screams!

Often he found himself, as if waking from a dream and catching himself unawares, wondering if everything had been a mistake. Not so long ago people walked along that street. Dogs tugged at leads, children laughed. They weren't all bad, those people. Some of them were good, decent and caring, enjoying their days, hopes and dreams playing around their eyes, planning for futures full of promise. The city, swelled with so many citizens; loving couples, arms entwined, heads pressed together, lost in a world of love. Families, young ones skipping, smiling. Occasionally someone shuffled by with their face clouded with misery and pain, but did that warrant their death? Even felons, were their crimes so heinous? Besides, how to tell the bad from the good, simply by watching them. Never possible. Only actions revealed the blueprint of the heart, and the actions of ordinary citizen had not created the problems.

“We have to cull,” he remembered the Chinese president telling him from across the boardroom table, whilst dignitaries from a dozen other countries gazed in silence, none of them daring to think the unthinkable.

Only Wilson Frement.

He knew ordinary people were not the cause. That was down to corporate business, the desire for more and more wealth, regardless of the consequences. Oil fields sucked dry, hydraulic fracturing of rocks causing earthquakes, carbon levels rising. Despite their world dying around them, not many citizens steered from the path of decent, clean living. Most lived out their lives as best they could, rats in the cages, but honest and law-abiding. Not everyone was bad. Nevertheless, Wilson looked into the Chinese president's eyes and nodded his head. The order to kill them. Kill them all.

The door opened and he snapped himself out of his reverie, turning to see his son stepping through the threshold. Wilson frowned.

“I thought I asked you never to come here unannounced.”

Sebastian stood rock still. For a moment, the coldness in the room outdid the cold beyond the window. The young man's eyes darted from side to side and he wrung his hands, uncertain. He made as if to go.

“What is it?” snapped Wilson, angry at being disturbed. He had so little time nowadays, a few moments of solitude now and again and he valued them more than anything else.

“They want you.”

Wilson squeezed his eyes shut and swallowed down his anger. They always wanted him. Always some new mandate to approve, a directive to oversee. The interior of the steppe, the Ghobi, the wilderness of India. So many areas not yet expunged. He sighed, turned his gaze once more to the world beyond the glass. A sparrow picked at something on the road, fear gone as vehicles no longer thundered by, threatening to extinguish life. No more vehicles, no more people here in the West. A few essential ones – for the ones who made the decisions, the ones who maintained the gene-pool.

And the occasional servant. Many privileged citizens preferred a human being to a cybernetic clone with no emotion, no sparkle in the eyes. Others, such as diamond-miners, bio-fuel workers, wind turbine and wave engineers. Their job now to service the elite, to ensure continuance of luxury life-styles.

The sparrow hopped up onto the pavement and flew into a nearby tree. Wilson strained to hear its call, but could not. Nothing got past the glass. He sighed. “I'm thinking of going away.”

“Oh.” Sebastian stepped closer.

Over his shoulder, Wilson peered at his son. “Somewhere far. Different. A place where I can clear my mind, be more subjective. Perhaps the Rockies. I hear it's beautiful there. I need the peace, the cleanliness. You understand?”

“I understand the words.”

Wilson closed his eyes. What the hell was the point? “Sebastian, why do you think I asked you never to come in here?”

Taking a moment to view the stark, naked walls, the lack of furniture, the tiny spy hole in the door, the forgotten electrical fittings, all lifeless now, Sebastian shrugged. “I don't know.”

“Haven't you ever considered the reason why?”

“Is it important?”

“To understand 'why'? Of course. It's the fundamental principle of life – to ask questions. Find the answers.”

“I thought the fundamental principle was to serve?”

“Serve?” Wilson shook his head. “Dear God. Serve who?”

“Oneself. The State. To contribute, maintain, improve.”

“You sound like a text book.”

“We do not have text books, father. In fact, I do not think I have ever seen a book, let alone read one.”

“Reading improves the mind, equips you with the tools to unlock secrets, develop the imagination.”

“Those sort of things hold no interest for me.”

“It should. You need to ask questions, Sebastian. Not just glibly accept everything. Take an interest, ask the questions that need to be asked. This room is …” He squeezed his eyes shut again, but not with exasperation this time. Memories. Too many; they lanced through his brain. He opened his eyes and nodded to the window. “Below, in the street. Nothing of any interest for you? How the world used to be, what once went on down there?”

Sebastian frowned, the question clearly causing him some difficulty. “What used to go on?”

“Yes.” He pressed his forefinger and thumb into his eyes. “Jesus … Things like children, people living their lives, going from one place to the next.”

“Why go from one place to the next when everything you need is here?”

Wilson allowed his hand to drop. He gaped at his son. “But look at it, Sebastian, look at the bird in the tree! Do you see it?”

Wilson's son went up to the glass following his father's pointed finger, and shrugged his shoulders. “I see the tree. Is this bird an exotic species?”

“It's a sparrow. Don't you find anything interesting about it? Nothing at all?”

Sebastian followed his father's gaze again and caught sight of the little bird as it flew down onto the tarmac. The sparrow hopped across the road, joined by two more. A tiny moment of togetherness.

“I don't understand. Birds? They don't do anything, do they? Why should birds interest me?”

“Because they live.”

“So do I.”

Wilson winced as a stab of pain bit into his brow and he massaged his forehead. “Is that what you call it? What you do, what I do. All of us. You call it a life, or an existence? People used to have lives. They used to look forward to things, holidays, weekends away. Don't you ever hanker over anything like that, a longing for it to be the past?”

A long sigh.

“Father, I don't understand where all this is leading. I don't understand your questions.”

“Never mind. Neither do I.” He dropped his hand to his side. “In fact, I am finding it increasingly difficult to understand anything.”

“I've never seen you like this.”

“Well …” Wilson shrugged his shoulders. “Things change. Life. You know, suddenly you wake up one morning and realize you're old. You look at things in a different way, re-evaluate your accomplishments, what you've done, haven't done.” He winced again, kneaded his temple with the knuckles of one hand. “So little time, so much still to do.”

“But you've done such a lot – for all of us. Our lives, the way the world is, so clean, a paradise people call it. It's all down to you, what you've achieved. Salvation.”

“Really?” Wilson found it hard to believe. He'd sat in front of the interactive screens, at home and in the stadiums, images of his smiling face beamed across the sky, people cheering. Salvation. Even when they had cleared the last tenement block of the decomposing bodies, he'd experienced no joy, no sense of triumph. How could he, now that he was the biggest mass-murderer in the history of mankind? Estimates varied. Some said ten billion, others said it was closer to twenty. Whatever the truth, they were almost all dead and the earth breathed a huge sigh of relief. But not Wilson Frement. He shook his head, turned away. “I'm not so sure.”

Frowning, Sebastian made as if to touch his father's arm, but stopped. There were rarely signs of emotion between them nowadays. Perhaps there never had been. “They want you to meet them in the Parliament building.”

Wilson didn't meet his son's stare. “I had no right to play God.”

“The world was dying. Someone had to make the decisions, otherwise everything would have gone. We would have become like beasts, father. You know that is the truth.”

“But so many …”

Silence. Wilson stared into space and after a short while, Sebastian moved away, pausing at the door to say, “I'll tell them you are coming, shall I?”

Staring out of the window, Wilson could hardly bring himself to croak, “Yes.” Then the door hissed shut and he pressed his forehead against the cool glass and watched the sparrows hopping across the empty tarmac. A simple life for them, but a life nonetheless. A life with meaning.

“Jesus,” he said as the first tear rolled down his cheek, “what have I done …”

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