Operations

“Are you sure we can do this here?” asked Sacha, his huge frown betraying doubt.

“Yes yes, just pull the curtain round, like that, and bring that other little footstool from over there. It’s Visitors’: they won’t come and bother me for anything right now.” 

Verity got out of bed, pulled on her dressing gown and lowered the over-bed table. 

“Then all we need is this one, and put the little table here...”

They knelt. In an instant they stood on the steps of Verity’s Mind Palace, overlooking the garden. 

Autumn had arrived. The skyscape was low, dark and monotone. Orange leaves stood out like frozen flames. Most of the plants in the beds had long since lost their green pulse of life and collapsed, brown and greasy, on the soil.

“Hey, the layout’s changed!”

No more ornamental octagonal expanses of flowers: instead, regimented raised beds of winter root vegetables, lined up for inspection.

“It looks like at the Dacha.”

“It looks like ‘Dig for Victory’. Anyone’d think I’d gone on a diet!”

They turned round to go in. 

“Oh God, the lights are out_”

“No, there are heavy curtains_”

“Blackout blinds! Heck it looks grim.”

“Grim oop North.” Sacha smiled. 

“Put that bloody light out!” Verity joked.

There were no chandeliers in the hallway: just bare bulbs with black metal hats. A wall blocked the right-hand half of the enfilade. On a dark wooden door whose cross-wired, frosted window had been curtained off from the inside were posted the words:

Ministry of Conversation

Verity tried the handle. The door opened.

They stepped through onto dusty worn parquet. The room stretched before them for at least twenty paces. Cold gloss walls, dark green to a brown strip at dado height and cream above, faded to indistinct colours towards the far end as the dust and soot in the air did their work. 

A huge wooden desk stood near the side wall to the left, with a formation of chairs around it. Verity noticed the design: ‘Utility’, from the middle of last century. 

A black stove squatted beyond the desk. Though throwing out heat, it showed no flames and didn’t seem up to the task of warming the room. A coal bucket stood next to it. 

A small table near the stove held tea-making things: a black kettle, a large pale blue enamelled-metal teapot and a flotilla of cups and saucers of a light green, triangular design that Verity remembered from her grandparents’ house. On the blackboard over the table someone had written: 

When in doubt, brew up.

Against the far wall they could make out a stark, bare table and two chairs. A black-shaded lamp hung low over the table. Near this arrangement sat what appeared to be a huge set of some type of audio equipment. Verity walked over to investigate it. 

“Hey, it’s Russian! Look! Made in Leningrad: like you!”

Ленинград, СССР

Sacha’s confidence working it took Verity aback: he wasn’t usually the practical sort. When he fired it up it replayed, verbatim, the entire conversation she had had with the Colonel in his Mind Palace. 

Verity found a sheaf of papers on top of it: technical drawings.  She recognised the shapes of all the pieces the Colonel had shown her in the attaché case. She turned to Sacha and leaned on his shoulder,

“Thank you...”

“What for?”

“You must have come and sat by me, when I was visiting the Colonel’s mind. Without your help, there’s no way I’d ever have been able to memorise all the stuff he told me...”

“Oh, what’s this?”

It looked like an oscilloscope. Verity fired it up. 

A perfect sinewave showed on the screen and a single tone filled the room.

“It’s...”

Verity’s face lit up.

“That’s the jamming frequency! The Colonel told me, how to defend against the sort of mind-reading he does. He was showing off like a twazzock. He forgot I have perfect pitch: I can remember it!”

She went to sit in the chair behind the large desk, and absentmindedly tried its top drawer. The drawer opened. In it lay two notebooks: one dog-eared and bound in pale green, one brand new and bound in black. She waved the green booklet,

“It’s a ration book!”

And opened it,

“It’s...words! Conversation! Like conversation’s on the ration!”

“Well, you don’t like to say much now because of that_”

“Blimey, so it is on the ration. And it even has a Ministry. To administer it. That’s...weird.”

Sacha came over, picked up the black book and opened it.  

“Let’s have tea” he said slowly.

“Oh, good idea! There’s_”

“No, I mean, that’s what it says in here, look.”

Verity looked. There were only two sentences typed on the first page. The second read:

“Let’s talk in the kitchen, where no-one can hear us.”

“What an odd pair of sentences.”

“We’re an odd pair of sentences.” said Sacha, putting an arm around Verity.

Verity giggled. “Yes I suppose we are. D’you remember when we had to do that? Use the kitchen to_”

“It’s a code book.”

“What?”

“That’s what we said, and that’s what it meant.” Sacha indicated the two sentences as he spoke.

“So it is!”

Verity flicked through the rest of the pages in the book. All were blank. She noticed a pencil in the desk drawer.

“Shall we fill it in, then? Make up a code?”

Sacha looked once more in the desk drawer. Another little book, and a second pencil, had materialised there. 

“I think it’s trying to tell us something.” grinned Verity.

They set to.

Bonfire Night thoughts

When I was a kid, I always thought tonight's date was about celebrating someone who was brave and daring enough to get rid of a load of greedy MPs, presumably for some noble, selfless cause. We learned the bare bones of it at school, but nothing about the reason behind it.

I came home and asked my mum what "torture" meant. I was about 5.

Then I found out that the celebration marked his failure, not his daring.  I thought this a bit of a let-down: why celebrate something failing?

Well, perhaps because the alternative was even worse than what England had going on at the time (famine, witch-hunts, etc). Meh. By this time I found this out, I was about 12.

Later we moved to Glasgow, where nobody likes to talk about it all because it's so divisive. We didn't go to bonfire nights for those four years: things tended to get ugly outdoors on 5th November. Fireworks were better saved for the New Year. 

And there my attitude stayed, until a visit, last year, to York Dungeon.

According to the display there, Guy Fawkes was on the rack for ten days and in all that time gave away NOTHING AT ALL. And the only reason they found him in the cellar in the first place was that someone had written a letter to a friend, warning them. No threats, no coercion.

Now at last I can think of bonfire night as having something useful and uplifting to say.

For over 400 years it has served us as a not-so-quiet reminder:

Torture doesn't work.

Third degree block

Dr Collins drew the curtains round the bed and came and sat next to Verity. 
 

It was evening. She had had all day to work out how she was going to do this. There wasn't even any need to go and find somewhere private to talk. 

Because, for Verity, there was nowhere private to talk. 

“Well it’s good news: your E.C.G. shows you’re back to sinus rhythm. Everything’s working as we’d hoped.”

“Oh, thanks.” Verity smiled.

“How are you feeling?”

“Great. Only...I’m sorry, I always end up asking you so many questions, but... it’s about the Enhanced Heart. I’m still thinking about it. Can you tell me, er, do you know, all the things that it does?”

Dr Collins started to explain about the electrical signals that sparked each heartbeat. Verity mentally compared it to the ignition spark in a car engine cycle: no spark and the rest would stutter and fail, or take on a slower rhythm from a ‘spark’ generated elsewhere in the heart. There were two or three of these: they were called ‘Escape rhythms’. 

But that wasn’t what Verity was after.

“Doesn’t it store a lot of data as well?”

“Yes: each time it has to cut in, it keeps a record. Then every six months, when you come in for your check-up, we can use a device to_”

Verity shuddered.

“interrogate it.” 

“Oh.” 

You know I’m scared witless. I can see it on your face. Cassie’s Oxytocin is still helping me...thank you, Cassie, you’ve done me a massive favour. With a ‘u’.

Dr Collins was searching the Reference on a small screen.

“Oh, might it have the instruction manual on there?”

“Yes: that’s what I’m looking for.”

Verity pushed her glasses up into her hair so as to see the details. Sure enough, there was the entire manual. It described the functionality just as Dr Collins had outlined it.

And then it came to an end.

Nothing about G.P.S. Or audio. Or the most terrifying part of all, that Verity had overheard at the presentation. 

“Er...is that it? Wait, there’s a continuation arrow at the bottom there, look”

They clicked on it.

You do not have permission to access this page

“Oh.”

 Verity pulled her notebook towards her on the over-bed table and grabbed her pen.

“Sorry. Another question, then. Can I draw a diagram?...”

And she started writing.

I am wired for sound! 

So writing, not talking. 

Taken at knifepoint! 3:30 a.m. The Colonel. A.M.P. are here! 

She looked up from the page to check that Dr Collins was following the words. Her hand covered some of them as she wrote; she didn’t often find herself wishing she was right-handed.

Forced me to have Enh Heart installed. Forced me to sign consent form! 3:50 a.m. 

Pacemaker team don’t know all its functionality, only Instructions that you showed me. They think I’m happy about it. I’m not!!

She looked up again: Dr Collins wasn’t looking as shocked as she expected. She resumed.

There’s more! Overheard presentation by A.M.P.   My G.P.S. and audio are picked up and sent to the Listening Station. Heart-rate and muscle activity together: they can tell state of emotion. 

He still didn’t look shocked enough.

Verity wrote out the final function of the Enhanced Heart: the one that put her in fear for her life.

There was something wrong. She had just told a doctor, her Cardio whom she knew cared about her, that her life was in danger from something unexpected, and he looked totally calm. 

I’ve heard of Professional Detachment, but this is ridiculous.

She had no choice but to carry on writing. 

They want to do this for all UK’s ‘dissidents’. Track them all, listen, control them all. 

Verity looked Dr Collins right in the eyes. Perhaps there was a simple explanation.

“Do you already know all this?”, she asked out loud.

There was an awkward silence.

Dr Collins started gently

“About those four blackouts. That was only the night before last.”

Verity found herself wondering whether even those had been faked somehow to fool her own team, but kept the thought to herself. 

“Yes, night before last night.”

“And, when the first one happened, and the nurse had to come in and check that you could be woken_”

“Yes, I remember. I felt it: felt there was something amiss. And I’d had a nightmare_”

she stopped short. 

Damn, Player. Walked right into that one...

Dr Collins was expecting her to say the obvious conclusion out loud. But she didn’t: only thought it. She didn’t want to put the idea in his head.

He indicated Verity’s writing on the page.

“That’s what’s happened this time, too. You had a nightmare_”

Verity shook her head. Covered her face in her hands. 

Make sure not to cry. The medical profession despise an emotional woman...

“No. I...didn’t.”

She brightened: tugged at the left side of her collar. There was the characteristic scar from the incision, just below her left collar-bone.

“Look!” 

“I meant to ask you about that: ask if you could still remember it. You were put under sedation. You’d asked not to be, but it's the usual procedure and no-one had told the team. I’m sorry_”

“What??”

“I’m sorry they_”

“No, I mean...”

Verity reddened, but managed to force her voice to stay calm. 

“If...I’ve been talking about nightmares, then...what are you saying actually happened?”

Dr Collins explained, “You agreed to go ahead with the Enhanced Heart. You asked for a consent form and you signed it this afternoon. Just before four. And the pacemaker team carried out the procedure shortly after that. You were back here in time to eat.”

Verity remembered eating. It had been just after five.

She also remembered exactly what she had been doing at 3:50 p.m.: so easy to alter one letter on a consent form. She had made certain to be surrounded by people: it was the easiest thing in the world. Visitors’ hours two till four: her birthday. Her entire family had come, and they had spent the crucial quarter-hour right in front of the nurses’ station, with all the staff coming over for pieces of birthday cake.  Neither her file, nor any yellow sheets of paper, had been anywhere in sight. 

She had been expecting a battle with Cassie, or possibly the Colonel, over this. Not a battle with somebody from her own side: the Progressives. The Cocktail Party. She was thrown.

She found herself wishing she had a handkerchief to hide her face. 

Oh wait. I forgot my borrowed talent...

She looked once more, carefully this time, at Dr Collins’ face. 

He knows I’m not delusional, and he knows I’m not lying: there it is, in his eyes. There’s only one possible reason he could be denying what he knows to be true.

She decided to put it to the test. 

“I know, you told me, the Enhanced Heart takes four weeks to bed in. It's four weeks, isn't it, for the wires to bury themselves in the rough surface on the outside of the heart. So can it be taken out, without too much danger, before that happens?”

Dr Collins’ face changed slightly, but the change was so minimal that even Oxytocin couldn’t help her decypher it this time. Or perhaps its effect was beginning to wear off.

“Er, yes or no?”

Nothing.

“Well, unless doing it puts my life in danger, I’d like it removed, please. I’ve changed my mind about it. I don’t want it.”

“Verity, you were given a very strong sedative before the procedure. It was an error, and I apologise on behalf of the team.   You can file a complaint later, if you want. But the upshot here is that you'll still be under its influence for a day or so. And that means you can’t necessarily trust your judgement for the time being. So it would be irresponsible of us to go ahead on something you ask now_”

The expression on Verity's face caused Dr Collins to fall silent. 

The expression which said, “You’ve changed sides, haven’t you?”

Summer interlude

Verity's adventures will resume in the Autumn. 

Meanwhile, here are a few words.

Long hours

I must wake her now, or we shall be late. But I fear she will suffer the effects of the lack of sleep... 

He shook her gently awake. 

He could tell she was assuming he was Sacha. But Sacha had gone to sleep in the spare room because he had come down with a summer ‘flu and didn’t want her catching it. 

“Verity lass: time to get up.” 

“Er...gnk...what?” She looked across for the time: twenty to four. 

“Get up lass: I’ve got what you need downstairs in the kitchen.” 

“Mills, it’s_” 

“Aye lass: we’ve got about forty minutes. Midsummer, recall?” 

“Oh Mills! Midsummer sunrise! I haven’t seen one for years!” She hastily washed and dressed. 

He had lain everything out in the kitchen. She declared it a work of art: she set to and made her full English. 

“It’ll be a long day for you, lass. Sunrise till sunset_” 

She was halfway through demolishing her breakfast when she suddenly recalled_ 

“Mills: last solstice you_” 

“No Blue Bombers this time lass: I can only offer those of a winter. Summer’s different. But related. We’re going on a day trip: pack some things. And you’ll probably need a towel.” 

He looked at her expression: intrigued. When she had finished her food, packed, and left a note on the kitchen table for Sacha, he pushed up his sleeve and offered his pulse. 

He still had to guide her hand that last inch or so: no Oxytocin today. 

*****

“Oh Mills, Whitby! Trust you!!” 

He had brought them to the lawn near the Abbey: high up, where it overlooked the sea. To their left sat the dark squat tower of St Mary's: to their right lay the Eastern horizon. She crossed the lawn and climbed over the old wooden fence for a better view; he followed, surreptitiously consulting the Gorgeous Timepiece. Four twenty: six minutes to go.  

“You trust me, eh? Sure I’m not a_” 

He made for her deepest pulse and she giggled: laughing, but in fear “I’ll find out if you disappear in a minute!” 

“Five minutes. And it’ll be right...” 

He leaned near her so that he could point her to the spot on the horizon accurately 

“...there. Keep your eyes on it.” 

She noticed a buoy far out to sea, that she could use to help keep her position.

The wind dropped. The sea mirror calm, the sky crystal clear. Perfect conditions. 
 

“There it is! The Green Flash!” 

It barely lasted two seconds, but Verity had seen it! Caught it, for the first time in her life. She turned to Mills and beamed. 

“I don’t know what to say! I don’t know what to...er...thank you!” 

“Pleasure lass. And now it’s time for us to get to work. You've just over seventeen and a quarter hours in which to ask me anything you want about my time. Only my time, mind you: questions on other topics are disallowed.” 

He saw her stunned expression and felt her fear: she was used to only being able to ask him questions as compensation for his having misbehaved somehow. What had he done? Were her family all right..?

“I heard that.” he accused. “No I have not been up to any mischief, lass. Let’s just say that certain decisions have been made, by certain individuals, that it is appropriate that you should know these things.” 

“Oh. Er, why?” 

“I’m afraid that’s one question I’m not at liberty to answer.” 

“And, er, who?” 

He shook his head. 

Verity looked again at the sunrise spot: the full disk had risen over the sea and there appeared to be a golden path leading to it. Gulls wheeled and cried. Her face took on a distant look. Distant in time. 

“Did you ever have anything like a childhood, Mills? Do you have first memories or anything?” 

“Aha: interesting question. Well as a matter of fact my memories are very much like those of a Mortal: indistinct right at the beginning because the wherewithal for keeping them wasn’t fully formed. So it gets sort of nebulous if I try and think right back to the start: the gradual beginnings of Agriculture. I have a very vague memory of lying in a field of some kind of long grass, looking up into the sky. A further one of running through grass: grass that was taller than I was, than I am. I do not, never did, grow like a Mortal. I have always been this size.” 

“How can you know?” 

“Well lass, you and most Mortals have nostalgia visits, no? Go back to a place you remember from your childhood, years after your growing phase is over. And what do you always find?” 

“That they’ve built all over it, usually.”she scowled.

He smiled: typical, Green Verity.

“I mean if, by some miracle, they haven’t. Like this place.” 

“Well, everything usually looks smaller than_” 

“Aye. And why? Because you are taller: you have grown. I do not have that sensation: therefore I conclude that I have always been this size.” 

“Are there other, er, individuals like you? I mean, I know of the Postie, the Referee and her Assistant, I don’t really know, how all this stuff works. You said the Referee had once been a Mortal. I know she only, well she was murdered, just a few years ago. Who was the Referee before that? And, how did she, for want of a better expression, get the job?” 

“They are elected.” 

“Blimey! Who by?” 

“By yourselves: by Mortals.” 

“I don’t get it. You mean, we have some kind of...of power, over_” 

“Aye lass. Weighted Mourning. Eudy was sorely missed, sorely mourned. You, for example, had no way of knowing her personally, yet I know it upset you when you heard_” 

“Yes, it did.” 

“Well, it upset a lot of people, all over the world. The total weight of mourning for her, it was massive. She walked it. Same with her Assistant. They named a stadium after him, hmm?” 

Tawfik Bachramov: the 'Russian Linesman' of 1966...

“What about the Postie?” 

“Oh, Messenger Mercury? He’s the same. Weighted Mourning.” 

“Was he a Postie in his ordinary lifetime?” 

“Not as such, no. He brought messages to people, in a different way. Including to you. His words would cheer you up when_” 

He could feel it dawn on Verity who Mercury had been in real life: felt her thinking, I could kick myself for not recognising him.  

That tache. 

God of Comms. 

Well I never. 

“But then, someone must have been the Postie, and the Referee and their Assistant, before the ones I know about. They must have, er, did they retire, or what?” 

“Aye lass, they retire. A century or so of dealing with the affairs of Mortals and they’ve had enough. Well, it’s many centuries for them, of course, because the workload’s so great they have to do the time in parallel. It’s enjoyable, aye, but you can only do so much. Nobody’s put in post unwillingly.” 

“But you_” 

“I’m different. I’m abstract. I don’t get to retire.” 

“Oh.” 

Verity gazed out to sea again.

“Are there any other, er, abstract, individuals?” 

“No.” 

He didn’t want to go there, yet she had put a perfectly legitimate question. 

“What, not at all?” 

She had picked up his tone. All that practice at the Camp. All his doing: poetic justice, in a way. 

“None, lass. Only me. I am made out of the irrational Fear that Mortals have. I don’t get any say in the matter. Sometimes I...” 

The words wouldn't come.

“You..?” 

“I can really begrudge them that.” 

“You must, I don’t know, do you feel lonely? Do you even_” 

“I do know what it means, and aye, I feel it. There have been Mortals who have been my companions for a short while, usually sole survivors from battles. In that state, one is glad for any company, and one is, or was, often shunned by one’s own.” 

“What, even in China?” 

The survivor of a great catastrophe, will be lucky for the rest of their life

大难不死,必有后福

“Even in China, aye. But then the person, whoever it was, would find Mortal company somewhere and I'd be alone again.” 

“Did you ever offer anyone a Blue Bomber?” 

“No, lass. No-one came close. It’d have scared the living daylights. Think about how religious, or superstitious, whichever you want to call it, people were in the past.” 

“So, if I’d picked it up and drunk it...six months ago...I’d have been...the first ever person to have lived as...both...er_” 

“A Mortal and someone like me. Aye. The first.” 

He could feel Verity’s nervousness about a loneliness-related question that she didn’t think was decent... 

“No. I don’t feel physical solitude as a Mortal man does. Only solitude as in, having no-one to talk to.” 

“Sorry.” she blushed.

And then she seemed to run out of questions. He wondered if he should prompt her a bit. But then someone else did the job for him: laughter came from a house far below. 

“Do you think anybody who, er, would have accepted your offer, of a Blue Bomber, er, would they end up with the same three, phobias, as you?” 

That’s more like it. Pity I didn’t think of that one six months ago... 

“Oh no lass. I’m glad you asked that, no they wouldn’t, far from it! They’d end up with the same three phobias they had in their Mortal time.” 

“What...if I...er, what would they be, with me?” 

“Deception, first, obviously. Second, people treating each other like objects and not people: I have noticed the chilling effect that has on you, on your mind: it enrages you and makes it difficult for you to think. Third is a simple physical phobia: a yellow phobia.” 

He noticed her blushing.

“Ah, I know it’s there, and I know why you have it. Since the age of three. I’m afraid you’re stuck with it, lass. As someone like me, you would retain it.” 

“But I also fear...losing my mind: people have used that against me. Threatened me_” 

She stopped suddenly: he could tell why. He had been one of those people and the thought had put her in fear.

“You would not have that phobia, because such a feat would be impossible. Your mind would stay intact, no matter what.” 

He wanted to make the idea of being like him sound as appealing as possible.  But her logic derailed him.

“Even if no Mortal could, you could, surely?” 

“Why would I want to? And deliberately make myself lonely again?” 

“You threw me off the Millennium Bridge” 

Burned her hands...tried to dismantle her heart...injured her shoulder on the rack... 

“And I know what it feels like: temper. You just...lose it. Don’t think.  Same as me. It’s too easy_” 

Step Four and I fell right in! Reid Technique on top of English Method. It’s going to be a long day.

“Shall we go and find a coffee somewhere? Look: it’s nearly eight.” 
 

After coffee they made their way to the beach: Verity wanted to see if anything interesting had been washed in on the tide. She took off her shoes and socks. He could feel the North Sea making her feet tingle: the bitter cold this early in the morning, early in the season, had invoked her buried memories of hypothermia. 

They spent the rest of the morning talking about history. Had the Fertile Crescent really been lush and green? What was Ancient China really like? Was Novgorod as nice a place to live in the Middle Ages as Sacha was always claiming? 

The sky drew overcast. 

She wanted practical information: would she be able to read people’s thoughts like he could? Dematerialise like he did?  He had to be careful about the mind-reading question or he might give the game away... 

After lunch (“Fish and chips of course!”) Verity’s questions became darker. Would it look like an ordinary death, would there be a body? A body, aye. Then_ 

“I’ve got it all worked out_” 

Oh-oh, she doesn’t like that! 

“You’d have to disappear somewhere: off the radar, as you put it. Where you don’t know anyone: perhaps China, for a generation or so. Come back and see your family once there’s no-one who recognises you. That way nobody gets embarrassed, like you were nervous about just now_” 

“But they’d have old pictures: they’d recognise me!” 

He quietly cursed himself: forgot about Mortals’ ingenuity.

“You’d have to be a long-lost cousin or something.  Look similar, as Mortals do in families.” 

“And, what would I look like?” 

“You get to choose what age you’ll stay as. Forties seemed to suit you.” 

“Would I eat?” 

“I chose to be able to drink, but not eat: you can choose.” 

That must mean so much to her: look at that delight...

Over supper, they talked about Mind Palaces. Verity looked pleased she would get to keep hers, but it would need some extension work over time... 

Evening found them back near the Abbey. The low sun shone through the arches near them but the beach lay in shadow. It began to get cold, and a wind got up: an East wind, from the sea. He could feel her beginning to fade, two huge meals notwithstanding. They found a seat and she leaned against him and fell asleep. He smiled quietly at the irony: the interrogator tiring out first. But he wasn’t going to waste that last hour. 

There is Verity’s dream. She is somewhere beautiful, abstract; she cannot tell where. Perhaps China, or a finally-peaceful Middle East. She has been handed a responsibility which she accepts with good grace: “Well, if you're sure you can't find someone else to do it, I’ll give it a go...” 

And then I think I shall teach her how to play Chess.