– Well, don’t ask me, he said. I only work here! And he winked at Georgia, who giggled. Hooley turned back to the terminal and scrolled up.
– Fraud isn’t what it says here, he said, squinting at the screen. The girl’s head leaned forward too. It says here terrorism. See? And he pointed. The word was there all right. – Libertycare finds you guilty of multiple terrorist activities, Harvey, he read.
He scrolled through some more.
– Uh-oh, he went. Georgia looked over his shoulder, and sucked in her breath.
– Wow. I haven’t seen one of those in here before.
– What? I said.
– You stay sitting down, mate, OK?
– Why?
– Cos I’m afraid it’s pretty bad news, Adjustment-wise.
– I’m kind of prepared for that, I said. They said ten years, max, but I could have it reduced for co-operation.
And then he told me.
It all happened in a swift whirl, no time to think, no time for anything to sink in.
From Head Office I was transferred to a massive holding station, with five or six hundred other blokes. You weren’t allowed to talk, and if you did, you got a blast from a stun-gun. Within the hour we were driven off in a fleet of white transit vans to Estuary Docks, and loaded on to a conveyor belt which shunted us up a gangway on to the Sea Hero. Everyone looked scared out of their wits, and some guys were crying. It was clear that none of us knew what was going on, or why we were there. There’d obviously been a mistake.
When the mess hall was packed to bursting, the smell of gas-pumped geranium kicked in to fight the stink of sweat and fear. I had a feeling that something unhealthy was about to happen, but I didn’t know what, and the not-knowing was like a horrible itch cloistered deep in my blood.
Then some twangy salsa-like music starts up, and Captain Fishook strolls in like a stocky little magician. He’s small but dense with energy, as if his blood might be made of mercury. With a startling movement, he pounces on to the raised platform at the far end of the mess, and stands there taking us in for a moment, his hands clasped together as though they’re glued that way. Beneath the peak of his Captain’s cap you can see he’s alert and shiny with his own success. You can picture him, ushering customers on to a roller-coaster ride, or congratulating himself – It was a team thing – at an AGM. Then he adjusts the clip-microphone on the collar of his gold-buttoned jacket and waits for silence. He smiles when it comes. He’s got charisma, so he’s used to this. Achieved it before, in other settings.
– Hi, folks, he goes, welcome aboard the Sea Hero. I see this as the beginning of a big new adventure for all of us. We set sail tomorrow, for a long voyage, to new horizons. Once we’ve established ourselves on an even keel…
Blah-di-blah, he continues in the same vein, until there’s a disturbance.
– Fucker! yells a bloke at the back. You can’t do this to us! I’m a lawyer! This is against all the –
But an orange-gloved hand has slapped itself over his mouth. He’s still trying to yell as the two crew-members haul him off. One on each side, the lawyer’s legs kicking in the air like an insect’s. It’s so speedy-smooth it might have been staged. Fishook isn’t fazed.
– As you see, he says, I run a tight ship. Any more mutineers?
Silence as we get the picture. The bloke next to me, he’s quivering like a frightened squirrel.
– Sorry, he says in a little whisper. But I’m scared shitless here.
Me too, but I’m not admitting it. I can feel he wants me to do something sissy, like pat him on the arm or something, but I can’t bring myself to. It’s a tough world, and I decided earlier that I’m not gay. So I just grunt.
Now Fishook’s making a signal to a crewman in the projection room behind us, and the lights are dimming around us.
– Before we leave shore, we’re going to join the rest of Atlantica in witnessing a historic television moment, he goes. There’s a special message in it for our Atlantican Voyagers. Many of you – I have this on good authority – are still clinging to the idea that you’re innocent. That everyone but you was involved.
His words have frozen us for a minute.
Then – What the fuck –? says a man behind me, and a nervous vibe’s crackling and pulsing through the mess.
– Well, after this film, goes Fishook, I want you to look into your hearts. Because the truth is in there. He pauses, looks around the room. – Remorse, he says, is the first step in the long journey to freedom.
Before we can take in what he’s said, the lights have suddenly plunged right off, and the whole hall’s pitch black. The sissy man next to me gives a little whimper, and reaches for my hand. I shake him off. There’s only one person whose hand I want to hold, and she isn’t here.
The screen’s so big it covers the whole wall. We watch as it flickers to life.
The commentary began over the familiar map of the island.
Our own Atlantica, said the voice. It was familiar; big and meaty. Where had I heard it before? But there’s another map that you don’t see, a map of corruption that extends deep into the very fabric of society. Of course, I thought. It’s Craig Voice of the Fucking Nation Devon. As he spoke, a tissue of thin red lines began to criss-cross its way out from the cities until the whole map was cobwebbed depravity. Cut to a weeping woman.
– If I’d known that’s what he was involved in, she sobbed, I’d never have let him out that day.
Some wobbly footage followed; it showed a small white coffin, a child’s, carried by two boys of about thirteen, who were crying.
Then a bloke popped up.
– I had no idea the Sect was behind it. It only dawned on me when it was too late, like. But it was them gave the orders, I know that.
– There is such a thing as pure evil, said a man in a dog-collar. Even in Utopia.
I almost laughed. If the customers fall for that, I thought –
But then I stopped and a huge shiver shuddered its way right up from my feet to my bald patch and down again. I thought of your typical Atlantican. He’s not used to thinking. And to be fair to him, why should he be, with Customer Care second-guessing his urges? Of course he’d fall for it. I was beginning to get an inkling now of what was coming. As the dread sprouted and homunculised inside me, the others seemed to be making connections too. The quivery squirrel-like man next to me had put his hands over his face, but was peeking through the lattices made by his little claws. The Liberty anthem had started up now: the muzaked version you heard in supermarkets and waiting rooms. Over it came the Atlantica the Beautiful shots we’d all seen a hundred times before on promotional videos: the Bird of Liberty flying across a blushing horizon, a family picnicking at Mohawk Falls, a lithe woman in her prime taking a mud bath at a health spa, cheery faces at a sample handout in a twinkling mall.
We have a system that’s so admired worldwide that the people of the United States are campaigning to have it, went Craig Devon. In the near future, a superpower may finally get the administrative system it deserves, free of human error. If that happens, it will be the dawn of a new era for mankind. An era of peace and prosperity.
Next, a shot of Earl Murphy, the American hero taxi driver, heading a huge march with banners. Music underneath. Your heart thrilled at the sight of it. You couldn’t help rooting for what they wanted. The people of Atlantica fought hard, as ordinary Americans are now doing, for the high standards we have enjoyed in the last decade, went Devon. His voice sounded as juicy as pork. But what we have fought for is now under a very real and terrifying threat. The sinister music started again – a pulse of drums – but I must’ve blinked or something, missed a beat. Because suddenly without any warning, there was my family. Filling the screen.