Goodnight 87

Short Sci-Fi Thriller. In the palpitating heart of the City, beware the greysuits.

Blasted morning.

Fingers are frozen crossed and a stomach glued to my back isn’t helping either. London Bridge came crashing down on me, leaving me barely alive but having to move out the rubble. No stranger to that though, I’m always on the move, constantly migrating within the one postal code aimlessly like a pigeon with a hole blasted through its wing by a shotgun. I can’t catch a break because everyone thinks I’ve stopped for a shit, or mistaken me for it, or thinks I am going to die at any given moment and make it their problem. Piss off! They walk past and around you like you’re not there. In clean, haughty shoes that fit them just so.

You know it’ll be a bad day when you wake up and the first thing you see are shoes, and the first pair of shoes are the all black, heavy duty of the henchmen and you are eyeball to boot with the evictor. They always have that fake half-smile on their face while they watch you to make sure you’ve got everything. A Chelsea grin carved on their faces with the dull and rusting blade of lack that’s forced them into non-righteous work.They are always following orders, they are always staring down with a horrendous pity, the kind they wouldn’t even address a wounded pigeon with a hole blasted through its wing with, or a limping, pained dog.

I miss Bessie. Bless my dead bitch, and may her immortal soul run in peace. She stunk, and I mean, so do I, but when the weeks stretched out without any of the spaces open, or any shelter from the english weather, I stunk worse than she did, or at least we battled for the title. Those days I were happy to hold her closer to me regardless of who stunk worse than who. Hidden in her fur on the worst days, a middle note. That bakery vanilla smell that she had when she was just a puppy and I was just a boy getting ready to fuck it all up.

The greatest gift since the Christmas of ‘98.

Once in a while, she’ll show up in my dreams, wagging her tail in some sort of reprimand because we never did find her ball and like most things the fault falls on me. In the dreams I’m paralysed by this insane amount of grief and shame, so I can’t even move to pet her. We just stare at each other and before she jumps off into the distance she’ll turn to me, but her snout has been replaced by the lips of the woman who raised me, and her bark is gone, replaced by that constantly disappointed tone of my mother, and she’ll go ‘come on Robel, you have to get up’.

I’m up. Socks wet, stomach empty, eyes bloodshot, jacket heavily compromised, all my belongings in a bag on my tired sore back and lips numbly mumbling to anyone who will listen ‘spare change, please’, which feels silly, because next to no-one has cash, it’s holed up in social credits, chips and cards but no one stops long enough to listen to me recount that I haven’t had a meal in days and that I’d be happy with a soggy sandwich and anything with caffeine. So the century old three words it is.

My arm juts out of my body all awkward like a withering tree branch as I beg, while people brisk walk past me in lightspeed, avoiding eye contact and all forms of contact, like they’ll die if the atoms that surround their expensive bodies clad in spenny clothes and eau de parfums just happen to collide with mine.

Well-to-do people are the stingiest stains on earth, sometimes you luck out and get a meal deal but that’s when they’re not avoiding you like eye contact will give them rabies or tetanus.

So it’s a real bleak, slow day. People are taking the ‘spare change’ very literally; if spare, proceed, if change, proceed, if not change, return to the start, if not spare, terminate sequence. The early afternoon drags on with the rain clouds pissing and stopping, it does not help that these days, the rain is accompanied by a thick fog with an off smell. Everyone is coughing into handkerchiefs and whizzing on, the person by your side is gone in a second, disappearing into the smaug then reappearing several paces in front or behind you.

By the time I’ve put together enough for a coffee, and convinced someone to fix me up with a sandwich, I realise I’m on Dboy’s ends. Luckily he’s a good one, not fussy about things like ends because he understands that we’re not robbing each other of anything; if someone else gets it, tough, but at least someone else is fed- he once said. Could’ve sworn I seen a halo floating above his head as he said it. Some people are just righteous like that, don’t need a degree to have a bit of common sense and share it with the world, so I shuffle to where I know he’ll be just to see what’s up.

‘The man-i-met on monument,’ I greet the old willow, and he cracks into a loud, Thai infused laughter like he hasn’t heard the joke a hundred times from me alone. Dboy is probably a grandpa. He’s never spoken about kids and I am in no position to stereotype a brother but he’s been around long enough and seems regretfully wise enough, so he’s probably a grandpa, but a names’ a name, especially when it’s stuck. He leans against the brick wall with an aged swagger and nods approvingly, taking another hit of his spliff. His headwrap bobbs with him, the woven fabric swollen and bulging as it tries and fails to contain all the hair, a little smile is hidden behind his grey beard. He’s stick thin and bundled in layers and layers of jackets of varying sizes and 3 sets of joggers, the waistbands stacked one on top of the other like shelves.

‘They’re jacking your style Dboy, seen some young’in wearing his trousers like you the other day,’

‘Him could never be the original, but the young shall grow!’ Dboy says with a haughty chuckle, I just nod in agreement.

‘Cut your hair again Robel? That’s why ya limping, all the strength them take it from you,’ Dboy continues, eyeing above my forehead with a concerned wariness.

‘This is how I walk, man.’

I put a bit of edge to my voice so he knows to cut it. If you let Dboy start on the Rasta talk he won’t stop until you’re a convert, wouldn’t even know how one converts to being a Rastafari because I stop paying attention when his tree kicks in. I always tell him when he’s done, ‘Show me one Ethiopian rasta, born and bred and maybe then, I’ll think about it.”

He notices that I’m drifting and nods.

‘Still a pagan? There’s always tomorrow!’

I’m never sure if or how he means it when he says there’s always tomorrow, because that’s the one thing that’s apparently not guaranteed, but the sort of hope in his eyes as he says it means something to me; that someone hopes that one day I will be something.

‘Tell me the weather then Dboy, if there’s a sunny day in all this I’ll take that as a sign.’ Low thunder rumbles overhead letting me know that whatever’s up there found my joke funny. Dboy whips out newspaper pages folded up neatly from the pocket in the second joggers, and smoothes it out, bringing it close to his face.

‘Jah don’t work on your terms. 10 degrees today but it feels like 3. Raining all through thru di week, cloudy all thru di week, windy too, nonsense everyday. Air quality him bad,120. Depression index 230. I just thank jah it neva snow,’

Dboy’s weather forecast involved a depression index. I never ask to see if it’s actually in the papers, I don’t bother reading nothing but the large issue or indie papers, but one time he explained that the scientists would calculate this by going on the streets and counting the percentage of the people screwfacing, which sounds like research Dboy would take great pleasure in doing so maybe it is his made up number. Regardless, he’s still spot on. Last time the figure was in the hundreds, would ask him what’s changed but a better question might be what hasn’t? What a real shame everything is turning out to be, but somewhat comforting, to know that we’re all on the comedown together.

‘Numbers are going up,’ I comment, and Dboy cuts me off with a hiss.

‘Look around, everything but the temperature a go up.’

I nod in agreement and reach my hand out in silent plea for the end of his spliff, thanking him sincerely when the burning remedy is pinched between my dirty, yellowed fingernails. I try not to stare at them for too long.

Instead, I pay attention to the halo above his headpiece as he nods and tells me not to worry, we talk for a bit longer, I ask if he knows a good spot, but no pressure if not. Dboy says nothing could pressure him on his worst day and directs me to a blind spot. I feel my shoulders relax a bit knowing that I have somewhere to rest my head that’s been vetted. As I thank the man-i-met he calls out after me ‘and watch out for them greysuits Robel, if them take you we neva see you again.’

‘What greysuits? Thai’s talking again?’

‘You’ll know em if you see em, and keep an eye on the shard when him blinking, they’re cooking up something, the wicked never sleep you know, just plotting and the scheming, that’s how them fuel up,’ and there he goes again, I nod and wave as I walk away.

Just when you think you understand Dboy he’s off again, soaring on a cone shaped rocket and laughing at those who try to keep up.

A lady walks by looking awfully familiar, her lips moving as she stares at me, a gaze that pierces and pins you down, her words echoing around me ‘come on Robel, you have to get up’. It’s her again, that tone and accent, but just as quickly as she came, she goes into the fog. The lady is nowhere to be seen on the street, blended into the bleak crowd and screwed faces, sunken into the puddle of my murky, untrustworthy consciousness.

The spot he recommended was a bit of a trek, twenty minutes at a steady pace but a lot longer when you’re stopping people for some ‘spare change, please’ and ducking out of the showers whenever you can and all, the time it takes isn’t really important though. All I have is time.

From where I stand there are infinite ‘tomorrows’ drawn and stretched out in front of me, it’ll be a long, long time, and longer days before I get to the greys of Dboy.

Maybe then I’ll have my shit together, fix up, learn a trade, make more friends, get out of London.

Darkness couldn’t wait, falling with a drunken urgency on the side street the man-i-met told me about. It was as decent as spots get, one of them ones that feel sheltered from the elements, tucked into a building’s great double doors that are no longer in use, at least, from the looks of it. Not a person in sight, not too much traffic from cars or wire-guts and the like. Jah bless Dboy, for real. That’s the last thing I remember thinking as I crawl into my paper thin and worn sleeping bag, shivering, even in the spare socks and most of my clothes on, shivering well into unconsciousness.

When I wake up again, there’s banshee screaming.

The kind that makes you think someone’s being killed and makes your entire body shiver and tense. So you’re up. Wide eyed, cutting through the deeper darkness of the evening, looking for an escape route, and adrenaline already pumping through your tired veins, ready to run as fast as your feet can carry you.

The screaming continues, scrambling my senses and ringing in my ears. A blend of sounds and voices join in, shouting and footsteps drawing closer, like they’re gaining on me. I whip to my feet and begin to roll up the bag, but then I give up, settling on shoving it in my bag so I can get the fuck out of there before whatever’s coming towards me reaches. My bag is half zipped and my brain struggles to keep up with my feet and work out the directions, as the shouts and the scream of agony seem determined to meet up with me.

My feet are moving before I’ve planned an escape route, sending me further down the dark street, and into an alleyway, but the cacophony doesn’t stop, voices grow louder and more comprehensible. Behind me I hear the scream, the harsh piercing shout that woke me up is clear enough to make out the words HELP ME and it’s the sort of scream that I always have bubbling and rumbling in my stomach, the exact words, the desperation and need to be heard this time, and the fear- the almost ever present fear.

‘Help me,’ the scream comes again, and this time I know that I am the one hurling out this desperate plea, despite the shouts behind me to ‘stop!’ and ‘hold on!’. Despite the gaining footsteps and a sharp sting in my neck, I keep on screaming.

I reach up to where the I think the site of the sting is with an arm that feels like jelly wobbling in slow motion and with a dawning horror, I realise that lodged in the side of my neck is a syringe. The last scream for help is cut short and caught in my throat, shoved back where it should’ve been, where it’s been kept, and weakness overtakes my body, turning my legs to mash. I topple like spilled change back onto the streets.

The feeling of full body paralysis isn’t uncommon to me, flush will have you like that on a good day. But I know flush and this ain’t it. It’s like my mind’s all here, but the synapses that communicate and control motor function went for a walk, the most I can manage is moving my eyes, slowly, from side to side, to try and find out where these footsteps drawing closer are coming from.

You know it’s a bad trip when the first thing you see is a pair of shoes, which means you’ve already started roaching. Whatever they drugged me with took hold fast.

The oxfords come into sight, swinging out the darkness, stuck to the streets in a confident stride. Nice shoes. Scuff free. Well polished, bootlicked. The figure that looms above me is a man in a Saville grade, grey suit. Black tie. Black gloves. Black briefcase. He has a face that you’ve seen a thousand times, and will probably see a thousand more.

Without emotion, he pushes the rest of the serum into my neck and collects the syringe, placing it inside the suitcase without a word. He says to someone outside my line of vision.

‘Were you recording the physical reactions and the reaction time for subject 87?’

Behind him, a nervous man stammers his answer: ‘Y-yes, 57.91 seconds for f-full body paralysis.’

‘Could be better, that’s nearly a minute, we’ll run the bloods for drugs and simulate this again in the lab. Grab his legs will you’

I feel nothing but know that I am being lifted off that statement, and the fact that I can see another bloke, shorter and stockier but still in that marl grey suit, holding my legs. They work quickly, half dragging me to their nearby van and placing me on the stretcher in the back, the shorter of the two straps me in, restraints coming to rest tightly around my head, chest, midriff, thighs and legs. I watch, unable to lift a finger as they place a black cloth over my body and climb in the front seat. I hear everything.

‘Is it necessary that we use the frequency transmitter before intake?’ it’s the nervous guy, posing a question in an unsure tone, like he’ll get punished for not knowing the why’s.

‘Absolutely. The subjects respond positively to the negative frequency transmitter, in further operations, from a group of people for instance, we need to be able to pinpoint who hears the frequency so we know who to intake. In addition, the responses are recorded and given to department 22P7 for classified research, highly important stuff, highly necessary to the entire procedure.’ The other man’s response is slightly irritated and practiced.

‘Thank you, supervisor. An honor, again to be working alongside your expertise’ the nervous one says, resorting to default bootlicking.

‘And if you really meant it, you’d have this whole report typed and on my desk by 0430 Beijing time.’

‘Sir, that’s 3 hours from now.’

‘If you started when you asked the question you could’ve had the title and key response figures down’

‘Y-yes sir, understood, sir.’

No one says anything after that on the short, smooth drive to wherever they were taking me. Just my luck that the first time I’m in a vehicle in a year would be in something very similar to a bodybag.

I’m wheeled out, able to make out white light from the fabric that isn’t entirely opaque, but that’s all I get. So I lie on the stretcher and get wheeled to god knows where, not like I can do nothing about anything anyways.

Around me, the sounds are real quiet, the occasional greetings to the supervisor, the taller man with the recognisably forgetful face, are met with flatline orders. He reminds people of missed reports, shuts them down with sarcastic remarks and sets unattainable Beijing time deadlines in the same breath, but that chatter dies down too. We’ve stopped moving, and all is quiet for a while, until the stretcher is lifted vertically by some machine they must’ve hooked it up to, and the dark fabric falls away from my face.

Both the abductors are gone. In front of me is someone who looks like a surgeon. Head to toe decked in grey scrubs, a grey hair covering, a face mask reinforced with a plastic shield- all finished with a black, rubberized apron and gloves.

In his hand is an electric hair clipper. Alright then. He flicks it on and makes quick work of shaving my head. I stare on, unable to do anything, teetering on the guilty feeling of being somewhat grateful for the trim, maybe this is some new outreach project they’re trialing to keep the streets well groomed. He sets the hair clippers down, and tugs at a long tube from the ceiling, which greedily sucks up all the hair and dandruff when a switch is flicked. He then tilts the stretcher backwards, just slightly. Silently, he unclasps all the restraints which retract into the bed. I suppose they were more for keeping me from tossing around the back of the van than for restraining me, as the only thing I have control over are my eyeballs.

From inside his rubber apron, he pulls out a glinting giant pair of scissors and in large sweeps, cuts through all of my clothing. They go in a laundry bin after he has pulled them out from underneath me, and I am completely naked, and black, and vulnerable. Dboy would’ve blamed the vulnerability on the lack of locs, which the potential organ harvester bloke had made note to cut off first.

Maybe if I had hair, a singular loc would’ve stood in the way of the syringe and my neck, maybe if I had ran faster, maybe if I had left the sleeping bag… My mind goes through a list of maybe’s as I am wheeled to the other end of the room, and another surgeon (dark, by the skin around his eyes) who must’ve been on standby appears by his side. Both of them wordlessly hoist me up and drag and drop me on a plastic chair with wheels and a low back, placing my arm in an awkward angle over the back of the chair and my legs slightly ajar. They step back. The dark skinned one who had come forward to help lift me is now holding a long white hose and the nozzle is pointed directly at me. I can’t move to avoid the spray, only watch as he turns it on and a torrent of water jets towards my body.

I suppose I’m meant to be grateful for the free ‘shower’ as well, but given that I can’t feel anything but an odd sort of pressure where the hose lingers for too long, I’m more grateful for the partial paralysis that stops me from getting the full experience of the prison shower. In a few minutes, it is over and I am hoisted back onto a new stretcher with a strange design like a massage bed, except the hole is at the back around my neck, and positioned in a vertical position opposite grey tiles illuminated by harsh light.

I know the surgeons are behind me because I can hear them talking amongst themselves for the first time. They are preparing for something, isolating an area and checking for instruments. I hear something about a scalpel and know that this time, they mean business.

Then it begins, a whirring mechanical noise. Faster and pitched at a higher frequency than that of the clippers, so I know they’re not shaving at neck hair. I can’t ask what they’re up to when I feel more odd sensations, this time at the base of my skull. I know that my teeth are vibrating because the little sensation I do have allows me the feeling of ants skittling around in my mouth. It goes on for longer than it should have and when the whirring stops they don’t come away, they stay behind me doing god knows what for christ knows how long. That too stops, and I am grateful for my ignorance and lack of sensitivity and 100 degree tunnel vision.

My feelings of relief are cut short when a voice similar to the supervisor calls from overhead.

‘He’s stable, plug him in.’

The dark skinned surgeon comes round from behind me, although he has made some effort to wipe his hands, and the black gloves show nothing, there is the unmistakable splatter of blood on his plastic visor and I know with certainty that it is mine. In his gloved hands is a headpiece that looks straight out of those sci-fi movies I watched as a boy, made of mostly metal, wire and grey plastic. The surgeon places it over my shaved scalp like he’s crowing him. His face hovers over mine for a minute longer. There is nothing in his dark brown eyes. I wonder what the face behind the mask and plastic visor would look like. If the features would give a clue as to where he got his dark skin from, whether the west of Africa or the West Indies, South India or South America or if he is Jamaican like Dboy, who tried to warn me. He fiddles with the headset, and I am aware of the feeling of drifting slowly further from my body when the surgeon says in a posh, bland accent ‘Goodnight 87.’

I’ve never been on a rollercoaster. I had a friend, what feels like a lifetime ago, who knew all these facts about roller coasters, used to talk my ear off about the acceleration time of the fastest ones ‘cause he knew all the physics about them. When I’d go to his place, he’d show me videos on his desktop of his favourite ones, where they’d be shot like you were in the front row seat. I used to watch from a distance, stuffing my face with butter and jam sandwiches while trying not to get sick when I stared for too long at the video on screen. I remember the cars climbing higher and higher, how they would linger at the crest before plummeting back down.

It’s hard to describe, but what is happening feels like I’ve gone from 0 to 80mph on a stomach full of sandwiches, which is all I’ve had today. My eyes close involuntarily like that will make any of it go away but instead of minor relief I am dragged under by a cold, viscous darkness. The only physical sensations that I can register is nausea and, more intense than when I was in the car or when I woke up to the horrible screaming and abducted, more intense than when I woke up this morning, more present in this moment than any I have known these past four years, is a deep sense of dread.

I know that when I am no longer suspended by this nausea and dread, when I am sent hurtling down towards that fast approaching ground, that something horrible is about to happen, and I know that I may not survive.

‘Don’t say that Robel,’ says a patronisingly soothing feminine voice, accented by a decent upbringing.

The drop is steep.

I emerge from the sludge of dread as I open my eyes. A cold, wet feeling still clinging to me as I blink away a fog like film, the kind you get when you’re ill and there’s a thin layer of gunk over your eyes.

My arms move to wipe them, and I’m so relieved that I can move again, I don’t even bother to fully wipe my eyes, settling for blinking rapidly, while clenching and unclenching my fist, bringing my arms around me, and when I notice that I am still naked, moving them instinctively forward to cover myself.

From the looks of it, I am still inside the surgery room with its floor to ceiling grey tiling and white grout. There are two chairs in the middle of the room and nothing else, no one else, except me.

‘Have a seat,’ the voice says again.

Testing my legs, I walk slowly to the middle of the room where both chairs are, and sit, hands cupped in my lap. When I do, something materialises on the chair in front of me, fading in like some sort of ghost. They too are in the greysuits of my abductors, and that’s about the only familiar thing about them. They are obviously not human. The skin of the hands folded in their lap is a light grey, lighter than the marl suits but slightly darker than the tiles, their fingernails appear to be a dull, natural black, but the most unnerving thing about them hovers where their head is supposed to be. Above their collar, their neck comes to an abrupt end with a smooth top.

Their face is an unnerving, grey and black hypnotic spiral. Like a hologram or a giant reflective stone creating a sense of negative space around them, there’s a depth to it, reminding me of the Thames on a dark rainy night, or the images I saw in textbooks of black holes. This suspicion is confirmed when a human hand slowly reaches out of the darkness, gripping the sides of the ‘face’. The thing clears its throat and swipes at the hand casually, like they are tucking a strand of hair away from their face.

‘I had a bit of a late lunch, pardon me Robel,’ it says in a practiced politeness.

‘We’re going to begin your induction now, so you can save any questions for later.’

I can barely move to nod or agree, which I doubt I could’ve gotten round to as I’m still trying to wrap my head around this thing’s head, and the human hand that just tried to crawl out of it, and the way it had referred to the hand as a late lunch.

It guts me now that I may be done for, fucking hell what is one even supposed to do in a situation like this? All the fight in me was taken with the temporary paralysis, and the little dignity I tried to keep was cut off and put in the laundry basket with the rest of my clothes. I’m exhausted and confused, so I stick to what it is clear they want me to; sitting still with my mouth shut.

‘Welcome to the C.H.A.R.D!’

It begins with robotic enthusiasm. A knot forms in my stomach knowing Dboy was right, and that it was the Shard, and there is nothing good about this rotten town save that angelic rasta.

‘The Centre for Harnessing Adversarial and Resistant Distress. Here we specialise in ensuring that everything in the City of London is running as smoothly as possible, by the end of this, you will see that you have just as important a part to play as the rest of us!’ More robotic enthusiasm and sentences that end in what are supposed to be positive exclamations.

‘As the world around is changing, with the City playing a massive role in that change, we are looking for new ways to power this change in the most boron neutral way possible. Home to almost 10 million people, and a working home away from home to 23 million, we set out on a mission to create ZERO emissions. That is where I come in. Interdimensional travel spearheaded by Research and Development, resulted in the procurement of the world’s only Human Emotion to Energetic Release Organism, or H.E.T.E.R.O for short. Through me, all human emotion from the inhabitants of London are converted into a boron neutral, sulphate free, non-toxic, renewable, energy source.’ the Hetero says and then pauses, talking in a more clipped, non patronising tone to no one in particular.

‘I thought we agreed to get rid of renewable? Have PR work through this again to make sure that the changes we made in the last meeting are reflected,’ although the Hetero doesn’t have a face, it turns its attention back to me with the body language of what I would assume is paired with an apologetic smile.

‘The balance however, is essential! Hetero’s need a delicate ‘diet’, if you will, of emotions to ensure that things run smoothly and I have a personal responsibility to myself, this city and the world, to ensure that the City of London remains the pride of Empire.

The problem lies in the ‘depression’ index which has measured steady rises in the last four financial quarters, what a shame!

As you may well know, London can be a miserable place for those who are…financially ill equipped to meet up with the demands of such a lovely, and vibrant city. However, I have a job to do, and doing this job requires the most optimal of conditions, most are kept stable and mechanically altered to suit my needs but the pesky depression index just won’t budge! Our Research and Development team have worked hard on the case to lift the human spirits, providing the middle and upper class with enough kocaine to keep things up and running, and figuring out what incentivises them to push those morning blues aside and aim higher and do better; Neo-aspen, Soldfridges, credit cards with reduced lifeforce interest and multiple entries in the yearly property lottery- they are a surprisingly easy group to appease.

What we haven’t been able to work out, is how to lift the spirits of those below. It’s no surprise however that the- and this word that I’m about to use really doesn’t make me happy Robel- the poor are the ones contributing to this astronomically high number, and their sadness makes me sad, because I can feel it, I feed off of it, and when I do, it stops me from getting on with my job. I mean, if they worked in offices like the others we could just cut their air supply with enough somloft to soothe but unfortunately they have to do these…unscrupulous tasks, like care, teaching, household and hazardous waste cleaners, boron neutralisation, floor to floor sales and junior doctors. I mean, you have to wonder what they’re thinking.

Anyways, since it would be expensive to introduce our somloft wellness air into the streets of London, unethical to gas the inhabitants of our underground boroughs with venlafaxine, and the effects of the wellair on children and the pregnant are less than satisfactory. We were nearing a wall, ’ Hetero pauses and leans forward to gesture around and then between us.

‘But then, R and D got me, and proposed another solution which cuts right to the meat and bones of this problem and ensures that it never happens again. We take the unhoused?- Is that the correct term Robel?- the destitute, the lonely, the mentally frail, the migrant worker, and we really sit with them one on one, to hear them out in their allotted time period, and provide them with an experience so life changing. The same experience we are about to give you.

We give them what they may never experience, and that is true, no cost happiness. For approximately one whole day, you get to be the happiest you have ever been, because no one deserves to be unhappy. Aren’t R and D just the best?

After your day, you will be processed by the department, and I can return to my optimal levels. Everyone’s a winner here at The Centre for Harnessing Adversarial and Resistant Distress! We’ve handpicked you, Robel, to join our league of winners, and most importantly, I want you to be happy.’ Hetero put its hand to its chest sincerely, something about its body language giving off a hint of pride that it has managed to remember the physical cues at the end of their ‘induction’.

‘That was a lot right? Take a moment to let it all sink in before you ask any questions,’ the organism adds hastily.

Jah, Dboy was right. The scheming, disguised as ‘problem solving’, keeps the psychos going. I sit quietly, attempting to process but ultimately failing.There was only one thing I didn’t understand, besides all of it, one thing about this particular process that doesn’t make sense.

‘Why just one unhoused person when you need millions of citizens to power you right?’ is my question. Hetero sits up eager to explain this.

‘That’s a wonderful question Robel, and one I certainly haven’t been asked before.’

Maybe because the previous subjects were too scared to even ask a question, or too occupied with how they could go about redeeming their 24 hours of true happiness, but then I remember that it could be lying and I could be like the poor (literally and figuratively) souls before me.

‘Right now, you and I are directly synced through an implant at the base of your skull. All the emotions aren’t being dispersed throughout your body; the buzz you feel when you’re excited, the pit in your stomach when you’re scared. All of those things that have relied on your physical form for a heightened manifestation still exist even without the physical form, but the amount of energy it takes to do that, to send your synapses these signals are all being redirected to me. This is the harnessing. You now exist in a limbo that I, and of course, our friends at R and D, have created. It’s more replenishing than me feeding off the emotions lingering in the air. There’s also the fact that this is a retroactive process. At the end of life, the human brain feels every emotion one last time, happiness, sadness, joy, grief, pain, pleasure, all will be harvested at the end, before you are processed!

However, it’s best if we focus on what we’re going to do with our 24 hours, this choice is in your hands.’ Hetero says, tone going all soothing and placating.

‘So why did you lie? you felt my dread and my fear of death and said ‘dont say that’ as though this would all be over soon and it’s going to be just as easy as collecting a urine sample,’ at this point, I begin to cry, because who knows what they will do to me if I express anything other than the sadness that they are trying to get rid of.

‘I told you not to say that, I do not recall promising otherwise.’ Hetero replies defensive and diplomatic.

Seeing the tears that run down my face and the sobs that shake my body, it continues ‘Look, Robel, besides the fact that you couldn’t have left here with this information and your life, isn’t this what you’ve wanted? for a while now? The first thing you think of when you wake up and the last thing on your mind before you go to bed?’ but hearing it from something that benefits from your death, who is lingering around in your mind and using your weaknesses against you, is like another audiovisual hallucination on a bad night, where nothing and no one is real, just shadows carefully designed to say the words and plant the thoughts to pull you under the currents.

’This is real, Robel. Well, not the room or our bodies if we want to be pedantic, but this situation you’re in? This choice?’ I begin to laugh, a joyless and broken sound, at the concept of this being choice.

You forget what it’s like to have agency when your existence relies on the agency of others exercised in your favour; the choice of others to dip into their pockets, to leave you undisturbed when you are sleeping on a bench or the side street, to let you in a store or a library, to offer you a coffee or better yet ask you what you would like. I realised in my second year of rough sleeping that beggars can be choosers, but no one wants them to be, to have agency would imply that I am human, and most days that feels like the last thing that people register me as. Now I’m…wherever I am, the most recent victim of circumstance, about to be fodder, again.

Hetero sits completely still while my laughing turns into coughing, and that turns into dry heaving, trying to expunge the lump in my throat. It sits still, through clawing at that lump, vacuuming lungfuls of air that choke me even more. I am having a fit of panic, unsure of what to do and even more unsure if anything can be done. A glass of water materialises on a plastic grey side table. I don’t care if it’s not even real, I take it and gulp it down in one inhale, water coming out the sides of my mouth and down my naked torso.

After moments of silence, Hetero decides to try again.

‘Let’s tailor your day Robel. Although I have access to your memories and the responsive technology here could weave together what we think is your idea of a good day, it’s always helpful beforehand to imagine and envision what you want to see, what you want to do or eat, who you’d like to be with. You could experience a day you’ve already lived, or make a sunset last 8 hours or talk to someone who’s no longer with us, and have them say exactly what you need to hear. Try it. Close your eyes and think about something you would like.’

Either the soothing, almost motherly tone Hetero had taken was working, or the water was spiked. I find myself closing my eyes, unsurprised that the first person I think of is Bessie. I feel a smile creep up on my face as I recall her dark brown fur, the days she kept me warm and kept an eye out for me, how it felt like she would talk to me, or cheer me up. When she passed and I used to think of what I’d give to see her one more time, it never crossed my mind that it would be my life.

A whole day, where everything is what I want; A long walk with a good view with Bessie, in shoes that don’t hurt, clothes that are warm and comfortable and people that don’t look at me funny, a full stomach of Doro Wat, Sambusa and Injera cooked by my mum who isn’t wearing her permanent frown of worry and concern and perhaps even my pa whose quiet presence was taken from us too soon, and one last good time with Dboy and him sensimilia- at least that’s the gist of it. The outline of the last good day.

‘I can tell these moments are really important to you,’ the inter dimensional energy harvesting organism that will kill me says, with an over-enthusiastic amount of empathy.

I ignore it. The difficult part is over, hopefully.

‘I’ve made my choice. When do I start?’

As I say this, the room fades in a haze of soft coloured particles moving ever so slowly, ready to form into my last memories. I hear Ethiopiques, the sound of my childhood, like it is coming from the next room.

‘Whenever you’re ready, Robel,’ is the last thing that Hetero says to me.

Fucking cunts.

Bessie’s bark and whine cuts through the coloured confusion, a beacon guiding me to where I need to be.

OUTside the limbo created by the H.E.T.E.R.O,

‘Should we note down what his last day was? It could be helpful in doing a study to find what could possibly reduce the distress we measure in the lower classes,’

The Supervisor glares down at his ‘mentee’ with thinly veiled distaste. It was disappointing to think that this was the Mayor’s son. The apple had fallen incredulously far from the tree with this one.

‘Perhaps if this were the Centre for Reducing Adversarial and Resistant Distress. We don’t prevent fires, we only put out the ones that pose a threat to the City, else we’d never get anything done. Anyways, people like that will always have something to be upset about,’

They are silent, staring at the sedated and subdued naked man they had picked up shy of an hour and a half ago. The supervisor with a beady calculation, the mayor’s son with an attempt at coolness, holding a glint of pity that he is desperately trying to bury.

Subject 87’s eyes are rolled back into his skull and his mouth is agape, a line of drool is making its way down the left side of his mouth. He is hooked up to multiple monitors, each one meticulously recorded; one shows his vitals, the other a render of what he is experiencing being hooked into the H.E.T.E.R.O, currently showing an retro, 8 bit game like image of a man and a dog taking a walk, and the third shows the amount of energy he is generating. A high level of lisdexamfetamine has just been introduced into his system. This will heighten the effects of whatever he is experiencing in the limbo, thus generating more energy. It is reflected in the monitors, as the figure of the energy generated goes up at the same time as his heart rate. Currently, he is generating enough for the organism to convert to energy that could power 22 Bishopsgate for half a month.

The mayor’s son notes these figures down in his report, while the supervisor makes a call.

Tomorrow, when 87’s body is limp and lifeless, he will be incinerated, and his ashes dissolved into acids R and D are developing to fine tune a human waste disposal process.

Tomorrow, the newspapers reports will show that the depression index is down by 10 points, and an article will stress that 220 is still a long way to go from the optimal levels whilst suggesting ways inhabitants could improve their mood, it will say nothing about the 60 hour work weeks, the lead poisoning, the mold poisoning, the crumbling healthcare, the neo-slavery or the heavy air pollution, light pollution and sound pollution, because those have been proven, time and time again, to have absolutely nothing to do with it.

Today, Dboy is a statue in Monument cloaked in darkness, glued to an uncomfortable park bench split in half by a pointless piece of metal jutting out.

‘Some things we understand,’ he says, stroking the metal forgivingly because he feels, had it the choice, it wouldn’t mold itself to this.

He counts as the tallest, sharpest, most sinister building in the foggy steel canopy lights up in flashes. Counts the 87 seconds between each flash, accounting for the difference in time in a small notebook from his first joggers trousers.

‘And some things, we just can’t comprehend.’