Hello everyone, and welcome to all the new subscribers! Thank you all, it really does hearten me every time someone subscribes!
I wanted to publish something today, but as is my ADHD wont, I have about ten pieces that are about 90% complete.
So here’s a short story I wrote for the New Philosopher magazine New Writer’s Award. I think it’s pretty bloody good. I hope you do too.
For context as to why I wrote what I did, every three months New Philosopher announce a new theme. Writers get 1500 words to put their spin on it.
The theme for this one was ‘Energy, Sleep, Power, Pollution’ This is what I wrote.
ENERGY, SLEEP, POWER, POLLUTION
The old man entered the consultation suite. He was tall but hunched, like a sapling in strong wind. The distant sound of an orchestra intruded as he entered before being cut off by the heavy clunk of the closing door.
“Smells like shit out there” quipped the old man in his Georgia drawl. Sniffing, he added “Does it smell like shit in here or am I still smelling the shit from out there?”
“It’s a sterile area” replied the doctor. “Please take a seat. I’m Dr Tedesco.”
“I know who you are. It’s nice to see you again.” The doctor looked down at the words ‘NEW PATIENT’ in his notes, back up at the old man and made a mental note to do a coded dementia check later on.
“Can I just confirm some details?”
“I don’t know. Can you?”
“Name. Harrison Walker?”
“Yessir.”
“Born 16th March 1981. Which makes you…”
“Ninety-one years old. Bon Jovi, that’s old aint it?”
“Bon Jovi?”
“That’s an old man’s joke son. The fossils out there get it. Guess there ain’t much call for humour in here.”
“And residence – District One…”
“…Section A1. Suite 2.” interjected the old man. “Right next-door to Bezos the younger. D’you know his wife snores something fierce? She ever come in here asking for help for that?”
“It’s not really my area.”
“You a family man doctor?”
“I’ve never married.”
“That’s a shame. Fine thing to have a family. Energising.”
The doctor felt a sudden jolt of annoyance in his guts. The old man was chatty and he had a booking list extending into next month. After the initial euphoria, demand for his services had rocketed up.
“You’re here because you’d like to undergo a Stage 3 Obliviation?”
“You know they call it sleeping out there?”
“I’m sorry?”
“What you do. Like a verb. They say, ‘I’m going to Tedesco. He’s going to sleep me.’ At least that’s what they’d say if anyone admitted to it. Cowards, the lot of ‘em.”
“Sleeping?” the doctor replied. He really was out of the social loop.
“That’s what they call it.”
“It’s not really sleep related. The procedure blocks the combination of neurotransmitters responsible for the feeling of guilt…”
“Oh really? Is that all? Then why every few weeks does another one of them silver spooners out there turn up forgetting this and that like they got my grandpappy’s Alzheimer’s?”
“Feelings of guilt are linked to specific memories. You can’t just remove the feeling without removing the associated memories. It’s a by-product of the procedure.”
“By-product!” The old man laughed heartily. “By-product. Banana-rama have we done a good job on you son!”
The doctor spoke gravely. “Mr Walker, this is a very serious procedure.” With great intensity, the old man leaned forward and locked eyes on the doctor, who suddenly noticed the sizeable bags underneath.
“I know it’s a serious procedure! And you’re gonna do it for me, for the same reason you did it for Petchkov, Zhang and um…what’s his name, the frog who fell down the stairs last week.”
“Vergenne.”
“Him. I can’t remember the damned fool’s name because I can’t sleep. Most of us can’t! Except Bezos’ wife, droning on through the damned walls like a lumberjack. It’s eroding my sanity! My mind feels contaminated.” The old man steadied himself, took a deep breath and continued.
“You know my name too. You know it’s not Walker.” He paused commandingly, raising a large, bushy eyebrow.
“You’re Lu-”
The resumption of his speech decapitated the name before it could squeeze its head any further out.
“I’m District One. Section One A. Suite 2. And no matter what I say in the next half an hour, you’re going to sleep me.”
Two silences filled the room; one soft, one loud.
The doctor’s: flustered and unbalanced. And the old man’s: so blatant, so present that it felt wrong for them to share a descriptor.
“And you’re gonna do it proper. I don’t want to be accidentally shitting my britches at the dinner table like the rest of them do.
Excusing themselves and coming back an hour later pretending like no one noticed. Takahashi’s diapers flopping out over his cummerbund after he’s had a few too many. Now what is that? Is that a by-product too?”
The doctor’s face reddened. This mortifying side-effect had been rare back home. It was almost universal up here. He looked up at the old man.
“It’s hard to tell why it’s started happening. There are only 5000 people on board, and I’m the only psych.” The old man smiled.
“You know who I am. You know how I got my ticket?”
“Power?”
“Ha. Power’s how Chip, Alvarez and Jacobson got their tickets.” he said, gesturing towards the door with his head, “No. I got mine through energy, son. Electricity.”
“Marvellous thing energy. Do you know just how much of it there is? If you take every little bit of energy in the universe, add it all up together?” The doctor shook his head.
“Zero.” He let it hang there. “Now ain’t that something?”
“Conservation of energy. Fascinating thing. In an i-so-la-ted system, energy don’t go nowhere, it just changes form.
Like this here light bulb. The electricity comes in, some of it escapes, but some of it gets switcherood into light and heat.”
He nodded his head, knowingly. “It’s all conserved in the end. Balances out. But if you isolate one part of the system from the other? Well sir, you can make yourself a lot of money. I guess that makes me a conservationist!”
The old man’s laughter met with silence. “Not much for laughing, are you?”
“Point is, you can’t get something for nothing. It’s against nature.” The overhead lights gave a small zap. “You know why I think these folks are shitting themselves? Because you can do your oblivation or whatever you want to call it. But like it or not, these folks are an isolated system, and darkness don’t just turn into light on its own, do you follow me?”
The doctor blanched at the suggestion. “The procedure is fully integrated by the psyche. It shouldn’t have any physical effects. It is a very strange by-product.” The old man laughed.
“There it is again! Son, by-products are the reason we’re in orbit, eating lobster 250 miles above whichever poor souls is left down there.
The economists had a term for it. Economics. Now there’s a science that makes your science look like a science, but they got this right. They called it a ‘Negative Externality.’ You ever heard that? Where you make a mess and everyone else pays the price.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Now why does a dying man call for a priest? For absolution.
I’m not a religious man myself. If I preferred confession over repression, I’d be in the Divinity Ward not yammering on with you.
You think that’s any different to what you’re doing in here?”
The doctor felt scared. Why did he feel scared? He shook his head.
“I read your paper, about power. How it affects people.”
“You did?”
“Them neurones in the brain that help us feel for people, what’d you call them again?”
“Mirror neurons.”
“How when you get your way all the time for long enough, they stop working so well? Shucks, that’s all you got in here. People who got our way all the time. It’s only been two months since launch. You been busy?”
“There have been more and more people coming in.”
“I bet there have. Three weeks ago, I thought they were weak. But now here I am.”
“In your paper, you said that power was like a disease. What’d you call that again?”
“Hubris Syndrome.”
“That’s it. Hubris Syndrome. I liked that. I thought ‘That’s the man we’re gonna need up there.’ That’s why I got you your ticket.”
“My ticket? I don’t-”
The old man scanned him up and down.
“Son. You don’t remember meeting me?”
The doctor’s bowels strained.
“Who’d you interview with to get this job?”
His mind joined in straining. He felt wrong, like his limbs had switched positions.
“I…I don’t remember.”
“Now as I’ve said, I’m a family man. I didn’t think it was right to only allocate you one ticket.
But that was beyond my control. That’s something I ain’t much used to. But that’s the thing about power. It’s about having options, and as you know, we were fresh out of those. But before you sleep me I want to say I’m sorry I couldn’t do better for the other five of you.
But I didn’t make you say yes. Hell of a thing for a man to have to decide. I ain’t surprised you aint much for laughing.”
Evacuation.
“Better fetch yourself a fresh diaper doctor. Grab one for me too.
And while you’re there, get a pen and paper. I’ll forget this after the procedure and I don’t imagine you’ll remember it after you go through it again either but it’ll be important for your job going forward, so write it down.”
In a daze, the doctor shambled over to his desk and grabbed a pen.
“There’s no such thing as an isolated system.”
Slowly, sadly, the old man closed his eyes. “Now put me to sleep.”