At the Edge of the Game

http://www.garethpower.com

Cover
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C
HAPTERS

1.
C
APUT
M
UNDI

2.
A
LL
C
HANGE

3.
A
N
A
CCUMULATION
O
F
N
OTHING

4.
O
UT
O
F
P
HASE

5.
S
OMETHING
E
LSE

6.
C
OLD
S
TATION

7.
M
UNDI
K
APUT

E
PILOGUE:
G
ONE
W
ITH
T
HE
W
ORLD

The letter,
a miracle, fell to dust in my hands. It had survived the ages intact and
disintegrated only when I disturbed it. But I had presence of mind. I was quick
enough to preserve its content using an imager, separating and polishing each
faded speck, then later reintegrating them.

 The letter
consumed me for weeks. I hardly ate. Nor did I take fresh air except to stand
at the stony water’s edge to look across at the decaying sea vessel. Everything
I did concerned the letter - image enhancement, analysis, deciphering,
extrapolation, supposition. Perhaps I was driven by the unhappy ghost of Helen,
on whose desiccated form it lay, or by the ghost of her shrunken, nameless
child, or one of those mummified others who perished with them. It’s done now,
and still I’m at a loss. It did nothing to sustain me. I am nothing, and
nowhere. The letter is the voice of nobody.

George -

Forgive me.
I could do nothing for her. It’s so cold in here... [
illegible
]… Soon
I’ll be with her.

The remains
of Helen and the child are still out there in the ship on the water, not far
from here, undisturbed since I returned to the Unquiet Spirit. I stood over
their dry husks just once, and did not go back. Her hair, only a few remaining
translucent wisps on the brown, leathery scalp, was surely once dark and long. She
wore a silver locket around her neck. I have it here now. Inside are two
likenesses, degraded by time to grey silhouettes, only shapes now set against
dirt. But it’s clear enough that the form on the left is Helen, the one on the
right the father of her baby, the man called George. I sometimes picture George
as an old man - as Dexter, in fact. Perhaps this is because their tomb is now
also his, or possibly it is because it is so long since I encountered other
live human beings that the face-recognition neural centres in my skull are
atrophied. More troubling, though, are the times I picture him as myself.

I have
regressed to the state of mind that characterised my days before Dexter ended
my solitude, long before our discovery of the ship of the dead. Then I, a man
irrevocably and voluntarily separated from his own age, that improbable age
when the world was filled with human beings, tormented by regret at my rash
escape from the world, often tried to remember what it was like not to be
alone. I found it impossible. My life, pre-exile, was as a dream to me. And,
indeed, the present time felt almost as unreal, such was my numbed lassitude. I
entertained ludicrous notions. Had I died? Perhaps I had committed suicide, and
was now in limbo, or in hell. Or – another related possibility – having died,
through the infinite potential of non-existence I re-sparked in another time
and place. But surely I would not rematerialise in the same body, nor as a
human, nor on Earth?

I scarcely
existed, though I was more alive than I am now. I went about my daily routine;
I ate, drank, breathed, walked, bathed in the ocean, felt the sun on my back
and the hot, wet air flow through my throat, talked to myself and to the
computer, listened to and watched recordings, interacted with the Cat, and in
spite of it all passed through the world as though it were at several removes
from me. It was a state to which I had become accustomed, one from which I
thought I would never emerge. But emerge from it I did, albeit briefly.

I know you
were trying your best. It’s not your fault that you failed.

I can’t
delude myself about my obsession with the letter. To me, it represented life,
far more to me than the animate man Dexter, whose heart beat and whose blood
was as hot as mine. The letter was life, as he was… something else. Anti-life. Unlife.
He offered nothing I could not find in myself, and what I find in myself does
not suffice. The letter, though… I envy those ancient people their suffering. At
least when they died they lost real lives.

I would
scream at the crashing ocean, except my breath would be lost, would not perturb
one droplet. I am a captive of myself. Thinking the same thoughts, being caught
in this endless brooding cycle. It has no natural conclusion; there are no
conclusions to be drawn. And worst of all now is when I sleep. I dream of
nothing but their world, the world of Helen and George, of all the escalating
catastrophes of that time. I imagine and reimagine it, relive it in fresh
permutations each night. Yet I never forget I am dreaming, never escape there,
never draw any solace from it. It is as though I am being sent there by the
triumphant, non-human forces of this current age, sent there to be mocked.

Thinking about
that idea I’d like to turn into a story, a television programme, a play,
whatever. It’s about the man whose life, like mine, is filled with endless
trivial torments. Each day he endures unfriendly people, noisy streets, dirt,
inability to rise above his lowly station, his failure to realise his modest
ambitions. The twist is that somehow in the end he realises that he is not
alive, but is in fact dead. He is dead, and has been condemned to see out
eternity in one of the upper rings of Hell. A highly autobiographical piece of
work it would be.

The bus is
stopping on O’Connell Bridge - not actually a bus stop because - a symptom of
the times - scumbags have barricaded O’Connell Street. Their sturdy bulwark
consists of burnt-out cars, bicycles, pieces of wood and masonry, sacks of
rubbish, all heaped high.

Well, good. Better
to out here anyway on the bridge rather than that filthy cesspit lost to the
forces of law and order. Step onto the hot pavement. Breathe in two
half-lungfuls of the city centre’s familiar gaseous mix. It does not quite
nauseate.

Bus u-turning
back the way it came, almost tipping over in its haste to get away from the
danger zone.

The police watch
it go, sheltering against the hail of stones, bricks, bottles coming over the
barricade from the scumbags, who have discerned that their fastness is
threatened.

Jesus, it’s hot.
Shirt dripping with sweat. The bus was a hothouse, but it’s no better out here.
Take off this tie, choking me. Stick it in my pocket. Will put it on at the
steps when I get to work.

Pigeons line the
walls of the quay, flapping wings to keep cool. My feet swollen and raw on the
littered boardwalk. Twenty-five minutes to get to work from here. No hurry. No
point in that. For today I am to receive the professional equivalent of summary
execution.

No one else is
hurrying either. People slope along slumping under the beating sun, squinting
against the grit of the hot, dry gale.

The Liffey
shrinks a little more each day, now a sludgey trickle in a black silt channel. Exposed
riverbed thick with rubbish. All of urban life is down there, every facet of
human activity represented in one way or another - shopping trolleys, forklift
pallets, tyres, shopping bags, planks, life belts, bits of rope, garments of various
types, cans and bottles. The terrible stench wafts up as I walk across the
Ha’penny Bridge. Pigeons oblivious to the vileness of it all drink at the
low-tide limits of the water’s edge.

A beggar is
saying something. Don’t look at him. We all have to look after ourselves
nowadays. It’ll be hard enough making ends meet now without giving money away
to beggars as well. As of today, I’m no longer an earner. How many notches more
do I have to fall before I’m a beggar? Not so many I fear.

Some of those brought
low in recent years still essay the swagger of old, but it doesn’t fool anyone.
It’s too self-conscious, doggedly maintained for reasons unknown as they wander
around doing whatever it is they do with no work and no money.

Further down
the quay there are no beggars, no bankrupt go-getters. I look across at the
Four Courts, at the flak-jacketed Gardai standing with machine guns in front of
the old building’s granite façade, at the stooping snipers on the roof. They
are probably training their sights on me at this very moment. Move along. Last
thing I want is to be mistaken for some pro-democracy firebrand or - worse - an
IRA spotter.

The soldiers
despise the democracy people, but they fear the IRA. No democracy movement can
topple the junta, but the Unity IRA just might be able to establish a different
one. That’s the essential distinction. That’s why they’ll kick your head in if
you demand a vote, but they’ll shoot your brain out if you advocate a 32-county
socialistic Gael’s paradise.

Close to Heuston
Station now. Something in the cracked mud of the riverbed, a human form,
sprawled, face-down, half sunk into the still-moist lower layers. The smell of
rotting flesh wafts up to me. Don’t want to stop, deal with this.

A man is coming
up behind me. I stop him and point. ‘Jaysus’, he says, and takes out his phone.
He’s ringing the police. A couple of women come across the road and are excited
to see the corpse, speculate as to the nature of its provenance. I’ll leave
them to it.

Tighten my tie
climbing the steps of the Boehm-Adler Professional Building. Someone has opened
the window beside my desk up on the second floor to let in the breeze.

Here is Baynes
in the lobby, giving something to the receptionist. See if I can get past him
before he sees me.

‘You’re late.’

‘So I am,’ I
say.

Keep walking. Oh
God, why did I say that? What if the grapevine is all wrong and they’re not
really going to sack us all today? Who knows what manner of misunderstanding
might have occurred?

The desks on my
floor are deserted. I boot up my computer, access my mail. Says here that a
general meeting is scheduled for 9:15. What time is it now? 9:17.

Hurry down to
the boardroom. Suffer the torment of walking into the meeting already in
progress, all eyes on me. Just one seat is left, and it is the one right beside
Baynes.

The big screen
is displaying a slide with RATIONALISATION in big letters.

I look around
the room and see the dismay on everyone’s faces. So it is true after all.

Baynes is
talking now, outlining the ‘challenges’ that ‘we’ face. Lists Boehm-Adler sales
offices around the world that have closed in the past year.

I wish he’d stop
beating about the bush, wipe that stupid, smug look off his face. Look at him
now, keying a text message even as he continues to explain to us how loss of
trade with South-East Asia has depressed the European and North American
economies. He’s on auto-pilot. He knows we’re hanging on his every word, but it
would make no difference to him if we weren’t.

Now he’s
leaning forward in a sincerity pose. His talk edges closer to the message of
doom we are all waiting to receive.

‘All right,
then,’ he says. He has the gaze of a lizard. ‘The good news is that this office
will not be closed. We’ll focus on our core accounts, those that have the most
robust numbers. This will mean that projections can be made more accurately,
and overall operational efficiency will be that bit greater. The bad news is
that staff levels here in Dublin are to be cut by eighty percent. We had been
hoping to provide a voluntary programme, but really what’s necessary is to be
able to retain the right people, those with the skill sets Boehm-Adler will
need in the coming months. You will all receive notification immediately
outlining your employment status with the company going forward. Any questions?’

There are a
million. Everyone is trying to speak at once.

There is no hope
of finding a few job anywhere in Ireland as a graphic designer. None. Or any
other similar work. Even labouring jobs are almost impossible to find. Still,
Baynes sits and grins. I want to hit him, knock his teeth out of his gob, throw
him out the window. Let him join that poor bastard in the river, who probably
didn’t deserve that fate even one tenth as much as Baynes would have.

I can’t take
this. I’m getting out of here. I’m going back to my desk, and I am going to sit
there until I’m told whether I am to get the boot. Don’t they understand that
Baynes will tell them nothing more, that to wait for reassurance or consolation
from him achieves nothing except to humiliate themselves and to fuel his
pathetic ego?

I stand at the
window in the glare of the morning sun, try to derive some sustenance from it.
There are police cars and an ambulance down at the quayside now, dealing with
the corpse in the mud. A long tailback along the quay, drivers honking their
horns at each other. I wish I were among them, and not in here awaiting
sentence.

Fifteen or
twenty minutes go by. Only a few members of the department have returned to
their desks. The junior girl from HR drops a sealed envelope on my desk and
keeps walking. She wants to avoid talk, which is fair enough in the
circumstances I suppose.

George
Holden
it says on the
envelope. The letter is typed in company notepaper, signed at the bottom by
Baynes.

George,

Further to
this morning’s discussion in the boardroom, I’m sorry to tell you that you have
been selected for compulsory redundancy. In compliance with current
legislation, you will receive four weeks’ salary as severance and a month’s
salary in lieu of notice. Your employment at Boehm-Adler ends immediately.