Experiment With Destiny (4 page)

             
“Thou shalt not steal,” Marcus remembered his Sunday school teacher’s dire warning. “Or you will go to hell when you die.” But science had long ago exposed the myth of Christianity as nonsense, and legislation under the Race and Faiths Equality Act had banned its spread through educational establishments and public meetings or gatherings. The fact that Christians preached Jesus Christ was the only way and boasted all gods but theirs were false was inciting racial and cultural hatred, ruled the secular Eurostate. Who said ‘thou shalt not’? God? God was dead, surely, thought Marcus. According to the government, Christianity was, officially, aerie-faerie nonsense. And, if God was dead, who else had the right to say ‘thou shalt not’?

             
Marcus wiped a smear of jam from his lips, gulped the last of his tea and switched off the television set. Pulling on his jacket and peaked cap he left his bedsit, locking it carefully, and descended the stairs. Stopping in the foyer to savour the sleeping silence of his neighbouring tenants and to pick up his delivered copy of Saturday’s Echo, Marcus walked out to meet the wind and the rain.

              Marcus Smith worked as a ticket clerk for CMS-Cardiff, one of two who were responsible for the ticket booth on Merthyr Tydfil’s modest terminus. He had barely met his colleague, Sasha, as they worked opposing shifts. If there was ever a need to communicate, and such occasions were rare indeed, it was accomplished through text messages left on the auto-till. In fact his, and Sasha’s, livelihood was superfluous and CMS-Cardiff would have made them redundant years ago but for the whim of the company’s fare-paying clientele. Customer research had shown that monorail passengers enjoyed the ‘human face’ of their service and did not like the impersonal mechanics of the cheaper auto-fare machines adopted by the bus and rail companies. CMS passengers preferred to exchange pleasantries with a ticket clerk, to speak aloud their destinations and travelling requirements, than to simply punch digits and letters into a swipe machine. And while they were paying, CMS did not mind. Marcus, and his invisible colleague, were the ‘middle men’ between man and machine.

             
There was no room to move in his booth but it was warm and sheltered from the wind and rain. He could read or watch television on his computer when his glorified swiping and punching skills were not required. His only other task was to carry out an hourly check of the platform area, its toilets and vending machines, filing an electronic report if re-stocking, cleaning or remedial work was required. Occasionally he would be asked for detailed timetable and destination information. That was the most challenging aspect of his duties although that, too, was mercifully rare as the majority of his passengers were regular commuters. All in all it was not a bad job. At worst he occasionally had to engage in conversation, as opposed to responding in time-honoured clichés, but it paid for his frequent excursions to the Morgan Bros and other such emporiums and, at best, it gave him plenty of time in splendid isolation to think…and dream.

              This morning Marcus was thinking harder than usual, paying scant attention to his copy of yesterday’s Echo or the cyclical news bulletins on his monitor. He was glad it was Sunday…fewer commuters making the routine trip to or from the city though the down side was the weekend day-trippers who tended to be more exuberant and verbose. Most of the day’s passengers were, however, pleasingly preoccupied with their seemingly purposeful lives and few strayed from the well-worn rut of polite exchanges. Marcus was more deliberate than ever to avoid engaging them in anything other than the business of buying tickets.

             
“Thou shalt not steal,” he pondered. Why not? Who would it harm? Nobody was really that interested in the fate of an old picnic basket to care if it went missing. City Developments certainly didn’t care…and the guessed the museum curator could think of far more worthy displays to spend the sponsor’s generous donation on. It was just a picnic basket. It held no secrets of the past, no enlightening insight into 20th century culture. It was probably sealed and buried as no more than a student jape. Marcus pictured it against the far wall of his bedroom, opposite the four-poster and his solitary painting. If he moved the teak wardrobe slightly he could make a proper show of the basket and its contents…though nobody must ever find out. Perhaps he would tell Misty. No, even that was too dangerous. He, alone, would enjoy his private exhibit. He, alone, deserved to.

             
Soon Marcus had shed the guilt of his desire and turned what had been a moral dilemma into an exciting opportunity to take another step closer to the reality of the past. He concentrated instead on a new problem – that of how to remove the picnic basket from the display annex without a fuss. Slipping in, hiding in wait and then sneaking out the next morning at opening time was no longer an option…and he needed something to transport the basket from the museum to his home. Taking the bus would be no good. Marcus hardly noticed the day passing as he pondered long and hard, just as the commuters in the evening rush, albeit modest, hardly noticed the curious smirk developing on their ticket clerk’s face.

His Sunday shift ended as every Sunday shift did, but with one deviation to the order of his established routine. At 7pm he locked the tiny booth, checking the barriers were switched to ‘unmanned’ mode. He would not begin the next shift for another eleven hours and Sasha was on nights next week. But, instead of making his exit through the automated turnstiles, Marcus returned to the platform and walked to the end of the covered area.

Leaving its shelter he passed beyond the sign that read ‘Danger – no passengers permitted beyond this point’ and huddled within his coat beneath the black and ugly sky. The exposed area of platform continued for another few yards. The wind pushed him towards the steel railing and he peered down at the lights of suburbia. Glancing guiltily over his shoulder he was the platform remained deserted. The CCTV camera seemed to study him for a moment, prompting him to make some pretence at checking the rail, before beginning its languorous 180-degree sweep. Then Marcus quickly descended the short flight of steps to the maintenance block. At the door, clearly marked ‘Strictly No Access - CMS Personnel Only’, he produced his coded tag-key and swiped it. There was a faint ‘click’ and he pulled back the locking mechanism, opening the door. Marcus rarely had cause to enter the maintenance block but he was entrusted with a key in case of emergencies – a blocked cistern in the toilets, wind-blown debris on the track. But Marcus knew that, inside the maintenance office, there was a key hanging on a hook on the wall behind the door. By the time he pushed the locking mechanism back into place and defied the wind and rain to return along the platform, the key was no longer on the hook on the wall behind the door of the office. Marcus felt light headed. As he passed through the automated turnstile to begin his descent to the street below, he chuckled…a strange sound in the back of his throat that startled him.

             
“Thou shalt not,” he thought.

              Marcus Smith did not sleep that night. He telephoned Misty several times. Each time he replaced the receiver and wiped away the evidence from his flat belly with a tissue he felt a little less remorseful. He rose, washed and dressed at dawn on Monday. As a slight variation to his morning routine he paused before leaving his bedroom and placed his jacket and peaked cap on the bed for a moment. He pushed his teak wardrobe further toward the corner and, in his mind, marked out a large rectangular area at the foot of the bed. Then he collected his cap and jacket from the bed and walked silently to the kitchen to prepare his tea and toast. Several minutes later than normal, Marcus left the house clutching his home delivered copy of Wales on Sunday tightly beneath his coat. There was no rain but the wind howled from an unusually cloudless sky. Marcus peered up at the fading stars, an infrequent sight.

             
Marcus felt different. He took the same route he always did, crossing town to the monorail terminus in silence with his thoughts. Yet he sensed a change. Shapes and colours, sounds and smells…they seemed clearer, more distinctive. It was not merely the cloudless sky that made him feel more alive on this Monday morning.

             
“Today is the day,” he said aloud. “Today I shall fly through time.”

* * *

III

DARKNESS fell in the late afternoon as the heavens simmered with an approaching storm. It was almost 4pm, the evening rush nearly two hours away and the end of his shift, three. Marcus Smith folded away his newspaper and clicked on the ‘send’ icon in the top right corner of his screen. A moment later the computer informed him: ‘Your message (FEELING QUEASY) has been successfully sent’. He switched the turnstile system to ‘unmanned mode’ and powered down the monitor. Automatically checking to ensure the platform was clear of passengers, he lit a cigarette and removed his wallet from his pocket. From it he drew out the selection of newspaper cuttings and re-read them one last time. Then he held them over his lighter and set them alight, dropping the flaming sheets of newsprint into the metal waste-paper basket. As he watched them burn, waiting for the flames to die, he recalled the expression ‘playing with fire’ and wondered if that, too, was an echo from his Sunday school days. “Thou shalt not.” The words inside his head were almost audible.

A wave of nausea swept across him as he vacated and locked the tiny booth. Only twice before had he left his post unmanned until the shift-change and both occasions were genuine. He would hardly be missed, he told himself, trying to calm the sickness in his stomach and the pounding in his chest. Cold, clammy and dizzy, he leaned his weight against the booth and stared down the length of the platform toward the maintenance block, gulping deliberately deep breaths. Darkness had activated the lurid neon strip lights that bathed the deserted terminus in an eerie, unnatural glow. The rain, carried on a sudden gust, began to fall.

Marcus felt trapped. He could stay, complete his menial duties and return to his bedsit. Nothing would change. His dull life would go on without meaning or hope…but he would be safe. Safe for what? Safe for whom? What was the point of being safe? Of living safe? His mind’s eye conjured the myriad faces of his framed photographs…people whose lives were much less safe, far less ordinary, much more real. Safe…or sane? He saw his life, a broad, empty highway where the relentless patterns and rituals of existence trudged ever on in monotony. He remembered the words of the teacher in an old archive film about poetry – ‘Seize the day, make your lives extraordinary’. Suddenly his sweaty palms pushed against the frame of the booth and he paced quickly toward the end of the platform. Inside his head it was like a wave thundering toward the shore, the waters folding back and crashing upon the sand in a tumult of foam and spray. His mind was clear, the nausea passed and he could breathe more easily again.

              The ice age was coming…mankind was doomed to a frozen grave and this drab existence was nothing more than humanity’s death throes. “Naked we come and naked we shall return,” he remembered. God is dead and, in a godless age, there is no life…only death, only hell. “Thou shalt not.” God is dead and who else can judge the thief? God is dead and who else can judge the crime? If life is hell, what else can be the punishment? Marcus marched into the coming storm.

             
No doubt lingered in Marcus’s determined stride. His garden of Gethsemane had come and gone like a momentary eclipse, its searching questions brushed aside with unfaltering certainty. Ignoring the panorama of suburban lights and the sting of the wind and rain, he descended the steps at the end of the platform and strode past the maintenance block to the bunker-like garage beyond it. He paused, staring down the steep ramp that joined the street below, then fumbled in his pocket for the key he had taken yesterday from the hook on the wall behind the door. The drumming of the rain grew heavier as he sought the lock with trembling hands. An instant later the heavy steel shutters were clattering upward and the distant glow from the platform’s neons fell ghostlike across the bonnet and headlamps of the waiting machine. Marcus stepped into the shadows, icy water dripping from the peak of his cap onto his face and blurring his vision.

             
The maintenance van was, as ever, unlocked, the key waiting in the ignition. Marcus gingerly opened the driver’s door and slid inside, removing his cap and placing it beside him on the passenger seat. It had been several years since he was last required to make use of the van, several years since his transfer from CMS maintenance and cleaning to CMS customer relations. Would he still remember how to drive it? He sat for a few moments in the quietness, peering at the steering wheel, the controls and indicators in the gloom. Then, slowly, he turned the ignition. There was a slight delay between the click of connection and the whine of the turbine as it powered into life. He clutched the wheel, his heart pounding, and stared nervously into the darkness ahead, aware of the steep drop down the ramp to the road.

             
Lights…where were the lights? His hands instinctively reached for the stick jutting from the steering column beneath the wheel and twisted its end. One click, two and the beams of the headlamps scythed through the evening sky. He pulled the stick down, remembering, and the right turn indicator blinked on the dash in time to the pulsing orange on the garage wall at his side. He pushed up, this time the same happened to his left. The instrument display was now lit up and he picked out the battery meter. It told him the batteries were two-thirds charged, a range of roughly 65 miles. That would be plenty. He would have to follow the bus route. It may not be the quickest or most direct route but it was the only one he knew. Was he ready? he asked himself. Would he ever be ready for this?

             
Pressing his foot to the brake with deliberate effort, he released the handbrake and pushed the gear from ‘neutral’ to ‘drive’. Then, with a deep gulp of air, he switched his foot to the accelerator and, with the slightest touch, the van lurched forward and began rattling down the ramp to the street. The question of whether or not he was ready was immaterial. His quest for a new, extraordinary life had begun and there could be no turning back. In his growing excitement, Marcus felt better already.

              It was 4.50pm when the CMS-Cardiff maintenance van pulled up in front of the National Museum’s grand entrance. Its heavy wooden doors would remain open to admissions just a few minutes longer, although the museum did not officially close to the public until 5.30pm. Marcus waited a moment to the rhythm of the wipers against the battering rain, studying the steps that led up between the columns, then he switched off the ignition and lights. His heart thundered in the stillness. “Thou shalt not.” He ignored the voice in his head and pushed open the door. The wind caught it and flung it open, threatening to rip it from its hinges. The rain lashed at him as he clambered from the seat and wrestled the door closed, leaving the key in the ignition ready for a rapid escape. Turning up the collar of his coat to hide much of his face, Marcus made his way quickly up the steps, passing the doorman with a furtive glance and swiping his way through the auto-till. At last he entered the stale catacombs of history.

             
Once more the dust filled his lungs like an intoxicating fragrance of reality. His tension simmered as he made his way along the rusty corridors of the ancients. Marcus began to feel like a time traveller, catching passing glimpses of momentary ages as he spun toward his destination.

The faces that peered down from their gilt-edged frames were more alive than any he had seen. They knew his purpose and beckoned him on. Their spirits danced, sylph-like, around the embers of his rekindled life, a wind to fan the flames and make them burn brightly. I have taken control, thought Marcus. I am master of my own destiny and, tonight, I will become one of them.

             
More than an hour had passed when Marcus emerged cautiously from the men’s room. There he had waited, crouched on a toilet seat in case anyone should enter and glance beneath the doors for pairs of legs – sure signs of occupation. He had not thought how to react if the museum’s security adopted a more thorough approach and checked each cubicle. Precautions were unnecessary, however. Nobody entered the men’s room. Just after 5.30pm he heard the sound of footsteps approach and tensed against the threat of discovery. That was when the lights were switched off and he was plunged into blackness, relieved to hear the footsteps trail away again. Occasionally he heard more footsteps, doors opening and closing and distant muffled voices. Then, finally, silence. Marcus continued to wait, the cramp in his muscles and the ache of his arched back almost impossible to bear yet he dared not attempt to step down in the darkness for fear of falling and crashing loudly against the cubicle door. Finally the waiting was done. Just after 6pm he lowered his shaking, numb limbs to the floor. It was time.

             
He stood alone in the corridor, lit only by the intermittent security lamps that cast an orange-red glow over the polished stone floor. With slow, deliberate steps he paced toward the annex, his ears attuned to any unwanted approach. His arduous passage was undisturbed. To the left and the right were rooms boasting a wealth of icons from time-shrouded yesterdays. Costumed figures and stuffed animals seemed to fidget and twitch in the flickering half light. Marcus did not mind. It was the living he feared most. A series of busts regarded his progress in silence as he approached the annex. He gave them no more than a cursory glance as he reached his goal. At last he passed beneath the board that read: ‘Old Cathays and University – An Exhibition supported by City Developments in association with the National Assembly’. Inhaling deeply, Marcus Smith entered the temple of his desires.

             
Inside his holy chapel he stopped. Even in the comparative darkness it was beautiful beyond comprehension. The sight of it captured him like a moth in the light. His heart fluttered in awe as the twilight of history melted into the dawning of his dream. It stole his breath. A distant noise snatched him from the trance and he realised he could not afford to immerse himself in the unbridled power of his vision, not yet. For the present he had to shun his desires and concentrate. There would be time enough for fulfilment once the object of his lust was liberated from this unfitting chamber.

             
The picnic basket was open and the plastic food was neatly arranged on the chequered rug, alongside the cutlery, bottles of wine, napkins and the old record player. The green felt sheet, however, was rolled up and resting in the corner, adjacent to a pair of mannequins. Marcus studied them. They were, as best they could be, male and female and dressed in authentic period costume. The woman’s gown, ostentatiously flowing and decorated with lace frills at its cuffs and hem, must have been white but in the eerie glow of the security lighting it appeared a sickly yellow. Her lifeless partner was attired in white flannel trousers, a white collarless shirt and a blue blazer with some braided insignia over the pocket, perhaps the former university’s crest. His crudely painted head was crowned with a genuine straw boater.

             
A thrill of excitement coursed through Marcus’s body. With almost superhuman effort he reigned in his urge to linger in this potent atmosphere of blissful reverie. Stirring his limbs into action, he began packing the record player, food, wine and cutlery into the basket, gently lowering each item with both hands as if it was composed of fine crystal. Once packed to the brim, he neatly folded up the rug and placed it, along with the napkins, on top of the basket, carefully pressing closed its wicker lid.

Then he turned his attention to the mannequins, first undressing the male. He held the shirt and trousers against his own body. They were perhaps a size or two larger than he required but that would not matter. Pausing only to listen out for any approach, he began to strip away his own clothes, peeling them off as though they were filthy rags. The mannequin had only been fitted with outer garments and there was a moment of indecision when Marcus stood shivering in just his underpants. He knew how cold it would be outside, but should he allow his own comfort to mar the purity of his fulfilment? A quick glance at the woman confirmed his decision. Turning away from her oddly demure smile he yanked off his pants and flung them on the pile of his abandoned clothes. Standing naked in the hallowed temple of history, the dust of his elders swirling around him and filling his lungs, he began to feel aroused. His mind flashed with the memories of Misty and her whispered obscenities, but he thrust them aside as he had his clothing and reached for the white flannel trousers, trying to ignore his growing erection. The heavy woven fabric brushed infuriatingly against his swollen manhood and Marcus moaned aloud in frustration, hissing a sigh as he buttoned the flies and tightened the real leather belt. By the time he had donned the shirt, blazer, socks and shoes, which also proved a little too large, he had regained control of his passion. Resting the boater on top of the basket, he reached down and cupped the woman mannequin gently in his arms and lifted her face to his. Comely in her soft white dress, her painted eyes stared lifelessly back at him, her rouged lips still and silent though, he was sure, curled in a curious smile. Marcus swung her beneath his right arm and, placing the boater on his head, reached for the basket.

              “Damn!” he cursed, realising it was too heavy to lift. He glanced at his plastic partner and then back to the basket. He had come this far and there was no way he could leave either of them behind now. He gripped her waist tighter and began dragging the basket from the annex.

             
Since emerging from the men’s room his fear had subsided but now, with the sharp click of his new shoes against the stone floor and the scratch of the basket dragging along behind him, it returned with a vengeance. It was only a matter of time before somebody heard his progress through the museum. Every few yards Marcus paused to listen and catch his breath but he heard nothing. He reached the end of the corridor and turned into the next, which led to the foyer. Not far to go now, he realised excitedly. Spurred on by the closeness of the exit, he quickened his pace. He could make out the auto-styles and the unattended information desk in the dimness ahead.