Intentional Dissonance (8 page)

“What is the right reason to be arrested?”

“The right reason, or at least the legal and official reason I was arrested, was for possession of Sadness. But they planted some on me, too.”

“You’re a junkie?” Edward recoiled slightly and a shadowed expression passed quickly across his face like a summer storm.

“No, I’m normal. I take the Sadness to counteract the shit the government puts in the water supply.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yes, really.”

“That’s bullshit. You’re a fucking junkie.”

“I don’t drink, I don’t do cocaine, I don’t shoot heroin, I just take Sadness.”

“You can try and justify it however you want, the point is, you’re a slave to something. Something else is in control of you and when that happens, you can either fight it or ignore it or try to justify it, or you can do what you’re doing, which is try to make it make sense. That’s what you’re doing.”

“Who the fuck are you to lecture me?” asks Jon, forgetting just how big the person he’s just met is.

The conversation is cut short as the door to the cell opens with a dull, ominous clank.

Two Peace Ambassadors come into the room, one after the other. They stand on either side of the door, in a manner that suggests that a third person will soon be coming through it. When he does, Jon has an instant dislike for the white-haired, scraggily-bearded man that eventually steps out of the shadows and into the room. He’s wearing a white lab coat with numerous pens sticking out of the pocket and thick rimmed glasses. He looks like a doctor. Jon will call him the doctor.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” says the doctor.

“Fuck you,” spits Edward.

“I understand your anger,” says the doctor and it doesn’t even sound like he’s being condescending.

Edward sighs and leans back. He has a collar around his neck that Jon suspects is weakening him; there is little else to explain the fact that the half-ent hasn’t launched himself up and at the trio in front of them.

“Jon, I’d like a word with you. Edward, some of my colleagues would like to talk to you too about the political flyers you’ve been printing and handing out,” says the doctor.

“They have a problem with philosophy?”

“I believe they have a problem with certain subversive ideas you’re promoting.”

“So that’s a yes then.”

“You’ll see them soon, you can ask them yourself. You are not under my department’s jurisdiction,” the doctor turns and smiles at Jon. “He however, is.”

Both of them are dragged by the guards from where they were on the floor through the dirty passage that runs between the cells. There’s Harkan™ Clean Sweeps installed on either end of the passage, machines designed to automatically sanitise an area; so it’s obvious, Jon thinks, that the guards leave the corridor filthy on purpose.

“Take Edward to the committee for rebuilding and reworking,” says the doctor.

“So they can make a coffee table out him?” asks the shorter of the two guards. It’s always the little ones who say the most.

“No, Ivan, treat our guests properly,” says the doctor.

“Your mother was poison ivy and your father was fertilizer,” says Edward. The bigger guard slams his gun into the back of Edward’s head.

“Jon is going to my office,” says the doctor.

The other guard lets out a grunt and drags Jon by the shirt behind them, who is now barely struggling. Now Jon’s wondering if he’ll ever see Michelle again. Perhaps they will experiment on him before they kill him. They lead him into a lift; the doctor obviously has his own. As they go up, the windows flash by and Jon gets a glimpse of NewLand. The floating news zeppelin constantly hovering above the city relays a headline about a terrorist captured on a train. There’s a picture of Jon. He focuses on the news screen and waits for the audio to be beamed into his head but it isn’t. It’s the glass, he supposes the United Government building doesn’t handle audio feeds too well. Intentionally probably. Jon tries to see if he can spot Emily’s apartment or his own. Maybe he’ll see Michelle in the window but he can’t, everything is too far away.

They drag him out the lift and down another passageway, past several laboratories and one particularly strange room with thick black velvet curtains and a series of mechanical sextants, powered by massive fires and they whir as they track the stars. They take him through plain, white, and unassuming plastic doors. The white-haired doctor’s office is made of a kind of chrome and wood hybrid that reflects strange silver patterns of light, which are coming from what looks to be a real WindowSkreen™ (not a recording), a literal window into the past, currently set to a field in France during a particular bloody revolution. Cannons fire and men die silently behind the glass. Tomorrow, the same day will replay itself but perhaps in a different location, depending on what model it is. The windows make up the majority of decor in the room, which is otherwise a very clean, white space, except for a cluttered oak desk. The guard shoves him into a lush, leather chair in front of the desk and Jon offers no resistance. They activate two cuffs on the armrests and Jon is restrained.

The white-haired doctor enters the room from a door at the back of the office and sits down in a second leather chair on the opposite side of the desk, facing Jon.

The man Jon has never met before in his life says, “Your father was a great man.”

Chapter 8

Then

A lady practices falling down so that her abusive, amnesiac husband will think he’s already beaten her and just leave her the hell alone. She keeps a secret video log of all that happens, miles away.

Jon is lying in bed, still unable to sleep, still with a test to write tomorrow. He thinks of Michelle, of the way her body moved on the swing at the park, of the sound of her voice; he thinks of his comic books, of
The Black Kracken
, of what the heroes he reads about would do in this situation. He’s angry at Michelle for leaving and not waiting for the comic book and he’s angry with his father for screwing with his plans to get Michelle inside the house. He’s angry with him in the way that only people close to you are allowed to be angry with you. Jon sits up in his bed. He’s never been so close to being alone with a girl. God fucking damn it. He gets out of bed and slowly but purposefully punches the wall with a dull thud, then collapses and starts to cry softly to himself.

“Stop being such a pussy,” he says out aloud and only to himself.

He thinks of how strong and confident the characters in his comic books are.

Suddenly, bright light fills the room. He can tell because the backs of his eyes turn red and he thinks someone’s heard him, mom or dad, and they’ve turned the bedroom light on but this is brighter than the bedroom light.

This is brighter than daylight.

Jon can feel the air becoming thinner and there’s less of it than there was seconds before. Jon can sense something behind him, something eating the shadows around him. He turns his head slowly and very carefully, he opens his eyes. It’s hard to focus on at first but a being, a creature made of pure white light is now in the room with Jon. Jon’s eyes are as open as they’ll ever be and all the air has left his lungs, burnt up by the light. There’s so much of it. They must be able to see this light out in space. As his brain finally catches up with what’s happening, he tries to open his mouth to scream but he can’t. He’s frozen in place. The being is holding a lance made of pure, white light and has muscles twice the size of its head. It’s every comic book hero Jon has ever read about, ever dreamed, on fire, all at once. The being opens its mouth; flames lick its lips and dance across what looks like ancient armour.

“It’s all going to be ok,” it says.

Jon, finally, manages to close his eyes and yell, scream, make some kind of guttural sound and as he does, the being disappears. There’s a giant ‘whoomp’ noise, like the biggest candle in the world has just been blown out. The lights go on in the house.

The bedroom door bursts open. Jon’s father stands in the doorway with the gun he normally keeps in the safe. Jon is on the floor. His knuckles are bleeding from where he’s punched the wall. His face is ashen and his eyes are red. Jon’s father kneels down next to him and grabs him by the shoulders.

“What’s wrong? What happened?” says Jon’s father.

“Da-dad,” says Jon.

“What happened?” repeats his father, scanning the room desperately with his eyes, looking for whomever or whatever attacked his son.

“There was…there was something,” says Jon.

“What?”

“I—I don’t know.”

“What did you see?”

“I saw…I saw a man made of light.”

Jon’s father’s eyes betray too much. He’s taking this seriously. Jon does not expect that. Jon believes one of them may have gone insane. Perhaps both of them. Perhaps this is a dream.

“Were you thinking about him before you saw him?”

“Not him in particular, comic books,
The Black Kracken.
” Jon’s father nods at this.

“Where were you tonight? Were you with a girl? I heard girls’ voices outside your bedroom window earlier, Jon, don’t lie to me.”

“I—I…yes,” says Jon.

Jon’s father sighs. He holds Jon. Jon’s brain is on fire. He holds him tighter.

“So, it’s genetic then and it’s happening to you, too,” says Jon’s father under his breath.

“What do you mean?”

“This is hard to explain, but I started to see similar things when I was a child.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“The first thing you should know is that what gives it power, is what you think of. You need to be careful of what you think of.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I think of the things that protect you. I think of the oak tree outside and your space ninjas from that comic book you bury your head in.”

“They’re space pirates, Dad, not ninjas.”

“It doesn’t matter, what matters is that I think of the things that protect you and as you get older, that will become more and more important.”

“This is crazy.”

“I need you to trust me and go to sleep.”

“Go to sleep? Go to fucking sleep?” asks Jon. Jon doesn’t believe he will ever be able to sleep again.

“I’m letting you use that language with me because you’re in shock. Now pay attention, I can tell you about what’s happened, I can explain everything but I need you to go to sleep right now and let me try and work out what to do.”

Jon is helped back to bed. Jon’s father leaves the room and comes back with a pill. He gives it to Jon and holds him while he falls asleep.

Jon does not dream. When he wakes up, his father’s pocket watch is clasped tightly in his hand.

Chapter 9

Now

The last poet in the world writes words on rocks with thick black permanent marker then dives to the bottom of the crystal clear water in the bay of NewLand and arranges them. He will never tell anyone what the poem says and the only people who’ll ever be able to read it are the ones who can dive as deep as he once did.

Jon is convinced at this point that there is no reason for the government’s sadism, that it’s all just the fun and games of those in power and that they do it simply because they can. Why else would “Dr. Herengracht,” according to the little sign on his desk, tell him he knew his father.

“I believe you know my father in the same way I believe that my suitcase was filled with vials of Sadness when the Peace Ambassadors picked me up in the train.”

The doctor smiles. “That was an unfortunately necessary aspect of our plan to get you here. Apparently it wasn’t even needed; you had a vial of Sadness in your pocket.”

“What do you want with me? Where’s Michelle?”

“Michelle? Your girlfriend. She’s an incredibly interesting phenomenon. Almost as interesting as the relationship between you and your father, Jon Salt.” No one’s used Jon’s surname in years and the name sounds strange when he hears it now.

“She’s a person, not a phenomenon. Leave Michelle out of this.” The doctor smiles.

“Fine. Let’s talk about your father, Peter Salt.”

“What do you know about my father?”

“Your father used to work for me.”

“Bullshit. My father was an engineer.”

“Yes, that’s what he told his family and friends because that was the requirement for working on the projects he worked on with me, exploring his gifts. The same gifts you have, apparently,” says the doctor, folding his hands.

“There’s no way my father worked for the government. This government, this global institution of leaders or United Government whatever the hell you want to call it, is evil and you, you and people like you have fucked the world. He was a good man. A better man than you’ll ever be.”

“Ah, you are correct there, my friend,” says the doctor. He goes to stand by the window and watches men from the past die through the WindowSkreen™.

“He did not work for this government. He worked for the previous government. And as you well know, the previous government became this government only after some very fundamental changes to it and the world,” continued the doctor.