Paradigm (9781909490406) (11 page)

Alice didn't really understand much of what Wallace Wilson was saying but she didn't think it sounded like they were going to be leaving the underground den anytime soon.

As the lights went down, Wallace Wilson announced that they would be watching a short film about the facility that they had made a few years ago for marketing purposes and that it would help them to see how safe they were. A lightening-flash logo zoomed across the screen and then the music started—a low soft drone of notes that underscored the documentary. A sharp voice cut through the hum as a swooping camera glided through long grey corridors, up and down staircases and through room after room.

‘The facility, built using new techniques and new polybrand materials developed by Paradigm Industries is unique. No facility combines research, manufacture, recycling, power and habitation in such a way. Not only is it the largest facility of its kind in the world; it's the only one fully equipped with its own power-production-at-atmosphere processing plants designed to withstand significant external pressure.'

Alice bit her nails individually until nothing was left above the finger lines except a row of red half-moons. The hands of the watch she had stolen from a stall at the Frederick Street market dragged around the face. Sometimes, her watch was the only thing that marked out the difference between day and night. It was so difficult to tell the time without sunshine.

As the film rolled towards the end, Alice yawned. Graham Allerton hadn't made a sound during the programme and the woman next to her who been crying was asleep. Wallace Wilson puffed out his chest and moved back to his podium at the front of the stage. A klaxon sounded that woke up the Great Hall in one, immediate parp.

‘Thank you for your attention everybody. Over the next few days you will be allocated a personal living space, but until then, please continue to treat the communal bunks as your home. Any personal possessions should be surrendered to enable us to maximise our resources here and we will make our best efforts to house families together or within close proximity.

‘Each level within the facility has hundreds of miles of tunnels, some of which can be used for recreational exercise and others that are entry prohibited. It will be very easy to get lost—and if you can imagine being lost in a large city with no recourse to refreshments or facilities, it could become very uncomfortable and even dangerous. If you have any questions, please refer them to your case officer when we issue you with your personal identification cards today. Thank you for your time and attention.'

A
s she lay
in bed thinking about Kunstein, Alice felt the plastic of her card in her pocket. It hadn't been difficult to swap her card with the one the food porter had clipped to his belt when he arrived with the evening meal. In fact, it was easier than shoplifting at the market—no one here was expecting her to do it.

She climbed out of bed, swiped her card on the door, slid it open silently and crept to the end of the corridor. When she got to the first set of stairs, she started to climb upwards, tiptoeing as quickly as she could without clanking her feet on the cold metal stairs. In the dim quiet of the service stairwell, for the first time since she'd been flipped like a giant fish from the window of her flat, she was alone.

Alice stood motionless in the silence for a few seconds and devoured it in great gulping chucks. Then she started to move again, this time more quickly, to the upper levels that were forbidden to anyone not employed by Paradigm Industries. She knew that the alarm would be raised, but under the circumstances it would be worth it to spend some time alone.

By the time the alarm came, she had found out enough. And it came quickly. Short, sharp blasts on the klaxon and then a long, loud blare. But as the cool air of solitude crept around her she felt calm and, although she knew there would be trouble, she was fairly sure that the punishments wouldn't come much worse than her previous fate of being marooned in a house alone with a deceased and decomposing Mr Hutchinson. And that thought alone instantly calmed Alice.

‘
W
here are they taking him
?' said Carter to Lily. ‘And what was he talking about?' Lily pulled down a lever on her machine, carefully shaping the chicker into cubes.

‘He's just a crazy old man,' she said. ‘His workmanship is still excellent but his mind has all but evaporated. He's made it to a good age really, but too long underground and not enough drugs. He was one of the earliest ones, you know?'

Carter pressed the stop button on the man's machine that was still running.

‘How old is he?'

‘Forty something or thereabouts—he's had a few blackouts in the last week or so; that's why he was allocated a position next to me. I covered for him as much as I could but the last time he was raving about monsters and all kinds of things—the Industry said they'd give him one more chance before…' Lily's eyes filled with tears and Carter put a hand on her shoulder.

‘Before what?'

‘Before he would be taken for his final freeze.'

A
bove the whirring
of the machines, there came a long, whining drone of a sound and then a voice spoke clearly across the whole room.

‘Carter Warren, please report to the initiation room immediately.'

Lily nodded towards the door. ‘You'd better be quick,' she said. ‘This will be your last test of the day. They may call you back for more, depending on how you get along with the next stage but this may be your last chance to impress them directly. It's back up the stairs to the room at the top. And focus.'

‘I always do,' said Carter and shut down his machine.

W
hen he got
to the room, the other two contenders had not arrived. All the tables and benches had been removed and three of the walls had been transformed into giant screens made up of thousands of dashboard metrics. Carter recognised it immediately. It was the Model. He watched as the charts and graphs flickered up and down fractionally, measuring the amount of food available, populations split by age, gender, suitability to simple tasks, health and every other thing imaginable—as well as air quality, time and weather. He stood mesmerised by the pixels that danced up and down, changing a miniscule amount every second. He was so encapsulated that he didn't even notice Elizabet and Jenson had entered the room.

‘Right then,' said Chess. ‘You all know what we're looking at here. This is a delayed feed from the Model. As you know, we employ hundreds of analysts to monitor this data on a constant basis but, ultimately, when there are decisions to be made, it always falls upon the Controller General to make the final call on any critical actions. Therefore you must all be experts.

‘I'm already an expert,' said Elizabet. ‘I'm a direct descendent of...'

‘Yes, yes, we know,' said Chess, interjecting. ‘Now, for the last task of today, each of you is going to monitor the entire Model, making the necessary changes to ensure that you maintain an absolute equilibrium across the Community. The decisions you make today, of course, will not have any direct impact as you're all using the same direct copy of an offline version and it will be speeded up so that you can see the results of your changes immediately. However, you should treat this simulation as if it were real life.
We
will be.'

Jenson's eyes flicked back and forth across the screen. ‘How do we control it?' he said.

Chess handed them each a tablet. ‘You'll use this,' she said. ‘There are five key mechanisms—Synthetics which controls food and materials production; Electronics for power; Land Grab, which monitors expansion and contraction; Behaviour Location of our citizens based on their card data; and, of course, Cryonics, which controls freezing and release. Combined, these make up the overall Censomics data, which you will all know as population control. Behaviour Location is a new one—recently developed.'

Jenson looked troubled. ‘You want us to monitor the whole thing?' he said. ‘That's impossible.'

‘Nothing is impossible,' said Carter. ‘We just need to work together. Right?' He looked at Elizabet who was focused on the data.

‘As long as you let me tell you what to do,' she said.

Carter laughed at her arrogance. ‘If you know all the right answers, you won't need to tell me—I'll be doing them already,' he said.

‘Enough bickering,' said Chess. ‘The challenge has already started.'

T
he levels
on the screen moved slowly as Carter started to find his way around the control. There was a deficit of food so he increased production, moving more of the population into work mode.

‘We need more people,' said Elizabet. ‘I'm going to unfreeze four hundred.'

‘There's not a thawing due until next week according to the rota,' said Jenson, flicking through his tablet. ‘You'll have to wait.'

‘I can order one—I'm Controller General,' said Elizabet.

‘Wait a moment,' said Carter. ‘That's madness. We don't have enough food as it is—according to the production data, we can't feed the people we have.'

‘Too late,' said Elizabet decisively. ‘Thawed. They'll be here tomorrow.'

‘What age and demographic?'

Elizabet looked down at her small screen. ‘Doesn't say,' she said.

‘You have to specify,' said Carter, irritated. ‘I thought you were an expert at this.' He looked at the data, shaking his head. ‘They're all over thirty—they'll consume and not produce effectively.'

Jenson pointed to the top left-hand corner of the screen. ‘We've got bigger problems than that,' he said. ‘There's trouble out near the Barricades.'

All three of them focused their gaze on the behavioural sector that was glowing red.

‘What's happening there?' said Elizabet.

‘Lack of food I'd guess,' said Carter. ‘It's making people agitated and they're looking for a way to rebel.'

‘Send in Terrorist Security,' said Jenson. ‘It's the only way.'

‘No,' said Carter, his mind on Morton. ‘We need to find out what's happening first.'

‘Ever the peacekeeper,' said Elizabet snidely. ‘The rebels need taking down.'

‘I know that,' said Carter. ‘But unless we understand their motives, then how will we stop it happening again?'

‘Times are different now, Carter,' said Elizabet, flicking a switch on the control panel. And, by the way, Jenson, Terrorist Security is not the only way. There are other methods for ensuring we get the information we need. Some of these rebels need to be kept alive and out in the Community for good reason. We just need to ensure they are...' she hesitated, ‘...controlled. There are ways of doing that.'

Within moments, the indicator on the screen turned from red to amber and then, eventually to green.

‘What did you do?' said Jenson.

‘You'll see,' said Elizabet, smiling.

A
s the afternoon wore on
, the days ticked through the Model. The unfrozen returned to the Community to consume resources and the disquiet in the Community increased. The top right-hand corner glowed a continual blood-red.

‘We need to make people happy, content,' said Carter finally. ‘Or expand into the Deadlands; give ourselves some more production space.'

‘No,' said Jenson and Elizabet in unison. ‘There's nothing good out there,'

‘And people don't need to be happy,' Elizabet added. ‘They should just be grateful to have what they have.'

Carter frowned at her. ‘Then we need to freeze some more people—including the older generations—until we can stabilise resources.'

Between them they quickly selected a few hundred. ‘You know this will give us more problems,' said Jenson. ‘There aren't enough births happening. When the young people grow up and we have to return the older ones, they'll consume without producing we'll have the same issue again.'

‘Then we don't return them,' said Elizabet. ‘We remove them.'

Carter shivered at the thought of his grandfather, his parents even. In Elizabet's plan, they were completely expendable. And the rebels too. There was something about her cool, calm confidence that sent a chill down his spine.

‘There has to be a better way—a different way,' he said. ‘There's no humanity here.'

‘Well, if there's a better way, Carter Warren,' said Elizabet, ‘you find it.'

‘I will,' said Carter quietly. ‘I definitely will.'

Within three hours, the Model of the Community was at breaking point. Chess walked into the room, smiling, eating a stick of carrotina.

‘Good work,' she said glibly. ‘It didn't take the three of you very long to destroy everything we have.'

‘He stopped me making the right decisions,' said Elizabet, gesturing towards Carter.

‘Yeah,' added Jenson, his eyes still fixed on the screen. Chess flicked a switch and the walls faded into blackness.

‘And that's why we only have one Controller General,' she said. ‘A decision made by more than one person is a compromise for all.'

Elizabet opened her mouth to add something but closed it again, content her point had been made.

Chess looked at the blackened screen and shook her head.

‘What's next?' said Jenson.

‘Nothing more for today,' said Chess crunching her carrotina. ‘You can leave now, but do start to think about your Contributions. And enjoy the last of the evening sunshine—it's been a while since any of you have seen it.'

B
y the time
Carter had boarded the Transporter back to Proclamation Plaza, the sun was already starting to dip its burning orange hump back below the edge of the horizon. He hoped deep in his heart that he never had to see either Elizabet or Jenson again—and definitely not as Controller General.

Lines of people were making their way home under the cover of a calm autumn evening, most of them channelling their way towards Unity Square. He breathed in the sweet air that carried traces of lavender. Lavender usually meant only one thing: a baby had been born. He fell in line with the stream of people headed north to the square, dazzled by the melting yellow rays of the sun and the thick sweetness of the air. He glanced at his reflection in one of the pools by the fountains and was startled to see the exhaustion etched on his face.

At Unity Square, hundreds were gathered around the screens where a girl lay panting in the final stages of birth. He didn't remember how many births he'd watched, but each one filled the whole Community with a dizzying rapture. There was a collective intake of breath and, at the first glimpse of the tiny head projected onto the FreeScreen, the crowd screamed. As the girl made her final push, the bloodied baby was paraded simultaneously and into every home, bawling red and scrunched for all to see. When there was a birth, there was no turning off the coverage, even if you tried to cut the power. It was all beamed in remotely. The screen showed a small crowd lined in rows to congratulate the parents and their families. There were almost as many Industry doctors as there were onlookers.

‘Lucky to catch the re-run,' said one woman, tears in her eyes, pointing at the screen. ‘I was at work for the live birth—it happened at ten this morning. Poor girl, there were only a few people from the night shift to watch her.'

‘All healthy?' said Carter, watching the reactions of the crowds.

The woman nodded. ‘Yes,' she said.

‘Then why so many medics around her—has there been a contamination?' He remembered a health scare back when he was younger when an animal had breached the Barricades and all pregnancies were rescanned to check for infections and deformities. He wondered how the birth of his own children had been, and what it would have felt like to have been there. The new parents on the screen looked terrified, yet proud.

‘Was the birth… not successful?' he added.

The woman looked over one shoulder. ‘You've not been back long, have you?' she said.

Carter shrugged. ‘Just since last night.'

She looked at him closely and her smile faded. ‘You're
him
, aren't you?' she said. ‘Well, Carter Warren, those aren't medics, they're Terrorist Security. They attend every birth these days, since the snatchings. It's written into the code.'

With that, the woman gathered her dark grey shawl around her shoulders and hurried across to the other side of the square, where a group had gathered around the edge of the FreeScreen. Carter thought about what the old man Morton had said about an uprising and the strange cryptic conversation with the girl and then with Isabella. His blood ran cold. The Community was falling apart and, more than ever, it needed him to bind it together as Controller General. Without any doubt, he was the person to mend this.

S
econds later
, he felt the uncomfortable stare of the whole group bore through him and he slipped down into a side street, away from their gaze. As he left, he glanced back at the screen as the baby was taken away for registration and within minutes, its clean, gurgling face was back once again, this time with a name: Angel McDermott.

T
he path
to the south of the Community became more rugged the further away from Unity Square it got. Most of the land had once been a housing estate so there was a lot of old crumbled tarmac through the forests, although most traces of the old world had disappeared. Many of the tallest buildings had fallen during or directly after the Storms but there were one or two that still stood as a reminder. In the south, there was the tall, glassy pyramid shape that speared out of the Black River and could be seen from almost every part of the Community. It was closest in the south and, although the top had broken off many years earlier, it was still there, lurching out of the water and reflecting shards of light across the Community. All of the professors, except for Mendoza, had advised their classes to avoid looking at it.