The Heart Goes Last

V | AMBUSH Town Meeting

On the evening before the December 1 switchover day there’s another Town Meeting. Not that anyone actually meets up: they watch on closed-circuit TV, whether they’re inside Positron Prison or out of it. The Town Meeting is to let everyone know how well the Consilience/Position experiment is doing. Their collective Healthy Interaction scores, their Food Production goals, their Dwelling Maintenance rates: things like that. Pep talks, Zing ratings, helpful feedback. Admonishments kept to a minimum, a few new rules added in at the end.

These Town Meetings emphasize the positives. Incidents of violence are way down, they’re told today – a graph pops onto the screen – and egg production is up. A new process will soon be introduced at Poultry: headless chickens nourished through tubes, which has been shown to decrease anxiety and increase meat growth efficiencies; in addition to which it eliminates cruelty to animals, which is the sort of multiple win that Positron has come to stand for! Shout-out to the Brussels Sprouts team, which has exceeded its quotas two months in a row! Let’s raise the bar on rabbit production in the second half of November, there are some great new rabbit recipes coming soon. More attention to the sorting for the Waste Recycling program, please; it won’t work unless we all pull together. And so on and so on.

Headless chickens, no fucking way I’d eat that, thinks Stan. He’s downed three beers before the meeting started: the Consilience brewery is up and running, and the beer is better than nothing, though he can imagine what Conor would say about it. You’re joking. It’s not beer, it’s horse piss. What’s it made out of, anyway?

Yeah, what, he thinks, taking another swig. He lets his attention drift; Charmaine, sitting beside him on the sofa, chirps up with “Oh, the eggs are doing well! That must be you, hon!” He talks to her, off and on, about his work in the chicken facility, but she hasn’t been similarly forthcoming about her own work, which has made him curious about it. What exactly is it that she does, over at Medications Administration? It’s more than just giving out pills, but when he asks questions, her face goes blank and she shuts the conversation down. Or she says everything is just fine, as if he might think it isn’t.

There’s something else about Charmaine that’s been bothering him. During their town times, he’s tracked the scooter off and on, just to make sure his two-phone system is working. Everything was as expected: Charmaine spent her time bustling here and there, to the bakery, to the shops, back to the house. But then, on the switchover days he’s monitored, she’s been making detours. Why would she have gone to the seedier part of town, where the unreclaimed houses are located? What was she doing? Checking out future real estate? That must be why she spent so much time inside the houses: she must’ve been measuring the rooms. Is she in nesting mode? Is she going to start pushing for them to get another transfer, move into a bigger house? Is she planning a baby? That’s most likely her game plan, though she hasn’t brought up the subject lately. He isn’t sure how he feels about that: a baby might interere with his Jasmine plans, not that these are crystal clear. He hasn’t imagined much beyond that first sulfurous encounter.

He now knows where Jasmine goes during her time as a Consilience citizen: she gets on the very same pink-and-purple scooter and heads to the gym. She must work out a lot. How lithe and toned and strong her body must be.

That alarms him: she might put up a struggle when he surges out of the

swimming pool like a powerful giant squid and wraps her in his wet, naked arms. But she won’t struggle for long.

He’s taken to going to the gym himself, checking around. Not that Jasmine would be there, she’d be inside Positron. But the weight machines, the treadmills: her alluring bum must have reposed on one of the former, her agile feet must have walked upon one of the latter. Though he knows it’s impossible, he half expects to find signs of her: a dropped handkerchief, a glass slipper, some fuchsia bikini briefs. Magical signs of her presence.

Sometimes when he’s loitering he feels watched; perhaps by the shadowy face at the window one floor up, overlooking the gym’s swimming pool. That’s where the upper-management supervisors are said to get their exercise, so naturally they’d have a Surveillance person somewhere around. That thought makes him nervous: he doesn’t want to be singled out, he doesn’t want to be of special interest. Except to Jasmine.

The Town Meeting today skips the preliminary shots of happy workers and pie charts and focuses right in on Ed, who’s in full pep-talk mode. How well they are all doing with their Project tasks – beyond Ed’s highest expectations! They must be so proud of their efforts and achievements, history is being made, they are a model for future towns just like theirs; indeed, there are now nine other towns that are being reconstructed according to the Consilience/Positron model. If all goes well, soon that model will be deployed wherever the need is great – wherever the economy has flagged and left hard-working people stranded!

Better still, thanks to this model and its reordering of civic life, and the construction dollars that have been generated and the waste that’s been saved, the economy in those areas is pulling out of the slump. So many new initiatives! So much problem-solving! People can think so creatively when given the chance!

Hold on, thinks Stan. What’s underneath all the horn-tooting? Some folks must be making a shitload of cash out of this thing. But who, but where? Since not that much of it is trickling down inside the Consilience walls. Everyone’s got a place to live, true, but no one’s richer than anyone else.

So are they all being lied to, played for suckers? Sucked into doing the work while others roll around in the cash? Conor always said Stan was too trusting, that he could never sniff out a bent motive, that given the choice he’d pay top dollar for a baggie full of baking soda and stuff it up his nose. Fuck, said Conor, he’d probably even get high on it.

So how much of a dickwit have I been? Stan wonders. What exactly did I sign away? And is there really no way out except in a box, as Conor warned? That can’t be true: those at the top must be able to come and go at will. But apart from Ed, he doesn’t know who those people are.

He really wants another beer. But he’ll wait until this show is over, because what if the TV can see you?

Stan, Stan, he tells himself. Cool the paranoia. Why would they be interested in watching you watch them?

Now Ed has put on a fatherly frown. “Some of you,” he says, “and you know who you are – some of you have been dabbling in digital experimentation. Now, you all know the rules: phones are to be used for personal intercommunication with your friends and loved ones, but no more. But we take boundaries very seriously here at Positron! You may believe you’re engaging in private entertainment, and that your attempt to invade the private space of others is harmless. And so far no harm has been done. But our systems are very sensitive; they pick up even the faintest of unauthorized signals. Disconnect now – again, you know who you are – and we will take no action.”

The Consilience theme song comes on – it’s the barn-raising music from Seven Brides for Seven Brothers – and the slogan zooms up: DO TIME NOW, BUY TIME FOR OUR FUTURE. CONS + RESILIENCE = CONSILIENCE.

Stan feels a chill. Sober up, he tells himself. That message from Ed seemed aimed at several people, so they might not be on to him personally. Still, he’ll take that phone out of the scooter immediately. Never mind, he’s got Jasmine in his crosshairs. On switchover days, it’s first stop the house, next stop the gym.

Ambush

It won’t be the gym, he decides: that would be too public. Instead it will be right here, at the house. On switchover day Charmaine will leave on her scooter and possibly inspect more real estate, after which she’ll park the scooter at Positron Prison, after which Jasmine will get onto it and drive it here. Meanwhile, he himself will stash his pile of clean, folded clothes in the green locker, key himself out of the house, and then, instead of heading right to the prison, he’ll wait in the garage. When Jasmine turns up he’ll watch her go into the house. Then he’ll follow, and the inevitable red-hot encounter will take place. They might not even make it upstairs, so overpowering will be their lust. The living room sofa; no, even that’s too formal. The carpet. Not the kitchen floor, though: that would be hard on the knees.

They won’t be interrupted by Max, because how can he get here without the scooter he shares with Stan – the red-and-green one? Which is supposed to be arriving at Positron about now, but which is still in the garage. He takes satisfaction in the thought of Max cooling his heels and checking his watch while his wayward, insatiable Jasmine is winding her arms and legs around Stan.

Now he’s in the garage. It’s warm for December 1, but he’s shivering a bit: it must be the tension. The hedge trimmer is hanging on the wall, newly cleaned, battery charged, ready for action, not that scum-bucket Max will appreciate the care Stan has taken. The hedge trimmer would make a good weapon, supposing Max makes it to the house by some other means and there’s a confrontation. The thing has a hair-trigger start button; once at full throttle, with its sharp saw whizzing around, it could take off a guy’s head. Self-defence would be his plea.

If that doesn’t happen and instead he gets involved in some heavy tangling with Jasmine, he’ll be late for check-in. That’s frowned on, but he’ll have to risk it because he can’t go on the way he’s been going. It’s eating him up. It’s killing him.

There’s a crack in the front door of the garage. Stan is peering through it, waiting for Jasmine to drive up on her pink scooter, so he doesn’t hear the side door opening.

“It’s Stan, isn’t it?” says a voice. He jerks upright, whirls around. His first instinct is to go for the hedge trimmer. But it’s a woman.

“Who the fuck are you?” he says. She’s on the short side, with straight black hair down to her shoulders. Dark eyebrows. A heavy mouth, no lipstick. Black jeans and T-shirt. She looks like a dyke martial arts expert.

There’s something familiar. Has he seen her at the gym? No, not there. It was the workshop, when they’d just signed on. She was with that dork of an Ed.

“I live here,” she says. She smiles. Her teeth are square: piano-key teeth.

“Jasmine?” he asks uncertainly. It can’t be. This isn’t what Jasmine looks like.

“There is no Jasmine,” she says. Now he’s confused. If there is no Jasmine, how does she know there’s supposed to be one?

“Where’s your scooter?” he says. “How did you get here?”

“I drove,” she says. “In the car. I’m parked next door. By the way, I’m Jocelyn.” She holds out her hand, but Stan doesn’t take it. Shit, he thinks. She’s in Surveillance, which is the only way she could have a car. He feels cold.

“Now maybe you’d better tell me why you hid that phone in my scooter,” she says, withdrawing her hand. “Or the scooter you thought was mine. I’ve been following it around, your clever tracker. It shows up well on our monitoring equipment.”

Somehow they’re in the kitchen – his kitchen, her kitchen, their kitchen. He’s sitting down. Everything here is familiar to him – there’s the coffee machine, there are the folded tea towels Charmaine set out before she left – but it all seems foreign to him.

“Want a beer?” she says. A sound comes out of his mouth. She pours the beer and one for herself, then sits down opposite him, leans forward, and describes to him in way too much detail the movements of Charmaine on switchover days. In and out of the vacant houses, for months now, in conjunction with Jocelyn’s husband, Max. Conjunction is the word she uses. Among other, shorter words.

Though Max isn’t her husband’s real name. His name is Phil, and she’s had this kind of problem with him before. She always knows about it, and he knows she knows but is pretending not to know. He knows about the cameras hidden in the vacant houses, he knows she has access to the footage. That’s part of the attraction for him: the certainty that he’s performing for her. He’ll stray off-track – it’s an addiction like gambling, it’s an illness, doesn’t Stan agree, you have to feel sorry – and she’ll let him run with it for a while. It’s an outlet for him: in a gated city with one-way gates, outlets are limited for a man like him. He’s tried to get help with this sex addiction of his, he’s tried counselling, he’s tried aversion therapy, but so far nothing has worked. It doesn’t help that he’s so good-looking. Women with overactive romantic imaginations more or less throw themselves at him. There’s no shortage.

When she thinks whatever he’s mixed himself up with has gone far enough, she confronts him. That shuts it down: he cuts it off with the woman in question, no loose ends. Then, after an interval of promising to go straight, he’ll start on another one. It’s been humiliating for her personally, even though he assures her that he’s loyal to her in his heart, it’s just that he can’t control his impulses.

“But there’s never been a wild card before,” she says. “Not one of our own Alternates. Mine and Phil’s.”

Stan’s so fucking addled he can’t think straight. Charmaine! Right under his nose, the slutty cheat – withholding sex from him, or doling it out in chilly slices between clean sheets. It must’ve been her who wrote that note, sealed it with a fuchsia kiss. How dare she show herself to be everything he was so annoyed with her for not being? And with some dipshit named Phil, married to a lady wrestler! On the other hand, how dare anyone else tag his wife as a mere outlet? “Wild card,” he says weakly. “You mean Charmaine.”

“No. I mean you,” she says. She looks at him from under her eyebrows. “You’re the wild card.” She smiles at him: not a demure smile. Despite her lack of makeup, her mouth looks dark and liquid, like oil.

“I need to be getting along,” he says. “I need to check in before curfew, over at Positron. I need –”

“That’s all taken care of,” she says. “I control the identity codes. I’ve rearranged the data so Phil’s going there in your place.”

“What?” says Stan. “But what about my job? It takes training, he can’t just –”

“Oh, he’ll be fine,” says Jocelyn. “He’s not good with his hands, not like you, but he’s all right with digital. He’ll take care of your chickens for you, both ends. He won’t let anyone interfere with them.”

Fuck, thinks Stan. Both ends. She knows about that thing with the chickens. How long has she been keeping an eye on him?

“Meanwhile,” she says. She puts her head on one side as if considering. “Meanwhile, you’ll be here, with me. You can tell me all about your interest in Jasmine. If you want to, we can listen in on Max and Jasmine, during their little vacant-house rendezvous. I’ve got the recordings, the surveillance videos. The sound quality’s excellent, you’d be surprised. It’s quite exciting. We can have a twosome of our own, on the sofa. I think it’s time I got a turn at playing Phil’s game, don’t you?”

“But that’s …” He wants to say, “That’s fucking warped,” but he stops himself. This woman is upper-level management, she’s in Surveillance: she could make his life truly disagreeable. “That’s unfair,” he says. His voice is going all wussy.

She smiles again with her slippery-looking mouth. She has biceps, and shoulders, and her thighs are alarming; not to mention the fact that she’s a sick voyeur. What has he done to himself, to his life? Why has he done it? Where is bland, perky Charmaine? It’s her he wants, not this sinister and most likely hairy-legged ball crusher.

Surreptitiously he checks out the exits: back door, door to the front hall, door to the cellar stairs. What if he were to shove this woman into his green basement locker, then make a run for it? But run to where? He’s blocked his own exits. “Seriously. This won’t work, it’s not … I’m not … I need to go,” he says. He can’t bring himself to say please.

“Don’t be worried,” she says. “You won’t be missed. You’ll get an extra month here at the house. Then, next month, when Charmaine comes out of Positron, you can go in.”

“No,” he says. “I don’t want …”

She sighs. “Think of it as an intervention to avoid possible violence. You’ll have to admit you feel like strangling her, anyone would. You’ll thank me later. Unless, that is, you want me to turn in a report on the rules you’ve broken. Want another beer?”

“Yeah,” he manages to say. He’s falling deeper and deeper into the hole he dug for himself. “Make it two.” He’s trapped. “What else do I have to do?” To avoid the consequences is what he means, but he doesn’t have to explain that. She’s fully aware that she’s twisting his arm.

She takes her time answering, drinks, licks her lips. “We’ll find out, won’t we?” she says. “We have lots of time. I’m sure you’re very talented. By the way, I switched the lockers. Yours is the red one now.”

Chat Room

On the January 1 switchover day, Charmaine is told by one of the behind-the-counter clerks to stay behind at the prison, because Human Resources needs to talk to her. She has a sinking feeling right away. Do they know about Max? If so, she’s in trouble, because how many times were they told it was absolutely not allowed to fraternize with the Alternates that shared your house? You weren’t even supposed to know what they looked like. Which was one of the things that made seeing Max so thrilling for her. So forbidden, so over the line.

Seeing Max. What an old-fashioned way of putting it! But then she’s an old-fashioned girl – that’s what Stan thinks. Though her times with Max haven’t involved much actual seeing. They’ve been close-ups, in half-light. An ear, a hand, a thigh.

Oh please, let them not know, she prays silently, crossing her fingers. They never spelled out what would happen if you disobeyed, though Max had reassured her. He’d said it was nothing much: they just gave you a little slap on the hand and maybe changed your Alternate. Anyway she and Max were being so careful, and none of those houses had spyware in it; he should know, it was his job to know all about those houses. But what if Max was wrong? Worse: What if Max was lying?

She takes a breath and smiles, showing her small, candid teeth. “What’s the problem?” she asks the clerk, her voice higher and more girly than normal. Is it something about her job as Chief Medications Administrator? If so, she’ll learn how to improve, because she’s always wants to do the very best possible and be all that she can be.

She hopes that’s the issue. Maybe they’ve noted that she ignores the surgical-mask protocol, maybe they’ve decided she’s being too nice to the subjects during the Special Procedures. The head strokings, the forehead kisses, those marks of kindliness and personal attention just before she slides in the hypodermic needle: they aren’t forbidden, but they aren’t mandated. They’re flourishes, grace notes – little touches she’s added because it makes the whole thing a more quality experience, not only for the subject of the Procedure but for her as well. She does feel strongly that you should keep the human touch: she’s always been prepared to say as much in front of a tribunal if it came to that. Though she’s hoped it wouldn’t. But maybe now is the time it will.

“Oh no, I’m sure it’s nothing,” the clerk says. She adds that it’s just an administrative formality. Someone must have keyed in the wrong piece of code, such things happen and it can take a while to unsnarl them. Even with modern technology there’s always human error, and Charmaine will just have to be patient until they can trace what they can only assume is a bug in the works.

She nods and smiles. But they’re looking at her strangely (now there are two of them, now there are three behind the checkout desk, one of them texting on a cell), and there’s something odd in their voices: they aren’t telling the truth. She doesn’t think she’s imagining that.

“If you’ll wait in the Chat Room,” the one with the cellphone says, indicating a door to the side of the counter. “Away from the checkout process. Thank you. There’s a chair, you can sit down. The Human Resources Officer will be with you shortly.”

Charmaine looks over at the group of departing prisoners. Is that Sandi among them, and Veronica? She’s glimpsed them briefly over the months – they’re in prison when she is – but they aren’t in her knitting group and they don’t work in the hospital, so she’s had no reason to get close. Now, however, she longs for a friendly face. But they don’t see her, they’ve turned away. They’ve shed their orange prison boiler suits and are wearing their street clothing, they must be anticipating the fun times they’re about to have, outside.

As she was, just moments ago. She’s wearing a lacy white bra underneath her new cherry-coloured sweater. She chose these items a month ago to be special for Max today.

“What’s wrong?” one of the other women calls over to her. Someone from her knitting circle. Charmaine must be signalling distress, she must be making a sad face. She forces up the corners of her mouth.

“Nothing, really. Some data entry thing. I’ll be out later today,” she says as gaily as she can. But she doubts it. She can feel the sweat soaking into her sweater, underneath her arms. That bra will have to be washed, pronto. Most likely the cherry colour is leaking into it, and it’s so hard to get dye stains like that out of whites.

She sits on the wooden chair in the Chat Room, trying not to count the minutes, resisting the urge to go back out to the front desk and make a scene, which will definitely not be any use. And even if she does get out later that day, what about Max? Their meet-up, planned a month ago. At this very moment he must be scootering toward this month’s empty house – he told her the address last time and she memorized it, repeating it like a silent prayer as she lay in her narrow bed in her Positron Prison cell, in her poly-cotton standard-issue nightgown.

Max likes her to describe that nightgown. He likes her to tell him what torture it is for her to lie there alone, wearing that scratchy nightgown, tossing and turning and unable to sleep, thinking about him, living every word and touch over and over, tracing with her own hands the pathways across and into her flesh that his hands have taken. And then what, and then what? he’ll whisper as they lie together on the dirty floorboards. Tell me. Show me.

What he likes even better – because she can hardly bring herself to do it, he has to force it out of her word by word – what he likes even better is to have her describe what she’s feeling when it’s Stan who’s making love to her. Then what does he do? Tell me, show me. And then what do you feel?

I’m pretending it’s you, she’ll say. I have to, I have to do that. I’d go crazy otherwise, I couldn’t stand it. Which isn’t true really, but it’s what Max likes to hear.

Last time he went further. What if it were both of us at once? he said. Front and back. Tell me …

Oh no, I couldn’t! Not both at once! That’s …

I think you could. I think you want to. Look, you’re blushing. You’re a dirty little slut, aren’t you? You’d do the midget football team if there was room for them. You want to. Both of us at once. Say it.

At those moments she’d say anything. What he doesn’t know is that in a way it’s always both at once: whichever one she’s with, the other one is there with her as well, invisible, partaking, though at an unconscious level. Unconscious to him but conscious to her, because she holds them both in her consciousness, so carefully, like fragile meringues, or uncooked eggs, or baby birds. But she doesn’t think that’s a dirty thing, cherishing both at once: each of them has a different essence, and she happens to be good at treasuring the unique essence of a person. It’s a gift not everyone has.

And now, today, she’ll miss the meet-up with Max, and she has no way of warning him that she can’t be there. What will he think? He’ll arrive at the house early because, like her, he can hardly restrain himself. He lives for these encounters, he longs to crush her in his arms and ruin her clothing, ripping open zippers and buttons and even a seam or two, in the haste of his ardent, irresistible desire. He’ll wait and wait in the empty house, impatiently, pacing the stained, mud-crusted floor, looking out through the flyspecked windows. But she won’t appear. Will he assume she’s failed him? Dumped him? Blown him off? Abandoned him in a fit of cowardice, or of loyalty toward Stan?

Then there’s Stan himself. After the month he’s just spent as a prisoner in Positron, he’ll have turned in his boiler suit and put on his jeans and fleece jacket. He’ll have left the men’s wing in the Positron Prison complex; he’ll have scootered back through the streets of Consilience, which will be thronged with people in a festive mood, some streaming into the jail to take their turn as prisoners, others streaming out of it, back to their civilian lives.

Stan too will be waiting for her, not in an abandoned building dank with the aroma of long-ago drug parties and biker sex but in their own house, the house she thinks of as theirs. Or half theirs, anyway. Stan will be inside that house, in their familiar domestic nest, expecting her to turn up at any minute and put on her apron and cook dinner while he fools around with his tools in the garage. He may even be intending to tell her he’s missed her – he usually does that, though less recently – and give her a casual hug.

She relishes the casualness of those hugs: casual means he has no idea what she’s just been doing. He doesn’t realize she’s returning from a stolen hour with Max. She loves that expression – stolen hour. It’s so fifties. Like in the romantic movies they sometimes show on Consilience TV, where it comes out all right in the end.

Though stolen hour doesn’t make sense, when you come to think about it. It’s like stolen kisses: the stolen hour is about time, and the stolen kisses are about place, about whose lips go where. But how can those things be stolen? Who does the thieving? Is Stan the owner of that hour, and of those kisses too? Surely not. And even if he is, if he doesn’t know about the missing time and the missing kisses, how is she hurting him? There have been art thieves who’ve made exact copies of expensive paintings and substituted them for the real ones, and the owners have gone for months and even years without noticing. It’s like that.

But Stan will notice when she doesn’t turn up. He’ll be irritated, then dismayed. He’ll ask the Consilience officials to do a street search, check up on scooter accidents. Then he’ll contact Positron. Most likely he’ll be told that Charmaine is still inside, in the women’s wing. Though he won’t be told why.

Charmaine sits and sits on the hard little chair in the Chat Room, trying to keep her mind quiet. No wonder people used to go nuts in solitary confinement, she thinks. No one to talk to, nothing to do. But they don’t have solitary at Positron any more. She and Stan were shown the cells, though, during the orientation tour, when they were making the big decision to sign up. The former solitary cells had been refitted with desks and computers – those were for the IT engineers and also for the robotics division they were going to build. Very exciting possibilities there, said the guide. Now, let’s go and see the communal dining room, and then the livestock and horticulture – all our chickens are raised right here – and after that we can look in at the Handcrafts studio, where you’ll be issued your knitting supplies.

Knitting. If she has to stay in Positron Prison another whole month she’s going to get really fed up with that knitting. It was fun at first, sort of old-timey and chatty, but now they’ve been given quotas. The supervisors make you feel like a slacker if you don’t knit fast enough.

Oh, Max. Where are you? I’m scared! But even if Max could hear her, would he come?

Stan would. He doesn’t minimize it when she’s scared. Spiders, for instance: she doesn’t like those. Stan is very efficient with spiders. She appreciates that about him.

Choke Collar

It’s late afternoon. The sun is low in the sky, the street is empty. Or it seems empty: no doubt there are eyes embedded everywhere – the lamppost, the fire hydrant. Because you can’t see them doesn’t mean they can’t see you.

Stan is trimming the hedge, making an effort to appear not only useful but also cheerful. The hedge doesn’t need trimming – it’s the first of January, it’s winter, despite the lack of snow – but he finds the activity calming for the same reasons nail biting is calming: it’s repetitive, it imitates meaningful activity, and it’s violent. The hedge trimmer emits a menacing whine, like a wasp’s nest. The sound gives him an illusion of power that dulls his sense of panic. Panic of a rat in a cage, with ample food and drink and even sex, though with no way out and the suspicion that it’s part of an experiment that is sure to be painful.

The source of his panic: Jocelyn, the walking Vise-Grip. She’s got him shackled to her ankle. He’s on her invisible leash; he’s wearing her invisible choke collar. He can’t shake free.

Deep breath, Stan, he tells himself. At least you’re still fucking alive. Or alive and fucking. He laughs inwardly. Good one, Stan.

He’s got buds in his ears, hooked up to his cell. The whining trimmer plays backup to the voice of Doris Day, whose greatest hits playlist serves as his daytime lullaby music. At first he’d had fantasies of booting Doris off a rooftop, but there isn’t a lot of musical choice – they censor anything too arousing or disruptive – and he prefers her to the medley from Oklahoma or Bing Crosby singing “White Christmas.”

To the bouncy swing of “Love Me or Leave Me,” he lops off a clutch of feathery cedar branches. Now that he’s used to her, it’s calming to think of Doris, ever virginal but with impressively firm bra-bolstered tits, smiling her long-ago sun-bleached smile, mixing milkshakes in her kitchen, as in the biopic of her so often shown on Consilience TV. She was the “nice” girl, back when the opposite was “naughty.” He has a childhood memory of an alcoholic uncle annoying young girls by calling them naughty for wearing short skirts. He was eleven then, beginning to notice.

Doris would never have opted for a skirt like that, unless for something sporty and asexual, such as tennis. Maybe it was a girl like Doris he’d been wishing for when he married Charmaine. Safe, simple, clean. Armoured in pure white undergarments. What a joke that’s turned out to be.

Lonely, he hums in his head. But he won’t be allowed loneliness, not once Jocelyn gets back from her spooky daytime job. “You should put your leather thingies on,” she said to him two nights ago, in the voice she intends as enticing. “With the little screwdriver doodad. I’ll pretend you’re the plumber.” She meant what he’s wearing now: the leather work gloves, the work apron with its pockets and widgets. Kink dress-ups for men, in her view. He hadn’t put the leather thingies on, however: he does have some pride. Though, increasingly, less.

He stands on a stepladder to reach the topmost layer of hedge. If he shifts he might topple, and that could be lethal, because the hedge trimmer is ultrasharp. It could slice neatly through a neck with a lightning-swift move, as in the Japanese samurai films he and Conor used to watch when they were kids. Medieval executioners could take off a head with an axe in one clean chop, at least in history flicks. Could he ever do anything that extreme? Maybe, with the drumroll and the crowd of jeering, vegetable-hurling yokels to egg him on. He’d need leather gloves, only with gauntlets, and a leather face mask like those in horror films. Would his torso be bare? Better not: he needs to firm up, bulk out the muscles. He’s swilling too much of that paunch-building beer: tastes like piss, but anything to get drunk.

Yesterday Jocelyn poked her index finger into the jelly roll over his lowest rib. “Shed that flab!” she said. It was supposed to be teasing, but here was an unspoken or else. But or else what? Stan knows he’s on probation; but if he fails the test, whatever it is, what then?

He has more than once pictured Jocelyn’s head becoming detached from her body by means of edged tools.

Secret love, Doris sings. Dum de dum, me, yearning, free. Stan barely hears the words, he’s heard them so often. Wallpaper, with rosebuds on it. Would Doris Day’s life have been different if she’d called herself Doris Night? Would she have worn black lace, dyed her hair red, sung torch songs? What about Stan’s own life? Would he be thinner and fitter if his name were Phil, like Jocelyn’s cheating dipstick of a husband?

Or like Conor. What if he’d been named Conor?

No more, sings Doris. Next up will be the Patti Page top ten playlist. “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?” Arf arf, real dog barks. Charmaine thinks that song is cute. Cute is a primary category for her, like right and wrong. Crocuses: cute; thunderstorms: not cute. Eggcups in the shape of chickens: cute; Stan angry: not cute. He is not cute a lot these days.

Which would be better, the axe or the hedge trimmer? he muses. The axe, if you had the knack of the clean stroke. Otherwise, for amateurs, the trimmer. The tendons would cut like wet string; then there would be the hot blood, hitting him in the face like a water cannon. The thought of it makes him feel a little sick. This is the problem with his fantasies: they become too vivid, then veer off into snafus and fuckups, and he gets tangled up in what might go wrong. So much already has.

You could do a good job on your own neck with the trimmer; though not with the axe. Once the trimmer was turned on it would just keep going whether or not you were still conscious. Conor once told him about a guy who committed suicide in his own bed with an electric carving knife. His cheating wife was lying beside him; it was the warmth of his blood seeping into the mattress that woke her up. He’s fantasized about that too, because some days he feels so trapped, so hopeless, so dead-ended, so nutless that he’d do almost anything to get away.

But why is he being so negative? Honey, why are you being so negative? he hears in his head: Charmaine’s chirpy, childishly high Barbie-doll voice. Surely your life isn’t that bad! The implication being: with her in it. Stuff it, he tells the voice. The voice gives a little shocked Oh, then pops like a bubble.

Human Resources

Charmaine waits and waits. Why aren’t there magazines to read, why isn’t there TV? She’d even watch a baseball game. Plus, now she needs to go to the bathroom and there isn’t one. That’s really inconsiderate, and if she doesn’t take control of herself she’s going to get cranky. But crankiness leads to bad outcomes, if you don’t have any power to back up your crankiness. People blow you off, or else they get even crankier than you. Smile, and the world smiles with you, Grandma Win used to say. Cry, and you cry alone. She must not cry: she must act as if this is normal, and boring. Just a bureaucracy thing.

Finally a woman with a PosiPad enters, in a guard uniform but with an identity badge pinned to her breast pocket: aurora, human resources. Charmaine’s heart sinks.

Aurora of Human Resources smiles mirthlessly, her eyes like sleet. She has a message to deliver and she delivers it smoothly: So sorry, but Charmaine must stay in Positron Prison for another month; and, in addition to that, she’s been relieved of her duties with Medications Administration.

“But why?” says Charmaine, her voice faltering. “If there’s been any complaint filed … Which is a dumb thing to say, because the subjects of her medication administrations all flatline five minutes after the Special Procedure, that’s what people usually do when their hearts have stopped beating, so who is there still walking around on the planet who could file a complaint? Maybe some of them have returned from the afterlife and criticized the quality of her services, she jokes to herself. Suppose they did, they’d have been lying, she adds indignantly. She’s justly proud of her efforts and her talent, she does have a gift, you can see it in their eyes. She executes well, she gives good death: those entrusted to her care go out in a state of bliss and with feelings of gratitude toward her, if body language is any indication. And it is: in the hands of Max, she has honed her skills in body language.

“Oh no, no complaints,” says Aurora of Human Resources, a sliver too carelessly. Her face barely moves: she’s had work done and they went too far. She has pop eyes, and her skin is wrenched back as if a giant fist is squeezing all the hair on the back of her head. She most likely went to a session at the cosmetic school in the Positron retraining program. The surgeons are the students, so it’s only natural that they’d slip up from time to time. Though Charmaine would jump off a bridge if her face looked as malpractised as that. At the Ruby Slippers Retirement Homes and Clinics, they did way better work. They could take someone seventy, eighty, eighty-five even, and have them come out looking no older than sixty.

They’re most likely training the cosmetic surgeons because it’s going to be really in demand here pretty soon. The average age in Consilience is thirty-three, so feeling beautiful isn’t that much of a challenge for them yet, but what will happen in the Project as the years go by? Charmaine wonders. A top-heavy population of geriatrics in wheelchairs? Or will those people be released, or rather expelled – tossed out onto the street, forced to take up life in a hardscrabble outside world? No, because the contract is for life. That’s what they were all told before they signed.

But – this is a new thought for Charmaine, and it’s not a nice one – there were no guarantees about how long that life might last. Maybe after a certain age people will be sent to Medications Administration for the Procedure. Maybe I’ll end up there too, thinks Charmaine, with someone like me telling me everything will be fine, and stroking my hair and kissing my forehead and tucking me in with a needle, and I won’t be able to move or say anything because I’ll be strapped down and drugged to the eyebrows.

“If there aren’t any complaints, then why?” Charmaine says to Aurora, trying not to let her desperation show. “I’m needed in Medications, it’s a special technique, I have the experience, I’ve never had a single –”

“Well, as I’m sure you’ll agree is necessary,” Aurora cuts in, “considering the uncertainty as to your identity, your codes and cards have been deactivated. For the moment you’re in limbo, you might say. The database crosschecking is very thorough, as it has to be, since I can share with you that we’ve had a few impostors in here. Journalists.” She frowns as well as she is able to with her stretched face. “And other troublemakers. Trying to unearth – trying to invent bad stories about our wonderful model community.”

“Oh, that’s terrible!” says Charmaine breathily. “The way they make things up …” She wonders what the bad stories were, decides against asking.

“Yes, well,” says Aurora. “We all have to be very careful about what we say, because you never know, do you? If the person is real or not.”

“Oh, I never thought of that,” says Charmaine truthfully.

Aurora’s face relaxes a millimetre. “You’ll get new cards and codes if” – she catches herself – “when you’re re-verified. Until then, it’s a trust issue.”

“Trust issue!” says Charmaine indignantly. “There has never been any …”

“This isn’t about you personally,” says Aurora. “It’s your data. I’m sure you yourself are completely trustworthy in every way. More than loyal.” Is that a little smirk? Hard to tell on such a wrenched-back face. Charmaine finds herself blushing: loyal. Has Max leaked something, have they been seen? At least she’s been loyal to her job.

“Now,” says Aurora, switching to efficiency mode, “I’m placing you temporarily in Laundry. Towel-Folding – there’s a shortage in that department. I’ve done towel-folding myself, it’s very soothing. Sometimes it’s wise to take a break from too much stress and responsibility, and the after-work pursuits we may” – she hesitates, searching for the word – “the pursuits we may pursue, to deal with that stress. Towel-folding gives time for reflection. Think of it as professional development time. Like a vacation.”

Darn it to heck, thinks Charmaine. Towel-Folding. Her status in Positron has just taken a pratfall over a cliff.

Charmaine changes out of the street clothes she put on hours ago. (Oh shoot, look at that bra, she thinks: bright pink staining under the arms from the sweater, she’ll never get it out.) There was something else. Aurora can’t smile like a normal person, but it wasn’t just the weird smile, it was the tone. Overly mollifying. How you’d talk to a child about to have a painful vaccination or a cow on the way to the abattoir. They had special ramps for those cows, to lull them into walking placidly to their doom.

In the evening, after four hours of towel-folding and the communal dinner – shepherd’s pie, spinach salad, raspberry mousse – Charmaine joins the knitting circle in the main room of the women’s wing. It’s not her usual knitting circle, not the group that knows her: those women left today and were replaced by their Alternates. Not only are these women strangers to Charmaine, they view her as a stranger too. They’re making it clear they don’t know why she’s been stuck in: they’re polite to her, but only just. Her attempts to make small talk have been cold-shouldered; it’s almost as if these women have been told some disreputable story about her.

The group is supposed to be knitting blue bears for preschoolers – some for the Positron and Consilience playgroups, the rest for export, to craft shops in faraway, more prosperous cities, maybe even in other countries, because Positron has to earn its keep. But Charmaine can’t concentrate on her teddy bear. She’s jittery, she’s getting more anxious by the minute. It’s the digital mix-up: how could it happen? The system is supposed to be bug-proof. There are IT personnel working on it right now, Aurora has told her, but meanwhile Charmaine should join some yoga groups in the gym, and stick with the daily routine, and it’s too bad but numbers are numbers, and her numbers aren’t showing her as being who she says she is. Aurora is sure it will work out soon.

But Charmaine doesn’t believe this runaround for one instant. Someone must have it in for her. But who? A best friend or lover of one of her Special Procedure subjects? How would they even know, how would they have access? That information is supposed to be totally classified! They’ve found out about her and Max. It must be that. They’re deciding what should be done with her. Done to her.

If only she could talk to Stan. Not Max: at the first hint of danger Max would vamoose. He’s a travelling salesman at heart. I will always treasure our moments together and keep you safe in my heart, then out the bathroom window and over the back fence, leaving her to deal with the smoking gun and the body on the floor, which might prove to be hers.

Max is like quicksand. Quicksilver. Quick. She’s always known that about him. Stan, though – Stan is solid. If he were here he’d roll up his sleeves and tackle reality. He’d tell her what to do.

Heck. Now she’s made a boo-boo with the neck of the blue teddy bear, she’s knitted where she should have purled. Should she unravel the row, knit it over? No. The bear will just have to wear a little ridge around its neck. She might even tie a ribbon around it, with a bow. Cover up the flaw by adding an individual touch. If all you’ve got is lemons, she tells herself, make pink lemonade.

When she returns to her cell that night, she finds it empty. Her cellmate is gone; it’s her month back in Consilience. But the other bed isn’t made up, it’s stripped bare. It’s as if someone has died.

They aren’t giving her a new cellmate, then. They’re isolating her. Is this the beginning of her punishment? Why did she ever let herself get mixed up with Max? She should have run out of the room the first minute she laid eyes on him. She’s been such a pushover. And now she’s all alone.

For the first time that day, she cries.

Houseboy

“Honey, cheer up, surely life’s not so bad,” Charmaine was in the habit of saying when they were living in their car, which used to grate on him: how could she be so fucking perky, with the shit that was bombarding them from all sides? But now he tries to recall her light tone, her consolations, her reassuring quotes from her dead Aunt Win. It’s darkest before the dawn. He should man up, because she’s right: surely his life’s not so bad. A lot of men would be happy to trade.

Every weekday he goes to his so-called work at the Consilience electric-scooter repair depot, where he’s had to fend off questions from the other guys – “What’re you doing back here? Thought it was your month to be in Positron.” To which he replies, “Administration morons screwed up, they got my info mixed up with some other guy’s. Case of mistaken identity, but hey, I’m not complaining.”

No need to add that the other guy is the douche who’s been jumping his chirpy, treacherous wife, and that the administration moron was a highly placed Surveillance spook who’s recorded her husband’s encounters with Charmaine in grainy but surprisingly erotic videos. Stan knows they’re surprisingly erotic because he’s watched them with Jocelyn, sitting on the exact same sofa where he used to sit with Charmaine to watch TV.

That sofa, with its royal blue ground and overall design of off-white lilies, had meant tedium and a comforting routine; the most he’d ever done on it with Charmaine had been hand-holding or an arm around the shoulders, because Charmaine claimed she didn’t want to do bed things except where they belonged, in a bed. A wildly false claim, judging from those videos, in which Charmaine required nothing more than a closed door and a bare floor to release her inner sidewalk whore and urge Phil to do things she’d never allowed Stan to do and say things she’d never once said to Stan.

Jocelyn, smiling a tight but lip-licking smile, likes to watch Stan watching. Then she wants him to recreate these videos, playing Phil, with her in the role of Charmaine. The horrible thing is that sometimes he can; though it’s equally horrible when he can’t. If he roughs her up and fucks her, it’s because she told him to; if he isn’t up to it, he’s a failure; so whichever it is, he loses. Jocelyn has transformed the neutral sofa with its harmless lilies into a nest of tortuous and humiliating vice. He can barely sit down on it any more: who knew that a harmless consumer good made of fabric and stuffing could become such a crippling head-games weapon?

He hopes Jocelyn has been recording these scenes, and will make Phil watch them in his turn. She’s mean enough for it. No doubt Phil’s wondering why he’s still in prison, and is trying bluster – There’s been a mistake, I’m supposed to be leaving now, just let me contact my wife, she’s in Surveillance, we’ll get this straightened out. Stan takes an acidic pleasure in imagining this scenario, as well as the stonewalling stares and hidden snickering among the guards, because haven’t they got their orders, which come from higher up? Just cool it, buddy, look at the printout, Positron identity numbers don’t lie, the system’s hackproof. That twisted fuckwit Phil had it coming.

Holding this thought keeps Stan going during his sexual command performances with Jocelyn, which are a good deal more like tenderizing a steak than anything he finds purely pleasurable.

Oh, Stan! comes the pert, giggly pseudovoice of Charmaine. You get a kick out of it, you must! You know you do, well, most of the time anyway, and every man has those letdown moments, but the rest of the time don’t think I can’t hear those groans, which have to be enjoyable for you, don’t deny it!

Ram it, he tells her. But Charmaine, with her angel face and devious heart – the real Charmaine – can’t hear him. She can’t know that Jocelyn’s been messing with their lives, paying her back for stealing Phil; but on the first of the month she’ll find out. When she walks into this house, expecting to find Stan, it will be Phil who’ll be waiting for her. He won’t exactly be pleased about it either, would be Stan’s guess, because a quick hit of supercharged nooky snatched on the run is not at all the same as all day every day.

That’s when Charmaine will discover that the fire of her loins is not who she thinks he is – not the Max of her fever dreams, whose fake name she invokes over and over in those videos – but a much less alpha male, who will look very different in plain daylight. Saggier, older, but also jaded, shifty-eyed, calculating: you can see that in his face, on the videos. She and Phil will be stuck with each other whether they like it or not. Charmaine will have to live with his dirty socks, his hairs in the sink; she’ll have to listen to him snoring, she’ll have to make small talk with him at breakfast; all of which will put a damper on the bodice-ripper she’s been acting out.

How long will it take the two of them to get bored, then fed up with each other? How long before Phil resorts to domestic violence, just for something to do? Not long, Stan hopes. He wouldn’t mind knowing that Phil is smacking Charmaine around, and not just as a garnish to sex, the way he does onscreen, but for real: somebody needs to.

But Phil better not push it too far, or Charmaine may stick a grapefruit knife into his jugular, since behind that blond fluff-head act of hers there’s something skewed. A chip missing, a loose connection. He hadn’t recognized it when they’d been living together – he’d underestimated her shadow side, which was mistake number one, because everyone has a shadow side, even fluffpots like her.

There’s another thought, not so pleasant: when Phil and Charmaine take up domestic life in this house, what will become of him, Stan? He can’t stay in the house with them, that’s clear. Will Jocelyn spirit him away to a secret love-nest and chain him to her bedpost? Or will she tire of treating him like an indentured studmuffin, of hotwiring his mind and watching him jerk around like a galvanized frog, and let him re-enter Positron for a much-needed rest?

Though maybe she’ll alter the schedule even further: maybe she’ll just keep Stan here with her, playing her warped game of house, and let the other two cool their jets inside the slammer. Switchover day will roll around and Charmaine and Phil will be all set to put on their civvies and beeline it to their seedy rendezvous, but then some gink in a uniform will tell them there’s been a delay, and they won’t be coming out of Positron right now. Which will mean three months straight for Charmaine. She must be going nuts.

Phil will already have guessed that Jocelyn has found him out, yet again; he’ll wonder whether she’s finally given up on him. He’ll be in an advanced state of anxiety if he has any sense at all. He must know his wife is a vengeful harpy, deep inside her business-suit-neutral cool and her long-suffering pose of tolerance.

But Charmaine will be confused. She’ll run through her gamut of girly manipulations with the Positron management: dimpled blond astonishment, lip-quivering, outrage, tearful pleading – but none of it will do her any good. Then maybe she’ll have a real meltdown. She’ll lose it, she’ll wail, she’ll crumple to the floor. The officials won’t put up with that: they’ll haul her upright, hose her down. Stan would like to see that; it would be some satisfaction for the contempt with which she’s been treating him. Maybe Jocelyn will let him watch on the spy-cam video hookup.

Not likely. His access to spy-cam material is limited to Charmaine and Phil writhing around on the floor. Jocelyn really gets a jolt out of those. Her demand that he duplicate the action is pathetic: she must know he can’t feel any real passion. At those moments he’d drink paint thinner or stuff a chili pepper up his nose – anything to dull his brain during these mutually humiliating scenes. But he needs to convince himself that he’s next door to an automation, he needs to keep the action going. His life may depend on it.

Last night Jocelyn tried something new. She has all the access codes to everything, as far as he can tell, so she opened Charmaine’s pink locker and rummaged around in Charmaine’s stuff and found a nightgown she could fit into. It had daisies on it, and little bows – very far from Jocelyn’s functional style, which was maybe the point.

Jocelyn is in the habit of sleeping in the spare room, where she also keeps her “work,” whatever it is; but last night, after lighting a scented candle, she’d put on that nightgown and tiptoed into his room. “Surprise,” she’d whispered. Her mouth was dark with lipstick, and as she pressed it down on his he’d recognized the scent of the lipstick kiss on that note he’d found. I’m starved for you! I need you so much. XXOO and you know what more – Jasmine. Like a moron, he’d fallen for this sultry Jasmine, with her mouth the colour of grapejuice. What a mirage! Then, what a disappointment.

And now Jocelyn wanted to be who? Dragged out of sleep, he was disoriented; for a moment he didn’t know where he was, or who was pressing herself against him. “Just imagine I’m Jasmine,” she murmured. “Just let yourself go.” But how could he, with the texture of Charmaine’s familiar cotton nightgown under his fingers? The daisies. The bows. It was such a disconnect.

How much longer can he go on starring in this bedroom farce without losing it completely and doing something violent? He can keep himself steady when he’s working at the scooter depot: solving mechanical problems levels him out. But as the workday nears its end he feels the dread building. Then he has to get onto his scooter and motor back to the house. His goal is to dump a few beers into himself, then pretend to concentrate on yard work before Jocelyn turns up.

It’s risky to combine beer fog with power tools, but it’s a risk he’s willing to take. Unless he numbs himself, he might find himself doing something stupid.

But Jocelyn is high up on the power ladder; she must have every one of her snatch hairs monitored, with a SWAT team ready to spring into lethal action at any threat. Stan would surely trigger an some alarm while making even the most innocuous move against her, such as roping her up and stowing her in Charmaine’s pink locker – no, not the pink one, he doesn’t know the code; in his own red locker – while he makes his getaway. But getaway to where? There’s no route out of Consilience, not for those who’ve made the dick-brained mistake of signing themselves in. Signing themselves over. do time now, buy time for our future.

You got suckered, says Conor’s voice inside his head.

Here comes Jocelyn in her darkened, softly purring spook vehicle. She must have a driver, because she always exits from the back seat. They’re said to be working on a bunch of new robotic tech stuff at Positron that’s going to help this place pay its way, so maybe it’s a bot driving the car.

He has a wild impulse to sprint over with the hedge trimmer, turn it on, threaten to shred both Jocelyn and her robot driver unless they take him to the main Consilience gateway, right now. What if she calls his bluff and refuses? Will he go for it, and be left with a dead car full of electronics and mangled body parts?

But if it works, he’ll make her drive him right through the gateway, into the crumbling, semi-deserted wasteland outside the walls. He’ll jump out of the car, make a break for it. He won’t have much of a life out there, picking through garbage dumps and fighting off scavengers, but at least he’d be in charge of himself again. He’ll find Conor, or Conor will find him. If anyone knows how to play the angles out there, it will be Con. He’ll have to eat his pride, though. Do some backtracking. I was wrong, I should have listened to you, and fucking etcetera.

Though maybe better not to try the hedge-trimmer move on Jocelyn. She can probably activate the alarm system by flexing her toes. Not to mention her fast moves: those Surveillance types must take martial arts training. Learn to crush windpipes with their thumbs.

Now she’s getting out of the car, feet first. Shoes, ankles, grey nylon. Any guy seeing those legs would have to be turned on. Wouldn’t they?

Hang on to that thought, Stan, he tells himself. It’s not all downside.