The Paper Eater

INTIMACY

It’s the third day since Fishook announced our return to Atlantica, and the ship is buzzing with bad vibes. One day soon – in four days? Three? – we’ll wake up and there it will be. Not even on the horizon, but right slap-bang there, outside the porthole. I’ve stepped up my chewing schedule, determined to complete Tiffany before we dock. The latest batch of paper from the Art Room (courtesy of Libertycare’s recycling policy) consists of transcripts from the Hotline.

The lengths they went to, to serve the customer!

I hereby accuse my mother-in-law, Mrs Scarlett Foster, of 11 Ovenhill Drive, Mohawk, of conspiring to defame and slander both myself and my…

That caller had rung thirty-three times in three days. There had been a row over a tin of sweetcorn. There were others.

… knew as soon as I set eyes on him that he was trash. I mean, there’s a type of person that’s likely to join this Sect, right? Well, he fits it to the max. For a start he’s…

That was a man called Ron, jilted by his gay lover, who had run off with a systems analyst who wasn’t even attractive. And so on.

Tiffany the rook is shaping up. I have given her a bobbed hairstyle which doesn’t suit her, and a dress that reaches to the floor, shaped like an old-fashioned lampshade. I’m pleased, and even John’s impressed as I spin her on the craft table like a little top.

– I almost fancy her, he leers. Go on, give her another twirl!

After that, he wants to know who’s next. Who I’ll be making.

– There isn’t a next, I tell him.

– Why?

– Cos she’s the last.

I was going to teach him to play, once I had the set ready. But he’ll be dead.

– Fancy lunch, I ask, changing the subject pronto.

Big mistake: when we get to the canteen, the midday news from Atlantica is on, and Craig Devon, my childhood tormentor, is staring out at me from the screen. I’ve never quite got used to seeing his face again – which is why when I lived in Gravelle Road, I’d get my news from the net. Just the sight of him now – all chunked out, that porky pampered look – makes me want to do damage.

Having proven there is no constitutional reason why the Liberty software shouldn’t be considered as a candidate, goes Craig, pretending to be a grown-up, the indications are that the people are increasingly behind the idea of a non-political federal service provider managing their nation.

An animated graphic with lots of arrows shows how easy it is to do: a little man-shape in Washington bursts like a bubble, to be replaced by a CD, representing Libertycare, with the bird logo fluttering around it. The CD pulses gently, sending golden waves across the whole map of the United States.

Craig Devon’s smiling now, as though it’s his idea.

So, with legal hitches a thing of the past, the next question is how the ordinary citizens of America are reacting to the prospect of a president-free superpower, he goes.

– Well, I’m impressed with the way Atlantica’s handled its Marginals, says a fat lady. Ship ’em out.

A big groan from us lot.

Next they show a clip from a political ad for Libertycare: it’s Mount Rushmore, peopled by giant Muppet caricatures of past presidents, yammering inanities and shooting missiles around the globe. You can’t see their dicks but it’s clever; you can tell they’re using the missiles to see who can pee the highest and furthest.

– Don’t worry! yells one of them, breaking off to waggle his muppety face at the camera. We’re in charge!

I groan. I had no idea it’d come to this. Serves me right for opting out, I guess. Till now, I’ve operated a one-man news blackout on myself.

The current surge in support for Libertycare is thanks to the efforts of one man, says Craig Devon. Who, over the past year, has been campaigning tirelessly to achieve just the victory that the polls are now predicting in next Wednesday’s election.

– Next Wednesday? I shout. Isn’t that just before Liberty Day?

– Shh! goes the bloke next to me.

Up on the screen appears a fat man, going ape. As he whoops and jumps about, the slogan dances on his T-shirt: Let’s go for it. I remember him from TV before, during the Festival of Choice, more than a year ago. This is the famous Michigan taxi driver who led campaign marches, and bombarded the Internet. Earl.

– And believe you me, we’re gonna win! He beams cheesily beneath his baseball cap. – We’re gonna tell them just where they can shove it! A huge cheer rises up behind him. – This is the future I want, proclaims Earl, pointing to the fried-egg map of Atlantica. Sunny side up!

– Jesus, says John under his breath.

An echoing murmur runs round the canteen, then hushes. Blokes are exchanging pale glances. Someone groans. Inside my head, I take a careful step back. You could get worked up about all this, I’m thinking. But if you’re powerless – well, feeling stuff about your fellow humans is a mug’s game, isn’t it? If I’ve spent the past year with my head forcibly stuck in the sand, it’s for a reason.

So when Craig Devon pops up on the screen again, I look away.

– Fifteen more new ones today, says John sighing and picking the mushroom out of his omelette. You can smell it on their clothes.

He means prisoners, helicoptered in. Marginals. And it’s true, the smell of Atlantica clings to them like a vapour spray.

– All insisting they’re innocent, like mugs, says John, reaching for the mayonnaise.

He has complicated rituals regarding food. Expertly, he slices the omelette open and smears mayonnaise inside, then shakes the pepper-pot ten times over the whole thing. He never eats till it’s stone cold. For my own reasons, I’d rather not hear about the new Atlantican recruits.

– Gotta go, I say.

He grunts by way of reply. I’ll admit that I’m avoiding him. The doom hangs around him like an aura. Walking back along the red line to the cabin, I pick up the tension. It crackles around my head like electricity.

Atlantica, Atlantica.

When two people are thrown together, things develop, don’t they?

After only a few days, it felt as though Hannah and I were in the same boat. Like kidnapper and hostage. With every session we spent together, there was an intimacy. We didn’t need to use as many words. There were short-cuts to things. Oh, I still hadn’t properly clocked that she’d got to me. It didn’t hit me that what I was feeling for her, things like admiration and pity and respect and distaste (no point lying about it) might be part of something bigger. Perhaps that’s how real families begin, with a stirring that’s like the pump of blood. Something you can’t do anything about, to stop.

– Hannah, what’s going to happen to me, I asked her.

I said it so low it came out as a whisper. We were standing close. So close we were almost touching, by the vending machine at the end of another God-awful session. Soon it would be time for the guard to come and fetch me. I hardly knew what I was feeling.

– How’s it going to end?

She reached out a small hand and laid it on my arm, then just as suddenly, pulled it back, as though burnt. It happened so quickly I could have imagined it.

– It doesn’t look good for you, she said.

But there was something in her voice that gave me hope.

– Hannah, I went.

– Yes?

She was inspecting the vending machine. Then she began to press buttons on it.

– How did you get to be here, in this place?

– Munchhausen’s, she said. I’m an expert. My mother had it. Has it. Anyway, with my Crabbe’s Block – it’s a – an emotional blockage – it made sense to work here. I could stay in one place. My work meets my needs, she said.

– We’re more alike than you think, I said, realising it suddenly.

Her eyes seemed to water behind her lenses, then, and I began to realise I was getting to her just like she was getting to me. The air around us was full of attraction; you could almost see its little glittery particles, like a potent hair spray.

– Don’t you want to live outside, ever? I asked her. I mean, this place, it’s a prison, Hannah.

The idea didn’t seem to offend her.

– I go to St Placid, to visit my mother sometimes. But I get – overloaded.

– What, like stressed? You get stressed?

– Sort of, she said, shivering in her cardigan. Agoraphobic too.

There was another long silence.

– I always liked staying indoors, I said. Just me and the family. But now –

– Yes?

– Well, they’re gone, aren’t they?

– I suppose so, she said.

– But they’re still my property, I said. My intellectual property.

– Your emotional property.

She sort of blurted it, and I looked up. Her eyes were watering.

I wanted to take her in my arms. Carry her out of that place for ever. Yes: even then I did.

– I have never had any of that, she said.

She looked so small and so vulnerable there by the machine. She turned and began to feed it coins, one by one, slowly, then dropped her head and stared at the Libertycare logo on the carpet. Give and take, it said. Sometimes, it’s hard to remember a string of events and emotions, especially if they seem to happen all at once, so they’re not a string but a tangle.

The following things happened: the vending machine made a beep; a tear ran down Hannah’s cheek and plopped bang into the middle of one of the circles on the carpet; her Frooto suddenly arrived with a clatter and jingled out her change; my heart somersaulted. And I realised that I’d been feeling lonelier than I’d done in my whole life, now the Hoggs weren’t mine any more, lonelier than when I was at the Junior Welcome Centre, before I’d invented them, and that I was a lesser, diminished man, whose heart had shrivelled to a small and bitter little tuber, gone underground. It would never flower again, that I knew. Except that right at the moment when life seemed as bad as it could be, Hannah Park had changed something. Done something to me I couldn’t begin to explain. The feeling came that I had to reach out to her now or I never would, that the moment had come at last, and I must grab on to it and cling for dear life, because this thing – however vague and nameless it was, and however scared it made me – it was real. I stepped towards her. She swayed, like she was ready to fall.

And that’s when I wrapped my arms around Hannah in her huge cardigan, and held her tight. I closed my eyes and breathed in the faint smell of peanut butter. Through the padding of the cardigan I could feel she was small, all bones, like a scraggy bird. She was shaking.

Chew, chew, chew.

The sea outside is flat as a pancake.

Spit.

And plop.

– So it was a love story, goes John.

– No. She didn’t do love, and nor did I.

But I’m lying of course.

The next morning I was back in my room, staring into space and thinking about Hannah, when the knock came and he stepped in.

– Harvey!

Wesley Pike.

He actually came and sat on the bed. My breakfast lay in crumbs around the small desk. He stirred me up. It was unnerving. He shouldn’t have sat on the bed. It had aroused me. Christ, for a fleeting second I actually wondered if I might be gay.

– Hannah Park has successfully completed her research, he said, shifting his weight. So we won’t be needing you any longer. Your co-operation with this project will be taken into account when you receive your Social Adjustment.

He smiled. Tight and efficient. His handsome face.

– When? My groin really was in turmoil. Down boy, I thought. Talk about inappropriate.

– Tomorrow, he said. After your de-briefing with Hannah Park.

I curled up my toes inside my shoes.

– But that’s…

– In twenty-four hours’ time. It all happens in the building, he said breezily. All the data about your crimes will be fed in to the Liberty Machine, as per standard procedure. Your co-operation and its value will also be vectored and factored. Your Adjustment will appear on screen at twelve tomorrow, in the Social Adjustment Office. The guard will take you. Bye then, Harvey. It’s been a pleasure knowing you. You’ve been of more use to Liberty than you know.

What the fuck did that mean? He grinned and left me standing there, staring in the mirror.

My face looked terrible, like I had died.

Well, if I am going to turn gay, I thought, then prison’s the place for it.