Artifice

Betrayal; that is the word his peers in the bureaucracy would use if they found out. But only if they found out. On the way here he had justified this course of action to himself what felt like hundreds of times and all iterations of thought led him to the same conclusion: this had to be done.

Street lighting twinkled and danced in the rain-dappled windscreen of his parked car. Intricate patterns of gentle white light kaleidoscoped through the water droplets could be made to look ethereal if he screwed his eyes tight and tilted his head from side to side. Pure white tendrils of energy could reach out from the corona of an individual water droplet and make new and fascinating patterns. They seemed alive as he slanted his head, like tiny stars cast in a microscopic solar system. Suddenly he realised what he was doing and flushed red, embarrassed. Not so much for acting like this but because he might be caught, sitting squinting at the windscreen and shaking his head like some bored five-year-old. That wouldn’t do. There was too much gravity in this meeting, this handover he was about to make. Sitting upright and shaking himself as if to exorcise his childish behaviour he swiped a hand through the dormant portion of the dash which housed the car’s holo display. It sprang to life, a dull grey portal, the car in night-time mode. Leaving his hand submerged in the display he could feel tiny notches with his fingers, the control fields coming to life and giving him the impression of switches, selectors and toggles. Gently he massaged these invisible controls with practiced ease, feeling them snick home as he executed a deft series of commands. Within a second the display responded and unfolded like an ancient paper map to reveal a three hundred and sixty degree view of the car. He scanned the views quickly, satisfying himself that there was no one coming before deactivating the display, conscious that it was illuminating him in his otherwise darkened car. The instructions he had received were clear; come alone, no tech and don’t draw attention to yourself. He was unsure what counted as tech but decided to interpret this as his PAD and anything else that was nominally a communications device. In the distance he could hear people chanting something in unison, but he was uncertain what they were saying. It was a protest, something he had been assured would give him the perfect cover.

He checked his watch, twenty minutes past. He was late, presuming whoever he was here to meet was a he. A nervous tic almost had him activating the display again but he stopped himself as he reached out, reasoning that perhaps whoever it was he was to meet had been scared off by the illumination from the holo just a few seconds ago. No. He would wait.

The rear door to the car opened calmly and clunked shut again, bringing with it a harsh surgical scent. He made to turn around, to look at the sudden presence in the car.

‘Do not turn around,’ said an anodyne voice. The voice was devoid of accent and carried no strong hints of gender but he figured it for that of a man. A sickly wooziness passed over him for a brief second; was it caused by the smell? The voice continued, ‘Wheels are in motion and we do not have much time. I have the information. Has it been explained to you how the transfer will work?’

A pause then, ‘Yes, it has,’ he said, confirming with a nod. He found himself gulping, his mouth dry. It was unsettling not being able to directly address the presence that filled the rear seat so ominously. He wondered why the stranger in the car smelled so; surely this was not an anonymous scent. Perhaps a mistake? Perhaps a false lead? Perhaps I’m over-analysing.

‘I cannot stress firmly enough that now more than ever everything we worked towards as a confederation is on a knife edge. Time is of the essence. We will not communicate again so take this message down, commit it to memory. Are you ready?’

‘Yes,’ he said, unhappy that his voice wavered a little, a telling insight to the maelstrom in his head. This was illicit, forbidden and wrong. But he felt alive; his heart thrashed in his chest as he wrote down the message the stranger gave him. He felt like a child, elated by sneaking out into the night under his parents’ noses. His hand wickedly shook as he wrote down the message. He briefly considered if this was why laws were made to be broken, if this buzz, this verboten thrill existed like some internalised drug impossible to purge from humanity.

‘You got that?’ said the characterless voice from the rear of the car, breaking the spell he found himself under.

‘Yes,’ he stammered. ‘Yes, I have it.’

‘Good,’ came the reply. ‘When the time is right you will get the signal. You will not be able to miss it, trust me. Remember there are enemies everywhere, watching in all the normal channels, so tread carefully. Remember: by doing this you are in mortal danger. Take precautions and good luck.’

With that the stranger and the surgical smell left the car. As the door clunked shut he waved his fingers through the holo display to get a look at the stranger. But he saw nothing, just the rain-soaked road bathed in cool white street lighting. The vicinity around the car was empty and the windows looking down onto the street were as asteroids; cold, lifeless and distant.

He turned the car on but did not pull away. He looked down at the handwritten note the stranger had made him take down and pondered it for a moment. It was such a small thing, this note, these few words, but such a terrible weight of consequence on a scrap of paper. Staring at the note he realised what a troubling thing it was, this one small fragment of information constituting such a huge betrayal. At least, that is how it would be seen by his peers; he had sold them out, betrayed them.

And for what?

No money had changed hands, nothing so filthy as a favour or compensation required. No, this betrayal was an obligation, a duty. When thought of in that light it wasn’t a betrayal; but then who would agree?

He double-checked that the car was in manual mode and pulled off, car sensors assuring him that the road was clear. As the rain pattered gently on the windscreen he considered that perhaps in fact betrayal was too strong a word, at least for what he was about to do. Indeed, it could be said that to follow any course contrary to the one he had just plotted was in itself a betrayal. But no matter; justification was not needed.

Ahead he heard the distant and intimidating chants of the protest march taking place. Thousands of voices in chorus chanted. It was at once moving and terrifying; a tsunami of emotion, a massive movement of people energised and unified. To surf this enormous wave would be exhilarating but to stare at it as it crashed down upon you; utterly terrifying. This was the fifth march in five nights, the fifth city in Eurasia, and this protest was the most telling yet. In the quiet of the street and his meeting he had forgotten about the protests, albeit briefly. No matter though; he would travel through the transport ways beneath the city, back into the quiet. He thought again of what had just happened and what he had done and tried to drown out the last vestigial thread of guilt.

It has to be done he repeated to himself.

As the car sped into the night towards the subterranean warren of transport ways he knew what had to be done and settled down into his seat, mind set to do it.