the switch

This is based on one of my literary challenge stories, which went down well wheh I read it to friends.  I have since recast it as a monologue for stage or radio, and revuised it to 1880s New York, which is more historically accurate.

Cast: Howard Morley, forties, writer 
Set: A dark space. A heavy wooden chair with leather straps attached to the arms

Blackout. Sound of a switch being pulled, high voltage electricity, sizzling, underneath it the echo of a scream. Slowly the sounds subside, light comes up on MORLEY, dressed in an open white shirt and formal trousers, centre stage, harshly downlit, sitting in a chair, the rest of the set dark. When still seen only dimly, he appears to be struggling as if having a nightmare, then as the light increases, he suddenly jerks upright, staring

MORLEY

So it's happened. But I'm still alive? Awake? Was it all a dream? I have always had a strong imagination.

But WHAT has happened? Flashes, only flashes, recently.

Imagination is important in a criminologist. But this?

To write about crime: it's not just about the cold facts, the police reports, the evidence. You also have to be able to put yourself into the mind of the criminal; to see the world through his eyes. I was always good at that. I can walk through a present day landscape and imagine how it was at the historic time I am researching. Maybe a hundred, two hundred years ago. I can see almost like a double image how the streets would have looked at the time – the old fashioned shop fronts, the hurrying people in crinolines and top hats, the horses and carts, like a black-and-white movie overlaying the technicolor image of today.

I can even move back and forth in time, fast forwarding the chiaroscuro image, back to a time of wooden cottages and dirt roads, forward to impressive facades and brick and cobbles.

So it was a real privilege to visit the actual scenes of one of the murderers I have always been interested in: William Kemmler. He was no Jack the Ripper. It was a fairly banal murder as they go, but my interest was sparked by the fact that he was the first to be executed by electric chair: August the sixth, 1890; Auburn Penitentiary, New York. As I looked into it, something fascinated me about it. It seemed to be a motiveless crime. His relationship with his wife previously had been idyllic and their love for each other was remarked upon. There had been no sign of mental illness – Kemmler lived a blameless life, he was a hard worker, a good churchman, a follower of the temperance movement. There was no evidence of gambling or debts; nor of infidelities on either side. This was Chicago in the 1880s, the boom time, a time of confusion and lawlessness – but there were no indications of connections with the underworld. So all the usual motivations for murder were absent. Some thought that a devil had possessed him, others that some kind of seizure had made him mad. The violence of his attack was horrific, by all accounts. But he offered no resistance to the authorities afterwards, and no explanation. In fact, he claimed not to be Kemmler at all, on the rare occasions when he spoke. Nowadays he would have been decalred insane, but then it was strictly an eye for an eye.

So with my good wife I decided to visit modern day New York. Olga likes to accompany me on these trips, even though I can sometimes appear to be in a dream as I wander the streets with my double exposure imagination going full tilt. Auburn Prison is today a modern correctional facility. But the old building is still there, alongside. The courtroom where Kemmler was tried and convicted, and the death row suite where they constructed the horrific machine that would end his life, have been turned into a little museum, although the execution room is now normally off limits. I had been given special access by the curator, Sam Wise, whom I knew through collaborations and conferences we had both attended.

I arranged a private tour a few days after we arrived. The prison was quite close to the house where William and Marie Kemmler boarded, which is even now a small family-run hotel, little changed externally but with marginally better plumbing and quite plushly furnished rooms in that characteristic American 'inn' style, and that is where we stayed. As I walked through its hall and sitting rooms I could picture how it would have looked in the 1880s, filled with heavy Victorian mahogany and slightly faded brocades that survived from a more prosperous time as a family house. It would have all been threadbare but respectable: my research showed it was run as a temperance boarding house by an impoverished widow.

The silent movie ran in my head, overlaying the real images as we toured the house and climbed the ornate staircase to our room. I had of course booked the room where the Kemmlers had lived, generously sized and now with an ensuite carved out of one corner where there would have been an overbearing wardrobe and dressing table. There was a small closet and the chimney breast of a fireplace on one side, long since boarded up. The bed would have been opposite, a big iron-framed affair in the same location as today's twin beds.

We went out to dinner and then back in the room to read. I wanted to find all I could about the house while I was there. Olga retired early and I stayed up in a comfortable armchair, reading once more the police reports, which survived. I imagined the door opening and Kemmler entering from a late shift, his wife already in bed just like my wife tonight, the room cold and dark but for the flickering light of the dying embers. It was as if I could really see him now, standing there, taking off his heavy coat and his hat, brushing off a little snow on this deep winter night. He stood for a minute looking down at the bed and his sleeping wife. Then suddenly he looked up and seemed to stare right at me. I shook my head to lose the image: I had seen the police mugshot, directly into the camera, so that was the look I imagined.

I went to bed and turned out the light. The house, all gothic details and grey clapboard, creaked and cracked as the night temperatures fell. I fell asleep I think, because I seemed to see him again, staring at me in the firelight.

Next morning was bright and clear. That evening we had dinner with Sam who explained the history of the old prison, an imposing classical edifice that had seen many a famous criminal sent down. Tomorrow the museum was closed to the public but he had offered to take us round personally. It was an entertaining evening: Olga enjoyed Sam's anecdotes and decided to come with me on the tour.

We got straight to bed, ready for an early start. As I lay down, I felt decidedly chilly, even despite the late spring sunshine earlier, and decided to fetch the extra comforter in the closet. As I turned back into the room, I seemed to imagine Kemmler entering the room with his wife, perhaps a happier earlier occasion, I thought to myself. With these visions of the past it was always vision only, but tonight instead of the sketchy version of the mind's eye, the figures, while still black and white seemed more solid, more real. He was taking her in his arms: they seemed to be laughing wildly, whirling round and round in a mad dance, then abruptly he checked them and threw his wife roughly on the bed. Enough: my imagination was running away with me. I shook my head and thought no more about it. I went to bed and switched off the light. My wife's sleep seemed to be disturbed: she was breathing fast and shallow and moving about in her bed. I opened my eyes and looked over. I was shocked to be confronted by the vision of Kemmler's face no more than a couple of feet from mine, as if he was lying on top of Olga, looking straight at me, staring wildly. I jumped up and the vision was gone. My heart was beating fast and I decided I had lapsed into a dream, perhaps a little anxious about tomorrow.

Early next day Sam took us around the museum exhibits then into the courtroom, oak panelled and surprisingly small. In those days courtrooms were often attached to prisons. He pointed out the various features – the judge's dais, the witness box, the jury bench, and the barred cage of the dock, with its stairs down to below.

'To be honest, it gives me the creeps down there.' he said, 'Every time I go down there. So if you don't mind, here's the key. Take your time and come up to the office when you're finished.' This suited me as I rather wanted to have some quiet time there, to imagine what it would have been like for the prisoner. We stayed for a while in the courtroom. Olga looked through a register of cases on the judge's bench as I thought about what would have happened here.

I could imagine him standing there in the dock, with the officers behind him ready with their truncheons in case of trouble, hearing the dread words of the foreman as his fellows of the jury looked on – serious and upstanding gentlemen aware of their solemn duty – and then the awful sentence of the judge as the lawyers and the gawping public looked on.

I saw him pleading, pointing at the jury then once again, strangely, seeming to stare directly at me, shouting something. This imagination thing was getting out of hand. I wondered how he felt as he descended the steps into the darkness below, then was led to the small whitewashed cell we found there, probably much smarter and cleaner than in his time, but still grim and dark. We walked along the corridor to a plain metal door at the end. It was heavy and creaky: it was obviously rarely opened. The room beyond was quite large, with some natural light from arched barred windows high on the wall. To one side, a heavy partition with a window, through which could be seen a brighter room, with ancient electrical equipment, and a separate entrance to another circulation route. This was where the witnesses would have stood, two physicians, with the executioner. In the middle of the electrical panel was a big switch, the kind that Dr Frankenstein would have used to pulse electricity into the dead body of his monster, to give it life. But here it served the opposite purpose.

And in this room stood nothing but the horrific instrument of torture and death. We both shivered a little. In fact, Olga was shaking and I took her in my arms and comforted her.

I could imagine the moustachioed gentlemen watching as the guards dragged Kemmler into the room and strapped him down. Was he terrified, was he calm? There was nothing in the record about this, just the bare fact that he was executed at such and such a time on such and such a day.

I imagined him there, scared, looking nervously over to the window as the guards left and locked the metal door, alone now. Seeing the men in the other room, looking back grim. I could see it all. He seemed to be calling out. Then the hand of Edwin F. Davis, the executioner, moving almost in slow motion towards the switch. Then it seemed all too real for me: I could see his actual body there, as he turned and looked at me and he was mouthing – something. What was it? It looked like 'You – you!'

The first 1000 volt surge lasted 17 seconds, but failed to kill him. He slumped unconscious. The physician urged the executioner to turn the current on again with no delay, but it took several minutes to recharge the circuit. It took eight minutes for the prisoner to die. Earlier an appeal judge had declared that the electric chair was not a 'cruel and unusual' punishment.

I hurried Olga out and back up the stairs and locked the door to the cellar behind us. 'What is it?' she said. You look more scared than me! Like you've seen a ghost.'

That night we went to bed early as we had an early flight in the morning. I lay awake thinking about what I had seen in the execution chamber. For a minute it had seemed absolutely real. I really need to get more detachment, I thought. My eyes were just drooping shut when I thought I saw a flash of light, as if the door from the hall had opened. I sat up and looked over. There was the form of Kemmler, just like the first night, still wavering - but I realised that it was as if he was seen in firelight – otherwise he appeared to be completely solid. I jumped out of the bed and stood at the far side of the room. He seemed so real. He brushed off the snow and took off his hat and coat again.

Then he took a knife from the coat pocket, long bladed like a butcher's knife – the knife that was in the police report – and went to stand by the bed. Over the sleeping form. Was it my wife? Was it an image of his wife? It was hard to tell. I saw the old iron bedstead and the modern twin beds like a double exposure in my head.

Then he lifted the knife and slowly turned to me and once again was looking directly into my eyes: into my soul.

Then he started to plunge the knife rapidly down into the body, over and over. I wasn't thinking, but just from instinct I rushed forward and tried to grab the knife, but my hands seemed to go right through him. Then there was a blinding flash.

This is where things start to get confused in my mind. Suddenly the room was brightly lit and there was blood, bright red blood, lots of it below me. There was Kemmler's wife, stabbed over and over and I heard her last gasps as she expired, and almost the echo of her screams from before. And I looked down at my hand and it was bloody too, and in my hand was the knife. And I looked around and there was the mahogany and the brocade, the dowdy wallpaper of the old boarding house, just as I had imagined it. And there was a sudden banging on the door, a crash, a splintering of wood, and two men burst in and wrestled me to the ground. And they dragged me away from the bed, wrenched the knife from my hand.

'Kemmler, what have you done?'

There was another flash: then there's a gap. I can't remember what happened next. Suddenly I was in the courtroom. The judge and the jury and the counsel were all there, just as I had imagined them, but real this time, in full colour and sound. They were all looking at me sternly.

Three people entered the floor of the court – strange, insubstantial people I could barely see in the glare of the winter morning. One of them was pointing around but making no sound. The other two, a man and a woman, were laughing and smiling, taking no notice of the courtroom proceedings. Then the first man left and the woman seemed to go behind the judge's bench. And the grim-faced jury stood. And the judge said: 'Have you reached your verdict?' And one of them said: 'Yes, your Honor. Guilty!' And there was some cheering and clapping and the judge banged down his gavel and called for silence.

Then he sentenced me to death. 'No, no, I'm not Kemmler,' I yelled. 'Tell them!' I shouted at the other man, who was staring. He seemed more substantial now. The other man: it was me.

Another flash. I remember I was sitting in the dreary cell. Unpainted, dirty, dank, just as I had imagined it would have been then. The man and woman appeared again at the barred door hatch. They look in. They are insubstantial, like ghosts. But I recognise them. Myself and Olga.

Another flash. I am strapped into the electric chair. The guards are just closing the door. The man and woman are there in the room, black and white, flickering now, fading. I look across to the side and there are the men behind the glass; and there is the switch. I stare back at the couple. He takes her in his arms, hugs her tight, tenderly.

It is Olga and me. Or IS it me? The man checks their hug, stops and faces me, staring into my eyes. It looks like my face: but suddenly it breaks into a malevolent grin. I realise now. 'You! You!' I cry. He grins wider, the embodiment of evil. Suddenly he slams her body against the wall. Olga's body. Out of the corner of my eye I see a movement behind the glass. The hand moves towards the panel and starts to close the switch.

Blackout. Sound effects as before

END

fake anthem

This is a revised version of a story about importance, or ordinary people becoming important, the theme on the day Trump was in town.   

The City was in confusion. Security like no-one had ever seen. Roads blocked, important buildings barricaded, barriers and police along every pavement, military helicopters lowering overhead, crowds milling everywhere. The Very Important Person was coming to the City to meet other Very Important Persons. The ordinary people were held back behind the barriers and corralled by the police. Some looked angry, some looked happy. There was shouting, there were placards, there were occasional scuffles between rival groups, between supporters of the Very Important Person and his denigrators. Strangely, it was the pros that were angry. The antis were having fun with their witty signs and jolly outfits and rude cartoons.

Some were just curious: here was a man with his grandson. He thought it safer to bring the boy among the antis, and the crowd had good humoredly allowed the old man and the young boy to push through to the front. Let the boy see the monster!

When I was your age, he had told the boy a few days earlier, my grandad brought me to the park and we watched and cheered as another Very Important Person drove by in an open top car. Grandad gave me a flag to wave and told me to shout out: I like Ike! The great man turned and caught my eye for a moment. It's one of my earliest memories. Of course, things were different then. Everyone respected authority, and he was a real hero of the war. This one? He's a draft dodger, isn't he? There was no security like nowadays.

The boy had pleaded with him. Can we go please grandad, can I wave a flag and shout like you did? Please? The old man told him that you wouldn't see much, just a flash of a big bullet-proof limousine. But the boy pleaded, so in the end he'd agreed. The boy had spent all the next morning finding out about the flag, then painstakingly creating his own handmade copy with paper and a stick his grandad gave him.

So there they were, pressed up against the barrier, surrounded by the crowd, who broke out into occasional chants and songs. The boy heard them singing a song from his favourite movie, one he'd watched lots of times with grandad. He'd even sung the song at his school's Christmas concert. But now they were singing it with different words. Why are you singing that, he asked one of the ladies beside him. It's the Very Important Person's anthem, she laughed.

They waited and waited, but the boy didn't get bored. He liked the friendly people and the chanting, and a policeman let him stand just where he got the best view, and occasionally police cars would race up and down the empty street with sirens wailing, and there were the helicopters buzzing over. Then he saw a man with a big camera coming down the street on the outside of the barrier, and another man with a microphone. He would stop here and there and ask someone in the crowd questions. He saw a sticker on the camera and it said Fox News. He liked foxes – sometimes when he looked out of his bedroom window at night he would see one silently slipping between cars in the street. As the men passed, the boy said to them, Do you make news for foxes? The men stopped and looked down at the boy, noticing him for the first time. The boy found the microphone pushed up close to his face.

Say that again, said the man. The boy repeated it and the man chuckled and said, No, we make real news for real people. He grinned over at the camera. Do you like real news? The boy nodded. So what do you think of fake news, son? I hate fake news, said the boy. Good for you, said the man: and did you make this flag yourself? The boy nodded. And do you know what it stands for? It has thirteen stripes for the states when it was made, and fifty stars for the states there are now, said the boy: and it stands for freedom and democracy. The man stood back up and turned to the camera with a very self satisfied smile. At last we have one supporter in the whole of this City! Suddenly there was a rush of noise, anticipation, cheering, booing: a dozen sleek limousines and vans flashed past and were gone.

The Very Important Person was fuming. In the residence where he was staying that evening he had asked for three TVs to be set up and he was flipping from one to the other: all of them showing this nasty little guy, one of the people he really hated in this god forsaken town, spouting his nasty little thoughts. Very dumb – spouting his fake news about me. This trip is meant to be about me, he said out loud. Why are they even showing this loser? The flunkies flinched, a little. Then something on one of the screens caught his attention: a small boy waving a hand made flag – his flag! He turned up the sound. The boy was saying, I hate fake news! That was more like it. The reporter was asking him about his flag. It stands for freedom and democracy, the boy was saying. Get me that boy, he shouted. The flunkies stood to attention and looked sidelong at each other. Get me that boy!

It was time to leave the City and the Very Important Person was on a podium, flanked by enormous gold fringed flags of his country, telling the assembled journalists and cameras what a triumph his visit had been. The cameras flashed their red lights, sending out their signals live around the world. Now everyone will know about the special friendship between our two countries, he said. Anyone who disagreed, like that dirty little loser on the TV last night, should just shut up peddling their fake news. I have met some Very Important People on this trip and they all loved me. And the ordinary people! Did you see the crowds? Amazing. And you know what? I have a big surprise for you – a very ordinary little person here who loves me and hates fake news! Yes, come on out, son! Yes it's the boy with the flag!

There was an audible delighted sigh even from this bunch of hardened hacks as the boy shyly appeared from the wings, with his little hand-made flag.

So you don't want anything to do with fake news, do you? No sir, the boy said almost inaudibly: my grandad said there's lots of fake news about climate change. Good on your grandad! Yes, sir, it's happening much faster than they let on. The visitor suddenly took a step back. He looked around the room. Kids eh? What do they know? So the flag, the flag. Tell me about the flag. You made this flag all by yourself, didn't you? Yes sir. It's beautiful, isn't it people? There was scattered clapping. The boy started to warm up: it was like the school concert. Only, he said, I couldn't do all the stars, I only did 32 because I ran out of space: it should have fifty! They all laughed. The boy liked the way he made them laugh. He started to smile. You did great, son. Isn't he cute? And to show you how good I think you are, I'm going to give you one of these wonderful flags at the back here to take home. What do you think of that? That's cool, Sir. I hope I can get it on the bus. More laughter. The boy was starting to love it now.

And you know the flag stands for freedom and truth don't you, boy? Do you know they call it the star spangled banner? Yes sir. And do you know the words of the Star Spangled Banner? The boy looked confused. Our national anthem? Your anthem sir? Yes! My anthem! The Very Important Person looked very pleased and gazed expansively around the assembled crowd. Impulsively he put his arms around one of the flags on the podium: My flag, my anthem! The boy watched him: he liked pleasing the visitor and the whole crowd. I know it sir, he said: do you want me to sing it? And he took a step forward and stood up straight, hands by his sides, just like at the Christmas concert, feeling very confident now, looking out at all the smiling faces. A flutter of anticipation swept around the room. In his high treble voice he sang out the words loud and clear: Super callous, fragile ego: Trump, you are atrocious!

consensus - part 3

This is the final part of a longer short story.
Read part 1 first!

I’ve been meeting up with Dave regularly recently. It’s been good. We’ve been working our way through the years since we were in power, looking at the Consensors’ view of history and how it differs from ours. Well, from mine anyway. Dave seems to have been almost won over.

He thinks we were so locked into conventional ways of thinking and acting that we couldn’t see the wood for the trees.

It was the kids growing up where the big changes happened. The ones who had lived all their lives with PCs in their bedrooms. l’m not sure how or when it started to hit home that they didn’t want things. They lived in their little cells and lived a virtual world and they had a social conscience to boot. They weren’t interested in things like national pride. Like conventional politics. Like fighting wars. They saw the world as one place for the first time in history. Their friends were as likely to be in China or Pakistan or New Zealand as round the corner in Upper Sydenham.

Suddenly the retail sector was failing. This huge demand for designer this and soap-star-endorsed that evaporated. The kids were in grunge — they wanted to dress like their mates in Karachi or Lagos. Suddenly, Versace and Nike and Macdonalds were evil as the kids learned about factory conditions in the third world and the destruction of rain forests to provide beef meat for burgers.

And they started listening to indy bands downloaded for free and — hey, what we were always complaining they never did — making their own entertainment. And developing their own ideas. l remember the shock when l, in my oh so elevated political position, was first in a live debate that was balanced by a ‘youth’ representative. And his line was unanswerable. I still remember his stare, the same keen bright-eyed stare of my consensus guides, as he said: The earth is not yours to use up — you are borrowing it from your children. Your generation doesn’t even begin to understand what a mess you’re leaving us — and we’re not going to take it any more! That was Jake Landry, who became one of the early leaders of the consensus movements of course. All I could do was nod weakly and say I agreed with him.

Dave put it this way to me: ‘There was a change around then. You know, on the telly. In the old days ‘balance‘ was between the likes of you and me and maybe some climate change denier. Suddenly, it was youth against age, the radical against the vanilla incrementalists. Suddenly we seemed like the deniers.’

At exactly the same time there was a series of scandals in the financial services sector that led to house price crashes and pension fund failures and a complete loss of confidence. People started putting their money into non profit credit unions and the old fashioned type of building society.

I met Dave again today, reminiscing about those times.

‘It still astonishes me how quickly it all happened,’ I said. ‘How a Europe that had been prosperous for more than a decade could suddenly go into freefall like that.’

‘We could have seen it coming if we’d chosen to, you know.’

‘Big name companies collapsing almost daily, unemployment...’

‘Well, the consensus generation loved it, didn’t they?,’ said Dave.

I had to agree. ‘It fitted with their theories. They were dancing on the grave of unfettered capitalism.’

‘And it was the first drop in carbon emission since the industrial revolution.’

‘Yes — the blackouts,’ I said.

‘The fighting I remember, and the desperate attempts to keep the hospitals running.’

‘And then the coming together.’

‘The wartime spirit? It was a bit like that, wasn’t it? In the end it did bring out the best in people, you know. Hard times — and the consensus.’

‘Do they talk to you a lot about the war we could have fought?’ Dave said when I met him again today.

‘All the time.’

‘Forget the second world war, the war against terror, the commodity wars. The War of the World was the real one we could have fought and won. That’s what we should have been fighting. The war to defend the planet, to save the millions. A war with a real moral imperative.’

‘We thought the Iraq war had a moral imperative at the time.’

‘Did we?’ Was there something of the consensus glint in his eye? The open stare? Or was it a hint of madness?

We both said nothing for the longest time.

I sighed. ‘That's the nub of the charges against me.’

“There are no charges, my friend,‘ he said.

‘OK, call them whatever you want. Except: they say You will come to your own realisation in time. I will realise that my crimes — failings, they prefer to call them? — were crimes of omission, crimes of distraction, fiddling while the world burned. lnaction when l should have put the country, Europe, the world on a war footing.’

We went quiet again. They don’t actually say this of course, they imply it — or do they? In my quiet moments, I think maybe I am coming to some sort of realisation. When I’m with them, I still defend my record — l still have the twentieth century politician DNA in my blood — but when I’m on my own, well, it makes me think.

‘Perhaps;’ I say tentatively… ‘perhaps we did ignore the bigger picture. Could we have put the world on a war footing and avoided all the horrors we have suffered?’

‘Are you asking me?’ He paused. Well, if you are asking me, I used to think like you that it would have been impossible. But would a Gandhi, a Mandela have found it impossible?’

‘I never claimed to be a Mandela, Dave.’

‘There’s not many of them about. But if you are asking me: it would have been possible, my friend; and we failed the world. The consensus is correct.’

So I said to them today: are you accusing me of crimes against humanity? Is that where this is all going? We are not accusing you of anything, Old Guard. Yawn! You think I should have done something more, or something different, and if I had, millions of lives would have been saved? They just stare for a minute and there’s a kind of glint in their eyes that says, Is this the breakthrough?

Is that what you think?, says one of them.

Suddenly I got angry. It‘s not like me, but... l jumped up and l banged on the screens, I would have hit them if they had been physically there, but of course it was futile. It was primitive. Animal. I don’t know where it came from. They just stared back impassively. I’ve told you: I’ve explained, I shouted. Explained, over and over. I was just doing what was possible. You think I could have done all that stuff, changed the world single-handed? Impossible!

Put the country on a war footing? Power rationing, controlling industrial production, building vast windfarms and wave machines, riding roughshod over planning processes, commandeering property, stopping people using their cars... social control? Taking us back to the second world war? You think I could have done that?

But isn’t that what happened anyway? Just in a much more chaotic, uncontrolled way?

Yes, but I would have been thrown out by my own party, never mind the electorate.

So the alternative was do nothing, and let the situation deteriorate as it did, and distract the people with the war on terror?

I laughed at them being direct for the first time, saying what they think, giving me something to argue against. I looked around the screens to see which of them was speaking. I saw Dave‘s face there. He gave that wry little smile of his. As if to say, They’re right, old chap.

Suddenly the rage evaporated. Have they got you too, Dave?

It’s not a question of getting, my friend, it’s a realisation. We were wrong at the time and they were right and the consensus has prevailed.

l’ve been having some more one-to-ones with Dave. He has totally gone over. The thing is, oh yes I have always had a stubborn streak, l find myself arguing still, always the same issues over and over, but less and less sure of my opinion inside. I have always respected Dave.

Well, this will be my last entry. I see now that I can still make a good if small contribution to the consensus. l have come a long way since the early days of denial and anger. I look back at the me that didn’t understand even after all those years the reality of our world now: still fighting the battles of the twentieth century. l confess to that. Still the twentieth century. Self important, politician.

I can see how I could have done more, working with the Consensus in the early days. I can see now that it could have made a real difference. It could have saved many lives; many millions maybe. Certainly the world has been greatly impoverished as a result of my action and inaction. I know we don’t talk about guilt and we don’t apologise for the past — but I’m an old man. Still Old Guard enough to feel like a criminal, a criminal against this good earth and a criminal against humanity. I never imagined when I set out on my political career, so many years ago, that I would end it being seen as one of history’s worst criminals. Not to others: to myself. Sure, I accept that I was not guilty of deliberately undertaking evil acts. I felt I was acting in the best interests of the world at all times. Most times. But then I suppose all those guilty of crimes against humanity think that.

I haven’t written anything for months because I have been making efforts to persuade some of my colleagues, some of the diehards from the old regime, the old democrats, to lead them on the journey I have been on recently. To understand their errors. Democracy failed, and I was almost too late to see that. You can teach an Old Guard new tricks, eventually, so: whoever reads this, I commend you for your actions and encourage you to keep at it.

My old colleague Dave and l have spent a lot of time recently talking about how we can make some contribution, however small, to the consensus. We believe we know the mind of the consensus now. There is something to be said for redemption, and even today when the collective will is so strong, the idea that redeeming your own personal error still registers.

We have been looking into the resolution of the Dungeness E disaster. Even after all these years and many attempts to solve the problem of leaking radiation, including use of ingeniously designed robots, the radiation leak has not been shut off. We have been told that only human action can close off the leak. Unfortunately, this means entering the central chamber, and only a few seconds exposure is lethal. The consensus is that Dave and I should undertake this task, and we are very happy to do so.

The area around Dungeness will still be uninhabltable for generations, but I hope that today when we go in we can solve the problem and make that a few generations, not hundreds. What Dave and I will do is just a small gesture by two old men near the end of their lives. l hope we can solve what is a problem ultimately of our making. It’s not deserving of thanks, but it may serve as an inspiration to some of my old colleagues.

Well, here I am sounding like an old politician again: please indulge an old man this one last time. Thank you all for rescuing me from my pit of self indulgence and giving me the chance for a short time to join the consensus.

Yours ever,

Tony

consensus - part 2

Read Part 1 first!

I've been thinking about the history of the last thirty years and how the Consensus emerged. They’ve been encouraging me to write about it, to look at how it has developed. Sometimes it feels like I‘m back at uni in here. It’s not government and it’s not democracy. It’s politics by lowest common denominator in my book. I'm beginning to see that, well, it has its points. Democracy always was flawed. Always was the art of the possible. I see that now. When l went into public service I really thought I was a force for good. I was a force for good, dammit. Hold on to that thought. I had a clear vision. Able to — well, yes, take the consensus, take the common sense approach, see what people really wanted and cut through the crap. And make a real contribution to public life. It wasn’t for personal gain. I just got a buzz from it, you know. I guess all politicians have that in their blood. I saw myself as a breath of fresh air. A force for change. God, I sound like an election advert — a bad one at that.

When it all started to go wrong, was when I lost the common touch, perhaps. I see that now. Stopped listening. Believed too much that I knew the answers, perhaps. Began to think I knew better.

The wars. The bloody wars. That’s where I went wrong. One of them quoted George Bush at me the other day. He said something like This will be the first war of the twenty-first century. Afghanistan, that is. Why were you in that mindset that there must always be wars — conventional wars, peoples against peoples, that is? I told them my heart had sunk when George came up with that. I was all for no wars. We had a chance at the beginning of the new millennium to make that our goal.

But this was a new kind of war. The war against terrorism. I got caught up in all that. It just seemed right, something we had to do, we couldn’t just sit back... A crusade, they said. I told them my heart sank when George called it that, too. Wasn’t that all an illusion?, they said. Just national interest when it came down to it. Or the first of the Commodity Wars — and in fact those are just national interest wars too. No, no, I said you’ve got it all wrong. But...

You see, I get defensive when they interrogate me but I’ve been thinking a lot about this recently. They keep hammering away at this. l was fighting these old wars, these blood and gristle, national wars; and yes, Iraq was the first of the commodity wars, it turns out. Fighting people for the oil and the water and the food; for the decent land and the raw materials. That’s where it all went rapidly downhill from there on. It's easier to see that now - it wasn’t at all easy to see it then.

And that’s the time when the Consensors emerged and their wikinomics and their co-operatives and their barter economy and their bloody wanky social networking... Well that’s how it felt at the time. Irrelevant to the big picture it seemed. Just a sideshow. How could I have known where we were headed? I never got into all that computer stuff. I didn’t really understand the significance of what was happening.

Irrelevant to mainstream business and mainstream politics, despite all the media hype. That’s how it all seemed to me then. But slowly they were chipping away, building this new politics, or this new Consensus. We didn’t call them that then of course. Neo-hippies, we called them then. l think it was Dave that came up with that one.

Democracy is dead, they said. Look at democracy as it operates today, they said. This is something I do know about — the emergence of modern democracy. The Chartists, the Luddites, all that.

It’s a proud tradition. They agree with me. Democracy was a necessary step. A step to what, I say. To consensus. Of course. People fought and died for democracy and I’m proud of them. We’re proud of them too. And of those that died for Consensus.

When modern democracy emerged in the early 1900s, it was to fight the excesses of the rich: wilful exploitation by absolute monarchs and dictators; it was to put power in the hands of ordinary people. Revolutions across Europe, and we even got close to it in Britain. It was to fight corruption.

But look what happened, they say. It’s true. Slowly the rich and powerful clawed it all back, will always claw it back. So you had a nation’s richest business men forming parties, taking over control of the media, forcing the country to their will. Russia, Italy, Thailand — even the US in many ways. Even Britain: I admit it.

In the third world it was even worse. After the rush of imperial powers to get out in the fifties and sixties the tribal leaders and the colonial satraps were shepherded in to run the spanking new countries, and no-one else ever got a chance even to get started. At the dissolution of the soviet empire we saw almost exactly the same thing.

I understood all that. l was a student of all that once.

But I thought democracy could shine through. I thought, especially when l was leading Europe, that we could make true democracy happen. Sometimes I felt that the UK and Germany, Holland and the Nordics were the last bastions. And how successful were you?, they ask. It‘s rhetorical, of course. Because not successful at all. If anything, the rich and powerful were more and more able to pull the strings; they got richer and richer and the poor got poorer.

So this is their theory. The consensors emerged because democracy failed and would always fail, in their view. They saw that the wars we were fighting thirty, twenty years ago, the national wars, the commodity wars, were a diversion, opium for the people to distract from what was happening at home. And the rich, ever more cunning and clever, used every means at their disposal to distract people from reality.

So why didn’t I make the leap when the Consensors emerged? Well, I’m really not up for that vast conspiracy theory view of history. That way lies all the failed isms of our recent past: communism, fascism, you name it. That way lies madness. It never was a conspiracy: just a series of cock-ups.

And because it all seemed irrelevant then, and l was too busy to notice what was happening. Too old maybe. I did try to reform politics. The old left and right no longer holds, I used to say: I was always banging on about that. That was my whole platform in Europe. But the big leap was getting rid of leadership, management, power, they say. Power corrupts, leads to distortions, poor decision making. Short termism.

Maybe it does. Sometimes lately I feel too tired to argue.

I looked at the official version of history — the Consensus version - or whatever it reads today. Because, like in soviet times, it’s constantly being rewritten.

I noticed a change in the description of my time in Europe, when I looked this up today. When I pointed this out, they said, But that is the whole point, Old Guard. History is consensus. Apparently, it will be rewritten as more information comes to light and as considered judgments are made across all those with an interest. I realised some of the changes in the Europe entry came directly from the conversations we have been having. But when I think about it, maybe they’re not so wrong: history has always been a bit like that. I think it was Napoleon who said: History is the version of events that people have decided to agree upon.

So perhaps they’re right.

Today the subject was growth, or lack of it. Why were we so obsessed with growth? I think sometimes they genuinely want to learn. I expect what I say will all fetch up in their wiki-history tomorrow. I’ve been reading their version of events on the business front and it could do with a few rewrites.

Why were businesses run like fascist dictatorships?, they asked. Tell us, we want to know how you rationalised that. And you know, the thing is, I’m not sure now. l remember we talked a lot about corporate governance, social responsibility, all that. But did we do anything? Enron, the bank collapses, the commodity market scandals. l read an interesting article about this the other day. Once upon a time — not that long ago really — companies were run, yes OK, they were run for profit — but they knew about producing something, too. They were run, often by generations of the same family who understood steel making or jam making or whatever it was, the ins and outs of it, and they took pride in what they did. They expected the business to go on for generations: they had long term plans. Somehow this all got lost and companies were only interested in short term profits and more profits and more esoteric ways of making profits. Shareholder value was all. Gambling on commodity futures; asset stripping; financial vehicles that became more and more complicated, a house of cards that we suddenly discovered would fall at the slightest knock. How did that happen? Could we have stopped it?

I saw Dave again today. He was in the centre when we went for lunch again. One of my ‘guides' was there with him. They came over and sat with me as I tucked into my delicious eco-neutral protein pack.

Dave seems to have calmed down. He was definitely on the edge before but a lot calmer now. We were chatting away like old times. But he’s changed a lot. It was he that coined the neo-Hippy tag for the Consensors. Yet now he’s starting to talk like them. The guide looked as pleased as punch. It was funny to see the guide in the flesh rather than on the teiescreens.

I mentioned how I’d been thinking lately about what happened to capitalism. He agreed with me about losing touch with real business.

‘When did the captains of industry lose touch with doing what they were good at and turn their companies into money making machines to turn short term profit? It was when they embraced business fascism,’ said Dave. ‘That‘s what I call it now. We could have done so much more at the time. Top down management was the only model. And growth.’

‘Growth? You had to have growth,’ I said.

‘Why? Why did businesses have to get bigger and bigger? Why couldn’t they just produce what they were good at, year after year, and be content with that? Why were we locked into this model where every fat company had to get fatter, so it had to create demand, so people had to be persuaded to always want more?’

‘lt was the way it was all organised,’ I said. ‘You know that better than anyone. You were right in the thick of it. Companies borrowed to expand; then to pay off the loans they, well they had to expand more.’

‘But why? Why did it take the Consensus to see through that, that, that m-mirage?’

Was it a mirage? I thought about it and we were silent for a while.

Then my guide perked up. You have always said that you were driven by a desire to fight the Carbon Explosion: couldn’t you see that the obsession with growth was its major cause?

Dave blurted out loudly so people around turned to look: ‘Yes, wasn‘t it blindingly obvious?’

I looked at him. ‘You tell me Dave, your friends were part of it.’

‘Yes, I was part of it and it was blindingly obvious, even at the time, but...’

But what? The guide coaxed it out of him.

‘We felt there wasn’t a thing we could do about it.’

‘Exactly. Out of office in an instant.’

But I’ve been sitting here since I got back from the centre pondering that. In the end, the Consensors did a thing about it. Did lots of things. If we’d joined them, how much quicker would things have been resolved or at least improved? How many lives would have been saved? My family’s, even?

consensus - part 1

This is the first of three parts of a longer short story - about 6000 words - that I wrote some time ago and have revised.  It was originally meant to be the final part of a series of episodes that together told a speculative fiction narrative.  When I did the challenge, I wrote influenca, which is something like I imagined the first part of that narrative would be.  new consensus is also on a related theme

I like my interrogators. No, really, I do. Admire them actually. They’re pretty focused guys, you know. I always liked that in people. No messing about. Not that I’m supposed to call them interrogators, of course. The Consensors wouldn’t like that.

Sometimes it feels like the confessional, actually. More than like a criminal confession. l think, behind all the pseudo-psychological mumbo jumbo they are trying to make me admit they were crimes, but it’s not working: I still feel that l was acting in the best interests at the time. l try to get that over but they’re having none of it. Politely, firmly, but no. Well that’s the young for you. They lack perspective. They can’t see what it was like then. No-one really foresaw what would happen 30 years ago — or if they did they were voices in the wilderness. I wish I’d had a crystal ball — of course the fact is I didn’t and politics is — was — all about the art of the possible. They keep banging on about short termism — the bigger picture. I always played to my strengths when l was in power. I tell them I always talked about the bigger picture. Not big enough, they say. And maybe they’re right. But if I’d followed some of the whackier ideas out there then, I’d have been out of office in no time.

It would have meant putting the country on a war footing —strict control of production, commandeering property, rationing even, just like the Second World War. For what? An idea about climate change? A theory? And even the worst predictions then were nothing like the reality since. Even if I thought of taking it that far, no-one in the party would have gone along with it. Never mind the press. And the voters would have laughed me out of office. But my charming young questioners can’t see it. They just can’t.

They dig up some speech or some scribblings from some obscure guy at the time, someone I’ve never heard of, and say Why weren’t you listening? But the climate was just so much different then. Climate! Ha, that’s funny! I did bang on about climate change. I was the first to make a difference, I tell them. They say I just made noises. No, there were real changes, I say. Gestures, they say. They can’t see it.

They call me ‘Old Guard’. l have to laugh at that. That makes you the New Guards I say to them. We are not guarding you, they say, we are guiding you. Sometimes they can be quite humouriess. They’re not good with jokes. Guiding me to what? Enlightenment? A better understanding? To an understanding of history, they say; to an understanding of reality; the need for sacrifice. I get uneasy when they talk about sacrifice — and the intense look they give me when they say it. It’s like a re-education then, I say. Like the bloody cultural revolution.

Still, it could be worse. They're not the Red Guards; not the Taliban. Not even like our own interrogators in the old day, from what I hear. But you could be worn down by this more subtle approach They seem to have all the time in the world. But I'm not letting it get to me.

I wonder how Dave is bearing up.

It’s like a War, they say. And the thing is, they cast me as the Appeaser. Me. The Neville Chamberlain of the 21st century. The War of the World. I wonder who thought that one up?

They don’t let the mask drop much. It’s clear that they are angry though. They try to control it but I can tell. It’s got worse recently. I suppose they thought they would have broken me down by now. Every day, seven days a week, the ‘guides’ appear on the telescreens. (They hate that term, reminds them of 1984, so I keep winding them up with it.) I do give this to the Consensors: they really can tow the party line. Whoever is on the screen that day, they always manage to follow the same line. That’s what their philosophy is all about, I suppose. l wish I’d been able to control my Cabinet like that.

They are quite well educated in a wiki sort of way. Whenever I drop in a reference they can be relied on to understand it, within a short time anyway. I suppose there are many others researching behind my interrogators, feeding them information. Given that none of them is over say 28, all too young to remember my time in office, they know, or can access, a lot about it. But they must have been well briefed, or be history specialists. Funny to think of my life now as ancient history, but that is what it is.

The trouble with the young is that they can be condescending without realising it — and it makes me feel so old sometimes. Hell, I am old. And they start in about sacrifice again. Without saying it, they imply that my life is over, what’s to lose?

And when they finish for the day I sit here and think: yes, what else is there for me? I miss the family of course. At the end of the day they were more than anything to me. Despite appearances some times, and the hundred hour weeks, and the weeks I didn’t see them at all, I did it all for them. Or I thought I did. But now I think, why was I so driven? Why was I so certain I had to do that? And was it worth it? Why did I seek public service? Sometimes I think to myself, maybe I did it for me. To prove myself. Or to set my place in history? Well l fucked that one up, didn’t I? But then, I know I was never the do-the-minimum kind of guy. l would never have managed a nine to five and get back home to play with the kids sort of life. But it was a sacrifice.

So I say to them, I’ve already sacrificed a lot. And they say, life involves sacrifice — and we can always sacrifice more.

There's been a hurricane the last few days and even in here you’re aware of it. I think it’s been bad again but they don’t tell you much. A few of the regulars on the telescreens and in the centre were missing and the food has been a bit limited. I think their hydroponics station was damaged. When there’s a hurricane, though, it always gets me down and I start to feel guilty again. The ‘guides’ have been playing on this lately. They keep making me go over those horrible days when the first hurricane hit Britain.

Today I actually broke down for the first time. Thinking about my dear wife and the kids of course. If I’d taken them with me when I went to the Brussels conference... O, you know, all the questions I’ve asked a million times, all the scenarios we played out. What if they’d stayed in town, what if they‘d left an hour later and had to turn back. What if I‘d called them and told them to stay in the basement? But they wouldn’t have survived the radiation even then? What if we hadn’t rushed the building of new energy sources? What if I’d checked the designs were hurricane proof? But they were: the inquiry said so, it was just a flaw in the structure. And I couldn’t check everything. What did I know about designing nuclear power stations? What if, what if, what if...? My head knows I’m not to blame, but my heart ...?

There’s a particularly persistent ‘guide’ that keeps rubbing at this sore on my conscience. American accent. She seems more intense and harsh than the rest. She tries to use the death of my family that terrible day — that’s what I can't stand. Yes, I understand what it’s like to have tragedy. Yes, my family died because of mistakes made but I didn’t make it happen. I am not the guilty party. But deep down, yes, I do feel guilty — and she knows it. And that’s why I broke down. Reap the whirlwind. Didn’t you reap the whirlwind?

And then she widens it. Yes, millions of families have had tragedy in their lives and yes, much of it was to do with global warming — and l don’t blame myself for them — it‘s not something that I alone could have stopped. Yes, 50,000 maybe were affected by the Dungeness E disaster, half of Kent abandoned. But no, I'm not going to accept it’s down to me. Not even this. Not even the loss of my own family.

O and there’s been a lot of talk about redemption lately too. Almost more than about sacrifice. Where are they going with all this? What’s the point?

I sometimes get a glimpse of some of the others when I go to the centre. Finally, I caught sight of Dave. They brought us both in at the same time. Poor old chap’s gone a bit doolally. He always was a bit highly strung but he wouldn‘t be strong against this intense buffeting by the ‘guides'. I was able to sit with him in the centre at lunchtime but he hardly spoke — he wouldn’t even look me in the eye.

I still can’t get over this thing where we all sit down together, the guards/guides and the inmates/whatever we are called. (I asked them: if it’s not inmate, what do you call my ‘role’? And they said, You don’t have a role, you’re just one of us. One of us! Could l do the interrogations then?, I said. They are not interrogations, they said, for the umpteenth time — they are ‘exploratories’ and of course you can ask the questions too. That’s what it’s all about. Exploring your attitudes, and the more you question yourself the better. It’s like trying to argue with jelly.

The interrogation - I’m not supposed to call it that - the ‘guiding’, is it? Anyway, whatever it is, it seems to be turning a bit more aggressive. I must admit the last few days I have been getting a bit shrill. When I’m in the ‘guiding’ room I somehow feel all those eyes boring down on me. I wonder how many tune in to see Old Guard have his wizened old face rubbed in it? Perhaps they have been influencing the questioning. Well, they have of course; that’s how it works now. Sometimes I feel quite intimidated by knowing so many are out there watching this, layer after layer behind the faces of my ‘guides’ that I actually see.

Sometimes I am glad to be able to show them how l feel — maybe that‘s why I am getting a bit more argumentative, to show them, get my message over. I was always good at that, and somehow I think I can maybe influence the Consensors. Persuade. Just like I used to do in the old days. I guess Saddam felt a bit like that — or Pinochet — or Eichmann. Not that l — yesterday I stupidly said something about Saddam. Are you comparing yourself to him?, they said. How dare you? He was a monster, I said. They just gave me those stares again. They do: they really think l’m a monster, and they want me to admit it.

What do you think of consensus?, they asked me this morning. Well it’s how I always operated when l was in power, I said. They laughed at this. Which is rare. How can you be in power and operate a consensus? You are controlling things by definition when you are in power. Well, but consensus was different in those days. We didn't have this technology. I would take the consensus view, of the Cabinet, the party, of the whole electorate via general elections sometimes and… And then do whatever you wanted. It was the American woman again. l thought that was a bit out of line from their normal indirect approach and I notice she wasn't on screen this afternoon. Isn’t that the whole point of the old outmoded ideas of leadership and management and power?, she went on. We’ll have to agree to differ on that one, I said. There is no differing now — that’s the wonderful thing about consensus, she said, with the shining eyes of a fanatic. Then we’ll have to come to a consensus to differ, I said. One or two of her colleagues almost smiled.

Don’t they realise there will always be those that lead the way and those that follow? The original thinkers who have the ideas will always be around. That’s why we called them the Consensors when this whole system emerged. There are always leaders, sometimes despots, sometimes — I hope most times — benevolent. They hate that term Consensors by the way. It implies there are hidden individuals manipulating their nice new system. There is only The Consensus now, they say. A true consensus reached by voting, and that everyone then benevolently falls in line with. If only.