Devolution

Inside Joshua’s Monaro, Veena immediately ordered on the display screens and asked for webnews.

‘There is a screen in the back there, isn’t there Ted?’

‘Yeah.’

Joshua initiated the auto start sequence and waited, his eyes fixed on the monitor. Lately every time any of them watched the webnews it was with a sense of dark foreboding. The algae of disinformation was slowly turning the fishtank of their world opaque green.

‘- and friends of Senator 15,’ said the news reader, ‘have strongly denied the suggestion, claiming this as an outrageous lie spread by his enemies to damage his reputation and throw investigators off their own track.’

‘What suggestion?’ asked 3 of the monitor.

Veena answered, ‘They say that someone has claimed that your dad poisoned himself. They’re calling it suicide.’

‘What!’ said 3 and Joshua, simultaneously.

‘That’s bullshit!’ added 3 as the back of his fist slammed into the side of the door.

‘They’re saying,’ continued Veena, ‘that your dad killed himself in such a way as to make it seem like he had been poisoned.’

‘Who are they? Who is saying that?’

‘Webnews reports it as being from an unidentified but reliable source.’

‘Lies,’ said Joshua as his seat belt locked into place and the Monaro rolled out into the flow of traffic under autodrive. ‘Lies spread by your dad’s enemies, Ted, that’s all they are. Lies.’

‘Damn right,’ said 3, ‘but there are plenty of people who will believe it. People who want to believe it. People who think the word of unidentified sources is gospel truth. People who hated my father and who always thought the worst of him anyway will seize on this as proof that he was a man without scruples. A man who would do anything to achieve the results he was seeking.’

‘It’s not true and we know it,’ said Veena, ‘and everyone who really knew your father won’t accept these false accusations.’

3 stared out the window of the Monaro as it hummed along the Eastern Freeway into the city center. His headache had returned with a vengeance now, stabbing his right temple repeatedly like a crazed knife attack. On top of losing his dad, now his reputation and the good name of his family which he had worked hard on all his life was being destroyed by people who did not even know him. There was no way it was true that his father had killed himself. 3 remembered well the lecture he received after one of his father’s colleges had committed suicide, and he remembered well how angry his father had been at the selfishness of the act. A weak man’s way out, was what he called it. As the agony of the migraine tore at his skull, 3 lifted his hand and pressed it hard against his temple.

‘Your headache getting worse, is it Ted?’ asked Veena watching him in the rear view mirror.

‘Do you want to bail?’ asked Joshua, ‘I can drop you home instead if you want.’

‘No keep going. Journalists and sightseers will be swarming around my place again after this latest piece of information. True or not, what do they care?’

Veena nodded silent agreement as Joshua looked across at her. The latter disengaged the autodrive and called up the satellite navigation for the best route to one of the outer ring parking stations.

‘The Eastern Gate is closest to the meeting point so we’ll park there and catch the shuttle,’ said Joshua.

‘How did you meet this bloke?’ said 3 wanting to change the subject albeit to a closely linked one.

‘Jeremiah gave me his number before he ran off last time?’

Veena ordered off the monitors and turned to watch Joshua negotiate the traffic under the direction of satellite navigation. ‘Did he ever tell you the full story, Josh?’

‘I don’t think he wanted to even if we had time to discuss it all. It seemed as though he wanted to protect me by giving me as little information as possible, as necessary. Whatever he was involved in was very serious and obviously he was right to doubt the possibility of evading these people indefinitely.’

‘So you’re gonna volunteer for the Carrier force to avenge him, to help him or what?’

Joshua needed to think about the question. It was out of a sense of hopelessness really that he had decided to join the ICF in one of their risky operations. Jeremiah’s misfortune, if that’s what it could be called, followed by the deaths, in suspicious circumstances of the fathers of his two best friends, were literally the straws that broke his back.

‘I have plenty of good reasons to want to do something active for the good of our world, and I definitely believe God is calling me into the action.’

‘So it’s God’s fault?’ Deliberate antagonism from Veena.

‘Don’t be stupid! It’s not God’s fault. I didn’t say that. God calls me to do something and I do it because that’s what being a follower is all about. It’s no good blaming God for anything, that’s just childish thinking. Foolishness! Do you think of God as a puppet master?’

‘Calm down, Josh,’ interjected 3.

‘I’m sorry Josh,’ said Veena. ‘I respect your faith. I do, I even admire it sometimes. I wasn’t trying to be smart or put you down or anything, it’s just that I...’

‘Just that you care, I know,’ said Joshua finishing her sentence. ‘I’m sorry too Veena, I’m feeling nervous I guess.’

‘I’m not surprised.’

‘And a little afraid?’ asked 3.

‘Yeah, I guess so. How about you?’

‘Yeah.’

Joshua stopped his vehicle on the yellow line at the boom gated entry to the parking station and waited for the three beeps from the parking auto-attendant to confirm they were allowed to park and to log them in.

‘Good thing you remembered to renew your parking authority Josh,’ said Veena.

‘I was told by someone that the government was planning to ease the parking restrictions and build some more stations to encourage people to continue using the city as an entertainment as well as a business district.’

‘I wonder if they’ll go ahead with that now?’ asked Veena.

The doors opened as Joshua slid gently into the first available parking place, and 3 was the first out. ‘Dad said it was pretty close to a done deal,’ he said.

Joshua and Veena got out together. ‘I’d say there’s no such thing as a done deal anymore,’ said Veena.

‘Not in this political climate,’ said Joshua stepping away from the Monaro and pressing the park button on the concrete column beside it.

Wheel clamps extended up from the floor, followed by a clicking sound and four beeps. The floor rose, lifting the transport easily into the air before stopping parallel with another vehicle suspended on the first level. After another four beeps the transport was carefully moved to the side into the position simultaneously vacated by the other vehicles. Two quick beeps signified the Monaro was parked, and the time and position were briefly displayed on a small monitor in the pillar before being printed out and ejected into the empty slot at the bottom of the meter.

‘Good system, huh?’ said Joshua, more to himself than anyone else.

As he and Veena walked to the exit with 3 floating noiselessly along beside them, Veena stayed out of the conversation which had ventured into abstract mathematical problems, and considered her position. If her two best friends were going to become carriers what was she going to do? Stay and pretend that life goes on, and just continue to try to live a normal life, whatever that was exactly. Even before the final examination at school, Veena knew what was going on although none of the three had dared allude to the fact. It was logical for her to join them. They had always done everything together and there seemed no reason now for that to change, even though she did not really agree with the philosophy of the Carriers.

‘You’re awful quiet there, Veena.’

‘Mathematics has always bored me.’

’That’s ‘cause you’re no good at it,’ said Joshua.

‘That’s right,’ she said, not bothering to deny the statement.

‘Anything on your mind?’ asked 3.

The elevator door slid open. After they moved inside, the door closed behind them. Joshua asked for shuttle link 4 and the elevator dropped immediately.

‘I’m coming with you,’ said Veena.

This time Joshua and 3 swapped puzzled looks as the elevator reached level 4 and they exited through the open doors into a large subterranean transit lounge. Being mid afternoon there were few people around. The odd person sitting here and there, a couple of vagrants drinking from brightly colored bottles, and four transit police stationed around the lounge, casually talking among themselves while casting an eye over all the comings and goings of shuttle link 4. Their attention was quickly drawn to the inter-tribal trio of Joshua, Veena and 3 as they made their way to a vacant bench at the far end of the terminal.

‘It’s quiet,’ said Veena stating the obvious merely to fill the pause in conversation.

‘Too early for the workers exit or the carousers’ entry.’

’Are those transit police staring at us?” asked Veena.

‘That’s their job,’ said Joshua.

‘Not exactly,’ added 3. ‘They’re supposed to keep an eye on things not stare at people.’

‘Whatever,’ said Joshua slightly irritated by the tone of paranoia in his friend’s comments. ‘Just ignore them. If we do nothing wrong, which we aren’t planning to do then we have nothing to fear from them, they are there to protect us.’

‘The shuttle is due in five minutes,’ said Veena reading off the VDU.

‘Do you think,’ began Joshua, allowing a smile to creep across his face, ‘that you can control your panic for that long?’

‘Maybe,’ said Veena. Then the three of them began to laugh as though a blanket of increasing tension had been suddenly pulled off them.