Moral Zero (33 page)

             
There never was, Jonathan. Hope is a fiction. You know that.

             
The fantasy is everything, he mumbled.

             
The warder laughed like a hound. Not for long, he said. I promise you that.

Jonathan looked back at the ground and his body ac
hed and shook. He felt so weak.

What is my crime?
he said at last.

Think
, Jonathan.

Jonathan remembered, and felt a fierce well of pride and anger suddenly surge up in him. He threw down his rags. He struggled with himself but finally managed to push the sense of injustice back
down. Then he looked at the floor. Is – is she okay?

She is in the Insti
tute. Do you know what that is?

Jonathan did. He was remembering more and more of this life. It was called the Institutional Clinic for the Treatment
, Re-Integration and Re-Education of Victims of Sexual Corruption, and it was based in London State City. Most people knew it just as the Institute. The girl he had sex with would likely be in it for life. Systematically stripped of all ounce of deviance, anything considered not moral and decent, anything felt unfitting for a loyal citizen of the Great London State. If she was ever set free she would be a sexless doll, a monogamous blank, brainwashed and bovine and even re-virginised, an artificial hymen implanted and further chemical implants disabling a high level production of hormones. She would be lucky if she ever managed to do more than chastely kiss another person again. She would marry a gentleman she felt nothing towards and be artificially impregnated by the Great London State.

The anger bubbled up again in him, and a
little seeped out his mouth.  I did nothing! he cried. She was innocent!

Those two statement
s hardly go together, Jonathan. Was she not underage?

She was eighteen! She was old enough to know everythi
ng and she consented to it all!

And yet you had no
written proof of this consent! The warder gave a feral grin. Apart from the completely suspect consent – I am familiar with your case and I do believe the judge ruled against it, given that no self-respecting maiden would have consented to your acts, and the girl came from a
very
good family – apart from this, already enough to land you in court, I needn’t remind you, Jonathan, that the age of consent in the Great London State is twenty-one. Far too young, if you ask me. I can assume that most of your senses and memory have returned to you by now, so neither do I need to remind you that sex out of wedlock is also illegal.

He looked once more at his clipboard and rifled through a
couple of pages. Then, on top of those already severe crimes, you committed the
bestial
and
filthy
, the warder spat these two words out like they were poison, acts of the most depraved sodomy on this poor girl.

He raised his hand and pointed his finger, as if he was the judge himself and the tria
l had not been over years ago. You were charged with level fourteen corruption of a minor, level three statutory rape, sexual intercourse out of wedlock, level forty-two sodomy of a minor, six counts of obscenity against moral decency, and three more counts of crimes against the State. And you were
found guilty on every count!
Jonathan White!
Did you think you wouldn’t be found out, that you could
hide
your perversions? You people make me
sick
! The warder hocked a spray of spit at him, and then backed up, slowly cooling off and returning to his cold, stony visage.

Alright! Jonathan yelled.
I’m to blame, it’s all me! Call me a pervert and a sinner and a wicked, evil man. But leave her alone!

The warder’s eyes felt like shards of ice as they bo
red into him. She was corrupted, Jonathan. She has to be restored. We undo the damage
perverts
and
paedophiles
like you do to their victims.

She wasn’t a victim. I’m not a paed
ophile and she wasn’t a victim. Jonathan gave up and sank his head to the floor, his voice left mumbling things that couldn’t be heard.

The bald, hook-nosed warder looked at him without an ounce of pity or mercy. He looked at Jonathan like one might look at a sewer rat.
Then he made a gesture and the two guards approached Jonathan with batons raised in their hands. They hit out at him and he yelped like a cub and curled into a ball. They rained down blows on him, bruising through his skin and eventually cracking bones.

May you never find peace.
These were the last words he would ever hear, but whether they were those of the warder or the guards, his own inner voice, or even the voice of some overseeing deity with a stake in his eternal torment, he did not know.

May you never find peace.

Eventually the guards ceased their brutality, grabbing Jonathan White and pulling him by his battered, dangling arms. The warder opened the prison door and they dragged him out down a corridor. A dim light at the far end was steadily getting closer and closer. It hung above a chair set against the wall.

Jonathan White’s eyes were nearly bloodied shut and only saw the stone blocks of the floor, but he knew where he was going. As he drifted numbly on, as if carried by angels and flying on a blanket of ice and pain, he wondered to himself if there were worse things out there than him.