Transition (11 page)

Marit Shauoon was a populist politician in the Perón mould, and, like the others, I had been reliably informed that he would,
if left alone, take the world to a Very Bad Place, in his case starting with South and Central America. (As if any of this
really mattered to me. Craft, my trade, was all. I let those who handed me my orders worry about the morality of it.) He had
been a motorcycle stunt rider, the most famous in Brazil and then in the world. He crashed a lot but that just added to the
excitement, anticipation and sense of jeopardy in the crowd. All four of his major limbs were pinned and strengthened with
extensive amounts of surgical steel and even without those there were enough metal implants in the rest of his body to set
off airport security scanners while he was still walking stiffly from the car park.

I found an induction furnace for him. He heated up, quite slowly, from the inside, to the sound of vastly thrumming magnets
all around him, and his own screams.

… What? Why, why, and why? I would have had no idea if I had not been told, and even once I was told frankly I still didn’t
care. (I am mildly surprised I recall any of the reasons given below at all.)

So: Yerge would have started a political party to rid the USA of non-Aryans, bringing chaos and apocalyptic bloodshed. Max
would have given all his hundreds of millions in royalties to an extremist Green movement who – taking an arguably rather drastic
approach to harmonising the planet’s natural carrying capacity with the size of its human population – would have used the windfall
to design, manufacture, weaponise and distribute a virus that would kill ninety per cent of humanity. And Marit would have
used his vast communications network to… I can’t remember; broadcast pornography to Andromeda or something. As I say, it didn’t
really matter. I had by then entirely stopped enquiring why I might be committing such terminally grievous acts. All I cared
about was the artistry and elegance involved in the doing, the carrying out, the commission.

The execution.

The Philosopher

Screams. Too many screams. They have kept me awake at night, woken me from dreams and nightmares.

I do not enjoy what I do, though I am not ashamed of it, and it would not be an exaggeration to say that I am proud of it. It is something that has to be done, and somebody has to do it. It is because I do not enjoy it that I am good at it. I have seen the work of those who do enjoy our mutual calling, and they do not produce the best results. They get carried away, they indulge themselves rather than stick to the task in hand, which is to produce the results which are desired and to recognise them when they are produced. Instead, they try too hard, and fail.

I torture people. I am a torturer. But I do no more than I am told to do and I would rather that the people I torture told the truth, or revealed the information that they carry and which we need to know, as quickly as possible, both to spare themselves and to spare me the unpleasantness of the task because, as I say, I take no pleasure in what I have to do. Nevertheless, I do all that I am asked to do, and will always work long hours and take on extra duties if required. This is conscientiousness, and a sort of mercy because at least when I do it only the minimum is done. I have had colleagues – the ones mentioned above who enjoy what we do – who have been impatient to cause the maximum amount of pain and damage. They are, in the end, inefficient.

The clever ones pretend not to be psychotic and only indulge themselves rarely, opting for routine efficiency for the majority of the time. They’re the dangerous ones.

My favoured techniques are electricity, repeated near-suffocation and, hard though this may be to believe, simply talking. The electricity is the crudest, in a sense. We use a variable step resistor attached to the mains and a variety of common-or-garden car jump leads. Sometimes some water or conducting gel. The crocodile clips on the end of the jump leads hurt quite a bit without any current flowing through them. The ears are good sites, and fingers and toes. The genitals, obviously. The nose or tongue with the other terminal inserted into the anus is a favourite with some of my colleagues, though I dislike the resultant messiness.

Repeated near-suffocation involves gaffer-taping the subject’s mouth and then using a second small piece of tape to close
the nostrils, removing it just before or just after the onset of unconsciousness. This is a useful technique for low-level
subjects and for those who must be returned to some other department or security agency, or even to normal life, without any
signs of injury.

Talking involves telling the subject what will happen to them if they do not cooperate. It is best done in a perfectly dark
room, talking quietly and matter-of-factly from somewhere behind the chair they are secured to. First I describe what will
happen to them anyway, even if they tell us everything, because there is a certain minimum, a kind of call-out fee level of
torment that we have to inflict once people have been referred to us. This is to maintain our reputation and the sense of
dread that must be associated with us. Fear of being tortured can be a highly effective technique for maintaining law and
order in a society and I believe that we would be in dereliction of our duty if we did not do our bit.

Then I describe what I might do to them: the voltages used, the symptoms of suffocation and so on. I have studied the relevant
physiology in some depth and am able to elucidate with the use of copious medical terminology. Then I describe some of the
other techniques used by some of my colleagues. I mention the man whose code name is Doctor Citrus. He restricts his torture
instruments to a sheet of A4 paper and a fresh lemon, using numerous – usually several dozen to start with – paper cuts distributed
all over the subject’s naked body which then have a drop or two of lemon juice squeezed into them. Or salt, sometimes. Like
repeated near-suffocation, this does not sound so terrible to most people, but, statistically, it is one of the most effective
torture techniques that we employ. Of course our friend Doctor Citrus does not use just one sheet of paper, as any single
sheet will grow moist with sweat and small amounts of blood, over time. He always has a box of paper to hand.

There are colleagues who prefer to use the tried and trusted tools of torture: thumbscrews, pincers, pliers, hammers, certain
acids and, of course, fire; flame or just heat, supplied by gas burners, blowtorches, soldering irons, steam or boiling water.
These are sometimes the techniques of last resort when others have failed. The subject will usually be scarred for life should
they survive, and the survival rate, even if full cooperation is achieved, is not high.

Another of our colleagues likes to use cocktail sticks: hundreds of wooden cocktail sticks inserted into the soft tissues
of the body. He talks too, softening the subject up psychologically by sitting in front of them and using a small penknife
to slit the cocktail sticks, producing little barbs and curls of wood which will increase the pain caused both when they are
inserted and when – and if – they are removed. He sits there for an hour or more with a big pile of sticks, using the tiny knife
on these hundreds of little wooden slivers and detailing to the subject precisely where they will be placed. He too has some
medical training and describes to the subject the thinking behind his technique as being in some ways the opposite of acupuncture,
where the needles are inserted with the aim of causing little or no pain on entry and alleviating pain thereafter.

This preparatory dialogue can in itself be sufficient to produce full cooperation from the subject, though, as I say, there
is a minimum level of pain which has to be inflicted in any event, just to be sure that full cooperation really has been achieved
and to ensure that we, as an agency, are taken seriously.

My own talking technique is in some ways my personal favourite. I like the economy of it. I have found it is especially useful
on artistic people or those of an intellectual persuasion as they tend to have their own very active imaginations and thus
this technique lets these imaginations do my work for me. Over the years, some of them have even mentioned said phenomenon
themselves, though this recognition would appear to make the process no less effective.

I do not like to question females. The rather obvious reason would be that their screams remind me of those of my mother when
my father raped her on that never-to-be-forgotten night following her return home after the birth of my sister. However, I
would prefer to think that it is simply good old-fashioned manners. A gentleman simply does not wish to subject a female to
anything unpleasant. This does not stop me torturing women; it is still something that has to be done, and I am a professional,
and conscientious, but I enjoy the process even less than I do when working with a male subject and I am not ashamed to admit
that I have on occasion begged – literally begged – a female subject to exhibit full co-operation as quickly as possible, and
I am also not ashamed to reveal that I have felt tears come to my eyes when I have had to work especially hard with a female
subject.

The use of tape across the mouth, regardless of what other technique is being employed, is good for cutting down the sound
of screams, which must then all exit the subject via the nasal passages – more than somewhat reduced in volume, I am relieved
to be able to report.

I do draw the line at children. Some of my colleagues will happily oblige when a child must be tortured to force a parent
to talk, but I think this is both morally objectionable and suspect in principle. A child ought not to have to suffer for
the follies or beliefs of his or her parents, and to the extent that the techniques we employ on the subjects are in themselves
a kind of punishment for subversion, treachery and lawbreaking, they ought to be applied to the guilty party, not visited
upon their family or dependants. Everyone talks eventually. Everyone. Using a child to shorten the process is, in my opinion,
sloppy, lazy and simply bad technique.

Largely due to this scruple and perhaps also because I find it interesting and illuminating to discuss or at least attempt
to discuss with my colleagues subjects such as those enumerated above, my code name within the department is The Philosopher.

The Transitionary

I live in a Switzerland. The indefinite article is germane.

The particular Switzerland I live in is not even called Switzerland, but it is a recognised type, a place whose function and
demeanour will be familiar to all those we number amongst the Aware. “Aware” means being au fait with the realities of the
realities. “Aware” is a term applied to those who understand that we live not in one world – singular, settled and linear – but
within a multitude of worlds, forever exponentially and explosively multiplying through time. More to the point, it applies
to those who know how easy it is to travel between these disparate, ever-branching and unfolding and developing realities.

My home is an old lodge in the pines, on a ridge looking out over the small but sophisticated spa town of Flesse. Beyond the
town, to the west, is high rolling ground, clothed with trees. To the east, behind my lodge, the hills rise in craggy increments,
culminating in a serrated massif of mountains high enough to hold snow all the year. Sufficiently compact for one to take
all of it in with a single glance from my terrace, Flesse nevertheless boasts an opera house, a railway station and junction,
a medley of fascinating and eccentric shops, two superior hotels and a casino. When I am not on my travels, working for Madame
d’Ortolan or some other member of l’Expédience – the Concern – I am here: reading in my library during wet weather, walking in
the hills on the finer days and, in the evening, frequenting the hotels and the casino.

When I am, as it were, away, flitting between other worlds and other bodies, I still have a life here; a version of me remains,
living on, inhabiting my house and my body and going through all the appropriate motions concomitant with existence, though
by all accounts I am, in the shape of this residual self, quite astoundingly boring. According to my housekeeper and a few
other people who have encountered me in this state, I never leave the house, I sleep a great deal, I will eat but not cook
food for myself, I am reluctant to get dressed properly and I show no interest in music or conversation. Sometimes I try to
read a book but sit staring at the same page for hours, either not really reading it or reading it over and over again. Art
books, paintings and illustrations appear to pique my interest as much as anything, which is to say not very much at all,
as will a television programme, though only if it is visually arresting. My conversation becomes monosyllabic. I seem happiest
just sitting in the loggia or staring out of a window at the view.

I’m told that I appear drugged, or sedated, or as though I have had a stroke or been lobotomised. I maintain that I have met
several allegedly normal persons and not a few students who exhibit a lesser degree of day-to-day animation – I exaggerate only
slightly. However, I have no cause to complain. I don’t get into trouble while I’m away from myself (well, I don’t get into
trouble
here
) and my appetite is not sufficient to cause me to gain weight. Perish the thought that I might go for a walk in the hills
and fall off a cliff, or head for the casino and incur vast debts, or start an ill-advised affair while my back is turned
on myself.

The rest of the time, though, I am entirely here, living fully, attention undivided, in this world, this reality, on the seemingly
singular version of the Earth that calls itself Calbefraques. My name – in what is for me at least this base or root reality – is
nothing like the ones I usually end up with when transitioning. Here I am called Temudjin Oh, a name of Eastern Asian origin.
The Earth I came from is one of the many where the influence of the Mongolian Empires, especially in Europe, was more profound
than the one in which you are reading these words.