2089. Miles M Hudson

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      Chapter Three

      After grandmother Ellie’s death, there was no one who knew Jack well enough that they would have been able to spot his strange behaviour in the build-up to his act of terrorism.

      However, with the audiopt feeds recording everything he saw and heard, his preparations had been difficult and disjointed. He had travelled the escape route to the Leckhampton Hill bunker virtually, through his armulet — there had been no opportunity to check the escape plan in the real world.

      He had practised making the bombs with random alternate ingredients, under the guise of trying to make cement for the cobbles in his little garden. And in collecting the actual incendiary ingredients, he had made every effort to gather them by touch out of his own sight.

      As the audiopt feeds picked up only the electromagnetic waves generated by signals in the auditory and optic nerves, they could not read thoughts. Things outside the field of vision and hearing – tastes, smells and touch sensations – were not recorded.

      Finally, Jack had twelve hours between shifts in which to make the real bombs, set them, and then cycle to Highnam to stash his rucksack and establish his alibi. He was not certain that his one shot at manufacturing bombs from scratch would actually work.

      Jack’s fingers traced the outside of the rough hessian sack filled with homemade explosives. His blindfold stopped the audiopt feeds observing what he held. Most of the chemicals had been collected from abandoned warehouses or shops, and one he had dug out of the ground. Gathering them had not triggered any red flags in the pre-sifting algorithms of the surveillance network, as they were all innocent items individually. He smiled at the thought that he had been able to collect some of the electronic parts of the triggering system from the Doughnut’s own stores.

      He got up from the wooden kitchen chair and carried the sack to join the others in the rucksack by the door. Jack was very familiar with moving around his house blindfold. Even before working on the plan to blow up his workplace, he had often worn a self-imposed eye covering in order to feel free from the audiopts’ ever-watchful supervision.

      As he closed the pack, he felt a twinge in his stomach. He had completed the physical preparation of the bombs — he would soon destroy southwestern Britain’s audiopt network entirely and nobody would need to blindfold themselves to ensure their privacy. He whipped the cloth band off his face with a flourish and observed the apparently innocent domestic situation intently. ‘Ooh, look, there’s my table. And the stove with two pots. What a calm kitchen I live in.’

      Jack grinned and scratched his short dark hair where it itched from the removed blindfold. He imagined his grandmother sitting with him for a cup of tea, and pictured her own deep smile. She would have congratulated him on giving people back the chance to have secrets.

      After he left home, they spoke pretty much daily using armulet video communications. With his long working hours, these were usually mundane chats about their respective daily activities. Sometimes the seasonal work in Ellie’s fields meant that she was not available much during Jack’s free time. Often their daily time together was shorter than he would have liked. The sometimes difficult nature of this arrangement meant that the life stories Ellie shared with her grandson had essentially stopped when Jack moved to Cheltenham at fifteen years old.

      *

      It took all his strength to upend the costermonger’s barrow. The wooden cart tipped forward away from the unsuspecting grocer and thudded onto the dry-packed marketplace mud. Green and red apples, which had been so carefully piled in little tetrahedrons of four fruits, cascaded onto the floor, streaming away in all directions. Jack’s incoherent roar was the thing that most attracted the villagers’ attention though. They froze and looked over, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, as the skinny sifter created the most unusual gossip. This sort of thing never happened in Highnam Kangaroo.

      Overhearing two middle-aged sisters had finally tipped Jack into action. They met weekly at the Sunday market to trade gossip from opposite ends of the settlement. With a population of nearly 4,000, it had enough people so there was plenty of gossip and few enough so that everybody just about knew everyone else. Or, even better for gossiping purposes, nobody quite knew everyone else. Each tale could begin with a lengthy relationship scene-setter: ‘You know Harry’s sister’s first husband? Well, his mother’s cousin… you wouldn’t believe it…’ Thus the stories were close enough to be interesting, yet just far enough removed to be not personally affecting.

      Jack hated this aspect of society. As there was nothing private, he could not understand why people would be interested in discussing the activities of others. It was all available on their armulets, at any time. As soon as anybody saw anything, or heard anything, including their own voice, it was published publicly and could be viewed and reviewed at one’s leisure.

      Frances had grabbed her sister’s arm to distract her from the bunches of grapes laid out on one stall. Whilst Frances was a large woman, Amy was much thinner. They had similar short faces, and virtually identical curly brown hair. With sagging, wrinkly skin, the women looked as though their lives had been hard lived.

      ‘Amy, you coming to Kangaroo this afternoon? I reckon it’s gonna be a good one – that Ali Dally has been messing on again, this time with a married woman from Wessex Road. Two adulteries in two weeks!’

      ‘He’s a queer one that Ali Dally. They’re all the same, mind. And last week, George and Marisa at it. And them getting ten days’ labour. Can’t wait to see what happens to Ali, second offence this year. But nah, I’m just gonna watch on the armulet today. Harry’s not been so well, so I figure best to keep him out of the afternoon sun walking there.’

      ‘It’s not been too hot this week, but I guess you’re right. Best not to tempt things. Who’d have expected mid-September and only twenty-six degrees?’ She looked at the small armulet screen strapped above her wrist and its temperature reading in one corner.

      Nobody recognised the boy they had voted to be their sifter fourteen years previously. His hair was darker than the common brown of the others, but his pale skin was different.

      With the eyes of the square then on him, a distant booming sound floated through the throng, and smoke from several miles away rose into view above the mayor’s house behind Jack Smith. ‘Vive la revolution!’ СКАЧАТЬ