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  The officer left Delilah now and went off for a very long breakfast. He ate well, of course, being a System officer. He was an ardent worker, and admired by colleagues. He’d brought in a filthy youngun on the way to work. This would be a good day, he could feel it. With Delilah he could now deliver the public disinformation bulletin that upstairs had been badgering him for for so long. But not before he’d put her through the System – or at least given her a taste of it. A taste was the absolute minimum she ought to expect. Really she should expect a great deal more.

  ‘Good morning, JJ,’ said JJ’s superior. ‘Word has it you have a reprobate on the Panic Unit. Splendid. You intend to do the bulletin with her, is this right? That should get the Center off upstairs’ backs. I assume you’ve checked: no relatives.’

  ‘No one, sir.’

  ‘Nobody we can sue if she doesn’t cooperate?’

  ‘Not a soul.’

  ‘Do not use that kind of language! Now give me that egg, yes, the one on your plate. I have not had an egg for seven years.’

  ‘I’d rather not, sir,’ said JJ.

  ‘Give me the egg, damn you. I haven’t liked you, you know, not since you lost your eyes. You lost your personality when you lost those eyes. You used to have a twinkle. Give me the egg. Or I will break you. I will snap you. The egg!’

  ‘No,’ screamed JJ.

  ‘This instant, It is the yellowiest egg I’ve ever seen. I want it!’

  ‘It’s mine.’

  ‘If I can’t have it, no one can!’ The superior lifted the table and threw it at JJ Jeffrey. Then stormed off, late for other work he was responsible for. JJ furious also, with egg on his face, took the lift (a complicated matter in itself) down to 101.

  Through Delilah’s mask came oxygen, in varying degrees. Clamped on her face was a System Panic Mask. She panicked, and her panic turned the air cold and restricted its flow, worsening her panic. Calmness heated the air, made it extra abundant, and all the attendant dangers this brought, including panic, which would take her right back. Delilah discovered, after much disturbing, and involuntary, experimentation that only with controlled panic, could she get the air just right. Then, just when you thought you were doing well, the air would heat up, become too rich, because you were getting too calm. Then panic. Panic would come back, cold, with restrictive air. Until Delilah had learned to control her controlled panic. It was horrid. Who invented such device? And if this was only floor 101 … The sweet spot, she found, was sweet panic – where you felt queasy almost with terror and almost with joy. The System understood such boundaries. Of the human system. The System wanted Delilah in a panic. A controlled panic. That was the System. And this was a very small lesson for Delilah. One she knew she’d need to learn, if she were to survive the System. Today wasn’t going very well either, she thought. Then she began to panic again, and to lose its control.

  Some considerable time later, his breakfast clean out of his mind though not off his chin, JJ Jeffrey came in and unshackled the other prisoner who’d been laughing. JJ Jeffery circled the room ten times then left clapping his hands. The prisoner’s breath approached, and then the prisoner himself. Delilah could not see him, only feel him. The prisoner prodded Delilah with what she could only imagine to be two handless stumps of arm, their radius and ulna split like grotesque V-signs. A bell rang and the door again opened. A man whose presence Delilah did not this time recognise came in and made a cracking sound and led the prisoner away – the prisoner now laughing all the louder. Delilah realised that recognising one presence from another was a small part of the terror of incarceration by the Authority. She started crying. As she began to cry, and then wail, she took deeper and deeper inhalations of oxygen, and this in turn made the air hotter and then she panicked and that turned it colder, all her controlled panic lost now, and the air reached a very low temperature, and she began to feel a deep unbearable chill. She knew, of course, that this was it, her end, twenty-four hours after she’d lost her Life. This was how it went. She’d heard such stories but never believed them. You didn’t with disinformation. Now she welcomed her finish, and gave up hope as the System set about freezing her from the inside out, her bronchia soon to resemble a frosted tree she’d never again see an image of. Nor would she spend that day in the rich suburbs with their ten-lane moving floors and spectacular fake blue skies, places she’d only ever heard about but longed to visit. She had never been so cold. Her teeth chattered and chipped away uncontrollably at the broken incisor and tore at the web under her tongue.

  The threat of the System was omnipresent: if one did not obey all set out by the Authority one would fall foul of the Authority and be subjected to the System. No consultable guidelines existed on what was or was not foul of the Authority. It was written nowhere that tans were illegal, but everyone knew, everyone had heard, and ignorance was no defence. Nascent law passed by word of mouth from the Authority ten miles away, through the more zealous of officials, to the Center of Disinformation, a place of great gossip. Once there, it was idly, and sometimes inaccurately, disseminated. This maintained a sufficient ambiguity vital for officers such as Officer JJ Jeffrey to carry out duties and exercise good judgement, just as law enforcement officers and operatives had for many years.

  Then a voice. ‘Come with me, prisoner. I bet you regret your transgressions now, don’t you.’

  Plunged next into a hot bath Delilah still had no doubt of her approaching demise, merely that it approached now more slowly and more horribly.

  ‘Wash behind your ears,’ said Officer JJ Jeffery, standing over her, an apron of a fat lady over his inside-out uniform, and wearing glasses that clouded his vision so that he did not have to look at Delilah’s nakedness. ‘Give me that brush. I will do your back. Give it to me, I say. I bet you did not think you would be in such a luxurious bath when you climbed out of your fluffy bed this morning! I can tell you are very taken aback by the generosity the System has to offer. All this water! Isn’t it a shame that you cannot drink it.’ JJ Jeffrey poured in more and more bright liquid. Delilah had had no water for twenty-four hours and she’d straightaway drunk some when she got in this bath. It was normal for the Authority when using hot baths in the System to lace the water with emetic drugs. ‘Come on my dear, that’s right wash your hair. No, let me do it. And then I will cut it. You are not the only hairdresser round here.’ The officer leant over and lathered mush into Delilah’s hair then he shaped it. With some electric scissors he cut it into a new style. When he had done this, quite forgetting that a moment ago he’d been scrubbing her back with a harsh brush, he pushed Delilah with a hand on her head under the water. When she came up, rather struggling for breath, her first sight was a yellow plastic duck bobbing in the water under her nose. ‘What do you think of that?’ asked JJ Jeffrey, ‘It is a lovely duck, don’t you think?’ Delilah, who had never been so cold inside compared to so hot outside, shivered both from her deeply chilled lungs and her overheated skin, which vibrated the duck wildly and made it go round in circles.

  ‘The duck likes to go swim-swim,’ said JJ Jeffrey, nudging it around in the steaming bright water. ‘Get out of the duck’s way, prisoner! You are in Ducky’s way. Get out of Ducky’s way!’

  Delilah grabbed the bath’s edges, locked her elbows, and tried to get out.

  ‘Where are you going?’ screamed Officer JJ Jeffrey, in his fat lady apron, and wearing a pith sun helmet too, that Delilah now noticed, seemed to be leaking liquid. ‘Get back in the bath!’

  ‘I am getting out of the duck’s way,’ said Delilah.

  ‘Are you clean? If you are not clean you may not leave the bath. Not until you are clean, duck or no duck, may you exit. Otherwise it is fine.’

  ‘I am as clean as I can be in this water.’

  ‘Then your answer is no. If you had answered that you were clean I would not have been in a position to disagree with you. But your answer implied a certain degree of your being unclean. So, as by your own admission you are not clean, you
may not leave the bath.’

  ‘But how can I get clean if the water is dirty,’ pleaded Delilah, and splashed her palms in the bath in frustration.

  ‘That is your problem. You must clean the water. Then you must clean yourself. It is quite simple. There are no options. I do not see a problem. That you see a problem and seek options perhaps explains why you have got yourself into such a situation in the first place. You are a very silly girl, of that there is no doubt. You could so easily avoid your problems if you only thought them through. It is to this purpose that you will be used. Yes the Authority will make good use of you in the education of others. However, this is not to talk of the issue of hand. Which is cleanliness. Get about cleaning the water. Be quick, we do not have all day. The Authority does not have unlimited patience. With the likes of you it has very little at all. And do not hurt my duck. If my duck reports any damage or insult to his person you shall be moved a floor lower in the System before you know what has happened to you. Now clean the water and stop pointing your nipples about like that, you slut. This is not a whorehouse, much as you might be accustomed to such places, were they to exist.’

  Then JJ Jeffrey absentmindedly relieved himself in a nearby sink. After doing so he turned and left the room. Delilah leapt out of the bath and made for a thick towel that had been laid on for her, or for whoever next stepped out the System’s bath. But before she could reach it her wet feet adhered first then stuck fast to the floor. A terrible freeze emanated from this floor and she quickly realised she’d been glued by ice on her soles to a deliberately frozen surface. Trying to pull away simply wrenched at each foot’s inner flesh, and she had to exercise restraint lest she rip her feet apart by yanking. The towel was just out of reach and folded onto a comfortable and warm looking wooden chair. She read a warning notice on the wall that said, No stopping, severe penalties. She had to think speedily – certainly more speedily than freezing water – before the insides of her feet froze solid and became like five-toed hammers. Though she had drunk no water in the last twenty-four hours her bladder had at least slowly filled and she had been offered or allowed no chance to empty it and certainly had not wanted to do so in the bath with Officer JJ Jeffrey watching over her with his cloudy spectacles, not that she’d have been able to if she’d tried. She could not believe that his own urination in the sink could have been a hint, a clue, but it nevertheless helped her make the leap she now made. In no time she was wrapped in the towel and awaiting whatever happened next. What happened was sleep.

  The Panic Unit had imparted a heavy fatigue within her. She did not want to sleep. She knew that when she awoke, everything would feel and be so much worse. Not only would the bliss of sleep be ripped from her but in its place would be the aches and pains of today’s torturous activities, come to take a hold of her. She would be stiff from the strain placed on various muscles used in an unaccustomed way by her being strapped to the wall for so long, muscles further pulled when she tried writhing away from the man with the v-sign arms, now partially broken she thought. Also she felt sure when she awoke that there would be a terrible continuation of events.

  When she was roughly shaken awake and heard the words, ‘You’re dirty and now you are to be showered,’ Delilah knew she was not wrong. The man wore boots made of synthetic blue fur that came high up his legs and a hat of the same material, but this was not what frightened Delilah, what frightened her was the second-person thrust of his statement. She had only ever showered herself before. She had visions of fire hoses, of her body being squirted across the floor. But she could not pre-guess the System. The System relied on its unpredictability, and resisted presumption.

  The man in the crotch-high blue fur boots and matching hat spoke in a very high voice. He also had very little confidence, which worried Delilah because unconfident people had a reputation for extreme violence and twistings of the mind once they got into their flow. He spoke like a child and Delilah, though only nineteen herself, thought it best to employ mothering-type qualities in her interaction with him to stave off, if she could, the worst. ‘Come this way,’ he said in his high voice. ‘Don’t worry,’ said Delilah, ‘I won’t leave you,’ and squeezed his arm. She followed him to the lift doors. Here he wavered before the buttons. Great significance was accorded these buttons. The up and the down meant exactly what they said, and a lot more. However, after nearly half an hour, during which time the unconfident man had brushed his blue fur boots with a terrifying fastidiousness and continually looked to Delilah for approval, he pressed the left button, a button direction Delilah had not previously seen or heard of, and they entered the lift.

  ‘Does blue suit me, do you think?’ he asked, as movement set in.

  ‘It goes very well on you,’ said Delilah.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘I am touched by your interest in my outfit,’ said the unconfident man. ‘I really am.’

  Delilah said, ‘Oh, by the way, I was wondering, might it all be right if I were to shower myself. I promise to do it very thoroughly.’ She gave a light-hearted laugh, and then fought back tears when she saw in the mirror what JJ Jeffrey had done to her hair. He’d cut it square on top, a style not fashionable for decades. And trimmed a cylindrical hole in it, too, creating a bizarrely false impression of baldness. Delilah decided that the hairstyle she now sported was the worst hairstyle in the world.

  ‘I thought green,’ continued the man, ‘when I first went boot-shopping. Then I tried them on and they just weren’t me. Uh-err. But blue is me. Don’t you think? You do think blue is me, don’t you? Look again.’ He put on a pose, his hands on his hips, his chin jutted out. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘You look lovely,’ said Delilah and squeezed his arm again, summoning as best she could a big smile.

  The unconfident man’s eyes fluttered and he blushed. A warmth filled his face and he proudly stroked his thighs, which bristled and sparked.

  ‘Now,’ said Delilah, ‘about this shower …’

  But the man had put his hand up in the air. ‘The prisoner will not speak,’ he said, his nostrils now upturned, his manner very changed.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The prisoner will not speak!’ sang his high angry voice. ‘I said, The prisoner will not speak, and the prisoner said, What? The prisoner disobeyed me deliberately. Events have taken a dramatic turn for the prisoner now. I thought we were getting on fine, the prisoner and I. I even thought the prisoner liked me. But no, the prisoner flatters me for its own ends. The prisoner is a manipulative cunning prisoner. That is why the prisoner is a prisoner. Perhaps the prisoner is mistaken into thinking I will not damage it because I am such an awfully nice chap and have been schooled in top schools and have about my person exemplary manners and deportment. The prisoner is wrong, woefully so. Now it is clear to me! The prisoner even mocks me with its hairstyle!’ The unconfident man in a fury grabbed hold of Delilah’s arm and half-nelsoned her. His eyes shaking with anger he positioned himself behind her and, tipping his head toward the mirror, removed his blue fur hat – to reveal a head of hair identical in style to Delilah’s. ‘Think you’re funny, do ya?’ he howled in her ear. ‘Avin a laugh? Come down here playing tricks on me. I’ll show ya. I’ll show ya good. This way! Shower time! I’ll give the prisoner something to remember. She won’t forget this in a hurry.’

  The shower unit, or System Shower Unit 101 to give it the System’s full title, was the mildest shower unit the three-hundred-and-thirty-three-story-deep building had to offer. This is not to say that it was a pleasant and relaxing environment to wash off in. Such words, and like-minded vocabulary, had no place in the System. The lexicon of the System was more fear-inspiring. Traditionally showers came from above. This perhaps was design inspired by gravity. In System Shower Unit 101 such policy was reversed and the water (laced again) came up from the large circular floor – in whose centre Delilah stood now weak-kneed and in another sick panic, not of the controlled variety, though she had not
been aware a controlled variety existed until this morning. A first upward blast of water tore from her clothesless person the towel and another took it from her, and others spurted from the colander-like floor and held it there above its surface. There came then a high-pitched laugh: time for a demonstration. On controlled jets the towel was now sent round the shower unit at great speed. From the circular wall were further outlets from which water jets propelled the towel. The towel had such a speed and trajectory that it reminded Delilah of an out-of-control magic carpet – she had read of a controlled magic carpet as a child, before the teacher had reprimanded her for reading controlled literature by rapping her head with a cabbage. Then the towel was manoeuvred before her, and here held in the wet air, disco lights began flashing and spinning, then came the instant roar of many new jets of water, which ripped the towel apart. It disintegrated into a cloud of its own tufts. The disco lights were shut off. The laugh came again. Then nothing.

  Anticipation was a vicious tool employed by the System, thought Delilah, anticipating the worst. More nothing followed. Delilah kept anticipating. And eventually, and as all along she had expected, she found herself tumbling through System Shower Unit 101. When she could breath, she screamed. When she could not, she drowned. Then the normal lights were turned out, and round and round in blackness went Delilah, and round and round and round, inheriting such a dizziness that up and down and left and right became meaningless to her. This continued from a long time, interminable time – her perception of time was not lessened by this application of System, but lengthened. She was subjected to hard turns, smack-backs, loop-d-loops. To the unconfident man peering through his one-way console glass she looked like a broken doll.