Withdrawal

Straightening the newly purchased old raincoat, flicking back a straight, mousy brown fringe, Berti adjusts thick tortoiseshell frames dulled by age long before Health Division reissued them, and decides there are no more excuses; it’s time to leave the flat.

Berti checks the door’s low peephole then the high one, blinks, struggling with the one-hundred-and-eighty-degree perspective on the hallway. Empty. No disturbance, no presence at any of the doors.

Thumb to the pad. Nothing happens. Berti frowns.

“Dear resident, for enhancement of your security, Safety Division has instituted two-stage authentication. Please scan your left retina.”

Berti presents a blue-green eye to the scanner.

“Thank you,” the building system purrs. “Your door will open in five seconds; three, two, one.”

Thunk. Whir. Clack.

“Have a safe day, resident.”

Berti steps back to accommodate the door, then out into the corridor, walks to the lift, heart thumping. The doors slide, revealing an empty box; otherwise, they would not have opened, the lift would not have stopped, Berti’s door would have remained locked.

The lift descends, bland, sonorous tones recommending a relaxing breathing pattern, an innovation since Berti’s last sojourn thirty-eight days ago.

The system has protected Berti from any potentially difficult encounter with a neighbour, but now the street door beckons. The signal above the door is amber. Berti has a choice: step out, risk meeting person or persons unknown indicated to be within twenty metres of the door, or gamble on a green all-clear, versus the consequence of a red light; a very close encounter with someone entering the building. There is no breathing tone here. Berti’s heart thrums as seconds pass. Which way will the amber light jump?

Green.

Berti steps out into cold, grey dampness, tugs up the raincoat’s collar then hurries away.

✹

Berti walks quickly, head low. This is normal, not just because the leaden sky fulfils the breeze’s long promise, finally dropping rain on the city. Droplets turn grey cobbles black. Ideal conditions to justify eye contact avoidance; those abroad must be just as happy to hustle on their way uninterrupted, in full compliance with Sensitivity Division’s latest advice.

The Assembly itself brought this stress upon the people. Only five years ago this could have been done online, without leaving the apartment. Berti shivers now at the thought of connecting to the Web. How could they have allowed the Net to become so dangerous, a threat to public safety? Berti is losing faith in Technology Division’s regular insistence that progress is being made against the gangs, the predators, the false prophets and the charlatans. The salesmen.

✹

The bank sits across the rainswept square, lurking indifferent in a monolithic monochrome cityscape. Fear grips Berti’s gut, but the need cannot be denied. Everybody has to eat, right? Of course, and surely accruals must be enough after over a month.

Customers come and go through the bank’s numerous doors, red and green lights above each of the dozen narrow portals the only brightness in the anxiety-ridden scene, flicking green to red to green to red, as if Christmas is a lie told to the bank’s depositors to tempt them in. Berti sighs, a head shake tossing droplets into the downpour. There’s nothing else for it. With a deep breath, a set of the shoulders, Berti strides across the square, switches doors in the last five metres, and enters the bank.

Wet tracks criss-cross the floor, leading variously to twenty different tellers. Berti doesn’t stop, lets a glistening trail lead the way, struggles not to flinch under the unwelcoming regard of the man seated beneath the giant letter ‘S’, paints on a fake smile, hates it, fights the expression, wrestles it into a shape no better than it started.

“Two thousand, please,” Berti blurts, even before reaching the counter, gaze nailed to the teller’s bound ledger. “Thank you.” 

The teller’s thin lips twitch, his left eye flinches. “Name and address.”

“Berti Stanhope. Flat 3/46, Aspire Block, Success Street.”

“Identity card.”

Berti presents the cardboard rectangle. The teller sniffs, turns the ledger’s big, creaking pages, stops, eyes following his fingertip to a row that spans the double page, the final box corralling a procession of numbers, one after another scored out methodically by ruler apart from the last, which Berti – stomach plummeting – can read upside down. ‘1,587’.

“Insufficient funds,” says the teller, obvious boredom suddenly suppressed by a glint of weaponised remorse.

Knees shaking, throat dry, shock vaporising the last vestige of civility, Berti manages to cough out, “I’ll take fifteen hundred.”

The teller reaches beneath the counter, produces a block of crisp new notes, and drops it in the slot at his left hand. The wad lands – thud – in the box between them. Berti tugs a cold, smooth handle, snatches the money from the hopper, stuffs it in a pocket, turns away, shuffles across the marble floor, eyes down, focused on not slipping on the glistening surface, clutching the thick wad between coat, shirt and ribs, not registering the blinking colours…

Bursting through a door just turning red, Berti collides with someone entering, reaching for the handle; knocks them backwards into the square to fall in the rain. The woman clutches her raincoat at her neck, expression shifting to shock, confusion, fear, anger, as rain soaks her hair dark, speckles her face. 

Her expression starts to shift again—

“I’m sorry!” Berti yelps. “I’M SO SORRY,” Berti shouts and runs away.

✹

Berti can’t face visiting the shop now. First, Berti can’t stand in the individually-distanced queue, with people. Not after… Secondly, there’s insufficient money for everything, un-watered milk, uncut bread, un-reprocessed cheese, unreconstituted meat, even without the omnipresent tax and duty and levy; the tin rental, the reprocessing charge, the uplift tariff. How can that be? A reconciliation from Work Division will take days, and it won’t change the number. No, Berti must get back to work. 

Suddenly, after the personal disaster caused by leaving the flat, Food Division protein wafers don’t seem so bad.

✹

Later, on the computer, Berti opens the landing portal, selects the only drive, ‘B. Stanhope’. Where yesterday three applications and two folders full of data resided, now only one app exists. Clearly the Data Division man took the old files in this morning’s collection, entering the empty apartment to leave Berti this new assignment. The app is named ‘Open Me’. Berti clicks.

A questionnaire unspools, a survey into the qualitative aspects of services provided by six of the twenty-three divisions of government.

This survey contains 1,032 questions.

Why does this not exasperate, incense and infuriate? Berti’s pulse and blood pressure – relayed by the computer when a digit touches any key – remain within tolerance. Berti imagines rain on skin, features flowing into shock, confusion, fear, anger, then…?

This survey should last between 8 and 9 hours.

Berti imagines a smile.

Failure to complete in the allotted time will result in the survey restarting.

Yes, ugly emotions had marred the face of Berti’s victim, but following the flood of negative feelings Berti had glimpsed, in the instant of rushing away, a wry smile slip across the woman’s rain freckled cheeks.

Onscreen, the survey clock counts up: 2:57, 2:58, 2:59.

The characters diffuse into fuzzy blobs, and Berti’s mind presents an image of a hand extending towards the woman; Berti’s hand, rain-dappled. The woman’s fingers overlap Berti’s palm and Berti’s fingers close around the supple yet corded wrist, their thumbs interlock, grip slick but firm. This tension, unlike the thrum in Berti’s chest, is confident, unafraid.

3:46, 3:47, 3:48.

Failure to commence the survey will result in reset after five minutes.

But… That’s not fair.

The number of resets is unlimited. After five resets, renumeration will reduce by ten percent of the original total.

No, Berti thinks.

“No,” says Berti, aloud.

The feel of the word in the silence of the apartment, the shape of the word, its aroma drifting in Berti’s mind. The taste of it in the mouth. Saliva spreads as if trying to dissolve the word, or the thought of what it means for Berti’s life.

Another trip, going out again, into the rain. There can be no hope of encountering the woman again; can there? To ask her what their collision meant? Of course not.

4:46, 4:47, 4:48.

Negative renumeration is possible, to the limit of funds available, then accumulating against future earnings!

4:58, 4:59. RESET.

A futile hope, to find that woman, but not impossible. To find her, and to understand that smile. And there are others to collide with, other emotions than shock, fear, and anger. There remains out there a city full of people.

And why should it not belong to me as much as it does to anyone else?