* * *
I first heard "The Police and the Private" through an iTunes promotion for Metric's "Live at Metropolis" DVD. A trailer for the film and three live tracks were available for cheap download, and I had been curious about Metric for a while. A perfect opportunity to dive in.
The sound of the live tracks was great - boomy and dark, with just the right audience mix - and the first song was pretty cool. I liked Emily's voice and there was some great guitar work. Nothing really connected with me though until I heard track two. A lonely synth pad and a full minute of drums and clapping build to what remains one of my favourite keyboard lines ever. The whole instrumental was so darkly alluring - so full of depth and mystery that I fell in love with it completely. Then the lyrics came in and it was all there: the paranoia of Phillip K. Dick, the sex and chaos of William Gibson and the future-shock of Neil Stephenson. It reminded me of Blade Runner and the video game Deus Ex, and that's a very, very good thing in my books.
I eventually got the studio version of "The Police and the Private" (as well as the rest of Live it Out) and enjoyed it greatly. But the version of the song that haunted me for years, and had me writing stories in my mind long before this project, was the live one. Imperfect, in front of a cheering crowd, this song gave me a whole world of inspiration to dive into. I can still play the entire synth part on piano. Thanks Metric.
Metric - The Police and the Private - Live at Metropolis
I.
She was so tired. The room swelled and pulsed sickly sweet, red and black, red and black and her eyes strained. At this stage of exhaustion, simply remaining functional was gruelling. The muscles in her face moved like worn machinery, drawing her mouth into a tight line as she gazed out into the current of motion.
The booth where she sat was a refuge. Flashes of intense white light punctuated the ambient scarlet glow, and a sea of bodies stretched out just meters away. Moving. Writhing. A flow of shape from which pieces of the familiar would emerge and be recast as shadow. A pair of eyes, a blur of hair, sweat and paint. It all seemed surreal, as though she were watching it on a screen.
Something happened much closer to her, and she turned her head, eyes tracking slowly across the booth. Jacob mouthed something to her, his eyes fiery and intense in the half-light. Abigail should have felt guilty. She couldn't match his desire, or even his interest. Jacob, with boney hands and wild thoughts. Not now. Not tonight.
Any guilt Abigail would normally have felt was absent, and in its place only numbness. The light and heat and sound were all a drone that passed through her without regard. She gave a weak smile - false and mechanical - as a pithy apology. Jacob shook his head with an impish grin, and slid across to where she sat. His head touched the side of hers, and she felt his lips brush against her ear. "Let's get out, stay with me tonight."
Jacob leaned towards her, familiar and warm, and all of it meant nothing. She and Jacob were good, and she even liked the way his rough frame felt against her body, but that was impossibly far away right now. What had felt so real and pulled her so hard seemed a distant memory. She wanted rest. She wanted the sleep that would not come. It had been 63 hours.
Abigail turned away from Jacob and scanned around the room. Exits were on the left, through the sweltering crowd. She would make up an excuse - some bullshit about having to check on Thomas - and disappear up the stairwell into the night. Thomas was fine. He'd been practically taking care of himself since he was 7, and would be safer in their container hideaway than anywhere else she could think of, but none of that mattered. She needed to get away from the thrall, and even away from Jacob. She would think of something in the night air. She just needed to sleep, and it had to arrive soon. Nothing had ever lasted this long.
Her mind made up, she turned back into the booth to see Jacob's face dissolve into confusion. Something was caught on her shirt, and she dipped her shoulder to free it. When it wouldn't release, she looked down in shock to see Jacob's hand under the thin folds of cloth, massaging the soft flesh beneath. Jacob was more alarmed than she was at first. The two of them had felt each other up in clubs countless times, especially in shitholes like Grid. She had liked the thrill, liked the shadow. But he had been kneading her body for - how long? - and she hadn't even noticed. No pain, no enjoyment. Dead skin on her body. Abigail turned away sharply and reached her own hand up to her breast, pinching tight in anticipation. She had to stifle a cry as the familiar shot of nerves never came. The dark brown flesh felt foreign and cold.
She stood up clumsily, and Jacob grabbed her hand. Abigail saw the fear in his eyes but shook him loose. He shouted something - maybe pleading, maybe reassuring - but she was already slipping into the strong currents, her mind jolted awake. Gateways of arms, bars of piercing light. Abigail tossed and reeled until the neon stairwell appeared in front of her and moved past the guard out into the street. It had been 63 hours.
II.
She was sleep deprived, and coming down. It didn't have to be anything more than that. The answer echoing in the back of her brain was that the stims had burnt out some part of her nerves, messed with her permanently. But that wasn't how hypo-stims worked, even the cheap shit that she sold. The genius of stims was that they weren't really any different from legal, commercial treatments that gave the suits in Easttown an edge. Stims boosted reflexes, calmed nerves and focused the mind - but faster and for half of the price of the monthly clinical treatments. Testing couldn't even distinguish who'd taken disposable stims, and who was on a sanctioned regimen. The only serious downside was the low.
Legal chemical enhancements were delivered in a slow, steady stream that allowed the body to adjust. They wore off evenly, and just in time for the next month's treatment. Stims hit hard and lasted only days. When they left the body - unevenly - users would crash, but remain restless for hours as everything finally wore off. The constant high and low cycle of habitual stim users led some to take multiple doses, but this only strengthened the crash when it eventually came.
Abigail had been selling hypo-stims for years. Thomas was released from the municipal house on his sixth birthday, and she could easily make the money they needed selling discount product to financial climbers and thugs from the PMCs that controlled West Market. She had been using periodically to keep up with runners from the gangs, and even other street trash working for Carli, but no one used stims periodically.
Ducking through several low alleys, Abigail saw the glow of a tram terminal, and hurried across the street to the entrance. At this hour the stairwell and checkpoints were as deserted as they ever were, and only a handful of people moved briskly through the corridors, eyes down. Abigail approached the scanner and halted, and the officer ran his search, routine and efficient. He grabbed at her body roughly, eyes hidden behind a thick face shield. Abigail's hand went limp as a thick, reinforced glove placed her palm on the reading palette.
She moved through the scanner and boarded the waiting tramcar. Keeping product stashed in their container meant some risk to Thomas, but she could move through the city uninhibited. Parcels were left for buyers at safe locations, and receiver tags allowed for discreet pickup. It wasn't a perfect system, but it worked well enough. Jacob preferred to carry his deliveries in person, and bought off officers in at least three of the main terminals, but to Abigail this seemed a needless expense.
She stole away in a seat towards the back of the car, and stared out of the window. The tram moved through tunnels at a blinding speed, and the flashes of light and colour left ghostly imprints on her eyes. For the first time since leaving Grid, Abigail realized that she had no idea of the extent to which she had lost feeling. She narrowed her eyes, and surveyed the car - a couple of wasted kids near the front, a drifter three rows up. She was as safe and private as was possible without returning to either Thomas or Jacob, and neither were an option right now.
For starters, she could feel something. She knew that she was sitting on a tram seat for instance, and that the cushioned pad was firm and uncomfortable. She touched her finger to the window, and the cool, smooth surface of the pane was reassuringly familiar. It was not until reaching over to her resting arm, and pinching at the skin, that the deep, latent dread returned. It wasn't quite dead skin - at least not on her arm - but the normal jolt of pain was so muted and dull that it created an alarming sense of disconnect.
Without ever realizing it, Abigail's body was her most valuable tool. She had darted along wet streets and climbed onto high rooftops, never questioning the network of muscle and tissue that held her together. Her body had been an extension of her life, and years of running and staying unseen had carved her lean frame into wiry, purposeful shapes. She took for granted that she was strong, but now there was a weakness she had never even considered. Abigail was far from arrogant about her position - to the contrary, she knew her role and her odds too well. But whatever she was facing, her strength had been an ally, and now it was betraying her. Or she had betrayed it. She pinched again to be sure.
The tram doors hissed and pulled open as it entered another terminal. Abigail knew she had to stop working, stop using, but going to Carli now wasn't possible. She hadn't even seen her in three years, and no one talked to Carli anyways. You listened, and then you worked. Abigail transferred her a substantial cut every two weeks, but the agreement wasn't business as much as service. Carli was the boss, and Abigail the runner. Runners didn't stop working.
Abigail waited until the next stop and exited the train. Jacob's stop. She should at least see him tonight, tell him she was fine. Abigail never minded lying to others. Maybe she would even be able to sleep in Jacob's warm basement apartment. The thought made her very, very tired.
She left the terminal and crossed the street behind a service van, white lights piercing in the tawdry glow of closed shops and 24-hour info screens. A woman's face glowed a dozen times as she updated the darkness, numbers flashing across the displays. Her smile shone almost as bright as the fading municipal van.
Abigail entered into the adjacent alley, and ducked down immediately. She had spotted the patrol with ease, but whoever the riot suits were harassing, had not. Through the alley and across the street, three large, armoured figures surrounded a much slighter one. Her eyes grew wide, and then narrowed as she stole another glance from behind the compactor. She was half a kilometre from his apartment, and the man was unmistakably Jacob. Even from the distance Abigail knew it was him. His red jacket looked dark and brown in the glow of the shops and her hands tightened. She suddenly knew the truth, blunt and merciless. He won't go with them. It was so instant and punched all the air from her lungs. He's carrying his delivery and he's surrounded and he won't go with them.
Abigail saw it happen twice in her mind, and when it actually did it was still a shock. The first officer said something to Jacob, and moved to search his jacket. Jacob waited until the guard was off-balance and spun to catch him with a hook. It was the slowest she had ever seen him. Abigail tasted blood. Jacob was drunk.
The second suit of armour was ready before Jacob even connected. The dry crack of a charge stick and a muffled cry and it was all over. The third suit didn't even bother with a weapon, and his glove raised and lowered four times before the first delivered short, brutal kick. They moved to search the crumpled shape, and one spoke again as he raised a small package in the air.
Abigail shock uncontrollably, still crouched behind the aluminum compactor. She had felt numb before and now she felt nothing. In an instant she saw the scene play out again and again, but each time with the charge ripping through her body and not Jacob's. Jacob, who kissed too hard and smelled of machine oil. Jacob, who drank only when upset.
This was where she would end up, Abigail was sure of it now. She would keep fighting and she would lose and her body would be torn and broken again and again by their blows. Her eyes would swell, and they would leave her sputtering for air in the street, and she would die.
Abigail hunched in the alley, paralyzed, outside of time. Slowly her thoughts began to thaw, and as water trickled past the ice, she remembered Thomas. Asleep in their modified container, the street - this moment - was as inconceivable for him as it was for her to avoid.
She stood up gradually on trembling legs, and made her way back towards the Tram Terminal.
III.
Abigail climbed the outdoor steps to the pressure-sealed door on third avenue. Carli occupied the second and third floors of an aging commercial block, though her operation hardly warranted the space. Unlike the ambitious and well organized gangs that had grown to dominate most of Westtown, structure and organization were almost certainly absent from Carli's setup. She purchased her wares - in person - from the freighters at Harbor Point, and employed runaways, junkies and derelicts like Abigail to run deliveries. The only control, and the only outward muscle in the small ring was Carli herself. That proved more than enough.
No one stood in Abigail's way as she scanned past the door and moved through the ruined offices on the second storey, but they were everywhere. Eyes followed her through doorways and from under desks, and she could hear scratching, low voices and a faint hum. The second floor was lit only by backup power, and Abigail had to step carefully over the corporate refuse - chair brackets, loose cables and dismantled cubical walls - as she made her way to the interior staircase. Abigail, and a select few of Carli's runners stayed elsewhere, but a majority of the street trash slept in the offices. Carli seemed to have no other use for the space, and it left her with a large body of service at her fingertips.
Mounting the stairs, Abigail felt the first murmur since she had left the alley an hour ago. A deep gnawing in the pit of her stomach that reached past the exhaustion and even past the shock. She felt afraid.
The third floor was much better lit, and more sparsely occupied. She recognized a few faces, leaning or slumped, as she passed by. One girl nodded to her, but her eyes were cold. Abigail passed through another doorway and looked across the room. Carli could hardly have stood out more from her surroundings.
She was beautiful. As beautiful as the enhanced Icons that beamed from info-screens in a never-ending cycle around the city, although word was that Carli had never cut or grafted. She was slim and impossibly perfect. Dressed in a fitted athletic overskeleton, she looked like a projection amidst the garbage. Abigail tried to imagine Carli reading news broadcasts with a shimmering white smile, but the vision was broken. Carli couldn't smile, or at least didn't. Her entire face was like that of a doll's, flawless and utterly without emotion. Abigail had met her twice before and never for her moment seen her face shift or alter beyond the basic movements of her mouth, and the occasional blink.
Abigail was locked in place, and she had to break Carli's synthetic stare to say the words she had brought herself here to utter. When she finally did speak, her voice was frail and small. "I want out, Carli".
Carli said nothing, her face locked in place, her neck craned slightly to the side as Abigail opened her mouth again. The numbness, the hollow fearlessness that Abigail could have used was slipping away, and she felt exhausted and weak. She started again, and surprised herself by faltering. "I can't...I"
"I'm done. I'll disappear and they won't notice" She finished. Carli remained silent, but began striding towards Abigail in strong, graceful movements. She was faster than Abigail had ever guessed, and before she could react, Carli was in front of her. In a single motion, she raised her forearm to Abigail's neck and slammed her against the wall by the doorframe.
"Do you want to know why you won't stop running for me?" Carli's frozen face belied the sudden mockery in her voice. Abigail squirmed to breath, and tried to push off a nearby desk in a panicked attempt to get free.
"Because you couldn't get out if I let you. Your body is breaking down, and you can't even trust your own mind. If there was any other place you could go, you'd have gone there. But you came to me."
The words were so loud and so present. Abigail looked around in a blur, and saw that the room had emptied completely. Carli was alone in the fluorescence, squeezing the life from Abigail's body. She was nothing. She could hardly even struggle.
Without warning, Carli loosened her hold, and Abigail gasped as she felt the oxygen rush to her head. When her vision cleared, Carli was holding up a microblade.
"You're fucked, Abigail. You didn't come to me to get out, you've never had that option."
Carli took the blade and levelled it to Abigail's cheek. Slowly Carli pulled the knife edge back to her own lips, and in a precise, measured gesture, divided her bottom lip in two. Dark blood slid down the doll's face, and Carli's hand wrapped tightly around Abigail's neck. She put the wet blade on the desk, and pressed into Abigail's mouth in a deep kiss.
Abigail overloaded. The tension and the fear. Her lack of oxygen and Jacob's crushed, discarded body. Blood, lots of blood trickling warm over he face and she couldn't feel her legs. There was a loud buzzing and the lights seemed white hot, beaming down on skin that could hardly register. It was so fast and she was slipping, drifting at last into a droning sea.
Abigail blinked twice. The fingers on her left hand tingled, and she spread them slightly. Even within Carli's hold she could move her hand. Carli pulled away from Abigail's face and stared into the back of her eyes, speaking suddenly from the parted, crimson skin. "Go back to your shipping container."
Through the blood and the light and her lack of air, the words did not register right away. And then it clicked. Clicked like her mind had done in the alley, and at once she saw Thomas as clearly as she had seen Jacob hours ago. The container. Thomas.
Carli's hand let go of Abigail's neck, and when Carli shifted her weight to step backwards, Abigail moved her hand again. She just moved it. It was so simple.
Abigail took the microblade from the table, and pushed it between the bars of the overskeleton, deep into Carli's chest. Carli stared ahead with infinite eyes, and Abigail moved the blade in and out twice more. Carli didn't cry out, or say a single word. The doll's face exhaled deeply and then collapsed. Abigail slumped against the wall.
She remained there for several minutes, looking across the deserted office floor. Jacob and Carli were dead, and blood pounded in her ears. All adrenaline had left her system, replaced by a rush of what could only be relief, followed by a new anxiety of her surroundings. She had to leave quickly, but she was more alive than she had been in days. Small sounds were distinct and crisp, and her eyes felt wider than she could remember. Abigail picked up the microblade once more and pricked her palm, flinching slightly with pain. She felt the ghost of a smile. It wasn't right, but she could feel it.
Abigail moved over to the row of windows facing down the street. As she eased the pane open, small service pipes and handholds caught her reflexes, and she was moving.
She would sleep when she got back to the container. Or at least she would try.
* * *
Alastair Pollock is an undergraduate student in the Urban Studies program at the University of Calgary. An outstanding musician and writer, be sure to check out his blog Snackable Rants and his band Hunger Hush. Too humble to take any credit, Alastair is the brains behind Art 4 Art, or at least he was the inspiration that encouraged my work on this blog. You should all be very grateful. Read more about Alastair at the contributors page.
Up top, I provided the version of "The Police and the Private" that first inspired Alastair and it's important that we recognize what elements of the live version he took from the listening experience. I'm posting the album version below (because the song is so good and deserves to be posted twice) and I encourage more interpretations, more short stories and more art.
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