Season 04 - Episode 05

‘there besides I’

“Alright, Mr Williamston,” says the blonde man in the suit with a sigh. “Let's go through this again shall we?”

“No!” cries Ak, sitting across the small table and shackled to it. “I won't. Listen, Agent Smithinski, this is ridiculous! You've been holding me for weeks, months now even! I've told you everything, over and over. How many times do you need to hear the same story?”

“Until it starts making sense, Mr Williamston,” drawls Smithinski. “Now, again. Where did you come from?”

“Argh!” Ak cries in frustration. He tries to bury his face in his hands but the chains are too short so that his palms stop a few inches before him. He shakes his fists and rattles the chains, bouncing enraged in his seat.

Smithinski leans back in his chair and watches unimpressed. As Ak continues his tantrum, the agent takes a small, angular packet from inside his suit jacket and retrieves one of several slender white cylinders from within.

He puts one end to his lips and then drags a tiny wooden stick across the surface of the table so that the end bursts into tiny flame. He lights the end of the cylinder then flicks the dead stick away and inhales deeply as Ak finally sags against his restraints.

“Do you have to?” says Ak, disgusted as Smithinski leans back and blows a plume of smoke up into the air. “What even are those things? They stink! Why do you people do that?”

“Relieves stress,” says Smithinski after taking another drag. “Passes the time. Both pretty handy in my line of work, dealing with people like you.”

“People like me,” Ak echoes morosely. “You've no idea who I am. I'm one of the most famous people in all The Levels! If you'd just get my agent on the vidscreen he'd... But no, I forgot, you don't have those down here, do you? No vidscreens, no food hatches, no box transit system, no technology at all. You're savages! Absolute savages! This is insane!”

“You know,” says Smithinski, clamping the white tube between his lips as he idly scratches the back of his head. “A lot of the time I don't understand half the words you say but it really doesn't matter. Savages we may be Mr Williamston, but you're in our world now and no-one here knows who you are.”

“Your loss,” says Ak then tries to fold his arms but can't and so sits and pouts instead.

“We'll live,” says Smithinski with a shrug. “What I do know is that each day you're in custody your bill ticks up and up. Hell, you already owe the Government Corporation like three years wages. You don't start making sense real soon, you'll never get out of debt.”

“But that's madness!” cries Ak. “You can't charge me rent for being in prison. You put me there! Besides, I earn more in a week than you do in a year. I could buy and sell your stupid Government Corporation ten times over!”

Smithinski looks Ak up and down, his wildly unkempt beard and raggedy clothes.

“Looks like it,” he nods.

“Well obviously I don't look my best right now!” snaps Ak primly. “But just you wait until I get home. I know people you know. The Chief Executive Minister's brother was at my birthday party last year. I'll have your job for this.”

“Alright,” says Smithinski, grinding the tip of the smouldering tube on the desk before flicking it off into a corner. “You're an obvious lunatic, Mr Williamston. The only reason you're still here and not in a hospital factory a hundred levels down, is that you were found in a restricted area and we don't know how you got there. Plus the restricted technology of course. So why don't you take me through it again?”

“But we've been through this!” cries Ak. “I'm from The Levels, you know? GovCo territory? Hundreds of floors above here? There was a disaster, a collapse and I fell, I don't know how far. Somehow I survived and I've been trying to get back up but the only ways open led me downwards until I ended up here. As for that machine, I've no idea what it is!”

Smithinski eyes him for several seconds then sags and shakes his head.

“There's nothing up there, Mr Willamston,” he says then. “Just the dead zone and nothing can survive up there. If you were there then you must know that, you'll have seen the bodies. No, I'm afraid you're going to have to do better than this. I'll see you again tomorrow.”

©  a d a m   b y f i e l d , not to be reproduced in any form without written permission