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CRIME / SCI-FI - You’ve Got Time

Today was set to be the longest day of Comrad Daley’s life. A hundred years long, to be precise.

7 : 4 6 P M

“Catch it Dad!” the younger Daley shouted, pelting the ball far above Comrad’s head into the far distance.

‘That’s my boy’ the proud father thought, the kid’s kick was improving, though he’d have to teach him aim and self-restraint next if he didn’t plan on going to fetch the ball every time his son touched the thing. He stared expectantly back at his Dad, smiling eagerly. As usual, Coach Comrad sighed comically and walked off the red shrubbery to fetch it back. He was a good kid, he had to remind himself that sometimes- he had his Father’s distinctive, animated eyes, shining bright blue but definitely had the patience of his Mother. Comrad pulled back his thinning grey hair and sighed, this time for real. A deep, heavy sigh he daren’t question or think about too hard. He lit a cigarette and tried to recall the last time he’d gotten a good night’s sleep. God, I need to stop bringing the office back home with me, he thought- trying to clear his head. Spending his precious four hours in-between labour shifts fetching footballs like a dog was hardly what he had envisioned for himself and his family when he started his life over on, the Beckham Base Colony (the ‘Garden of Mars’ my arse’ he had said before.)

Ah, man.’ He said under his breath as he pulled it out of the red lake, a sickly light red, like watered-down blood or faded paint. Comrad was so compliant to the demands of paternal life he almost assumed it was something for him to repaint. He half-laughed at himself, joylessly.

‘You can’t fix everything, Dad.’ He said dryly to himself, he looked through groggy eyes at his reflection in the crimson water. A tired, near-unrecognisable face. His stubble turned white over the years, his eyes significantly greener than he remembered and his smile, Jesus-his smile.

Comrad Daley tried with all his might to smile, as if the muscles simply wouldn’t obey- the smile was too heavy to hold. The image of his son shot into his head, that young soul beaming brightly...as if his own flesh and blood had drained him and stolen the smile from his soul, wearing it as his own. Before this thought could last, a sudden sting surged through Daley’s head. As if violating every atom of his nervous system, the shock lasted only a second- but was enough. Comrad Daley fell into the pool of red before him.

7 : 4 9 P M  

“-cking repeated conquests of your ripest slut!” shouted a furious Yank, a crazed animal dressed in a blue trench-coat and chains. Daley fortunately only woke up in time to catch the rear-end of the furious curse. The blonde-haired beast kept shouting, thrashing around in his chains in the cell at the end of the cell-block. Chains. Comrad snapped awake in shock, finding his own hands in a lock of their own, an impossibly heavy Cuff-lock Seal. His hands were magnetically sealed, which resulted in the reaction one would expect:

“Help me! Lord, help me, fuck!”

The scream fell into a murky sea of wailing cries, swears and moans. The exclamation was as desperate as it was futile as Comrad Daley found himself just one of many men locked away, big lumbering barbarians to smaller, sneakier types, shaking ominously, nutters- the lot of them. What in high heavens was he doing here among them? Had the last few days of his life been wiped?! On whose authority? This was one hell of an admin fuck-up, and one he would sue into the ground. Except…no, it hadn’t been days, more like minutes. He caught view of a giant marble clock mounted to the wall of the cell, an Imperial-white, spotless clock standing out amongst the black, dirty concrete of the room displaying the time and date digitally.

He shook at his bars, reinforced metal that didn’t buckle or bend an inch as he caught sight of the Space Pirate Yank at the far end of the room facing him, realising his chains were his own- decorative and now slightly ironic. Jesus wept, Space Pirates were still a thing? In this day and age? Seeing this gargantuan man spit and swear restlessly allowed it to sink in for him just how out of his depth he truly was. Trapped, far from home, fucked.

Through his tearful eyes, Comrad realised his shouts were in vain and made a conscious decision to stop shouting, realising keeping quiet made him louder than any other man in the room. Disorientated and confused, the boisterous and hopeless cellblock song went on.

8 : 0 0 P M

As the clock struck eight, a door unlocked- perfectly on the beat. The entire room fell silent in an instant as a terrifying titan of a man opened the vault door and walked down the steps into the cell. Comrad looked up desperately for answers and broke the silence with a small gasp, he recognized this giant…Diamondback Fletcher, infamous leader of an Australian crime syndicate. His name reached even Mars during his role in events of the Great Capital Purge of ’81. He had hated this man since he heard of him, signed petitions and ranted at his TV at his very mention. And now face to face with him he was…despondent, impossibly tall and…unconscious.

“Thank you Fletcher, now. GUILTY-340, there’s a good boy.” Spoke up a mysterious voice.

“GUILTY-340?” He called in a shrill voice, browsing the cells casually. “Ah, no. Dahly rather, Mr Dahly.” Snapping his calculated gaze to Comrad as if he knew his location the whole time. “Now, we have an appointment.” Comrad edged to the bars, uncertain of the man but relieved for a bit of normality. This OAP seemed even more out of place than him among these criminals, clearly intelligent- a science division by the uniform.

“It’s uh, Mr Daley actually, but I rather think there’s been some kin-“

“Mistake? No mistake here.

“No really, it’s Daley.”

“Comrad Dahley. Your unusual surname is of Irish descent, inherited from Gengo and Joyce Dahley. 45, Blood type O, Father of two, Capricorn. Enthusiast of gardening, football and lesbian porn.” He said flatly, somehow speaking without emphasis, inflection or irony. “Apologies, I like to be precise. Seems you’ve been mispronouncing your own surname, is all.”

Comrad Daley stood in shocked silence, identified and violated. They didn’t keep that detail of information on the public record. Who was this old man? As if reading his mind, the Doctor stuck out his hand.

“Dr. Randall Roache, pleasure.” His voice was small and scratchy, but he spoke with the precision of a sniper rifle. His extended arm fake-paused, as if expecting to be shook. A cruel joke for the cuff-deadlocked Daley and yet the Doctor showed no sign of a smile or pride. Comrad could think of nothing better to do than shakily laugh along at his joke, wondering if he could flatter his way out of this mess. Fletcher silently held paper cups, almost to a comical effect.

“You can’t charm your way out of chains, Dahley.” He said coldly. “Ugh, the state of you. A drink?”

Suddenly, Comrad’s brain informed him just how parched he truly was and noticing the reaction this gesture got from the convicts around them, he took it politely, thanking him sincerely before guzzling it desperately[U1] . Almost instantly, the lights of the room seemed to flicker. Some prisoners watched on frantically curious, those who knew averted their eyes. Randall Roache’s genius had begun to unravel.

“What have…you done to me?” He said, struggling to form or make sense of sentences. He fell backwards, but the experience felt different somehow. Had something happened to the gravity?

“Apologies again.” He said, unapologetically. “I’ve spiked your drink. Volatile subjects don’t exactly respond well to being offered pills. I think you’re ready for a time-out.”

“Please, Sir. Doctor, there’s no….neeeed.” He said, his words slurring and his sentence structuring slowing down. His brain was going full speed but it’s as if his lips were struggling to keep up.

“For an inhuman mass murderer, there’s every need.” He spat with new-found venom. “Now pay attention, we have little time before you serve your sentence.”

“You have the wrong guy.” He repeated, insistent but his eyes alive with terror, but Roache’s glasses reflected nothing back as he pressed on with his schedule. “Let’s not play dumb, you’re familiar with The Foresight, because everybody with half a brain cell knows about Crime Forecasting. Our prediction technology caught you before you could commit Class-A precipitated Murder.”

8 : 0 6 P M

“Murder? Who…?!” He said, familiar with the law technology but barely processing his words.

“Your boy, Mr Dahley. You killed your boy with your bare hands. You’re going to deny this, say ‘that’s not me! I’m not capable of murder!’ but really with the Foresight we know your nature better than you do yourself.”

“How…fucking…dare you.” He said, his voice trailing at a snail’s pace. “My kids…they’re at home, safe. I demand…a trial. My lawyer…” before finally trailing off.

“Unnecessary. No lawyer, court, nor you can disprove the future. Wielding the future as an instrument we have developed absolute law prevention, control over time itself.” Daley’s mind processed the terror in real time but his body lamely flailed in slow-motion at this revelation. “Your family are safe Dahley, thanks to our intervention- saved from you.”

“My…records clean and there’s zero reason…I’d do that. I’m being…I’m being set up.”

“We have all kinds here, the war criminals, the kiddy fiddlers and tax fraudsters but nothing cracks like the office-bound family man. Beat down by colleagues, family pressures, a parent- it’s a thankless job, I know.” Roache caught himself indulging in his monologue and realised the subject was almost out of time- he cut to the point. “But all it takes to snap your kind, is one bad day.”

“If this is a Foresight facility, then what was in my drink, Doctor?” Daley spat, piecing clues together. Roache knelt down and smiled, glad he was finally asking the right questions. He pulled something small out of his coat pocket and showed it to the grovelling convict. “I’m required by law to tell you what is about to happen to you. This is time, in a pill. See, as a young man I dared wonder- what could biotechnology bring to the field of law enforcement?”

“Dying to know.”

“Well, what if, instead of the life sentence you’ve been given. The very long, flawed, expensive for the taxpayer sentence, we could trick a prisoner’s perception of time? Turn just five minutes into ten, fifty, say hundred years.”

“Imposs…ible.”

“Very possible. I made it possible. Please, relax. Should you not fight it, you walk out here a free man by 8:15.

8 : 1 0 P M

The world spun around, he wanted to see his family. Did little Jamie even know he was missing? Did he get his ball back? The clock oppressively stood above him, taunting him as much as the decrepit man of science in front of it.

“Hundred…years…” Daley moaned in disbelief.

“Yes. A lot of time for some well-needed personal reflection, don’t you think?”

Daley was completely slowed, but managed one final sentence before he fell to the process. “Is that what you told your pet?” Nodding to the brain-washed Fletcher, a stab that turned the Doctor’s face dark, he removed his glasses.

“You didn’t just stop with the boy, you know. You went one neck to another, you cut their mouths open before dumping them in the lake. Child to child to your wife, to your town- you couldn’t be stopped. The blood…that sound.” He whispered, taunting him by relishing in every graphic detail. “You think over that image for the next hudnred years. I hope you like the walls of this cell, because you better get used to them.” He said coldly, rattled by having his ethics challenged- he sneered and turned away to go on his coffee break.

“See you in five.”

8 : 1 1 P M

Tick.

Tock.

The smaller hand of the clock becomes the only marker of time. The seconds changing every couple of years. The sound of my wife’s neck crumpling in my hands used to feel so foreign and obscene but now the slightest doubt had begun to creep into the corner of my mind, sitting there like a demon. I know every follicle of this cell, every little bit of dust and have favourite parts of the concrete. The clock serves as my only distraction from the terrors on my mind. Today I forgot my own name. The only things I know, this blasted clock and that looming old face. The wrinkles of that worn skin seem like nothing to the centuries I’ve endured. Was there anything else outside this room? Voices in my head go in circles, clock-wise. My body needs no sleep or nourishment in the mere space of five minutes but my brain convinces me I should be starving nonetheless, out of habit I bet. Some days I debate whether I truly am capable of such crimes, some days I embrace that part of me and some days I curse it to hell. There are only so many thoughts to be had, I am losing my mind. I am losing myself. My hands in a lake of red. I have eternity to plan my thoughts and actions, to decide my own verdict. Guilty?

8 : 1 5 P M

The clock stopped and the Doctor was late.

Just a half-beat short of turn of the minute, the door opened once more. From behind it stepped the familiar Doctor, with his assistant and two new colleagues. They idly chatted down the stairs as Conrad sat up slowly, exiting his own mind and back to reality. He tried to make syllables with his mouth.

“Daley…” The scientists heads perked up. “Daley. Daley. Daley!” He echoed, each utterance getting more powerful and clearer than the last. He rattled his name and shouted it in protest.

“Now, now sleeping beauty. Don’t overexert yourself.” Said one of the unfamiliar men at the back. The other started scanning the prisoners. “Vitals good condition, no lasting brain damage, tremors might be permanent.” But Roache batted them out of the way. “His mind, I want to know about his mind.” Daley continued repeating in the background, tired eyes fixed on Roache. “Tell me, are you a reformed man, corrected?”

“…It’s Daley.” He said through gritted teeth. Suddenly he headbutted the bars, pointless but enough to make the man flinch. The stage was his.

8 : 1 6 P M

“Doctor Randall Roache, you are a genius. A real, goddamned genius, above us all aren’t you?” Randall’s smile dropped into an annoying grimace, subjects rarely maintained their independence. “You have the ability to make a man, any man live countless lifetimes. An eternity of thought…and you’ve wasted it.”

The clock in Conrad’s head started ticking, adrenaline once again shooting through his veins. The Doctor pulled the keys out of his pocket and unlocked his cell to let him leave. Conrad held his ground as the cell door swung open.

“You have another pill in your coat pocket, don’t you think you should try it next?” His fist tightened.

“Yes? Now why would I do that?” Roache bemused, hoping it was brain damage.

“Oh come on Randall. IQ like yours, five hundred years of just you and your thoughts? Apply yourself. You know as well as I do, what progress an academic mind like yours could make in five hundred years. Imagine we had Einstein for a hundred more years, a thousand- the progress that could be made, the lives that could be saved.” He exacted his speech meticulously, words that fell on the right ears.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, you’re a free man. Leave, or would you like another fifty?” he said behind his glasses, losing his cool.

“What would my ‘crime’ be this time?” Conrad replied, exerting his height over the man. A sweat-drop ran down his head as his two colleagues watched the exchange in anticipation, they seemed sold on the notion. Fletcher stepped forward and poured a pill from the plastic cup into his big, offering palm, Conrad nodded to the shell and showed the good Doctor his invention, a look that said ‘take the pill’. The Doctor stood frozen, shook to his core by a use for it he had never considered. He took the drug from him and held it in his old, shaking hand. The longest silence passed.

8 : 20 P M

A tiny pill-sized thud hit the floor, the atmosphere was palpable and the implications clear.

“Then how dare you try hold the moral high ground, Sir. I don’t know…if I’m capable of murder, but you are capable of so much more.” He was met with nothing but silence, the other prisoners went to cheer but dare not break the tension. Comrad Daley dusted himself off and pulled his hands from the Deadlock Seal, he was confused how to feel as he walked out, to where he didn’t know.

“I’m a free man, are you?”