The following morning he found himself in an unusual position, the one he was in when he tried to get back to sleep: curled up like a fetus, at the bottom of the bed: this is how he had fallen asleep, victim of such an emotional discombobulation he wouldn’t normally be able to go back to sleep. But physical exhaustion got the better of him and he fell into a darkness merciful enough not to produce any more dreams.
A light, reassuring greyness reached his eyes and ripped away the shadows still clinging to his brain like useless posters hanging from a wall. He recollected all the night’s events and immediately promised himself he wouldn’t let them influence him in a negative way, thus ruining his day. What happened had to stay where it was, in the dark room where all the mental flotsam and jetsam were thrown away, with no real use no matter how many times one would examine them on different lights. Rubbish. Junk. Like the ones groaning down there.
He ate an abundant breakfast with pineapple juice, apple pie and pudding. He felt the need to store some energy. He had a devastating nightmare? Good, it was over now. Had he sleepwalked, turned on the Tank’s audio, listened to those fires? Yes, so what? They were all pieces he needed to put into place, thinking of the year in the Tank as a big, uneven mosaic. His predecessor had suffered; maybe he wasn’t as strong as he was expected to. But it was useless to look back, and so was the fear of possible future experiences: the path had been walked for a third. Four sheets of his calendar and been folded back, disappearing against the wall. And there he was, steadfast after all, and determined to get what he was owed once the job was over.
Staring at his image in the bathroom mirror, he whispered: “I am the NMO.” And with that, he had said it all. Let the nightmares come. They would eventually leave like the others. He just had to not give importance to things that hadn’t got any. It was a good forma mentis with which to face the eight remaining months.
He mimed shooting his reflection with his fingers, like a true american gangster of the movies.
***
The notion that the diary under the mattress had to be destroyed - which in his nightly, numb mental distortion had seemed reasonable - to him was now utter idiocy. How could he come to think it could infect him? He had also thought about the possibility of throwing them into the Shutter, and that would objectively be the surest way to eliminate them. But the matter of getting rid of them or leaving them where they were was an old one, and a waste of time to go back to. As far as he was concerned, that stupid diary could stay there for eternity. Moreover - and he hadn’t consider the possibility it up to that moment - maybe it wasn’t even his predecessor who wrote the diary, but the one before him, or the one before that one. It was an unlikely, but interesting hypothesis. And if by any chance...
With admirable timing, the buzzing announcing the first delivery of the day saved him from the web of useless thoughts in which he was entangled.
***
May passed without incidents. The food and laundry services worked with clockwork precision. Books, movies, documentaries and music occupied the many gaps he had during his days, together with the physical exercise.
He still couldn’t grasp the delivery schedule of the Escort Guards (Giovanni came to think that they were balloted), and from time to time some new faces to which he could give new, secret nicknames appeared. Like Carnival, a man with such a somber look that he seemed more crestfallen than the convicts he escorted, or Burr, a blond-haired man with a bad case of rhotacism. This kind of things wasn’t fitting for a NMO representative, of course; but Giovanni managed to benefit from keeping his humor and fantasy alive. The Tank was the ideal place to make both disappear in a heartbeat, and growing these little bushes in the midst of the desert could be helpful.
The spring that filled Camp 9 didn’t just affect the weather. It was also a state of mind. The bright light shining on the barbed wire filled everything with purity and, when Giovanni open the window of his bedroom, his lungs expanded at their maximum capacity to benefit from the invigorating power of nature. Even the deliveries and the unloading had become less emotionally engaging. No doubt that it was also because habit had kicked in: any monster could become family living with it long enough. In the new order, throwing those people, the kind who couldn’t fit with society, into the jaws of pain and death was nothing but a dutiful act to be carried out with automatic gestures. Numbers and buttons, nothing else. There couldn’t be a man in all this. Living inside the Tank required self-detachment; the more one’s character fit in the required physical and psychological standard, the more linear would his year at the service of the NMO be. For him, to be honest, the path was steeper than he had initially thought. But once having dealt with all the obstacles more or less directly bound to the role of Keeper, even a potentially unpleasant job like that became routine.
Giovanni was so sure of knowing the ins and outs of his job that he really felt more relieved. And it was probably because of that confidence that, when the message arrived on the first night of June, the floor seemed to tilt under his feet.
He was in the Control, updating the Management Register. From the kitchen, the performance of a celtic arp virtuoso - a kind of music Giovanni had always found particularly relaxing - was on TV when the well-known beep made him jump. 9:17 P.M.. An unusual time for receiving communications from the Center. It had to be something important. He had never been contacted after 8:00 P.M., and they were always comments on the deliveries or other events of the day.
He opened the message and the first impression he had was that the office chair he was siting on had distanced from the console, as if the floor had tilted. He would have felt the same on a ship pitching among the waves. Naturally it was just an illusion, an effect of the light faintness he had felt after reading those four words on the screen. “Did you read it?”
Paradoxically, the first thing that hit him as weird was the form, no the message. They had never directly asked him anything. It was of little importance, but considering the context, it gave the event a completely different emotional impact.
“Read what?” Vocally answering that written message instantly alarmed him. Under his ribcage, his heart started pounding like a blind bird in a cage.
“What?” he wrote. He should probably have written the question in a more articulate and deferential way, but he instinctively excluded that could be an official communication.
He stared at the screen for thirty second or so, until a second beep shook his nerves with a jolt of low tension current.
The answer was utterly illogical: “Bed bed bed bed”.
The notes from the harp started harmonizing on two minor chords, as if they caught the weirdness of the situation, and Giovanni felt sucked in by the spiral they created. What did that mean? Who the hell was writing those absurdities?
Hoping to make things right, he answered: “Possible malfunction in the communication. Requesting clarifications, in possible.”
But when after five minutes no reply had been sent, he decided that there could only be two options: either there truly was some technical problem, some interference or whatever; or someone was having fun at his expense and the game was over, for now. Not having enough information to determine the cause of those incomprehensible messages, he decided to choose the most linear explanation: the first one. And yet he suspected the second one to be truer.
The Register was left where it was. He had lost his concentration, and didn’t even feel like listening to music anymore.
He turned off the TV, drank a glass of grapefruit juice - swearing because of the small, cold stain that expanded on his singlet - then went to his bedroom and sat on the bed, making the frame creak.
Why on Earth would someone ask him if he had read something? Was he talking about one of the books in the Tank? In that case, wouldn’t it have been simpler to just say its title? No, the answer was elsewhere. It wasn’t a book...
Despite knowing he reached the conclusion through completely arbitrary deductions, Giovanni couldn’t help but think that the question - Did you read it? - was about the diary. And that word - bed - repeated in such an absurd way...it was a reference to the place where the diary was hidden. Someone was provoking him. Testing him. But why? And since it seemed that every question led to another, his doubts expanded like numerous concentrical circles generated by a rock thrown in a pond. How could the stranger who had contacted him know that damn diary was hiding under his mattress. Simple: he was the one who put it there.
“Ah, that’s a good one!” Giovanni slapped his thigh with one hand. “So who was the one who wrote those messages? The former Keeper?”
He shook his head, stood up and started walking up and down the room. Beyond all the questions that had exploded inside his head, only then did he realize what the fundamental one was: what did he have to do? Whoever had poked him was expecting some kind of reaction. The possibility of the NMO being behind the bait-message was high, since very few people could access the Operative Center that was linked to the Tank, or so he thought. Now, if he decided not to do anything or just wait passively for other such messages, he would make a poor showing. His role required initiative, ability to face any kind of problem and most of all discernment. He had to be able to distinguish the situations he could manage on his own from those that needed the involvement of the higher-ups. Always without disturbing the general, if possible.
He approached the window and set his sight on the crimson and violet sky. Camp 9 was a completely still expanse, a vast space suspended between dream and reality that, after the sunset, was remodeled following the imagination of some invisible painter. Giovanni would have liked staying there to watch the world while it imperceptibly slipped towards the dark abyss of the night; but in order to do he would need a clear mind, free and well-disposed to dusting off the day’s dirt, ready to grasp the true value of such beauty...
Unfortunately, it wasn’t so. The Tank didn’t allow slipping away, not even in spirit. And the matter of the messages needed to be solved. He turned towards the bed, intently staring at it. He was given an input and it was his duty to demonstrate he had caught it. In the past, he had decided to ignore the diary. It hadn’t been an easy choice, but he wanted to pretend nothing had happened. Things had changed now. Someone had given him a clue and he could exploit it to “find” the diary and give it to his superiors.
(And how did you find it?)
Interpreting the hint correctly.
(What hint?)
The one that is registered in the Head Office - Tank communication log.
(Good job, Keeper Corte. You did the right thing!)
Yes, he would do so.
Without hesitating he lifted the mattress and grabbed the diary for the second time. How would he have liked to spit on it! It was no more than a jumble of delirious thoughts, getting rid of it would no doubt make him feel better. And about the remorse he felt towards his predecessor: to Hell with it! He sure didn’t do him any good, leaving that to him. Moreover, those pages were against the norms of the NMO. So, no more scruples: he would wait until the following morning, then he would announce his discovery. He would get of clean irrespectively of the diary being some kind of test or someone knowing about his existence under the bed. He would really do the right thing.
He leafed through those creased pages with contempt, avoiding reading their content. Then he locked them in one of the console’s drawers. And as a demonstration of how powerful suggestion could be, he couldn’t sleep more serenely that night.