****Want to share Chapter 1 of my story** Acuity** with you. If you like it please share with others and if you want to know more subscribe to my newsletter which drops weekly chapters - here
Acuity
Casper Maddox
Part One
1
‘You didn’t tell me she was fit Sarge.’
She could see eyes leering.
‘Thought it would be some fat Russian. She’s a babe.’
A mouth puckered its lips, blew a kiss. The hatch shut, leaving her alone in the stark cell.
‘Wouldn’t have thought it to look at her. You sure it’s her?’ said the copper.
’So I’m told. VIP, according to upstairs. Not my type, now make the bloody tea will you,’ the sergeant said.
‘A Silverwood. Her mum…. Rupert… her?’
‘Think so,’ Sarge said.
‘Well I never.’
‘Told to hold her until Swift gets here.’
’Swift! Thought he’d retired,’ said the copper.
‘He loves it too much. What’s she doing?’
‘Just sitting there, staring straight ahead like’s she's meditating.’
‘The lotus?’ Sarge asked.
‘The what?’
‘It’s what they do in mindfulness classes. Sue goes now, Tuesdays,’ the Sargent said, while flicking through the newspaper.
‘I’ll have another look.’ He opens the Hatch. ‘Crossed legged, arms on legs — hands upwards on knee?’
‘Lotus.’
‘Well I never knew that,’ said the copper.
‘The other night she did it in lounge while I’m watching Clarkson race around in Grand Tour. You seen it? Bloody great.’
‘Netflix?’
‘Prime,’ Sarge said, whilst folding his newspaper and putting it in his in tray on top of papers wanting attention.
‘Oh yeah, not got it. Good though, you say?’ he said.
’She’s right there on the rug,’ Sarge explained, ‘doing the lotus. Bit much. I said — Sue love, do you mind.’
‘What she say?’
’Nothing; just stared at me in a trance. Still, she’s more chilled at home since the accident.’
Hannah stuck her tongue out. The copper shut the hatch.
A cell is as dull as you imagine it to be. Boredom, the tool of torture. She had been offered a weak tea and a sandwich, not made with care. Someone had scratched THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT on the wall. Her mouth was dry. She tried to sleep.
‘I do hope you’ve been looked after,’ Swift said.
She nodded, shrugged. He opened his file, scanned it before looking at her. ‘Thought you’d have long hair like your mum.’
She ran her hands through her short messy dark hair, feeling self-conscious, trying to hide the pang of the past stabbing her like a cattle prod cruelly and randomly used by a farm hand, angry at his lot, projecting onto the innocent animals. She wasn’t projecting but protecting herself. She gave him a tight-lipped smile and blinked slowly. He was observing her like a scientist examining a subject. She crossed her arms and looked to the side.
‘Tell me about the New Stars,’ Swift said. He paused, wet his fingers and ran them over his moustache, patting it down as if it was his pet. He asked her again: ‘New Stars — what do you know?’
She said she knew nothing.
‘New Stars are a terrorist organisation, low-key at the moment but making noises,’ Swift read from his file. ‘Christian Fundamentalists who have adopted your mother’s work. Hell-bent on destroying the modern world. Want things to go back to Biblical times for a simpler way of life,’ he explained matter-of-factly.
‘Sorry, know nothing about them,’ she said innocently.
‘Their main thing is tech.’
‘Uh huh.’
‘An affront to God,’ said the detective.
‘Tech you say?’
‘Against the natural order of God’s creations, according to them. Anyway, it makes them very upset.’
‘Right. Know nothing about it.’
‘They see the Tech 27 bombing as the start. Your mother bombed the offices.’
‘You mean she was murdered,’ Hannah snapped back at him. ‘She cared about humanity. What’s wrong with that? She wasn’t a terrorist. She was seduced, brainwashed!’ Hannah stood up.
‘Sit down please,’ shouted Swift.
Hannah kicked the chair across the room and whispered, ‘No.’
‘Please sit yourself down right now!’ barked the detective. Hannah weighed up the situation. She took the chair and sat down, scraping it across the floor. The light bulb above them was dull, making her eyes strain. She felt the walls were looking at her menacingly, sweating out the lies, filth and stress of previous tenants.
‘Can’t you see the link Hannah? Your mother was an ethics professor arguing against automation. Decrying AI, she rallied against biotech coming into the workforce, stating she thought it was degrading to humanity, leading to a place where people would be slaves. These are her words Hannah. So, I’m saying she felt like you do,’ He said, half smiling at her.
‘What are you saying?’
‘You’re part of the New Stars is what I think. A mother/daughter team. Now you’re taking her place. Leading them is what some are saying.’
‘Who says that?’
Swift laughed. ‘Come on sugar, level with me. She died taking out the Tech offices, which stopped your Grandfather buying it. Tech 27 made the first internal chips for monitoring people. She was against this, gave a talk online, then the bombing.’
‘She was killed!’
‘Oh sweetheart, it’s bloody obvious. You’re just an angry young girl who lost her mum, took revenge and carried on where she left off in a family feud gone wrong.’
‘Don’t call me “sweetheart”.’
‘That video. Now that’s clever, we can’t decode it and as far as I’m concerned its true, and he’s going down for it, but he’s taking you with him; you, mum and Eric, a terrible trio of terrorism.’
Hannah gave him the finger.
Swift tutted. Hannah leaned back in her chair, staring at him. Her eyes flashed anger. Swift smiled. ‘One of those huh?’ he said, his tone condescending, striking her. The thing she kept locked up was rattled.
‘What is that exactly?’ Hannah said.
‘Feminists, sensitive little things.’ He smirked and sniggered at her annoyance.
‘Good God! What’s the matter with you?’ she snapped. ‘You don’t have a right to call me “babe”, “honey”, “darling”, “princess”, “sweetheart”, “sugar”, “doll”, “angel” or any other fucking manmade masculine misogynistic put-down to control the female. I am not your object! My name is Hannah Silverwood. I am a woman. A human. Show some goddamn fucking respect.’
Swift stroked his moustache and kept doing it while he watched her. He seemed amused at her fire. He picked up his pen, clicked it a few times.
‘What about Eric then? We found him gurgling blood with a broken nose. He told us you attacked him?’
She gripped the side of the chair making her knuckles white. Her breathing was erratic. She smiled a ferocious smile of anger. Her head hurt. He waited for her to talk more. She didn’t. The silence became thin. Her legs started to itch. She knew he’d made up his mind, figured the story out to its end, this little dance was just sport for him. She could see him in the pub later with the coppers. ‘Cheers Swift,’ they’d shout, glasses chinking, beer spilling, smug police nodding approval to each other. Good work Swift, who would tell whoever was listening, that he had tied mother and daughter together in a domestic terrorism case while closing down an underground nascent group of religious freaks. She shook her thoughts.
‘He wanted me to join him and his band of merry men, to recruit me, said he was starting a revolution like Jesus. Did I want to follow him for the lost unemployed souls? I said no. Then he attacked me.’
‘Why go meet him?’
‘Greif, detective. Closure.’
‘You wanted retribution?’
‘Maybe, the spiritual kind — like I said to him, God and bombs not my thing.’
‘Look Miss Silverwood, whatever the conflict in the family it has obviously had an impact on you. You’re twenty-one, hurting, confused even. Being a Silverwood can’t be easy. Let’s sort this out, tell me the truth.’
In the corner of the room a computer sat on a table with two small, hooded domes on either side. Swift went over and turned the machine on. A flat screen flickered on. Swift touched the top of the white hoods, and they too came to life. Soft blue lights glowed from them. The screen had the scales of justice on it, with words ‘Acuity Justice’, imposed.
Swift said, ‘Never thought in my time I would see this, but there you go, it’s here.’
Hannah looked at the screen. ‘Lie detector?’
Swift shook his head. ‘Not really, no. You place your hands in those hoods and it reads you. We feed it all the evidence we have – data, files, records – everything really, and it weighs up the probability of guilt. Wait though, this is the best bit.’
Hannah squinted as she tried to understand the machine.
Swift became excited. ‘The clever thing works out from all the information we have on you, the likelihood of you committing a future crime. If the probability data is higher than seventy, then it delivers a sentence. Preventive justice.’
She said nothing.
‘It’s an algorithm,’ he said, like she was a child.
‘I know what an algorithm is.’
‘Silly me, sorry Miss Silverwood, forgive me. I’m an old man learning the modern ways. Still think everyone else is the same as me. Course you know all about those things. Funny thing is the firm that makes this is…’
‘Ironic, right?’ Hannah said, biting her lip.
‘Put your hands in there.’ He pointed to the white hoods. ‘Let the machine work this little mess out.’
Hannah pulled her sleeves up from her jean jacket. He nods for effect. There was a knock on the door, followed by its opening abruptly. A tall skinny man walked in with authority oozing from his stern face. Hannah thought, as she looked at the man, you don’t know power until it walks in a room. The furniture seemed to shrink away. The man told Swift to leave. He did.
The man in the room was Kennedy. He stepped closer to Hannah. Sharp suited, black brogues, hint of sixties mod. A sharp retro look that he pulled off, she thought. Kennedy looked like he could handle himself in a fight, charm anyone to do anything, with eyes that ate the room. A smile that said, ‘It’s okay, I’m here now.’ His voice played along with the look, commanding respect with tones of don’t mess and kindness. A class act holding all the cards. Hannah was mesmerised. She was trying to work out if she knew him; he looked famous. She relaxed as he spoke.
‘What, are you my lawyer or something?’ she asked.
‘More the something. We need to move fast, get out of this horrible little room and get back.’
‘Back? Where?’ said Hannah.
‘Rupert’s. He’s waiting up.’
She couldn’t help the smile creeping along her face from the warmth that safety brings when money mixed with the right people are brought into a situation. ’How did he know I was here?’
‘He knows most things about you. You’re his granddaughter for goodness’ sake, what kind of man do you think he is? Now he wants to fix things. Start again. He takes it you’ve got this rebel thing out of your system?’
Hannah liked Kennedy’s straight talking. She ruffled her hair thinking of something clever to say but couldn’t. The smell in the room was starting to give her a headache. Hungry now, she felt ready to go.
‘Is he okay?’ She sat forward, aware her body needed to move.
‘Rupert is well and hopes your little adventure has given you a new perspective. Maybe now he wonders if you’ll join him?’ Kennedy played with his tie as he went through the script. She gave him a flirty smile. He smiled back. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘let’s make tracks.’
‘Sure, how does this work?’
‘Well, you understand that machine will put you inside on some serious charges. Linking you in with your mother’s work. Tying you into the New Stars.’
‘Nothing to do with me,’ she said.
‘I know. We know and understand, yet the police have a different view. Not helped by you visiting Eric and breaking his nose but nice work on the deep fake.’ He locked onto her eyes.
Hannah swallowed, her mouth drying up from the rooms dying air. The walls looked as tired as she felt. Hannah fell silent. Her fight walked away. She submitted. ‘I’m sorry. Get me out of here. Take me home, please.’ She wanted to cry. A tear got ready to jump, she blinked and released it. Kennedy stood up. He opened the door and left. Silence filled her head. Her heart beating fast. She wondered what Rupert was up to as an army of tears filled her eyes, ready to be deployed. Maybe if she went to work for him, she would heal.
The door opened with Kennedy and Swift entering. Swift spoke first. ‘Okay love, up you get, free to go,’ he said, without looking at her.
‘Really?’
‘Come on then,’ said Kennedy, nodding towards the door. She didn’t understand what was happening. Swift looked at her and clicked his pen; she thought his moustache twitched. Hannah walked out. Kennedy shook hands with Swift then followed Hannah out the police station.
His car bleeped, lights flashed. They got in the black Land Rover, driving off into the night. ‘You okay?’ asked Kennedy.
‘Don’t know. What just happened?’
He changed gears, turned the radio on. A lost sound from the sixties played.
He looked straight ahead. Rain fell, making a delicate swooshing sound on the road. He drove into the night as she thought of questions that would never be answered. The old sounds of the past filled the air-conditioned leather seated cocoon, driving them into a future unknown. She liked the modern mixed with the classic sounds from the sixties. It made her feel timeless. She stared out of the window to catch a glimpse of a stag watching the car drive past — its ancient antlers a symbol of something ineffably beautiful, sculpted in the night time shadows. Rain fell on the land, home to nature’s secrets. Wildlife roamed the undergrowth of nature’s nest. Hannah sighed, her eyes heavy. Kennedy turned up the music. Rupert was waiting.
End.