Are You Feeling Normal, Keating?

"Your greatest work will be coming face to face with the truth — that all of the things you are chasing are empty, that all the rules you are following are lies".

Keating looked at the note. It was tiny, written in pencil on a small ticket of paper. He heard someone come in the office door and let go of the end so it spiralled up and he shoved it back in the heart-shaped locket where it came from.

"Locket for the girlfriend?" Brennon asked as he walked past the desk.

"Something like that."

"Unless you're planning to wear it for yourself," snorted Brennon.

Keating knew who it was from. It arrived at reception like the other gifts. It was from Xanthe, the girl he met in Mayfair the night he worked late and the stewards permitted him to walk home through the upper zones back to his Euston Road apartment.

Every present she sent brought him closer to danger. If the loudmouth Brennon or his cohort found out, Keating would find himself on the top floor, answering questions from the Consortium's Chief Steward, Oswald Cosely. There he'd eventually confess he left the campus perimeter and met a terrorist from the boondocks.

It was Xanthe who led him there, rambling about why Xenon launched the Cubris, the infeasibly huge square satellite above New London, geo-fixed in the sky, a tiny square moon, waiting for action.

Xanthe was an employee. At least, in name, like everyone on campus. You're either an employee in New London or a slummer in the boondocks. She lived in the upper quarters because her mother was high up in Xenon, and sat on the Consortium's executive board. Their house was a detached property in Mayfair, the most grand and opulent campus zone. Some traditions never die. Mayfair was grand before The Calamity, before Xenon bought the city, and it remains grand now.

Xanthe was loitering outside her gates and asked Keating for a cigarette as he wandered past. Within the hour he'd fallen for her as she dragged him over a perimeter fence to meet the terrorist.

"The French let the Nazis have Paris," she told Keating. "250 years ago, they loved the city so much they didn't want it destroyed by fighting so they surrendered."

"World War Two?" ask Keating, chasing Xanthe as she darted through the grounds of the Church of the Immaculate Conception.

"It's the same reason why the British gave London to Xenon. It was only a matter of time before The Calamity spread into the city and destroyed everything." She waved her hands in explanation as they exited the church grounds.

Keating was petrified but already intoxicated with adoration.

Every time someone left campus, they disappeared. Officially, you were allowed to leave if you decided to quit Xenon, but no one leaves New London by choice. Keating was brought up on horror stories about the boondocks, stories told at night with candles held to faces, in the Academy dormitories. Every employee born on campus was educated in The Academy, included Keating.

The pair slipped through Leicester Square, skirting the border of the Covent Garden Laboratory, Xanthe showing her pass and getting a retina scan by stewards when required.

They reached Waterloo Bridge, Keating's hand in hers. Across the river loomed the boondocks. She led him to an underpass snaking under the bridge and pushed through fencing to the muddy river banks where a tall figure waited, called Dave Fox.

The phone on Keating's desk rang.

"Hello, Efficiency Department, Keating speaking."

He'd been called upstairs by Cosely, an arcane figure, aged and rarely spotted, though omnipresent; his portrait hung in the breakout kitchen on each floor.

Keating was instructed to use the executive elevator going straight to Cosely's quarters.

The lift doors opened. “Feeling human?” Cosely enquired, sticking out an ageing claw for Keating to shake.

"Fine, Sir."

They walked across the lobby and sat in leather chairs by the window overlooking Mayfair and the twisting river in the distance.

Keating was fixated on the locket in his desk drawer. If Brennon went riffling, he'd find it. Was Cosely was about to have him arrested? Not for the notes or leaving campus but for fraternising with the boondock madman Fox, a paranoid drug casualty who believed the Cubris controlled people's minds and he planned to destroy Xenon to "emancipate humankind."

Cosely monologued his way through Consortium history in fastidious detail. Keating said nothing.

“When London turned to us, to Xenon, we saved this city. After The Calamity, the world had fallen apart. London needed order, so here we are. The boondocks are not to be trifled with, Keating. Have you ever been?" Cosely widened his eyes.

"No, never."

“We had five messy years getting the New London Consortium together, but when we did it, equilibrium was reached.”

“Yes Sir. I’m a proud Xenon employee.” The words felt like a lie.

“And why not! We're at the forefront of civilisation. Half the world is in ruins and what is happening here, as a civil society, is so far out there it doesn’t even have a name.”

“A name?”

“What name would you give it? New London is beyond politics. The Consortium governs the campus, Xenon provides gainful employment, the quality of life here is beyond the dreams of boondock savages.”

Cosely pointed his finger in the air in defiance.

“My boy, when there's no name for something, there can be no opposition. What we are doing here is anti-politics. We offer natural freedom! There is no obligation to stay. You chose here. You chose wisely.”

A door opened and out stepped a wide lady, dressed in a red skirt suit. She walked towards Cosely's side.

"This is Mrs Overmars" Cosely gestured behind his shoulder.

"I believe you met my daughter," she said bluntly.

Keating's stomach turned over.

"My boy, the campus is tracked, cameras, stewards, scanners. How did you think we wouldn't know?"

Keating remained silent. How much did they know? He knew people who'd been fired, exiled to the boondocks. There one minute, gone the next."

There was a pause. Cosely looked into the middle distance and stroked the draping flesh on his neck.

“It's an exciting time, Keating. We are a corporate city, an oasis of order in a desert of chaos. And now, teleportation. Old London was never such a fertile bed of progress. Are you feeling normal, Keating?”

“Teleportation?”

"He asked if you feel normal. Or do you feel like a terrorist?" Overmars said.

"I'm not a terrorist! I love Xenon and the Consortium, I'm a model employee, check your records." Keating's words tumbled out.

"Oh, we have records. Brennon's kept tabs on you."

Keating’s mouth dried up.

Cosely began, “The Vatican thrives Keating, a city of gold still standing after The Calamity. Why? Because it has no government. It is a business. It trades in God. We too have removed government and now there’s more prosperity here than anywhere else on the earth. Xenon provides. And now teleportation! Teleportation my boy!"

Cosely raised his voice and leaned forward, as Overmars eased him back into his chair.

"Are you feeling normal, Keating?"

"I met Fox because Xanthe took me there, he was a lunatic, talking about human lab rats."

"My daughter is sick. She suffers from many mental health challenges but if she wishes to entertain her illness by talking to Fox, we let her. The more they meet, the more we know. Besides, he is marked to be destroyed. We do not tolerate terrorism."

“Too much at stake, Keating. Towering oaks of technology come from the seeds we planted. The Cubris regulates this perfect ecosystem. It runs the teleporters, controls the campus, everything."

"Fox is right, though," interjected Overmars.

"Yes, but he comes at it from the wrong angle." Cosely retorted.

“Boondock slummers chose to be where they are. Nature is the haves and the have-nots. No government cajoling people into playing "society". But Fox, he wants to interfere with how we do things. I have no quarter with the boondocks, he should not interfere with us."

"How is Fox right?"

Overmars interjected, "You are Xenon property. You were born here, raised here. Your life is the debt you owe us."

She took out the heart-shaped locket from her front pocket and threw it into Keating's lap.

"Open it, read the note. My daughter doesn't remember you. She's too ill. But she has her uses. I wrote it. I sent the locket."

Keating fumbled the paper open, hands shaking. "Your greatest work will be coming face to face with the truth — that all of the things you are chasing are empty, that all the rules you are following are lies."

Overmars smiled. "You greatest work is serving Xenon. That's the truth. The things you chase, your dreams of a love affair with my daughter are empty. Your personal rules are lies. You are just a debt, we are the creditors."

Keating breathed heavily. "Are you going to kill me?"

"Are you feeling normal, Keating?" Cosely asked.

"Yes?"

"Well then no, not kill you. You're here!"

Overmars spoke. "How did you get here Keating?"

"My mother died in childbirth so the Academy..."

"I mean now, here."

"I, I took the lift, the executive elevator."

"That's a teleporter," Overmars said.

"It's... a lift?"

"No, it's a teleporter. You get in, the doors close, you get teleported. You were just teleported."

"The Cubris did it. From up there!" Cosely stuck his crooked finger in the air once more.

"That's my debt? To test it?"

"Yes, your debt. But you must do it many times over."

"I can do that."

"The trouble is my boy, those boffins in the Convent Garden Laboratory aren't sure it works."

"Well, I am here, so it must."

"No no, you've been duplicated."

"Been what?"

"Cloned Keating. Copied."

"Where's the clone?"

"You're it, my boy!" Are you feeling normal?"

"That's not possible!"

"You are it, Keating," Overmars repeated.

"Margaret's right. You are the only Keating. The other one has gone, into the air, evaporated, like a puddle in the sun. Zoop!"

Keating's blood ran cold. His neck felt prickly, his feet swelled.

"I died?"

"No my boy, the other one did. You're new. Same memories of course. You're Keating 2, as it were."

Keating got up and two stewards hurried into the lobby and stood by his side.

"Sit down," Overmars instructed.

"My boy, the Cubris works wonderfully, but teleportation, well, it's more duplication right now. A fantastic bit of kit, but not usable for us."

"Who's it useable for?"

"Everyone else, of course! The Consortium can't be cloning themselves all over the place. But employees can use it day in and day out. Perfect clones. No errors. Good as the real thing."

"You'll be killing people! They won't even know it. Thousands of murdered employees replaced by walking, talking clones who know no different."

"Yes, it works. Hand me the locket, best not take that back in there with you."

Cosely took the locket as the stewards lifted Keating from his chair and marched him towards the teleporter.

"You can't do this! I'll make sure my clone tells everyone! There are consequences, this is murder!"

"We've already got a copy of you when you came up," Overmars bellowed. "We'll clone you from that. You won't remember this conversation. You'll just think the lift is broken."

"You can't do this! You can't! I'm a good employee, look at my records, Brennon is a liar..."

The stewards threw Keating back into the teleporter.

"There's a good employee," said Cosely as the doors shut.

Brennon stood by the coat stand putting his wallet back into the pocket of his Crombie jacket as Keating walked past.

"Back so soon? You don't have to clear out your desk do you, Keating?"

"Shut up Brennon," he replied. "The executive elevator didn't work. This is serious, I can't screw Cosely around. I've got to call his secretary."