Trembling With Fear 4-20-25

Unit Twenty-Eight, by David McKenna

“Walk me through it from the beginning, would you?”

Ali shifted uncomfortably in his chair. Barbara from Head Office was pale and poised and smiled a lot, and all of these things made him nervous. Those and one more thing: she was far too well-dressed for someone so young and still relatively low on the corporate ladder. Ali had his own car and apartment now—he was no longer what he thought of as ‘poor’—but there was still some of that reflexive shame in him which a childhood in poverty instils.

“Sure,” he said. “Um,” he said.

“The gentleman came in at…half-past-two, is that right?” Her smile around the question was bright and practiced and very cold.

“Yes, that’s right. Two-thirty-three. You can see it on the security feed there, in the corner.” Ali pointed, but Barbara from Head Office had her nose in her notes.

“And he was alone?”

“Yes. He came in alone, and he didn’t speak to anyone who came in before or after. You can see there. On the feed.” He didn’t point this time; she didn’t look. Who’d go to a Cleansing Centre with company?

“Mmm-hmm. Mmm. Then. He used Unit Twenty-Eight.”

“Yes, miss. That’s back on the right of the room, away from the street, near my desk. Those units, you know, they’re all Series Six. The older models. Do you th-”

“Did anything seem off about the gentleman at the time? Was he behaving strangely? Did he do anything that caught your attention?”

He was behaving like everyone else at a centre behaves. Like he didn’t want to be seen. Like he didn’t want to think about why he was there. “No, miss. Nothing that seemed odd. He sat at the unit and spent maybe five or six minutes registering his information. He paid with his credit card, and he was getting up to leave when… Well, you know.”

“Mmm-hmm. Mmm-hm! So. He registered…adultery. Two partners. He overpaid?”

“Most people do, miss. They round up. To be on the safe side.” How can you not know these things? But then he thought about the watch, and the necklace, and her fine clothes—too fine for one so junior. Married well, or the family has money. She’s always had a unit at home. She’s never set foot in a centre as a customer. 

She flipped back and forth through her notes for a moment. Then: “It says here he was in the Defense Forces. Three years. Nothing about that?”

“No, miss. Most military men stop registering for that after a year or so.”

“I see.” She turned back two pages, made a note. Turned forward three pages. Made a tick. Forward two pages, scanning. Back two. A tick. A cross. “Would you play that on a bit?”

Ali leaned over and unpaused the video. The man, grainy and monochrome, stood up from Unit Twenty-Eight, patting his jacket pockets to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything. He turned towards the door. There was a chaos of flashing and fire. Smoke billowed, and there were clutching hands in the smoke, three-fingered and angular and long. The man’s face was in the floor, screaming. Then the smoke was gone, and only the charred floor remained.

There was no audio on the recording. I wonder if she knows what they sound like, at the end.

“How many units written off?”

“Four, miss. Three of them those old Series Sixes. Replacements are coming next Friday morning. I called and left a message asking if we might get some Eights, consider-”

“I believe the policy is to cycle upgrades in series order.”

“Yes, miss. Of course.” Of course there isn’t any urgency, with only—what?—a 0.02% failure rate? Of course there isn’t any truth to those rumours from a few months back claiming the Series Seven was just a Six with new casing. Of course. Of course.

Ali came back to himself. Barbara from Head Office was looking at him, but her hand was still moving, making a note behind a turn of yellow paper. They smiled at one another. Between them, the burned room flickered on the screen.

“Well, I think that is all I need for the moment.” She rose, two hands on the handle of her small briefcase. “Thank you for all your help today, Ali.”

“You are very welcome, miss.” He stood and pushed in his chair, performing something that was more than a nod and less than a bow.

“Do you mind if I ask: how long have you been here now?”

He touched his beard, considering. “Four years with the company next week, miss.”

“No no, I mean how long have you been here.”

“Ah. Fourteen years, miss.” He said it very slowly, as though doing so might lend the years more weight.

“I see. Well, good day then.” Barbara from Head Office smiled and left.

Ali stood for a while, looking back through the black and white security feed—looking at the man’s face in the moment before he was damned. Then he returned to his desk. There were four hours left on his shift, and they were never short of customers.