Tempus Fugitives

The former Queensland, it was explained, was almost, before this practice was circumvented by the introduction of geographic description becoming the basis of state names, named FloJohland after a former premier an his wife who had ruled it as their own private fiefdom with little effective opposition for many years, at a time when that state was emerging as the retirement and holiday capitol of Australia.

The report quoted an unsubstantiated rumour that Sir Joh and Lady Flo had requested that their mortal remains be cryogenically preserved to be revived on the second coming of their religious leader, Jesus Christ. Jadixna scoffed at this part of the report, "What a joke! Why bother to revive them when they were long past their use-by date when they departed this earth, what makes them think that they would be any better when they were thawed?"

When we were alone I spoke quietly to Jadixna, "Your language when you arrived here was bad enough, but now I have to warn you that your attitude is hardly appropriate for occasions such as this. These retirees are here at a sensitive time and we are asked to treat them with a certain degree of dignity and civility. Do you think you can manage to do that?"

"I understand. I'm sorry boss but I found it difficult to watch the Vidscreen without thinking that it is all a load of rubbish, especially that bit about Flo and Joh. They, or at least he, thought that he was above criticism, the law and second only to the deity. It's a measure of his arrogance that he hadn't figured out that by the time that the people realised that Jesus Christ had arrived for his second visit, under the terms of the totalitarian regime, Christ would have met the same fate that he did on the occasion of his first visit."

"Oh, who is this Jesus Christ any way?"

"I forgot that the modern histories have deleted any mention of Christianity, or for that matter, any other religion from the record. Except for vague references to Jesus, Mohammed and Baha'u'allah as leaders of Middle Eastern religious cults which, in the case of Christianity and Islam, were the root cause of many of the wars that raged throughout the previous millennia. Religions, for that reason, are prohibited in these times."

"Where did you get all this information?"

"From the University. While I was there as a student, I had access to classified databases. It wasn't all that difficult to gain access to the highest security databanks because, the powers that be failed to make allowances for someone like me who has little time for convention. I was able to extract information that has been denied access to the general public, if they wanted it which of course they don't, since the beginning of our time as the major power on earth."

Our conversation was cut short by the arrival of our next client and after she had left the office I was denied a further opportunity to talk to Jadixna by a summons from the halls of power requesting my appearance before my supervisor.

I stood in his office for several minutes before he even deigned to acknowledge my presence, this did not bode well. "Sit!"

I sat. I waited for what seemed like another hour for the question to arrive. "Your new assistant, how is she performing?"

"Fine, why?"

"You don't find some of her ideas and attitudes a little radical do you?"

"A little, yes, but I don't feel that it is any of my business what she thinks as long as she does her job correctly within the parameters set down for her performance. She was a little unsure of herself at first and I have spoken to her about this so I don't feel this will be an issue unless she continues to make the same mistakes."

"All right I will leave at that for the time being but I must warn you that her performance will be monitored and any inefficiency will be viewed as a failing on your part."

I spoke to Jadixna on my return to the office, telling her of my conversation with our superior and explaining to her about the monitoring system in the office. Her reaction was not what I had expected. Instead of showing contrition she took a small note pad from her garb of office, I hadn't realised that it was there, and wrote on it 'are you interested in what I was talking about earlier? If so blink your eyes once.'

Even before I could decide what my answer would be my traitorous eyelids decided for me by blinking once. She then wrote on the pad 'I will come to you tonight, expect me just before curfew but don't say anything when I get there.' She took the pages from the pad and ate them without any hint of distaste.

The afternoon passed somehow. I couldn't stop thinking about how she intended to call on me when she didn't know where I lived, there is no way that people could move from place to place without being detected, there are no passageways or doorways into my apartment, no windows that she could climb through and apart from all of those considerations there had been no social interaction allowed between people since the government had decided that war and sedition was the product of people getting together.

This process had been successful in preventing war because, even if the people had the power to think that they had a grievance against the authorities they had no way of comparing notes with other people.

I wondered if my thoughts were being picked up by the monitoring system that kept a check on all people. Every waking moment was continually being monitored and dissected in order that any problems in a person's performance of his duty could be modified if necessary before the next cloning. The way the world was progressing would see the Genetic Engineering section controlling all aspects of life. I was surprisingly uneasy at this thought. Jadixna had, in the short time that I had known her, upset my ordered existence.

"Hey Boss what's the matter?"

"Just thinking. Don't you think you could see your way clear to call me by my name instead of calling me boss?"

"Sure thing, but that's not what is bothering you is it?"

"No." I sighed and indicated to her to let me borrow her pad and pen. 'I think that it is too dangerous for you to come to me this evening, even if you could somehow manage it without being discovered.' I wrote on the pad and showed it to her.

"It won't be dangerous as long as you don't make a sound when I arrive. I'll get there just before you attach your sensors for the night.' She showed me the message before slipping it into her mouth and eating it as before.

I thought to myself that if this was to keep up I would have to get some of those pads and wondered in what flavours they came.

The office closed at four o'clock and for the next hour we were subjected to the video Discs of the reconstruction work being carried out in the Northern Hemisphere. The last remains of the nuclear devastation had almost been cleansed from the land masses and new growth was beginning to form. These areas were being developed as future retirement sites and those of the surviving population who were considered sufficiently 'normal' and who had retained some inherited learning abilities were being trained as servants for the retirees.

At five we were able to leave. I teleported to my apartment and set about preparing my evening meal which consisted entirely of reconstituted ingredients which formed what was in fact a bland mass of tasteless mash. For the first time I thought that there might just be more interesting foods around, even the paper that Jadixna had consumed during the day would probably have tasted better.

Meal prepared I sat down to watch the evening Vidnews and while I watched it I had the uneasy feeling that just maybe things were not as rosy as they were being depicted on the screen. Nothing seemed to ever go wrong in our part of the world. Each new development was a triumph of Australian ingenuity and technology. With this country the undisputed centre of science, education, the arts and technology, all new developments were designed specifically for the betterment of our way of life. For the first time in my life I was having a problem with this concept. I found myself wondering how the other people of the world who were not as fortunate to survive the apocalypse unscathed would feel about the way that they were being exploited.

After the news there was the usual array of sitcoms and dramas all of which seemed to perpetuate the image of Australians as the master race and depict the other nations as considering themselves as being fortunate just to serve the Australians.

I was just beginning to worry about the strange way that my life has begun to be influenced by a person who I had only just met when she just appeared in front of me. It was all that I could do to avoid calling out in amazement. Two distinct and new emotions passed quickly through me, the first was that I was joyed at seeing her and the second was that I was feared that we would get caught out.

Jadixna held her finger to her lips indicating that I should remain quiet, which was just as well because I was about to say something to her. She crossed to the monitor on the wall and placed a small box like device over it. "It's all right we can talk freely now."

"What does that thing do?"

"It substitutes what should be happening for what is happening."

"How do you know what should be happening here?"

"I had a fair idea what it was that you were supposed to be doing so I just borrowed some of their own technology and produced a simulation that should be good enough to fool them."

"Oh." I had lost her after the mention of substitution and simulation.

"This place and my own apartment are the only places at present that we can talk freely."

"How do you know all of this?"

"One of the reasons that I was assigned to you was that I was the cause of some considerable amount of trouble at the University and the powers that be did not know what to do with me, so here I am."

"In what way did you cause trouble?"

"Well you see I have this capacity to absorb information from a variety of sources to the point that I was willing and able to enter into debates with the lecturers and in nearly every case beat them. They found this very disturbing and took steps to overcome the problem but not before I had managed to crack their computer's security code and absorb a lot of classified information that was being withheld from the students in general. This much they did not like."

"What sort of information?"

"Mostly pre-apocalypse History, a subject that has been quietly lost in the computer memory and most of the professors have not even seen it. I have learnt much about the way of life back then and it has started me thinking, which is a new concept in these times of mind control that, life back then wasn't so bad after all, you see one of the basic tenets back then was the right to free thought and speech. This got me wondering why we no longer exercised that right and it led me to the conclusion that our minds were being controlled."

"This in turn led me to investigate the monitoring system that we have to endure each night. This device," indicating the sensors in the sleeping chamber, "does more than monitor our sleep patterns, it also programmes us with subliminal messages. In this way we are brainwashed into accepting our existence without question."

"Obviously you have overcome the system."

"Naturally." As if it was the most natural thing in the world for her to have done.

"And I suppose that you are about to suggest that I should follow your example."

"Only if you want to."

"I want to." I don't know what made me say it but the words came out sounding as if I wanted nothing more in life than to follow her, which I suppose is true although I was not yet ready to admit it.

"Right! Here's what I want you to do. I will attach this device to your sleep monitor. It will record your sleep patterns while not interfering with the messages passing through. Tomorrow I want you to bring it with you to the office, give it to me without being seen by the monitor and tomorrow evening when I come I will have a device that will not only tell it what it wants to hear, but will start your education."

"How do I smuggle it into the office without it being noticed?"

"It is very flat and thin so what you can do is to lick the back of it and press it to your chest just before your garb of office is applied, when you get to the office you face away from the monitor and put your hand into the neck of your top and remove it, much the same way as I did this morning. The glue by the way is quite tasteless."

We talked about everything and not much for a while longer before Jadixna left to return to her own apartment leaving me with my non-subliminal thoughts.

I slipped the sensors on and the last thing I remember before drifting off to sleep was this sickeningly pleasant voice pointing out that I should be eternally grateful for the opportunity to live in Australia. Yuk! The redeeming thing was that if Jadixna was right this would be the very last time that I would have to listen to this rubbish.

2

The next morning surprised even me. I managed to secrete the device on my person without detection and slip it to Jadixna just as easily. That she managed to hide it in her skin tight garb intrigued me to the point that I was about to ask her where on her person she had hidden it when she signalled to me to keep my question for later.

The day passed almost as uneventfully as the previous one except that I was getting the impression that the clients of the Department for Compulsory Leisure were a uniformly dull lot. There seemed to be a singular lack of imagination when choosing their retirement venues, it was beaches and tropical climate and doing nothing. Where was the adventure, the having a good time and actually doing something?

Eventually we left work and headed home. My evening meal was boring, the Vidnews was boring, it was the same stories as the previous night but with the names changed, the programmes that followed were boring.

Jadixna was not boring. I was pleased when she arrived but had to control my pleasure until she had plugged the new device into the monitoring system and given me the all clear.

I didn't know how to show my pleasure, it was a new experience for me you know, but she took care of that. Crossing to me she placed her lips against mine and her arms around my neck she whispered "It's safe to talk normally now."

"Then how come you are whispering?"

"I needed to keep you calm otherwise you would get carried away. Now, this device I want you to put over your sensors before getting into your PERC tonight. It contains a subliminal history disk that I copied from the University Data Bank. It will give you an insight into what went on before the Apocalypse and some of the root causes of it."

I was reluctant to let her go, my lips still felt hers and my neck would never be the same again. I was enjoying her company and while I didn't understand why, I knew that somehow it would get me into trouble.

Jadixna must have felt the same way because even though there was little to say she kept talking. We sat side by side on the floor beside HERC because each apartment was equipped with only one chair and this way I could feel her closeness. I wasn't sure whether it was her closeness that was affecting me or her smell. It was something I had never experienced before.

When it was time for her to leave she stood up and waited for me to stand as well. Turning to me she placed her arms around my neck and once again pressed her lips to mine.

I felt something that I had never felt before. There was a movement in the area where my legs joined. Jadixna felt it also and after pressing her hips hard against mine she pulled away from me. "I had better get out of here before we do something that we are not ready for yet."

"What is that?"

"I'll tell you later when we are both ready for it." With that she left.

I didn't sleep properly. I dozed fitfully between listening to the Discs and wondering just what possessed humanity to get itself into the situation that left it no alternative but self destruction. That this destruction should have resulted from an incident so trivial was beyond my limited comprehension but then the Discs had told me that some of history's greatest and bloodiest battles were the result of similar trivialities.

Someone in the past once said that to start world war three you simply had to put two Irishmen who had been best friends since birth into a hotel and give them a drink each and stand back and wait for the skin and fur to fly. But then that was before it became politically incorrect to make such a statement.

One of the more intriguing aspects of life in the past, apart from death, was the beginning of life. The Discs that Jadixna had given me touched on the subject superficially but enough to tell me that what she said and I had experienced was a precursor to that action.

Our lives took a dramatic turn on the tenth night that Jadixna came to my apartment. It was something of an anniversary for us and we were holding each other close as before, our lips, as was now often the case, were locked together and our breaths were coming in short pants. What followed was not as before, Jadixna took another disk from that hiding place in her garb of office.

We had been discussing procreation the previous evening and she had mentioned that she had found a video that showed how it was carried out. This time it was not one of the subliminal Discs that would be plugged into the sensor circuit but one that she managed to set up on the viewscreen. She had fiddled with some of the connections at the back of the screen and clipped some wires leading from a small box onto it.

The screen came to life revealing a writhing mass of arms and legs that eventually separated to reveal that they belonged to a man and a woman who were locked in a passionate embrace. Their mouths touched once more, but instead of their arms being about each other, their hands began to move over each other's body, touching and exploring all available flesh. They appeared to become very agitated. The hands seemed to be concentrating on a couple of specific areas instead of a random number of places.

I felt a hand on my thigh and it wasn't mine. I looked away from the screen to see Jadixna, eyes still on the screen, lips parted revealing the tip of he tongue. I felt a stirring in my groin region as her hand edged slowly closer. My appendage was growing, amazing. I felt my breath shortening as her hand reached its destination. I reached for her thigh.

The couple on the screen had also become somewhat exited. She had grasped his appendage and was looking at it closely. One of his hands was between her legs, his fingers out of sight. When I followed his example Jadixna spread her legs apart to allow my hand access. It was then that I discovered that, unlike me she did not have an appendage.

She got to her feet and peeled her way out of her garb of office and standing before me she looked so inviting that I was compelled to reach for her. Instead of coming fully into my arms she manoeuvred so that her frontal appendages were resting lightly in my hands. They felt soft yet firm. I didn't know what to do in this situation but my fingers, having it seemed, a will of their own, began to move slowly over her skin until they found the darker centre mounds. A sigh escaped from her lips and she was no longer looking at the screen.

Jadixna bent forward and started to peel my garb from my not unwilling body. The sensation that followed would have rung all sorts of alarms in the Central Monitoring Centre if we had still been connected to it. Her hands were holding my appendage, not so hard that it hurt but enough that I was compelled to move closer to her, she guided me to her and we sank onto the floor, me on my back and she on top of me.