“So you do admit it!”
“What’s to admit?” Caroline replied, throwing her hands up. “There was nothing illegal about it!”
Her panicked eyes locked on Addison’s.
“Tell them!” she cried, the penny finally dropping. “They don’t know. Tell them this was just how people lived. You can’t blame me, everyone did it!”
Addison bowed his head, saying nothing.
Just a clone.
“Judge,” Two announced, his smile giving way to a lurking savagery. “With the witness confessing, I see no need to continue. Things were different then, or that’s just how it was are neither valid nor moral arguments. Wrong is wrong in any century. The prosecution rests.”
Caroline let out a choked sob. “Tell them!”
“Defence?” the judge called.
Five stood dutifully to deliver his one line.
“The defence has nothing to add at this time.”
“Please!” Caroline cried, shaking. “Please!”
Addison couldn’t meet her eyes.
Just a clone just a clone just a clone.
Caroline died in agony, like the rest.
* * *
In the days that followed, Addison became the performer Five had always wanted him to be. The levellers were trying more and more returnees, up to nearly ten a day, and after his poor showing with Caroline he knew he had to try harder. So to keep people compliant during trials, he came up with a simple strategy: he began to lie.
It was surprisingly easy. Addison told the returnees whatever they wanted to hear, creating an entire performance around keeping them happy and compliant. He shouldn’t have been surprised: acting wasn’t just a career to him, he’d been performing ever since his parents’ bungalow. He’d kept them happy and compliant for years – acting, performing, lying (and truly, what was an actor if not a professional liar?) – before they finally found him out. This was different, but not that different.
And yet, even Addison was taken aback by how naturally the lies came, how dextrous he became with mistruth. Each lie was different, tailored to the returnee. Different people reacted to the chair in different ways, some accepting, some denying, so he adjusted accordingly. To the weak, the overwhelmed, he would feed simple platitudes: telling them it was all going to be okay, soothing them with kind, mollifying words. With the clever, the suspicious, he would play co-conspirator: intimating things were not quite as they seemed. He would say “play along, just don’t let on,” then let them walk into the trap thinking they were a step ahead. To the angry, the incensed – men in all but the rarest of instances – he would play to their egos and sense of exceptionalism. “I’m sure this is all one big misunderstanding,” he would say, plastering on a subservient smile. “A man such as yourself? Inconceivable! Have a word with the judge. He’s your sort. Just do it at the end...” By the time anyone realised, it was much too late.
Sometimes he felt guilty, complicit, but he quickly buried those feelings. After a small feat of mental gymnastics – they aren’t real, they’re just clones – he always felt clearer-headed. In fact, so clear-headed did he become that Addison began noticing things.
He noticed how the levellers became fatigued as trials went on, as Five had in the levelling room. He noticed how they flinched at the thudding in the walls, how they disappeared into the upper levels at night, and how there were gaps in their knowledge. They knew a great deal about history, but almost nothing about day-to-day life in the past: Two not knowing what a model was for example, or the time Addison had to explain that a ‘shop’ used to be a real, physical place. The levellers had seemed almost appalled.
But the most interesting thing he noticed was the returnees. As trials progressed, Addison noticed a certain dropping off in calibre. At first it had been CEOs, captains of industry, big fish, but now they were increasingly normal. The new defendant’s sins were working for companies, not owning them, and the adjunct crime of ‘inaction’ was cited more frequently.
Curious, Addison decided to ask Five. They hadn’t really spoken since their altercation, but of all of his captors, he seemed most amenable. He certainly wasn’t going to Four. So one evening after trials, before the levellers disappeared to wherever it was they disappeared to, Addison made his move.
Heading out of the court, he caught sight of Five disappearing down a ramp pushing, of all things, what looked like a wheelbarrow.
“Five, wait,” he called, sprinting round a corner after him. “I have a que––”
He screeched to a halt. It wasn’t Five, but Two. The prosecutor stood blocking the balcony, a foreboding smile spreading across his face.
“Mr. Moore,” he beamed. “Expecting someone else?”
“I just assumed...” Addison said, backing away. “The lower levels, the wheelbarrow, I thought it was...”
“We all pull our weight in the institute.”
The wheelbarrow was full of strange mechanical components. Some were rudimentary, things you’d find under a kitchen sink, but others were ferociously complicated: intricately intertwining structures of metal, stone and glass.
“Five is supposed to be delivering these replacement parts,” Two continued. “But he is indisposed. In his absence the task should go to Four, but she has her own mission and as Three is occupied, the honour has fallen to me.”
“The hierarchy,” Addison said unthinkingly.
“You are well informed,” Two replied, eyebrows raised. “You and Five have developed quite the rapport, no?”
Addison felt on the spot, like he was dumping Five in it.
“Whatever you were going to ask him, ask me.”
“No, it’s okay,” Addison stammered.
“I insist.”
“It was nothing.”
“Do I have to summon the paladin?”
Addison blanched. Two had him cornered.
“I was just going to ask about the recent returnees.”
“What about them?”
Addison’s insides clenched. Mind racing, he tried to find a way of phrasing his question that wouldn’t get him into trouble.
“To do my job,” he began, “to keep the returnees compliant I mean, I need to know them. And of late, they’ve just seemed a little…”
“Spit it out, Mr. Moore.”
“Small fry. Guilty of less severe crimes.”
Two
