The Future of the Past, by Carlie Morgan

7/27/2019 The Future of the Past, by Carlie Morgan

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The future of the past

The room is everything you expected it to be, all except the long windows. You

didnt think thered be windows in a prison. There is an orange glow from the

street outside and you can still hear the snap and crack of stone hitting shields.

The chants have got louder since you were first hauled in here. Their voices

scream and crumble against the prison walls and you see their cheap homemade

cardboard signs in your mind. Sergeant Cartwright walks into the room, hes

carrying something big and flat and its getting in his way. A woman follows in

behind him; shes carrying a black briefcase, all official. There is a red badge in

the shape of a sun dial pinned to her blouse. Shes a regressive judge. Youve

heard about these. Your stomach churns and you feel a cold sweat trickle over

your forehead.

She stays close to Cartwright, peering around his shoulders to get her first look

at you.

Mr Stoakes, this is Melanie Taylor... says Cartwright, gesturing to the small

woman at his side. She attempts a smile. You notice her thick waxy lipstick and

how it runs too wide over her mouth. You say hi. This seems to comfort her, she

nods and sits.

Cartwright lifts the flat object onto the table and slides it towards you. You look

down upon it. It's the painting from your living room, the one you paid five

pounds for at that auction, years ago.

You recognise this? asks Cartwright, his voice already confident of your

answer.

You look over the smooth surface of the water colour. A man sits upon his grey

horse high above a soft green pasture. Cigarette smoke twists into the air in

front of him or at least thats what you always thought it was. You were never

sure if it was a cigarette or just a piece of wheat he held between his lips. But it

was the cigarette and the blue coast and square hat that had always made him

look so very French. Behind him a red horse follows on reigns, its glossy coat

shimmers despite the cloud cover. It was the reason you bought the painting.

The great red horse reminded you so much of Hazel, the pony your mother kept

when you were just a child.

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Yes. You shrug, wondering what the painting has anything to do with anything.

The woman starts nodding, agreeing with no one in particular.

There is some link, you know. When you bought this painting you probably

chose it subconsciously, she says.

You take a deep breath as she leans down and picks up her briefcase. She places

it on the table. You cant stop your hands shaking. Any moment now they will

show you what you didnt want to know. What you fought so hard to escape from

while the world pushed against you as you ran against the flow.

You catch your breath.

Please you beg, I dont want to see it. Just sentence me and let me do my

time. I dont need to know.

The woman places a red file on the table. You notice your name on it, written

below the sundial emblem. She gives you a half smile, she seems genuinely

sorry. You didnt expect that of a regressive judge. You heard they were trained

to be tough, unemotional and unforgiving.

I am sorry but it is the law. According to article 5 of the past crime act, you

must be aware of all crimes and the evidence, committed by you in your last

three generations, she says, looking anywhere but at you.

Suddenly there is a flash of light and a thud that echoes throughout the stone

room. The woman, Melanie, screams and covers her head with her hands.

Cartwright doesnt flinch. He simply scrapes his chair across the floor and walks

to the window that's just been hit.

Fire bomb. He shrugs, looking down into the street. You see a slip, just a smallchange in his face. What is the expression? He yanks down the blinds and you

realise it was fear.

As Cartwright sits back down, you hear the voices outside getting louder. There

is a loud roar, screaming and then spluttering. They must have brought out the

water hose. Melanie is shaking now; you notice the pink hue of her eyelids and

the small watery smudge of her mascara. Emotional, scared. Not like a

regressive judge at all.

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Please go on, Miss Taylor. Cartwright puts a hand on her shoulder. She

struggles with a smile and picks up the paperwork.

This is your record, Mr Stoakes she says, her breath quick and short, It is

relatively clean, by comparison to the rest of the UK. She smiles wide now. Thegood news, she enjoys giving you that.

But in your most recent life, I regret to tell you, there was a crime. She frowns.

Your whole body stiffens, you feel that familiar warm swirling in your stomach

and you want to be sick. This is why you didnt want to know, why you didnt

have yourself tested when the rest of the country exploded into a mania,

queuing for weeks, spending every last penny, desperate to know who they

were, who they are.

Please you beg, I really dont want to know.

The woman apologises again, but continues on anyway.

You were a farmer she says, Your name was Mathieu Courcier...

You try not to listen, drift off, and think about how all this started. You think

about the very first time you saw it in a newspaper, the front cover just a white

background with those eerie diagonal lines and smudges, the headline Proof of

the soul in hard red letters.

You remember reading it, how the scientists at Stockport invented the machines

by accident, their research originally intended to find a way to make the HIV

virus eat cancer cells, but then they saw the lines and smudges.

It is unequivocal proof that the soul exists! It lies in every codon of our DNA!

Doctor Hamer, head of bioscience at Stockport had said on every television

network, every newspaper and every social media site on the planet. The world

knew and the world wanted more.

It took only months for the lines and smudges to be translated, decoded and torn

apart.

Theyre memories, just like those we develop in our brain cells, said Doctor

Hamer, who was now the face of soul cell discovery worldwide. It wasnt until he

developed a way to turn the lines and smudges into images and prints that he

received his knighthood.

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You remember the frenzy. Only the rich afforded the testing at 16,000 pounds

per screening and it took three screenings to translate six generations of

lifetimes. All of them paid their money and willingly stood within the plastic

tunnel as the machine blasted light into their bodies. They watched as the lines

and smudges appeared like x-rays on screen, convinced they would reveal

something spectacular. They all had allusions of greatness, believing themselves

to be Picasso, Einstein or Alexander the great but what they found were

murderers, thieves and cowards.

Great mysteries were unravelling, evidence that bone fragments and fossils

couldnt compete with. But the big question, the only question that truly

mattered couldnt be answered since the cells of the soul disappeared upon

death. This caused mass debate. No one knew whether the soul proved or

disproved God. Some religious groups refused to believe the evidence as fact

whilst some stated God made the soul and so it was solid proof. Wars started

over it, people had something else to disagree about a new reason to fight.

You cut the power cable on your television and sold your computer. But you

came around eventually; the curiosity was too much to bear. You bought the

newspapers, you listened to the talk.

The price of soul cell screening had dropped by 90%, making it affordable for

anyone to be screened. The world was curious and Doctor Hamer watched his

bank of information swell into the new bible, the new origin of the species.

Then some poor kid in Italy changed everything. He'd only turned 18 and the

screening was a birthday gift from his mother. It revealed a soul that had done

so much evil, it was decided that the identity would not be publicised for fear of

his life. There were rumours, and guesses of course. Some theories pointing to

famous murders but most nearer the truth at dictatorship and holocaust.

What could the law do? They had an innocent 18 year old boy whose hands were

clean but whose soul had committed the worse crimes in human history which

were never punished? You remember that's when the protests really started,

they wanted that boy to be made accountable. Crime numbers went through the

roof. It seemed that knowing you were never going to truly die, but pop up

somewhere else in a new life with a fresh record took away most people's

conscience. Parents were having their new born babies screened, pre-judged

before they could even talk and cast away if what they found was not

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acceptable. You remember your next door neighbour, Nicola and how she sat

watching her two year old, George play in the paddling pool. Her lips quivering

and skin prickling every time the child splashed the water, knowing somewhere,

deep down within him was a soul capable of drowning another person.

You knew something needed to be done. You knew it couldn't go on much

longer. When you saw the news broadcast about the new laws regarding soul cell

screening you were preparing to be relieved. But instead it only got worse. It was

law that everyone, upon turning 18 was to be soul screened. Any crimes

committed in the last three generations were to be made punishable in this life.

It would stop future murders, they said. It would make people less likely to

commit a crime, knowing they would pay for it in the next life.

You remember thinking about how they would punish you, the death penalty

would be a free ride into the next life and detainment would see every prison on

the planet full to breaking point. No, they couldn't issue conventional

punishment. What they decided was so much worse. They were going to make

an example of the 18 year old Italian boy, they figured it would give the people

what they wanted whilst showing them what was coming. It would make the

punishment acceptable. So the Italian boy was the first to suffer cell separation

treatment.

It was when you first saw the images of that boy, what was left of him that is,

that you decided to run. You knew your postcode was only weeks away from

compulsory screening. You packed a rucksack with three changes of clothes, you

kept it small because it would draw less attention. You weren't the only one to

run, after all. You started at Hammersmith, you knew a guy there rumoured to

have the same hot stamp they gave you after you'd been screened. It was their

way of separating you from the rest. When you got there it cost you all the

money you had. You gave it gladly and bit down hard on the wax of a candle as

he scorched the sun dial symbol and unique serial number into your skin. You

found a bed for the night out of London while you figured out what to do next.

You remember the dank smell of urine on the mattress. Then you made it to

Wales, screening hadn't started there so you were safe for a while.

You heard about the court procedures on the radio whilst staying in a child's

playhouse. The family were enjoying a bbq and they had no idea you were there.

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You heard about the regressive judges and how they sentenced you without a

court trial. With the amount of punishable crime now in existence, it was too

costly. So they screened you, assigned you judge who would attempt to find

some link between your past life and your current life and then punish you. For

the Italian boy it had been his ambition of joining the army.

They finally caught you in Scotland. You had been sleeping in a plastics factory

warehouse and didn't hear them coming over the drone of the machines. A

worker had seen you there and reported you. There were so few whole, kind

people left now that most of them had been punished.

Sergeant Cartwright puts a glass of water in front of you, it sloshes against the

glass and splats onto the desk. You look down at your hands, roll them over,

searching for the evidence you know won't be there. You look at the painting.

The man on the horse looks calm, peaceful. The big red horse that follows behind

him snuffles at the air as a brown and cream spaniel leads the way. You had

always wondered about the painting, the red horse, the French looking man.

Where had he been? What was he looking at in the distance? But now you look

down on the water colour knowing that the man, Mathieu Courcier was a

murderer and the big red horse that reminded you so much of Hazel once

belonged to the man that dared to cross him.

You don't want to hear anymore, you feel as empty as anyone who had suffered

cell separation treatment. What you had once feared, you now welcome. You

want it to be over. You want to forget who you were, who you are. You think

about your soul and it feels like hot poison inside you. You agree with Melanie as

she hands over your file, wanting you to sign it. You drag the ink across the

paper skin gladly. Then another fire bomb hits the window. The protestors in the

street scream for the screening machines to be destroyed. They yell that no oneshould know their past, that everyone is born innocent. Sergeant Cartwright

stands to take a look out of the window when the explosion shatters through the

room. Melanie screams and throws herself onto the floor. Cartwright is crawling

towards the exit. The thick black smoke billows out of the crater in the wall. The

flames trigger the water sprinkler system and it suddenly gushes over you like

tropical rain. You stare down at the painting and watch as Mathieu Courcier's

face melts into the background and into the past, where he belongs.

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The Future of the Past, by Carlie Morgan