Frank Tayell - Work. Rest. Repeat.

“Yes, Constable.”

“Did you hear that?”

“Oh, yes. I’ve been watching since you arrested him. You should have warned me.”

“Can you confirm what he said?”

“Yes, I think so. Give me a moment. Yes, there’s an increased water usage during that time.”

Ely turned his attention back to Glastonbury.

“You said everyone knows. Who’s everyone?”

“Everyone. I mean,” he added, hurriedly, “it’s just one of those things that people know. Like how the purple flavour has more sugar or how the eighth row of machines in the Recreation Room are slightly easier than the rest.”

Ely stared at him. He knew about the purple flavouring and the eighth row in the Recreation Room, but he also knew that those were rumours with no more truth to them than the ones about ghosts. The glitch with the hot water, however, that clearly wasn’t a rumour, nor was it something that he had ever heard or read before. If it was known and discussed, it wasn’t done online, not even on the other-net. That was a chilling thought. He wondered what other conspiracies were taking place without his knowledge.

“I swear, that’s all it was,” Glastonbury babbled. “I just wanted a hot shower. I didn’t have anything to do with the murders.”

“How long has this been going on?” Ely asked quietly.

“A year,” Glastonbury whispered back. “But I wasn’t greedy. I only spent three minutes in there.”

“A year. Three minutes a day, three hundred and sixty-five shifts.” Multiply that by forty-seven, though Ely wasn’t going to tell the felon how many others had done the same as him, “Do you know how much energy you’ve wasted? We can’t afford to squander a single joule. Everyone knows that, everyone except you.”

“What are you going to do to me?” Glastonbury asked, “It’s not sabotage. Not really.”

Glastonbury was wrong. It was sabotage, but it wasn’t murder. Production had to come first, and Ely doubted that either Councillor Cornwall or Chancellor Stirling would allow him to deport Glastonbury. If they did it for one, they would have to do it for the other forty-six.

“I’m deferring sentence until a full assessment has been conducted into how much damage your greed has done.”

Ely grabbed the man’s arm and hauled him back to the elevator. He pushed him inside, and sent him down to the Recreation Room.

When the doors closed, Ely leaned up against the wall and breathed out. It was a serious offence. Had it not been for the murder, it would have been the most serious crime he’d ever discovered.

“Control?”

“Ely?”

“Can you look at the other forty-six suspects? Check the water usage for them and—”

“And see if they were doing the same as him. I’ve already done it. They were.”

“Thank you,” Ely said.

“What do you want me to do next?”

“Just… I’ll be in touch.” He clicked off.

He had no suspects in the murder. No leads left at all.

He saw that there were a dozen blinking lights at the bottom of his display. They must have been there for some time, but he’d not noticed them. Most came from various contributors to the newsfeeds, and most of those came from Tower-One. He tapped out a short reply; Glastonbury had been questioned in connection with the murders. The investigation was on-going. More suspects would be questioned shortly.

He hesitated before sending it. The message seemed inadequate, it implied his uncertainty, yet he could think of nothing else he could say. He sent it and blocked all future messages asking for information. Only then did he remember that he should have informed Chancellor Stirling first. He tapped out a slightly longer, but no less vague, message to her.

He looked down the corridor. To the left was Councillor Cornwall’s office. Ely had never been inside before, but he was tempted to ask to speak to the man. Perhaps the politician would have some advice. No, Ely thought, today he would only be concerned with the election.

He sent the same message to the Councillor and headed back to the elevator. He did need advice, and there was only one person who could give it; his former supervisor, Arthur.

“You should have come to me as soon as it happened, my boy,” Arthur said, reproachfully.

“There’s hardly been time, and I didn’t want to bother you,” Ely mumbled. Arthur always made him feel like the seventeen-year old he’d been when he was recruited five years ago.

“You mean you wanted to prove you could handle it on your own. I understand lad, and you wouldn’t be bothering me. Do you know how dull it gets up here?” The old man gestured at the doors behind him. “All that lot ever want to talk about is the past. It’s like they’re already dead. No, any distraction is welcome. Well, there’s no point talking out here, come on in.”

Taking Ely’s arm with one hand, he waved his other by the sensor. The doors opened.

Up until the rains began fifteen years ago, the whole of Level Seventy-Six had been given over to the retirees. When the solar panels became useless, the museum was moved out of Level Nine - that space became the Recreation Room. Level Seventy-Six was split in two and most of the older residents of the Twilight Room had moved to Tower-Thirteen. The smaller half of the level became the new museum, though the rarely visited artefacts were so crammed together that the space would be better described as a storeroom. The larger half of Level Seventy-Six was still occupied by the retirees, but with the increased urgency to establish a working colony on Mars, most of the space was given over to row after row of earth-filled allotments.

Tending these was the retirees’ continued sacrifice to the good of the Tower. Some were open to the room’s atmosphere, others were enclosed in opaque plastic panelling. A mess of wires and pipes snaked into those simulating, as far as possible, the conditions the settlers would find on Mars.

Some plants arrived as sprouting shoots, others as seeds, and all came from frozen storage in Tower-Thirteen. It was one more vital part of the plan to establish a thriving colony; after terraforming, would anything from Earth grow on the red planet?

The rewards for those who volunteered to eschew the luxuries of retirement in Tower-Thirteen were privacy and respect. The City had nothing else to offer them. Yet, with fifty-three ‘residents’, the Twilight Room was nearly at full occupancy. Though they were allowed to visit the lounges lower down the Tower, they rarely did. It was just as permissible, as long as an appointment was made forty-eight hours in advance, for workers to visit their aged relatives, but that was equally rare.

Ely, as a civic servant, didn’t need to make an appointment to visit Arthur, but he had his own reasons for not visiting as often as he knew he should.

“I thought that having family to visit was the reason why people opted to stay here rather than going to Tower-Thirteen, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone visit,” Ely said as the two men walked into the room.

“Really? I think that just shows you don’t visit often enough. We had a girl in here, oh, let me see now… yes, about three weeks ago. A visitor for Violet Truro. Her grandaughter, I think it was. Nice girl. Very polite. Didn’t like the view, though.”

Arthur gestured towards the exterior wall. Unlike everywhere else in Tower-One, the windows weren’t covered in the piezoelectric panels that captured the energy of the wind and rain. Ely watched the incessant raindrops impact against the glass in an explosion that seemed almost to have a pattern to it.

“But then,” Arthur went on, “how many people really are close to their families? I mean, take you for example. Your parents were up here, weren’t they?”