Loyalties: part 2
A low flying panic attack
The Triverse is
Mid-Earth, an alternate 1970s London
Max-Earth, a vision of the 26th century
Palinor, where magic is real
Previously: DCI James Miller has been arrested on charge of corruption. He sits in a cell, awaiting his fate…
London.
1974. December.
Jail did not suit Detective Chief Inspector James Miller, a man more accustomed to wine bars, networking dinners and press conferences. The connections he might make within the jail at Scotland Yard were unlikely to prove as valuable to his long term career prospects.
They’d given him his own cell, at least, separate to the communal holding area that kept the scum off the streets. Putting a cop in with the criminals wouldn’t have gone well.
And so he seethed to himself in the small space, still dressed in his office clothes, sat on the uncushioned bench at the back of the room. To think that Bakker had flipped the script on him! It was outrageous. Then there was Holland, that ungrateful snake, revealing his disloyalty at the worst possible moment. If one thing was certain, it was that Miller would get his revenge for that betrayal. Bakker wasn’t the only person in Miller’s video records, and Holland would find himself on the receiving end of some awkward footage in the near future. The man’s predilection for aen’fa whores would be his undoing; Miller would make sure of it.
All of this fuss, when it should be Bakker in a cell being questioned. It was Bakker who had been conspiring against the SDC, working behind everyone’s back, recruiting the younger officers to his cause. That was the kind of cronyism that Miller wanted to sweep away. Wipe the slate clean, get rid of all the righteous, left-wing schemers that were infecting Mid-Earth society. It had started when those damned portals had opened, the infection spreading from Max-Earth. Slowly at first, insidiously, the future’s banal and generic morality imposed upon the other worlds through diktats and ultimatums. They should have known when Max-Earth demanded the abolishment of the slave trade on Mid-Earth as a prerequisite for any other agreements. It was the right thing to do, of course, but Mid-Earth should have been able to do it on their own terms — instead they were rushed to change, decades ahead of Max-Earth’s own torrid history. As always, Max-Earth enjoyed the fruits of its advanced timeline, then banned and decreed and dictated what the other dimensions could do. Get there before anyone else has a chance, then ban them from doing the exact same. Max-Earth snapping its fingers and making everyone else dance to its tune.
And now it likely had Bakker and the others doing its dirty work. A no doubt AI-coordinated reaction. Miller and the others had rocked the boat, and the overlords didn’t like it. Well, it would be too little, too late. He’d be out of lock-up in less than a day and then there’d really be hell to pay. Bakker and the others had played their cards, thinking it would end the game, without realising it was only the first round.
His hand was shaking. A peculiar micro-shudder that he was unable to quell. He looked at the misbehaving hand and willed it to stop. He put his other hand on top, but that didn’t help either. It was as if his muscles were involuntarily activating on a rapid frequency, independent of what he was instructing them to do. Miller’s breathing accelerated and his chest tightened, as if a corset were constricting his lungs.
It was fine. It was fine. Lord Hutchinson would pull some strings, get him out of there in no time. 48 hours from now and he’d be home, and Bakker would be under investigation for corruption, misconduct and whatever else they could throw at him. They’d take down the rest at the same time.
His mind turned back to Holland. That double-crossing son of a bitch would need a special kind of treatment. Not just a standard discrediting and dismissal. A leaked sex tape was too good for him.
Miller’s stomach churned. The bare walls of the cell, featureless grey plaster pocked with scratches and dents from decades of angry prisoners, pushed in at him. The air felt compressed, stale, short on oxygen. He forced himself to breathe, and stared at his hands, both of which were shaking. He needed to get out.
Footsteps down the hall, then one of the local officers on duty appeared. “Come on,” he said, unlocking the cell door, “you can make your call now.”
“Thank god for that,” Miller said, standing from the bench and hurrying out. The officer led him to a wall-mounted telephone and Miller started dialling the number. He knew it by heart.
The line rang, four times, five, six. Nobody was picking up. Miller adjusted his stance, shifted the handset to his other ear. Pick up, damn it.
There was a click and the call connected. “Lord Hutchinson’s office. How can I help?”
“It’s James Miller. Put me through, please.”
There was a pause.
“Can you repeat the name?”
“Detective James Miller. He’ll want to take my call, he’ll be expecting me.”
“One moment.”
The line buzzed impatiently as Miller waited. Seconds passed. Too many seconds. He could feel his jaw starting to chatter, the shaking having spread up his arms.
Then the buzzing stopped, and the line closed.
“Hello?”
There was nobody on the other end.
Miller stood in the grey corridor clutching the handset, still holding it to his ear. If he just held it there, kept it to the side of his head, then the officer wouldn’t know that the conversation had ended. If he kept the handset in place, it would delay his return to the cell, and prolong this moment of relative civility. Taking a call, having a conversation, like any other day.
“All done?” the officer said, suddenly standing very close. He took the handset from Miller’s reluctant fist, held it briefly to his own ear, then placed it back on the receiver.
Later, Miller could not remember walking back to his cell, or the door being closed and locked once more. He was simply there again, on the bench, staring at the bars. The ceiling extended away as the walls caved in, and he was in an extending tunnel, stretching ever further such that there would be no end to it. He could still hear the buzzing of the telephone. No, it was the wind outside. Not the wind — his blood, rushing to his brain, his ears pounding, his feet feeling several miles away.
He found himself kneeling on the floor of the cell, in the accumulated dirt, hands pulling at his hair, his bowels aching. Were they going to abandon him? Perhaps Hutchinson had simply not been at the office. Was he due to be out of town? He couldn’t remember, damn it. The secretary would have taken a message. Or called back. She would never have simply ended the call unless instructed to do so.
If they were going to throw him to the wolves, they’d be making a mistake. He knew enough to take them all down with him. Hutchinson, Baltine, Matheson. He knew about the AI disruption plan. He knew about how Callihan had got too close. He knew about the blackmailing of Bakker. If that was how it was going to be, he’d cut a deal. It could still work out. That’s what Miller did: he cut deals, made things happen, made things work.
The thumping sounds receded. He looked down at his hands, scratched and filthy. They had, at least, stopped shaking.
Thanks for reading. I really need to find the time to do more of my own illustrations.
Earlier this week I mentioned to some people that I’d written a 22-chapter guide to writing serial fiction, and the general reaction was one of surprise. I’d assumed anyone who might be interested already knew about the guide, but apparently not. As such, here’s a link:
When I was in Porto I saw a lot of crucifixes. Jesus stuck to a cross is a very common visual element of the city, especially in the Clerigos tower museum which includes an entire room of crucifixion depictions. It’s quite unnerving. None of them grabbed me quite as viscerally as this:
That image has been stuck in my brain since
shared it, and is refusing to leave. Absolutely astonishing work. So much story in one image.By pure chance I happened upon
on BBC News yesterday, talking about his wager that Elon Musk is talking rubbish about AI. I think it’s probably a fairly safe bet, given the rubbish Musk talks on every other subject.1 This comparison shared by Marcus is fascinating and amusing in equal measure, noting how LLMs function quite similarly to con artists:I’m quite iffy with much of what
says in this piece,2 but it’s got me thinking:
In particular, the ‘what if’ utopian internet that Elle is describing sounds remarkably similar to the internet in the late 1990s, and possibly into the early 2000s. In particular this bit:
What if the internet served only the most quality news sources, the most trusted and intelligent individuals, the most enlightened posts and the most thoughtful Twitter discussions? What if we were connected with the most beautiful craftsmanship from Etsy, and refurbished products from curated thrift shops? What if we could connect to friends and loved ones who read the same books and have the same values?
The implication is that all of that is currently impossible, and always has been. But that is a description of my experience of the internet in those early days. It wasn’t until the smartphone appeared in the mid/late-2000s that everything started to slide.
“What if we could connect to friends and loved ones” literally describes the early social platforms, including Facebook. That’s what it did! We don’t need AI to ‘solve’ these things, because they were already solved two decades ago. We just need less capitalist sabotage of good ideas.
Rant over (for now).
MEANWHILE, I’m currently considering adding some pretty cool services to the paid subscription version of this newsletter! I’m keen to provide some real extra value to all of you who generously support my writing, in a way that backs up the ‘Write More’ ethos of the newsletter. More soon.
Author notes
This is one of those chapters that was going to be one thing, then insisted upon becoming another. The original plan was to have Miller be interviewed, probably by Ford, and have him slowly unravel and lose his nerve. For a while I still intended to have that as the second half of the chapter.
Once I got to writing, it felt right to keep the focus on Miller himself, and see that unravelling of the man happen from his own narrative point of view. This is a slow burn panic attack as his assumed imperviousness to consequence collapses. Miller is simultaneously coming to terms with being held responsible for his actions, while also realising that he’s perhaps not as high up the food chain as he’d imagined.
He’s a pawn who thought he was a king.
Writing the chapter was about having those two aspects of Miller competing with each other: on the one hand there’s the super-confident deal-maker, and on the other hand there’s a scared, isolated man who has lost control. The internal voice was about capturing the tilting balance between those two aspects.
I also wanted Miller’s motivations here to be genuine. He might not be honest with himself, but he’s being honest with the reader. He thinks the ends justify the means, and in this chapter we glimpse some of his motivation: that sense of being in thrall to Max-Earth, of not being in proper control of your own destiny. Of being patronised and talked down to by an entity that has no moral right to do so. The shading there, what I had in my head, is pulling from various climate crisis debates. There are countries in the real world that have contributed an enormous level of pollution to the world, yet now seek to restrict other countries from benefiting from the same shortcuts. It’s the awkward practicalities of a joined-up world that insists on compartmentalising itself based on arbitrary borders.
The interesting thing with Miller (and Holland, and various other characters) is in writing somebody that I don’t agree with, without depicting them as ‘a bad guy’. Miller’s definitely done bad things, many bad things, but his motivation should still make sense. Nobody wakes up in the morning and makes a conscious decision to be a baddie. Every decision is based on vaguely enlightened self-interest, and we all think we’re making the right decision at the time.
More of Miller’s woes next week! Thanks again for reading.
Photo by Tim Hüfner on Unsplash
A couple of years ago I mentioned my general distrust of Musk in a newsletter, I think when he was considering buying Twitter. Several Musk fans appeared in the comments declaring him a genius, and how it would all be fine. You don’t tend to hear that kind of opinion much these days.
I tend to disagree with a lot of what Elle writes, but I’m glad she writes it and has found such a keen audience. Elle is the reason I’m on Substack in the first place, after all, having interviewed her waaaaay back in the mists of time. By which I mean 2020. Or was it 2021? Anyway, point is: it’s her fault.
I agree with your take that the early internet was already like that. It was pre-monetization!!!!!! (And thus pre-algorithm and pre-SEO!) But the internet was going to monetize at some point, and unfortunately they monetized our attention. I’m just wondering if there are better ways to monetize.
Thank you. 😊 I enjoyed the story, it was a good subject.