The Ministry of Labour Transition
by Joel McKay
|
Table of Contents parts: 1, 2, 3 |
conclusion
Marian’s hand shifted to her wife’s shoulder. Lillian reached up and held it there.
“Couldn’t we have another month? Just a bit more time?” she pleaded.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Ca-”
“Missus,” Marian said, a warning in her voice.
Ray met Marian Cat’s eyes and nodded. “Mrs. Cat,” he corrected. “I’m afraid these things move quickly, and legislation doesn’t allow us a lot of leeway to give you extra time. The crews are across the street this week. I expect they’ll be here by next Monday.”
That’s when Julia chimed in, “We’ll also have to seize any profits you have.”
The blue hologram floated silently between them.
Ray gave her a look. Julia sat back.
Lillian shook her head. “I don’t care about the money. Have at it. We weren’t running this to get rich, would’ve been a not-for-profit, but it was easier to incorporate a business. We just wanted... wanted something to do. Something meaningful. Our families were already gone... it was... just something to do, that’s all.”
Ray took a couple paper napkins from the thin wood dispenser between them and handed them to her. She wiped her cheeks and nose and sat back.
“Do you think... do you think there’s a way to transfer our business to the Corridor? Surely people need to drink coffee there. We’d operate however the government wants us to,” she offered. She turned to Marian with a hopeful smile. Her wife responded with a less convincing one, almost pitying. She knew the score. The reapers were here, and that was that.
Ray shook his head. “I’m sorry, Mrs.—”
“Yes, absolutely,” Julia interjected. “We can speak to our superiors and see what the process would look like to have you both transition and reopen your business there. Do you have any cities in particular you’d want to be in?”
Marian looked skeptical but after a moment said, “Well, my family is all in Montreal. That would be ideal.”
Julia smiled. “We can make that happen.”
Lillian offered a weak smile through puffy eyes. Marian mouthed a thank-you. Ray felt the anger surging inside him. He clenched his fist.
Julia nodded and continued, sounding as sweet as caramel, “Now listen, Ministry teams will be here soon to shut you down. We’ll have to ask you to gather your things quickly, head home and pack. You’ll port to the Corridor in forty-eight hours.”
Lillian nodded silently and stood up. She hugged Marian long and hard. Lil Cat’s was silent except the persistent drone from the hive of reclaimers across the street.
* * *
It was half past midnight by the time Ray walked through the front door. A deathly quiet had settled over the house. Most of the lights were off save a single lamp next to the couch in the living room where Caroline lay sleeping, her head tilted back and mouth open. A near-empty bottle of red with a glass next to it sat on the coffee table. In the kitchen, there were two more empty bottles.
The den was quiet. No blue light to signal that Tansie had fallen asleep again watching cartoons. The hallway to his room was dark. The sliding door from the living room out onto the deck was half-open.
Panic struck Ray like a chord, his fatherly instinct kicking in as he imagined Caroline passed out drunk and a mischievous Tansie escaping out on the balcony and falling off.
He kicked off his shoes and darted through the room and onto the deck. Outside, the cool September breeze blew, but he found only a table, four chairs, one of them askance. An ashtray at the centre of the table held a stubbed-out joint.
Ray peeked over the balcony to look below. He knew it was crazy. She wouldn’t fall. Couldn’t fall. But still...
A snorting sound called his attention back to the living room. He walked in; Caroline sat forward, rubbing her eyes.
She looked at him, a moment or two passing before he saw the recognition in her drunken eyes as to where she was and who was standing in front of her.
“Have enough to drink?” he asked, that brotherly accusatory tone in his voice.
“Take it out of my pay,” she said. Then she tapped a thoughtful finger against her chin, well... more like smeared it across her chin in a booze-induced attempt to look witty. “Wait, you don’t pay me.”
She erupted in a cackle of laughter and fell over sideways.
“I hope you had most of this after she fell asleep,” he said, lifting the bottle. “She shouldn’t see you like this.”
He returned to the kitchen, flicked on a light and rinsed out the glass and bottles. He stashed the bottles in the recycling bin under the sink and returned the glass to its rightful place in the cupboard.
“What time did you get her down?” he asked.
Caroline had pulled herself to her feet but was struggling to get her boots on near the doorway. Her red coat hung haphazardly, one arm through a sleeve, the other end spilling onto the floor as her feet navigated the narrow passageway into her boots.
“I didn’t,” she muttered.
“What do you mean?”
“Ray, what’s the point? She doesn’t know the difference.”
“Caroline, what did you—?”
“I shut her off. Needed a break. I’m here all week with her while you’re off gallivanting in the gardens with your oh-so-precious job. She doesn’t know the difference. Boot her up; she’ll be back in a flash.”
Ray gripped the counter. His fingers dug in. Rage seethed through him. His little girl was gone. He held the granite tighter and tighter.
He turned to his sister, still gripping the counter. A corkscrew sat on the counter next to him. A wayward cork next to it. He thought about picking it up and jamming it into her chest, just like that shard of steel had ramrodded through Mary’s chest in the accident. He thought about smashing her head against the door, cracking it open like an egg. Just like Tansie’s head had smashed against the car door frame, leaving a splattering of blood and slivers of skull for the investigators to clean up afterward.
“She’s a hologram, Ray! She’s been gone a year. You have to stop. Have to move on. I can’t keep coming back here to look after your little fantasy life. It’s not real.”
Ray fell to the kitchen floor. His fingers hurt, he had gripped the countertop so hard. He saw the corkscrew and felt ashamed. Ashamed he had hurt Julia, ashamed he had thought about hurting Caroline. But most ashamed those awful images of Mary and Tansie’s death flashed through his mind. That he had allowed them to, allowed himself to see them again.
He had spent a lot of credits to have her memories pulled and save what he could of Tansie so that he could recreate her. Nothing could be done for Mary. The damage to her head was too complete. But Tansie... Tansie hadn’t died until they got to the hospital. Some of her could be saved. So, he spent all his savings — his retirement credit — to harvest what he could and have a simulacrum made in the Tides system. To wipe his memory as best as he could so he didn’t remember the details of that day. The mistake he’d made.
But you can’t wipe everything away. Some things are burned into you.
He started to weep, hands resting in his lap, legs stretched out in front of him like a little boy crying on the floor. He looked through bleary eyes at his sister. It was pity he saw in her eyes, not love. She left. The door shut behind her with a resounding metal click. His favourite sound of the week suddenly sounded so lonely.
Some time later, after he had cleaned himself up, he stood in the living room and said, “Tides, reboot Program One: Tansie Gallun. Bedtime.”
“Sure thing, Ray,” the female voice answered.
Did he detect a hint of pity in that voice too?
The sound of cartoons playing in the den broke the silence. It was an old one. An ancient one. Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner and a crate of Acme TNT. Tansie loved the old ones. He peered in through the door and saw her curled up on the loveseat beneath a heavy white blanket. Her side rising and falling with each breath.
He went in and curled up around her. Curled up like that cat around a warm steaming coffee mug. He listened to her breathe. His breathing settled, and he fell asleep to the sound of explosions rattling out from the TV in front of him. In his dreams, it sounded like crumpled steel and shattered glass, metal spiders and anti-gravity engines speeding away with rubble.
* * *
It was a mom-and-pop furniture store. The kind that’s been in the family since great-grandpa founded it. The owners, Raj and Diya Sharma, had operated it for fifty years. Ray and Julia stood under the fabric awning of a bubble tea shop across the street. It was already cleaned out, having been shut down by them on Monday.
It was the end of another long week. Julia had tested his patience more than once. They’d gone tit-for-tat on thirty businesses that week and, if someone was keeping score, which he was, they were about dead even on the number of them he shuttered with just-the-facts versus her promises-to-be-broken approach. He was tired, and all he could think about was getting home.
Sharma’s was downtown at the foot of an empty skyscraper. A simple square sign with the name written in a gilded cursive lettering was the only thing that denoted its existence. Through the glass walls, Ray could see an extensive gallery of sectionals, end tables, lamps, beds, and dining sets. The kind of thing that suggested homes that needed to be filled, not ones that would be torn down.
Ray pulled his overcoat tighter around him. The warm September weather of the last few days had given way to the first signs of a West Coast autumn, heavy clouds that looked like battered steel, a light persistent drizzle that made everything look freshly washed and cast the darkening forests of the North Shore mountains in a deep shade of blue. Gone was the August sky and, along with it, the endlessly vibrant shades of green that made Canada’s West Coast one of the more startlingly beautiful places he had ever reclaimed.
This is how you really look when all the makeup and lipstick are off, isn’t it, Vancouver? An outpost of mist and fog that revels in its own gloom. A place whose song is more akin to croaking blackbirds and the steady tattoo of rain than the blustery cacophony of city life.
He could hear it with each passing day more clearly. There was a calmness to it, a peaceful coziness that, just for a moment, made him forget who he was and what he was there to do.
“What do we know?”
A hologram popped up above Julia’s tablet. The stats spoke for themselves. Sharma’s had been losing money for a decade. In fact, it didn’t look like Raj and Diya had made a sale in at least two years.
“Why is it on the list? This part of the city won’t be reclaimed for several more years. Seems pointless,” he observed.
Julia shrugged. “Not our concern.”
Ray hesitated. Would anyone notice if it was gone? Had anyone but the bean counters at the CRA noticed it was still open?
Just then the glass door opened. Out stepped an elderly man with deep brown skin and curly white hair. He wore a neatly trimmed beard, a pair of sand-coloured chinos and a button-down plaid shirt. He smiled and waved at them, gesturing for them to come in.
Ray and Julia exchanged a tentative glance and walked across the street.
The inside of Sharma’s was more like a museum than a furniture store. The tables and chairs were polished and dusted, impeccably well-kept. The sofas, loungers, and divans were spaced in an orderly fashion with wide laneways between them that allowed customers to tour with ease. Each set had been assembled in a way that would provide would-be owners with a sense of how it might look in their own homes, not that there were any permanent homes left in E-Garden.
Ray noticed several beautifully crafted mahogany and teak dining seats. He didn’t bother to look at the price tag, knowing they were well out of his price range.
Raj and Diya offered them coffee and a comfortable seat at one of the living room sets at the centre of the store.
“We wondered what had taken you so long to get here,” Diya said, lifting a cup of steaming hot tea to her mouth.
“You were expecting us?” Julia asked, a note of surprise in her mouth.
Raj smiled. “Oh yes, for quite some time. We were starting to think maybe you got lost or we were forgotten about somewhere along the way.”
“Then you know what we’re here for?” Ray asked.
It was Diya’s turn to nod. “Yes, and although it pains us to see this place go, we know it’s time.”
“Long past time, probably,” Raj chimed in.
They smiled at one another; an easy kindness flowed between them that spoke of two people used to being alone together for long periods of time. Ray and Julia exchanged an awkward glance.
“Well, there are no profits to speak of so there’s no need for us to claim any financial assets, so it’s just a matter of packing up, turning off the lights, and readying for your transition,” Julia said.
“Of course,” Diya said.
A silence fell between the four of them. The only sound was the steady, comforting tick of a grandfather clock somewhere behind Ray and the rain tapping lightly against the windows. He settled into his chair, a strange sense of comfort washing over him. Julia shifted uncomfortably. She ignored the coffee cup in front of her. Her fingers rattled over the tablet, scanning documents and images.
“So, you’re okay with a forty-eight hour time limit?” she asked.
The couple nodded.
“And you recognize our reclaimers will be here today to repossess everything?” she pressed.
Raj grimaced slightly but held his lips in a half-smile. Diya nodded.
“Of course, we understand you must do your work. It can’t be an easy job,” she offered.
Julia ignored that. She shifted again, this time straightening out her navy-blue skirt. Her fingers rattled across the tablet, faster this time. She avoided eye contact and made herself busy looking for something, anything, that would make this easier for her.
But it wasn’t easy, Ray realized. The Sharmas weren’t like Beakman, there was no fight to be had here. No argument to engage in. No triumph in having the upper hand. And they weren’t the Cats. There was no solace that could be provided, no faux comfort that could be extended. Inside Sharma’s, the Ministry of Labour Transition employees were neither grim reapers nor protectors offering succor. They were just two people sitting in an empty furniture store sharing coffee and tea.
It was just the facts. For the Sharmas, it was the end of something they had watched over for half a century, and that their parents had before them and their parents before them. The space wasn’t just a commercial lease filled with capital assets. It was a place, a home. Something that once taken away could never be replaced.
Ray leaned forward and told Julia to put away the tablet. He told the Sharmas they could leave if they wished, that the Ministry would support their transition to the extent it could, and they would be provided with a living income once they moved to the Corridor. It wouldn’t be much, but they’d have a roof and food to eat and security.
Then he told Julia to mark the store as reclaimed. She did so, and he shifted back to the Sharmas, and he told them they could stay as long as they wanted.
His young colleague’s eyebrows lifted at that suggestion, but she didn’t argue.
Diya and Raj shared a look. “No, it’s okay. We have both agreed it’s time to move on,” Diya said.
Julia stood up. “Thank you for your understanding. Ray, let’s go. We’re done here.”
“More clients to visit?” Raj asked.
“Yes, I’m afraid so,” said Julia. “Ray?”
Ray looked at her and smiled. “You go on ahead. I’ll catch up.”
Julia lingered a moment, her fingers twiddling nervously at the hem of her skirt. She chewed her lip, as if unsure of herself. Ray just looked at her. He thought about the score he’d been keeping in his head. The tech companies. The construction outfits. The coffee shops and restaurants. How many had he shut down? The droning of the reclaimers ever-present in his head. Pulverized steel. Shattered glass.
Julia nodded once and promptly left, tablet in hand. The door onto the street drifted shut behind her without a sound. Ray settled into the plush sofa with his cup of tea.
“So,” he said, turning back to Raj Diya, “tell me about your business.”
The clock ticked steadily behind him. Rain tapped against the windows. Steam drifted lazily from their cups. And, for a little while, Ray lost himself in something that was already gone.
Copyright © 2023 by Joel McKay
