I sit, surrounded by blackness, hearing her breath; it has the regular, slow pace of the drugged. After quite some time, I hear her stirring. I switch the lights on. I had hoped she would remain under the drug's influence for the whole 3 hours it takes for the medicine to work. Still. Since she is awake, I might as well proceed.
“Ah, you are coming back. Just in time for some civilised conversation. No no no.”
The sound of a metal implement hitting flesh resounds.
“I have to insist. Don’t get up. Let us talk”.
Sobbing noises. Blood is running from the fresh would on her shoulder.
“And when I say us, I mean me. Where was I? Ah, yes.”
“There are many types of casinos.
I have seen modern ones, that try, and usually succeed, to pull off this Swedish/Japanese minimalistic style, with empty spaces, with colours of black and white and deep emerald green, with carpets made of some strange synthetic that feels like a Gray-sand beach lays beneath your feet. Their tables are modern, supported only one leg, which tends to not even reside bellow the barycentre of the table, usually favouring one of the corners of the table for its position. And that is if the tables even have corners! They can also be elegantly suspended tables, hanging from the roof. The walls are covered with flat-screens, showing a permanent calm sea, or some other bullshit Zen concept, on an infinite, one hour long loop. The columns at those places are statues of the finest detail. If only you could see them.
Then, there are what I have come to consider the standard casinos, with patterns of red, yellow, brow and gold all around, with light bulbs and lights wheeling and changing around you. The music is loud in the aisles, forcing you to get to the quiet spots, where gambling is taking place. The walls are brown, the tables are brown, the carpets are thick and monochrome and make always give me the impression of being a huge lichen that has invaded the room.
Finally there are the ones that are just like the standard ones, just older and sadder. Like all casinos, these casinos put on a lot of make-up on, but, like the stewardesses these employ, no amount of make up manages to hide the fact they are past their prime. The golds and reds and lights seem to be fading away when you do not focus on them. The carpets are torn, and the stick of beer can no longer be removed. But what am I talking about, you obviously know these ones, we are in the basement of one of them.
My, oh my, this is turning more into a monologue than a dialogue! Logos is speech, and mono means only, or one, in Greek.
Dio, means two. It also means God in Latin, but what did they know about the subtleties of language?
So it takes two, dio, to dialogue, miss... I am sorry, I did not catch your name.”
She has been crying there, tied on her chair.
“My,” she sobs after seeing my expression, “my name is Hanna. Please, please let me go. I ...”
I kick her and the chair down. The sound of her meat hitting the ground from a certain hight and her cry of pain, interrupts her tiresome interruption.
“Hanna; I am sorry for this, but you were diverging from our subject. Now, what do you think all types of casinos have in common, Hanna?”
The girl only sobs.
“I asked you”
, the sounds of a boot,
”a”,
repeatedly,
“fucking”,
connecting with flesh,
“question”,
punctuating my words,
“Hanna”.
The cries of pain, the sobs, continue.
“But you do not seem disposed to answer me. Well, I will tell you what people think about casinos. People think that casinos are places you always loose. Everyone knows it. Statisticians know it, gamblers know it, everyone knows it. What they sell, people say, is the dream. The dream of easy money.
Or they might say that casinos exist to clean away dirty money. Let me tell you something Hanna: Money is never dirty. I have to quote the Romans, even though I hate them, on this one: “Pecunia non olet”, money does not smell. It has a funny story, this phrase does. Do you want to hear it Hanna?”
She has not stopped crying, but she manages a “Yes” between two gasps for air.
“Vespasian, he was a Roman emperor, imposed a Piss tax on the distribution of urine from public urinals in Rome. You see, the urine collected from public urinals was sold as an ingredient for several chemical processes. It was used in tanning, and also by launderers as a source of ammonia to clean and whiten woollen togas. Imagine that. The buyers of the urine paid the tax. Well, Vespasian's wimp of a son, Titus or something, complained about the disgusting nature of this tax. His father held up a gold coin and asked, whether he felt offended by its smell. When Titus said "No," he replied, "Yet it comes from urine". I always feel baffled by this, me.
But I mention this because I believe it ties in with the next, very interesting, point. Can you guess what the next point is, Hanna?”
Her crying has abated a bit. Her breath has steadied. They always do that, them. She answers. “No”.
I bend down, getting closer to her.
“Come on Hanna,”, the sound of a finger snapping, “be a sport,” and a scream, ” take a guess”.
The scream keeps on going. Progressively it turns itself into a moan.
“No, I am sorry, Hanna, that is not a correct guess.
The topic we are going to move on to, is the topic of evolution. Amazing thing, is it not? Evolution. To say that before Lamarc, no one had properly thought of it. Oh, I hear you protest, surely it is Darwin that first came up with the idea of evolution. Well it is not. Lamarc was fist to postulate that the ones most fitting their environment reproduce better and get to procreate and spread even more of themselves. Sadly Darwin reaped all the glory.
Well, personally, I dislike evolution. To be more precise I dislike biological evolution. We are where we are right now as a species, in this comfortable niche, thanks to this evolution. But we managed to extract ourselves from this biological bog, dry the bog out, plant bio-engineered corn in it, and eat all other animals thanks to the use of tools in order to modify our environment. I, like most humans, would be loath to see some fluke of biological evolution come out of the sad remains of the biological bog and supplant us. Evolution has had its day, has served its purpose for us.
We are civilised now, and we use tools. We do not have need of abominations. We have no need of the likes of you Hanna.”
The girl, the abomination, looks at me. My words must have given her a resolve of some kind. She is gritting her teeth, glancing from her broken finger to my face. Will she try to bargain, or will she try to react again?
“But... I am not an abomination. I am human. I am like you!”
Bargain it is, then. This might be a bit more fun.
“Oh, sorry, I had not noticed! You are no abomination, you say. So you mean you did not come to this place in order to cheat. You think that we did not notice you. That you were the first one, that you were unique. My, my...
Well. I cannot complain. You see, most people who develop super-powers like you, tend to quickly come to one of two possible conclusions, or rather delusions.
The first delusion is believing they are superheroes, and that they therefore need to use their powers to save the world. When they reach that conclusion they can try to be discrete, hide themselves, and disperse their version of justice from the shadows; then they get themselves in difficult situations and die when the odds and the guns of the mob stack up against them. They can also choose to try to be flashy, get as much attention as possible on them. Well, when they are flashy, we find them, and our friends at the media make sure we are the first and last to find about them. That is the first delusion.
The second delusion is that you can use this biological advantage of yours in order to further your own egoistic dreams. You can try to be flashy, be an amazing entertainer or whatever, to try and get fame. I told you what happens to the flashy types. We find them, and we are always the last that can be say they found them. But then... then there are the smart ones. The ones who do not try to be flashy. The ones like you.”
The emotions have been shifting on her face all through my monologue. She currently tentatively tries a weak smile at the compliment, yet the pain quickly brings her features back to a proper expression of despair and loathing.
“Like you.”, I reiterate.
“Yet you all fall to the same hubris. I asked you Hanna, before, what you thought all types of casinos have in common. You thought that the money making aspect was the important one. I might have misled you with this one. To be honest, the one saying those words might even have been me. Well, whilst it is true that casinos make money, it is not the most important shared aspect of all casinos. The most important one is that all casinos are closed places. You cannot see the sky from inside a casino. The time is of no relevance to the ambience inside them. There are no windows. Analysts say this is done on purpose in order to lure the gamblers in, and make them loose track of time. That is certainly true. But this closed spaces...
One could almost think of them as traps...
Do you know what makes for a good trap? A good trap must promise a difficult to obtain goal as an easy achievement, and remain inconspicuous while luring their prey to a point where they cannot escape. Mice eat cheese from the mousetraps, focusing on the cheese part, not the trap. You, and the other smart homo superiors, those of you that try to stay hidden, despite your telekinesis and whatever other powers you have, choose to remain in our society. And our society has created a new breeding criterion: money.
Remember how I told you about money? It is not tied to morality. It is tied to social success. The means by which you acquire it are not important so long as you are able to keep it and there is a society. Those with money will get better education, will have longer life expectancies and will get healthier kids. Those that are weak of body can compensate it with money. Our whole society ranks us by our gross salary. And since you decide to stay hidden, but still want to advance, what do you do? How are you going to make easy money and remain anonymous? When you can stop a roulette ball with your magnetic waves, control dice, see from inside the eyes of other people? You are going to come here.
Just like the mice, we let you get to the cheese. It is at the checkout where we get you. When you take the money, all happy, we inject you. And just like that, you loose all your powers.”
She tries to interject, but I am tired. The product has been active for a whole 3 hours, she must have been rendered safely killable by the medicine by now, her powers neutralised. I kick her in the head.
“Well Hanna, I cannot say it has been a pleasure. It never is. But sometimes you have to know. Nothing personal.”
Then I kick her again. And again. I kick her until my legs are sore and there is nothing properly worth kicking left.
I page Michael to come and dispose of the remains. I turn the lights off, take off my shoes and work clothes in the hall, throw them in the refuse bin and proceed to my office. I start whistling as I start writing my report. We will need to check Hanna’s family and arrange for sterilisation, cancers and what-have-yous to her immediate blood relatives.
It is hard to do my job. I keep people safe, I keep humanity alive, like the many thousands of us in the know. Yet as far as job recognition goes, ours is crap. No one knows of us, as well they shouldn’t. It is so hard not having anyone to talk about your job however, that you end up talking about it with the abominations. It makes as much sense as a hunter talking to his prey... but what can you do about it?
