The man who is but a number awakes like Lazarus. Last night he had a large amount to drink – maybe four times more than The State considers healthy. As he reaches out to switch off the alarm with one hand, while rubbing the sleep from his eyes with a knuckle of the other, Johannes Duck knows he has no choice about the application of the numbers he generates any more. And the numbers always add up. They make sure of that. Something he has been told to accept.
As his wife pulls the sheet over her bare shoulders with a half snore and a nasal moan, sleep finally departs and he winces as he remembers the significance of today.
Today is noteworthy for an important number that Johannes Duck cannot avoid.
And that number is one thousand.
Johannes knows, as he pulls yesterday's underwear down his legs and wonders where his wife has put this week's laundered replacements, that there is a ninety-eight-point-six per cent probability that either pancreatic cancer or myocardial infarction will kill him in exactly one thousand days' time. One thousand. A lovely round number. Ten centuries if time could be expanded. Oh, if only time could be stretched! But no, this is the numbers game society has accepted and in less than three year's time, it is highly likely that he is going to be dead.
"I'm surprised they can't tell me if it will be in the morning or afternoon," he says in a low voice, so as not to fully awaken his wife. "I'd let everyone know. Plan the wake. Have a party. I mean, what's the point of having information if it's not truly precise?"
This auspicious number is known to him because he had his DNA analysed for genetic defects. (He was obliged to when he and his wife applied for an extension to their mortgage – what financial solvent insurance company, beholden to its shareholders, would take on the unnecessary risk of potential large pay-outs?) He peeks through the curtains and discovers it looks as though it will be a bright, warm day.
"Ah, fuck it," he says, pulling the curtains together again. "I want to be miserable. It never rains when you want it."
The near mathematical certitude of his death is not only known to his ex-life-insurance company, his doctor, and his wife and children, but it is also known to The State. This is because the intelligence services accessed his email communications, his medical records and every other communication and possible source of information. The State thought it wise. Just in case. But, since information is power and money can be converted into power, the genetic flaws he carries have been sold on to various other insurance companies. His family will therefore receive nothing in monetary terms when he dies because his life insurance premiums would have outstripped his yearly income.
It is the alarm on his Smartphone which awoke Johannes and it is this device he turns to glare at, wishing he could do without it. He would rather ignore it and stand naked at an open window and breathe the air of the first of his last one thousand days.
But technology and progress have always been the king and queen of The State. It used to be the slim knife easing the wax seal from paper. And now most everything in his life is connected to this slim piece of micro-electronics.
"And we did it to ourselves. Like willing sheep."
Still naked, he goes into the bathroom and is soon urinating. His steady stream of piss is tainted with the smell that asparagus lends so quickly to the contents of any bladder. He must have finished off the remains of the dinner as a late-night snack to accompany his drinking. Johannes grimaces as he realises he doesn't have any control over what his body does with items he ingests either, let alone all the information he excretes second by second which The State monitors. He would like to turn around and open his bowels, but Johannes intends to save that for work while he thinks about his boss.
Cause and effect.
Going back into the bedroom, he snatches up the Smartphone, holds it horizontal to his eyes and squints down its length, trying to see if it possible to ascertain the electronic waves emanating into space that will be collected and collated and numbered.
For the remainder of the day it will transmit information about him to the authorities. He would laugh about the fact that he used it to vote at the last election, but he has a feeling it is somehow listening to him.
"And why not?" he says. "You have me. You have all of me already."
And they do.
It will tell them how carefully Johannes is driving to the railway station he commutes from and whether he infringes any rules of the road, however minor. (He may get lower insurance because his car is linked to a SatNav and automatically speed-limited, but every ten low-grade infractions will incur one penalty point on his licence.)
It will tell them how many calories are in the food he purchases on the train when he has breakfast and will include details of what percentage of his RDA of fats and salts are in that meal, whether or not he consumes it all. (Every ten per cent above that figure translates as one negative weighting point used when calculating his position in the NHS priority lists of medical treatment.)
It will monitor what news stories he shows interest in as he alleviates the tedium of going to work, when he has known for some time that it will not be worth bothering applying for promotion. (Every political article he reads increases the degree of 'Possible Subversive' ranking the intelligence services give him. If he finally obtains that nomination – and the bar is being lowered weekly – he will be brought in for questioning. As a precaution. Who knows from whence the next assassin will spring?)
And so on and so on and so on. The limitless possibilities of what The State says it needs to know about him, to avert the never-ending war on terror, to save money on the people who refuse to help themselves, or to ascertain who are not cost-effective participants in society, is only possible because The State won the right to do so many years ago when society gave up caring that they could do so.
The population even helped by buying their own equipment to help The State do it.
Cause and effect.
Johannes Duck would throw the Smartphone down to the floor and smash it into a thousand pieces with the hope that there would be a ninety-eight-point-six per cent chance that it couldn't be reassembled. But he can't. Such folly would only increase his day-to-day suffering and that of his wife and two young children as the clock ticks down the numbers.
"Fuck it," he says, going to the bedroom window and yanking the curtains aside.
"Oh, God, Johannes," his wife says. "Give me a break, you bastard. And put some clothes on."
Reflected in the bay windows of the house opposite, he can see a police car parked in the adjoining road. It must have been noted how much he drank last night and been calculated there is a ninety-nine per cent chance he will still use his car to drive to the station. It has long been known Johannes may be prone to this sort of bloody-minded mentality, because he once wrote about it in a blog where he made the observation that when a state circumvents the law it applies to the population it is supposed to protect, it pisses people off.
Cause and effect.
He puts his hand to the warm pane of glass, spreads his fingers and tries to clasp the surface. Johannes Duck tries to claim the day, tries to claim his life.
"And this is you," he says to a world unconcerned with his last one thousand days. "You too are a number. Just like me. How does it feel that you never did anything?"
His Smartphone vibrates with the first email of the day.
Somewhere, a computer ingests the information.
Still naked, he goes down to get the keys to his car. He'll give them a car chase to remember.
Cause and effect.
And on a lighter note...
Total recorded cycled miles this year: 2677
Max speed (hill assisted): 39.3
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