Clime Inside

I went to see a doctor because I’ve been feeling a bit peculiar up my head. It was a new doctor who I hadn’t met before. When I sat down and began talking to him, he immediately started typing everything I was saying on his computer. He could touch type. All the while he stared at me over his left shoulder while his body continued to face the screen and type away with impressive speed and accuracy.

“Will all of this go on to a central database?” I asked.

‘…central database…’ he tapped on the screen.

“You’re even entering that, aren’t you?” I said.

‘…even entering that…’ he continued to type, smiling warmly at me.

I asked him to stop typing everything I was saying and he said he would but he actually just typed that up as well. I asked again, more firmly. Sure, he said, he wouldn’t type in any more information – but he did! Each time I asked him to stop he said he would stop but then he just carried on anyway, even typing up what I said when I asked him to stop. In the end, I gave up.

“Have you been experiencing any slow-motion vomiting lately?” he asked.

“Slow-motion vomiting?” I said.

“Yes, there’s a lot of it about at the moment. It’s like normal vomiting but it all comes out very slowly, very gradually, creeping out constantly for hours on end sometimes.”

“No,” I said, “not that.” I paused. “I’m scared of the state.”

He stopped typing.

I expected him to ask what exactly I was scared of or for how long I’d felt that way, or something like that - but he didn’t. He just continued to stare at me while he pressed a button on the side of his intercom. A moment later, in came a nurse. She took my left arm, rolled up the sleeve, and injected into it a needle connected to a small glass phial. The vacuum of the phial automatically sucked out a fresh sample of blood from me.

“You see?” the doctor said.

I looked down at the phial and saw that what was coming out of my veins was black. Not reddish-black but black, pitch black, absolute colourless black. It was thick and black like sticky tar-black crude oil.

“Those who are scared of State should be scared of State,” the doctor and nurse said in unison.