The M word

The year is 2120 and Michael fondly looked at the ornate heart shaped golden locket. It contained a picture of his late wife Lara who died two weeks ago. Lara and Michael had only been married for 2 years but were childhood sweethearts.

Her death was described as suicide. This was what Michael was strongly persuaded by the coroner. This explanation did not satisfy Michael who appeared to miss his wife. Michael is abruptly distracted from his thoughts by the holographic machine blared in the background. The newsreaders’ blurred face danced around the room like an unsettled ghoul. The black suited man informed his audience that murder simply no longer existed. This was confirmed by a press conference by the Prime Minister earlier in the day. He applauded the efforts of his Scientific advisors in the last few months. “Their efforts”, he blared out, “have allowed for us to eliminate the so called ‘warrior gene’, which will permit us to formulate a harmonious society”. His audience clapped robotically in the background. Michael was not one of them, he was one of few who did not have their memories wiped in the purging. Michael placed the locket back in the engraved jewellery box which depicted more simple times long ago.

Michael got dressed for his 9-5. He was a plain looking man of medium height with jet black hair. He was wearing a plain blue chequered shirt and sandy coloured trousers. The uniform for the blandness of office life. This day however was unlike all others. Michael worked as a computer engineer in Whitechapel in East London. Although others might steer away from Jack the Ripper’s old stomping ground, it had an almost magnetic attraction for Michael. His day at work was very quiet except for a tall formally dressed gentleman who introduced himself as Gerald. This man explained he needed his laptop to be fixed urgently. However when he placed his satchel on the table before removing his laptop, Michael noticed a tattered copy of ABC murders. Michael commented that the Gerald’s taste in books, “reminds him of a different age”. Gerald replied that “not all progress is good for humanity”. Michael agrees, “I used to love reading murder mysteries as a child but those days are long gone.” Gerald pays for the repair and briskly walks away, leaving the Christie book in his wake. Michael opens the book and sees an indentation half way through the book. A card advertising the ‘pleasant nature trail’ falls out of the book. The card also contains red writing which states ‘Tuesday at 4pm’.

Michael follows his usual daily routine, the only difference being that he walks out of work at 3:30 pm with the ornate locket in his front pocket. Michael cautiously walks around the forest until he reaches an open clearing. In the clearing Michael discovers two wooden tables. These tables contained newspaper clippings from various years from around the 2000’s which was before the Prime Ministers party ‘Peace’ took over. The clippings showed various gruesome images involving unfortunate victims with headlines involving foreign words such as ‘murder’, ‘suspect’, ‘police’, ‘motive’.

“Quite the spread.” remarked Gerald wistfully. Other inquisitive individuals emerged from the forest as back-up. “What is all this?” Michael replied. “We are from the group CRIME,” Gerald stated. “All of us are a group of individuals including forensic pathologists who remember a time when crimes were properly investigated before the Peace party. We are now out of jobs. We try to investigate crimes when we have individuals willing to cooperate with us. However this is rare. I recognised you and your wife’s picture from the newspaper. I saw a glimmer in your eye which told me you were like us. The newspaper mentioned you worked in a technology shop and tracked you down. I thought we could help you?” Michael sighed, “My wife Lara died of suicide despite being positive and full-of-life. I was not allowed to see her body even. I am trying my best to move on with my life”. “Moving on is problematic without closure, let us help you.” Gerald replied. “How is that possible?” enquired Michael. A small red haired lady stepped forward. “I work in administration in the department which burn all corpses. I can gain access for you.” stated Marie. However Michael was still sceptical. “Why would you want to help me? You don’t know me!” “We believe murder is unjust even if the word has been removed from the dictionary!” replied Gerald. “I want you to prove your abilities to me”. Michael demanded softly. Gerald picked up a gruesome looking picture of a woman lying down on a bed in a clinical looking white room. “This was my wife when she supposedly committed suicide” Gerald replied. “All of us have had some relative who we believe has been murdered even if this does not fit with the official report” Gerald stated curtly. The woman had many deep wounds throughout her body. “The cause of death…. is that her throat was cut. She likely died of blood loss. The killer also stabbed her many times before slitting her throat, clearly pre-emptive. This could suggest a crime of passion”. Gerald replied, trying to keep back the tears.

Michael sheepishly walks into the abandoned office block to meet his CRIME party comrades. They were all gathered in a small clinical looking room. “It was a challenge to find the information on your wife Michael.” Gerald stated. “We had to distract the officials by laying a trap of contraband newspaper articles involving murder. This delayed your wife’s body being cremated. We then had to crack the safe for the cold freezing room which contained her body. This is not difficult when your boss has as many pets as he has organs. I only had to listen to what he was droning on about for one day to get the code word Suzy.” Marie replied.

Projected on the wall are pictures of Michael’s deceased wife Lara. Michael seems to be crestfallen. Gerald appears from behind the clinical cabinets alongside a short, red haired woman who introduces herself as Marie. Marie outlines that herself and Gerald managed to examine Lara’s body and take wall-o-graphs They suggest that Lara’s death was a murder and the cause of death was her throat being slit similar to Gerald’s wife. “This could suggest some type of mass murderer at large” Gerald suggested. “We need more evidence however.” Marie replied. “It seems likely this murderer is targeting women in a passionately evil manner,” Gerald outlines. “the difficulty is how to investigate and catch this killer?” Gerald asked.

“We need to catch these people. CRIME need to step it up a notch by launching a public campaign. If people have lost their memories of violence and killers.” Michael suggests. “How exactly would we do that?” asked Gerald. “We need to use modern forms of communication such as holographic messenger and screen blaring.” Michael replied. “I don’t understand you youngsters and all your new technology. What does this mean!” Gerald explained. “It’s obvious. Holographic messenger allows for holographic messages to be sent to someone but other people around can see the messages. Screen blaring means that you can share messages on your phone to large screens such as the screens in London square. That explains why you never replied to any of my messages!” exclaims Gerald’s daughter Irina who was wearing the uniform of a teenager. “How could that possibly help us?” asks Gerald. “We can use it to gain publicity for our campaign and can hopefully be used to get clues for our murder search.” replies Michael.

The team headed by Michael, set to work in painting the town with stories of murder. The team used modern forms of technology such as Holographic Messenger but also traditional methods such as writing to newspapers, writing letters and trying to spread messages through word of mouth. The campaign was wildly successful. The public’s previous fascination with murder returned with a vengeance. Soon the streets were alight with talks of murder and murders. People weren’t turning up to work. Society was descending into chaos. A civil war was brewing between the people and the government.

As chaos was descending around him, a glimmer of hope appeared in Michael’s eye. He stepped back from the action. He took a leisurely walk up to a nearby hill. Michael fondled the heart-shaped locket in his fingers. The locket fell open and a blood stained strand of brown hair fell out. His plan had worked perfectly so far. Michael had always believed he was destined for more. He had worked a dead end job all his life. He always knew from a young age that one day he would be famous. He had always been fascinated by psychopaths from the old eras. He had been reading contraband murder mystery books since he was a teenager. Murder provided a perfect bridge between his two desires in life. The beautiful yet ditzy Lara who he had known since his school days provided an ideal subject for his experiments.

Michael did not care whether people admired or despised him. He wanted to be known. Michael lightly chuckled to himself, he knew he would not be caught and would be free to strike once again. Michael threw the locket onto the city which was at war with itself. His new, more gruesome job was just beginning.