“These just came from Haworth Labs. Apparently Miss Boyle has had another conflagration of inspiration,” Sergeant Sargent explained to Chief Inspector Peters, placing a pill bottle filled with pitch black capsules on the edge of his desk for Peters to take.
“They call it Oblivion. Makes one forget everything. Entirely. The Chief Constable feels these would be best applied on Skippers trying to leave town via the Britannia Bridge. Orders are that anyone caught trying to leave should be forcibly administered one of these and sent back the way they came.”
Peters collected the pill bottle and nodded an acknowledgement that could be easily misconstrued as agreement.
As he entered the elevator and the doors closed him off from the rest of Central, he regarded the pills in his hand with measured alarm. He supposed Sally Boyle more than anyone understood the want – the need, even – to forget. Still, she had to know making a drug like this was incredibly dangerous. The constabulary’s use for it was downright benign compared to how a drug like Oblivion could be used. In the wrong hands…
But they were in his hands, weren’t they? At least this batch of them. And he, who had long since made the choice between following orders and following his conscience, could instead use them for the benefit of the citizenry.
It had been his experience working the Britannia Bridge that not everyone was prepared to cope with reality. People emerged from Wellington Wells with wide open eyes, horrified by the world around them and the world within. Many of them, it was plain to see, would give anything to just go back to their old lives, even knowing the consequences. Now he had a tool to give them that option. They would still have to face the music eventually, be it through starvation, Joy-induced folly, or running afoul of society, but they could choose that for themselves.
The bottle of pills was a heavy burden to bear, but Chief Inspector Peters returned to his post feeling as though his job had been made a modicum easier.
—
When he arrived back at the Britannia Bridge, he saw someone on their hands and knees in the ticketing area. At first, he thought they were crying, weakly banging their fists on the ground. It was not an uncommon response among Skippers. Often, they would arrive at this place and find themselves overwhelmed by whatever journey had brought them here. As he approached, though, he saw that this person was actually scrawling a message on the concrete.
“Special Agent Bolton?” Peters asked upon recognizing the man.
“Chief Inspector Peters,” Bolton greeted, getting to his feet. Peters walked over to see what Bolton had written on the ground.
“Remember John Bolton?” Peters questioned the message.
“There should be a comma, but I think that makes it too obvious it’s from me, to me,” Bolton said, dusting his hands off. “I’ve received some extremely worrying intel. Word’s come in that Miss Boyle has developed some sort of memory erasure drug. Not like Joy at all. It erases everything. Permanently. One of my other contacts has floated a theory that she dosed Oliver Starkey with it and that’s why he went mad in the Duke’s Arms and broke all those televisions.”
“She has made the drug,” Peters confirmed. “They just gave me a bottle of them. They’ve ordered me to force anyone who comes here to take one.”
Bolton huffed at the enormity of it. “God helps us all. You’re not going to, are you?”
“No. Some, though, will take it willingly if I give them the choice.”
“You’re going to let them go back?” Bolton asked incredulously. “After it all it takes to get this far?”
“The truth is not for everyone,” Peters pointed out. “I think you’d know that better than most.”
“Touché,” Bolton nodded. “Just this morning, I tried to inform Miss Byng of my findings about Dr. Verloc, but she wouldn’t hear of it. I don’t think any amount of evidence can shake her faith in him. And every step closer I get to exposing him, he seems to get some new advantage. Now that he has access to this Oblivion? If I’m not careful, I could very well end up like Starkey, holed up in some hovel out in the Garden District, raving like a lunatic.”
“Is that what this is about?” Peters asked, gesturing at the message Bolton wrote.
Bolton let out a hollow laugh and ran an anxious hand through his hair.
“It’s a contingency plan. A long shot but… I’ve heard about these techniques the Americans are trying to develop. All sorts of mind tricks, but one in particular… I’ve been trying to plant a trigger phrase in my mind. If I am unsuccessful when I make my move on Verloc, I have no doubt that he will use Oblivion on me. But if I have a foothold in my own mind, perhaps I could force myself to remember my mission. I’ve planted less obvious cues around the Village to help trigger it, but if I end up here, on my way out, I need a reminder with no subtlety at all to make sure I don’t leave the job undone.”
Bolton let out a weary sigh.
“It sounds absurd when I say it out loud,” he concluded, glancing at Peters to see if he thought it was ridiculous too.
“We live in a world of absurdity,” Peters said, clasping his hands behind his back.
“Too true,” Bolton said. “I’d best get back to Central.” He made to leave, but turned back a second later. “Could you spare one of those Oblivion pills for me?”
“What would you want it for?” Peters asked. He trusted Bolton, but all the same, if Bolton planned to use it on someone else, it could be traced back to him.
“In the event of my capture, they could want to just be rid of me but they might also want to interrogate me,” Bolton explained. “And were that to happen, I’d like to have the choice about it.” He afforded himself a rueful smile. “It’d be terribly poetic, destroying any information I know with their own trick.”
Peters didn’t share Bolton’s appreciation for irony, but he picked an Oblivion capsule out of his pill bottle and handed it over.
“Here’s hoping I never have to use it,” Bolton said, tipping it at Peters as if to toast him with it before pocketing it.
“Godspeed,” Peters said, turning to head back through the train cars.
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