Freedom Island Read Online Free

checked himself in to Rehabilitation for ‘personal development’; this being a process fabled to spit you out at the other end rebuilt, into a fresh new life. Whether it did or not, nobody had been able to confirm, and the Union was careful to ration knowledge. But since Frank had always been terrified of Rehabilitation, as of everything else, it seemed highly unlikely he would have done it willingly. Maybe he’d been denounced or a system error had dragged him off by mistake. He was always whingeing, of course, whispering that something had to be done about this or that, so maybe he had finally spoken up and put his foot in it. But without him, time was dragging terribly.
              I arrived back at the office.
              ‘Hello Ollie, how are you feeling today?’
              It was my boss, Mr Dickinson-Standing. The Company offered ‘personal development’ as a ‘perk of the job’: don’t take it and you’re not in the ‘company spirit’. After some cumbersome small-talk which always made it uncomfortably clear how little we had in common, he began:
              ‘Today we are going to look at three positives, and three negatives. We asked your colleagues and your friends to identify these, to help you.’ I already felt exhausted. Then, just as I was wondering if there are friends without utility, and then how the simple-minded seem to love psychology, he got a knowing look in his eyes:
              ‘If you want to be a man at night, you should be a man in daytime too!’ —it was an imported proverb. Dickinson-Standing, for his part, having concluded some time ago that I needed anti-depression drugs, was now convinced despite my assurances that I wasn’t taking them. I wasn’t.
              I continued daydreaming until he chirped-up about how my friends say my worst characteristic is that I drink too much and how it makes me dull company. Which of course left me needing a drink. Alone.
              ‘You must drink less—we will track this over the next month and let's reduce the amount by thirty percent, shall we?’
              ‘But aren't friends there to help?’
              ‘Ollie, if you feel bad use a therapist, Morality and Culture will pay. Don't make your friends suffer too!’
              ‘On the positive side,’ he went on, ‘your colleagues and friends say your social attendance is reasonable,’ adding with the intonation of an ambitious father: ’I think we can do a bit better than that, don't you?’
              I nodded.
              A while later, I was home again after a train journey identical to the morning’s, only in the opposite direction. I stared up at the standard light fitting on the ceiling. It was the same light unit as in all the other flats in my apartment building, and countless others. I flicked it on. I knew there was a camera and microphone in it, although maybe they were never used. I knew the department that procured them. But it made me terrified of talking in my sleep.
              I noticed an unopened telephone bill on the table. This was quite out of character: I always paid my bills on time. It made me deep down, or so I felt, a good man. It was one of those regular actions that seemed to glue the rest together.
              The days were taking on a surreal texture, more than just repetition. That light was white, annoyingly so; it made the walls and everything else look as though they were yellowing. The paint on the window frame was beginning to bubble crack and split, and that stale smell of ageing, peculiar to the lonely, seemed to suffuse everything around me. I sighed. It was seldom that friends would visit. I gazed around at the stupefying banality of hell.
              My flat had become an unintended