07th June – Marrakech – series One
At first the premise was simple. And yet it must have been interesting, as it kept going and going and going. Marrakech army would fly over the planet, and beam up the unfortunate souls. At first I had no idea what was going on, but whilst waiting in the ante-chamber one time, I saw it happen, I saw my fate.
Inside a large concrete room was the floor. From up on high but behind triple thick glass shadowy figures watched. The Marrakech elite. The commanders of the crews that had found and brought us here, wherever here was and whoever we were. In the middle of the room was about 50 people, cowering and very clearly disorientated, their clothes were dirty and their eyes were very glazed over. Not drugged, just confused.
There was a hum, and suddenly I became aware of a room beyond, it was full of what looked like turbines or fans spinning. There was a door between that room and the floor room, but before we could see more blinds formed between our own glass door and the rest. There were some muffled noises then, and… I was sure of it, screams.
After a few minutes the blinds disappeared and the middle room was empty. The turbine room though, was all pink and there were weird things on the floor, long white stones stained red, and a few delicate stones that looked like heads, but hollow, and without face features at all. Our door opened.
A growling, deep voice began. “I am Marrakech, you must step into the middle room now.” And we did, as though we had no choice but to obey. Then the door behind closed and the voice continued.
“You’re here because your lives has been misworthy, unspent in their potential, and for some spent in a world of hate. You are to be destroyed. May the good one spirit have mercy on any soul you possess.”
Then the turbines started to spin again, and I noticed, I noticed a room at the side, with a door that seemed half open, and quite thick. I rushed to it, and entered, there was nothing inside but a desk, the room itself being only just big enough for three of these, one being enough though. I got behind the door and realised air was being sucked slowly towards the turbines, which could be seen through a triple thick window on the right of the door.
This wind became more powerful and caused the door to bang closed and stay that way. The hum of turbines was so loud I put my fingers on my ears and crouched on the floor. I heard screams, and loud bangs and my head felt like it was being pulled apart. Then for some reason, the door broke from its hinges and was flung backwards across the chamber, and I collapsed to the floor.
Marrakech – Season two
This time the venue was a big theatre, red seats and curtains and spotlights. The stage had stairs reaching up onto it and it seemed there were two doors. There were folks there, lots of folks with orange suits on, and a couple of robots, large with big arms and red camera-eyes. The robots patrolled the rear of the theatre; a dark corridor with a door in the middle. I saw no more, as a nearby robot picked me painfully up and threw me back into the theatre.
A familiar growling voice said, “4355 your time is up!”. The audience started cheering and a spotlight from above fell onto a prisoner, he got up, smiling, waving at the audience and made his way to the stage.
Once on the stage, a chair appeared. Just appeared from thin air, he sat on it. It seemed a screen suddenly appeared from the black rear of the theatre, high up, and no illumination was cast. A thick pair of grey lips filled the screen, beyond the lips only blackness. What more of the face there was to see, was only a dark green skin. When the lips moved burst of spittle occasionally dribbled or sloshed out, and I couldn’t help but think washing machine, washing machine.
“You are to be judged. A random series of events will be picked from your subconscious memory and played. You will then be judged based on these random memories.”
Then the screen went black, then a few seconds later it reappeared, showing a street in a city that looked familiar, but no names came to mind. I realised I couldn’t remember anything.
The person from whom we were watching was running down this street, in a pedestrianised area. From out of nowhere a kind of bat or club like object appeared and suddenly swung out at a figure, which dropped to the floor. Then the view looked down at the victim, a woman in a black smart dress, blood was pouring from the back of the head, a hand reached down as if to grasp her arm and pull her up, but instead grabbed her purse-bag thing, then running resumed.
White bright light suddenly filled everything, and we were in a tiled bathroom, there was a figure on the floor, probably feminine, but in a gross state of disarray. She wasn’t moving and appeared to be sleeping heavily. A hand reached out and touched her face, the same hand. The face moved lazily, to get away from the touch. The eyes didn’t open though. The hand gently resumed touching the face, then went lower, neck, chest (here it spent a long time). The audience were raucous and quite loud, so that any audio was drowned.
The figure sat before us on the chair tried to get up, but fell down. It was as if he had been drugged himself, or at least incapacitated in some form.
More horror-show events played out on the screen, all bad events in 4355’s life. Eventually, the house lights, which had dimmed previously to this returned to full brightness. The huge lips were back, and said only one word.
“Failed”
A door opened on the stage, two robots came fourth and picked up the creature, they threw him down in front of the door and stood there like guards. No getting’ out sonny Jim.
The growling voice replied “Would you please step into the wind tunnel, inside you will be separated down into your component molecules and returned to processing”. 4355 stepped forward slowly, cautiously, everything went quiet. Then suddenly there was a blast of wind, felt even from the back of the theatre, and 4355 seemed to shift sideward. Not walk, just shift at incredible speed. After a moment he was gone, gone in the blackness.
This routine carried on for a while, people got up, had bad events played and then disappeared into the door. Occasionally one would appear with good events played, and would be shown to the other door, through which such a bright white light flooded the theatre and sent me nearly blind as bats.
The current prisoner was 4410. I looked on my own sleeve and realised I was number 4412. A light suddenly shined on my, it was my turn.
Blink
Season Two Bonus Scenes
At one instant I got loose. Instead of watching the hypnotic judgement or these crazy people, I concentrated on getting out. Watching the back of house robots, I saw they patrolled in a pair, walking first one way down then another. I waited till they had reached the halfway-point (going away from me) then made a run for it.
Behind the doorway was something I couldn’t understand at first, and then I saw it was a theatre, again with stage, screen and rowdy audience. I could almost believe I had just walked out of here at the other end.
An alarm went off now, and the audience members started to rise and turn towards me, their faces contorted in hate. Time seemed to slow down, as if I was no longer a person, but a mystic creature with instincts like atom-razors. I looked to the other side of the back end of the theatre, there was another door, but at a different angle and beyond it, the purest, cleanest light I can ever remember. I started to move for it, but moved so slowly, and arms were already on me, metal arms.
I was dragged down a side corridor and then thrown outside.
I though it was outside.
After a few moments I realised what I had taken for a concrete wall of the side of the building, was in fact part or the room; a room which seemed to hum. The other walls were concrete too, and at one end, behind a huge glass door, there were turbines, moving quickly. The door started to open and invisible hands started to pull me towards them.
Blink.
Season Three
In the first instance, I knew this was different. There were no lights, no stage, maybe even no Marrakech. Just red chairs and blue chairs. I was in a red chair.
“Your first challenge today is destruction racing. You will each be assigned cars and must ensure you destroy at least one other car to continue.”
Within seconds I was falling towards the ground, from hundreds of feet up. Below me, were little black spots, maybe cars? One started to glow so red I could not not notice it. Then I was overcome by a blinding rush. I was in the car. No, I was the car. There were red vehicles and blue vehicles moving around now on this hilly landscape. I spotted a blue car and instantly recognised it as 4355. I started chasing. My wheels seemed to adapt quite well to the terrain and it was far less bumpy than it seemed. Suddenly 4355 lost control and flipped over.
I saw a blue car coming at me on the left and raced even faster and the still spinning car. I was clipped at the back and pain erupted from that area, and a dull soreness. But I stayed in control and smashed 4355 in two.
I turned my attention back to the blue car which had clipped me. Turning in a wide arc I saw it was 4306, I did not know him, but started to charge at him, him already being perfectly lined up to hit me and gaining speed. I started to turn, as though trying to avoid him. Noticing this he started to turn also, but then I switched tactic and drove straight at him. Without any more time to turn I crumpled most of the front of his car and shattered every window. The pain I felt was substantial, but less surely.
The battle didn’t last very long after that, I have no idea how many people were involved; I just drove around, aiding my fellow reds where possible.
Then suddenly we were back in the room with chairs. Opposite us, the blue team were bleeding and howling in agony, I gave a feral smile. Then realised howls were also coming from our own team.
Theres no such thing as a free lunch.
I felt good though. The impetus to judge and reward had become extremely unimportant this year. We were now our own reward reapers, and though something felt extremely odd about our lives, I knew I was only doing what I needed to do to survive.
Directors Commentary
I guess that’s what you get for listening to Anthony Burgess’s “A Clockwork Orange” late at night. Not the movie version, no that is now strange and incomplete, especially seeing as more than a few chapters were simply cut from the end.
The tale told before you, which yes I wrote in its entirety this morning, is a reflection on this. However a fusion of other elements seems to have been infused, based on my own stimulus of the last few days. Cars, nature programs and sci-fi.
An initial theme of judgement, presented in A Clockwork Orange is one of judgement. What gives us the right to judge others, and thus it becomes a cautionary tale about the abuse of power by the authority figures, keen to “help”. Whilst the mysterious Marrakech is not a substitution of the British government, he is a reflection of it. If one is to transmogrify these ideas, it creates a question, who has the right to judge us? The answer I think which is subconsciously resonant in A Clockwork Orange is only the individual. Only the individual should judge itself. However when this doesn’t happen, others often step in, for good or bad, to try and “help” someone.
