Happy Birthday, Martin - part I

Greg stumbled down the facility steps in the same manner as he did every year - hesistantly, leaning against the heavy railings while he adapted to the pressure of the season, cynically considering a hemisphere of stellar promises and bulletins, finally dumping his personal effects near the drains, complete with the box in which they had waited so patiently for him. Only the expression on his face differed from the previous year's expedition and that was because Greg was deeply worried.

No-one else on the rails could be said to be worried, nor elated, angry or sad - a slight giddiness, hesistance or pre-occupation corresponded to a dip in capability, in competence, so an overt display of emotion could only be bad news to anyone nearby and no-one wanted to be forced into an intervention. Most assumed the doctrine of the stiff upper lip, nowadays, and Greg realized his error, quickly composing his features in a disinterested mask, betraying - if anything - a slight boredom, a splitting image of any of the other busy people traversing the rail system, and every bit as cool to companionship. Not bad at all that after half a year of seclusion and ordeal one could be so closely and immediately re-assimilated, but then it was nothing new to Greg. He did this every year, or in this case, slightly more often still, and that was what he was worried about - for what ever reason, they had let him out one day too early.

It was simply disastrous.

He entertained the possibility that he had miscalculated the sentence he tried so hard to earn, but he was adamant that he had acted correctly; it was distinct and fresh in his mind that animal abuse was worth a month in the slam, incrementing by a month for each further offense. Hadn't Lasry, his lawyer, confirmed that much when he had called? And since the system couldn't afford to distinguish without greatly confounding the already byzantine legal lexicon - not to mention fueling the ire of the various pressure groups, and there really was one for every minute consideration, these days - three flushed rats would seem to qualify one for the same detainment period that you'd expect for hacking the antennae off of the three tallest giraffes in the pens, and those girls got rarer every season. "No, this must be a policy thing", Greg thought. "It can't be a gift for my good behaviour, because I was simply awful every time I had the opportunity to be," and then had to think about something else, because remembering the uncouth acts he had performed inside drew his face into an unpleasant grimace.

Things got more complicated every year, and this was the result. His feet drew him inexorably onto the tracks and then diverted him onto a flyway which egressed near his home (that old manor, the one he'd rather avoid through confinement than spend even a night there) upon which he walked as slowly as possible, shuffling like a children's clockwork toy, desperate to keep its footing on an incline. This was not where he wished to go, but it was too late to make plans and in any case, on a day like today it was a magnet; Greg grinned as he restrained his body, moving as sparingly as possible in order to delay his inevitable arrival.

Greg had spent every one of his previous birthdays behind bars, as they used to say, through his own designs in every case but the first, the event that had precipitated it all; his mother had snapped on her own birthday (exactly opposite Greg's own on the celestial calendar, a fact which astrologists had urged psychiatrists to consider grave and consequential) and had tried to electrocute him with a severed flex-cord for reasons unknown - presumably something of the mothering instinct had become deeply corrupted on what was after all an emotional day; Greg had overpowered her in a panicking frenzy, falling on her in such a way that had fate touch the exposed elements to his mother's brow, causing both of them to be coursed with that surging, addictive, uncontainable energy - unlike her, he had survived from the atomy inwards, requiring whole new folds of fat and flesh but still retaining his mind and his pulse. Following his reassembly, Greg was confined to a ward under the reasoning that it would take time for him to come to terms with his shock - a pun that was lost on the operatives there, at least until his back was turned. He played along with the shrinks, allowing them to read damage into his behaviour, even affecting a slight sluggishness and ideosyncracy in his speech, but in secret he was happier than he'd ever been before - more vitalized and commanding of a hitherfore unawakened purpose. The ordeal, instead of damaging his powers of communication or capability, had only caused the deterioration of his morals.

They had released him on the day following his 16th birthday; he had spent it climbing the walls in pursuit of some unseen goal, and this exuberance was interpreted as the final sign that he was ready to tackle society, head-on. As the air greeted him, so did a gray old nurse, who told him that he was to be known as "Martin" from that moment onward - this was the last step in "locking away the old, frightened self and presenting a fresh, approachable new face to the world," - and presented him with a nametag that said so, along with a fresh change of woollen clothes which he abandoned, more or less immediately, in the middle of the road.

In any case, that facility closed the very next year following an investigation into certain therapeutic techniques of dubious benefit, and with hindsight, Greg could see why. Martin, Greg thought, was a cretin with only a stiff upper lip to his credit - and what use was that?
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