Outpost 9: Part 1.
Betsy is recruited by the Institute of Thinkery, and Ezra assigned to The Transmitters.
Welcome to the first instalment from The Incredible Machines of Thinkery: Outpost 9. The whole story will be published in instalments of around 2000-2500 words on Substack as a ‘test run’ before taking it any further.
I am therefore very open (and grateful) to hear about any typos, holes in the plot, comments and criticism!
For a brief introduction to the world of Ezra Cooper, please see About Outpost 9.
As more instalments are added (weekly on a Friday) you will be able to catch up on any missed newsletters by heading over to Chapters.
Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoy the journey!
Linnhe
They play on your mind. They lie just beneath your feet, below the wooden planks that form both the floor of your tiny outpost and the ceiling of their temporary morgue. You were able to wrap them much more securely in the shelter provided by the raised cabin, but you can still hear a couple of the loose canvas ends barking into the wind.
A woman from a highly classified government institution. The first victim - that you are aware of - to have any form of ID. And a girl in her twenties. Younger by some years than the previous unfortunates spat up by the North Sea. Three. Three in the six months since you arrived at the posting. Which feels both inconsequential, and yet too high a number to be acceptable.
On one of the higher sand banks, flanked by the spiky tufts of Marram grass, three hand-hewn crosses mark their graves. Your skills in woodcraft had some - if limited - use here.
On this day, on a day that began like any other, the panes in the small wooden window rattle in the storm. Horizontal white flashes of rain against a sky as grey as gunpowder. The entire cabin shudders as another humongous gust barrels in from the North. It is early winter.
You carefully add more logs into the spitting woodstove - it is an ongoing battle keeping the fire alight in these winds - and fill the dinted, blackened stove-top kettle from the water butt. Spoon coffee into a pot, what wouldn’t you do for a proper cup of tea, and place two tin mugs on the table. Dragging a chair over to the table, you take the precious envelope out from your coat pocket.
Wednesday 2nd November, 1892
My darling Ezra,
Finally! I have been given permission to write to you! The initial training, Phase One, is now complete, I naively did not realise just how controlled our contact would be!
Talking of which, I have been instructed to remind you that our letters will be monitored. I am sorry I cannot share any details with you, other than the work itself is sensational. We are now entering Phase Two, and I understand I am one of the most promising candidates. I hope you are as proud of me, as I am of you.
I miss you so much. But it will not be for long, and it will be worth it. I keep thinking of how wonderful our new home will be, away from our old life and the city. I think we should keep hens.
A couple of badly drawn chickens interrupt the letter. They make you smile. She has many skills. Drawing is not one of them.
Write soon my love,
Betsy -...
You fold the letter over to reveal the familiar wax seal. A bee. Just like her little Morse signature at the end of her letter. B. Betsy. Your heart feels heavy.
You had married young, and it is still just the two of you nearly three and a half decades later. Her body grew soft and round, whilst her brain grew sharper. Within Betsy, the unfulfilled desire to bear children had triggered an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. And an obsession with science. Including the newly emerging nano technologies – you still didn’t know what they were. You are but a carpenter, your skill lies in your hands.
As love struck newly-weds, Betsy had left her family to move in to your two room flat, on the third floor in a tenement building. A more suitable home for the children that never existed.
Work was scarce. Wages were low. You weren’t in an unusual situation. The country was in the iron grip of a brutal Recession and showed no signs of relenting. Your income was steady, but so very meagre. Betsy endured a series of low paying, demeaning, short lived jobs.
You might have accepted and existed. Wasn’t that just the way it was? Your wife, however, didn’t see the conforms that held you, and many of your peers. Work hard, go to Church, be rewarded in the afterlife. The prescription set by society. Betsy was always looking. Trying.
Hoping.
The year is now 1892. Just six months ago, you were sitting across from each other, at that battered old table in that dingy old tenement building. That old oil lamp providing a solitary, spluttering source of dim light.
And on that evening, in early May, she was – as was her weekly routine - scouring the recruitment section of the papers. And then she held a newspaper aloft with a shout. ‘This!’. ‘This’ was a half-page recruitment advertisement from The Institute of Thinkery, seeking Ordinary Women of Extraordinary Intelligence for a Highly Classified Three Phase 12 Month Programme. The smaller print went on to assure you that the husbands of all successful married applicants would be allocated their own posting, and gave details of the high salaries attached to both positions. Those with children need not apply. This.
For ‘Ordinary’ Betsy – correctly – read ‘Working Class’. This was not the kind of advert that would appeal to the middle, or upper classes. It was aimed at women just like herself. Bright keen brains trapped in impoverished female bodies, with no children to leave abandoned. Women looking for a way out, a way up. But as eye watering as the joint income would be, and as much as you could see she wanted this, you initially found it difficult to give her your full support. Twelve months is a long time for a man and his wife to be separated.
She had cut the advertisement out. Pinned it up in the kitchen. Pointed, hinted, talked about it at every given opportunity. Wrote off for the application form.
As the deadline for the applications had loomed, you had faltered. Signed the form permitting her to attend the initial consultation, and subsequently accompanied her to a faceless grey building on the outskirts of Manchester. You were made to wait outside the interview room, where you sat on a hard wooden bench staring at your badly repaired boots. Gripping an Institute of Thinkery branded tankard of tepid water. Trying not to make eye contact with the other men. Men who had – like yourself – failed as a husband. As a breadwinner, a father. The shame in the room was palpable.
When the door had opened, the sight of excitement and delight dancing in her eyes had made the final decision easier. It is not all about you.
The next stage of the application process was long, and arduous. It began as a series of Regional Aptitude Tests in Liverpool, and ended five weeks later with a solo train journey across the Pennines to Newcastle. You had walked to the station together – Betsy treading a lighter step than your own - carrying a small suitcase borrowed from a friend. She had boarded the train wearing her best smile and her best dress. The yellow one with the pink roses, the fabric as faded as your enthusiasm. Her hair bobbing in perfect ringlets thanks to those uncomfortable, overnight newspaper curlers. No tears. Just her hand – pressed to the window as the 13.55 to Newcastle pulled away – the only sign of the emotions that must have been so tightly held within.
You had stood, alone for the first time in thirty four years, in a hot and sweaty Victoria station.
Betsy was – of course - selected by the Institute for the yearlong assignment. This didn’t surprise you. You know she is a genius.
Your own posting was to a tiny island in North Holland. Now that was a surprise.
Outside, you hear heavy footsteps at the door and a fumbling of the latch.
You startle into the present with a flash of guilt. Ivo. He was still on the last patrol, and the weather out there is horrendous. The kettle is not yet boiling, but you grab the milk and sugar in a show of preparation. The howling gale takes advantage of the catch being lifted, almost flinging your Dutch colleague into the small room. He fights the door shut, drawing a thick curtain across in a largely unsuccessful attempt to keep the warmth in. Behind him, the fabric billows in contempt.
Ivo Visser is a short man, perhaps in his early forties. This is a guess, as you have never asked. You suspect he has a seaman’s background, but again, this is an assumption. His English is better than your Dutch - you can just about ask for beer and fish stew – but he barely uses it. His manner is quiet, reserved.
What he lacks in conversation he makes up for in stoicism. Ivo Visser is more than just the partner the Institute had assigned to you. He has become one of your closest friends, and not just since you arrived here, on Vlieland. Ever.
He is dressed in a similar style to yourself, with the addition of government issue flight goggles, and favouring a black leather version of your well-worn burgundy tailcoat. You are tall, lithe, perhaps even a little underweight under the generous beard – now greying from youthful to distinguished. Brown eyes, rounded spectacles, a slightly too prominent nose. Long hair. Always combed. Always tied back.
Ivo pushes his goggles up onto his forehead, revealing kind blue eyes that had probably seen too much liquor, and more of life than most. His dripping garments mark his journey across the cabin. You grab a couple of rags and skid them around the rough wooden boards, succeeding in only moving the puddles around, rather than absorbing them.
‘Twee.’ You fumble around in your stunted Dutch vocabulary. Two. As in, two beers. Ivo heads to the table, shaking out a crumpled map, unaware of the personal correspondence already lying there. Your hand darts in. ‘Sorry, Cooper. Sorry.’ Ivo looks up apologetically, waiting for you to rescue the precious pieces of paper. You smile – its ok – and nestle the letter safely behind the coffee pot. Returning to stand by his side, you scrutinize the map together. ‘Here.’ The seams of his fingerless leather gloves carving damp troughs the stressed surface.
A stubby forefinger, the tip blue from the cold and the nail encrusted in dirt, taps at an area not far from your current location. Another spot of nothing in this enormous sandbank jutting from Vlieland’s south-westerly shores. The vast harshness of North Sea to the west, the smaller nothingness of the Wadden Sea to the east. You nod, albeit reluctantly, you had only just got the wood burner going properly. But duty calls. ‘Let’s go’.
You are both wearing the compulsory armband of The Transmitters - now a little faded from wear. It was issued in as bright an orange as could be fabricated, embellished with a singular white eye. You drop your glasses onto the table, to be replaced by your regulation flight goggles grabbed from a hook by the door. Better to be blurred than blinded. Ivo passes you your oilskin - state of the art, imported from New Zealand. Branded with the letters IoT, and an absolute God send in this weather.
The thin wind bites into your thick clothes, your thick boots fumble on thin ladder rungs. You follow Ivo’s lead, descending from Outpost 9 to the sands below.
Outpost 9. A purpose-built cabin - perhaps 12ft square - not yet two years old. A solid, simple construction of white painted boards, raised above the ground on thick wooden piles. The platform on which it stands is slightly larger than its footprint, allowing room for a walkway surrounding all four sides. Three white painted rails form a basic balustrade, to prevent any accidental journeys to a painful landing.
This is just one of several, near enough identical, outposts manned by The Transmitters – a small, ambiguous arm of the government that reports directly to The Institute of Thinkery. All staffed by the husbands of those recruited by The Institute. That made four and twenty men posted overseas, each to be paired with a local counterpart. You had been given no indication of where you were going, or who you would be working with, when you boarded the steamer on that hot summer morning.
The culture shock and wave of homesickness you experienced when you first set foot on this tiny island, was made much more palpable following your introduction to Ivo Visser. The job itself involved largely uneventful daily patrols, and highly repetitive weekly reports.
The occasional dead body.
The cabin becomes a shadowy spectre behind a screen of bad light and poor weather. Ivo crouched over the hefty steering wheel of The Rig – a small steam powered traction engine with wide, pitted wooden rear wheels to help it master the island’s sandy, low terrain. It was originally designed to run purely on coal, but Ivo has since discovered that a coal / driftwood mix works just fine for everyday purposes. Saves you both a little extra beer money. Tonight however - ploughing the compromised contraption headfirst into a northerly gale - it is apparent it doesn’t work well at all. It makes slow progress over the storm-whipped sands. Its twin headlights paint the lashing rain white, two tiny swaying circles of warmth in this world of darkness.
Ahead of you, shadows form in the lamplight. The crashing breakers hide then reveal two tragic figures. Lying together on the shore, stark black against the foaming grey backdrop. The what more obvious than the why. You still couldn’t work it out. Why leave the safety of English shores. Risking it all in a vessel most likely too small, in seas most definitely too big.
The Rig splutters to a smoking halt just short of the tide line. The spray from the sea sizzles angrily as it falls on red hot metal work. You hop off the back riding plates, whilst Ivo unhooks one of the headlamps. Side by side you share the solitary dot of light, down to the broiling sea.
The first corpse is lying face down on the sand. Impossible to guess their age, or gender, at first glance. Dark, heavy, civilian clothing.
The second is a woman, in her fifties. On her back. Grey hair cropped short, wide starting eyes. Wearing a khaki municipal overall, with a distinctive insignia embellishing a breast pocket. The singular white eye, on a cobalt blue background. So, not orange for The Transmitters, but most definitely from The Institute of Thinkery. You raise your eyebrows. This was a first.
A rogue wave soaks through you. The wind whips your hair into a wild mane. You shout into the gale. ‘Were they together when you found them?’ He nods. You kneel beside the first body, and with some effort, turn them onto their back. A girl. Much younger. Twenties. Colleague? No, not a colleague, no overall. No insignia. You glance up at Ivo, who just shrugs, he is none the wiser. He returns to the Rig for canvases, leaving you momentarily in the darkness, with only the breaking white crests and the two black humps for company.
You work together to wrap the bodies, without sharing any further words. It is difficult work, and there is nothing to say. Besides, it would have been too frustrating, your puny human voices competing against a deafening orchestra of crashing waves. With Ivo lifting the feet, and yourself the shoulders, you carry them one at a time across to the Rig.
The Rig’s small rear platform - that doubled as a riding plate for yourself - was built, custom built, for one. You have never had to carry two. It is challenging, trying to load both corpses whilst handling them with respect. And they leave no room for a passenger. ‘I’ll walk!’ You hold your hand out for the lamp.
You follow the Rig’s distinctive chuff, and its remaining bobbing headlight, back to the Outpost.
Word length fine for me. Greatly dislike second person viewpoint, but the whole premise is fascinating enough that I'll keep with the story for a while. So far, this repressive society seems much harder on the men than the women.
LOVE! the steam powered traction vehicle.
Great start to the story. Took me a bit to get used to the second person perspective, but it works! I love the ominous atmosphere and you've definitely hooked my interest in The Transmitters and The Institute 🤗