It is Possible to Kill Someone by Remote Control

Deep down in the bowels of the Ministry, the research team are celebrating. After three long years of trials and failures and test-runs and tweaks, they’ve finally managed to deliver the goods. Earlier in the afternoon, a memo appeared on Professor Fornby’s desk. The top brass are delighted with the product and, as a means of showing their appreciation, would be giving everyone on his team, a ten percent raise, effective from the end of the month. Spirits are now running somewhat high. Though it is only four o’clock, a significant amount of drink has been taken. In an uncharacteristic fit of generosity, Professor Fornby has nipped out to the off licence down the road and bought them out of fancy champagne.

There have been speeches and commendations and, for a while, the atmosphere was a little emotional; a couple of the girls from the typing pool were unable to contain their tears. They weren’t upset. They were just relieved. For a short period, back in the summer, it’d seemed like the project was going to fail. But they’d all pulled together, working weekends and long into the night. They’d pooled their learning -all those brilliant Oxbridge minds- and taken some risks and stretched their science to breaking point. In the end it was all worth it. They’ve done the Ministry proud. In the safe, at the back of Professor Fornby’s office, there is now a blueprint for a brand new weapon: a clean and efficient murdering device. The army have ordered a dozen models. Several other countries have also expressed an active interest. The implications are enormous. Combat will never be the same again. Thanks to Fornby and his team, it’s now possible to kill someone by remote control. 

Professor Fornby excuses himself from the party. He’s the sort of man who becomes more withdrawn the more he drinks. He has now reached the contemplative stage. He carries his glass into his office and pulls the door behind him. He perches on the edge of his desk, watching his team through the floor to ceiling windows which make up two sides of the room. Most of the team are significantly younger than him. They are easy in themselves, limbs and voices loosened by drink. They are not burdened by responsibility. Fornby watches them standing around the lab, laughing and flirting in jolly clusters. A couple of the girls have set up a HiFi system. They are jiving and bopping around the room’s edges. They look rather silly to Professor Fornby. He’s never been the dancing sort. Too stiff. Too serious. Too lofty. He prefers not to waste his energy on trivial matters. This is why he’s never married or had children or owned a dog.

He crosses the room and, with a practiced flick of the wrist, opens the safe and reaches inside. Here are the blueprints and here’s the patent and here’s the tiny launching device. No bigger than a TV remote. No more complex either. Fornby carries it back over to his desk, weighing it gently in his hands. He pours himself a measure of Scotch from the bottle he keeps in his bottom drawer. On the other side of the window, the party’s really ramping up. A bottle of vodka’s doing the rounds. The younger men have removed their ties. The glass deadens the sound of the music so it’s barely perceivable. Professor Fornby feels as if he’s watching strange creatures at an aquarium silently twisting and gyrating behind a thin layer of glass.

It’s hard not to despise them. They look so silly without noise. They could just as easily be celebrating a win on the pools as the biggest development in combat technology since the atom bomb. The Professor points the remote at each in turn. His thumb traces the smooth red button. It would be so easy to end them. A muscle flexed. A slight tremor. A noise like air rippling across water. And afterwards perfect silence. This is the beauty of remote control killing: no blood, no fuss, no mess to clean up. And would the world be any less for the loss of one of these creatures with their shiny shoes and their hairsprayed hair? Professor Fornby does not think so. They don’t have half the mind he has.

Now the project’s complete he can’t think of any further use for them. He’d press the button in a heartbeat if it wasn’t for the sinking suspicion that what is really rattling him, isn’t the drinking or the gadding about, but the fact that no one’s noticed he’s missing, nobody’s asked him up for a dance. 

Inspired by a line from Agatha Christie’s 1961 novel, The Pale Horse