Polyplay by Marcus Hammerschmitt - First Chapter, Abstract and Scenario
What is this?Essentially, this is an offer. In the year 2002, my science fiction novel "Polyplay" got published by Argument, a small yet determined publishing house in Hamburg. British author Christopher Priest proposed to make "Polyplay"knowledgeable to English speaking readers by compiling an outline and translating the first chapters. He helped me doing it. These are the outcomes. If you see a chance for "Polyplay" to be published in any English speaking country, feel free to contact me or Argument. The material below is copyrigthed to me. Thank you.
Short abstractPolyplay is the story of a police officer, who, confronted with a puzzling case, cannot desist from digging too deep. Doing so, not only his family and his career fall apart, but more and more he realizes that he’s either growing mad, or that there’s something fundamentally wrong with all of reality around him. When in the end the real scope of his discoveries hits him full force, he decides for the existentialist approach towards the absurdity of his situation: going on is literally the only thing he can do.
Scenario
Polyplay is set in a scenario where reunification of Germany took place the other way round. The GDR swallows the FRG. The most influential factors towards this development have been: The capitalist west couldn’t avert the negative consequences of the (real) stock exchange crash of 1987, diving down into a deep economical crisis, only to be managed by a military, quasi-fascist government. Second, in the GDR, seemingly out of the blue, a revolutionary method of generating power has been developed, named after its inventors: the Müller-Lohmann-process. With energy costs quickly falling to almost zero, and the West struggling to maintain industrial production, the GDR’s economy soon evolves as Europe’s champion. Third, Erich Honecker accidentally dies on a hunting spree. The ensuing political struggle within the Central Comitee of the Party of Socialist Unity (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, SED) makes Hans Modrow the president of the state’s council. The western populace, discouraged by the ongoing economical hardships and oppressed by a brutal junta of generals, opts for defection: in 1989, it forces the opening of the wall from the west and makes reunificaton with the cautious brothers and sisters from the east a fact. Hans Modrow, not a hardliner to begin with, decides for going with the flow, and leads the Germans to a somewhat mellowed version of socialism ("pluralist socialism"). The rest of the western economy is socialised, you have almost true elections, Marx is the dead hero of this state, nobody cares for reading his writings or for larger ideas of revolution. The old elites are still very much in place, yet they have to struggle hard against the overall mellowing of socialism’s ways, because with the new Germany being Europe’s undisputed leader, there’s little motivation for carrying on cold war styles and behaviours. Everything fine so far. Comes along Rüdiger Kramer, chief lieutenant (Oberleutnant) in the state’s police forces (the People’s Police or Volkspolizei) and this nasty murder case, which sees a boy dead in a games parlor, lying in front of a video console, his head smashed in.
Prologue: The lament of Jonah
He had never adapted to this darkness and lack of space. If he imagined all this water around his quarters - he could quite easily imagine it - he sometimes still felt funny. He often felt funny here. He had made this special experience of becoming seasick on a unmoving ship. Anyway that was his explanation of this reoccuring mood: seasickness. He didn’t talk about it. He wasn’t the talkative kind anyway and moreover he had quickly found out that keeping one’s own confidence was a value here. This place was cultivating paranoia like mushrooms in a tunnel: surveillance was everything, appreciation was hard to come by. Security reasons. Sometimes he thought the devil himself justified most of his actions by security reasons. And in dark and claustrophobic nights like these he could feel his own paranoia getting the upper hand. Then he felt as if in a mixture of a submarine and a prison. When he was wide awake in nights like these, the whole structure made noises which somehow managed to both lift his stomach in an uncomfortable way and strangle his throat. Indistinct, almost subacoustic noises they were, indescribable, of unknown origin. His fear turned them into potentially deadly developments anytime: undetected leaks beneath the waterline, an inadvertent, spontaneous disintegration of steel and concrete above his head, a sudden rupture of the massive steelcables, keeping the whole structure tethered to the bottom of the North Sea. Improbable, all of this. But to him it seemed inevitable on nights like these. "Failure!", paranoia hissed in his ear, "I told you!" And all hope for sleep evaporated. After one and a half year on the fortress he knew: a night like this promised a lot of caffeine for days to come, muscle tremor and headaches. The second stage of his special kind of seasickness, so to speak. The dark confinement of nights like these, when he felt like Jonah in the whale’s tummy. He was angry about the easyness with which this metaphor crept up on him. He was very antireligious, which didn’t help in nights like these.
First chapter: Headaches
First, Kramer noticed the lack of blood. He’d expected a massive mess, but apart from some drops and smears here and there on the worn linoleum floor - nothing. Hat in hand, he stood in this backroom. Looking for blood, for the obvious, for remains of the event, but he saw little. In his time as a policeman, he’d developed a certain approach to this: the worse the murder site, the easier his work. The stupider customers often made a bloody mess when killing a man. They weren’t in control. With people able to restrain themselves it was usually harder. This murder site annoyed Kramer from the first minute. Much too clean.
Someone had thrown a tablecloth over the body. People surrounded it as if they should. There was a stretcher on the floor. In the only windows’ light he saw Pasulke, a Vopo who looked like ABV and an SMH surgeon. At the windowtwo blokes loitered around who looked also like SMH. Kramer had seen their Barkas outside. The SMH blokes were smoking. Nobody needed them, but they didn’t dare to simply walk off, just like their Boss, the surgeon.
He strode towards the group, when one of the video consoles started to twitter like a bird. Or was it one of the pinball machines? Kramer turned. One of the consoles. He could see some tiny figures running and jumping about the screen. At the machine’s slot you could see the usual scratch marks left there by the gamers. At the wall, he saw this poster: a happy boy, dressed in official party youth regalia, presented a colorful flower bouquet to the watcher, along with the line: "FDJ-initiative Berlin 2000". Just to next to the poster there was graffiti reading: "Solanaceae Tau". Sounded like one of the South American bands so popular these days. When Kramer walked over to group around the body, he thought: "There you have it. The only thing you hear and see of the FDJ-initiative here is a poster. Worker’s quarter. Ha."
"Cigarettes out" he said, passing the SMH-paramedics. They threw them reluctantly out of the window.
"Wagner, ABV in charge", the Vopo said. "The body was detected on hour ago, by the janitor."
Behind him, a manniquin with yellowish skin, dressed in a grey janitor’s robe, leaned against the wall. It tried hard to not see the tablecloth on the floor.
"Thank you, Wagner", Kramer said. "You can go now."
Wagner saluted and walked to the door. Handle in hand he said: "In case I can be of service ..."
"Yes, of course. We’ll call you then", Kramer replied to the eager ABV dismissively.
He exchanged looks with the silent surgeon. Pasulke said nothing. Kramer felt everybody knew what was to happen now. He knelt down and lifted the tablecloth. Awful. Pretty awful, this was. The victim’s head had been smashed to a pulp of flesh, blood and splintered bone. It looked as if a lorry had rolled over it. Some dregs of the pulp stuck to the tablecoth’s underside in Kramer’s hand. There was a revolting sound when he let it fall down again, like a wet cleaning cloth sliding down to the floor from the kennel. Kramer stood up. Unwillingly, he wiped his right hand against his jacket. Pasulke’s face was green, the embarrassed surgeon looked nowhere.
"You can go now too", Kramer said to him.
The surgeon nodded, winked to the SMH-paramedics and they left with the empty stretcher.
Obviously the janitor was bordering on nervous breakdown now. Kramer didn’t know how to calm him down. Neither did he know whether it made sense to interrogate him. But he just had to, simple as that.
"Terrible", he said in a low voice.
"Yes ... terrible ...", the janitor mumbled. "Michael ... found him ..."
"You know who this is?"
"Must be Michael ... loitered about ... had himself locked in here sometimes ... crazy for the game ..."
"Michael? Know the last name?"
"Michael ... Michael ... Abusch. Must be Michael. Once gave him a good hiding and had him taken home by the ABV."
"Have you seen somebody suspicious around here? Anything unusual?"
The janitor’s head jerked. His face yellow-green, his eyes full of terror.
"Mr. ... Mr. Inspector, Sir! If you think I’ve got anything to do with this ... that’s not true!" Now he was almost yelling. "Michael got on my nerves, but I wouldn’t kill him for that! Opened up this very morning, first thing saw him lying there! You gotta believe me! I amn’t no killer!"
Kramer felt embarrassed. He exchanged looks with Pasulke, and Pasulke shook his head slightly, as if to say: What the hell are you doing? The janitor proclaimed time and again he was no killer, very loud.
"Hey", Kramer said, "hey, hey, hey. That’s alright. I believe you. Everything alright. You can go home now. Take a break. It’s going to be ok."
Brilliant. He had this boy with his flattened head lying at his feet, and he tried to comfort the person who had had to endure this view first by claiming that everything was alright. The janitor watched him for some seconds with a wild expression on his face, as if he didn’t knew who exactly was crazy here. Then the janitor hid his face in his hands and started to cry. It was a thin, pathetic wailing, to Kramer it sounded unpracticed, almost impotent, and he hated himself for groping after the wrong sound, after the actor’s effort, but nothing of the like. There was only misery, confusion and shock. Kramer couldn’t bear it for a minute longer. He took the janitor by his shoulders and lead him to the door. The guy didn’t object.
"Shall I call you a cab then?", Kramer asked.
"Live ... live ... some doors down the road", the janitor uttered with some difficulty.
"Go on home now", Kramer said.
The janitor obeyed. One could here him sniffling for a while. Pasulke and Kramer were on their own now. Forlorn they stood there and didn’t know what to do.
"Well done", Pasulke said. "Excellent interrogation."
"Oh shut up, will you?"
Kramer couldn’t think of a better defense. Because he knew Pasulke was right.
The forensic people came and danced their forensic ballet. Kramer and Pasulke were about to leave when Akkermann shew up. Akkermann of the K5. The K5 had been created in the old GDR to solve cases like this one, cases of brutal homicidal violence, because officially they hadn’t even existed. Over time, the K5 had grown more and more political till it had mutated into the Stasi’s stronghold within the criminal police. Remembering their original mission, the K5-guys always tried to meddle with homicide cases and pried and sniffed for circumstances of "societal relevance" or some "political background" which allowed them to gain control over investigations. Kramer had seen them succeed in this game. Since the political climate had changed, they had to fear for the existence of their outfit, this made them even more repugnant.
All of this was a nuisance by itself, but Kramer hated Akkermann’s guts for private reasons too. They had collided now and then in recent years, and Kramer had learned to fear Akkermann as both intelligent and crafty. When he was honest with himself, he also envied Akkermann for his outstanding looks and the virility he dispersed like a radiator dispersing warm air. Kramer usually preferred not to be honest with himself in this respect, otherwise he had to relive remembrances of Akkermann flirting with Anette, during that party at the inspection’s headquarters on occasion of July 1. Anette hadn’t been totally annoyed either.
Kramer had been sure this day had hit bottom with the crying janitor, but Akkermann’s arrival made him think again. He was wearing uniform, as usual. Like Kramer, he was Chief Lieutenant, but he looked more like a General Major of the NVA during a reception with the state council’s chairman. He briskly stepped forward to the body lying on the floor (the forensic people made way immediately), lifted the table cloth and said: "Holy shit!" Then he stood up again, turned to Kramer and grinned, obviously pleased with his brilliant remark.
No, Kramer thought, I don’t have to think about him coming on to Anette. It’s only natural I hate him. Any sensible person would.
"And what are you doing here?", he asked, as unfriendly as possible.
Akkermanns face fell. "Investigate of course", he said in the same tone of voice.
"Happy investigations then", Kramer retorted and winked for Pasulke. Time to leave.
The ride to the Warschauer Straße wasn’t a pleasant one.
"Do you think it’s absolutely necessary to treat Akkermann like that? Anybody knows he’s a jerk. But he’s a jerk with connections."
Kramer didn’t want to quarrel. But he didn’t want to swallow bullshit either.
"Feeling ambitious? Want to move up with Akkermann as chief of the inspection?"
Pasulke yanked the car with uncomfortable roughness around the bends, speeding as well.
"Ah, shut up. You toss him around like that and he’s going to complain to the boss or to his Stasi-friends. We cannot work like that."
"He’s going to complain anyway. These lights were red, you know!"
"O-range-at-the-most, Mister Kramer!", talking in an exaggerated highbrow tone of voice, indicating he was willing to reconcile.
"Besides, he can have this case for free", Kramer said. "It stinks, I don’t want it. Where did he learn about it so quick anyway?"
"A birdling twittered to his ear, he just couldn’t ignore it."
People took for granted now that the Stasi monitored all phone and radiocommunications of all people’s police’s sections. Kramer still hadn’t grown accustomed to the idea, while Pasule said, he’d always known. Pasulke wheeled into Warsaw Street and brought the car suddenly to full stop when spotting an empty parking lot. They ran past the doorman who hardly took notice. The staircase smelled like floor wax, as always. First floor to the left, third door right. Schuhmacher sat at his terminal, Natschinski standing behind him. Schuhmacher turned around, saying nothing. That’s what it was like in the people’s police’s inspection Friedrichshain, 7 Warsaw Street, criminal police section, office 1/14 (homicide) in the morning of April 3, 2000.
It was all quite subdued here, and when Kramer drew closer, he knew why. The screen of Schuhmacher’s sparkling new Robotron R610 workstation shew the evidence people’s pictures, a live feed in colour. Somebody was currently filming the victim’s feet with great dedication. Surprisingly, there were no shoes. Why hadn’t he noticed earlier? But didn’t he remember shoes quite clearly? Somebody from the evidence people must have removed them, though that was clearly against the rules. Anyway, the new equipment worked flawlessly. In case of need Schuhmacher could have had audio too. Obviously, he’d refrained from that, because he wanted to be spared from the forensics’ commentaries. Everything was recorded by default anyway, for later use.
The camera moved slowly alongside the body. Schuhmacher said: "Smart stuff, this is." He didn’t say it with much conviction, but obviously hoped to start a conversation about the features of his new toys. Nobody followed in. This was smart stuff indeed. The window shades had been made in the seventies, by "Plaste & Elaste Schkopau", and this place had last seen fresh paint in prehistoric times. But the homicide commission’s computer equipment was state of the art. Kramer should have been happy. Normal police, transport police and other branches still had to make do with 8- and 16 bit-garbage from the olden times. Compared to that he and his colleagues lived on a different planet entirely. Somehow he didn’t feel overly grateful at the moment.
"What about the chap’s data?"
"DKA", Schuhmacher retorted.
"I’m at my desk."
Kramers disliked his office on this morning more than ever. The worn down furniture, the stupid armchair with his ridiculous red upholstery and of course that brandnew computer on his desk, so strangely out of place here - all of it depressed him like hell this morning. He put away jacket and hat and sat down. The calendar at the wall said: "The people’s police - securing our socialist achievements!" Above the calendar, there was a portrait of chairman Modrow. Kramer closed his eyes.
While sitting there with eyes closed, he saw something familiar happening. This morning’s pictures flickered on his retina like phosphenes: Michael’s head, the FDJ-poster, the janitor, all in a wild chase. Kramer wanted to relax, he just wanted to cancel it out for a couple of minutes, but he couldn’t. Usually this was indicating that he’d grown curious. Some details with this case tickled his imagination and morphed from a bunch of facts into something completely different: a mystery he wanted to solve. He’d taken interest, he wanted to see clear. "DKA", Schuhmacher had said. "Dora knows all." Kramer opened his eyes. He wanted to know who Michael Abusch was. Had been, to be precise. The blue DORA-II input form disappeared at once after he’d fed it the name. DORA-II: "Dialogue Oriented Research and Accounting on persons and evidence". A thouroughly modernized version of the old GDR’s DORA-system, the data backbone of the German People’s Police. Dora knew quite a few Michael Abuschs in Berlin, but Kramer chose the one already flagged out as today’s victim by Schuhmacher. He still marveled about the system’s funtctionality: information density was astonishingly high here. CV, biometrics, foto portraits, police statements, finger prints, family tree, RA (recent activities). Everything neatly arranged in windows all over the screen.
Kramer felt shy, but he still went for the portraits first. There were different ones, simple black and white shots from the first passport to the recent 3D-surround-data, showing Michael as a youth of sixteen, and these were of course the most important right now. This face told him nothing. A plain boy’s face, fair hair, somewhat disheveled, light eyes, some spots here and there. Kramer clicked "rotate" and Michael’s head rotated on Kramer’s screen as it had within the 3D-camera when he had been portrayed on behalf of the police. The reason for this was indicated in a small sub-window: "Arrested at youth club "Dove" Feb-22-2000 / domestic disturbance / end of process SC AZ/1470308 C". This meant that Michael had been tried and found guilty of domestic disturbance by a Societal Court, a small scale instrument of socialist justice just beneath the judicial system proper. Kramer could have dug up the sentence as well, the data were linked to those of the Societal Court in question, but he wasn’t interested in that. The sentence hadn’t kept Michael from loitering about in that youth club, that was evident.
Family tree, level I, parents, step parents, legal custodians. Parents: Bernhard and Katharina Abusch, he a physicist, she a pianist. In the old GDR they both had been at the top in their respective fields until Bernhard had illegally left the country shortly prior to the wall’s fall. Katharina’s career had been damaged by that, but not badly. Shortly after reunification, she’d been giving concerts again, and they hadn’t taken place in the backyard: Gewandhaus Leipzig, Salzburg Festival, short gig during the central reunification festivities in Berlin (first anniversary) on Oct. 3, 1991. Kramer frowned on this. Katharina Abusch might excel in talent. But obviously she had good friends in the higher echelons of the cultural bureaucracy. Sure, nowadays "fleeing the republic" wasn’t even a crime anymore - mostly because it had ceased to happen. But Kramer knew there were traditionalists everywhere and they could be exceedingly unforgiving. Seemingly, they couldn’t hurt Mrs. Abusch. DORA II stored movies on her concerts. Kramer noticed her powerful hands: she was playing Rachmaninov. Sound was excellent. Somebody would have to tell her about her only child’s death. He would send Pasulke. On Bernhard Abusch DORA offered his doctoral thesis in full text, but it didn’t know his current whereabouts.
RA: the forensic people still weren’t done. At the moment, they searched for finger prints on the consoles and the pinball machines. Kramer shut the window and turned to Michael’s CV. Which was unspectacular: kindergarten, POS, EOS, young pioneers, FDJ, nothing special. Last entry was the day of his death: today. Kramer leant back in his chair. He was craving for coffee, but the coffee machine was in his colleagues’ office, and he just wanted to stay put for a while.
Somebody was knocking on the door. Irritably, Kramer said: "Come in!" It was Lobedanz himself.
Major of police Achim Lobedanz usually didn’t do this. He paid no visits to his subjects in their places, he called for them instead. Therefore, Kramer was truly alarmed when his boss suddenly stood in his office without prior warning. He sat up and said: "Achim".
"Rüdiger", Lobedanz retorted. Being bald and wearing a grey moustache he somewhat looked like a worried seal. His tie wasn’t straight.
"What’s up?"
"Normandy’s calling."
"The bloody Normannenstraße? What can they want?"
A huge complex in the Normannenstraße was the Stasi’s headquarters.
"Don’t know. By ways unaccounted for they’ve heard about this Abusch case. And now they want to talk to you about it."
Kramer thought of Akkermann’s beautiful face. I’m going to kill him, he thought.
"Talk to me? Brilliant. I’ll see them for a chat later."
"No way. They really appreciate your company, you know. The car’s already waiting."
Kramer felt funny.
"The car’s waiting? I haven’t seen real food today yet!"
Which was a strange ad hoc objection, utterly unconvincing, like Kramer thought himself after having finished the sentence.
"Maybe the Normans do provide some bread and butter. I think they got a coffee machine or two over there. Be a nice guy. Don’t want no trouble with them."
Which meant: if they want the case, give it to them. Thank you very much, comrade Lobedanz.
"Well, right", Kramer said.
"That’s settled then", Lobedanz said, turned around and left.
Kramer graubbed his jacket and let the door shut behind him. His three colleagues looked somewhat spooked. A minute earlier, they had seen Lobedanz walk away wordlessly, like a spectre disappearing.
"Small change in plans", Kramer announced. "Got a meeting with the Stasi on short notice."
Pasulke tried hard to look like he’d known in advance.
"What can they bloody want?", he asked.
"I’ll know later."
Pasulke put on a dramatic grimace and uttered in a low and deep voice:
"If you aren’t back in two hours time, companero, we’re gonna get you outta there alright."
"Very funny", Kramer said. "Got to get going. You tell his mother."
"Whose mother?"
"Don’t be a brick. Michael Abusch’s mother, of course."
"What, me?", Pasulke yelled, but before he could state his case for not having to go there, Kramer was already on the corridor.
Out on the street, he was in for a bad surprise. His hosts from the Stasi had sent him a grey transporter usually used for moving prisoners, and the driver was part of the Stasi’s guard force. This was not funny at all. The stasi’s guard force wasn’t called "Regiment Felix E. Dzierzynski" anymore and had been cut by half. But it was still the same affair: the private army, the openly armed force of the still powerful intelligence service. Before reunification it had consisted of 4500 elite soldiers, now there where still 2200 of them. One of these specialists stood at the other side of the road and waited for him. Kramer thought about Pasulke’s stupid joke while walking over. Nab me. Are they out to nab me?
The friendly looking soldier smiled at him and said: "I hope you don’t mind. We didn’t have anything more convenient at hand for the moment. Please."
He opened the door like a courteous taxi driver and Kramer got in. This guy didn’t sound like Berlin at all, und he didn’t sound like Dresden either. More like Düsseldorf. It was a known fact that most of the former MEK/SEK commandos from the old FRG had found their way into the guard force. His companion might well have been trained for anti-terror missions in Nordrhein-Westfalen, when he had been twenty five. Of course Kramer felt uneasy on his seat. He knew too well what was in his back: six unbelievably confined compartments for detainees and a metal bench for one or two guardians. As a young policeman, sometimes Kramer himself had been one of those guardians. He didn’t like thinking about those times. The police had swapped models long since, but the Stasi clang to tradition, as always.
The soldier started the engine. "Fasten your seat belts please", he said.
"What?" retorted Kramer, who’d been startled out of his brooding about the past. "Oh yeah, sure", he added now paying attention. Fastening his seat belts, he thought: "We didn’t have anything more convenient at hand for the moment. Bullshit." This car was a threat, nothing else. Totally like them, the comrades of the Stasi. Why handling something in a humane way, when bullying worked too? Off they went.
© Marcus Hammerschmitt, 2002