The Power of Five Oblivion

head. Jonas had been working for the London office when he heard the news but he hadn’t asked for time off to go to the funeral. He was far too busy and he had been brought up with one simple rule: business always comes first. He had never really liked his mother very much anyway. He only ever saw her a couple of times a year and he was slightly jealous of her success.
    Jonas was still a young man … which was just as well because old age, like any weakness, disgusted him. His curly blond hair had been cut short, in a style that was almost military, and he had the physique of a soldier … the result of a careful diet and a personal trainer working with him every day at his private gym. Jonas was proud of his body, with every muscle perfectly developed, and he never covered it with anything less than a one-thousand-dollar suit. Even his nails were manicured, his eyebrows plucked, his teeth artificially whitened. Appearances are important. That was one of the things he had learned in business school. And business, of course, was his life.
    Even so, he was not particularly handsome. Hours spent in front of the computer screen had damaged his eyesight and he now wore wire-framed spectacles that sat awkwardly on his face. He had never had plastic surgery but somehow looked as if he had. There was a slightly sweaty, artificial sheen to his skin and everything was stretched a little too tight, making it hard for him to show any emotion. He spoke with a public-school accent and there was perhaps a part of him that had never left school. His lips were always twisted in a half-smile. He was very pleased with himself and couldn’t disguise it. But then, he had managed to work his way to the highest level of Nightrise. He was even more senior than his mother had been at the time of her death. So why shouldn’t he be pleased with himself? He was at the top of his game.
    Jonas Mortlake was not married and had no children of his own. The idea of being close to another human being slightly repulsed him and he particularly disliked women, with their soft, flabby flesh, their emotions, their weakness, their constant demands. He glanced at the business newspaper lying open on his lap, at the tiny print and the endless columns of figures. That was where real pleasure was to be found.
    He was excited.
    As much as he mistrusted emotion, he couldn’t deny it. He was on his way to a conference and he’d been looking forward to it for weeks. “ENDGAME” it had simply announced on the invitation, which, of course, was actually a command. He was aware that, elsewhere in the traffic, a hundred more limousines were carrying hundreds more men and women to the same event. They had all been summoned to meet the chairman of Nightrise, to hear him speak. But Jonas was different. He had already been told what was going to be said, and afterwards, when the chairman had made his surprise announcement, he was going to have a meeting, one-to-one, in which his own destiny would be spelled out.
    They had managed to move the ox, which was now lying at the edge of the road, its eyes wide, its stomach heaving up and down. One of the policemen blew a whistle, frantically gesticulating, and somehow the traffic managed to untie itself and move forward. Glancing up from his newspaper, Mortlake saw an open-air market spread out beneath a concrete flyover: more food frying, and water carriers – some only seven or eight years old – bent double under the plastic tanks which they carried on their backs and which would cripple them before they were nine. Women dressed in shorts, low-cut T-shirts, sandals and cheap jewellery with nothing to sell but themselves rested against the concrete pillars. At night, the area would be lit by coloured bulbs and open braziers and perhaps they would look a little less hideous and grotesque.
    The car turned a corner and suddenly the river was ahead of them, the water as tangled up with old boats as the roads were with cars. The sun was even worse here. Out in the open, reflecting off the water, it made everything hard and brittle. With the smoke rising from the dozens of miniature bonfires that had been lit along the quayside, it was as if the ground itself was catching fire. There was no electricity or running water in this part of the city. The people sat, slumped in defeat.
    At last they reached their destination. The building, with its famous curved front and multiple flags, stood in the plaza that had been named