Chapter Two

“Context, ladies and gentlemen – that’s what we’re getting at here. It’s all hidden in context.”
The auditorioum was bright and clean, but the lighting was set up so as to transform it into a desolate, off-white wasteland, replete with an over-enthusiastic blue that covered every one of the two hundred seats.
“In it’s most abstract sense, context is about what’s not there, what’s not being studied. It’s about the wrap-arounds to theories, to phrases, even to situations.”
A man in a sharp black suit and a crisp white shirt was gesticulating in a circular motion towards a board where notes had been hastily scribbled.
“Out of context, you can have meaninglessness, random chance, idle phrases. The moment you place your subject into the right circumstances, or supply the relevant information, everything falls into place. Motives become clear, implications are unveiled, the solutions become so self-evident as to remove the need for any investigation.”
As he paused in his speech, the dull clicking of biros tapping onto slabs of paper could be heard, a chorus of repetition without understanding. The professor might have considered it ironic, given a moment to think.
“Context is continuously important throughout human history – law, philosophy, literature, mathematics, the sciences. All fields of human endeavour are contingent on neighbouring ideas and theories…”
He held the last syllable on a rising note and glanced up at the clock held above one of the fire exits.
“…and of course the force that keeps our lives in a sensical order is that ability to judge context both in study and in reality. You have your assignments for the weekend, I shall see you on Monday.”

The bell struck out at the clicking. The lights glared on.

~ ~ ~

You can taste the air, and it tastes of bad memories. It's an air that even the Doctor himself finds it hard to reside in, despite having lived in it for so many years. It feels repulsive, as if you are an intruder onto foreign soil. It hangs around the grim yellow lights in pockets, clings to the sills of windows, and lurches out at you from the shadows. It's an air cultivated from decades of depression that have passed through the house, from an oversized family living through war and economic instability, through a single mother dragging her kids up amidst drink and poverty, to the present - an unlikely success as a Doctor inevitably leading to the most likely of consequences.

And there ends the story of Doctor Grey- unmarried, unloved, unknown. Risen from the ashes of a poor education and the welfare state, but got complacent, pushed for progress, but forgot to watch his back and so he fell right back down to where he started - only this time he was on the other side of the desk, he himself now hauling the poor out of drink problems, abuse and morbidity. He sits in a tired armchair and reflects on his life, a fleeting ritual that occurs at the end of every working day for as long as he can remember. For a few moments, his mind drifts back through time, picking up again the haunting of years gone by, the missed opportunities, the bad luck, the betrayals. The times when life was good, when the paypacket had too many zeroes to fit on the slip properly. It collects them, carries them back to the nest of his consciousness, and allows them to burn inside him for a few moments.

Then he switches the television on, and all is forgotten, the burning remnants of years past fall down into the dishes of his ready-meal dinner.

"Look, look - the point isn't that economic growth is bad for everyone, alright, you're taking what I'm saying and you're twisting it. You've got to consider it for this city, for this situation." The man's tone raised slightly as his counterpart attempted to but in, "No, no, the simple fact is that if big business means unemployment, if, if globalisation means a faceless high street, then I'm against that, and the polls show that much of the country is too."

Doctor Grey took a forkful of chicken and laid it in his mouth. He bit into it, searingly hot on the inside. He cursed the necessity for microwaves on his weekday shifts. On the TV, the camera shifted from one suit to the other.

"This is madness, you're proposing that we hold back the economic growth that is characteristic of this government, and watch the Eastern economies rise up and overtake us - and for what? So that you can stroll down the decaying high street and admire the drab, run-down shopfronts, is that what you're saying?"

A year or so ago, Doctor Grey had jokingly suggested to a tired businessman that he should inject caffeine. He had narrowly missed a lawsuit when the patient had died attempting to mainline a latté. It was the stuff of cartoonists. The coffee he sipped now, though, was satisfying. There was no way he was going to be too tired to make a good coffee. Therein lay the road to ruin.

"I'm not saying anything of the sort. Rising economies, political fist-fighting - the global balance of power is shifting all the time, there's no need to dehumanise the towns and cities of our fair citizens just to streamline a few offices. If you had your way, this whole damn city would be a mall."

The interview was becoming petty, making the trite arguments seem all the less important. But something stirred within the Doctor as he listened to the rantings of the globalisation machine. The word 'capitalist' could barely be used nowadays without sounding like a revolutionary, but... something just didn't seem right. He thought of all the wastrels he'd yanked away from the brink of nonexistence. Was it all linked? Or was that the kind of sentiment that belonged back in the fifties, or perhaps later? The haydays of his youth, when activism was interesting. No room for that now.

He considered the point for a further few seconds, before the blinding sensation of pain hit his teeth and tongue again.