Treatment — Russell Smith

Dalton's life is coasting along just fine until his four-year relationship runs into a brick wall. Being in his mid-thirties, he feels past his best, and even more like someone outside of society looking in - not liking what he sees. Dalton has always been different, has always seen the world in a slightly different way to others. His unfashionable attitudes and appearance contributed towards Stephanie's departure from his life. Over time, however, he wants to depart from his life, also. Thoughts of suicide creep in. Dalton lives in a paranoid, heavily-monitored world terrified of the Satanic Rebels, a nasty terrorist organisation aligned with Satan Himself. According to the all-powerful Central Government, Satan has a new Hell, has annexed the Sun, which now ‘continually radiates particles infected by His madness.' Any caring government aligned with God would provide what the Central Government has for its 9 billion citizens: thousands of treatment centres all over the world, where you get your magnetic shielding. Apparently, without it, after a month or so of exposure, you'll be dead, just like the billion or so that perished before treatment was developed. Knowing it's illegal to miss treatment, but craving the apparently pain-free end that comes from subjecting your body to the constant bombardment of contaminated particles, Dalton dodges his weekly session, and soon finds that, far from being adversely affected by exposure, his mind and memory are functioning better than they ever have before. Gradually, he learns things about the world that no ordinary citizen can know. When Price is arrested and taken to an empty treatment centre by police at the dead of night, he begins to enter a world he could never have anticipated. Has his subjection to contaminated particles already sent him round the bend, or is he seeing things exactly how they are?