by Toby Weston
The storm is picking up outside. The tortured scream of the wind manages to force its way past her ear buds. It howls around the ropes that attach her feed bucket to the struts and girders that support the building. Outside, massive slabs of water are queuing for their turn to slam into the fragile little floating collection of objects. On the other side of the ring, that is bearing the brunt of the storm, cranes are being ripped from the decks; entire buildings vanishing in a breath. Stella is oblivious to it all; she has found something to absorb her mind and to deny it any chance to rage and wail.
The crew of the sewerage barge are lashing more lines to the farm, trying to stop themselves from tearing loose. Every time the sea drops from beneath them, the boat hangs above three metres of empty air. When the storm fills the void again, a hammer of water slams back against their steel hull.
Only yesterday, Marcel's father ran another set of lines around Stella’s pod. He looped coils of webbing through the galvanised steel gantries. Stella doesn't really care if she dies; she is busy paging through menus.
A massive set of waves break, one after the other, across the three-hundred-metre hoop, which is the Farm. Stella is on the trailing perimeter, but avalanches of water still periodically douse the entire building. The noise is astonishing, but the ties hold.
She pauses while the maelstrom sucks at her plastic shell, waits until the world sorts itself out, then returns to the maze of menus. She is frustrated with the slow progress and repetitive nature of the tutorials. She wants to connect to something, see something real, beyond the farm, its all too familiar buildings and dull poverty-stricken peasants. She randomly dives into the menus again, their glyphs appearing, as she navigates the labyrinth of possibilities. More nested menus appear in response to her choices. She sees something promising:
-> Connect
-> Compatible Local Hosts
-> Closest
-> Link . . .
Noise cancellation drops down around her like a shell, enveloping her in an insulated fluffy cave of peace. The sounds outside are all but gone, her vision is limited to whatever her Spex choose to show to her left eye. Stella's consciousness severs its ties with her body. Then, finally, she is looking through the eyes, or at least one eye, of another living creature.
Her point of view is in the water, looking up at the bottom of a damaged boat. It is moored alongside the Farm to one of the huge pontoons. She almost quits in frustration. She is still confined to her hoop world. The POV swims higher, towards the bottom of the boat. There is a large crack in its fibreglass hull about twenty centimetres wide. Its source, a torpedo-shaped buoy, is still wedged in the crack. A nose, now trying to nudge through the crack, brushes the buoy. It jerks sideways and rises deeper into the boat, forcing a mass of bubbles from the fissure. Something dark comes into view, and a human arm drops in slow motion, then sways in the water, at one with the waves. Stella is terrified by the apparition, but so is the dolphin. She knows it’s a dolphin, because there is a little two-dimensional stylised icon of a dolphin at the top of her vision, which she can see when she focuses on it.
The dolphin dives deeper at a sprint, and then hangs in the water, looking up at the moving liquid geology of the surface. It lets itself drift warily up again and returns to nudge at the crack and the arm. Stella senses a change and feels the dolphin relax in the water. Simultaneously, words appear on the Spex and through her ears:
“Help him. He is not dead.” After a few seconds, another message: “Help him.”
Stella doesn't know what to do as she quit the tutorial before it got to sending messages.
“Help him. Help him. Help him. Help him. Help him. Help him. Help him…” the voice nags.
Stella pulls on a waterproof jacket and hat and clambers down the ladder from her eyrie. While immersed in the electronic sensory deprivation of the Spex, she had become used to the dolphin's perspective and is shocked by the terrible weather. She leans into the wind and runs in the direction of the boat she knows must be moored not far away, but is utterly obscured by the driving rain and spray. She runs while avoiding the migrating drift-crap tossed up by the sea and then driven by the wind across the ring. She can see the boat.
Old Tommy Sugar is out in his yellow oilskin, tying tarpaulin against his shop. Stella runs to him and grabs his sleeve. It is almost too loud to talk, but he seems to understand some of what she is screaming over the wind and wave roar. He finishes off a knot and starts after her when she dashes away towards what she hopes is the right boat. It is a broken thing, intermittently dashing against the floating concrete pontoons. It’s lashed to one leg of the Farm, the loop of rope caught on the barnacles the only thing stopping it from sinking.
Tommy listens to her explain again, and then, without a word, clambers onto the debris-strewn boat. Stella pulls the Spex back down and is instantly transported back to the amniotic stillness of the sea. Her new friend is still down there, looking up at the allegedly not dead fingers. Tommy has been gone less than a minute when she notices the arm twitch. It disappears back up through the crack. She pulls the Spex away again. Squinting against the salt and wind, she watches for movement. Thirty seconds later, Tommy's head pops out of the little cabin, and he is back, carrying a sodden black shape on his back. He looks over at Stella and nods once, before striding off towards the Medical Centre.
Stella watches the body on his back for signs of life as it is hauled through the blasting chaos of the storm. The wind sucks the air out of her lungs and hurls grit, debris and stinging water at her face. She huddles down, behind a stack of nets, covered in tarpaulin. Here, she is safe from the full force of the wind and looks down at the surging flotsam-speckled briny surface. The flickering of electric lights, smashed by the storm, jams her senses. She already misses the peace and tranquillity of below.
Pulling the Spex down over her eyes, she escapes again to the world beneath the huge surging mirror. She is looking at a fractured reflection of a grey torpedo with a mischievous smile. She rises closer to her reflection until two noses meet. Then, she passes the interface and finds herself looking at a girl crouching in the wind and spray, her coat flapping open, ineffectually tied with a length of blue twine. A fifteen-year-old girl, small for her size, with wild straggly hair and a pair of Spex hiding her eyes.
With a near audible click of perspective, Stella is examining herself. She is surprised to see that she is pretty, despite being tatty and poor. Then she lifts her Spex and scans the waves for her watcher, until she finds a slick bulbous nose and tiny black eyes. The nose jerks back and she hears a faint twittering above the wind’s roar. A fraction of a second later, her Spex display the incoming message.
“Hello.”
Stella walks to the steps, clutching the rusty railing tightly as the wind tries to tear her hair and clothes from her body. She descends as close to the sea as she dares. It is sheltered from the wind and the full force of the waves here, but the swell is two metres and, when the sea withdraws, it does so with a terrifying sucking power. The nose swims closer. Stella is hypnotised, and something happens inside her soul. She feels its love. Then she is sobbing, crying, raging. The eyes watch and wait as a girl, who has seen too much for her fragile mind to process, flails at the universe. When she eventually exhausts herself, she feels stupid and embarrassed. She smiles shyly at the nose.
“Hello,” it repeats.
“Hi,” she replies, self-consciously.
*** ERROR—EEG Traducer Failure ***
*** WARNING—No local symbolic Transmission Possible ***
There is a pause and then more chattering, accompanied by another audible message: “Can you talk?”
She doesn't know much about how the Spex work, but she knows they are broken and so she shakes her head and then blows her nose on her fingers, flicking the snot into the sea. The dolphin doesn't show any signs of understanding, so she shouts as loud as she can:
“Yes, I can talk!”
The increase in volume seem
s to have done the trick. She guesses the Dolphin also has something like Spex that will translate her voice only if it can hear the words.
“Can you hear me?” the dolphin asks.
Stella nods. Then, still not sure if dolphins understand human body language, she shouts. “Yes. Will you be my friend?”
I am Tinkerbell [@0809aB772 Free Dolphin, Pics, Blog, Personal].
Thank you for helping Chris [@ChrisTuck3rR, Marine Geologist, Recent Publications, Blog, Personal] Who are you?
“Will you be my friend, Tinkerbell?” she shouts above the raging surf and screaming wind. She needs this so badly; it threatens to tear her in half. The sobbing hysteria is close.
I am Tinkerbell [@0809aB772 Free Dolphin, Pics, Blog, Personal]
“Please?” she shouts. “My mother died. I don't have friends… well, except Marcel. He is the boy who gave me these.” Her voice dies to a mutter. “But he is… can you even understand me?”
“I understand,” the voice says. “Who are you?”
This is followed by some arcane debug messages:
*** DIAGNOSTIC - Audio Verbal Translation Error Report: High levels of background noise 17%. Semantic Incompatibilities 40%. ***
“I am Stella, Stella Sagong,” she shouts. More text appears across her vision:
[@St3llaSag0ng LOCAL_GUEST, no details added]
Stella doesn’t understand half of the weird text displayed by the Spex. However, as far as she is concerned, the next words to appear on the scratched lens are the best message ever sent from one entity to another.
Tinkerbell[@0809aB772] has added you [@St3llaSag0ng LOCAL_GUEST, no details added] as a friend.
Chapter 10 – What’s a Boy to Do?
The hand is black. Skin, once supple, now charcoal brittle and split. Cracks showing a pink wetness deep within, weep with clear liquid. Nails shift in the sticky raw flesh or are missing from charred stumps. A hand closes on his neck, the flesh of its palm shifting and disintegrating like the puffy skin of an over-boiled chicken. The grip tightens, sloughing more skin as it twists. He feels the cool of bare gelatinous muscle touching the sensitive skin of his throat. He knows it’s a dream, even as he dreams, but the knowledge doesn't help. Reality is worse. A man is dead, and he knows the mangled, burnt, water-saturated body is floating somewhere on the Rheine or is already slowly drifting west, across the sea on its last journey.
Some part of Anosh decided to wake up then. Without turning on the light, he carefully slid out of bed and shuffled across the bedroom to change his sweat-soaked t-shirt. It was 4.30 am. Out of the sanctuary of their bed, the room was icy cold. The sense of horror, spawned by the dream, felt too big and too real to be contained within his skull. It wouldn’t let itself be rationalised away by the process of waking. He needed to check that nothing evil had spread out of his eyes and mouth into the real world.
He walked along the carpeted hall into the boys’ room and leant over each, carefully listening for the rhythm of their gentle breathing. Satisfied that they were okay, he pulled his dressing gown around himself and, against all instincts, took the dark stairs to the roof. His heart was still hammering, and the dream wouldn’t leave him. He sat on one of the wrought iron chairs Ayşe had reclaimed. A half-moon lit snowy roofs and streets, veiled by wisps of cloud, an eye peering out between fingers. Its light illuminated fog rising from the river and smoke from a few chimneys.
Over time, a resentful stand-off with the local gangs had established itself. Many vigilante self-defence forces had sprung up. The police rarely interfered, and this had been taken as a sign. Anosh could see tiny glimmers of red on several of the surrounding roofs, glowing ends of cigarettes, flaring and dimming or disappearing entirely behind the cupped hands of sentinels. In the years since they had moved in, the Docks had developed a reputation for self-sufficiency. They now attracted a steady stream of artists and artisans. The neighbourhood hadn’t seen such levels of occupancy since the nineteenth century.
In a form of self-assembly, micro brewers, coders, cabinet makers, modders, tinkers, electricians, mechanics and other like-minded can-do-ers flocked to its run-down warehouses and empty office buildings. The darker side of this auto-ghettoisation was that individuals deemed incompatible were encouraged to move along; cajoled, bullied, and forced out by enthusiastic members of self-appointed local committees.
The cold slowly washed terror from the shadows. Normality returned and eventually he felt secure enough to get back into bed. In his absence, the sweat that had soaked his pillow had turned cold and clammy. He flipped it round before lying down. Reluctantly, he surrendered his mind to the realm of sleep again.
The next day, the terrors were replaced by the mundane routine of family life. A week had passed since the shooting. The first night, ebbing adrenaline had left him exhausted, and he had gone back to sleep immediately. The nightmares did not start until the third night. The imagined horror had wiped out any clear memory of the actual event. He was beginning to think that, somehow, the night had been a communal dream; there was no body, had never been a body.
Their daily routine started with him cleaning out the ashes and lighting a little fire. Ayşe would get up a few minutes later and put the water on to boil for brewing the morning’s tea or coffee, depending on what was available. After Anosh had washed his face and checked that nothing was amiss with the house or roof, they would take their mugs to the window and stand looking out at the activity on the street. It was a special time for them; they chatted while waiting for the kitchen to warm up before waking the boys for school. The walls were still bare chipboard. They had hung blankets for doors, and their dwelling was tolerably warm, once the fire was lit. That morning, Ayşe was about to pour their second cup when, from downstairs, the mechanical bell rang with a dull trill.
Anosh’s heart immediately began to race. Denial and the fervent hope that their society was too dis-functional to support a functioning police force evaporated as he looked down from the window: a battered silver and white auto was pulled up at the curb and two men in smart green uniforms stood at their door.
The automatic buzzer had never worked, so Anosh went down the stairs to confront the visitors.
“Guten Morgen. Sind Sie Herr Anosh Karum? Durfen wir rein kommen?”
“Er…” Anosh paused, but he couldn't think of any valid reason the two policemen shouldn't enter. “Yes, of course. Come in.”
He led the men up the three flights of steps to their kitchen and the four sat facing the stove. Ayşe distributed drinks.
The older of the two visitors seemed in no hurry to get to any point. He was an elderly chap with a big white moustache, ruddy cheeks and a belly that, despite rationing, appeared to be thriving. His position clearly granted him privileged access to bratwurst and beer. He sat cupping his hot tea and smiling pleasantly, while politely letting his eyes drift around the kitchen, sliding from flowers to fruit bowl and settling on their radio.
His colleague was much younger, probably less than twenty-five, hawkish nose, with neat, mousey-blond hair combed diagonally across his forehead. He kept glancing from face to face, looking to his boss for clues on how to proceed.
After a few awkward minutes, Anosh asked: “So, can we help you with anything?” Ayşe flicked her eyes over to him and then down to the floor. Anosh was aware that the old cop was taking all of it in, every glance, word and breath.
“Can you help us? I suppose you could.” He paused dramatically, while looking into their souls—years seemed to creep by. “I noticed as we were walking by that, unlike in most areas of this humiliated city, my Companion has a data connection. I also notice that, although there’s a scheduled power outage at the moment, your lights are on.”
Anosh was thrown off balance, unsure if he was expected to say anything.
The younger cop took out his Companion and was thrilled to find he could access the community OpenMesh gateway. With a bit of tapping and the odd muted exclamation, the tinny, but still familiar
, tones of a popular classic soap opera began to emanate from the Companion’s little speakers. They were all looking at him. As if stricken, Anosh realised that professional suspect interrogation protocol did not include watching re-runs of old daytime TV. The senior policeman smiled indulgently, but gestured to the younger cop that he should stop playing and pay attention.
“It’s nice to see the internet, or the Mesh, as I think it’s now called, popping up again. It’s such a powerful tool for education and community.”
The geek in Anosh wanted to explain that the two things were different, but the old cop continued.
“I don't find it so much of an inconvenience as some of my younger colleagues.” He glanced at the aforementioned individual, who continued to look sheepish.
Again, Anosh had the feeling he should say something. Instead, he remembered Vikram's instructions for dealing with the police and took a sip of his tea, staying silent.
They supped and chatted for another half an hour, until Segi wandered in, rubbing his eyes and making for the food cupboard.
