He placed his elbows on the desk, pressed his palms together in front of his face so he looked like an overgrown child at prayer. ‘All that aside,’ he said, ‘you’ll want some time to reflect. I can give you … thirty minutes?’ With a functional smile, he unfolded himself from his seat. ‘Not,’ he said, ‘that there’s much to consider, once you really think about it.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
When Oswald had gone, Cassie hoisted her feet up onto the chair, sat with her forehead pressed against her knees and her hands clasped tightly round her shins. Though she was relieved to be left alone, she felt suddenly weighted with tiredness, as if when he’d shut the door behind him Oswald had swept all the energy from the room.
Imagine, if it were a friend of yours. Suffering in this way.
It had been an opening, whether or not it had been intended as such. Her chance to challenge Oswald, to find out for certain whether the things she’d guessed – about Alan, the patient trials, Raphael House – were true. But an opening could be a trap. She had sensed manipulation, and kept her mouth shut.
Up until that point, Oswald’s manner had been forthright: he had answered her questions, been clear about what they wanted her to do, and what they would give her in return. Even to leave her like this, alone in his room, suggested a certain amount of transparency. She lifted her head to look around: low bookshelves, outsized floor lamp, framed print of some mountainous landscape. Still, there were things that didn’t make sense. For instance, the time and money that must have gone into manoeuvring her into this position, when surely Imagen could have used an existing member of staff to deliver their upgrade. Perhaps they were confident they could persuade her to stay quiet; her silence would doubtless be another condition of the offer. Or perhaps it was something else: There are other ways we could do this, he’d said, and maybe that was the lie. She wasn’t simply the neatest, most elegant solution; for some reason, she was the sole solution.
She squeezed the back of her neck, trying to ease the crick from lying too long in Lewis’s bed with her head at an awkward angle. With an effort, she got to her feet and, staring absently through the glass wall, raised her arms in a long stretch above her head. Directly opposite, on the far side of the open-plan office, was the 1950s mosaic that dated from the building’s original incarnation as a telephone exchange. She had never seen it so clearly before. It showed four blocky, stylised heads, one at each corner of the panel, all connected by different coloured lines that arranged themselves in a geometric pattern.
Multiple connections. Cats in a bag. Claws unsheathed.
She turned her back on the mosaic. Circled Oswald’s desk, and settled into his swivel chair. Swiped her fingers across his trackpad, bringing his screen to life: biotouch protected, of course. She ran her palms over the smooth wood surface, then – knowing it would be pointless – tried the first of his desk drawers. Locked. The second drawer locked as well, and the third—
The third slid open at her tug.
She paused, with her fingers still on the handle. Allowed her hand to slip over the edge of the drawer. Touched card, paper: a stack of files. Down below, the office was empty apart from the cleaner still going about his work. As subtly as she could she glanced round Oswald’s room, checking for spy cameras. Just because she couldn’t see any hidden lenses didn’t mean they weren’t there. She hesitated – but then, what was the worst that could happen? If Oswald caught her prying, he’d have one more crime to set alongside the others on his list, all those breaches he’d reassured her she needn’t worry about – for now. Swiftly, she extracted the topmost file from the drawer, flipped it open on her lap.
Inside was a single document, a spreadsheet that ran to several stapled pages. Columns and rows labelled with abbreviations, cells filled with digits, with Xs and Os, with nothing she could recognise – until her eye snagged on a pair of repeated initials that stepped in a ladder down the page. The column was headed Loc; the initials read RH. Location: Raphael House? Yes, it could be. She looked closely now at the other headers. At columns labelled Csnt / Scrnd / Enrld, each filled with dates that ranged from three to four years ago. At a column of initials that was headed ID. She traced a finger down the line, unable to stop herself jumping ahead in search of the familiar shape – and when her eyes found it, she blinked and waited for her tracking finger to catch up. AJL: Alan James Lauder. The initials followed by a six-digit number she knew instantly as his date of birth. She pinned him down with her finger, followed his data the length of the row, but the remaining codes refused to yield.
For a moment she thought of stealing the document, replacing the empty file. Oswald held so much over her: these pages tucked neatly into her pocket could even the balance between them. Only, it was so cryptic it was no real proof to anyone except her. How could she convince anyone that RH meant Raphael House? That each cell nestled under the heading Enrld meant an individual patient, enrolled onto a trial they were not equipped to agree to, or even understand? She placed the paper back into its cardboard sheath, ready to put it back where it belonged. And then she stopped.
Come on: a single drawer unlocked? This particular document on the top of the pile, carefully informing her of everything she already suspected, and nothing more? It was all too obvious. She was meant to find this.
It seemed impossible, but it had to be true: Oswald knew what Alan meant to her. Had it been encoded in her data, from all the times she’d connected with Alan? A one-sided stream of information issuing from her receiver, luminous with need, repeating the message of her longing again, again, again? And this file was a nudge, a little extra persuasion to accept Oswald’s proposal. A reminder that if she turned him down, it was not her but Alan who’d suffer the most.
What she’d been offered was a bribe; this was the sour to go with the sweet, something more like emotional blackmail. It was the confirmation she needed, of all that not-Alan was going through. Last night, in Make-Believe, she had felt it for herself, a suffocating blackness; it had been distant and brief, and she’d been able to free herself. In the locked ward, it would be quite different. Individual psychoses: shared, multiplied. Each invading the others. Each locked into a web of evolving, strengthening networks. She forced herself to think of it, and the air was pressed from her lungs.
There was no real choice. Of course she would say yes.
Down in the open-plan office, the cleaner had finished. The mug was gone from her desk. She wondered how they’d arrange for her return, what they’d say to the person who’d been doing her job for the last year. Looked again at the mosaic, tracing the coloured lines that passed over and under each other, turning corners, weaving patterns. Thought of how the upgrade would be done. The nasal spray, a lingering taste, and then the alterations that would go on inside her. Imagined her network as it had appeared in the 3D display in the Newman building. Fresh instructions issued, washing through the mesh of molecules that criss-crossed her brain, and the network responding. The same thing happening with not-Alan: clearing him, cleaning him, keeping him safe. That’s where they would begin, of course: in the locked ward. She imagined the upgrade fanning its way through the patients, switching them off, and off, and off—
And that was when she realised.
I’m only here because of you.
What it meant: to destroy the connections.
This is how you save me. Being here. You have to be here—
Her Alan. Real Alan. The Alan she’d found in Make-Believe. It meant she would lose him, all over again.
I’m only here because of you.
It meant he wouldn’t exist. Their shared past would not exist. His skin – his eyes – his warmth, his kicking heart and all of it couldn’t exist.
Her mouth was dry, suddenly, tongue plastered to the roof of her mouth, as if she would never be able to speak again. How could she make this choice?
She could say no, walk out of here now, and most likely she’d never find her Alan again, never find a
way back to Make-Believe – but the possibility would be there still, the faintest glow of his waiting for her. And in the meantime, not-Alan would stay as he was: in the locked ward, in torment. The invasion of another consciousness … something beyond your control … She felt the darkness lapping, shook her head sharply. He was the mistake; he was not her Alan. Even so, it was impossible. How could she let him stay there and suffer, when it was in her power to do something about it?
Or she could say yes – agree to Oswald’s offer – and not-Alan would still be broken but he wouldn’t be suffering, or at least he’d suffer nothing more than ordinary madness. She and Alan both would lose their capacity to connect in Make-Believe, and the waterfall would become a memory of a dream, a place lost to both of them, as they were lost to each other. He would be gone, irrevocably. She would never touch him again, or inhale his smell, hear his voice or his breath or the beat of his heart – and that was impossible too.
Cassie buried her hands in her hair. Tried to think coolly, against a rising tide of desolation. It was a choice between losing Alan probably, or losing Alan definitely. And it was a choice between degrees of suffering – and how could you measure that? The patient was mad, therefore the patient was suffering, but what was the extra amount of suffering caused by his connections in Make-Believe? And to what extent was that additional suffering acceptable, if it kept alive the possibility of her Alan? I’m only here because of you … What degree of suffering was too much to justify, to keep alive that hope?
She stared at the wall, at the mosaic, trying to kick her brain into a higher gear, to find a way around it. A way to keep them safe, all three of them: not-Alan, and Alan, and herself.
When Oswald returned, she was still in his chair, swivelling side to side. She watched as he took in the mutinous expression on her face, the file in plain sight on his desk. He remained on his feet, close enough for his height to feel like intimidation.
‘You’ve been exploring,’ he said.
She swung right – left – right. Held his gaze, acting the boss. ‘Nowhere you didn’t want me to go.’ With the tip of her finger she nudged the file, till it sat just slightly askew. ‘That’s where it all started, then. At Raphael House. Let me guess: biomolecular networks similar to those you went on to use in Make-Believe, except you’d need a way for psychiatrists to shape the patient experience, so … engineered so the connective capacity was active instead of latent? Which means, you wouldn’t have this problem at all if you hadn’t been running unlicensed trials—’
‘It’s not unlicensed.’ His voice was unexpectedly sharp, and she registered the effort he made to soften his tone. ‘Alright: things haven’t gone as we hoped. We’d prefer it remain under the radar. But it’s important you understand, every aspect of this trial was approved. Standard protocol was followed, to the letter. There’s no wrongdoing here.’
Cassie stopped her swivelling. Didn’t try to conceal her disgust. ‘You know I have a friend in there.’
‘Which is why we’re on the same side!’ He held out his palms, gave an appeasing smile. ‘These connections, Cassandra, are a shared enemy. We all want for them to stop.’
‘But you could stop it right now, if you wanted to! All you need to do is split them up. You must have thought of it. Separate the patients, and the connections will stop.’
‘We have thought of it, of course we have. But you must see, now that the patients’ networks are active, separating them would be only a temporary solution. Think about it: whether they’re admitted to another facility or they recover to the extent that they’re able to go back into the community, it’s almost inevitable that they will, eventually, encounter another individual whose biomolecular network has also evolved sufficiently for a direct connection to occur between the two. At which point we will be quite unable to help in any way; we won’t know about it, and even if we did we would have no means of treating them.’
‘You’re not treating them now,’ Cassie muttered.
‘Whereas in Raphael House,’ Oswald went on, ‘the doctors at least understand that sedatives, for instance, only worsen their symptoms.’
Cassie stared at him. ‘It happens when they’re sedated?’
He gave a grim little smile. ‘Essentially, if the connections can’t be blocked by the conscious mind, they cannot be stopped. Asleep, comatose, sedated. It’s all the same.’
She didn’t want to acknowledge it, but she could see Oswald’s reasoning was sound. Imagine Alan in a different hospital, where nobody knew his clinical history. In the next room, another patient with an evolved network. Imagine him locked in a vicious circle: torment and sedation.
‘If I say yes’ – she watched his smile falter – ‘that’s the only reason. To protect my friend.’
‘Understood, of course.’ Oswald spoke fast – indifferent to her insistence, wanting only to seal the deal. ‘Just to be clear, though: the rest of it, what we’re offering you, that’s still on the table.’
‘But this.’ She grabbed the file, rattled it. ‘This hide and seek. How am I supposed to trust what you say when you’re planting stuff in drawers, pretending to play it straight? This is a big decision. I need some kind of proof.’
She saw him ready to say something; then he stopped, looked down at the carpet. He had his hands in his trouser pockets, thumbs hitched over the edges and stroking the fabric as though he was trying to reassure himself.
‘Alright,’ he said, and lifted his head again. ‘Alright, then – what if we show you?’
‘Show me, how?’
‘Would it convince you, if you could see – feel – for yourself?’
Something in his assessing gaze sent a twist of unease through her stomach. ‘But I want to go home first. I want some proper clothes, and I want a shower and—’
He was shaking his head. ‘I’m afraid not. We can get you those things afterwards – but if you want to do this, it has to be now.’
The taste of burning rubber. No: she did not want to do this. But perhaps – perhaps it would help her. Inside his jacket she squared her shoulders, straightened her spine. To know the suffering. To measure it. To choose.
Once again, the woman was driving. She and Oswald sat in silence; alone in the back, Cassie folded the collar of Oswald’s jacket so it stood up stiff and soft, walling her off from the world, and pushed her hands deep in his silk-lined pockets. Though it felt as if hours had passed since they’d escorted her from Lewis’s flat, the streets were still quiet. She craned to see the clock on the dashboard. 04.28.
The passing landscape was familiar. The journey much quicker than when she’d last made it. She let her eyes close. Noted the turn. The deceleration. The pop of gravel under the wheels, then a bump onto softer ground. Opened them to see the woman had parked up against a stand of shrubs, in an attempt to conceal their presence. From here, Cassie couldn’t see the hospital building, but it must be close by. The small paved area. The bench, and the rustle of bamboo.
Oswald turned in his seat, halfway facing her. Handed her a receiver. It looked like one of those the woman had taken from Lewis’s flat – same model, at least.
‘Knowingly using bioware that’s been illegally modified?’ Cassie said. ‘Unauthorised use of someone else’s account?’ It wasn’t a challenge – more like a joke. Was there something about a man lending you his coat that sparked a rapport, in spite of everything? Perhaps it was just in comparison to his mysterious colleague that Oswald came out well. At least he acknowledged her presence.
‘We haven’t yet reinstated your account, so – it’s the quickest way. We don’t have a great deal of time.’ The clock on the dashboard said 04.56. ‘As soon as you’re ready?’
It was weightless in her hand. Such a neat device. She slipped the receiver onto her ear. Ready: to experience what not-Alan was going through. Ready to measure the suffering.
She leant back. Pressed the switch.
ON
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Oswald stayed twisted in his seat, watching the girl as she sank. When her eyelids started to twitch, he turned away. ‘Half an hour, do you think?’
Beside him, the advisor took off her spectacles, drew a small cloth from the glove box and began to polish the lenses. ‘If you say so.’
In the back, the girl sat silent. He turned to check on her: motionless, except for her eyelids, jumping and flickering. He looked away again. What was she experiencing? Couldn’t tell, from the outside. It could be bliss or terror – but it would be terror, of course. He was counting on it. He was glad he couldn’t see the building from here; it depressed him. Looked like sheltered housing, like the place his old mum had been in at the end. Again, from the outside you wouldn’t guess.
‘So we don’t know what the problem is,’ the advisor said. ‘Whether she’s stalling for something.’
He guessed it was a question, though it didn’t sound like one. ‘I can’t think what for,’ he said.
He could hear the girl breathing now, short and shallow. What was it that kept them hooked – the ones like her? A temperament thing, just born that way? He was a light user, himself. Had tried out all the obvious novelties. Didn’t have the time for it. Now it was just occasional, once or twice a week, the stuff he wouldn’t tell his wife. Highest privacy settings, of course: he set his own, no way in hell he’d trust it otherwise. Connecting. Collaborating. Last thing he’d want. That would really spoil the fun. There was something compulsive about it, perhaps – when you got the urge – maybe it was like that for the girl—Stop it: stop thinking about that. Not sitting next to this woman, the sort whose business it was to know things, to sit behind her spectacles and notice you, probably to read your thoughts … He glanced in the rear-view mirror, suddenly sure she was watching him, but it was angled so all he could see was the view through the rear windscreen. He shifted slightly in his seat. It was understandable, the insistence, now, on close governmental oversight. Given what had happened. And they shared a common aim, she and he – to manage the fallout from this situation without jeopardising the original investment, the potential rewards. Still, he wished it was Lachlan driving.
A User's Guide to Make-Believe Page 20
