A User's Guide to Make-Believe

by Jane Alexander

  On the other hand. She worked hard on the business. Bringing in clients. And it was her who had offered him a 50/50 split. And the croissants were a bonus.

  He just didn’t want to be the idiot. The guy that jumped.

  Five minutes later he was putting on his jacket, checking his pockets for wallet and keys.

  Jo hovered in the living room doorway, eyebrows raised. ‘Bit late for a stroll, is it not? Where are you off to?’

  ‘That was Cassie, needing a bit of help.’

  ‘Uh-huh. Thought you said you were done with all that?’

  Nicol shrugged. ‘I know … but she did ask nicely. Kind of, anyway.’

  From the hall table, Jo picked up the lead and the plastic bags. There was a commotion from the living room and in seconds Princess Leia appeared, panting with excitement, swiping her tail from side to side.

  ‘Up to you,’ Jo said. ‘You can take the dog. Save me a trip, at least.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  The usual place, Cassie had told him, but as soon as she saw him ambling towards her she sprang up from the bench, meaning to steer him away.

  ‘I told you to come alone,’ she said, deadpan. Nicol’s dog was sniffing her trainers, tail slicing through rain like a windscreen wiper. ‘Didn’t know you were a dog person.’

  Nicol glanced down, gave the lead a tug. ‘Don’t worry. Leia’s very discreet.’

  Briefly, Cassie dipped her hand so Leia could get a proper smell, get the measure of her. ‘Good excuse to walk.’

  Glancing back over her shoulder to scan the empty square, she led them towards the night-time centre of the city. The rain had eased, and she relaxed a little as they left the university quarter, cutting down a side street towards the pubs and clubs. They were safer among the knots of smokers out on the pavement, the closing-time crowd.

  ‘Come on then, Bond, tell me. What’s going on?’

  Cassie started to speak. Stopped again. Let out a long breath. ‘Thing is,’ she said, ‘I could talk all night, and I don’t reckon you’d believe even a fraction of it.’

  Nicol shrugged. ‘One way to find out, eh?’

  ‘Honestly. There’s so much, too much, I don’t even know where I’d begin. But I’ll tell you what I can, as quick as I can, and – and I have to just ask you to trust me.’

  ‘On you go, then.’

  ‘The other day, outside the Newman building – when I was spaced after seeing that display.’

  ‘The Make-Believe stuff?’

  ‘You do really hate them, don’t you?’

  ‘It’s not about hate. It’s like I said. I disapprove.’

  ‘OK, well … confession: I used to work for them.’

  ‘For Imagen? You worked on Make-Believe?’

  ‘It was a while back; it didn’t end well, I – anyway, that’s not important, at least I don’t think so.’

  They fell into single file, giving way to a laughing, shouting crowd of students: young men with shining drink-flushed cheeks, owning the pavement. Leia made a soft gruff sound, somewhere between a growl and a whine. When the pack was past them, Cassie picked up her explanation, voice low.

  ‘The important bit is: when they tested the technology – trying to develop different applications – I’m pretty sure, now, that they were testing on people who didn’t consent. Or couldn’t properly consent, legally. People they thought were disposable.’ Cassie glanced at Nicol. He was staring straight ahead, face dark with concentration. ‘So if it went wrong it wouldn’t come back at them. These people, no one would believe them. And it did go wrong – and it’s still going wrong. And one of their test subjects was … a friend.’

  They were passing a cluster of late-licensed pubs. No matter how tight the money was, people always managed to drink. Inside: noise and light sealed behind closed doors and fogged-up windows. Outside: the mouth of a close, cans glinting under dim street lights, a group of drinkers sheltering under an archway. Sometimes she looked out for faces she recognised. Women or men she’d known at the group. Give in to temptation, and the worst that can happen is you spend your life wasted in the gutter. Give in to temptation, and the worst that can happen is they inject you with an experiment that freezes your skull and alters your brain. She wanted to tell Nicol, tell him what they’d put inside her. But that wasn’t what mattered. Not right now.

  ‘Just so you know,’ he was saying, ‘I’ve already got about a million questions.’

  ‘And you’re not asking any of them, which I really appreciate. So the thing is – the important thing – is there might be a way I can help him. My friend. The rest of them too, however many there are. It’s something that Imagen asked me to do’ – she saw another twenty questions flip through Nicol’s head – ‘and it could fix everything – and I agreed to do it, I said I would – but now, I don’t know if I can trust them. How much they might have lied. I mean, I know I can’t trust them, but with this …’ She thought for a moment. An idea – a wild, long shot – was taking shape as she spoke. ‘There’s a possibility that our interests coincide, mine and Imagen’s. Could be, I do this thing and everyone wins. But I need to be sure. I need information. And that’s where I need your help.’

  They stopped at a crossing, waiting for green. Headlights shone off the wet streets, colour smeared against the dark of tarmac, the wet sky. A pub door flew open, releasing a hand-in-hand couple along with a tease of music and tumultuous voices, a gust of warm, beer-scented air. The couple cut across them, as if she and Nicol weren’t there, as if they were a pair of ghosts out walking their ghost dog. It was what she wanted: to slide, shadow-like, through the lights and the colours and the sudden brief blooms of talk and laughter. Merging herself with a crowd might not conceal them from Imagen, but it was all she could think of. A tree in a forest.

  ‘Alright,’ said Nicol. ‘Hit me with it.’

  ‘The hard bit first. Imagen’s system. Their computer network, their server. Do you think you can get in?’

  ‘I can give it a go.’ He spoke so casually, he might have been agreeing to change a lightbulb.

  ‘The stuff I need – it’s going to be seriously protected.’

  ‘Aye well, it’s lucky I seriously know what I’m doing.’

  It sounded like a yes. But she had to be sure he knew what he was getting himself into. ‘I’ve got to warn you, Nicol – if this fucks up, and they manage to trace you, they won’t let you get away with it.’

  He stopped, turned to face her. Leia’s tail swiped gently against her thigh. ‘Listen, man, I’m not some script kiddie. I know how this works. If it’s there, what you’re after, I’ll find it long before they can find me. And if I can’t do it … Let’s just say, I know folk. I’m connected. Folks with shared ideas. Folks who’ll help us out.’

  Us. She blinked as it hit her again, the relief she’d felt when he’d finally answered her call. ‘And one more thing – this should be simple for you. I need an address.’ She told him the name. ‘It’ll be ex-directory.’

  He nodded recognition. ‘Done. And if that’s your lot …? I’ll head on home, get started straight away.’

  Her thanks came out gruffer than she’d intended, and when he peeled away she didn’t wave goodbye. Instead she kept her hands pushed into her back pockets, so as not to embarrass the both of them by trying to give him a hug.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Cassie shivered as she watched Nicol disappear into the distance and the dark. Cold: yes, a bit – but what she felt, really, was alone.

  Still, Nicol’s down-to-earth presence – Leia’s too – had made her feel almost normal. In deciding what to tell him, she’d turned her confusion into a story, a simple case of cause and effect. She’d been in control of her thoughts, certain of what she had to find out, and how she would go about it. Soon, Nicol would be burning the midnight oil on her behalf. She pictured him arriving home and settling in front of his computer, waking the screen and leaning in to its bluish glow, with Leia the dog stretched o
n his feet. And once he started to dig, she’d have her own work to do.

  The thought of how Oswald had lied to her – telling her how valued she was, how much he wanted her back on the Make-Believe team – made her sick with humiliation. She’d been so ready to believe him, when really her only value was accidental: the evolved state of her biomolecular network, its active ability to connect with other users whose networks were similarly evolved. Aside from that, she was utterly expendable. Nevertheless, it was possible that Oswald had not been wholly dishonest. If the upgrade really was intended to disable the connections in Make-Believe then, all else aside, by carrying it out she would still be doing her best for Alan. That was what she needed to find out, now: the truth of what would happen when – if – she delivered that upgrade. And in the meantime, whatever was happening inside of her was beyond her control. She couldn’t let it freak her out. Even as she made to rub at her scalp, she caught herself, forced her hand back down to her side.

  A quarter past twelve, by the church clock that rose above the wet rooftops. She walked as she waited, wheeling her bike, choosing streets more or less at random but making sure always to stick with the thinning crowd – and in less than an hour her screen buzzed with a message from Nicol: the address she’d asked him for.

  The roads were quiet now – buses, the occasional cab. The lights stayed green as she travelled, riding out the bumps and the craters, swerving the worst of the puddles. As she reached the wealthy inner suburbs the tarmac flattened, and instead of concentrating on dodging potholes Cassie allowed herself to turn it in her mind: her wild idea. That what gave her value to Imagen – her ability to connect – might be turned to her advantage. By the time she reached the wide, tree-lined street that was her destination, she had a rough notion of how she was going to proceed.

  The houses here were named, not numbered. They squatted well back from the road, hiding behind trees and high hedges, turning their shuttered eyes inward. If you lived here, it would be no effort to stay separate; not like in the warren of her block, divided and divided again, filled with so many lives jammed up against each other. Here, the effort would be to connect.

  The driveway was gated, but there was no security, just a tall wrought-iron affair that opened easily to let her slip inside. The drive was gravel; she paused, plotting the quietest course over the lawn and up to the house. Was about to move when she found herself caught in a sudden flood of light. She froze, lit up with the whole of the house and the grass and the trees and the driveway – then she ducked in by the gatepost. But the house stayed shuttered and blind. The security lights had been triggered by something outside.

  Fox. She saw it sauntering across the lawn, uncaring or oblivious. In the middle of the grass, it stopped, seemed to catch a scent on the air. Her sweat, her adrenaline. For a second its eyes fixed on her, blank and fierce. It crackled with energy, its fur electric. Cassie stared, trying to absorb it – the charge, the boldness, its ownership of the night – till the dark returned, and she lost it in blinking and blindness. And when it triggered the light once more, loping towards a fringe of shrubs and the fence beyond, she was ready to move.

  She knew her route now, and she wasn’t scared to set off the lights – because no one was watching. The world of the wealthy was asleep, rolled in a fat, false security quilt. In the full glare of the lamps she darted over the lawn, stopping when she reached the gravel in front of the house. Here, she stepped lightly, her weight shifting the stones with a grating sound. Each step made her blood pump faster. She tried to move steadily, hoping that anyone lying awake would mistake her for a neighbour’s car. Hoping the house was home only to heavy sleepers. She skirted the front of the building, dropped with relief into its shadowed side – still crunching, but feeling safer here, tucked in the narrow passage between this house and the next.

  In the borrowed light from the security lamp, she could see a single ground-floor window. Small, with frosted glass, and bolted open a couple of inches; it must lead to a bathroom. She reached up, placed her hands on the stone sill, testing, but it was too high. No way she could haul herself up. She carried on down the side return till she reached a back garden that stretched into darkness. Gravel turned to silent slabs, and as she stepped onto the patio, a second security light sprang on – and her heart skipped in sudden terror. There was someone – a figure – motionless, beside her—She forced herself to move her head, inch by fearful inch, till in the black mirror of a glass extension she faced the figure. Faced herself. Only herself. Her eyes were wide in a pale, frozen face. And behind that face—She stepped away, away from her self, and whatever else that self concealed – an imaginary someone standing unseen, on the other side of the glass, looking at her through her own reflection – and backed into a heavy garden chair.

  It was perfect for what she needed. With difficulty she hoisted it into her arms, lugged it into the side return, staggering and crunching too loudly. Set it down by the window, feet pressed firmly into the stones, and climbed up onto the seat. From here, she could slide a flattened hand inside the window, push up against the lever that bolted it in place. The lever was reluctant to budge: sweating, she tugged and shoved until at last, with a clatter, it jumped free of the spike. Slowly, the pane swung inward.

  With the opening now at chest height, Cassie could heave herself onto the sill, wiggle forward till her top half was inside the bathroom, her legs still dangling outside. Ahead was unknown, details lost in darkness. The spike of the bolt jabbed her pelvis; the sill cut into her diaphragm, pressed the breath from her, and she felt the blood flowing to her head, the beginnings of panic. Then an image came to her: traitor Lewis with his flashy, flashing shorts, his helmet and his safety signals. Be like the fox, she told herself, and went for it – diving forward, hands-and-head first, onto the hard slip of enamel. A bathtub. Elbows, knees, head knocking hard on the way down, thumping explosively and shooting bolts of pain – but she was in. She was in.

  She scrambled into a sitting position, gathering herself. Waiting to see if her banging and thumping had woken anyone. Counted to thirty, then to sixty. Nothing: no creaking steps, no clicking lights, no one calling out, Who’s there? No dog, thank God, to sense an intruder and rouse the house with outraged barks.

  Her hands squeaked, sweat-damp, on the surface of the bath as she clambered out. When she unlaced her trainers, warmth pushed up from heated slate into the soles of her feet. The door handle turned soundlessly; the bathroom door opened with more of a sigh than a creak, and Cassie stepped out into a space that felt high and wide around her.

  With a hand on the wall to her left, she started along what must have been a hallway, each step anticipating collision: a child’s toy, a side table, a pile of books. But the way was clear, polished wood and an empty wall – till her fingertips nudged a door frame. The door opened easily, but inside was only a shallow, shelved space. A linen cupboard. She moved on. Reached a right angle, turned, stepped forward again. Another door frame – and here the floorboards ran on, into a pitch-black room.

  The floor became soft under her feet. A living room? It felt the size of a football pitch. After an age of shuffling, she toppled into something hard and yielding: armchair. And behind it – her outstretched hand touched a wall that gave a little. No, not a wall. Shutters. She felt for the edge, pulled them open so a dim light fell through the window, making bleached squares on the enormous rug. With her eyes adjusted to the dark, she could see clearly enough. Two armchairs, a fireplace, a corner-mounted screen above a media centre. One wall displayed books, the others paintings. And, facing the empty grate, a long and perfect sofa.

  Cassie reached for her screen, checked the time. It was almost 2 a.m. The smallest of opportunities lay open before her: call it two hours, while she was still safe. Before the upgrade was ready to spread.

  On her screen, she set an alarm for four. Adjusted the volume: loud enough to wake her without rousing anyone else. Checked the vibrate was on, a backup that would
haul her up from a deep sleep, so long as she kept the screen clutched in her hand. Then she crossed the room to the sofa, and climbed aboard. She stretched, then curled herself into an S, reached back to shove a cushion under her head and tugged a throw to cover herself.

  Up above, in the bedrooms of the first floor, Professor Morgan would be dreaming. Perhaps she would have a husband at her side, two kids asleep nearby. And that was the risk, of course. If this worked at all, it might not be Morgan she would connect to. But if she could shape this thing, direct it … There was something Oswald had said, about emotion: that you could almost say it drove the connections. She thought of Alan: how they’d matched each other in longing and relief, how they’d worn their yearning as a half-healed wound. Thought of how it had worked in the back seat of the car, of the fear that had multiplied into a terror that still made her sick to recall. If she could echo whatever Morgan was feeling, perhaps that was the way into her head. So what might be the emotional value that coloured her dreams? Positive, or negative? Smug and secure in her vast house – or anxiously alert to potential invaders? If Morgan had any kind of a conscience, she’d be sharing her bed with a cold slab of guilt, at the thought of what she was responsible for. And that was something Cassie could channel. Guilt was a wave she could surf. Just think of Finn and Ella, and Meg. Or think of Alan, every time she’d walked away. Pitilessly, she replayed each scene. In the airport. Kiss. Turn. Leave. Onscreen, three thousand miles between them. I love you. I miss you. End call. In the hospital. I’ll visit soon, in a week or two, in a month, in a while … Felt herself become dense with guilt, weighing down hard on the sofa. And then she conjured Morgan: her rumpled face, her polite, efficient voice. Imagined her dead to the world, beneath a thick warm quilt of sleep. Stretched her imagination to catch that quilt by the corner, and pulled it down to wrap around herself.