‘Sorry, what? I didn’t catch that, what is it you want?’
She said it again, thick-tongued – ‘Did we win?’ – and as she spoke, she wondered what those words were meant to mean.
‘Water? Is that it?’
The woman held out a glass. Cassie tried again to sit upright. Tipped onto her side, tried to straighten herself, but her arm, her wrist was weak.
‘Here.’ The woman put down the glass. Slid her arms under Cassie’s, clasped her shoulders, a stranger close as a lover. Heaved her gently upright, so her head thudded back against the wall, waking a deep rhythmic ache that pounded her skull. ‘Sorry.’ The woman rearranged pillows to cushion her. Lifted the water to her lips.
It tasted clear translucent blue; it ran through her like birdsong, cool in her desiccated mouth, her parched throat.
‘Thank you,’ she said, and saw the woman frown, uncomprehending.
‘You’re awake!’ A man’s head, round the door. ‘Thank Christ for that! You’ve been asleep for days, man. Unconscious, like. Really properly freaked us out. How’re you feeling now?’
‘Who …?’ Who are you, she meant. But she was supposed to know him. She gazed around the room. The man was standing at the door because there was no space. Desk. Screens, hard drives, cables. Slatted blind closed over a window. Everything hard, everything black and beige and grey.
Inside, her heart contracted into something dense, heavy and painful. She felt herself folding in around it.
No, she said, or tried to say. Closed her eyes once more.
Next time she woke, the light that filtered through the blind said daytime, and there were voices coming from somewhere close by. Not the voices from earlier, the woman and the man who seemed to be looking after her; these were unfamiliar, different in tone. A TV, perhaps, or a radio, turned up loud. She turned her attention inwards, assessing how she felt. Swivelled her head. The ache was still there, but more faintly, pulsing now at the back of her skull. She shunted herself upright, saw she was wearing a cotton nightshirt. Not hers, she thought, the wrong size, too big; and then a voice said Make-Believe, which is owned by Imagen – and in her brain, a loose wire connected. The flick of a switch – and the house of her head was illuminated. An onslaught of remembering: a blaze of images, fragments, moments, episodes that collided – jostled – started to settle. To arrange themselves into a narrative. Make-Believe, and Imagen – Oswald, and Lewis – the thing alive inside her head – Alan, Alan, Alan—
When she tried to stand, she tipped sideways. Used the bed and then the desk to steady herself. Headache balanced like a saucer of milk, she clung to the door frame while she got her bearings, then made a sea-sick walk in the direction of the voices.
On the living room sofa, dog at his side, Nicol had surrounded himself with laptops and tablets, was shifting his frowning attention from one screen to another.
‘Nicol,’ she said in a cracked-dry voice. ‘Did we do it? Did it work?’
At the sound of her words, Leia sprang from the sofa, landed barking at Cassie’s feet. Leapt up to plant her tongue once more on Cassie’s face. Nicol made to grab her collar, relief plain on his face – and what with the barking and the slap of Leia wagging her tail against the floor, Cassie wasn’t sure she’d heard him right, had to ask him to say it again.
‘You did it, aye,’ he said. ‘Or at least – you made a start.’
Later, installed on the sofa with Leia between them, they followed the stream of updates on TV, on radio, online. Read the latest communique from Imagen: unforeseen circumstances, unreserved apologies, the whole team working as hard as possible to understand what had happened. Listened to business correspondents analysing the impact, to brand credibility and the bottom line: Make-Believe systems down for a fourth consecutive day. Understandably subscribers were concerned. It had started to look less like a temporary glitch, more as if there were underlying issues – but how serious those issues might be, as yet they still couldn’t tell.
‘Surely they can’t survive this,’ said Nicol, but the words were more plea than prediction. Onscreen, the CEO was reading a statement from the steps of Imagen HQ, the kind of speech that acknowledged no problem, accepted no blame. Cassie had the queasy feeling that they were watching the first of a series of strategic steps, neat as a dance, that would take in his resignation (for family reasons), a year or two of obscurity that would allow the world to forget his fuck-up, followed by a shimmy back into some other high-status role. And chances were it would be the same for all of them. Tom Oswald. The nameless woman in the driver’s seat. Even Professor Morgan.
‘It’s not enough,’ she said.
From the corner of her eye, she could see Nicol switch his gaze from the screen to her face.
‘No,’ he said, nodding. Leant forward to fiddle with one of his laptops, swivelled it so she could see an email glowing on its screen. ‘But I reckon this is.’
It had taken four days, he told her – but he’d kept at it, all the time she’d lain unconscious. Working on the task she had set him, to break into Imagen’s server. And early last night, he’d finally made it in. Since then he’d been downloading, searching, sorting. Gathering the material they would need to set the whole company ablaze. Information on the trials at Raphael House, with their flawed consent; on the connections between Make-Believe users; on Imagen’s plans to manipulate users’ experiences.
‘I’ve drafted the email. I’ve zipped the files,’ Nicol said. Cassie leant in close, to read what he’d written. Couldn’t help but smile, when she saw the webmail address: [email protected].
‘I’ve got a pal who’s a tech journalist,’ Nicol was saying. ‘It’s all ready to go. Been ready since last night.’
‘So why haven’t you sent it?’
He frowned, like it was so obvious it shouldn’t need to be explained. Fetched his Rizlas, started to roll. ‘Not my decision to make.’
On one screen the CEO ducked his head, refused questions, retreated into the temporary safety of an office in lock-down. On the other, a cursor hovered over the send command.
Without looking up, Nicol made the suggestion. ‘Care to do the honours …?’
Cassie reached for the trackpad. Let her fingertip touch down.
‘With pleasure,’ she said.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Outside the door to her bedsit, Cassie put down the weight she’d been carrying, stretched her arm and flexed her shoulders before fishing the keys from her satchel. The weakness, the unsteadiness she felt, could be from days lying in bed and then on Nicol’s sofa. Or it could be something else, the kind of damage Morgan had warned her about – but don’t think that. No point in thinking that.
The door caught on a pile of junk mail, and as she kicked the envelopes aside to step over the threshold, a sharp fuzziness caught in her throat. Here was one good thing: Rentokil must have been at last.
The place felt unfamiliar after a week away. With the door locked behind her, the first thing she did was to pour some water into a glass and carry it over to the schefflera.
If you can take care of a plant for one year …
How long had she kept it alive now? It was looking dusty, had dropped a few leaves over the past week in protest at the sudden drought. She cleared them away, and gave it a drink. Hoped the fumigation wouldn’t have harmed it.
If you can take care of a plant, and after one year it’s still flourishing …
Next, she turned to the plastic carrier. The moment she freed the clasps and removed the lid, Pita made her bid for freedom. She dashed towards Cassie’s den, vanished behind the chest of drawers.
Cassie hadn’t intended to catnap her. All she’d wanted was to reclaim her T-shirt – the one she’d worn to Make-Believe, the one from the festival she and Alan had gone to all those years ago. She had used the keys she still had to let herself into Lewis’s place on the way back from Nicol’s, buzzing up first to be sure the flat was empty. Inside, the usual welcoming smell
of clean laundry had been replaced by a staleness. Clothes needing to be washed or left to sit in the machine. A dirty litter tray. There was no sign of her T-shirt – not in Lewis’s cupboards, not in the laundry basket where she’d left it, nor in the overflow strewn across the bedroom floor. When she opened the bedside drawer where she’d been in the habit of leaving clean underwear, she found it empty. Through a rising red mist she had checked the bathroom, seen her toothbrush, too, was gone.
He had cleared her out, like she’d never been there.
It wasn’t the way he’d erased her that had made her want to break something. It was the loss of the T-shirt. Only a scrap of worn-out cotton, but for years she had kept it, treasured it like a relic, and the thought of Lewis dropping it into a black bag, leaving it out for the bin collectors, made the blood pound in her temples. In the hallway, she had wrapped her hands round the handlebars of his dead girlfriend’s bike. A fair exchange, she’d thought. And then Pita had appeared, winding herself round Cassie’s legs, yowling with uncharacteristic urgency. Cassie had stuck her head into the kitchen, caught the smell of unwashed plates, seen Pita’s food and water bowls sitting empty on the floor. If she’d needed any justification, that was enough. It was clear Lewis was neglecting the cat as well as himself.
She had claimed the dishes and the litter tray, spent most of a tenner that Nicol had lent her on biscuits and cat-lit on the way home. Now she unpacked this paraphernalia, began to arrange it. There wasn’t much room for the tray. For the moment it would have to go down by the sink, in the kitchen zone – but once Pita had settled in a bit Cassie could keep the window open, let the cat go outside, at least through the summer. And by the time the weather turned … well, she wouldn’t be here for ever. It could be an incentive: to get a bit more space, keep Pita in the manner to which she had been accustomed.
She tipped some litter into the tray, scrunched it in her hand so the cat could hear it was there. ‘Toilet’s ready,’ she called. Pita was still in hiding. Next, Cassie set out food and water at the other end of the counter. ‘Lunch,’ she called, and gave the biscuit box a loud rattle. There was no response.
Perhaps the carrier was the problem, sitting in plain sight. A reminder of the traumatic journey. If she hid it away, Pita might venture out. There was nowhere to store it, so instead she covered it with a towel, doing her best to disguise it. Then she crouched to peer behind the chest of drawers, held out her hand and made a cat-whispering noise.
Pita stared, moon-eyed, and didn’t shift.
Cassie straightened up, walked an unsteady circuit of her flat. She collected the sticky papers spotted with cockroach corpses, dropped them into the bin. Checked the plant once again. Ended up back on the bed. She plumped a couple of cushions and sat down, hugging her knees. Leant back against the wall.
So this was what victory felt like.
Outside an argument was in progress, two men yelling at and over each other, flinging threats and insults. She heard her neighbour’s window swing open, his shouts added to theirs: Gonnae shut it or I’ll come down and make you … On her screen, she brought up the latest news clips. Turned the volume up to drown the fight.
When Nicol’s journalist friend had first broken the story, reporters had seemed uncertain of what they had. They’d led with a privacy angle, what Imagen planned to do with your data; civil liberties campaigners were outraged, the rest of the nation indifferent. But once they’d verified the results of the clinical trials, the mood had shifted. Shots of Raphael House were followed by soundbites from patients’ relatives. The implications of what was alleged were teased out by talking-head neuroscientists and synthetic biologists. A hundred thousand Make-Believers, waking up to realise what they’d been hosting: synthetically engineered biomolecules that were responsive to their environment. An unsafe product, rubber-stamped by the Department for Innovation. The story caught, and blazed.
The focus now had moved to the wave of protesters converging on Imagen’s office. Cassie peered at her screen, flicked between streams. Within the mass, she thought she could pick out different factions. Some wore badges and shirts that identified them as Campaign for Real Life. Another knot of people stood under a banner with a Liberty logo, and a printed slogan: HANDS OFF MY DATA. But a third group wore no badges, carried no banners. Women and men, smart and scruffy, young and old and every age between. All that appeared to link them was a shared expression, a common manner: something flushed, determined. They weren’t chanting, weren’t leafleting. Intensely, urgently, they were talking – to each other, and to the news reporters. ‘Wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy,’ said a softly spoken man in office attire. ‘I thought it was me, but now … wasn’t my fault … ruined my marriage …’ An elderly woman spoke loudly into the reporter’s microphone: ‘Had to sell the house, because we can’t live next door to each other now, it’s just too awkward to bear …’ Her cheeks were highly coloured, her expression one of bewildered outrage.
It was all familiar, somehow; and then Cassie realised why. Listening to these people was like sitting in the meeting room, as the pig passed round the circle. Each story was different, and each the same. But she kept on watching, listening – because she was hoping for something she hadn’t yet heard. Someone whose connection, for good or bad, was not with the neighbour upstairs, or the flatmate, or the partner who slept at their side every night. Someone who had made a connection over a distance not of metres, but of miles.
Ever since Oswald had explained to her how the connections worked, the thought had been there: quiet, stubborn. Each time it spoke, asked for her attention, she turned from it – but it kept on tugging.
The factors that had to be in place, for a connection to occur. The evolved networks. The state of sleep. The strong emotional fit. And closeness.
Close, like Lewis stretched at her side.
Like Morgan sleeping somewhere above her head.
Like the first time she had found Alan – on the garden bench outside his ward, with only a wall between them. Was that close enough? Enough, so she could call it real?
Like slumped in the back of a car parked outside the hospital, the last time she would ever find him. Reaching out through the chaos, the moment before the connections started to die – the two of them matched in fear, her terror and his. As if, for a second, their fingertips touched.
And like nothing in between.
Like nothing.
All along, the question had stayed the same. What could she call real? Those countless times she’d slipped on her receiver in her city flat, thirty miles distant from the hospital. Found Alan waiting for her, in the place they always found each other. But it was too far, wasn’t it? There was always too much distance between them.
She couldn’t bear to admit what she knew must be the truth. How could she have imagined it? The waterfall, maybe, and the sound of the rain. But not the translucent white of his skin, decorated with freckles and football bruises. Not the water-clear blue of his eyes. No: how could she have felt him so close against her that not even air could push between them? His rhythms. The rise and fall of his chest. The strong, steady kick of his heart. How could she have inhaled the warmth of him, the smell of comfort from his hair? How, how could the words he’d spoken be a script she’d made him say?
Thirty miles between them. A distance that made it impossible. Meant their shared reality could only have been a fantasy she’d allowed herself to believe.
Imagined, or real, she’d lost him either way.
She slid further down the wall, kept sliding till she was lying on her back, staring up at the slats of her bed – and when she felt the crying start, prickly and hot, she gave in and let it come. She let the tears hammer her, shove the air from her lungs till she gasped for knotted breaths, till she had to turn on her side or be choked. Till the shell of her ear was pooled with saltwater, her hair, her cushion soaked; till she shuddered and broke into messy fragments, and heard herself moaning, ‘Not fair, not fair, not fai
r …’ She cried herself empty, was calm for a minute, then her loss rose up again. Knocked her back under, drowned her in salt and snot. She bit into the wet cushion, let the waves crash over her. And the next time the tide of it left her stranded, emptied, she opened her swollen eyes, and found herself staring straight into an alien face.
A hot trickle leaked down her cheek. She dashed it away. Dragged her hands across her face. Sat up, and stretched out her legs, making lap-space for the cat.
Pita tried a paw on Cassie’s thigh, then a second. Paused, and sniffed at the hand Cassie offered her, nuzzled delicately at the drying salt. Then, halfway onto Cassie’s lap, she lowered herself into a tentative crouch.
If you can take care of a plant, and after one year it’s still flourishing – then, you should look after an animal.
Cassie stroked the cat, and the cat did not complain: and that was something. For now, that was something.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
To arrive at the Good Park without mishap was a small triumph. With her balance still shot, Cassie had avoided the canal towpath and the chance of an unwelcome bath, had wobbled instead along back roads and cycle paths.
It was becoming a routine, now. She would spend the morning here, and this afternoon she would visit Alan again. It was easier now he’d been transferred to the NHS facility. There were no sunshine-yellow walls there, no glass-walled rooms styled like coffee shops, but in spite of the drab decor, the harsh strip lights and the cracked vinyl floors, she thought he seemed just a little bit happier. A fraction more responsive. At any rate, that was what she chose to believe.
Cassie kept her eyes on the kids swarming the play-park, tried not to be distracted by a gang of dogs that were racing and fetching and kid-on fighting. It would be nice to have a companion as she waited, a Leia sitting by her side. That morning she’d woken to find the cat curled by her head on the pillow, like a Russian hat. Pita had now graduated to sitting wholly on Cassie’s lap, needling her thighs for an age before she would settle. It was a strangely enjoyable pain.
A User's Guide to Make-Believe Page 30
