An old man in a woollen cardigan holding a knife. A pregnant woman with a baseball bat. An old lady with a meat cleaver, all screaming as they waddle towards him.
The man stands his ground, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘Are you taking the piss?’ he mutters.
‘Yep,’ Roshi can’t help but reply.
‘I’m not killing them,’ the man says, looking up and round.
‘Die then’ Roshi says from behind him.
He spins to see her staring earnestly, the grip marks still evident on her neck.
‘What’s going on?’
‘Threats come in all sizes and shapes.’
‘The kids were they real?’ he asks.
‘What do you think?’
‘I think if they’re real, I’ll be killing you now.’
‘I see,’ she says in a way that suggests he gave the right answer. ‘They’re not real…none of them are but the point is threats can come from anywhere.’
‘Who are you? Who am I? Ouch!’ he yells out as the pregnant woman finally reaches him, lashing out weakly with the bat that he blocks one-handed. ‘She’s not real?’
‘She’s not real,’ Roshi says, grinning at the sight.
‘Promise me,’ he says.
‘I promise you,’ she says earnestly.
He snaps her neck then moves quickly to the old man, killing him quickly then the old woman before turning to face her.
‘I want some answers now,’ he says plaintively.
‘Do you, my sugar pot?’ she asks, leaning over slightly to look past him.
‘Oh, no, no way…they’re children,’ he says angrily, pointing his baton at the thirteen children stalking into the room. They don’t smile or weep now, but stare fixed and expressionless, devoid of anything but sinister because of it. ‘No,’ he drops the baton, shaking his head. ‘No more.’
‘Threats comes in all shapes and sizes,’ Roshi says again.
‘I don’t bloody care…oh, shit…’ he ducks from a chef in a big white hat trying to knock him out with a rolling pin and veers off with a comical look of horror then spins again as a woman in an apron whacks his head with a frying pan. ‘Oh, my god…’
Roshi bursts out laughing at the sight and sound. ‘They’re not real…’
‘They look bloody real,’ he yelps, dancing away from the woman swinging the pan at him.
‘Fight back,’ Roshi laughs.
‘It’s a frying pan…she’s got a frying pan.’
‘It’s still a weapon…’
‘Who are you?’ he yells out, ducking to avoid the frying pan again then ditching his baton to snatch the pan from the woman and a big donk sounds out when he hits her with it. ‘Oh, god, I am so sorry,’ he says quickly, wincing at the sound it made.
‘Roshi,’ Roshi gasps, covering her mouth as she laughs at the sight.
‘Roshi?’ he asks, downing the chef with the frying pan.
‘Yes!’ she laughs harder, wiping the tears from her eyes at the trail of people chasing him round the warehouse.
‘What’s my name?’
She gasps, unable to stop laughing at the sight. ‘You haven’t got one yet.’
‘Get off my leg, you little shit,’ he shouts, trying to shake a child from his leg. ‘I must have a name…’
‘I have to name you…watch that chef!’
‘Got him…can you make them stop now?’
‘I could…’
‘I’ve got a frying pan,’ he says, brandishing it as he charges at her.
She bursts out with a fresh peel of laughing, waving her hand at him while losing vision from the moisture in her eyes. ‘Okay, okay…’
A cessation of sound from the feet running behind him and he snatches a glance back to see the warehouse now empty of priests, cops, pregnant women and everyone else save for her and he comes to a stop, breathing hard and still clutching his frying pan as he watches the way she covers her mouth as she laughs. He could attack her now, but something stills his actions. A lessening of the threat. The malice gone.
‘Okay,’ she says, wiping her eyes with one hand while fanning herself with the other. ‘I’m Roshi.’ She studies him while steadying her breathing. Dark blond hair, dark eyes and a brooding, pensive look. His nose is a bit too big, his eyes a bit too deep. He’s not overly muscled either but athletic and currently waiting for her to stop chuckling.
‘Who are you? Other than a serial killer I mean,’ he asks.
‘Serial killer?’
‘You stabbed me like a hundred times…’
‘Oh, that,’ she says, waving a hand at him. ‘It’s cool though, yeah? You got the whole pain thing now?’
‘Pain thing?’ he asks.
‘Pain is fear, or rather the fear of pain is what makes it so bad. Humans are programmed to relate intense pain to death but once you realised you’d come back the pain wasn’t so bad was it?’
He goes to argue to tell her she’s a psychotic sick bitch then realises begrudgingly, that she’s right.
‘They’re going to love you,’ she adds with a frown, almost to herself.
‘Who will?’
‘In Disco.’
‘What’s Disco?’
‘Hold your horses, my strange little man…’ she smiles again, holding her hand out with an expectation that he will take it.
‘I’m not holding your hand,’ he says bluntly.
She blanches slightly at the rebuke. ‘It’s a sign of trust.’
‘Trust? I fell from the bloody sky with you holding scorecards up while I drowned then you chopped my dick off with an axe…why are you smiling? That’s not even funny…’
‘Take the hand, buttercup…’
He stands still, refusing to do as told then sighs and takes her hand in his with the full expectation that he will explode, or snakes will drop from the ceiling onto his face, but nothing happens. He’s just holding her hand. The same hand he knows so well from the fights they’ve had. The same feel of it. The same essence of her.
‘You can drop the frying pan now,’ she says then laughs when it drops from his hand with a metallic clang. ‘Coffee?’
8
He lurches a step as the world around him changes to a bustling coffee shop filled with noise and smells. The scent of coffee, perfumes, aromas of food and the clacking of keyboards as people type on laptops at tables. Others talk on phones, pressing fingers into ears to listen above the din. A counter to his side with a glass display case filled with pastries and cakes and jets of steam blast from a long coffee machine on the other side. Men and women in uniforms shout to each other, calling out names of drinks as customers give orders. Harsh New York voices mixed with foreign accents and every skin colour known to humanity seems to be in that one big room.
He pulls his hand from hers to rub his face as the dizzying sensation of the immediacy of the change sweeps over him. A hand on his arm rubbing lightly. ‘It passes,’ she says quietly.
‘Whaddya want?’ a harsh grating voice snaps the words.
‘Two latte’s, please,’ Roshi says.
He blinks and looks round again, seeing it’s real. The warehouse is gone. ‘Is this real?’ he asks.
‘Real enough for now, and the coffees here are awesome,’ Roshi says.
‘What kinda latte’s you want, lady?’ the harsh voice booms.
‘The bloody drinking kind in a cup…’
‘I gotta ask,’ the man behind the counter shouts.
‘Good for you,’ Roshi says, scathing and glaring over the counter as the man attacks his cash register like he’s trying to re-programme a satellite before the world blows up.
‘Ten bucks.’
‘What?! Ten bucks for two coffees?’
‘You wanna coffee, you pay the fuckin’ price or fuck off someplace else.’
‘Daylight robbery,’ Roshi hands over a banknote that he snatches to throw in the till before slamming it closed. ‘Did you hear that?’ Roshi asks, pushing him down past the till to the waitin
g area. ‘Ten dollars?’
He looks down to see he’s still barefoot and dressed in a blue coveralls but not one person spares a second glance at him.
‘You could wear a giant chicken suit, and no one would look,’ Roshi says. ‘I did once…where’s the lattes? I ordered them like an hour ago…’ she shouts at the counter.
‘It was thirty seconds, you dumb broad…’
‘Fuck you.’
‘Fuck you!’
‘I love New York,’ Roshi says. ‘You can have the best arguments here and no one bats an eyelid…watch this…YOU FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT.’ He blanches in surprise, stepping back at the animosity of her voice but only the closest guy looks with a mild tut and goes back to reading his paper. ‘Couldn’t do that in a tea shop in Hastings, could you, my angel?’
‘Two lattes,’ a new voice bellows from the serving section.
‘About time.’
‘FUCK YOU,’ the man at the cash register yells.
‘Fuck off,’ she shouts back, grinning as she grabs the coffees and nods for him to lead the way outside.
Yellow cabs. Skyscrapers and the air thick with fumes and so much noise. People everywhere. A cop on a horse walking slowly through the snarled-up traffic with drivers leaning on horns and gesturing from windows. An assault to the senses and he walks barefoot with people barging into his shoulders, knocking him round until Roshi guides him to the side of the pavement and hands him a cup.
‘So, my brave bear,’ she says as they walk slowly down the street. ‘I guess you want some answers yeah?’
‘Nah, I’m fine,’ he says weakly.
‘Bit noisy here though,’ she muses. ‘Fancy somewhere quieter?’
‘Quieter?’
‘Lake or beach?’
‘What?’
‘Lake it is.’
He squeezes his eyes closed as the noise and bedlam of New York is replaced with the sound of nothing and the dizziness comes on again. Nauseating and making it feel like the ground is heaving underfoot. She grabs his hand, steadying him as he looks round to the wide expanse of calm glittering water on his left and a grassy meadow on his right. A pebbled shore underfoot and clean, pure air inhales through his nose into his lungs.
Roshi sips her coffee, watching him closely. ‘Okay now?’
He nods and blasts air. ‘Sorry, bit overwhelming,’ he mumbles.
‘It’s fine. Most people puke the first time.’
‘Most people?’
‘Yep. I almost puked…I heaved a bit but then got into an argument in that same coffee shop so it kinda distracted me.’
She waits for it. Seeing him digest and process what she just said.
He decides, at that point, that he doesn’t like being baited so resists the urge to reference what she just said and sips his coffee, instead. He knows it’s coffee. He also knows he has had coffee before but it’s all still blank.
‘Touché,’ she says with that wry grin. ‘Either that or you missed my massive clue.’
‘I didn’t miss it,’ he says.
‘Good for you, lumberjack. Okay, poky…where do we start? It’s a bit messed up cos normally you do stage one and then go into Disco, have a chat, learn a few bits then do stage two but I changed it.’
‘I don’t know what any of that means’
‘Look at me,’ she says. He looks at her. Feeling the invasive reflex of someone staring hard into his eyes but finds himself absorbed in her hazel iris’s flecked with green and the freckles on her nose and such is that familiarity between them that only then do they both become aware she is still holding his hand from steadying him when the world changed to the lake.
She finally lets go and reaches up to feel the pulse in his neck, detecting the steady beat. He isn’t sweating through panic or anywhere close to hyperventilating. He can take it.
‘I’ll tell you…’ she says. ‘You’ll never know who you were or where you’re from. You’ll never know your name or what life you had before this. None of us do. Every person in Discovery is the same. We’ve all been taken from lives we have no knowledge of and can never go back to.’
‘Did you do that…’ he falters, frowning as he thinks. ‘The falling and…’
‘We call it The Circuit. Everyone does it, kind of, sort of,’ she winces, half smiling. ‘Anyway, moving on…most people do it once, you did it three times, unbroken. Like I said, normally you do the circuit then you go into Disco for orientation then…’ she waves a hand in the air. ‘I’m repeating myself, but I need you to know all this. I put you straight into the start of stage two…the warehouse with the kids? That’s the start of stage two…I wanted to see how you’d react without knowing anything.’
‘Why? I don’t understand…’
‘I’ll explain in a little while. Do you understand what The Circuit is?’
‘Yes, no…I mean…where did I come from?’
‘I just said we don’t know. I don’t know where I came from or anyone else. No names, no memories…no nothing. We’re all the same.’
He listens intently with more questions that demand answers, and more demands that create more questions with claxons sounding in his head through the fog of utter confusion that none of this makes sense. Then, he remembers he has coffee and takes another sip through the hole in the lid while staring out across a beautiful lake. It’s warm here. He can feel the heat of the sun and smell the scents of flowers, the water too, the humidity of it. He lowers to a crouch, picking a pebble up that feels completely real. He smells it. Scenting earth and stone. He feels the weight of it. The smoothness that suggests it was in running water for a long time that has rounded all the bumps and ridges off. He drops it, hearing the noise it makes and the action as it rolls then settles. He picks it up again and throws it into the water, watching it climb as it should then reach the apex of the throw where gravity takes over and brings it down to splash into the lake, and he sees the ripples gliding out in ever-increasing circles.
‘That stone so needed to go back in the lake.’
He smiles at the absurdity of her comment and looks up at her. He’s killed her. She’s killed him yet here they are.
‘Okay,’ she says, still staring at him. ‘The world we are in now is a construct run by an artificial intelligence.’
The world changes again and they’re standing in central London with red buses going by and black taxicabs tooting horns. Madame Tussaud’s famous waxwork museum dominates the street they’re in. Daylight and a sudden change in temperature. It’s chillier with a biting wind that makes him shiver as he fights the nausea.
‘Are you listening?’
‘I am,’ he whispers, ‘I am,’ he says louder, nodding at her to show he means it.
‘We’re all from either the twentieth or twenty-first centuries judging from what we all know of the world around us. What we recognise, what we can name and label and understand…We don’t know when the AI exists. She won’t tell us. Do you understand? Nod. Say something. I need to see you are…’
‘I heard you,’ he says.
‘Look at me,’ he does as bid. Her tone, now firm and formal is such that it’s nigh on impossible to not do as she bids. The world changes around them again and fills with voices shouting, phones ringing and men and women in weirdly coloured jackets staring at huge screens on circular podiums in a vast area enclosed by booths. People everywhere and he has to step closer to her for the press of bodies and again her arm is there, holding him steady. ‘Where are we?’
‘Stock exchange,’ his knowledge is instant but with the frustration of not knowing where it comes from. ‘New York, I think…yeah…it says there…NYSE…’
He lurches into her as it changes to a wide-open place and a tremendous heat bearing down. He swallows, grimacing at the sensation and closing his eyes for a second.
‘Where are we now?’ she asks softly.
‘Taj Mahal, India,’ he says, looking round. Another change. Another place. Nausea and dizziness. ‘Italy…Venice�
��er…the square…Saint…Saint…’ he clicks his fingers as she watches him, her eyes lingering on his. ‘Saint Marks!’ He looks to the tower at one end and the columned sides filled with men, women and children all going about their lives. It’s so real. The feel of it. The whole of it.
‘Are you listening to me, my tiger…’
‘Why do you do that?’ he asks, looking back at her. ‘Why do you call me those things?’
‘Because you don’t have a name yet my handsome little teapot, that’s why,’ she grins that grin. The one he hated when she was killing him. ‘What you are seeing now is part of the construct…’
Another change and they’re back to the lake with the calmness it imbues.
‘We don’t know where our real bodies are. We don’t even know if we have real bodies. We think we have real bodies because we exist, but it’s not proven, and the Old Lady never answers a bloody question.’
‘The old lady is the AI?’
‘You got it, my smart little smarty pants.’
‘What?’ he can’t help but laugh again, a soft chuckle and he widens his eyes, shaking his head slowly. ‘Isn’t there a movie or…’ he searches his mind, feeling rather than thinking.
‘Lots of movies, lots of books, lots of fiction and all sorts of things from popular culture.’ She shrugs, nonchalant and casual. ‘Life imitates art. Art imitates life. Is your head fucked yet?’
‘Just a bit.’
‘Guess what?’ she says, leaning in to whisper as though sharing a secret. He swallows again at her closeness. Scenting that fragrance of cherry blossom in the air around her, feeling her breath on his cheek. ‘None of that is the weird part. Want to hear the weird part?’
The world changes to a huge open area. Early evening. People everywhere. The nausea hits, the dizziness inside that makes his eyes clamp shut.
‘Look up,’ her voice in his ear. He looks up, squinting to see an enormous airship lowering through the sky. Nazi swastikas on the rear fins. Instantly recognisable. His heart races. His breathing coming faster as she moves closer. ‘May 6th, 1937…’
A Town Called Discovery Page 5
