TWICE

by Susanna Kleeman

  ‘It’s me, Nim. Chris, for real, come to get you out of this. We got no time. We got to run.’

  British accent, weird monotone. As if, for fuck’s sake, moving towards me, pulling down its neoprene to show me its hands in the candlelight. Ten whole fingers, no stump, different eyes, huge knife sheathed at its waist, the rod over its back. Purporting to be my real Chris from Scritchwood. Like fingers proved anything, like anything proved anything, like I cared, trying to morph into something else since its game was up due to me reading the letter it probably wrote, fluid monster still playing with me, batting off my hot flame and biro.

  ‘Come on, no time, we got to go, there are tunnels, he’ll be here soon,’ grabbing my wrist, starting to pull, trying to wrest the flame from me. ‘That letter, though. That you were reading?’

  That I was reading when it was still under the wreck, piercing the hull with its rod or whatever. That it could never have seen, except through its screens.

  I closed my eyes, pulled against it. ‘Blah blah blah,’ I said. ‘La la la.’ But then I stopped because there was a new noise coming from above me: something clambering around up there on the metal, stomping on the deck up there, knocking its five and six, opening the hatch.

  Cold wet air, rain and salt sea. I couldn’t help myself: I opened my eyes. Crouched up above us at the open hatch, lit by lightening from behind: another one, in motorbike leathers holding its helmet. A thunder crash. The thing held our gaze.

  ‘Nim,’ Leathers said, as I looked from one to the other of these two same freaks, wondering if they’d cancel out each other like in old stories their tech had wiped out.

  ‘Nim,’ Wetsuit said, pulling me away from the hatch as Leathers moved down the steps towards us, jumped down so it was down in there next to us, reaching for me too.

  Me there with the two of them.

  Fuck this shit. I had no power but there’s always power. I dropped my biro, pulled the crumpled note out of my pants, held the wad to the candle in the bottle in my hands so it set alight.

  They both moved towards me, then dodged the burning note and candle and stood back as I dropped fire to the floor of dry seaweed and sawdust strewn by their set-makers. The flames spread, catching newspapers, mattresses. The floor started to burn. Our cauldron, getting hotter, filling with black smoke: would we rise as new-borns from the ashes? Or would something happen and would that deed tell me something? Can’t argue with physics: only so much finagling when you’re on fire, right?

  Sure enough the flames and smoke rose, burning feet, and something happened: the sound of sea and storm clicked off, there was a new noise as all the portholes smashed in at once and white smoke, dry ice, got puffed in. Then the metal hull ceiling above us lifted up as if sliced off: got hoisted up and shunted clean to one side. To let sand pour in from above, masses of soft yellow sand, not brown coastal mud, dousing us and the flames and smoke. And then a silver claw from a crane above us, from nowhere, reaching down to pluck Leathers up and away.

  Gotcha, old Daddy.

  They left me and Wetsuit down there, for the big-legged robots jumping in over the cut walls. I stood waist-deep in sand, slightly singed, let those robots grasp me, pull me up. They cradled me high towards where the hull ceiling had been, where there should have been rain and the stormy night sky of the Barrow coast—the roar of sea, the shine of stars, satellites, streetlamps, power stations, wind turbines, the twinkle of Roa Island. Instead there were echoing sounds and another roof, very high, from which dangled electric rigs, messy power cords, like in a movie studio. We were indoors, somewhere, under the roof of a vast set. And in the middle of this roof, high above me, was one electric light, set into a large metal circular panel I stared up at as the syringe pierced my neck.

  48

  I woke sat in a white chair in a big wooden port-holed cabin bobbing at sea sparsely furnished with white chairs and sofas arranged round a square black table. I was in a cosy white tracksuit and trainers. I felt thirsty and undrugged.

  On the opposite sofa: two of them, both in white tracksuits. One held a black leash attached to a collar round the neck of the other one. The collared one was thinner and bald. The collar had metal spikes on the inside. Ten whole fingers, they both had.

  ‘Hello,’ the one holding the leash said gently. It had longer stubble, looked clean and washed. ‘I got fixed,’ it said, jiggling its index finger, smiling softly. Beyond it were round windows, blue sky. I closed my eyes and got a shocking pain in my head. I opened my eyes: the pain went.

  ‘Sorry,’ Leash said. ‘Bear with me. I want you to look. I want you to see. Like I’ve been seeing. The two of you together,’ nodding at the collared one. ‘For the scrapbook. My two Scritchwood pieces. Crunch out the truth. See it with my own eyes. So I can know for sure.’

  I closed my eyes again, got the same pain, opened them again, stared down at the blue-and-white patterned rug like the collared one was doing. Seemed the best option, under the circumstances.

  ‘Persian,’ Leash said, about the rug. ‘Be careful, it might infect your thoughts. That’s a joke. So. Did you enjoy my chain of adventures? Planned by my machines, sometimes on the fly. Pushed beyond the bounds of believability, at times, I thought. But you enjoyed yourself, I noticed. So. The three of us. On the level now. At last. I’m sorry. Total transparency now, between us, you’ll have to take my word for it. So,’ leaning forwards, at the very edge of my vision. ‘How does it feel? To know?’

  To know what? More bunk? I didn’t move or say anything. If you don’t know what to do then do nothing. As I no longer needed Alan to tell me.

  ‘He taught you well. And you’ve done well, under the circumstances.’

  Like it could see my thoughts, nanocams inside me, sniffing plants, helmet probes.

  ‘Or just my hunch.’

  ‘What’s this, my appraisal?’ Mainly to see if my voice worked, which it did. And what was I going to do, sit there like a turnip while some freak had its jollies?

  Unless by interacting I could without realising tell it things it needed to feed hedgehogs, crack the planet.

  If it hadn’t done that already.

  If all that was true.

  It smiled kindly at me. ‘Want to know?’

  It sounded warm and friendly, accessing my mind.

  And was it even it or some other demented instance?

  Even here, even now, you can’t stop your thoughts.

  ‘I’m me,’ Leash said. ‘On the level. Reborn Don, in poor Sean’s body. Technically immortal. I’m totipotent, these days. Perpetual Don. Maybe I’ll come back as you next time, I’ve got the bits. Why not. Personal development. Really see things from your perspective. And this is your Chris,’ yanking the collared one staring at the floor directly in front of me so blood beaded at its neck, the collar’s inner spikes. ‘Our captive. Since he switched off your phone and came to your flat. Clamped and squeezed for facts ever since so we could pass ourselves off and discover what’s up. I don’t think he’s been acting in our best interests. I’m hoping you might help us work it all out.’

  It let that settle: real Chris acting against it. The current story, if I’d got that right.

  I closed my eyes, the pain came.

  ‘Sorry,’ it said. ‘This can help. A bit. If you’re going down that path.’

  I sensed it get up from the sofa and come close to me, its breath, the pain ratcheting. I opened my eyes, the pain flooded away. It was holding something out to me, brown things on a white saucer.

  Mushrooms. No thanks.

  ‘They do help.’ Still so close to me, almost touching. ‘How does it feel? Beyond the pain and anger. To know what you are.’

  What a freak. Almost panting, like a junkie.

  ‘Why ask? Check your read-outs.’

  ‘Go deeper.’ So it could feel too. Hooked into me via its techniques, leaching off my feelings. To feel what?

  ‘So you can access her again?’ That other me. Sudden sharp hot knowledge. />
  ‘Ah yes.’

  ‘I’m not her.’

  ‘Tell me about it. But we make do with what we got, right?’

  I woke again in what seemed the same cabin, strapped into what seemed the same chair, in the same outfit. The collared one was gone. Only it sat opposite me, or another identical instance, in a black tracksuit this time.

  I looked down at the rug.

  ‘Want to see her? You, I mean. You again, the first you. You but dark. Is how they hid you from me. When I had my watch out for her sequence. Fiddled with you after they stole your DNA, spliced you blonde and blue-eyed in some lab I don’t yet know about. Guised you then hatched you in some womb or incubator when I thought you dead and buried twice, the second time among your people. The princess in disguise, hidden in tubes and motor park homes. Created not begotten. Made, like we are. Doesn’t that feel weird?’

  The floor I stared down at changed, became a screen. Instead of wood and the rug there was a woman’s face. My face, except different: darker, laughing soundlessly in a desert with her dark hair blowing over her face. Wearing khaki desert clothes, forties fashions.

  CG.

  ‘Real,’ it said gently from its sofa. ‘On the level, this conversation. You have my word. Radical honesty. Permanent sun. Scorch the dross away. I’m not proud of myself. I was young and dumb once, even me. Lost in feelings. I’ve done lots of things. I’ve done everything. How else do you learn? I wouldn’t do it now. Nature’s trap: wisdom only comes with age, when it’s useless. No way to act on what it takes a lifetime to understand. Built-in failsafe, so we don’t get to peep behind nature’s curtains, have to keep on starting over. Not anymore. My spanner in nature’s works.’

  The dark me by the black rock in the desert, touching its hot surface, shocked by the heat, her wide smile.

  ‘Her, on our tour. Just before the end of the big war. With the AV we had then, kept from dumdums. So weird, isn’t it, to see yourself? You’re like me: another instance, something she could never understand, being an original. You and me, we’ve got more in common, than she and I did, in the end. We can understand each other, now that you know. Weird, isn’t it? When you are several. Which one does it best?’

  I closed my eyes, felt the extreme pain, opened them, looked up. The bobbing stopped. What had seemed to be a wooden cabin on a boat at sea was a studio, the walls were screens of immense detail changed to show the same video it had playing on the floor. Soundless huge images of dark me in bare desert, by the fort, naked in bed. Her in warm clothes by what looked like British sea and headland, her next to a huge earth mound at night, lit by the moon. Her up high by a window in what looked like old-time New York minus today’s skyscrapers, chatting to someone who looked like a younger Alan.

  ‘Old friends. He brought her to me with her jigsaw secrets. But she had plans.’

  From my sofa I watched dark me and young Alan, their silent chat above the glittering lights of New York in the olden days. Then more of her on top of croissant dunes in the desert, smiling at us, at him holding his camera. Two journeys, this thing’s proxy, using me to replay its past.

  ‘Like you were using me. Our honeymoon. Not that we were married. We were married, though, in ways you can’t understand. Down those old roads to the dragons. What she loved: old stories, lost lands. My secret hoard, assembled at great price. Who gets to hear all that, my morsels? The world’s secret history, how we snared you. Whispering it down his ears to bewitch you like I knew it would, like it had before. Like they meant me to? Our double bind. Poor lost Sean.’

  Her smile and face, that was like my face except darker, filling the screens and floor.

  ‘Younger than you are now, at her end. Organic you, unclipped, not some botched realm copy cooked up by me after I killed her and was sorry. But dud too, in her own way. So cunning. You can’t imagine. Our bond, despite it all, though she denied it. What she wouldn’t do. But just another hole in the end. Nature’s trick. Love’s their con, the glue of their enterprise.’

  Who’s enterprise?

  ‘The big question. Help me know.’

  The walls and floor changed: stippled patterns it pointed to with red arrows.

  ‘You and her. See the difference? Your cross-sections. Kind of the same, outside, except for the colouring. But different neural paths. See how complex her patterns are? And here’s you: a simpler proposition. More base, enthusiastic. Realm-coarsened. Which has its pleasures. How does it feel? To be compared and known, inside and out? Shamed, but that makes you tighten and wetten a little, even here, admit it. Saucy wench. I got the data. Truly naked. Calls itself a lawyer! Are you strong enough to own it?’ It laughed gently. ‘Are you heck.’

  The walls and floor changed back to huge dark me smiling on the walls, bright teeth I didn’t have, brown flashing eyes that weren’t my eyes.

  ‘What does anything matter, when you’re with that? When you’re young and dumb. When you’re old. The optics and the hook. But she was sent to snare me, feed me lies. The thrill. Playing me, playing her own people, up to her own game. Turned on by deceit though she wouldn’t admit it. Electricity beyond our machines. Only one way to control it.’ The walls went red. ‘I regretted it immediately, of course. I kept a swatch. I had plans.’

  On the screens: the Ring of Seeds, Alan’s big iron ring shaped like a castle. Opening up to show the dark cube inside, its cylinders full this time with new glass capsules.

  ‘Our vault, our spiral castle. Your cradle. Where I put her DNA and my DNA. Where we camped out for the next time. Her and me, you and Chris. My mistake, once: no duplicates. Kept just one of her, fetishising her. Like she was so special. And maybe she was. But who loves like that anymore? So they stole us, Alan now in league with her people on their island. Always was? Stole my ring from my finger, replaced it with a clone ring. Took the bit of me and the bit of her that are you and Chris. How? When? While the ring was being made? While I slept? During some procedure? Who knows, though I tried. Inside job. And then they fiddled with you, to hide you from me. Kept him the same. Hatched you both, grew you in Scritchwood for their reasons. Took me years to find out. For years do you know what I wore on my finger instead?’

  On the walls: two piglets, one black, one white.

  ‘I had the last laugh, when I found out. I usually do.’

  High waves on the walls smashing into a palm tree island. Bodies and settlements in the water.

  ‘My hedgehog in action. But you weren’t there.’

  The walls changed: their rough blocky fragments of Scritchwood Covert done from nanocams but different this time: no BMWs, nothing modern, our bad old rotting static homes. Winter skies, Ann Wynn hanging up grey washing, Alan in sleeping bags on the torn Chesterfield warming his hands at the brazier. Chris and I racing down the Fall.

  I held my breath, to see my past. Nanocams even then?

  ‘No. Patched from Chris’s memories, your hypnosis and our renders. It isn’t magic, it just looks like magic. My hard-won tech.’

  And in fact it wasn’t quite right: the faces, the clothes, the trees, errors masked by the roughness of the footage.

  ‘But near enough, right? Look at them. Mom and Pops. What were they up to, using you like that, growing you up there with my copy? Throw away what you think of me. See it clear. Just as bad as me. Worse than me. Weaponised you. Look at you: a built lure, a maimed tool, the poor copy of a fake, reared for this moment, crammed full of info. Never allowed to be yourself, never knowing what yourself is until I told you. Poor old Nim.’

  It had something in its hand: a wad of singed paper scrawled with biro. Sean’s note, supposedly. Sean’s note that I’d set alight, that had got burnt.

  ‘Not his note. A copy. That I’ve had singed, theatrics. A real note, that he wrote you, his sad story, coming clean. That he lodged in the cold box, directed you to from the bottle. Of course we found it, while preparing. We find everything. You know that. We found it and scanned it but we left it, wanted you to find
it. Were you clever enough, what you’d do if you did. Who you are really, when the shit hits, the quality of your mettle. If you’re worthy. If I’m worthy. What you are, given her.’

  It unfolded the note, began to separate out its pages. The walls and floor screens changed, rough blocky footage of the wreck lit by streetlamps, scabby me asleep in the smeggy tramp bed, one of them writing furiously at the porthole. Sean, in his rags and coat.

  ‘“To Whom It May Concern…”’

  49

  ‘We know this first bit: If you’re reading this he’s gone, I scraped him out, cut-and-paste-job, I’m wearing him, Don redux. And you’re her grown again. Then apologies, for duping you on my orders, at first. Till he tried to redeem himself by disobeying. Noble Sean,’ patting himself. ‘Think so? Think again. Chip off the old block, except without the knowledge and vision. Sold you to save his skin. Till he smelt bigger game he wasn’t up to. Sucked you into this, did what I told him. Took you into dark woods to meet your old love.’

  It dropped a page to the floor, scanned the next.

  ‘Not much here. Fears you won’t believe this letter is real, that you’ll think it’s one of my fakes. It’s real, I swear. Fears it’s me reading this instead of you, insults for me if that’s the case. Telling you how very ancient I am, how close to death, how desperate, on the life-support. Either him or Chris’ll be the sacrifice now the tech’s right. Some touching stuff: you asleep near him in the bed as he writes,’ nodding to the images of me on the walls. ‘His admiration, the weird bond you’ve formed, how he wishes he could say all this to you. In some deep way your sequence and our sequence are magnetic. Would you admit?’ It glanced back down at the ‘letter’. ‘He wants to tell you everything now in person but,’ and here he looked back up at me, ‘“I can’t now, you’ll freak out, I need things simple. Till we find whatever we need to find in Barrow, it’s too much to say now, I’ll tell you everything after.” Using you just as much as I have, in the end.’