‘Not quite.’
‘It speaks. You were pretty easy.’
‘This time.’
‘This time. I see you’d like to know more.’
‘I’m sure you can see everything.’
‘Don’t try games you can’t play. But,’ it said. ‘Maybe you can. Now that you know. You feel different, don’t you?’
Just how close was it latched into my feelings? Could it really read everything I thought or felt? To feel it…living off my insides via its devices.
‘Via pure connection. We read each other. We don’t need machines.’
I closed my eyes. The pain came.
I opened my eyes, saw me in bed on the walls and Sean at his writing.
‘Encouraging words from him next: what to do if caught in our grip: question everything, we’re tricky bastards. Yes we are. Given our responsibilities: would you want it any other way? His childhood, how we farmed him. From the same batch as Chris, only the two of them left, how it could have been him snagged by Alan, growing up with you in Scritchwood. No such luck. Schooled by us instead. How he hated it. Trying to run from us, always being found. “Good instincts,” he says. “Then I realised”: instead of inheriting the mantle—like me and all and sundry before me—the tech was here. He was going to end up meat for my next time. I wanted him for his body. Then your Chris turns up.’
The walls changed: blocky footage of younger Chris and what was supposedly younger Sean facing each other across a wooden table in a wooden room with books, musical instruments, computers, other objects carved into the panels. An old man with cracked skin sitting between them.
‘Old me,’ it said. ‘Before my new leaf. And your Chris, in his first days. When we were so pleased to see him. Holding his game so close. Well-made by Alan. You both are. Is that why he dumped you so cold? To cut you from us before we could see you? On his mission? To protect you? Is that what he wants you to think? Yes,’ it said, seeing my face. ‘We suspect him of all sorts. Hoping you can help straighten things out.’
Real Chris, working against it, up to good? Plots Alan sewed into him, that I never knew about?
‘Maybe,’ it said. ‘Don’t just discard it because it doesn’t fit your sob story. Or maybe he never felt anything, maybe he can’t feel. One of those. Fiddled with, or maybe I made him wrong. Or. Something else entirely: Little by little did your Chris sense new options, find allies? Corruption. Chip off the old block. Usurpation. As I’ve done to rivals in my time. I have my theories. But,’ waving the letter, ‘let’s not ignore poor Sean for Chris again. So. Chris shows up. Another body, Sean thinks—maybe I’ll go for that realm-reared one. But me and Chris, we bond. Sean runs.’
The walls changed: an eye, under leaves in a forest.
‘“That’s how come I know roots and forests. Months at a time, I’ve done it for real.” But not well enough, right?’
Men and dogs chasing one of them through thick trees.
‘It’s hard to outrun us, as you know. Two is good: an heir and a spare. I’m growing new ones but that takes time—I don’t want to be transplanted into some baby. So. Sean ends up on my boat.’
Establishing shots of the Skidblad on the high seas, quality promotional footage. Then back to blocky fragments: one of them strapped to a bed, like I’d seen him from my peephole.
‘My smart palace. “No matter what, don’t go near.” But then one day we came for him.’
The Sean sitting on the bed, men around him.
‘A job. That only he could do. “Follow Chris,” we said. “Pretend to be Chris, see what that cur’s up to.” We smelt something wrong about Chris. “Your chance for a reprieve.”’
On the walls: ‘Sean’ in medical setting, getting devices sliced into his ears and eyes.
‘We set him up. Wired to receive and transmit. We brief him. We work on his British accent. “They explain about those sharp headaches they’ll zap me with if I go off-script.” We’d had a message, you see.’
On the walls: rain on old crooked trees in a graveyard, globe-shaped hedges, an obelisk that was a church tower. An old wooden door slowly opening to show oiled pews, candles, a worn black visitors’ book.
‘That “Cuckfield Message”. The sly bird. The Jenny 2. No one got it from Alan. We got it from Tibet. An approach. A peace offering, from the other world, to celebrate my oncoming rebirth. Impressed with my new attitude and plans, they said. Word must have got about. “Dear Don. You may finish your jigsaw. Go to Cuckfield, find a message Alan sent us years ago. We think it may be what you need, sent to us for safekeeping. Use it wisely, we plead. Only thing is: we can’t decode it. But we believe your Chris may be able to. Alan trained him, childhood games. And now he’s on your team.”’
Blocky fragments on the walls of Scritchwood, not-quite-right Chris and me digging for clues in the Fall, watched by a not-quite-right Alan.
‘Your games. We’d heard of them, a bit, during Chris’s screening, via the blab juice. “Dear Tibet. How thoughtful,” we wrote back. Sadly we were already suspicious of your Chris. Some in my circle have never trusted him. But self-love is blind. For a while.’
Old Don and a young instance in deep chat on the walls.
‘So. This kind “Tibetan” approach. What was it in fact? The keys to the crack? So I can get the supplies I need to free Earth from our con? Or a ploy, for them to reach out to their sleeper? At my oncoming vulnerable moment, during my cut-and-paste? Still, very tempting. You don’t know the materials I need, the challenge I face, the work to be done. For us all. Birth life death: who signed up for that? Who signed us up? I’m at the brink. So, very bravely, we called Chris in. Gave him the message we’d retrieved from Cuckfield. Asked him to decode it.’
On the walls: a confused-looking instance that was supposed to be Chris.
‘He claimed he didn’t know how. Would have to go home and mull it, he said. We let him. But stuck to him like a rash thereafter. No more privacy for this prince. Halt, I said, about my plans to squeeze me into Sean. Get Sean on standby in case we need him to pretend to be Chris. Do or die. A last-chance mission. Perhaps I’ll get squeezed into Chris after all. Because what did Chris do next?’
The walls became my road in rainy dark November, Chris walking to my front door.
‘Skanked off to you in London on the down-low. Killed your phone with his high access. Turned you dark so we couldn’t peep. His last free action. Because by doing so he inevitably drew our attention to you. Suicide, and killing you too. As he must have known. Why did he show you to me? You again. Pale and tampered, but you. In our realm. Under our nose. After years of thinking you were gone.’
Lights on in my flat. My empty road at night in the rain.
‘Dodgy Chris. What did he say to you there? What did he show you? We’ve drained you both, we’re still not clear.’
I couldn’t control it: I saw the scene in my mind’s eye, the first Chris in my flat yonks ago with his cheeses and chutneys, wanting his book. I tried not to think about it.
‘Yes, don’t think about it.’
Which made me see more: the pacing up and down at my bookshelves, the Polaroids, the whole index finger down his nose.
‘Which photos?’
Blurry on the walls, coming into focus: teenage me staring at him behind the lens. Generated from my thoughts? So I pictured it on the toilet instead.
‘Cheap.’ It smiled, the walls changed: Sean strapped into a tube.
‘We deploy Sean. We bring him to London, to your flat, feed him your toplines: you’re Chris’s ex and he has to impersonate Chris, play a desperado on the run. We explain we’ll pipe him all the info he needs on the fly, as and when. Stick to the truth as much as you can so it has that ring, we tell him. We’ll zap him if he says too much. Tell her it’s about Alan, we say, finding the old guy, the truth about her past, that Alan was her dad, any old cobblers. Don’t worry, she’ll be wetting her panties the moment she sees you no matter what she says. Easy meat. Just spin her
some shit.’
Sean, dirty Chris, at my front door. My eye above the chain in the open crack of my front door. Footage from Glen’s phone: me and Sean in the hallway. Sean and me on the old railway line.
‘“Some book it turned out that he wanted. They’d never heard of it. The Alphabet. Had to get it out of you, and Tal, drip it down my ear. Jesus fucking Christ, Nim, having to piece all that together, having you quiz me, your fucking Scritch.”’
The bushes, the trees, the helicopters circling above. Images of the white Nissan Sunny.
‘Our smart-dumb car. “Wired up to the gills, a self-driver they can power remotely if they have to: when my eyes were closed and I was trying to show you…Driving out of London for Brechfa. Spinning you the deets they dripped into my ears. Stopping off in those service stations,’” as the walls changed to show the lit-up Hoover building, then neon service stations at night. ‘Signals. Border checks. “Service stations is where they do their business. Giving me new instructions when we stopped, taking your blood.”’
The old powdered grey woman at the service station, her nail nicking my cheek, glittering cats’ eyes.
‘I took charge directly then. “She likes stories,” I told him. Because I knew you. “Spin her shit about the past.”’
Chalk and forests at night under the silvery moon.
‘Where I took her. Blurring the lines. The world’s a drug if you know how to use it. And somewhere out there, for Sean: the penny drops, the plans form, seeing your profile in the moonlight. “I saw you there, Nim. I looked into your eyes there and then I knew it, not all of it, but I saw it: it was YOU they were after too, you were someone I’d seen before, old pictures, your face. You were something to him once, or a version of you, that he killed once, I couldn’t place it. But it wasn’t just the book they were after, it was you too and you didn’t know it. Regrown. I felt so bad: what was I doing?” Hatching his plans. Seeing his chance.’
On the walls: me in the car in my drugged sleep, then waking up in Wales. The woman in the LOL t-shirt. Flora’s gone house, the endless green.
‘“Your friends. I’m so sorry. Rounded up and carted off before we got there.’”
Images of the caravan and down in the bunker with the Alphabet, me quizzing him.
‘Poor Sean. Tough times for him down in that bunker. We had to help him out.’
Us driving through the Welsh nowhere. Dragon flags and Welsh castles, stealing the blue car, tipping the white one into the lake, me crouched over his note in the service station loos.
‘So. His big plan. Snatch you from us—“our only chance. I’d come to care for you.” He’d come to see you held the cards. One last desperate roll. Must have known how it would end for him but you have to admire it. Chip off the old block.’
Me crouched there on the loo.
The dirty white van in the car park, us eating burgers on the berm. The blue car and the white van down the motorway from on high. Me and the Sean by the bronze horse, at the troll’s house. Me going through the chest of drawers.
‘Clever: getting you not to tell him what you found. Storing it inside you where we couldn’t get.’
The purse. The campervan and the four shrouds.
‘The convincer.’
I closed my eyes and felt the pain. When I opened them it was Sean dragging me through reeds and hedges as the skies went dark, dogs behind us. In the boathouse, under the dark water.
‘Into the water, fritz our tech, cut and shave us off, like that would work. Gouge out his tracker.’
Red blood clouding dirty water. Flecks of me and him in the black lake. Dragging me through weeds, up stream beds as dark machines whirred. Him digging our hole. Me and him entering our grave.
The screen went black.
‘We can piece together what went on down there. Stunning you with history like we’d taught him to. Illing you, the deepening bond. And maybe it was all true. The magpie bridge, the charge between us. Even with Sean, the very least of us.’
Us emerging from the ground at sunset, shitty and naked, running through trees to the water. Finding the boat, putting the clothes on, sailing down the river, his excited face.
‘His last spree.’
The water getting wider, the bridge, joining the estuary, the glittering shore. The changing sky, the rosy edge, the beginning of dawn, getting stuck in the mud. Our mad sludge through the brown on hands and knees, plastic bags tied to us. The obelisk and birds on the shore. The wreck.
The honeymoon suite I’d just been spliced from.
Ill me getting washed, making fires, eating fish, drinking water, us chatting by the porthole. Him looking after me. Us huddled in the bed.
‘Tender moments, for you both. Bonding. We measured. You knew by then he wasn’t Chris. But you ignored it. You like us in our weaker aspect. More control.’
Me asleep, the Sean crouched up at the porthole, writing his letter. Him putting it into the cold box, wadding one page into the Blue Nun with the seaweed.
‘And here his touching story ends. Lucky we were there, to fill in the missing pieces.’
Two tramps huddled on chocolate mud, walking past gasworks. The lit-up Skidblad, so ugly. Us dashing through Barrow, blocky footage quilted from cams and passer-by phones. Us in Vengeance Street, climbing in from the back. Getting in, footage Ramona had shown me. The real versions of Alan’s things, Sean not knowing. The Little Key, the Braille scrap of news leafed inside.
‘Left by whom? You Chris, before, setting this up? Tibet? Other parties? Alan himself, from years ago? What did it say, that message to you? That he ate? Don’t trust him. Don’t trust me, I think it was meant to say, right? Don’t be in this room with Don.’
Mad Sean facing me, begging, grabbing the message. The knock on the door. Sean scuttling off to his cupboard. The yellow team, me pointing, them dragging Sean out, him chomping the message. Them coming for me with the syringe.
The walls went black.
‘The hospital. My ship. You told us things but not everything. You told us what you could say. But Alan made you better than that. He hid them in you in parts: you have to pull them together in a flash. I think.’
Blocky me, scuttling through its ceilings, working those clasps and peepholes, peering down on it ‘asleep’ in its bed.
‘Sleeping Beauty. Awakened by your knock. Me now, kitted out in Sean. The Easter Bunny, the born-again king. Poor Sean,’ nodding at a grey brain in a jar on the wall.
It and I, staring at each other through the ceiling hole.
‘You rescued me. Thralled in my fun palace.’
It and I in the ceiling, scurrying from its Cwyd.
It and I in the speedboat. The storm, the fight. It nearly killing me.
‘Again.’
The rusting boat coast and boatmen. Us in cuffs in the white tent on the shore. Us in the jeep, cuffed together. The ‘medical centre’.
‘Where we prepared you.’
The drive through the desert. Us the leeching tourists with Grandpa and the men. The black rock, the eclipse, Grandpa doing his prayers. Us walking solo, it talking. It with her, it with me. Us cuffed on the camp bed. Me asleep, it leaving me there. Back in the jeep. The fort.
‘My lair.’
The bed there.
Down the well, into the tunnels with Gums. The gas line, the mask, my horrified face.
‘Your rendition.’
A black whoosh, melded with it zooming us on the bike. Me clinging on, drugged up to the eyeballs. Sitting with it on the bench staring out over chocolate sea at the lit cube. The wreck again, the Blue Nun, another one of them rising from the hulk, me in there with two of them.
‘You and Chris. I had to see you both together. Measure your interaction.’
The burning wreck, the ceiling lifting, the robots.
‘The rest you know.’
We looked at each other.
So what did it want with me now? Get me to that…flash?
It shrugged.
Take what it needed and then…
A new bad feeling: kill me again, regrow me?
‘I could.’
Regrow me and meet me again and not tell me any of this?
‘Technically possible.’
‘Has this happened before?’
It laughed. ‘Maybe. I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you everything. After you’ve helped.’
Seething red on the walls, cells splitting, crystals growing.
‘Life,’ he said softly. ‘It comes from the cauldron down there. Deep inside earth, where chemistry becomes biology. Let’s call it microbes. I need them. I need to get at them, the deep hot biosphere. Mesh it with my tech. My fake transvestite magic: that’s what tech is: my poor male copy of your female magic. Throw away the past and merge. All this secret knowledge, elite attainment. I’m nearly there. See what’s up. I know so much—we know so much. The lovely knowledge. So beautiful, what they knew. What we can do with it. Give it to everyone. Enlightenment on-demand, instant sages. Universal democratic wisdom marching up your flow channels to open your pineal eye. Use nature’s tools against nature, see the truth. Never die.’
The walls went white. Back in its studio, us on the white sofas, looking at each other.
‘This is real,’ it said softly. ‘I left Sean’s note for you. I wanted you to find it. I’m glad you found it.’
It faced me, talking without words.
‘I’m not her,’ I said. ‘I’m a dumdum.’
‘You’re you.’ Getting up from its sofa, coming over to me, taking my head in its hands.
I couldn’t stop the kiss, I could stop nothing, I couldn’t stop the feeling—of what? The room breaking, our minds melding, mashed-up images of our lives, of her. Of everyone’s lives right now, through their phones and hacked eyes, from his cams, all of us right now in this together, our love and pain and losses, blazing out together in his kingdom, sharing everything like lovers via his surveillance. Knowing everything about each other and the world till it got too much.
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