‘OK, fair enough. I think I trust her, too.’
He promises to contact me once Donato has got to the cottage and checked in on what he finds. But then he Spacetimes me two hours later, while I’m on the train en route to Dorking in defiance of his advice. I edit my environment so that he thinks I’m still at home, but as it turns out, he’s on a plane with a bad connection, so we only hear one another’s voices.
‘Well,’ he says. ‘Donato’s there now. She died in her sleep. The will is just as you said it would be. So I guess that means everything you dreamed was true. Congrats, Charlie. You have an evolving piece of tech in your head that can be operated remotely.’
‘So it would appear,’ I whisper into the link. ‘I’m a monster, Roman. A monster in progress, no less. I will probably be accused of killing O, but I didn’t do it. The Agency ordered it. And of course I can’t prove that!’
‘Do you think the Agency and BigSky are one and the same?’
‘I don’t know what to think. Every time I think I know anything, I’m wrong. But I’m not giving up. I’m going to get to the bottom of the Agency.’
‘Do me a favour and stay out of trouble until I can get back, all right? This is a very fast-moving situation. Maybe you should contact Meera, though.’
I already have. I’ve asked her to come round tonight, but I don’t tell Roman that. I like him a lot, but he’s not going to be able to keep up with me from here on out.
‘Take care, mate,’ I tell him. ‘Good luck explaining things to Donato.’
‘You take care, too.’ He pauses, and I remember how tenderly he looked after me when I was being sick. ‘There will be better days, Charlie.’
‘Than this? Yeah, I bloody hope so.’
It’s late afternoon when find Daphne in the weight room of her care home. She’s benching half her own body weight, which I’m fairly sure I can’t do.
‘You’ve come to interrogate me,’ she says, sitting up with an effort and mopping the bench thoroughly with a little gym towel. ‘Let’s go and get one of those protein shakes. Strawberry for me.’
‘Daphne, I’ve come to give you some news. About your sister.’
‘I notice that she isn’t with you. This is the second time. I suppose she’s ill again. Would you like banana?’
‘Sure, banana.’ I’m not sure if she’s forgotten what she did or if she’s dissembling.
We sit on Swiss balls sipping our drinks.
‘She passed away yesterday. She died in her sleep.’
Daphne’s hands are trembling. She gives me her drink and puts her face in her hands. When she takes them away her eyes are still dry, but she continues to shake. Maybe her arms are just tired.
‘I suppose that’s a blessing,’ she says in the end. ‘It was her time. She didn’t suffer.’
‘Daphne, about the last instruction you got. From the Agency. Did you save it?’
‘I never save them. Of course not.’
‘But you still have the birds that came home to you, right?’
‘Yes, absolutely. They’re in the dovecote. Let’s look. I’ll show you the one that brought me the last message.’
We go up to the dovecote, to the familiar smell and shuffle of pigeons, but even though they have come in for the evening, she can’t find the one that brought the message.
‘I remember it clearly,’ she says. ‘It was one of the birds we had as children. All black with a star on his back. O called him Mephistopheles. He was always my favourite.’
‘You had this bird as a child?’ There’s a feeling like a cold hand on the back of my neck.
‘Yes, well, now it’s a ghost, isn’t it? It’s a ghost pigeon. It was here yesterday, where’s it gone?’
‘So it’s possible that not all of the pigeons were strictly real.’
‘That depends what you mean by “real”. The Agency isn’t real, is it?’
‘Erm . . . I don’t know. Is it?’
She laughs and gives me a little push. ‘Well, you’re an agent now. You should know. There was a bird. I saw it. I read the message. I followed instructions. But I can’t find it, I can’t find the one . . .’
She’s becoming distressed now, and I make her go back inside.
‘I thought I was getting better,’ she says, and her voice is half a sob. ‘I’ve been remembering people’s names. It’s Tuesday, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, it’s Tuesday. The pigeon may have been sent to you in a dream, Daphne, and that’s why there’s no evidence. Do you record your dreams?’
‘Me? No, never. O didn’t trust that BigSky, you know. I don’t use any recording devices. I’m not even sure if I want to remember my dreams. They can be quite dark at times, you see.’
I still don’t know if she’s aware of killing O. I have to come out with it, I can’t back off.
‘Daphne, do you remember being in O’s dream with me? At her place in France?’
‘Now, are we supposed to feed them or were we just checking the water?’ Daphne says.
‘Why would the Agency want O dead?’ I press.
‘Next time you come, bring my sister’s pigeons. Someone will have to look after them now she’s gone.’
* * *
The flat is too quiet when I get back. Feeling wobbly, I close O’s bedroom door. Can’t believe she’s fucking dead, how dare she check out on me like this? I kick her desk, but that only hurts my foot. So I wodge up her favourite afghan into a ball and throw it. This is even less satisfying than it sounds. Eventually I end up crying into Edgar’s fur. Luckily Meera soon shows up with food. And tea. I sniff my tea but for obvious reasons don’t drink it.
I fill Meera in on O’s death and the details of its circumstances. She says, ‘How awful!’ and makes the right noises in the right places. She listens intently to my account of O’s justification, shaking her head and looking pained at the worst bits. Maybe she’s acting, but I don’t think so.
‘So,’ I finish, trying to sound brisk but coming off a bit desperate, ‘there’s a thing growing into my skull and I gather you’ve been talking to it.’
‘I suppose you could put it that way. Through a computer feedback interface.’
‘So all of your extended experimentation on me, via BigSky, via Little Bird, all of your using me as a crash-test dummy – was there a plan to eventually tell me what was going on, or was I slated for destruction, too, once you’d got what you wanted?’
Meera shakes her head emphatically. ‘I was brought in to try to improve your condition, Charlie. To improve conditions for all of the people who had been introduced to the agent. And I think I have done that. These crimes that you’re talking about, that’s not me. I’m too busy working in my lab to plot anybody’s destruction, even if I were so inclined. And I’m not so inclined. I didn’t know that O was doing these things. We didn’t speak much, to be honest.’
‘But you knew you were working on me and Daphne. You knew you were getting in our heads, literally and figuratively.’
‘I have to gather information about how the agent is working, and I have to interact with it. That’s the advantage of using a tiny engine as opposed to a drug. I can work on it while it’s in situ, sending back information continuously via your headware. Now, if my efforts are translating into some sort of dream event for you, well . . . I wouldn’t know.’
‘No, you wouldn’t. Because you’ve never been in my position. But I’ll tell you one thing. I’m not the same person I was when I met O. I’m not afraid of anything you can throw at me because fundamentally you don’t have the courage to put yourself on the line like I do. So if you want to carry on with this work, then I suggest you think about what you’re prepared to do to get on board with me. Because I’m your partner now. I’m not going to let you take over. And I’m done running. I’m so done, Meera.’
She sits back and folds her arms across her chest. Clearly she’s not in the habit of being scolded.
‘By tweaking in situ, I mean I cured your narcole
psy,’ she says.
I flinch. ‘You mean you spiked my tea.’
Her eyes flash defensively. ‘Only the one time, when I came to the flat, and only because O told me you didn’t know and asked me not to upset you. Before that, I gave the revised agent to O and I had no idea what the arrangement was between the two of you. If it was involuntary on your part, that’s on her, not on me.’
‘You should be ashamed of yourself.’
‘Well, maybe I am! I am ashamed. I’m sorry about how it went down. Either way, you should find you don’t have trouble staying awake any more. I expect something like that will be life-changing.’
‘Thank you,’ I say angrily.
‘You’re welcome. And you’re right: I don’t have the courage. I don’t even go on roller coasters and I don’t watch horror films. So kudos to you for what you do, Charlie. But I’m not your enemy.’
I snort. ‘You tricked a mentally impaired woman into killing her own sister.’
‘I did nothing of the kind.’
‘Why don’t I believe you?’
She shrugs. ‘I’m a neurotechnologist. I work to improve people’s lives, not end them. Daphne did what she did. I didn’t ask her to, and I don’t know why she did it. Don’t try to assuage your own guilt by blaming me, Charlie. O has put us both in deep trouble, even in dying. According to your friend Roman she was a manipulator and a serial killer by proxy. Were you going to stop her?’
I don’t have an answer for that. Well, the answer is no, but I’m not about to admit it.
‘The point is, we’re safe now,’ she says.
‘We’re not safe! A lot of people are dead and it’s still not clear why or who is to blame. There’s a dreamhacking bot sitting somewhere on the BigSky server and it can make people sleepwalk, if so instructed. I’d say our work is just beginning.’
‘Yeah, about that. Now the phone calls are starting to make sense.’
‘What phone calls?’
‘Today. Security people from Sweet Dreams calling and wanting to talk to me, but it was all Bernard’s department. I couldn’t answer their questions. They are convinced that people using Sweet Dreams are vulnerable to being hacked, and they’ve just released the beta version of The Dark Side.’
‘How do they know about the dreamhacker bot?’
Even as I ask, I know the answer. Roman and Donato told them, either for some sort of payout or for conscience – it doesn’t matter. I can’t even blame them. If BigSky are going to expand liminal programming, then they’ll need to know about the problems – not least of which is the possibility that someone is exploiting the Dream City, someone calling themselves the Agency. And for all the people I’ve suspected of being the Villain, for all who are dead, I can’t be sure we’re done yet. Not until I find out who gave the order to kill O.
I don’t think it was Meera, but who knows? She and I are the ones left holding the baby.
Meera only shrugs. ‘Does it matter? They were bound to find out, and now BigSky realise they’ve got a big problem. They want me to consult. They want us to consult – we’re partners now, as you say.’
‘Here’s the thing, Meera. You know me. But I don’t know you.’
She folds her arms, tilts her head. ‘I’m a doctor, Charlie. I swore an oath and I have a responsibility to serve the well-being of others. That’s all you need to know about me.’
‘Here’s what you need to know about me: I don’t believe anything anybody tells me any more. Also, I snore.’
She frowns. ‘Is this a joke?’
‘No. No joke. Think of something to tell your family because we’re sleeping together tonight.’
Awake
It’s getting late when Shandy emerges from the cloud to help me do this thing with Meera. She deactivates Rodney at my request; even so, her presence lends a slumber-party atmosphere to the proceedings. Meera thinks all of this sleeping-together is some kind of weird initiation rite, contrived so that I can convince myself she’s harmless – and to some degree, it is. I’m going to get inside her head and find out what she’s really made of.
We drag my mattress into the sitting room and haul out extra blankets and pillows. Shandy has taken all the sharp objects away. I’m leaving nothing to chance.
If O was really the mastermind behind everything, then no one will try to hurt either of us now. If Meera herself was the mastermind and somehow manoeuvred O into taking the actions that she did before killing her in the name of the Agency, then I’ll find that out soon enough as well. She won’t be able to hide from me. The fact that Meera’s willing go along with this says one of two things: either she’s keen to convince me to cooperate with BigSky so she can keep Little Bird going, or she’s looking to mix it up with me in dreamspace. As unlikely as the second option feels, I’ve been wrong about nearly everything so far. I’ve got to be ready for anything.
She tosses and turns. Finally falls asleep around two. The last thing I remember is the image of Shandy curled up in a chair under a reading lamp, absorbed in an illustrated book about the history of pubs. Then I close my eyes and slip into Meera’s dream.
It’s a strange intimacy, dreaming with someone you barely know. So backwards to find out someone’s deepest insecurities and wishes before you even have a clue how they like their coffee or where they grew up. But I doubt it’s much of a secret that even in her dreams, Meera is to be found in her lab.
She’s working on a 3D simulation of the agent as it embeds in the skull and invades the white matter. She’s using code to mimic the effects of drugs on different receptors to predict the agent’s behaviour in vivo. The simulation is covered with flags and notes so that it looks more like a map of a battle than a blown-up section of microscopic tissue.
‘How does sleepwalking fit into this?’ I ask her quietly. She looks up, sees me and frowns.
‘I don’t know.’ She turns her attention back to her work. ‘We haven’t actually identified the mechanism that shuts off R.E.M. atonia. You’d think it would be simple, but it isn’t. There may be more than one mechanism. We know that our agent can switch it on and off, but not how.’
‘Do you always dream about your work?’
‘Yes, if I’m thinking about it, which I usually am.’
‘There must be something else on your mind,’ I suggest, and nudge the walls of the lab with my awareness.
The setting abruptly changes. We are in the HQ of BigSky, which manifests in the Dream City in the form of a literal head. It’s a giant transparent thing plopped in the middle of the grey plane of the Sweet Dreams platform. Inside there are workstations and stairways just as in a real building, but everything is transparent so that the Dream City is visible just through the walls. It’s chaos, with crowds of people moving around us like schools of fish. Meera and I are dressed in navy and grey suits, respectively, and she is carrying a burgundy attaché case.
‘We have to present our ideas about how Little Bird and BigSky can best cooperate to stem the security crisis,’ Meera says. ‘This will include our advice to minimize sleepwalking risk until we can pinpoint the cause. We have to convince BigSky to roll back the beta and run more safety checks on Sweet Dreams. It’s sensitive because of the IP conflict; they didn’t like losing the IP to Little Bird and will try to manoeuvre us into sharing it with them. The fact that you carry the tech in your head will help us. They can’t claim to own you, after all.’
I’m not sure about that, but I don’t argue. This is just her dream. I’m not interested in her subconscious worries about BigSky, I’m looking for signs of what’s really going on in Meera’s mind. I need to know her intentions. We are just about to step into a meeting room when I suddenly realise Meera isn’t with me any more.
She’s collapsed. She’s lying on the floor and there’s something on top of her. A kind of shadow, a formless thing with a white face.
Not this a-bloody-gain. The Creeper. I throw myself down. I try to peel the Creeper off her but I can’t. I roll Meera onto
her side, recovery position, and that’s when I see the keyhole in her back.
Before my eyes, the Creeper turns to a black stripe of smoke and flows into the keyhole with a shrill whistle like a steam kettle.
It has her.
‘Who are you?’ I shout at the Creeper, shaking Meera. ‘What are you, damn you?’
I can’t open the panel in her back. I put my body on top of hers so she can’t stand up, but she is strong. She throws me off. In real life, if the Creeper has disabled her R.E.M. atonia, then she will be out of bed by now. I’m just praying that Shandy is paying attention.
‘Meera, wake up!’ I get in her face, slapping her to get her attention, but she shoves me away easily. I stumble and go down on the spongy grey surface . . . Wait. What spongy grey surface? I thought we were in BigSky HQ . . .
That’s when I notice we aren’t indoors any more. We are out on the physical platform itself, a featureless grey ledge built above the canals and around the skyscrapers of the Dream City. The platform has been hung with silk banners for the great unveiling of the Sweet Dreams expansion. There’s a huge greyscale crowd standing around us acting terribly entertained. Some are laughing for no fathomable reason. But they are all wearing morphine masks and none of them can see.
I get to my feet and run around in front of Meera as she sets out across the platform.
‘Meera, wake up! You’re sleepwalking. The dreamhacking bot is controlling you. You need to wake up in the dream and take back control.’
‘I have to get off this platform,’ she tells me earnestly, pupils wide. ‘It’s not safe here. Sweet Dreams is going to be attacked by monsters from below.’
‘No, Meera, we’re fifty metres in the air, you can’t just walk off the platform.’
‘I’m a bird,’ she tells me, spreading her arms wide. ‘I love flying dreams!’
‘Whoa . . . stop. Don’t play around. Are you telling me you’re the little bird that’s been telling Daphne who to kill?’
‘Little Bird is my company. Come on, I want to fly while this lasts.’
Dreams are full of puns. I’ve seen a little bird in the Dream City twice: once Meera turned into it, and the other time it was a robot bird conspiring with Martin Elstree to make me kill myself. The bird could be a representation of Meera’s efforts, through her device, to control me and Daphne – up to and including the infamous ‘ghost pigeon’. But if that’s true, why is Meera being hacked right now? If she is the mastermind, she has no need to sleepwalk herself to death.
Sweet Dreams Page 29
