by Matt Crawley
Chapter 3
17 days later. 10:25AM
Jim never minded his job. There was always a lot of conversation, but the work was never undone. Everybody had their part to play and kept the machine steaming along. It struck him odd that out of the twenty-three who worked in his office, seven were absent and there was no explanation. Not only that, but no one else seemed to be interested in where they had gone.
"You'll never guess, I was at the Madmen concert last night in town, I got free tickets!" "No way, I've always wanted to see them." "Well you should have written them in your favourite music list on your S.N. profile, tickets went to everyone who did that." "I swear my social life has gone to another level since I joined that site, there's parties all the time, and you meet so many lovely people." "Darren met a girl on there and he's got obsessed with her, and he hasn't even seen a picture of her! How weird!" "I think it's sweet. People get to know each other without being so judgemental." "I'm not judgemental, I'm just saying it's weird for him!" "Hands up who wants tea." "On Saturday Christoph...you know Christoph?" "Yeah" "He set up this big do on Saturday, it was so much fun, and he says he's gonna do one every Saturday, cos you know, people don't know anyone these days. People are so unsocial." "I don't know how I keep my energy up". "Look, Pete's so funny in this photo, come and look!"
Jim's stubbornness had kept him from looking at or even asking about all the social gatherings organised through SoulNet, but this morning the conversations were unnerving. He knew that Kate was not at a concert last night, as Jim was at out at the pub that time with her husband, and he was unaware. Also the Madmen had split up as a band years ago. There was no concert. He knew Dawn was not out on Saturday night because she had her daughter's school play to watch. And Pete was not able to be at any recent gatherings because he was in hospital with a broken leg he got from a terrible football injury which everyone had seemed to have forgotten all about. But how was there a photo?
He walked over to Dawn's computer screen and saw the pictures. It was in a dark place, hard to see if it was outside at night or indoors with bad lighting, but it was clearly Pete, and he was having fun. A few other people from the building were in the picture, all dressed in their favourite gear.
10:11PM
The TV was blazing some kind of trashy monster film with terrible special effects and a script that you could work out before the actors' spoke the lines. This was Monday night, Monster Movie night on the Scare channel, and a growing tradition in Jim's flat. He was sat next to his flatmate Jez, who was always unkept in appearance and lifestyle, but easy company. Jez was munching aimlessly on a coleslaw sandwich.
"Hey, I think I've seen this one." Jez mumbled, spilling mayonnaise on his shirt. "If I'm right, the scientists think the alien king is hiding inside someone's ear, but he's actually behind the military guy's eyepatch. So they do all this open head surgery to find the alien, for no reason. You don't see it coming! It's really messed up." Jim opened up a beer.
"If you're right? If you're right, anything could happen. Don't act like you actually enjoy this rubbish!"
After a while, Jez turned on his laptop and caught up on some emails. These films were never worth paying much attention to. Just background noise. Jez then instinctively checked his SoulNet messages. Soon the explosions and frequent commercials melted together in a syrup of sound, and Jim dropped off to sleep on the sofa.
1:48AM
He stirred, after what felt like a couple of seconds of sleep. He was hot and sticky - he hated sleeping in his work clothes. Quickly his eyes opened - the room was filled with a hot pink light, shimmering as if shone through a diamond. He looked at the TV screen - it was an old black and white gangster film. Wait...where was the light coming from? It engulfed the room and seemed to come from all directions.
Then he looked to Jez, who was sitting on the far end of the sofa. The laptop was open, and pulsing with pink, so bright it was almost white. Something was wrong with his flatmate. Jez was sat upright, eyes wide open, unblinking and intense. His mouth hung slightly open, a slight trail of saliva ran from its corner.
"Jez? Hey Jez, come on, turn that thing off, it's too bright." Jim groaned, kicking his friend in the leg. Jez didn't flinch, his attention never moved. "Come on Jez, s'not funny." He chucked the TV remote lightly at his flatmate's head. Nothing. Jim heaved himself up and stood behind where Jez sat. Jez was unaware of Jim's presence in the room. What Jim saw next was almost too much for him to comprehend.
On the screen was SoulNet, but the image was fragmented, like a spiderweb, changing shape all the time, moving like a living thing. A bizarre looking code filled the screen, like a mixture of hieroglyphics and space invaders. All the time moving, pouring out, a tsunami of mindless scribbles. Jim couldn't say a word. Then the code seemed to ........'notice' him. It stretched and skewed all over the screen, like it was trying to reach out to him. Jim felt frozen to the spot, overwhelmed with feelings ...every feeling all at once. A strange sense of belonging, of excitement, of beckoning. Then in the corner of the screen he saw a message that he had written to Jez earlier: 'SOULNET DOES NOT EXIST!' At this message he panicked, and closed the laptop shut. The room became cold and dark again, and Jez dropped backwards, like a puppet whose strings had been cut. He started breathing heavily, like he was asleep. Jim wasn't sure whether himself was awake or still half asleep - too many late night horror films perhaps. He went to bed leaving his friend to rest.
7:50AM
Headache. Thump. Thump. His mouth felt full of filth. Jim had had a restless night, and the alarm clock hurt his brain. Then he remembered the pink coloured...whatever happened last night. He remembered Jez' face, like his mind had been eaten away.
He stumbled into the kitchen and turned the kettle on for a strong coffee, three sugars. Jez was sat at the kitchen table, sipping at dark tea. "Morning Colonel."
"Hi...did you sleep okay?" Jez rubbed his greasy head.
"Yeah...when I finally fell asleep."
"What happened? Were you okay?"
"...Yeah, it was a great party last night. You should have been there dude, there was so many awesome people...can't remember very much, I probably drank a lot. Got home quite late, sorry, hope I didn't wake you up last night." Jim put his coffee down with a clunk.
"Jez, what are you talking about? You were here, on the couch. You were on your laptop all night....I was with you!" Fear crawled under Jim's skin.
"What the hell are you talking about Jez? I was there. Ask people. There's about a hundred photos of it on SoulNet. Have a look!"
Jim walked to the living room and flipped open the laptop. As he hadn't turned it off, it opened at the website where it had closed. It was SoulNet, and the screen had details of a SoulParty of the night before. The button that said 'Accept Invite' had been pressed, presumably by Jez. Jim clicked on the photos button. Jez was right. There were hundreds of photos of this party, and Jez was surrounded by other people he knew. He was having a great time, and wearing the same clothes he wore last night. The date was yesterday.
"In a couple of weeks there's gonna be the biggest one ever, it's a Global Gathering of S.N. users. In the streets of every city in the world. Pretty epic, you should do it!"
Jim had had enough for one morning. His head hurt even more than before. He threw the coffee down his throat, pulled his clothes on and ran out the door without a word. His sense of comfort and reality was falling to pieces. Whatever happened last night may have given Jez fake memories. Perhaps the photos were an impressive way of making it all seem so much more real. Or perhaps Jim was losing his mind - maybe he just didn't want to accept that everyone was having such a good time.
