could I have been so stupid. Jesus, what if Mark saw me. I gulped the rest of the whisky down to help me concentrate, and poured myself another large glass, this one to help steady my nerves. Then I sat down again and concentrated on the mirror. It was roughly every thirty seconds, nothing, nothing, nothing, a flicker and I was visible, nothing again. But the flicker was so quick, I was sure, absolutely certain, in fact, that the tiny glimpse of me was not recognisable; it was just a flicker in the air and then gone. And after another couple of glasses of Chivas, I was positive that I was right. Not good, though, by no means great or something to be proud of, and we would have to sort the design out, although maybe, I have to admit, I thought, just maybe in the ghost business it may be quite good, a freaky glimpse of the beyond. Maybe I could adjust the software to allow a flicker on and off, it couldn’t be that hard, I would talk to Benny and ask him to see what he could do. I’d think up some excuse, like prototype testing, for the rationale for it. Old Benny wouldn’t mind, he wouldn’t even think to ask, probably, he’d just see it as a challenge. We picked him up from geek school, one of those kids who spend twenty-three hours a day at his computer, hacking into the White House, probably, or building a connectivity route to Mars or whatever these kids do these days. I imagine we probably rescued him from a life sentence in Alcatraz, and he wasn’t interested in cash, either. We gave him a room with a two hundred and fifty six inch flat screen taking up one of the walls, his choice of any films, games, whatever he wanted, a connection to a twenty-four-seven fast food delivery service (anything he wanted) and promised not to try and persuade him to do any exercise, eat healthily, or indeed even wash, and he was happy.
His parents didn’t mind, I think. We had tentatively approached them and had an awkward conversation until we understood that they didn’t actually realised that he was still living in their house; they thought he had moved out two years ago, and had put the high level of consumption of chocolate down to very fat mice, and the disappearing funds from their bank accounts down to internet fraud on a grand scale carried out by their Romanian cleaner, which I have to say seemed a little racist to me, but then your expectations aren’t that high of a family who lose track of their son when he moves into the basement.
Benny didn’t seem to mind, anyway, he was glad to get out of the basement and have a proper room with proper electricity and running water, and he loved the projects that we gave him, as long as he wasn’t in the middle of an epic battle on World of Mines, or whatever the latest craze was. The biggest challenge with talking to Benny was staying in his room for long enough to a – grab his attention, and b – stand the smell. It had become quite bad, but we had ignored it because he didn’t mind and we just wanted to keep him happy, until it started seeping out and being noticed outside his room, and then outside the department. It came to a head when X, our CEO (as you know, as I’ve mentioned), was stopped on the steps outside our grand building by some dim-witted politician who thought himself a bit of a comedian. He commented on the smell that seemed to be emanating from our building, and quipped that we were probably taking the essence of the Ministry for Rural Affairs slightly too far.
It was going to be quite tricky, Benny was a little touchy when it came to discussing things like hygiene (or most things apart from programming) but something had to be done and therefore diplomacy was called for. For some bizarre reason, it was decided that I would be the best person to tackle this (which said more about the sort of people we employed than my own diplomatic skills) and therefore I found myself, not without trepidation, knocking on the door of his boy cave and waiting for permission to enter. There was a little huffing (use your imagination) and then a Wait a minute, followed by a gruff Hello. I tentatively turned the door handle, wiped my now sticky hand on my expensive trousers and walked into the room. It smelt like any teenager’s bedroom, only a thousand times worse, one that never had had a cross mother or father fling open the window in frustration, one that hadn’t been cleaned for years (probably true), one that had absorbed the putrid flatulence of junk food heaven without remorse (also true) and the hormonal extracts of a growing boy (again true). I caught my breath as Benny glanced at me and offered a small smile. He had always liked me, I thought, we had always got along. I had been responsible for his induction, such as it was, after he had been extracted from the parental home and set up with us, and we had talked about video games, consumed light beer and discussed the perils of the internet (none, in his opinion) and its virtues (Godlike). I would have liked to have thought that it was those chats that created the bond between us, but I was kidding myself. He talked to me as he would talk to any adult who, in any case, didn’t understand anything but thought they did, and wanted to espouse their imagined wisdom to kids who just didn’t want to listen. Why? Because they already knew the answers, saw adults’ mistakes and knew how to correct them, had unshakeable opinions on everything and didn’t see why they should have to compromise on anything, or do anything that they didn’t feel like doing.
A bit like grown-ups really, I guess. Except, of course, all those things did actually apply to us. I know, I’m sounding bitter, aren’t I. It’s not as if I even have kids, so yeah, get off my soap box, right, I know. My point was only that I made the mistake of thinking we had made a connection, whereas in Benny’s mind the only connection was my ownership of the key to his boy palace. Other than that, what was I? A surrogate father figure? Not an enviable position when his own father had forgotten he existed and his world view was narcissistic to a point. This may be why our conversation about the cleanliness of his room didn’t really go far beyond the basics.
How goes it, Benny?
Grunt.
You think maybe we could let someone in here to clean up this room (noticing pizza stuck to wall and strange movement underneath it).
Humph. Grunt. (Focus on destroying enemies in video game).
Ah. Great? (uncertain voice, backing out of room as I saw the pizza start to slither towards me).
Nah. (Grunt. Fart.)
(Close door behind me, lean against wall of corridor in a sweat of relief)
My report to X, instead of admitting failure, suggested another strategy. In the three minutes it took me to walk back from Benny’s room to X’s office, I had come up with at least five possibilities, the foremost being to drug Benny when asleep – rejected off hand, for two reasons – Benny would notice his room was suddenly clean, cue fits of rage, etcetera etcetera, and second, he never slept. Both fair points, and I guess one of the reasons he was CEO – a sharp mind. But to give him his due, he did have sympathy for my failure and didn’t ask me to go back in there; instead we sat down together and hatched a plan that involved sending divers into the sewerage system that ran under the building, getting them to drill microscopically small holes leading to Benny’s room, and setting up a ventilation system that extracted the dirty air, and replaced it with clean, fresh air. You may think Benny would have noticed that – cue fits of rage again - and that is a fair point, but we had thought of it and had created a terrifically simple addition – the fresh air pushed back in was scented with an artificial smell of gone off food and stale breath, whose intensity we lowered fractionally every day, gradually weaning Benny off his addiction to filth. It also contained a kind of antibiotic bug spray, which we hoped would stop Benny from falling (too) ill. It also had the added benefit of killing off any new life forms that may be emerging in his room and that may have a taste for human flesh – always a potentially hazardous issue. As a pleasing side effect of this, we were able to sell the bug spray to a number of unnamed countries’ prison systems, though we declined to ask exactly what they were going to be used for.
I digress. Benny’s ability to solve programming challenges was critical to helping me develop the VDE in the first place, and I was sure he would resolve the current glitch. In the meantime, though, I debated whether to stay in the hotel and risk being caught… did Mark know about the VDE? I really couldn’t remember,
but then I had been absolutely sure that I hadn’t told Louise, and yet she knew. What if he saw me, realised and then challenged me about it. I could just imagine it now, his histrionics about how he couldn’t believe his best friend had let him down, how he wanted me out of his house, how he would ban Louise from seeing me, you get the gist. I played the conversation in my head and laughed to myself, imagining him calling me his best friend! And meaning it! I couldn’t stand the guy. True, we had known each other for a long time, but the only thing that kept us in touch was a mutual lack of having any other friends, and a somewhat difficult choice of dubious company over loneliness. True, I knew other people, like Carl, but calling them friends was a real step into the unknown. I think Mark and I were both surprised, no, shocked, when we both met women who were willing to spend time with us, and even more so when they both agreed to marry us, although I have to concede that Mark proved more successful in that department, avoiding the ignominy of being divorced because you’re just too dull not to be. And Mark just couldn’t see it in
An Innocent Man Page 11
