by Kim Curran
The doors clunk open. I let myself out and watch the car pull away, wondering how much that secret could have been worth.
The steps up to my house seem too large, too steep. I make my way up them with my eyes scrunched tight, trying to keep as much of the information at bay. I press my hand to the cool key reader and the door swings open.
‘Good evening?’ Zizi is standing in the hallway. I hadn’t expected her to be home. She’s wearing her bright blue kimono again, but it can’t hide the pallor of her skin. She looks tired.
‘Why aren’t you at work?’ I say.
// WORK SUCKED TODAY. // WORK IS THE CURSE OF THE DRINKING CLASSES. //
I try to shake off the messages coming at me.
‘It’s 22:30, Petri. Besides, I gave myself the day off,’ she says, as if distracted by something. She’s staring at me.
I stare back. Not because I want another argument, but because of all the data she’s giving off. Her name, birth date, address, work position, articles she’s written, books she’s reading. All of it, flowing out of her, for the world to see.
She strides towards me, takes my face in her hands and stares into my eyes like she did with Kiara. ‘Petri, what’s happened? What are you on?’
I shake her away. ‘Nothing. Leave me alone.’
‘If you’ve started to do drugs, we can talk about it, Petri. I experimented myself in my youth—’
‘Don’t!’ I screamed. ‘Don’t you dare make this about you. I’m not doing anything. I just want to be left alone.’
‘Petri,’ she gasps as I push her out of the way and charge up the stairs to my bedroom. ‘Petri, I only want to help!’
I pull the door closed. Only it’s not emphatic enough. So I open it and slam it again. This time a picture falls off my wall.
I throw myself onto my bed and I can’t fight it any more. Great sobs of self-pity rack my body. Fear too. I’ll admit it now I’m alone. I’m terrified.
‘What have I done?’ I keep saying, into the darkness of my pillow. ‘What have I done?’
But I know what I’ve done. The question is, can it be undone?
After the tears stop coming I feel empty, but better for it. Like I’ve cried away some of the rage I’ve been holding back for the last few hours. I risk rolling over and opening my eyes. The rush of static doesn’t shock me so much. Although with each new thought that pops into my mind I get another surge of images. Like my brain is falling down a rabbit hole of searches.
// FEAR. AN EMOTION INDUCED BY PERCEIVED DANGER. A BASIC SURVIVAL MECHANISM. IN EXTREME CASES OF TERROR... //
// TERROR IS A STANDARD LITERARY AND PSYCHOLOGICAL CONCEPT APPLIED ESPECIALLY TO GOTHIC LITERATURE... //
// THE CASTLE OF OTRANTO IS CONSIDERED THE FIRST GOTHIC NOVEL, WAS INSPIRED BY A NIGHTMARE... //
// URGH. I HAD THE WORST NIGHTMARE WHERE MICE CAME AND ATE AWAY MY TEETH! //
// THREE BLIND MICE. YOU THOUGHT IT WAS ABOUT A TRIO OF UNFORTUNATE RODENTS ON A MISSION TO FIND OUT WHERE THE HELL THEY ARE. IT’S REALLY ABOUT QUEEN ‘BLOODY’ MARY AND HER BRUTAL... //
It’s endless. Sucking me in deeper and deeper.
I don’t sleep. I lie awake all night, staring into my feed, following the static wherever it will take me. I search for any kind of pattern in the noise, something I can hold on to; a point of fixture. But it’s all so random. So many lives, all pumping out all this information about themselves. Some of it so intimate I feel guilty eavesdropping. Do they know? I wonder. That their inner most thoughts can be seen by strangers? Do they care?
The rat, which I’ve yet to name, is lying in its cage on my bedside table. Its eyes still staring dead ahead. Every now and then it reaches out a tiny pink tongue and takes a sip from its water bottle, sharp teeth scratching on the metal tube. Other than that, it doesn’t move.
Dawn finally comes and I get up and get ready for school. Maybe it’s not a great idea, but I can’t stay here. Not with Zizi around.
Frank is waiting in the van to take me and the other kids to school. They’re all too young to be chipped, so they’re giving off no data. I’ve never been so relieved to see them.
I sit in my normal seat and try to pretend everything’s OK. But after five minutes of driving through the streets there’s too much information.
‘Have you got a hangover?’ the boy from number ten says. ‘You look like my brother does when he has a hangover.’
//... DEEP FRIED CANARIES WERE THE HANGOVER CURE OF CHOICE FOR THE ANCIENT ROMANS. //
‘Shove off,’ I say closing my eyes to shut everything out.
‘Hangover, hangover, Petri’s got a hangover,’ he sings. The other kids join in. They sing it all the way to school.
I let them all file out first and eventually peel my head away from the back of the seat in front of me. There’s that moment of hope, where all I can see is the floating three triangles in my peripheral vision and I think that maybe it’s working, and then the static hits me again.
Frank gives me a weak smile. ‘Overdid it a bit, Miss? Don’t worry. We’ve all been there.’
I ignore him and crawl out of the van and head for the school gates.
School kids swarm around me. The little ones are running, their too-large rucksacks bouncing on both shoulders. The older kids are in less of a rush. They let their bags trail by their knees and walk slowly, their eyes drifting, checking their feed for the last time before they enter the blocker zone.
The blocker zone!
I start running towards H block, the data and images blurring as I do. I slam into the wall, ignoring the pain in my hands. When I open my eyes, everything has vanished. It’s such a relief, like throwing down a heavy rucksack after miles and miles. I lean my head against the rough, red brick of the school wall, never more glad in my life to be there.
‘Petri.’
I slowly peel myself off the wall and turn around. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ I say, as Ryan walks towards me.
‘You look terrible. Is... is everything OK?’
I consider telling him about how it’s not working. How I have no control over the information that’s flooding my mind and that I think I might be going mad. But that would involve trusting him.
‘Sure. It’s fine,’ I say. ‘It took me a while. You’re on OK then?’
‘Yeah, all back to normal.’
Amy waits behind him, her arms crossed. ‘So I see.’
Logan was right. Ryan was using me. Using me to get to my mother. I should feel betrayed. Angry. All I feel is more relief. One less thing to be confused about.
He glances over his shoulder at Amy. ‘Look, Petri, can we meet after school to talk? So I can explain?’
‘Ryan,’ I say, laying my hand on his arm. ‘It’s fine. There’s nothing to explain. You two are perfect for each other.’
‘You’re something, Petri, you know that?’ He smiles at me and then leans forward and whispers in my ear. ‘And I meant it about the kiss.’ He brushes his lips against my cheek and then walks away.
Amy is still staring at me when he slips his arm around her shoulder and guides her around the corner. Her high-pitched complaints fade away.
When lunchtime comes, I avoid leaving the safety of the blockers. I wander the corridors reading notice boards I’ve never paid any attention to before. There’s a sign-up sheet for the school play, with a list of twenty names already on it. Information about the school fireworks display tonight. The debate club has been cancelled.
I find an empty classroom and gaze out on to the lawns outside. It’s bright and warm for November, so most of the kids are eating out on the grass. The years sevens are running around, playing games: red-faced boys kicking footballs, girls playing tag. Year eights and nines are mostly sitting around in small groups, bitching about the other small groups if my memory serves.
Year eleven, my year, are all sitting around in large groups. I look closer and realise there are three, distinct circles. There’s what I think of as Ryan and Amy’s group, with K
arl and Pippa and the other kids like them. Then there’s Dave Carlton’s gang and hangers on. Kiara is in the final group. She tried to stay with me but I told her it would be better if she left me alone. A lie, but I can’t bring all of this down on her. She’s watching some girl I half-recognise from the school play last year wave her arms around telling everyone a story. Although I don’t think many of them are listening. I scan all three groups and notice that they’re all sitting quietly. Happily. With the younger kids, fights and squabbles are breaking out all over the place. But among years eleven and, everything is peaceful. Another thing hits me. No one is outside a circle. No one is alone. Except for me.
The school bell rings and everyone stands up and heads back to their classes.
17
WALKING OUT OF THE BLOCKER bubble is like walking into traffic.
I’ve waited at school for as long as possible, hiding in the library, telling any teacher who asked that I was working on a project for coursework. It was the cleaner who finally kicked me out because he had to lock up. I’ve missed my ride home with Frank and I have a full twelve hours before I can return. Twelve hours at the mercy of the static.
Each step I take away from the school feels like I’m walking deeper and deeper into the sea of information. Like pushing away from the shallow end. If I’m not careful, I may drown.
I walk as far as I can with my eyes closed, feeling ahead of me with my hands like someone in a trance, sliding my feet across the cracked pathway. I take a peek every five steps or so to check I’m heading in the right direction. But there’s only so long I’ll be able to keep it up. Only so long before I fall.
‘So it turned you into a zombie. I did warn you.’
When my eyes adjust, I see Ethan leaning by the school gates. He’s wearing a brown hoodie and straight-legged jeans. He’s giving off no data. Everything around him is—the gate behind him, the tree pressing against the school wall, the tag sprayed by some school leaver last year—but there’s nothing from him. He’s like a patch of shade on a scorching day.
‘Something like that,’ I say, too exhausted for an argument. Too afraid that he might leave.
I’m so tired and all I want to do is sleep. I flinch as I’m bombarded by a new message, a Polish woman singing her child a nursery rhyme.
// ACH, ŚPIJ, KOCHANIE, JESLI GWIAZDKE Z NIEBA CHCESZ — DOSTANIESZ. //
Glaze’s translator kicks in instantly.
// OH, SLEEP, MY DARLING. IF YOU’D LIKE A STAR FROM THE SKY I’LL GIVE YOU ONE. //
Ethan straightens up and reaches for me, as if to stop me from falling. I take hold of his arm and use it to steady myself.
‘Can you walk me home?’ I say.
Ethan nods.
‘How bad is it?’ he asks, after a few minutes.
I can’t lie to him. ‘Pretty bad. But I’m sure it will settle down. I just need time.’
// THE TIME SPONSORED BY WHITEINC LIFE INSURANCE 17:48 // REGISTER TO VOTE BEFORE DECISION TIME! //
‘Logan got anything to say about it?’
‘I tried calling him. I got his message.’
‘Hey, this is Logan. I’m out changing the world,’ Ethan says, in a passable impression of Logan.
I laugh. ‘That’s the one. I don’t know if he even checks his phone. I mean, who does?’ I tried sending him a message via Glaze, but all I got was an error message in return.
We walk on more, Ethan still holding my arm. I want to lean into him. To place all my weight on his strong shoulders and let him carry me the rest of the way. I settle with letting him guide me.
‘Have you thought about going to the police? You can’t go on like this.’
I imagine Detective Lee and how smug he’d be if I went to him. ‘What would I say anyway? Hey, you know that blank you put in my head? Well, I had it illegally hacked and now I can see everything that everyone’s putting on Glaze, like all the time, and I think it’s driving me mad?’
// I’M SO MAD TODAY // THE ACTOR WHO PLAYED MAD MURDOCK IN THE BELOVED A-TEAM SERIES... //
‘Is that what it’s doing to you?’ Ethan says, stopping to look at me.
I suck in my bottom lip, fighting back the rest of the words. I nod.
‘So what do we do?’
We. The word echoes. How can such a small word make me feel so much?
‘There’s nothing we can do. Just wait and hope,’ I say.
We start walking again. ‘Like The Count of Monte Cristo?’ he says.
‘What?’
‘“Until the day when God will deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is contained in these two words: wait and hope.” It’s from The Count of Monte Cristo. My favourite book.’
I’m seeing images and text and video all connected to this book, but I don’t want to tell him that. I want to hear it from him. ‘Tell me the story.’
And so we walk, and he talks. More than I’ve ever heard him talk before, telling me the story of Edmond Dantès and his grand schemes of revenge on the man who stole everything from him. It’s the most animated I’ve seen him. I could listen to him for hours. In the brief minutes that he talks, the static softens.
There’s a loud bang, and I practically jump into Ethan’s arms.
‘It’s OK,’ he says, laughing. He wraps one arm around me and pats me on the back, a little awkwardly. ‘Just a firework.’ He points up at the sky where a trail of glittering lights are falling back to the earth. ‘We’re nearly there.’
‘I don’t want to go home,’ I say, looking up at him through the haze of firework images exploding behind my eyes, as people all over the country stream their experiences. ‘Not… not yet.’
I wait for him to argue, to tell me I’m in no state to be out, and he’d be right. But he doesn’t.
‘Let’s get a better view,’ he says and we start walking back the way we came.
The office floor of Gruber & Gruber looks different at night. The shadows thrown by the lights outside are angular and biting. Filing cabinets have become rock faces, tables looming monoliths.
The windows almost seem too big. Unreal. They make the scene below look like a backdrop projected onto a screen rather than really there. The whole thing is like stumbling into a dark cinema as the film has already begun. I stub my toe on a beige lump of office machinery as obsolete as this room.
Despite Ethan being here I feel completely alone. Perhaps even more so because of his presence and his stillness. It’s exactly what I need to make up for all the messy humanity that’s been going on in my head.
I feel so tired, stretched out too thin. How was it Kiara put it? Like a pancake person. I don’t know what’s left of me anymore.
I can sense them all there, in my head, scrabbling away, demanding my attention. But at least here, with Ethan next to me and the river stretching out beneath us, it feels quieter. Neither of them demands anything of me.
I take a seat on an old chair and spin in gentle circles. It’s easier in the dark too, I realise. If I can’t see things, neither can Glaze. Is this how it’s going to be from now on, me hiding in the darkness? The irony is sickening. I did it because I wanted to feel connected to people, to be a part of things. Now, I want to stay away.
Ethan is silent as always. Sitting on a table and staring out into the night. I’m starting to think he’s right about the chip, that I need to get help, but I don’t want to admit it. The adjustment period is only supposed to be a few hours. A day tops. But it’s been two days now and it’s not getting any better. And there’s another thing I haven’t told him about it.
The first blast of colour explodes in the sky, the sound coming a fraction later. Even though I’m expecting it, I still jump.
‘Are you OK?’ Ethan asks.
‘Yes. I’m fine. It’s beautiful.’
Blossoms of coloured lights glitter in the sky. I can’t actually hear the track the fireworks are being timed to, but I know from the feeds of all the people watching below that it’s Beethoven’s 5th. I
start humming.
The speed and quantity of fireworks build and build, layers of sparkling motes falling out of the sky. There are other firework displays being streamed from all over the country, along with bonfires and burning figures. Bemused Americans are chatting back and forth, asking why we celebrate a foiled attempt to destroy democracy.
‘Because we love a loser,’ I say, knowing that no one but Ethan will hear.
It’s the first time I’ve felt it: the connection everyone talks about. The sense that each experience really is better when shared. It’s like that puzzle Max put to me once: ‘if a tree falls in a wood and there’s no one to hear it, does it make a sound?’
I’d argued that of course it did. Simple physics would mean it had to. ‘Ah,’ he’d said, tapping me on my nose with his gloved hand. ‘But you’d never know.’
Big Ben gongs right in time with another explosion. By the time the bell has sounded for the eighth time, I know something awful is happening.
I sense the first scream before I hear it. Someone crying out in fear and shock. Then another. And another.
I stand up and rush towards the window, pressing my hand against the glass as if I can hold off what’s happening.
‘What is it?’ Ethan runs to stand behind me. He grabs me by the shoulders and pulls me away from the glass.
My fading palm print flashes in the light of another firework.
‘They’re so afraid,’ I say, pressing my hands to my head to block out the cries for help. Thousands, millions of voices all across the city all screaming in terror. I can’t see what they’re seeing. Only experience their reaction to it. I imagine bomb explosions and terrorist attacks. I imagine monsters tearing people limb from limb. Whatever’s causing this mass horror has to be worse than that. Each and every person on Glaze is feeling it at once. Amplifying the fear as it’s fed through the system. Like feedback on a speaker.
