by Martyn Ford
Dee didn’t respond.
“Quite an acute observation, Timothy,” Phil said, looking up from Tim’s pocket.
“It couldn’t be a blanket transmission,” Tim added. “It’d need to be directed at individuals. But how would that work?”
“Hmm, yeah, whatever,” Dee said. “Or, like, the carrots and riots were nothing to do with it, and Samantha’s madness is contagious?”
“Your mum’s right,” Tim said. “You do spend too much time on your cell phone.”
“What else is there to look at between doing things?” she said. “Besides, she’s started making absurd rules to restrict it. She’s explicitly banned me from using it in the bathtub, for example.”
“You use your phone in the bathtub?” Tim said.
“Well, not anymore. I nearly dropped it in the other day. Was a close call. These things ain’t waterproof.”
Tim’s heartbeat steadily sped up. “What did you say?”
“Three stars!” Dee said, proudly turning her IcoRama toward him, showing him her 90,000 score on Squirrel Boarder.
And there was the answer, hiding in plain sight.
“It’d need to be an electronic device capable of sending and receiving signals, that people had close to them at all times….Oh my gosh.” Tim grabbed her arm. “Dee. It’s phones. The Mind Surfer was controlling people through cell phones. It makes sense. That’s why the man who chased me stopped when he jumped into the river. The water—it broke his phone. He couldn’t be controlled anymore.”
Dee’s head dipped. She set her IcoRama facedown on the bench by her thigh. “That’s not true, Tim,” she said. “Do not say it again.”
“We’ve got to tell Samantha, Fredric, everyone. If the technology is still in place, what’s there to stop someone else doing it? We would need proof, we’d need something substantial.” Tim turned to her. “Dee?”
Her face was blank. She simply stared back with empty eyes.
“Dee?”
She struck like a coiled snake, wrapping her hands around Tim’s neck, squeezing with an incredible amount of force. At first he thought she was joking. “Wha—” Tim wheezed, trying to push her off. “This…isn’t…funny.”
Teeth exposed, she shoved him down onto the ground and continued to strangle him. Phil bounced out of Tim’s pocket and rolled under the bench. Turning red, then purple, Tim flailed his arms, clawing at Dee’s face. He punched and grabbed her wrists, but she was too strong, her grip too tight.
Tim croaked. “Th—the—the ph—ph—” he managed, his vision narrowing, a throb growing in his head as Dee pressed the life from him. “Sm—smash her phone.”
The monkey turned, leapt up onto the bench, grabbed Dee’s cell phone, lifted it, and jumped off, pile-driving it onto the pavement. The screen cracked, but it was still on.
Tim thrust his weight up, trying to buck Dee off, but it was no use. Her thumbs dug in; his face was bright with the heat of blood. As he began to feel numb, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Phil swing the silver IcoRama above his head and slam it on the ground with all his might. Bang, bang, bang, until—
There was a loud gasp of air from Tim’s lungs as Dee fell off, grabbing her hair and trying to understand what was going on.
“What…what’s happening?” She slid to a sitting position on the station platform. “Oh my God!” she yelled, looking at Phil. “You broke my phone.”
“So there we go,” Tim said, with a cough. “We got it wrong. The Mind Surfer is still very much at large.”
Tim and Dee were sitting, facing one another, on the cold concrete of the train station platform. Between them, Phil stood amid the innards of Dee’s IcoRama phone—glass, green circuitry, microchips. It looked like the tiny monkey had murdered a tiny robot.
“What’s going on?” Dee asked again, scrambling to a kneeling position. She rubbed her temple. “Why has Phil broken my phone?”
“You became crazed,” the monkey replied. “You tried to strangle poor Timothy.”
“For real?”
“Seemed pretty real to me.” Tim gasped, holding his throat and clambering back onto the bench. He brushed the gravel from his jeans and straightened his hat. “The Mind Surfer is out there.”
“And Timothy’s theory of cell phones being intrinsically linked to his operation is accurate,” Phil added.
“Wait, they were taking me over to use me to kill you?”
“Yes, because I figured it out, because I’m a genius. It’s all coming together,” Tim said, looking up at the winter sky. “That’s how you knew where the Imagination Box was. You said you just had a feeling it was in that cupboard. Someone was guiding you. Maybe that’s why you were so keen not to investigate now. Why you thought Samantha was crazy. Why you accepted so quickly that your granddad was involved.”
Dee was shaking her head. She seemed overwhelmed by the news, by the idea that her thoughts had not been her own. What else had the Mind Surfer changed about her personality? What else had she done against her will?
“That means whoever stole the Imagination Box planted it there for us to find,” Tim added. “Samantha was right. It is all connected to me.”
“But why?”
“I too am curious about the specifics of this plot,” Phil added. “Especially as you own an IcoRama phone as well, Timothy.”
“Yes,” Tim said, grabbing it from his pocket. “You’re right.”
“So why aren’t you under the Mind Surfer’s command?” Dee asked.
“Maybe you are,” Phil added, bulging his eyes and wiggling his fingers. “Oooo.”
Tim dropped his phone onto the ground, next to Dee’s, and repeatedly stamped on it—the frame buckling, plastic casing and small screws bouncing—until it was just bits.
“It’s probably because you created it yourself,” Dee concluded, glancing between him and the debris. “It’s not really a proper one, is it?”
“Oh yeah,” Tim said, standing up straight, realizing he hadn’t needed to smash it. “Better safe than sorry.” He shrugged.
“If there is truth to these suspicions, as I suspect there is, I feel we must tell Fredric,” Phil added. “And Samantha. She will be most elated to hear, I am sure.”
“Good idea.” Tim nodded. “Let’s call them.”
“How?” Dee asked, picking up a wire from which a miniature microphone was dangling.
“Pay phone?”
“Are pay phones not fictional?” Phil wondered. “I thought they were like telegrams. Or carrier pigeons. Or sea horses.”
“All those things are real,” Tim said.
“Even sea horses?” The monkey’s face lit up.
“Even sea horses.”
Tim grabbed his backpack and they headed down the quiet street in front of the train station. After a short walk they found a phone box, proving to Phil that they weren’t mythical.
“How quaint,” he said, leaping from Tim’s pocket to the top of the handset, before clambering up higher, standing in front of a wall of scruffy flyers. “I fear, in this day and age, this contraption lacks a purpose.” He frowned, looking at his feet. “A little like me,” he whispered.
“Phil, you’re supposed to be a secret monkey. Back inside.” Tim held his shirt out, and after a short pout with flopped arms, the monkey scurried back into his hiding place. Tim rummaged, patting himself down. “Has anyone got any money?”
“Make some,” Dee sighed. “Sometimes I think you forget about having an Imagination Box.”
“That’s an actual crime—counterfeiting money.”
“Again, how many times, why does it matter if you’re not going to get caught?”
Tim rolled his eyes and half agreed. Dee was often somehow right and wrong all at the same time. He threw his bag off his back, then imagined, as clearly as always, a coin for the telephone. The device trembled quietly for a moment; then he slid the lid open. It shone—clean and new—from the bottom of the metal box. Instead of the queen’s face, the head s
ide of the coin featured Dee.
“There,” he said. “This’ll confuse someone one day.”
The coin clinked home and Tim lifted the handset, reading from the card Samantha had given him. The moment she answered, he double-checked what kind of phone she had; she told him hers was more than ten years old, with a dated green screen.
“Good,” Tim said. “Now, can you remember what kind your husband had?”
“What?” Samantha seemed confused.
“His cell phone. What brand was it?”
“I…he…he’d just got a new one,” Samantha said, stuttering to remember. “That’s right, he showed me how good the camera was. It was an IcoRama 2020.”
Bingo.
“Samantha, I think I know how the Mind Surfer is controlling people.”
Tim explained, with Phil and Dee crammed behind him in the tight space, shouting out supporting comments. The final piece of the puzzle, which confirmed it all, had fallen into place. Samantha’s husband was murdered by the Mind Surfer. And if it hadn’t been for Phil, the truth would have died again right there on the station platform.
“My goodness,” Samantha said after an astonished pause. Tim heard her scoop keys off a table. “Wait there. I’m coming to get you. Have you told anyone else?”
“No. I called you first. I’ll phone Fredric now.”
“Don’t,” Samantha said quickly. “Stay off all phones. This needs to be reported face to face. Who knows who’s listening.”
—
No more than ten minutes later, her car skidded to a stop in front of them. “Get in.”
Tim and Dee leapt into the backseat, the Imagination Box between them in the middle. Samantha passed them a thick folder. “That’s some background on IcoRama,” she said. “They’re a giant company and are clearly affiliated, in some capacity, with the Mind Surfer. We need to get as much dirt as we can before we expose them. Fredric—he can help?”
“Yes,” Tim said.
They headed toward Wilde Tech’s offices.
Samantha instructed Tim and Dee to look through the documents as she drove. They were searching for any information that could link the business to anything that had happened to Tim. He wondered again why he had been targeted. What they had to gain from stealing his Imagination Box, from entwining him in all of TRAD’s politics. And again, he felt a surge of energy toward finding the truth—to prove Eisenstone’s innocence.
The car shot up the entrance ramp and pulled onto the highway—it was getting late now, the dusk light casting shadows on shadows. The indicator clunked—Tim watched Samantha check her mirror, then her blind spot, then cut across the white lines and into the fast lane. They must have been exceeding ninety miles per hour. Tim saw the world zip past, his eyes juddering to keep up.
“If IcoRama are behind this,” Samantha was saying as she drove, “then we’ll need to go public with what we find. If they’re able to silence anyone, the only way they can be beaten is exposure. Everyone has to know the truth. And all at the same time.”
“What do you know about them?” Tim asked.
“Not much—only that the company was in trouble last year,” Samantha said. “Falling profits, big losses. Then some other business took over, they sacked the board of directors, it was all a bit controversial. Someone wanted to take control of IcoRama and wanted to do it quickly. Now we just need to find out who.”
By his side, Dee was licking her thumb, flicking through the sheets of paper.
“How you doing, Dee?” Samantha asked. “Can you remember what it felt like when you weren’t yourself?”
“Yes and no,” she said. “I can kind of remember little bits, but there are blanks too—it was just that I had no control. When we broke into the Diamond Building, I just had a feeling—an urge—to look in that cupboard. And when I strangled Tim, it was just like a reflex. Like blinking—kind of automatic. I’m a bit miffed about my phone, though. Loved that thing.”
“Even though it was taking control of your brain?” Tim asked.
“That was certainly a downside,” she admitted.
“Is that why you’ve been so materialistic too?” Tim wondered. “You were being controlled?”
“Nah, a lot of that’s just me.”
“It’s insane,” Samantha added, thinking aloud. “IcoRama’s profits over the last few months have been monumental. Those phones are all over the world. We’ve got to stop them.”
Tim looked out of the window as they overtook a large green SUV. The driver, an old man with a blue vest and muttonchop sideburns, had a hands-free set in his ear.
“So, you strangled me when I’d figured out that it was the phones…,” Tim said, still piecing it all together. “That means the Mind Surfer was controlling you right then. They were watching through your eyes, listening through your ears. So…they know.”
“What do you mean?” Samantha said.
“They know that we know.”
“So anyone with an IcoRama phone…,” Dee said, slowly, catching up. Tim could only see Samantha’s eyes in the rearview mirror. She looked concerned. The engine roared as they picked up even more speed. “…is a danger.”
Then, on cue, the SUV by their side smashed into their car. Samantha yelled, grasping at the steering wheel as they swerved and bounced off the guardrail, dust and sparks flying. They returned to the roadway. Tim grabbed the back of the seat, turning and watching the four-wheel-drive drift away, across two lanes now, getting ready for a second go.
“Hold on!” Samantha screamed as they collided again, glass from the front and back windows exploding inside, the roar of the highway tearing into the car. Sheets of paper were swirling, madly slapping around them.
In what seemed like slow motion, Tim watched the SUV prepare for a third and, by the look of it, final ram. The driver’s face was blank, like the man who had chased Tim through the market, like the crossing guard, like Dee when she strangled him. Time sped back up as he yanked his steering wheel, hurtling toward them, but, moments before impact, Samantha stamped on the brakes.
Steam swirled around them. The SUV whipped in front, missing the car and slamming into the guardrail, tilting and rolling over and over, once vertically, in a haze of mud and spiraling shrapnel. A piece of fender grazed the windshield as Samantha rammed the gear stick forward and continued on.
Tim looked behind, silently hoping the driver was okay, but without a beat, a sports car barreled toward them. Next to it was a van and beyond that was a large truck. All the drivers’ faces were empty.
“They’re going to kill us!” Samantha said, weaving between vehicles, changing lanes.
“Do something, Tim,” Dee said, pushing his backpack toward him. The sports car connected with the rear bumper, jolting everyone. Dee grabbed the armrest, her other hand on the ceiling. “Sort of nowish?”
Trying his best to ignore the chaos and noise, Tim buried his face in his hands, imagining something to drag the odds into their favor. He unzipped his bag and pulled the box out. Opening the lid, he held it up by the broken window as one, two, three and then hundreds of metal spikes poured out. The road behind was littered with a trail of them. Their pursuers weaved and dodged but, one by one, tires exploded, and they skidded, some swerving off, others spinning complete circles, as though on ice, bashing into one another.
“Ha-ha!” Tim yelled. “Spikes solve everything.”
“Superb work, Timothy,” Phil agreed.
“Got any ideas for that?” Samantha asked.
Up ahead, Tim saw what appeared to be a roadblock—ten or more vehicles all parked at unusual angles, across every lane.
“This is turning into quite a high-profile incident,” Dee said. “They sure are desperate to get us.”
“Just shows how right we must be,” Samantha said.
Instead of stopping, Tim noticed that she put her foot down. The revs picked up, the worry mounted.
“What…what exactly are you planning here?” Tim asked, concerned.
>
The car then slowed down dramatically. “I was going to ram through, like in a movie,” she said. “But then I realized we’d probably all die.”
“Yes,” Dee said. “It’d just be a car crash, wouldn’t it?”
“Off-road it is, then.”
They left the highway and rumbled down a bank. Branches whipped the hood, leaves flurried inside. Toward the bottom of the slope, the vehicle’s left wheels rode up onto a tree stump, and Tim yelled out as the car went rolling over, crashing, smashing, and bouncing onto its roof.
Upside down, suspended by seat belts, everybody groaned. The stench of exhaust fumes and damp earth swept into Tim’s nose as the engine sputtered out. For the second time that day, Tom’s head throbbed, and his cheeks flashed hot.
With his trademark agility, Phil scurried onto the ceiling—now the floor—and looked up. “I must confess, that was my first time on this highway,” the monkey said. “Is it usually like that?”
“Generally there are fewer crashes,” Dee said in a pained voice. “But otherwise, yes.”
They unclipped themselves, all taking care not to get cut on the glass crunching below them. Tim and Dee clambered out first; then they helped Samantha crawl through the open window.
At the top of the bank, a police car had pulled up, its bright lights unmistakable through the foliage.
“Oh, thank God,” Dee said, brushing herself off, as two large officers trudged down toward them. “Have we got a story for you.”
But when they arrived, Tim noticed that familiar glaze in their eyes. “Wait,” he said, “they’re not—”
As Samantha realized and turned, one of the policemen grabbed her shoulder, tugging her back. Phil leapt from Tim, scuttled across a branch, and jumped onto his hand. The officer barely reacted as the monkey bit down. With a straight face he just held his arm out, and the other man grabbed Phil and squeezed him within his leather glove.
“Release me from this fingery prison!” Phil yelled.
“Get the kids,” one of the officers said in a neutral voice, staring at Tim and Dee. He then dragged Samantha and Phil away, up the hill.
