As I say the phrase I feel something like déjà vu. That expression: Time is distance in the Troposphere. I keep hearing it and I keep saying it, but I don't know what it means. The Troposphere is made from thoughts. Distance in the Troposphere is just the arrangement of thoughts. What do I already know?
Distance = time.
Matter = thought.
So what if there's another equation to add:
Thought = time?
Then, I guess, thought really is everything. And it makes sense: Time isn't measured in anything other than thought. The only thing that separates today from yesterday is thought.
"What are you thinking?" Adam asks.
I laugh. He can see what I'm thinking: It's all around him.
"What?"
"I'll tell you on the way," I say.
"Hang on. We don't even know where we're going yet."
"Oh. Yes. You're right. OK—do you understand about the distance thing?"
"Yeah. I think so. If I'm in someone's head and I can see all their ancestors, I can jump to any of them. If one of them lives in Norfolk, and I'm in Kent, I'll go back maybe a couple of weeks at the same time as I do the jump. But if one of them lives in Africa and I'm in Kent I could maybe go back a couple of years."
"That's right," I say. "So maybe we find a well-travelled family to go back through."
"Look up," Adam says.
I do. I can see the black sky hanging there like something I just clicked on, with the moon like a big digital button. But its light is still real, draped over the buildings and the street. Just beneath the sky I can see the gray tower blocks that seem to be everywhere in the Troposphere, just rising out of the ground and pointing upwards.
"What am I looking at?" I ask.
"The tower blocks," he says. "Where the animals live."
"Why do the animals live in tower blocks?"
"I don't know: This is your metaphor."
"Oh. I suppose I wouldn't think of them as shops. People are shops. People are part of an economy in a much more direct way..." I shake my head. "Oh, I don't know."
"Well, let's find some mice."
"But the time ...?"
"We'll see how far we have to jump before we get into a lab mouse, and then it should be just millisecond jumps all the way back to Abbie Lathrop, surely?"
"I don't think all lab mice are descended from her stock," I say. "I can't remember what Apollo Smintheus said. Damn."
Console? It comes up.
"Can you see that, too?" I ask Adam.
"Yeah," he says.
"Hmm. I wonder if it's possible to send messages on this thing?"
But we don't have to. There's the broken sound of a small engine struggling to fire, and then a red scooter comes around the corner.
"Good plan," says Apollo Smintheus, getting off. "Mice. I like it."
"So where do we start?"
"I'll take you to a descendant. But that's all I can do."
I want to say thanks, except that I'm doing this for him, anyway.
But I do owe him.
"Thanks," I say.
We all walk towards an office block. There's an entry phone, but Apollo Smintheus manages to get us buzzed in by saying something I don't understand in that unfamiliar language of his. While we walk up a set of concrete stairs, I try to plan this, but there isn't too much time. But surely what Adam said is right. Apollo Smintheus said before that all of these mice are inbred. We should be able to go back to Abbie Lathrop directly. We should ... Apollo Smintheus has stopped outside a door. And Adam is opening it.
You now have one choice...
You ... I... We're walking quickly over bare floorboards and our claws are going click-click-click as we move. It's like the sound of Lura's knitting needles, but in a much larger, more bare space.
"Adam?" I say.
"Yeah."
"I don't think we're a lab mouse."
"I know."
I become aware of the mouse registering our voices—or, actually, only my voice—and I immediately know that we shouldn't communicate with each other like this. The mouse... I can hear sounds in my mind and I try to run away from them. Faster, along the wood. I haven't eaten for several hours and I remember that if I run down here and then follow my own scent through the large gap in the wall I will probably find something.
Console!
It appears. I can see lots of images. Most of them are moving, but one is still.
"I'm going to let you do all the choosing," Adam says. "I'm not even going to look."
"OK. But shhh. I think we're disturbing the mouse."
"Sorry."
Voices, voices. I can hear a person but I can't see her. I remember another time when I heard voices like this and there was pain. And then hands on my back, but hands gloved with something that wasn't shiny and smooth, and then sickening movement in the dark, and then freedom: Something I had never known before.
This new voice sounds like that one, a little. But all voices are danger.
I fix my mind on the static image in the console. Something tells me that this could be the lab animal. The mouse we're in now was freed. I can sense that from his memories. But...
We switch. And...
You now have one choice.
You ... I can hear something muffled and distant.
"No!" It's Adam screaming. "Ariel, no..."
But I can't hear him because I am screaming, too. But I can't even hear that properly because the pain stops me registering anything very much. I want to die....I don't know what death is, but there's something in my mind that does, and understands that I should be able to move and that there shouldn't be metal spikes in my eyes, that if they weren't there I would have less pain in my head, and maybe I'd be able to see. What is seeing? The world is a black slab and I have never known anything apart from this. Each day it takes an effort to draw air into my lungs, and that's what I spend my life doing, just trying to breathe....
"Jump again," Adam's saying. "Oh God..."
The pain is like nothing I have ever felt before.
The console is still there, faintly.
I don't think I've got any legs. I don't think I have ever walked.
Everything is black. I pick an image from the console: any image.
You now have one choice.
You ... I... We are standing at the entrance to a maze. A new world! How exciting. Maybe this is finally going to be the way out. I've been down this passage before. And this one. I can smell the food at the end. It's the same stuff again, but it keeps me alive, and it keeps me doing this. I'm only halfway down an unfamiliar passage when a gloved hand picks me up, and the feeling of the material against my fur smells the same as the walls of my world, and all my life I have been comforted by these smells. Now I am being placed down again: my feet touching the glass. Where's my reward? This is the wrong tank. Where's the sawdust? This doesn't smell like my tank. I can see the same symbols on the ground (and which I can now read, and which say HappiMat™) but something is terribly wrong. Fear pierces me like the needles my carers use on me every day. My brothers and sisters are lying around me, but they're not trying to fight me or mount me. They smell different. I walk over and look at them. I nuzzle one of them with my nose: He's cold. They are all just lying there like the wet cloths our carers sometimes leave in the tanks when they have finished wiping off some of the smell. I walk over and sniff them.... They're not right. They're... Ow! Get off. Another gloved hand takes hold of me, but this one isn't gentle....
"Ariel!"
"Sorry."
We jump.
You now have one choice.
You ... I... We're being injected again. I don't know what is worse: the sensation of the cold, sharp needle going in, or the sensation of it coming out again. Once it's in I want it out, but once it's out I feel dizzy, and I can't make my nest properly and ... I don't actually care about my nest. I feel something warm and wet creeping down my legs. I just want to sleep. My nest smells so
ur now but I need to sleep. I can't even be bothered to lick myself clean.
You now have one choice.
You ... I... We can't breathe because of all the smoke. I can't move my head.
You now have one choice.
You ... I... We are flying through the air and then landing with an awkward bump, and then flying again. My friend is flying as well, and another mouse I haven't seen before, and all around us people are laughing; although I can't understand the language, something in my mind can hear the carers saying, "Stop juggling the mice, Wesley." I am very dizzy and I want to go back in my tank.
***
You now have one choice.
You ... I... We can't understand why this keeps happening. I keep making my nest in exactly the way I like it (the way my mother taught me), and then I find it's gone. The hand takes it away. And then the hand gives me more nesting material and I start building again. Every night I sleep on bare glass, despite all the nests I have made.
You now have one choice.
You ... I... We can't sleep with these lights on all the time.
You now have one choice.
You ... I... We
You now have one choice.
You ... I...
You now have one choice.
You...
You now have one
You now have
You now
You
You
You
You
You
We're now jumping so fast that it feels like a fluid journey, just as Mr. Y described in the book. It takes a lot of concentration, although it is hard to concentrate when you're essentially surfing on a wave of pain, fear, humiliation—and the constant simple desire for a warm, quiet nest. This is a wave of death: a wave of dead black bodies and dead white bodies and gloved hands and bony fingers and the pain of the needle and the pain of the tumors and the blindness and trying to lick off your own blood when it's still pouring out of you, and being left with your legs and back broken in a pile of other broken bodies and still thinking that there'll be food at the end, and that the carers will put you back in your tank just as they always do after something bad happens.
While I surf, Adam tries to locate details.
Most of the labs have calendars on the walls.
And I notice that as we go back the lights become dimmer and the tanks become smaller. There are no more HappiMats. We hear sirens and explosions, and we travel through labs that all smell of metal and gunpowder. But each tiny jump is a new kind of pain. By the time we reach 1908 I have bled thousands of pints of blood and vomited and pissed myself and fallen asleep in my own shit, and each time—every moment—I have just wanted to crawl into my nest, because something I am born with tells me it's good and comfortable in my nest, but all the time I have known that there's something not right about my existence. I either don't have a nest, or someone has taken it away, or I simply know that there shouldn't be glass walls around it.
We slow down as the calendars start showing 1907, 1906, 1905....
And then there she is. She's lifting our friend out of a box full of sawdust.
In the console the black mouse she is holding is blurred.
And we jump. We're in.
Chapter Twenty-seven
You now have one choice.
You ... I... We are taking one of the best mice—one of the black ones—and putting it in a box. Does it need sawdust? No, it's not going far, and the dumb animal probably wouldn't take any notice, anyway. Everyone knows that mice don't feel. They don't have a soul, as my friend Dr. Duncan MacDougall will prove just as soon as his experiment in Mass. General Hospital is conducted. The human soul weighs something: He will prove that. Animals do not have souls to be weighed. The mice squeak when I pinch them but it's just a physical reaction. They have no real minds. And the creature shouldn't get used to luxuries, anyway. There won't be much comfort where it is going. But if the scientists like this one, then I feel sure they will order more. Will sawdust make the mouse look better, perhaps? Like a little black chocolate in a box? I can't decide. I take another look inside. The dumb thing is quivering in the corner as though a cat is after it. But it does appear pathetic there on the bare wood of the box. I'll add some sawdust, and then I will get changed.
This is going to make my fortune. Can it? I'm darned unsure that anything I do will ever go quite right, but with God's will, we all just carry on—the pioneer spirit, just like Mama said. What am I going to wear? I think.... My most fancy formal skirt and that black shawl, although I don't want to look like a widow in mourning. In that case it should probably be the green jacket.
I'll tell him I can supply him with all the mice he needs for his experiments. And then they'll earn their keep at last. The waltzing mice—what a disaster! Why did nobody want the waltzing mice? I thought they'd be exactly the kind of thing that children would adore: little mice that danced around. But then that awful woman pointed out that there was something wrong with them: that they danced because of an ear defect. Well, it didn't take a genius to work out that there was something wrong with mice that danced instead of walked—but it was fun. Why didn't the children love them?
It sure is difficult working with fancy mice. It was worse working with poultry. Was it easier working with the children in the school? I can hardly remember. No, now I come to think of it, that was the worst of all. Being a schoolteacher was the worst of all the dead-end paths in my life. The children did have minds, and that made a difference, somehow.
I look at mouse number 57, twitching in his cage. He'll be the next to go.
I think I am a good mouse breeder.
I want to be rich....
"Adam?"
Who is Adam?
"She can hear us."
"I know. Stupid bitch."
Oh my. Oh my. I'm hearing voices. Well, one voice.
"Let the mice go," says Adam.
"I don't think she can hear you. Let me do it. Open all the boxes, Abbie Lathrop, and let the mice go."
Oh my. I feel a little faint. I'll just sit down for a moment. But...
"Let the mice go. You don't know what you're doing. You have no idea of the pain you're causing by your actions. Let the mice go."
Adam is being a little kinder than I feel, but she can't hear him: I'm the one they can hear. I'm the one who can change minds. Of course, now we're in this woman's mind we understand exactly why she's doing this. But that doesn't make it right, and it's going to take a lot more than a little bit of empathy for a lonely, miserable woman to cancel out the crushing waves of torture we had to surf to get here.
"Do you know what happens in a lab, Abbie?" I ask her, inside her head.
"Oh, shut up." I clap my hands over my ears. "Go away. Demons!"
"Let the mice free and we will go away. Otherwise we will stay here forever, telling you what a worthless piece of shit..."
"Ariel!"
"Do it for God, Miss Lathrop."
"You're not a demon?"
"We are not demons. We're your conscience."
"My conscience?"
"Let the mice go. Let the mice go. Let the mice go."
And then Abbie Lathrop gets up and, with a shaking hand, re-leases the wooden catches on all the cages.
That could have been more subtle, but it worked.
The console is still up. I look at the Quit button and then we're out on the Troposphere. Adam and I fall into each other's arms immediately, knowing we don't have to say anything about the experience we've just had. I feel as though something has been lifted from me because I don't owe Apollo Smintheus anything anymore. But the weight of what I know about suffering makes that lifted weight feel like a speck of dust I have just brushed off myself. And I still feel haunted: not by Apollo Smintheus, of course. Something has replaced that, but I'm not sure what it is.
The Troposphere looks exactly the same as usual, except that when I bring up the map in the console we seem to be thousands and thousands o
f miles from where we started. There's something different about the map now and I realize what it is: There are little yellow circles dotted here and there, and I understand that these represent train stations. These are the way I could get out of here, if that was what I wanted to do.
We only have to get back to the early 1890s to find Lumas, and we're already in 1900. We cross from Massachusetts into New York via a travelling salesman, and then we find a newspaper editor whose grandfather still lives in England. Once we're in his mind, we don't have to make too many more jumps to get to London in 1894, a year after The End of Mr. Y was published. We make the next jumps quite steadily. First we cover most of the time and then we do the last of the distance, working our way across London until we are standing outside Lumas's publishing house. And the person whose mind we are inside is a Mr. Henry Bellington, age twenty-two. He is holding a thick manuscript under his arm.
We've agreed not to talk when we are inside people's minds, so I am left to make my own impressions of the things around me. The first thing I notice about Victorian London is how wonderfully quiet it is. Mr. Bellington doesn't agree. He finds it chokingly oppressive, with the beggars and thieves and all the thick black smoke. But then he isn't used to a world of air traffic, car engines, mobile phones, and the constant thick drone of electricity in the background.
Bellington is shown into the publishing house.
And then it's only two jumps into the mind of Lumas's editor.
I only need his address. Do I know it from memory? Yes I do.
And then it's out of the building via a pigeon on a window ledge, and then into a hansom cab with a young accountant, and then off again once we're on the Strand. And then I simply hop from person to person until I'm standing outside Lumas's front door. But the people whose minds I am inside don't want to stop and after I've jumped a couple of times simply with the purpose of standing still, I choose Quit in the console and end up on the Troposphere again with Adam.
"That was good," he says.
The End of Mr. Y Page 40
