Infinite Detail

by Tim Maughan

  Eventually what he’s doing holds, and cautiously he removes his hands and steps back, the music constant now, the jungle breaks rolling out of the radio’s tiny speakers. He bends down to grab it but pauses, stands back upright again. He lets the radio do its thing, lets it capture the invisible data from the aerial nest, lets it make it real. Making the inaudible audible, revealing the true contents of the air. This is what it’s all about.

  Slowly, fighting vertigo, he edges toward the roof’s edge. Below him Bristol is laid out like a crumpled map in the night, dark architecture merging with more forgotten, useless infrastructure and long-abandoned roadways. The only signs of life are the interior lights from those neighborhoods that have been lucky enough to jury-rig electricity, and the flickering of outside fires from those that haven’t. There’s the occasional shout from the streets right below him, from the spaces between the towers, and he can hear his own radio waves being translated back to him. All at once he feels some pride rise in him, some all-too-rare wave of accomplishment.

  His focus is broken by an unearthly sound behind him, and vertigo hits him as he stumbles back from the ledge, turning. Half hidden under the angle of one of the solar panels is a seagull, nestled with its young against the wind, watching him suspiciously with a piercing black-and-yellow eye. It squawks again, and Ty feels his pride and significance fade, replaced yet again by the constant sense of fragility. He realizes now that he’s the only person to come up here regularly, otherwise this gull and its family would be dead; plucked and jerk-seasoned and roasted over a fire. Gently he bends down, grabs the radio and his bag, and finds another route around the panels to the stairs back down into the tower, so as not to disturb the bird again. As he goes it never takes its eye off him, tracking his every move like the now-dead CCTV cameras that always watched him and the other kids from the towers whenever they went out to play, and all he can think of is his dead mother.

  * * *

  Back in Grids’s apartment he pushes into the kitchen, and is surprised to see the man himself standing there, eating curry from a bowl.

  “You got it working, then?”

  “Yeah. Loose connection.” Tyrone drops the keys back into the drawer. He instantly seizes up, finds himself checking his emotions and movements, some ingrained mixture of embarrassment and bravado.

  Grids nods toward the rumble of the radio from another room. “Sounding good.”

  “Cheers.”

  He wipes rice from his lips and fixes Tyrone with slightly blunted eyes. “You ever find that beat I was looking for?”

  “Melody’s beat?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Nah.”

  “Yeah, well. Don’t think it ever made it to vinyl, innit. Just thought you might have heard it on a tape.” He laughs, shakes his head. “A tape. I didn’t know what a fucking tape was when me and Mel were your age. Dead technology, fam. Now we’re all excited about finding tapes.”

  “Yeah, I don’t think so. Plus I never heard it, so I wouldn’t know.”

  “Oh, you’d know it if you heard it.”

  “What about her?” Tyrone nods toward the door.

  “Mary? Nah. Says Mel was…” Grids pauses, looks at the floor. “Says she was gone before the time she can remember. Before she can see, y’know.”

  “That’s how it works?”

  “Apparently. Like there’s only a small time she can see. Like a few days, I think.” He shrugs. “I don’t fucking know.”

  Tyrone wants to ask him how much he really believes in it all. Mary. Why he keeps her so close, now he knows she won’t find Melody. He thought that was the only point.

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  “What?”

  “About Mary. You believe all that?” As soon as the words leave his mouth he regrets them, expects Grids to get upset, to think it’s a diss. That he’s questioning his authority.

  Instead the old gangster just laughs, shakes his head. “I don’t know what to believe anymore, Ty, to be honest. Do I think she’s psychic? Probably not. But do I think she sees shit we don’t? Maybe. I do know she makes people happy. Gets through to ’em. Puts ’em at rest. Gives ’em closure. You’ve seen it. What she does, how it affects people. That’s gotta be important, right?”

  “I guess,” Tyrone says.

  “Besides. I gotta look after her. Whatever she is. I gotta keep her for us, for the Croft. Because if I don’t—” He pauses, and for a second Tyrone gets a sense that he knows more, knows something special about Mary that he’s keeping from him. From everyone. “I can’t let her get out of the Croft, man. Can’t let her get into the wrong hands. That’s why what you do, looking after her—that’s why that’s important. You get me?”

  “Of course, man. Of course.”

  “You want some food?” Grids sounds like he wants to change the subject.

  “Ah no, I’m good.” His stomach rumbles. But something tells him no, that it’s not right. He’s not sure what.

  “Really? You must be hungry. It’s good. Goat. Made it myself, man.”

  “Nah, I’m good. Gotta get back to the radio, innit.”

  “A’ight, if you’re sure.”

  “Yeah. Cheers.” He heads for the door.

  “Well played today, man, y’know.”

  Ty turns around, startled. “Huh?”

  “That shit with Mary, the guys from the Land Army. You handled it well.” He shovels another forkful of rice and meat into his mouth.

  “Cheers,” says Tyrone, and walks out, head high, riding on significance.

  9. AFTER

  “I can’t believe you’re actually here.”

  “I can’t believe I’m actually here.”

  The bar is full of ghosts.

  So many that their bodies seem to obscure the living, who sit hunched over their beer and cider, their clothes ragged and fading, patched at knees and elbows. They look tired and broken, older than their own ghosts somehow, who stand and laugh beside them, their clothes still ragged and faded, but in intentional, affected irony. Less crumpled, cleaner.

  The ghosts have more life than the living, Anika thinks.

  She rubs her eyes and sips warm, too-sour cider. The ghosts disappear.

  “I can’t believe this place is still here.”

  College smiles. “You’ll be surprised how little has changed.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. Well, apart from everything.” They both laugh. “You know what I mean. This place—the Croft, I mean. It’s always going to be the same, man. You get me?”

  “Yeah. Yeah.” She looks at him. “We got old, though.”

  “Yeah. Well. It’s been a while.”

  “Yeah. Yeah it has.”

  * * *

  Over the first cider he gets her up to speed. About how it was tough for years, but they held it together. How Grids kept a firm grip on the Croft but was reasonable, mainly. How they held it all together with string and solar panels. How they kept Claire’s farms open and running enough so that most people had a few fresh vegetables and a little ganja, plus enough spices to trade with the Mullahs in Easton and the pharma labs in Brislington. All to the annoyance of the Land Army and the city council. He glosses over the details: the pain and the deaths and the suffering. That’s all taken as read.

  “Claire still here?” she asks him.

  “Nah, she’s back up at the uni now. Doing research up there.”

  “Research?”

  “More farm stuff. Hydroponics and aquaponics. So they can build more. It’s hard, though, getting the shit she needs. Everything she built down here—well, it was all from stuff she bought online. Stuff she had shipped from China, or that she printed herself. The LA wants her to just copy what she built here, but she’s gotta start from scratch. Like, really from scratch. She’s gotta work out how to make stuff that was never made here.”

  “She’s working for the LA?”

  “Nah. Well, yes. Kind of. They pay for some of her research, I t
hink.”

  “Right.”

  “Ah, c’mon, Anika.” He shakes his head. “Don’t be like that. You know how she is. She’s just doing what she thinks is right. Just doing what she always did. She just wants to feed people.”

  “I guess.” Anika looks down, into the sickly orange soup of her pint.

  “What about Rush? You ever see him again?”

  College shakes his head, can’t meet her eyes. “Nah. Last time I saw him, he was with you.”

  “Right.”

  “I gotta assume he’s—I dunno. He’s either on the other side of the world or they caught him.”

  “Or he’s dead.”

  “Well, yeah. I guess. Claire is convinced he got out of the country. Went to try and find that Internet boyfriend of his. Steve?”

  “Scott.”

  “Yeah, that’s the one. She reckons he went to the U.S. to see if he was okay. Says he was completely obsessed with him, in love.”

  “But how? It was hardly like he could just get on a plane. I mean, all the airports were fucked, I thought?”

  College shrugs. “Something about a ship. That academic friend of his that bought a container ship, you remember that?”

  “Strickland.”

  “Sounds about right.” He finally makes eye contact with her. “Is that why you came back? Wanting to find him?”

  She blushes. Memories of her lost mentor, of abandonment and betrayal. “No. Of course not.”

  * * *

  Over the second cider she gets him up to speed. About Wales, and the civil war. About how she spent two years on a farming commune before the Land Army turned up and seized it, and forced them all to work the land. About how she escaped, went on the run, ended up with the insurgency. About the Bloc training camps. About being in Cardiff when it fell. She glosses over the details; the pain and the deaths and the suffering. Again, that’s all taken as read.

  “It’s not going well, then?” he asks her.

  “It could be better, yeah.”

  “I’m sorry. We don’t get much news from outside the city, y’know? We don’t even know what’s happening in London.”

  “It’s pretty bad. Wales, I mean.” She has to look away, can’t keep eye contact with him. The bar fills with ghosts again, ones that don’t belong here. Ghosts wrapped in bandages, clothed in camouflage. The ghosts of crying children, of their wounded and broken parents sobbing on the floor. “The LA controls most of the countryside now, right up through Cheshire. All the cities and towns are theirs now.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I mean—” She stops herself, hearing the tremble in her voice. Breathes. Hard words for her to say. “I understand, I get it. I know why they’re doing it. They need to feed everyone, keep the cities alive. They need the land and they need the workers. I get that. It’s just—they’re so fucking brutal. The number of people they’ve moved. The refugee camps. The way they treat people. What they’ve done to people, to children, to families—”

  “Yeah. I’ve heard. I’m sorry. I know what—”

  “No.” Her head snaps back to face him, her voice raised. “No, you don’t know. You don’t fucking know.”

  Glances from the living in the bar. The ghosts have gone again.

  He reaches out, touches her hand. “I’m sorry. Really. I am.”

  She sighs, takes a deep breath. “No. It’s okay. I’m sorry. I just … y’know. I’m fine.”

  College takes his hand back, downs the last of his cider, winces at the acid burn. “Come on, let’s get the fuck out of here. Get some food. You can crash at mine tonight. Oh, and fuck, yeah. I nearly forgot.”

  “What?”

  “There’s something you should see.”

  * * *

  “Fucking hell.”

  College laughs. “Yeah. Mad, innit.”

  “Is it …?”

  “Yep. It’s yours.”

  The tank sits in a pile of rubble, a vacated space where architecture once stood. She glances up and down the street, trying to work out what it once was. She can’t get her bearings. The Croft doesn’t look that different, but enough buildings have fallen, enough shop fronts vanished, that she’s lost for a second.

  “What used to be here?”

  “Really? You can’t work it out?”

  “Nah.”

  “Tesco.”

  “Oh.” She laughs. They both laugh. “Oh, shit. That’s kind of perfect.” Tesco supermarket. An eternal emblem of the struggle of Stokes Croft, going back nearly three decades now. The scene of protests, riots, battles. A corporate infringement into the anticapitalist hipster dream, but one that meant the real locals could afford to buy bread and cider.

  “Right? I thought you’d like that. Part of the reason I put it here.”

  “You put it here?”

  College shakes his head. “Don’t ask. Long story.”

  At first glance the tank looks like it’s covered in psychedelic camouflage, pink and red and blue scatter markings, as though it were trying to stage a sneak attack on a sweetshop. That makes it hard to make out the tank’s form, but as her eyes become accustomed to the patterns she realizes what it is: every part of its surface—its armor, its turret, its tracks, even its canon—is covered with graffiti. Paint and stickers, words and colors. Tags. Splatters. Wild-style lettering. Doodles and characters. Slogans. The names of the dead.

  She steps up onto the rubble, runs a hand across the tank’s flank, just above its busted, spray-painted tracks. It feels rough, the texture of layer upon layer of forgotten art. She has a sudden flashback to a forgotten time. Amsterdam.

  “Damn.”

  Sprouting out of the top of the turret is a sprayed-out cobweb of cables, dozens of wires silhouetted black against the dusk sky. Like the tendrils of some mutated banyan tree they explode out of the tank, shooting up to the walls of the neighboring buildings and across the street, fastening themselves to broken brick surfaces and slithering onto rooftops.

  “Does it work?” she asks College.

  “God, no.” He fishes inside his olive combat trousers, pulls out a crumpled joint, stretches it out. He produces a lighter from his bomber jacket. “Well, it doesn’t move, if that’s what you mean. The control systems are all fried, they died with everything else. But the battery still works.”

  “The battery?”

  He lights the joint, takes a drag. “Yeah. It’s got a huge fucking industrial-level battery inside it. Took me fucking ages to figure out how, but I got it to work. I tried taking it out, but it was a pain in the arse, so I just left it in there. Now it’s wired up to most of the panels down this end of the Croft. Stores electricity, means we get some juice at night.”

  She looks up, tracing the cables across the sky again. “Right.”

  “It’s carnival this weekend.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah, no shit. We come down here and hook a massive system up to the battery. Put some decks up on the turret, turn it into a DJ booth. Everyone comes down and dances around the tank. Your tank.”

  She smiles at the thought. “I like that.” She looks at him. “You know what—can I ask you a question?”

  “Sure. What?”

  “I never got around to asking you this before, it always bugged me. Why they call you College?”

  “Because I went to college.”

  “Everyone went to college, College.”

  “Not where I’m from.”

  “Sorry, of course.” She’s embarrassed. “You mean Barton Hill?”

  “Yeah. Up in the towers. Up in the sky.” He sighs. Wistful, stoned. “When we was kids most of us up there dropped out of school at sixteen. Couldn’t afford to stay on. Not me. Instead I got myself involved in some shady shit just so I could pay my way. Loved my fucking video games too much, wanted to know all about them, make them. All my mates started calling me College.”

  “That’s when you knew Grids, from before?”

  “Yeah. We came up together. We
re pretty tight. Got ourselves in enough trouble back then. But then I finished college here, down in St. Bart’s, and I went off to university. I’d actually made enough money running around with Grids to do that, which was crazy, thinking about it. So yeah, I went off to Manchester. Came back three years later and everything had changed. You know how it is. Friends drift apart, innit? Grids was dealing, Mel … Melody was off doing her music thing. I was twenty-one and all kinds of fucking fired up about saving the world. Barton wasn’t the place for that. Or me. So when I bumped into Rush and saw what he was doing I moved down here.”

  “And now you and Grids are tight again.”

  “I guess. It’s different. Everything’s different.”

  “Yeah. It is.”

  College takes another toke, then steps over rubble to pass her the joint. “So then, my turn.”

  “Huh?”

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Sure.” She takes a hit. It burns her throat.

  “As much as I’d like to think it’s because you were missing me, why’d you really come back here? I mean, for someone that’s on the LA’s wanted list, it’s hardly the most sensible place to come. Whole city is crawling with ’em.”

  “I dunno. I thought…” She’s suddenly stoned, space echoing around her head. From somewhere down the street she can hear the scattershot rolling drums of jungle, bass throbbing. An MC chatting. Pirate radio vibes. Bristol. She can’t help but smile.

  “You thought what?”

  “I thought maybe there’d be something that’d give us an advantage. In Wales, I mean. Against the LA.”

  “The tank?”

  “What? No.” She laughs, stoned. “No, not the fucking tank, College. It’s not that kind of war.”

  “Then what?”

  “I dunno.” She feels embarrassed, suddenly too self-aware. “Something that might help us be organized, keep us one step ahead.”