by Tim Maughan
“I know you’re not.”
Anika places the spex on the floor between them, arms still unfurled, lenses facing back toward her. From her bag she brings out another pair—bulkier, scratched gloss-black finish—that College gave her earlier. She places them on the floor in front of Mary’s, facing them, as though the two pairs are nose to nose.
“What are you doing?” Mary asks.
“I’m not sure exactly … but apparently this should work.”
They stare at the floor in silence together, for what feels like a long minute. Mary opens her mouth to speak, but before she can form words she’s interrupted by a sudden loud chime. They both jump.
Anika gingerly picks up the black spex. As she touches them, green power bars glow along its arms. She slips them on.
In front of her the words FLEX OS 10.74 INSTALLING and a quickly filling progress bar float in the swirling sunlit dust. They chime again. Welcoming screen. Ready.
(1) other users detected in range. Connect now?
Find more friends in your neighbourhood to talk and share with!
“Well, that was quick.”
“What happened?”
“Those ones, your spex—they just repaired these ones.” She taps the ones she’s wearing, then takes them off. “Made them start working again.”
“How?”
“Magic.”
“Shut up.” It’s the first time she’s seen Mary annoyed. “It’s not magic. There’s no fucking magic.”
“Yeah. Yeah. Well, you’re right there. There’s no fucking magic.” She picks up Mary’s spex and hands them back to her. “Ask College. He’ll tell you. He knows how all this shit works more than I do.”
“So … now what?”
“Now what? Well, now I can see what you see, I guess.”
“You’re looking for people too?”
“Me?” Anika laughs. “No. I’m not looking for anyone.” She doubts her own words as she says them.
“Really? I reckon everybody is looking for someone.”
“Right? That’s what you reckon, is it? So who are you looking for?”
“I dunno. Someone called Melody.” Mary seems embarrassed. Her eyes drop to the ground again. “For Grids.”
“Oh, right.”
“You knew her?”
“Not personally.”
“Oh.”
“I—I don’t think you’ll find her.” Anika tries to pick her words carefully. “Not here. She … died. Away from here.”
“Yeah, I know. Grids knows that, too. But he wants some … memory of her, I guess. A picture. Some of her music. So that’s what I’m looking for.”
“Right.” Anika isn’t sure what to say.
“Could you help me?”
Anika wants to straight-out tell her no, to not get involved. Wants to take the spex and go. Not her fucking problem. But the kid seems insistent.
“I’m not really sure how I could—”
“Please? Look, you know how this all works. Better than I do. I don’t think I’m using it properly. You said yourself earlier, it must be giving me headaches. It does. Because I don’t know how it works. Nobody has ever shown me. Can you just show me, a bit?”
“Talk to College. I’m not—”
“Please? Look, I helped you.” She points at the spex in Anika’s hands. “Just show me a few things?”
Anika sighs. Fuck it.
“Okay, okay. Whatever. But quickly.”
“Yes!” The girl smiles and bounces, claps her hands once. Anika suddenly sees how fucking young she is again.
“So, what now? Here?”
“Why not?”
Because this place is crawling with fucking ghosts, Anika thinks. Dread creeps along her spine, seeping up from the cold concrete.
“Okay. Sure. You never been up here before?”
“Nah. Grids won’t let me. He doesn’t know I’m here now.”
“Yeah, I guessed as much.”
Mary looks around some more, at the shattered plaster and fading scrawls. “What is this place?”
“This is where it all happened.”
“Happened?”
“Yeah. Where it all started.”
Mary’s eyes open wide. “Show me.”
* * *
Eventually she finds it, buried deep in a settings menu. The surveillance app that nobody apart from Rush knew was there, installed by him and pushed out to everyone without them even knowing. Watching everyone, recording everything. She remembers people freaking out in that final week, as their spex’s inbuilt storage mysteriously started to fill up with data, not being able to work out what it was and assuming it must be the lethal malware, eating away at their system. Instead it was just Rush, squirreling away his surveillance recordings in the distributed cloud of his decentralized network, capturing everyone’s reality and hiding it right under—or resting just above, in fact—their own noses.
Before they dive in, she shows and explains a few things to Mary. How it works, the principles behind it. How it can only show things that people in the Croft saw that one week—how, although it looks real, everything is just an illusion, a mix-and-match collage of hundreds of people’s viewpoints. She shows her how the interface works, how the spex track the movements of her eyes, and how she can use that to control things; to swipe-scroll, to pull menus down from her periphery, how she can blink to select things. She shows her how they can send messages between them, how to share their spaces so they can see the same things.
Then she fires the app up, and the room changes. Graffiti is replaced with collages of Post-it notes on the few spaces where the walls are still visible; most of them are hidden behind server racks and piles of disused, half-repaired computers. Mission control, they used to call it. A heavyset figure moves among them, vague and unclear at first.
Mary recognizes him first. “College!”
His virtual presence startles Anika for a second, but that’s soon replaced with a melancholic fondness. He looks younger, lighter. His dreads are shorter, less gray, his hairline receding less. As quickly as it comes, the flash of nostalgic joy at seeing him in his youth again vanishes, replaced by concern. She can see he’s not happy. Frantic. He’s packing a small black backpack with seemingly random items; a laptop, cables, two pairs of spex. Dead technology.
And then it happens, before he can finish or react, a loud popping sound from all around, the flash of sparks from some of the server stacks, and then freeze-frame, glitch out.
Back in the shattered room, her skull rests against the brick wall.
“Well, that’s the end of the recording, then, I guess.”
“What just happened?” Mary asks her. “Is it broken?”
“You could say that.” Anika laughs. “Your spex are fine, don’t worry. But yeah, that’s the point where everything broke.”
Anika wonders how far back it goes, exactly when Rush kicked it off. Only one way to find out.
Spex back on, the room full of servers and junk again. Mission control. She works an imaginary jog wheel with her right hand, relieved to find the spex are working well enough to read her gestures. Rewind.
Time begins to collapse upon itself as she accelerates backward. Shadows strobe. Figures dance around the room at inhuman speeds, until she notices something in the motion blur. She releases the jog, and time snaps back to attention, the whiplash of normality.
She’s here, standing directly in front of herself. Towering above her as she sits on the ground. Arms outstretched at her sides, crucifix pose.
She laughs. Then the thought of that allegory makes her feel sick.
“Is that—”
“Yeah. Yeah, that’s me.”
She can’t make eye contact with herself, unable to look into those young eyes. She doesn’t want to see what’s there; the slight nervous shaking of her younger self’s body is enough to tell her. She doesn’t want to look into those eyes when she knows there’s no way she can change things.
; This was it, the beginning of the change. The tipping point.
College is here, too, on his knees in front of her, fiddling with the makeshift vest. Wires and cylinders.
“You sure this is gonna work?” says then Anika.
“No. I’m not.”
Now Anika tries not to start crying.
“Great.”
College stops his fiddling, looks up at her. “Look, you don’t have to go through with this. Just say the word.”
Then Anika looks down at him, smiles. “Shut up, College. Just hurry up, yeah.”
There’s a dull thud from somewhere outside the building. All four of them startle. The staccato riff of gunfire.
“Hurry up,” she repeats.
College has taken something from a bag on the floor, is wiring it into the vest. He hands it to then Anika. “Here,” he says.
“What’s that?” she says.
It’s a stubby molded grip with a trigger at the top, a flat button above that. It looks like the grip of a handgun with the barrel removed. “It’s the detonator,” College says.
“Yeah, yeah, I guessed that. But what is it? I mean, why d’you have fucking detonators lying around—”
“Oh. Oh, it’s an old VR controller. Wireless, but I didn’t trust that, so I added a cable to it. It’s a game controller.”
“Of course it is.” Then Anika laughs grimly. “It’s a game controller. Of course it is.”
“Keep it hidden.” He tucks it into the pocket of her hoodie. He stands up, looking at her. “Try to get as close as you can before—”
“I know, I know.”
“Okay. You know. I’m just fucking repeating myself.” College sighs, looks down at her. He zips her hoodie up, it barely covering the bulk of the vest. Now Anika laughs between tears. The way it pushes them up, it makes her tits look great. Then Anika would have laughed at that, too, if she could have seen it.
“Okay,” says then Anika.
“Okay. You ready?”
Now Anika doesn’t let her finish, her hand reflexively twisting that nonexistent jog wheel in retreat, time flowing backward again.
Mary is on her feet now, her back to her, glancing around the room. Anika is pleased Mary can’t see her face. With the fingers of her left hand she wipes tears from her cheeks behind the spex, the rush of memories almost too much.
Time collapse rewind blur.
* * *
About another thirty-six hours back, according to the readout, she instinctively releases the jog wheel.
Whiplash real time, silence pierced by screaming. Her at Rush. He’s got his coat on, a backpack hanging off one shoulder.
“You can’t fucking go! You can’t just walk out—”
“What choice have I got? Really? I’m putting everyone’s life in danger—”
“People need you here—”
“People need me to get the fuck out of here, Anika! Why do you think they’re blowing the shit out of us—”
“They need you here!” Now Anika can almost feel how hoarse then Anika’s throat is, sense memory of anger-burn. “You’re the reason people are here! You’ve always been—”
“They’re trying to kill me, Anika! They’re trying to kill me and they’ll kill everyone else in the process!”
“Then turn yourself in.” Claire’s voice is calm, rational. It cuts through the atmosphere in the room like a knife, even from the corner where she leans against the closed door, as if to make sure nobody leaves.
“What?” then Anika asks her.
“Turn yourself in.” Claire fixes Rush with cold, tired eyes. “If you really want to save everyone, then turn yourself in. Just leaving won’t help. They won’t know. They’ll think you’re still here and they’ll keep on bombing us.”
“He’s not turning himself in,” then Anika snaps. “Don’t be so fucking stupid.” Now Anika can see the resentment in her then self, that never quite quantified jealousy bubbling up to the surface. It’s needless. She’s flushed with embarrassment, regret.
“He’s got to. They’re going to flatten this place until they have him.”
“I’m not turning myself in. But I am getting the fuck out of here.” He turns from Claire to Anika. “And I suggest everyone else does the same.”
“Where you going to go, Rush?” There’s that edge of mocking to Claire’s voice that always came out when she was mad. Anika always hated that.
“Yeah. Where you going to go?”
“I…” He seems to lose his words for a second, glancing at the floor as if searching for them there. “Away. Just away. From here.”
“He’s going to New York,” says Claire.
Then Anika laughs at her. “He’s not going to fucking New York. His passport’s been canceled. Plus the airports must all be fucked. Right, Rush?”
Rush says nothing. Still searching for words on the floor.
“Rush?”
“He’s got some way of getting out of the country. Who is it, Rush?” Claire tilts her head to one side, trying to catch his gaze. “Your hipster futurist friends? Those millionaire infrastructure pricks, with their, their”—she stumbles over her words, anger bubbling up through the cool—“their gentleman’s container-ship yachting club?”
“What?” Then Anika looks confused. So much innocence, all lost now.
“Turn yourself in, Rush,” Claire spits. “Turn yourself in or we’ll turn you in.”
“Whoa.” It’s the first thing College has said. Now Anika hadn’t even noticed he was there. He looks up from the server cabinet he’s had his head buried in. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here—”
“Nobody is turning anybody else in, Claire,” then Anika says, stepping between her and Rush.
“Look … Okay. Okay,” Rush says, flustered. “Okay. I might have some way of getting out of the country.”
“What?”
“I might, okay. It’s a long—it’s fucking complicated, okay?”
“I fucking told you.” Claire, vindicated, shaking her damn head. “‘I might have some way of getting out of the country.’ Fucking coward.”
“You’re abandoning us?” Then Anika, close to tears.
“No! I’m not abandoning anyone!”
“You’re abandoning everyone!”
“Come with me!” Rush, arms outstretched, crucifix pose. Supplier of answers, hacker of problems, the solutions guy. “Seriously! Come with me, all of you!”
Anika pauses time.
She pulls herself up to her feet, dusts shattered plaster crumbs from her backside. Mary watches her, confused and awkward.
“Who’s this guy, the one that’s leaving?”
“A fucking coward,” says Anika.
She steps over to Rush, passing through her own ghost, feeling nothing. Circles him. Peering at him up close. Infinite fucking detail. The pores of his face mapped in high definition, pixel by pixel. She has to lean right in to make out the individual polygons that construct the LIDAR-scanned surface of his hair.
Angry, disgusted, she steps back.
Hand on the floating invisible jog wheel.
She thinks about unpausing, of letting the scene play out. But she knows the endgame, everybody’s answers. What happens next. Spoiler alert: he leaves, nobody goes with him.
She could, this time, she thinks. Follow his ghost as it leaves, exit stage right.
Instead she hits REWIND again.
* * *
Rewind. All the way back to the beginning. As far as it will go.
Rush is here, alone, typing at the computer. He looks shook up, upset.
He finishes typing. Something isn’t working, it’s clear. He swears, wipes a tear from his eye.
The door behind him bursts open.
Claire is there, she’s supporting this girl—Anika struggles to remember her name, Sarah?—who’s leaning on her shoulder, arm around Claire’s neck. Blood runs from a gash on her head.
“Rush, give us a hand here, yeah?”
R
ush spins around, glances back at the monitors in front of him, reaches out to guiltily thumb them both off before going to the door to help Claire. Gently they help Sarah down onto the bust-up sofa in the corner of the room.
“What the fuck happened? You okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“She took a can of peas to the head,” says Claire.
Anika has that sudden feeling of recognition, of being witness to events she’d only heard of thirdhand, through conversations and timeline posts.
“What?”
“You got that first-aid kit?”
“Sure…” Rush turns around, confused for a second. Rummages in a junk-filled drawer, pulls out a green plastic box. He passes it to Claire. The blood doesn’t seem to be stemming. “Jesus, you want me to call an ambulance?”
“I’m fine! Really!” Sarah is protesting too much. “Guys, stop freaking out, please…”
“I already tried,” says Claire. “Couldn’t get through.”
“Hmm?”
“Ambulance. Tried calling her one before we got back. Nothing. Networks are all fucked, no data, no voice … dunno what’s going on.”
“I don’t need an ambulance, I’m going to be fine. Really.”
“What happened?”
“Riot at Sainsbury’s.” Claire’s voice is deadpan, like it was an everyday occurrence, her attention all focused on trying to clean up Sarah’s split head with an antiseptic wipe.
“Sainsbury’s?”
“Popped out to do some shopping, and all I got was a can of peas.” Sarah laughs, wincing in pain.
“What’s—” Mary’s mouth struggles with the unfamiliar word. “Sainsberries?”
“A shop. Where we used to buy food.” Anika’s focus is on the room. She’s never seen this before. “Shhh. Watch.”
“Stay still, yeah?” Claire glances up at Rush. “It was fucking nasty down there, man, full-on riot.”
“A Smash/Grab game?”
“Nah, this was a different crowd. Like, lots of, y’know … normal people? Lots of them. All really angry.”
“Angry? Why?”
“No food. Nothing on the shelves. Apparently not been anything for days. A week, someone told me. Not just Sainsbury’s, all the supermarkets. People are getting hungry.”
