‘Please open it, Dr Sorle,’ Anderson says mildly.
More people are coming now. There are two women, one in handcuffs, the other – Alison! – arguing stridently with the Pace people. You hear her say your name but none of what she’s saying is important to you now.
You kneel on the deck. The briefcase isn’t even leather. The nubby roughness of the naugahide is supposed to simulate an animal skin but it’s all been done by machine. This makes you think of yourself. You are the real Kisi Sorle. The other is the machine-altered version – better, stronger, faster. If only you could call him up. Why does he not come now? It’s as if the loss of the Resistance has broken him.
You need him. You need his faster responses, his lean muscle mass, his preternatural coordination and most of all you need his hatred.
Because it was the other one of you, the one capable of murder, the lawless one, it was he who could imagine such a thing as the Resistance. It was he who could dare challenge the ordering of the world, resist the dominion of violence. He was able to imagine a different way and he cut ontological corners to make it happen. Moral corners.
He failed. But he tried. And you can’t stop thinking about him.
Ever since the bridge he has been absent. Did those bullets drive him from your body? This old story that says humans created AIs and they will turn on us, it is stuck on the mythology of deities that are outside the world and create those of us who are inside. No one is outside. No one is inside. There is no objectivity; there is no creator and there are no creations. The laws of physics demand intelligence and our intelligence is no more ours than our bodies. Our creativity is no more ours than our molecules. Everything that we possess, we are possessed by. That’s the story in Balamory.
Dig deep, Dr Sorle. The one you seek is already inside you. The other you stole this briefcase from a place beyond time. In that place there must be other possible outcomes, lined up like the paint chips Ayeisha kept bringing home when she was deciding what colour to paint the bathroom. When you hold the briefcase and feel it tremble, you imagine that you could open it and find inside a different version of events.
But when you open it nothing of the kind happens.
The veterinarian and the oil rig
Helicopters were not Alison’s preferred mode of transport. She probably would have been all right if she’d been flying it, but she wasn’t. When she finally staggered off across the helipad she was shaky and sick. A woman in a Pace Industries polo shirt shoved a hardhat in her hands and put another one on Bethany since Bethany’s handcuffs prevented her from doing it herself. Brian and Naz were told to wait in the office under the helipad, while a sweet-faced rig guy called Mike led Alison and her prisoner several levels up and through a maze of metal walkways. The farther they got from the helipad, the more nervous Alison became. Very quickly she lost all sense of where she was and her tension was manifesting in a wobbly gut. She hadn’t given any thought to bathroom facilities. There were lots of facts not covered in spy films.
They emerged on the open deck on the north side of the rig. The rig guy, Mike, seemed matter-of-fact enough; he treated them as though they were guests, not prisoners, and he gave them ear plugs for the deck. Out in the moon pool, the kelly was deeply submerged and active drilling was going on, but there were other jobs, too. The environment out here was so noisy that Mike communicated mostly by gesture. Bethany was still wearing her life jacket and she looked very young with her windblown hair and her wrists penitently cuffed in front of her; Mike ignored this so pointedly that Alison began to entertain thoughts that people were handcuffed all the time out here.
All she wanted was the briefcase.
Still, she couldn’t suppress a smile when she saw Dr Sorle standing near the mud tanks, one of which had been opened for servicing. He was surrounded by handlers, but he looked all right despite the pungent smell of the mud; it made Alison queasy. There wasn’t time to say anything before Liam caught sight of Bethany and started losing his shit.
‘Now this is quite enough,’ he snapped at the tall blond man beside him. ‘Why is she in handcuffs? If this is how we’re operating now then I’d rather just go back to the mainland and take my chances in court. It’s completely unacceptable.’
The tall man ignored him and introduced himself to Alison as Carl Anderson. He looked directly at her with spun-glass eyes while she squinted back, shading her own eyes against the glare.
‘You have the keys?’ he shouted, holding out his hand. ‘There isn’t anywhere she can go.’
Alison unlocked the cuffs herself. Bethany rubbed her wrists and edged away as far as space would permit. There was a grinding boom from the deck below and the younger woman startled like a frightened animal. Alison ignored her own feelings of guilt. She kept a close eye on Bethany as the scene unfolded. She wasn’t sure she believed the story of the breakup in the relationship with Liam, or the embezzling of half the funds. It didn’t quite fit, especially considering the amount of money involved. Alison had a private theory that Bethany had moved the money on Liam’s instructions, that this was all part of a ruse to get the money away from Pace Industries and away from the old man’s IIF successor corporation, too. To keep at least some of it for themselves.
Not that she knew anything about money. Brian’s girlfriend did the books for her veterinary practice and before that she had given them to an old school friend. Alison lived in a state of perpetual relief that no one used chequebooks anymore so she needn’t be embarrassed that hers was never balanced.
She knew people, though, and she could see the two of them eyeing one another across the mud processor. They had not fallen out at all. Bethany was looking at Liam as though she expected him to do something to save the situation, and Liam was moving around restlessly. His frustration was obvious.
‘I don’t think the briefcase for this woman is a good trade,’ he said to Anderson. ‘She doesn’t actually know anything that I don’t know.’
Alison said in a loud voice, ‘I’ll just take the briefcase and go. I’d like Dr Sorle to come with me.’
She knew it was a long shot, but she had to try. Anderson said, ‘Dr Sorle is going to open the briefcase so we can ascertain its contents before we release it to you.’
Alison tried to hide her dismay but it was pretty much impossible.
‘That’s not a good idea at all,’ she yelled.
‘You see?’ Liam had been edging closer, presumably to get near Bethany, though she was avoiding acknowledging his presence. ‘I told you. It’s crazy to open it. Not here, anyway.’
Alison was trying to catch Dr Sorle’s eye, but he was fixated on the briefcase. Almost in a trance.
‘Look,’ she said. ‘It’s nearly dark. Can’t we go inside, sit down, talk about this in a sensible way?’
Anderson said, ‘We have scanned it. We know there is nothing inside. It has been rigged in some way to affect the weight. This is what I want to see. There must be some mechanism, something that causes this change. We can only see this if we open it. So let’s stop talking and just open it up.’
Well, thought Alison. Pearl might come out. Or fire, like before. Or the quetzlcoatlus. Or even the old man himself could step out with his oxygen mask, to settle his financial improprieties once and for all. That would be nice. But there was simply no way of predicting. And the environment was all wrong for spooky behaviour. The long minutes Alison had spent patching up the injured pterosaur on Holyrood had happened under cover of darkness, with Pearl there to reassure. This place, in broad daylight, with the smells and noises of industry and the constant vibration of the machinery making her teeth shake – it seemed impossible that anything so extraordinary could happen here.
And then it did.
The Rockford Files
It sits there quiescent while you thumb the latches, slide them open. The locks react invisibly to your biometric signature, snapping up for you and you alone with an old-fashioned thunk thunk. Anderson makes a move toward you �
�� now that the thing is unlocked he doesn’t trust you with it. Rightly so. You may not be as fast as the other self, but you are faster than Anderson. You spring to your feet, flinging the briefcase open, and as you run you feel its contents unfurling behind you. Around the open briefcase there is a region of space and also time where things don’t quite connect as before. You experience a dreamlike consciousness where effects precede causes, of geometry fracturing and fractalling and matters folding inward to become paradoxically larger. You run up the steps to the nearest walkway, thinking to get out over the sea where you can throw the briefcase into the water, but Anderson’s guys have cut you off. You won’t make it.
You turn and through the disturbance in the air and through the sound and through the uncertainty in position of the deck steel you see Liam standing there like a mug. Before you know what you have done, you throw it at him.
Why not? He has fucked everything up, after all (Bethany, too, but Liam’s closer). This passes for justification in your mind; but the truth is, you don’t know why you do it. In fact it seems to you that the act was already done before you got there and you were simply fulfilling a predestined role.
Of course that could be the causality distortion talking.
The sense in which the briefcase is an object coexists with the sense in which it is not an object, but an idea. The ideation can’t actually be seen or felt or smelled, but it’s as clear to you as the solution to an equation. The halves of the briefcase flap open and it flies across the deck spinning from the force of your delivery, so that Anderson makes a too-slow grab for it and Bethany jumps back and Liam ducks, bringing his hands up to protect his head. His hardhat has got stickers on it that someone has gone to the trouble of collecting from rigs across the world, and there is a proto-second in which this offends you since you know Liam has never lived the life of risk that a rig worker lives, yet his borrowed helmet suggests that he has.
The briefcase just misses Liam’s long and bumpy spine and instead it strikes a length of six-inch pipe that carries a mix of seawater and oil out of the mud system. The other aspect of its nature shows in the fact that the briefcase shears right through the pipe like a spinning blade before falling into the open top of the mud tank. It lands in a vat of mud that has returned up from the ocean floor and waits for filtration before being pumped back down. Heavy with crude oil and silt the mud lies in a stinking pool while the equipment is serviced. The briefcase slaps into this dark grey sludge face down and begins to sink.
Anderson moves for the briefcase and his associates move for you. Kang, who had been behind you, now rugby tackles you and tries to put on an armlock. You get your hip under him and throw him to the deck. Bethany and Liam have been thrust together like frightened children and you don’t notice what’s become of Alison. This would worry you, but there is the other thing also going on.
‘No!’ Alison screams. ‘You idiot! What are you doing?’
She slides past Anderson and his guys, ignored. She comes pounding up the stairs pigeon-toed and with the fat on her arms swinging from side to side and she grabs your bicep and shakes you.
‘Pearl is in that briefcase. Get it back!’
She’s pushing you into the railing. You want to tell her to fuck it, it’s all too late, it’s no good – none of you stands a chance – and then you see what’s happening down there.
The mud seethes. Steam rises from as though from a cauldron, and all this while in the physical space of the briefcase its larger and more dangerous aspect has been strobing, flickering like a forgotten word on the edge of recall. Crude oil that’s been filtered from the returning mud is now gushing from the severed pipe; some lands in the mud tank, some lands on the deck, but it comes at a ferocious rate and within seconds everyone is slipping and sliding, trying to get away from it. Everyone but you.
A klaxon sounds, piercing the protection of the ear plugs. One of the rig guys has pulled an alarm. Men in hi-vis gear emerge from the upper walkways, half-running.
You climb over the rail and lower yourself into the mud. The tank is deeper than you’d realised and you can’t touch bottom. The mix is more viscous than water and it smells awful: oil, salt water, sand, and chemicals fume in your nostrils. You flounder towards the briefcase. The rig guy has now dashed off to find a hooked pole used for moving high cables. He comes back brandishing this like a lance, but the deck is so slippery he falls just trying to get up the steps. Anderson is telling you to get out of the way as though you care what he says. You are up to your neck in mud and you laugh at him and at Kang, both of whom are looking at you like you’re a goat they mean to catch. You laugh and then choke on mud and focus on what you are doing.
The briefcase is spewing waveforms. You can’t see them, but you can hear them and you can feel their presence in your teeth like nails on a blackboard. Eddies and disturbances push at your feet as though the mud is alive. You remember before your first child was born, Ayeisha putting your hand on her belly so you could feel the seismic movement of your daughter in her uterus. It was like a horror movie. She laughed at you. Tough-guy orthopaedic surgeon, freaked out by baby moving under skin.
Fight panic.
The briefcase has sunk out of sight now. Anderson stands by the side of the mud tank screaming at you like a basketball coach, red-faced. He could jump in and wrestle you, but he doesn’t.
You wonder who you are kidding, trying to grab the briefcase before it sinks. Let it go. Let Austen Stevens drown in his own oil. Let everything go down.
And yet you fumble for the handle, groping through the dark fluid as if hunting for submerged soap in the bath. You touch the side. You nearly grasp it. Nearly.
The air shudders. A hollow gasp comes out your mouth and you are thrown backwards as an animal shoots from the depths of the mud. It’s long and supple like a salamander, bigger than a crocodile. It drags itself ponderously out of the mud tank, clambering in the manner of a thing unused to land and obviously hampered by the mud. It stands on the walkway on its four clawed paws for a few seconds. No one moves. You can see its flanks moving as it breathes. Without warning it throws itself off the walkway, landing with a deep thud on the studded deck now flooded with oil. It shoots across the deck, slipping and wriggling, and disappears behind the metal housing of the pump system. For a moment the stream of oil coruscates with rainbow colours in its wake.
An alarm goes off. Guys are talking into their headsets. Even you know that if the mud flow is disrupted it will affect the pressure in the drill site, and if the pressure of the formation fluids exceeds the pressure of the mud there will be a kick, and a kick can lead to a blowout. And nobody wants that.
But nobody reckoned on prehistoric animals appearing out of the mud system, either.
Mike, the rig guy who brought Alison and Bethany, has his phone out and is taking video. You see another worker grab the phone out of his hand and signal him to come away from the scene. The flow of oil is lessening now, but there are more things coming out of the mud. Anderson has been ordered back, Liam and Bethany have been taken away. One of the security guys has a rifle.
Rifle? WTF! A rifle on an oil platform! That’s what you think, stupidly, not even noticing or caring that it’s aimed at you. Alison is now on the walkway on the other side of the mud tank. She’s down on her hands and knees shouting to you and beckoning urgently.
‘Leave the briefcase and get out of there,’ she hisses. ‘Something’s going on. Do you want a pterosaur to come out of it?’
Make your mind up, you think. First they say get briefcase. Then they say leave briefcase. You feel like a dog.
The rifle goes off twice, bullets disappearing under the surface of the mud. You wait for the pain signals to reach your cortex, but there is no pain.
Something grabs your legs and pulls you under.
How to bring back the dead
After all the discussion, faff and bustle the end of Gilligan’s Island comes like the sound of a record scratching on vinyl as
the DJ changes her mind.
There is a rushing sound and the sky flies open. A chunk of rock roars through, burning. Just as the hole in the plane sucked out Dr Sorle and myself when the briefcase broke through, now the atmosphere inside the bird mothers’ realm goes spiralling off into space, taking loose things with it – including the bird mothers themselves. Their wings spread, they tumble into nothingness. I hold on to the ramparts of the nest and watch them go, until whatever conceptual space we shared is torn away from me.
When they are gone the wind is still loud but I am in mental silence.
The structure shakes. I am clinging to it, crushing the material in my hands as the escaping atmosphere drags at me. Moments away from the vacuum.
My life is in my hands. I squeeze my fists on the branch I’m holding. Push, Pearl. Push it harder. Push through. Push this world over on its ass and make everything different. The briefcase is a part of me. If I’m inside it now then I’ll push my way out, and if I’m outside then I’ll push my way in.
My deltoids burn and my thighs twist like a towel when you wring out the water. Blood stands tall in my veins. My eyeballs shake. My fingers go through the garbage and the jetsam, they enter intermolecular spaces and they sidestep the electrical forces that bind us together and I slip like a ghost under the skin of things.
Floating up in HD the self crumbles like salt, we are all here together as if some fantastic swizzle stick has stirred us in a cocktail and yelled ‘Party!’ All us lost ones: broken, abandoned, given up on, forgotten.
I cannot breathe I don’t have to there is no light either.
A possibility space has opened. It seethes with chances. I swim.
I have to find my way back to you. I have both hands in this pie now, I’m pulling the material world open, tearing at it, scattering myself across space and scrambling myself in HD and it’s needle in haystack time as I search for the way back to you and to my own insides that you stole such that my topology is now all messed up and I’ve gone from being an innie to being an outie and I just want my shit back once and for always.
Occupy Me Page 24
