As Above, So Below

by Richard Lawther

  ‘It’s over here!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your Parker.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, I’m no mood for this, Alex!’

  Bridgett handed Alex his Parker pen and began to dry her hair. The girl really could be anal sometimes: it’s only eight o’clock, what’s the point of getting all worked up about a bloody pen?

  Talking of pens, what was this red felt-tip doing in his hand? Alex couldn’t remember why he needed it. Did he need it? No matter. He got dressed and proceeded to the en-suite kitchen-area. As he searched for a jar of instant coffee he noticed the calendar, which was still stuck on March: a snowy mountain scene...

  The dream came back to him. ‘Amazing, so vivid!’

  He’d been in the Lake District, talking to Geoff – no, it would be more accurate to say that Geoff had been talking to him. Alex remembered Geoff’s characteristic insistence. He’d been spinning some yarn about Dai Evans, the remaining diaketamine and the state of his ‘waking’ coma.

  He finally located the coffee.

  Could this dream be offering some kind of symbolic insight, he wondered, as the kettle commenced its pre-boil rumble. Firstly, there was Geoff: he was apprehensive about visiting Geoff tonight. Secondly, there was the diaketamine: yesterday’s amazing trip, naturally, still loomed large in his mind, no doubt he’d be dreaming about it for weeks to come. Finally, there was the dream’s clarity: a natural after-effect of the drug, perhaps?

  A drug like diaketamine, a drug that so profoundly affected the brain, was bound to give ‘flashbacks’. He might have even experienced one of those a few moments ago: there was certainly some kind of continuity break... An uninvited anxiety stepped forward at the thought of frequent and inconvenient flashbacks. And what about brain damage? Best not to dwell on it. The anxiety was roughly manhandled from the scene.

  Time to drink that coffee...

  ‘I’ve never heard you get so excited about a lecture before, Alex,’ Bridgett idly remarked, as she joined Alex in the kitchen.

  ‘What?’

  ‘What, what, what, what! – is that all you can say this morning – what!?’

  ‘I beg your pardon.’

  Bridgett gave Alex a steely look. ‘Stop trying to wind me up, love, it’s too early in the morning.’

  ‘I’m not trying to wind you up, I’m just half asleep still.’

  ‘Yes, this must seem like the middle of the night to you, hmm?’

  ‘Now who’s doing the winding up?’

  ‘Okay, Alex, let’s start again, shall we? We’ve obviously climbed out of the wrong side of the bed this morning.’ Bridgett was attempting to be more conciliatory but her chattering simply got on his nerves. ‘You seemed to be looking forward to today’s lecture, the statistics mechanics or whatever, that’s why you needed the pen, remember?’

  ‘Why would I need a pen now?’ What was the daft hen blathering on about?

  ‘You tell me, Mr Grump!’ Bridgett made no sense, and it sounded like she was spoiling for a scrap.

  Alex finished his coffee, pulled together some notes and books and made for the door. ‘I’ll catch you later.’

  He reached the street and stopped to massage his throbbing forehead: this was too early–

  He spied Gil: the mugger stared back from a favourite perch behind his owner’s window.

  ‘It’s all your fault you greedy little bastard!’

  Gil just carried on watching, clearly unencumbered by any sense of guilt.

  ‘It’s all peanuts from–’ Alex checked his bag: Where were Cube’s notes on statistical mechanics? Still in the flat. And that was the first lecture this morning; he turned to face his front door and thought of Bridgett: No, to hell with it, Cube could have them later ... on second thoughts – he would retrieve them after all...

  He returned to the lounge and found Bridgett reading Cube’s notes.

  ‘Err, excuse me, Bridgett, but I need those.’

  ‘What’s all this?’ Bridgett handed over the file and pointed to the red scrawled messages.

  Alex blanched at the sight of them. ‘Holy..!’ he muttered under his breath.

  ‘Alex..? Alex..!’

  But Alex was already out the door and on his way to the university.

  ‘Well, look who it is,’ chortled the bastard Jordan. He sat alone, at the front of the classroom. Alex ignored him and proceeded towards his dusty seat at one of the rear corners, directly behind Cube.

  ‘Here you go, mate,’ he said to Cube, ‘your stat file.’ He handed over the file; the red additions removed.

  ‘Oh, thanks, man, brilliant. I’ll be needing them, thanks very much,’ replied a thankful Cube.

  ‘Yeah, I’ll need to photocopy them later, if that’s okay?’

  ‘No problemo.’

  ‘Cheers. I was reading them last night, it’s good stuff.’

  Cube turned around and gave Alex a sceptical look. But then his expression changed. ‘How are you feeling, you know, after.., you know, the “thing” – yesterday?’

  ‘Fine, tiptop, I’m even looking forward to this lecture.’ This sunny diagnosis would have been true but for the recently discovered note: his mind might not be in such good shape after all. There was also the issue of his mood swings, which, since the diaketamine trip, had been up and down like a yoyo. He’d always been moody, of course, and he readily acknowledged the causes: Geoff, Bridgett, his course, his money ... but the reactions to these factors appeared subtly shifted, as though something within, something that held a particularly basal emotional view of life, had decided, unilaterally, to help out, to shoulder some of the burden, and feel some of the pain. And expose it to the light.

  Was this all down to the drug..?

  Dr Beresford (Cutthroat), today’s lecturer, suddenly barged into the room.

  ‘Morning,’ he barked, as he placed a stack of papers on the front desk.

  Beresford’s face contained two eyes, a nose, and a mouth; he had no other distinguishing features. However, despite the bland appearance, Beresford was not a man to be trifled with. He stopped and smiled as he noticed Alex hiding at the back of the class; the rest of the class dutifully tittered on cue, and Alex felt himself go red.

  ‘Mr Stanton, so nice of you to join us. You look... older somehow, how long has it been?’

  ‘I don’t recall,’ replied Alex.

  ‘Too bloody long. That’s how long it’s been.’ Beresford approached Alex and continued more quietly: ‘Drop into my office after this lecture.’ He returned to the front of the class and commenced the lecture.

  Within five minutes Alex began to daydream, once again he thought about the vivid dream and the scrawled notes...

  Alex, pay attention! that drug you’ve just taken, the diaketamine, it does more than you think. A lot more! It has somehow conjured up a life-force, something that resides down here, in the subconscious, and it has the power to cure me!! Are you listening!? it can cure me! But it needs something that Dai Evans possesses.

  It needs you.., WE need you to give Dai your remaining diaketamine, but you mustn’t, you absolutely mustn’t just put it in his pint, make him snort it. I know this sounds strange, ridiculous even, but once Dai snorts the drug I’ll be set free...

  Alex, you must believe that this is real, and if you do nothing I’ll probably go insane...

 

  ‘Mr Stanton?’

  Beresford waited at the front of the class; he held aloft a piece of chalk and invited Alex to complete the next line of equation.

  Alex knew that Beresford knew that Alex knew – nothing. This pantomime was simply Beresford’s revenge for all those skipped lectures. Alex received the chalk and held it in his sweaty palm as he studied the lines of equations on the board. This stuff looked difficult, convoluted and obscure – as tough as anything he’d seen on this degree course. No doubt most of the class had some reservations about it. He stared at the board, increasingly aware of
the restless shuffles emanating from the students behind him – whether or not they were amused or embarrassed, or both, was hard to tell.

  Except Alex did not know nothing. This proof had been covered in Cube’s notes. Now, if he could just figure out this first step...

  He leaned forward and wrote down the next line – and then the one after that. He continued, without intervention from Cutthroat, until the proof had been solved. He underlined the answer, handed the chalk back and returned to his seat, aware that an irritatingly smug expression now clung to his large-featured face.

  But Cutthroat wasn’t about to let him off the hook. In the remaining fifty minutes of the lecture he called Alex up a further four times. Always the same pattern, however: hesitation, contemplation – solution.

  How come he was successfully dealing with this shit!? Okay, he’d read Cube’s notes but...

  Near the end of the lecture Cutthroat invited Alex to deliberate over some esoteric quantum theory that lay beyond the requirements of this undergraduate physics course. It made no difference, he still managed to figure it out. It felt like his brain had been patched!

  ‘Good luck, Stant, I’ll see you down the refectory.’

  ‘Yeah, cheers, Cube.’

  At ten o’clock Alex watched as the rest of the class non-silently charged out of the classroom like a herd of liberated buffalo. They stampeded down the corridor sending fellow students and stray lecturers scurrying for their lives. Like Cube, most of them would be heading for the refectory. He’d meet them there later.

  But first, this small matter of Beresford’s office...

  ‘Peter, I’m going to be speaking to Alex Stanton in a second, could you– ah! Here he is.’

  Alex entered the office just as Beresford’s colleague, and fellow lecturer, was being bounced out. He shot Alex a wholly unsympathetic look as he made his way to the door.

  ‘Right–’ Beresford suddenly became distracted by a two-page document that sat on his desk: it looked like officialdom. Surely it could wait...

  Just as abruptly, Beresford lost interest and pushed the material to one side. His attention returned to Alex.

  ‘I’d ask you to sit down, Alex, but why should I extend you that courtesy when you can’t even be bothered to turn up to any of my lectures?’

  Alex blankly stared back, wary in equal measure of appearing sheepish or cocky.

  For a second, Beresford seemed eager to respond with a cold belligerent stare of his own. But he glanced away.

  ‘I can’t deny you’ve got a brain, you showed that this morning...’ Beresford opened a drawer and retrieved a blue file. ‘And, of course, you’ve demonstrated this fact on many occasions in the past...’ He flicked through the file, eagerly searching for something. ‘Along with Jordan, I’d say that you are one of the most naturally talented students...’ He trailed off again, attention fixed on the file. What was he looking for? ‘...that I’ve ever had the misfortune to teach. But, unlike your more studious colleague–’ Beresford handed Alex the file, ‘–you’re going to sell yourself short.’

  Alex accepted the file and glanced down at the open page, he had a pretty good idea what he was looking at.

  Beresford continued: ‘You’ve amassed seventeen module-points so far, carry on at this rate and the finals will probably yield you a further twelve.’ He looked up. ‘You’ll drop short of honours.’

  The file confirmed Beresford’s words.

  ‘But if you pull your finger out – and we’re at the eleventh hour, here – I think you could add a further ten points to the total and attain a 2:2 honours. Nothing special, and a huge underachievement on your part, but, nonetheless–’

  ‘Worth having,’ stated Alex.

  ‘Yes, worth having,’ concurred Beresford. ‘It could set you up for postgraduate work. And then the slate would be wiped clean.’

  Alex reflected on this as Beresford explained further: ‘There is an MSc in Quantum Physics starting here next year. If anything, that’s a field where you particularly shine.’

  Alex looked up, ‘Jordan’s going on to that course, isn’t he?’

  ‘What of it?’ asked Beresford.

  ‘Nothing.’ Alex returned the blue file. ‘But thanks for the information, it was interesting. Was there anything else?’

  Beresford seemed disappointed. ‘No, Mr. Stanton, nothing else.’ He pointed to the door, ‘hop it, your toast will be getting cold.’

  Alex departed from the office but loitered by the door. ‘Post-grad Quantum Mechanics–’

  ‘Quantum Physics,’ corrected Beresford.

  ‘Yeah, I wouldn’t mind some of that.’

  Beresford nodded. Pleased.

  ‘Here he is, super brain!’ exclaimed Cube.

  Alex gave Cube a high-five.

  ‘I’ve got to hand it to you, Stanton, you’re a player. How did you know all that stuff today?’ asked Trevor D, another physicist.

  Alex shrugged.

  ‘Thank God I wasn’t called up, I couldn’t understand any of that,’ remarked Angus. ‘You have got your uses, Al: you deflect the Cutthroat away from the rest of us.’

  Alex beheld his admirers and assumed a look of appallingly insincere modesty. Everyone, it seemed, believed him to be some kind of prodigy. And maybe they were right.

  He sipped scolding coffee and chatted with his new fan club as past dreams flashed him puzzling images and sharp, pungent emotions. He glanced up towards the door, and from the door to a nearby seat; his eyes finally came to rest on Jordan.

  He fixed Jordan with an antagonistic glare. Jordan had remained silent so far – no words of praise from him.

  ‘What did you think, Jordan, were you impressed by my performance?’

  Jordan stared back. ‘What did Beresford want to see you about?’

  ‘Why don’t you go and ask him, tosser?’

  ‘Maybe I will,’ said Jordan. He quickly finished his tea and departed in the direction of the library.

  ‘Why do you give Jordan such a hard time, Alex?’ asked Anne.

  ‘’cause he’s a tosser,’ replied Alex.

  ‘No he’s not! He can be a bit full of himself at times, but he’s basically harmless. These days he’s quite quiet, isn’t he?’ Anne looked at the rest of the group and received some confirmatory nods in return.

  ‘Yeah, I never see him out these days, do you?’ asked Steve.

  The group shook their heads.

  ‘That’s because you never go out, Steve,’ said Cube, ‘but, yeah, he does keep a lower profile these days. Do you want that toast?’

  ‘Yes I do!’ said Steve, covering his toast with both hands.

  ‘Jordan’s never out because he’s revising – he’s in with a shout of a first – and besides, Alex here, who’s always out, would probably try to beat him up,’ replied Anne.

  Alex shook his head: ‘Jordan despises me.’

  ‘That’s because you despise him,’ remarked Trevor D.

  In time, someone changed the subject. As the group chatted about something else, Alex sat silently and brooded: maybe Jordan did seek to avoid him, he had made no secret of his desire to ‘put Jordan in hospital’. Was he perceived by his classmates as the bully here? He had been in a few fights ... but not, as yet, with Jordan...

  After a further twenty minutes the group began to thin down as members drifted off.

  ‘What’s next?’ asked Alex.

  ‘Eleven: Nuclear Physics,’ said Cube. ‘You can fall asleep, Al, no problem.’

  Cube was right, the lecturer was an old duffer. Unlike Cutthroat, he wouldn’t be asking him to perform circus tricks in front of the class.

  ‘Is that the last one this morning?’

  ‘There’s a tutorial at twelve, electronics–’

  ‘Sod that, we’ll head for the union bar, yeah?’

  Cube hesitated. ‘Yeah, I s’pose.’

  ‘See you later,’ said Anne, as she departed.

  Alex and Cube, now the only two that
remained, watched her go.

  ‘I see Anne still favours the oversized-tent look,’ remarked Alex.

  ‘That’s because she’s got a rectangular body,’ replied Cube.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Trevor D told me.’

  ‘How the fuck does he know?’

  ‘I don’t know, but he said, and I quote: “she is shaped like a cuboid”.’

  ‘Really,’ said Alex, laughing, ‘you should check her out, man, she’s the girl for you.’

  Cube looked doubtful.

  Alex changed the subject. ‘Hey, you know that stuff I took yesterday, the diaketamine? It might have been responsible for an amazing dream I had last night.’ He decided to forget about the scribbled notes.

  ‘That’s funny,’ said Cube ‘I had an amazing dream, too. I was with Geoff, and–’

  ‘Hey! I started this, you can hear my dream first!’ Alex paused. ‘Did you say, Geoff?’

  ‘Yes, indeed I did, it was a very vivid dream, it took place in the Lake District–’

  ‘What!?’ Alex’s shout caused several heads to turn. He whispered: ‘My dream was about Geoff; it was very vivid; it was set in the Lake District!’

  Cube looked intrigued. ‘Where in the Lakes?’

  He could clearly recall: ‘Summit of Glaramara, then Scafell Pike/Lingmell col.’

  Cube seemed baffled by this news. ‘Me too – exactly the same!’

  ‘My God ... Are you winding me up, Cube?’

  ‘No way, I wouldn’t joke about Geoff.’

  Alex gave an account of his dream and then listened to Cube’s; when his friend had finished, Alex reached into his pocket and showed Cube the front sheet from the statistical mechanics notes. ‘I found this shortly after I woke up.’

  ‘This is incredible! You know what this means, don’t you? – Geoff must have really visited us in our dreams!’

  ‘What? Agh, come off it, Cube!’

  ‘There can be no doubt, Al, for starters: there are too many coincidences, but mainly: how the hell do you explain this?’ Cube pointed at the scribbled note.

  Alex couldn’t explain anything. But there was that little niggle at the back of his mind. He tried to listen to it but that direct approach simply caused it to fade away.

  ‘He desperately wants you to give that new drug to Dai Evans. You must do it, Al.’

  ‘What? It’s worth fifty quid, man!’ Alex was more dumfounded than ever. ‘This is absurd, how could this action save Geoff?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter how preposterous it seems, doesn’t even matter if it’s all bull, you simply must act – and soon by the sounds of it.’

  After a lengthy pause, Alex finally came to a decision:

  ‘I’m not about to waste hard-to-get diaketamine on this... whimsy!’ Cube was ready to protest, but Alex stopped him. ‘We need to check this out further...’

  14