Taking the Tube to the Outer Limits

by Darren Humphries

  Inside, I found a construction model of the Houses of Parliament, comprising (according to the claim on the front anyway) of seven hundred and forty-seven pieces, all fully compatible. It took me a few moments to figure out that this meant that, though not branded as Lego itself, the bricks contained could be used with kits from that company.

  Seven hundred and forty-seven pieces sounded like a lot of pieces for a toy. I didn’t know then what I know now.

  I left the box on the table, having disposed of the outer packaging into the recycling bin, whilst I made a cup of coffee and considered the present. There was, of course, only one thing I could do with it and that was to build it. Jennifer would ask after it, and even want to see photos of it when built, so there really was no way out. I did consider searching the internet for photographs of the finished article and passing them off as my own, but that was taking things to the point where avoiding doing the job was going to be more work than doing the job in the first place.

  Again, I didn’t know then what I know now.

  Finally, I could put the task off no longer, so I cleared the kitchen table and opened the box. Inside, there was a set of clear plastic bags filled with multi-coloured bricks. Each of these was handily labelled with a number. The number corresponded to the instruction books, all three of them, that were to be found inside the box. The reason that there needed to be three, it quickly became apparent, was because each stage of the construction process was presented as a picture. This obviously saved translating the booklets into various languages, but it did seem to make the whole process a bit more juvenile.

  I reminded myself that these kits were, first and foremost, toys.

  I opened the first of the bags and shook all the pieces out onto the table. I separated the items by colour and then by size to make them easier to locate when I needed them. Then I started to build.

  The final piece was fitted into place at the very top of Big Ben’s spire, Elizabeth Tower as any architect will more properly refer to it, and I sat back with a curious sense of satisfaction and achievement. It really did look quite impressive under the lights.

  Under the lights.

  I sat still as the realisation came to me. When I had opened the box, it had been mid-morning at the latest. Now, it was dark outside and I had the lights on. I did not recall having got up to switch them on. I had worked right through lunchtime and right through the time for dinner and had not even noticed. I had not even stopped to go to the bathroom, my overburdened bladder took the opportunity to inform me. I had worked right through. A whole day had passed and, unusually for me, I had something to show for it.

  The person I showed it to was Jennifer, a few days later. She was the one who had sent it to me, after all. I didn’t show it to her in person, of course. In these days of Skype, wi-fi and the internet there was no need to go anywhere to see anyone. I felt absurdly proud when I turned the mobile phone’s camera on the table with its construction. I had built a child’s toy and yet I felt as though I had been part of the team that had designed and constructed the Shard. Ridiculous, I know, but then feelings never were much for being sensible.

  “Oh, Dad! It’s wonderful. It really is.”

  “Wait, wait!” I told her excitedly. “I made a slight modification.”

  I switched off the lights in the kitchen and then flipped a smaller switch at the back of the model. The windows all lit up, as did the faces of the clock. In the low light of evening, the effect was impressive, even though I do say so myself.

  “Is it supposed to do that?” Jennifer’s voice asked. Since I was using the front camera of the phone to feed her the image, I couldn’t see her, only hear here.

  “Well, it doesn’t come like that, but a few LED lights and hey presto,” I explained, rather pleased with myself.

  “If they don’t do it, you should market the idea,” Jennifer said, her voice sounding strangely tremulous.

  I turned the phone around again and was surprised to see that her cheeks were wet and her eyes were shining more brightly than was usual. The latter could have been a trick of the poor image quality, but I didn’t think so.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “Oh no, no. These are happy tears,” she said, wiping them away hastily. “Honestly, happy tears. It’s been so long since I’ve seen you like… well, you weren’t you… not really you. I was worried. I felt like we were losing you.”

  “Losing me? But I never go anywhere. How could you lose me?”

  “Oh jokes,” she said, more tears spilling down her cheeks and I saw for the first time how much I had frightened her, or how the change in me had frightened her. And that frightened me. “Now, he’s making jokes.”

  “Well, I don’t know how to make chocolate cake,” I pointed out, lamely.

  “Do you want me to send you another?” she demanded urgently. “Oh, don’t bother to answer that; I’m going to send you another one. Is there anything particular you would like?”

  “You needn’t bother yourself,” I told her. “It’s already ordered. It’ll be here in three days.”

  “Three days?” she was surprised. “You do know you can get these sorts of things on next day delivery?”

  “Yes, I do know that, Little Miss Condescending,” I replied with a smile, “but I wanted to get the garage all cleared out and set it up into a sort of work space where I can build it. They can get quite big, you know, and I do need somewhere where I can sit down and have my breakfast.”

  “Setting up a workshop?” she looked stunned, in a delighted sort of way. “You do one kit and you think you need a workshop? I’ve created a monster.”

  “You didn’t create anything,” I objected. “You just set it free.”

  Three days was a very optimistic timescale to set for clearing out the garage. Since Joanna’s departure, I hadn’t been bothered about throwing anything away properly, so the space was filled with cardboard boxes, expanded polystyrene packing shapes and, for some reason that I could never quite understand, plastic carrier bags that were themselves full of other plastic carrier bags. Any piece of furniture or appliance that had broken had been placed in there to wait for the day when I got around to organising for someone to remove it.

  That day had finally come.

  One skip was not enough and two of them were only just sufficient for all the detritus to be packed into so it could be carted off for separating into what could be profitably recycled and what would just be buried out of sight (and mind).

  As the skip wagon pulled away, it was passed by a delivery truck heading the other way. I had ordered several long work tables and some storage units that I knew would fit nicely together around the periphery of the room. They would be not only my construction desks, but also the place where I could display the fruits of my labours.

  I also started to research my new hobby. I turned out not to be alone in my newfound love for small plastic bricks. There was a whole worldwide community of brick builders with their own websites and forums and rules and traditions. The enthusiasts liked to be known as AFOLs and, no matter what the acronym rhymed with, that stood for Adult Fans Of Lego. Someone had tried to introduce the term ‘brickies’, but that had never caught on, even when someone suggested (in an alarming break down of sense of humour) that the word was juvenile and they would be better adopting ‘bricker’.

  There were factions within the community as well, it seemed. There were those for whom Lego was the only true brick and working with anything else just didn’t count. There were those who worked only with the kits themselves, as supplied, and those who used the bricks to create original works of art, most of which were utterly useless, but some of which were absolutely stunning. A full-size model of Doctor Who’s TARDIS, for example, was nothing compared to the full-size model of a Star Wars X-wing fighter, or world record-making Lego towers that stood over one hundred feet tall or replica cars, or ‘paintings’ in Lego, or even a house, a real house, built for a television show. The possibil
ities truly were endless and people everywhere were using the bricks to challenge their creativity. The community had its stars and its controversial figures. It was a whole world that I could not have ever imagined existing.

  And I was taking my first steps into its shallows.

  I established a small website and advertised a few lighting rigs. I offered the plans at a low price for those who wanted to build them themselves and offered the finished article for a reasonable fee. With each model that I completed, I added another rig to the site. I had presumed that there were lots of people offering this service, but it seemed not. Initially, I had more requests for specific rigs than I did orders for the ones that I offered, but that changed over time and before I knew where I was, I was unable to keep up with the demand from all over the world. The word got around that the lighting set ups were good quality, easy to install whilst building the models and very effective. I got some good reviews on important websites and the business took off. I was forced to hire someone to help me produce and package the rigs and as demand continued to steadily increase, I brought in more people and someone to oversee the operation from a small industrial unit in town. It was taking me away from the kit building and that was what I was interested in. I was the designer. I was the architect, not the building contractor.

  I got a name for myself in the community and then some custom jobs came my way. I would have turned these down since I wasn’t about to go travelling around the world, but the design challenges were interesting and one of the young guys working for the business, Aaron by name, volunteered to do the on-site stuff whilst in contact with me via Skype. My reputation with the serious AFOLs was steadily increasing

  Then came the first masterpiece; a replica of the Argonath from The Lord of the Rings, as depicted in the first part of Peter Jackson’s remarkable film version. The stone warriors, each with arm outstretched, rose fully five feet from the floor, with the wide river passing between. And, sure enough, there in the middle of the frozen blue plastic flow were two small boats carrying hobbits, men, dwarf and elf. The banks of the river spread out on either side with trees and boulders and fallen temples and, to the rear, barely visible unless looked for, was a chasing troop of Uruk-hai.

  It was stunningly detailed, elegant in conception and beautiful in execution.

  It was also terrifying, because I hadn’t built it.

  “Well, I don’t know what to tell you,” DC Charlie Porter said, actually scratching his head in confusion as he did so. I didn’t think I had ever seen anyone do that in real life before. “There’s no sign of entry, forced or otherwise, that I can see. You say that everything is in place and that nothing’s been taken?”

  Since I couldn’t nod and shake my head at the same time, I shrugged to show my similar lack of comprehension. Porter wasn’t attending officially as a police officer. His daughter had gone to the same school as Michael and Jennifer and now had a daughter of her own in year three. We’d been friendly, right up until the constant demands of Joanna’s illness had stripped us of our friends, just as it stripped us of everything else. I’d hesitated before calling him and asking for a favour, but the bizarreness of what lay in the workroom was enough to overcome my reticence. That reticence had turned to terror as we walked through into the converted garage. What if the model wasn’t there anymore? What if it was and he couldn’t see it? I had taken photographs and they had shown the panorama in the centre of the room, but if I was seeing a phantom in that room, couldn’t I see the same phantom in the photographs? Was insanity digitally transferable?

  Porter, though, had seen the model, though he had been understandably confused as to why I had called him, after all this time, to see it. When I explained how it came to be there, or rather that I had no idea how it came to be there, he turned all serious and examined the house from top to bottom and back again. His much more forensic examination had revealed nothing more significant than my own quick search earlier.

  “And the Lego’s all yours?” he asked, though I had already confirmed that, failing to put him right on the fact that the bricks had come from kits sourced from multiple suppliers, all compatible. Such nuances were lost on people from outside the community.

  “That’s right.”

  Where there had been perhaps a dozen fully-constructed kits, including that first Houses of Parliament model, there were bare tables and worktops. The loss of that initial model hurt the most.

  “Then I suppose we might be able to make a case for criminal damage, but this...” he indicated the Argonath. “I don’t think there’s an offence that covers this.”

  “No, I suppose not,” I mused.

  He turned to me, looking quite serious and somewhat intense, “You need to take this seriously, though. If some whackjob is coming into your house and doing...” again the helpless indication, “...this, then it’s fair to say that they are playing with a little less than a full deck.”

  “Is ‘whackjob’ a technical term,” I quipped, rather weakly.

  “Get your locks changed, all of them,” he continued forcefully. “Install CCTV and put up big signs to say that you’ve done so. Has the gate at the end of the drive got a lock?”

  “No.”

  “Then get one and use it. I’m serious,” he said rather redundantly. I didn’t need him to say it in words to know it was true. “This is not normal behaviour. It smacks of some sort of obsession, a desire to please you, perhaps. The fact that they know you like this film may suggest some sort of stalking is going on. Have you seen anyone hanging around recently, anyone that you didn’t know?”

  I thought about that, “No, and I would have noticed.”

  Which was true. The patch of land in which the house was situated was large enough for the house and garage (now workroom), the drive and a reasonably-sized garden, but was certainly not large enough for someone to skulk around in unseen.

  “Not just here, anywhere else?” the off-duty policeman enquired.

  “I don’t really go anywhere else,” I told him, realising it as I said it.

  “Well, maybe I should get Elizabeth to invite you over for dinner,” he said, breaking the resulting awkward moment, but using a tone that I recognised as signifying that he probably wouldn’t.

  “That would be nice,” I responded and heard in my own voice the tone that said even if he did, I would find a reason to be busy.

  “Well, if you decide to report this officially, and I suggest that you do, call up the non-emergency number and get it recorded.”

  “If you couldn’t find anything then I doubt that would be anything other than a waste of your colleagues’ time,” I suggested.

  “Maybe,” he admitted, meaning ‘true enough’, “but if you do see anyone hanging around, don’t challenge them and call it in.”

  “I will,” I promised and I actually meant it. The almost inexplicable appearance of this bizarre wonder in my house had rattled me almost as much as it had baffled me.

  “Did you make that then?” the locksmith asked when it came time for him to change the locks on the workshop door. I could, perhaps, have covered the construction with a dust sheet or something, but it never occurred to me.

  “Yes,” I said, that being easier than an alternative that could have led to further, and awkward, questions.

  “Got a lot of free time, have you?” he queried affably, with no hint of judgement in his voice.

  “It’s sort of what I do,” I replied. “Design lighting rigs for models.”

  “You can make a living out of that?” he wondered.

  “You can make a living out of changing locks?” I challenged, though with no great conviction.

  “Fair point,” he said and laughed. “Still, it’s an impressive piece of work. Not that I was much taken by the film, though. I don’t really hold with all the elves and pixies and stuff...”

  I texted a photograph to Jennifer. She had been so pleased, moved even, by the Houses of Parliament one that I thought this one might
have the same reaction. It would be nice to cause her something other than worry for a change. She put it on her Facebook account so that Michael could see it, with the message ‘look what Dad did’. Within a week, I was receiving emails to the business address asking if I was selling (though most used words that amounted to ‘giving away’) the instructions so that others could make their own versions. I was forced to place a disclaimer on the site stating that I hadn’t made any plans or kept details of exactly how the sculpture had been built. Sorry about that.

  That stopped the email requests, but it didn’t stop the orders. The increased exposure on all kinds of social media, which I admit to not fully understanding, had raised the profile of my little business. Within days, the demand had doubled and I was on the way to wondering how we were going to fulfil all those orders without expensive expansion.

  This was nothing compared to how I wondered what was going on when the Argonath was replaced.

  All the newly-replaced locks were exactly as they had been the night before, and I know this for a fact because I had taken to checking each and every one before going to bed. The expensive CCTV camera set up that I had purchased on Charlie Porter’s advice also showed nothing untoward outside at any point in the night. Nobody approached the house at all, unless they were trained by the best ninjas in the world.

  And yet, where the Argonath had stood guard over Frodo and what remained of the Fellowship of the Ring now stood the Miracle Square of Pisa. Every detail was correct. I had studied these buildings once upon a time in my previous life and I retained enough of my architect’s eye to know at a glance that the campanile (or leaning tower, if you must) was inclined at a totally correct 4 degrees. To add to the authenticity, there were tourists wandering between the buildings across the manicured (and studded plastic) lawns. It was, arguably, not as dramatic as the model it replaced, but the detail was even more breath-taking.

  And I was even more scared.