Networked: A gripping sci-fi thriller

by LK Chapman

  ‘Interface,’ I said, ‘stop... stop this. Put me back how I was.’

  The image immediately disappeared, and I blinked several times, struggling to get my breath back.

  ‘What is it?’ Dan asked.

  ‘I just saw Lily,’ I said, ‘I mean, I saw through her eyes.’

  He accepted this without too much difficultly. ‘And?’ he asked.

  ‘She’s up ahead somewhere. I don’t recognise it. But she’s going fast. Really fast.’

  ‘So what’s Interface doing?’ Dan asked, but before I had time to even think about an answer, Interface started talking to me again.

  ‘She’s doing well, don’t you think?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but she can’t be doing this. She doesn’t even have a license, let alone how dangerous it is. Please. Just get her to pull over and we’ll go and get her.’

  ‘Okay,’ Interface said, ‘but I’ve got a better idea. How about you get her to pull over.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You know how to drive. When I leave Lily’s mind she’ll be scared. She’ll panic. But I think you can help her.’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘you got her this far, you get her to pull over.’

  ‘Come on. Let’s not fight about this. It’ll be interesting, don’t you think? And surely you’re tired of chasing her now?’

  I sighed inwardly. Interface wasn’t going to take no for an answer.

  ‘That’s right,’ he said, ‘I’m not. Shall we begin? I’ll stay with you both, there’s nothing to fear.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake,’ I said. I didn’t like the way I felt coerced. ‘Okay. Let’s get on with it.’

  Chapter 36

  To begin with I was just given Lily’s view of the world again, and I fought to contain my panic and confusion. I understand what is going on here, I told myself. I am in Dan’s car and I am seeing what Lily can see, and that is fine. It is all completely fine. When I’d calmed down, Interface gradually began to withdraw himself from Lily’s mind, while simultaneously letting me into it, and as his influence faded, so did her composure.

  I wasn’t prepared for the sheer quantity of raw panic that would start pounding through my mind from Lily’s when she realised where she was and what she was doing and it seemed I could no more calm her down than I could turn back time. Her emotion infected me, until I completely forgot that I had no issues with driving and everything was intense and overwhelming and frightening- her instincts raw and dangerous. She- I- was looking around helplessly, and her mind kept sort of buckling, almost greying out, as for split seconds she would forget, or dissociate, from what was happening, only to then realise it was real again and I watched in horror as she began to lose control of the car, to veer towards the centre of the motorway.

  And then I was out again, and my arm was being shaken. I blinked repeatedly and realised that Dan was talking.

  ‘Are you okay? What’s happening?’

  I looked at him but my vision seemed all blurred, and I realised I was shaking from fear and adrenalin.

  ‘Lily!’ I said, staring up ahead, searching for signs of her.

  ‘She’s okay,’ Interface said to me, ‘I’m with her again.’

  ‘Nick, what’s going on?’ Dan asked urgently. ‘You suddenly went all... I don’t, I don’t even know how to describe it. And you were making this noise, like you were scared out of your mind.’

  I didn’t know what sort of a state I looked like, but if anyone looked scared it was him. His skin was pale and he was jumpy as anything, looking round like he was expecting danger from everywhere. And he’d slowed right down, we were just crawling along behind a caravan, while at our side the other cars were all speeding past.

  ‘Interface put me in Lily’s mind, or her mind in me, or something,’ I said.

  ‘So she’s okay?’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘she’s not okay. He wants me to get her to pull over.’

  Dan seemed reassured that I was behaving like a normal person again, reassured enough at least that he managed to overtake the caravan, but I was not feeling any better.

  ‘So,’ Interface said, ‘do you want to try again? You don’t have to. I can do it if you prefer. Only, it would be something, wouldn’t it? If you managed to help her to safety?’

  ‘I don’t think I can,’ I said.

  ‘You can,’ Interface said, ‘I assure you of that. You do not lack the ability. Lily, in her natural state, currently lacks the ability. Her anxiety is so high that it is paralysing her. But you suffer only minimally with anxiety. Likewise, she possesses other skills that you do not- though admittedly they are of little relevance to the current situation. But you see my point. Together, you can achieve things that separately you could not. Together, you possess far more knowledge, far more strength, far more abilities. But that is only of any use if they are freely shared. She needs your help, but you are not physically with her. But through me, you can give her what she needs.’

  I took a few deep breaths. All I actually had to do was get Lily to move into the middle lane, then the left hand lane, then onto the hard shoulder. Three manoeuvres. Three actions. Depending on where the other cars were it could be over in less than a minute.

  I was actually a bit annoyed with myself that I’d succumbed quite so easily to her anxiety. Now I knew how strong it was, perhaps I could control it. I knew Interface had kind of played me. By saying he could do it if I preferred he’d made me see it as a challenge, not an ordeal, and if I didn’t try I knew, and he knew, that I’d be pissed off with myself.

  ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘I’m ready.’

  This time I was prepared. I insulated myself somehow from her anxiety- held it at bay in the periphery of my own mind and tried to channel some of my control and clarity into her.

  ‘Nick?’ she said shakily inside my head.

  ‘I’m here Lily.’

  I watched as she looked around and while I saw opportunities- gaps in the traffic, ways to solve her problem- she saw only overwhelming difficulty.

  ‘I don’t want to be here,’ she said, and even though her voice was inside my head I could almost hear a sob in her words. ‘I want to be at home.’

  ‘You will be,’ I said, ‘we’re right behind you. All you have to do is get over to the hard shoulder and then me and Dan will come and get you.’

  ‘Dan? Dan’s with you?’

  I felt a horrible, sickly wave of emotion from her and my cheeks began to burn. Then I realised, what I could feel from her was shame.

  ‘Lily, please don’t tell me that’s why you’ve done this. Don’t tell me you were trying to run away because you’re ashamed of what happened last night?’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ she said, ‘I couldn’t bear it. I didn’t want to be at home, I didn’t want to be anywhere. I just felt so awful.’ I could feel her losing what little there was of her composure again, and she looked to her left at all the traffic and in her fear started braking.

  ‘Don’t do that,’ I said, ‘just do exactly what I say and you’ll be safe in no time.’

  She started crying and I couldn’t see what she was seeing so clearly anymore. It was a very strange sensation, I felt a bit like I was crying, but also knew that I wasn’t.

  ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘let’s forget about everything else and just get you out of this situation, shall we? You need to listen to me very carefully, Lily. Will you do that?

  Whether it was my voice and my influence on her mind, or whether she realised that she had to do what I said out of sheer necessity and some survival instinct kicked in I don’t know, but she regained a little bit of control and when I told her she needed to move in to the middle lane, she managed to take in my instructions. The problem was, she did so with a panicky obsessiveness that in the end was almost her downfall.

  She started indicating straight away, but was too scared to do anything apart from constantly check nothing was coming, so that the other drivers were confused by what she was doing. I
saw what was about to happen before she did and even though I was in her mind I couldn’t act quickly enough to stop it, so she ended up drifting into the middle lane at exactly the same moment as a car from the inside lane who had lost patience with her.

  It was about the worst thing that could possibly have happened- aside from an actual collision. Lily only got out the way at the last moment, and she started crying again when she saw the driver look round at her and throw his hands up as if to say, ‘what the fuck are you doing?’

  ‘I can’t do it,’ Lily said to me.

  ‘Yes you can. You almost did it.’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘I almost hit that guy. He thinks I’m a total idiot.’

  ‘What does that matter?’ God, she took everything so personally. If I got as upset as her every time I accidently pissed off other drivers I don’t know how I’d ever go anywhere.

  ‘I’m not doing it,’ she said, ‘I can’t do it.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ I said, ‘it’s okay.’

  I gave her a little while to calm down, but it didn’t really help and I realised that leaving it too long might just make her even more nervous, so I focussed on telling her how well she’d done to get this far.

  ‘I bet you never thought you’d get all this way on your own,’ I said.

  ‘I wasn’t on my own, I was with Interface.’

  ‘Yeah, but still. You were the one driving the car, right?’

  Eventually, she tried again, this time without incident and she felt a little burst of relief, quickly followed by dread as she realised she had to do it again.

  ‘Just think,’ I said, ‘all you have to do is one more lane change- then it’s just straight onto the hard shoulder, and that’ll be easy.’

  Lily looked round dubiously at the lorry on her left.

  ‘Don’t worry about him,’ I said, ‘just do what you did before.’

  But she was getting scared again and she’d started to slow down.

  ‘Lily, don’t slow down too much,’ I said, but actually it worked out pretty well. There was a car behind the lorry, but behind that there was a fairly nice gap.

  ‘Come on, Lily,’ I said gently, ‘you can do this.’

  I was impatient for her to act. It seemed tantalisingly close, but then I realised she must be able to feel my impatience because she was becoming a bit obsessive again, checking all around her repeatedly.

  ‘Now, Lily,’ I said, ‘do it now.’

  What Lily actually did, once she made her decision, was to drift straight through the left hand lane onto the hard shoulder and brake so hard and in such a panic that she ended up skidding partially onto the grass verge. The second the car was stationary she threw open the door and scrambled out, running round the front of the car and up towards the dense green bracken beyond the grass, where judging from the sudden change in what she was looking at I was pretty sure she’d dropped to her knees. I was going to try and speak to her, but Interface snapped me straight out of it again, and I was back with Dan looking out at two stickers on the rear windscreen of the car in front of us, one of which said baby on board, and the other, in an interesting contrast, said How’s my driving? Call 0800 F**K U

  Chapter 37

  It took us no more than a couple of minutes to catch up with Lily, and when we got to her she seemed in a terrible state, clutching her chest with one hand and taking really fast, shallow breaths.

  ‘What’s wrong with her?’ Dan asked as Lily cried and said repeatedly that she couldn’t breathe, before running a little way into the bracken and making noises like she was about to be sick.

  To begin with, I wasn’t really sure. But then I remembered something I’d seen on TV and I realised she was having a panic attack.

  Once I explained to Lily what was happening to her she calmed down a lot and we sat together on the grass in the warm breeze and relentless roar of the traffic, but then she started to cry.

  ‘I don’t want to be me anymore,’ she said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What I... did,’ she said shakily.

  I exchanged a look with Dan then I placed my hand on her arm.

  ‘Were you trying to avoid talking to us, Lily?’ I asked, ‘is that why you ran away?’

  ‘I couldn’t bear it,’ she said, ‘I couldn’t bear how thinking about it made me feel. It made me want to be dead. I couldn’t stand being in the flat, seeing the desk, seeing the pictures, seeing the two of you. I thought by this morning I might feel better, but I didn’t, so I begged Interface to make it go away, to make things better. That’s what he did last night as well. I was so upset I told him I didn’t want to feel anymore, so he helped me go to sleep. But this morning... I didn’t realise what he’d make me do, he just knew I didn’t want to be where I was and the next thing I knew I was in the car-’

  She started shaking uncontrollably and I put my arms around her. ‘You don’t have to explain,’ I said, ‘I understand.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, ‘I put everyone in so much danger, myself, you, all these other people.’ She gestured at the traffic. ‘I don’t know what I’m doing anymore.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ I said, ‘you’re safe, everybody’s safe.’ I squeezed her tightly and tears sprang into my eyes. ‘But I want you to do something for me,’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I want you to promise you won’t ever run away like that again. I was so scared.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Promise me, Lily.’

  ‘I promise,’ she said.

  …

  Dan and I could see Lily was in shock, so we stopped at the first services we came across to give her a chance to calm down. But the first thing she did after we sat at a table with our drinks was to rush off to the toilets, leaving me and Dan alone for a while.

  ‘Look, Nick, what we talked about in the car...’

  ‘Let’s not do this now,’ I said, concentrating on stirring my coffee.

  ‘But I think we need to,’ Dan said, ‘all I want to say is that I’m sorry. And... and I wanted to reassure you. I’ve never tried anything with Lily and I swear I never will-’

  Abruptly I stopped stirring and slammed the spoon down on the table.

  ‘Right,’ I said, ‘that’s great. Only, you and Lily have done quite a lot together already.’

  ‘That’s different!’ he said, ‘Interface-’

  I held up my hand, ‘look, Dan, I appreciate what you’re trying to say, but I really would prefer not to talk about it.’

  I could tell he wanted to argue, but we saw Lily making her way back to our table and he mumbled, ‘fine. Whatever.’

  ‘She’s the priority now,’ I said, ‘Interface is taking advantage of her. You’ve seen what she’s done, right?’

  ‘You mean her running away? Or her hurting herself?’

  ‘Both,’ I said, impatient. ‘She would never have started doing things like that again if he wasn’t fucking around in her head. We have to stop her talking to him.’ Lily was quite close now and I wondered how to sum up my concerns most concisely. ‘She thinks he’s God,’ I said.

  ‘God?’ Dan said in surprise, but then Lily sat down and we had to stop talking.

  Lily looked a bit better as she sat with us in the very normal, noisy environment of the cafe, though she was distracted and gazed out the window while she crumbled the blueberry muffin on her plate into little pieces which she picked up one at a time to place in her mouth.

  ‘Lily, you need to accept what happened last night,’ I said, ‘you can’t run away from it, or rely on Interface to make you feel better, because ultimately you’re not dealing with it. As soon as he stops helping you you’ll feel just as bad as you did before.’

  ‘I know,’ she said.

  ‘Why does it upset you so much? You didn’t do anything bad, you didn’t hurt anybody. You didn’t even do anything embarrassing, really.’

  Lily played around with the crumbs on her plate and thought about it. ‘I
feel like it wasn’t me. Like I did something that I would never, ever do. Not even after drinking.’

  ‘And that frightened you?’ I asked.

  ‘I felt like I’d let you all down. Like I don’t know what’s happening to me or who I am anymore. I mean, why did I do that? Of all the things I could have done, why that?’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t normal drunk, was it?’ Dan said, ‘Interface was connecting us as well, making us feel closer to each other than people ever normally feel. I didn’t really feel like an individual last night, we were all just extensions of each other, so it kind of follows that something that would normally be private was shared with all of us.’

  ‘Do you think so?’ Lily asked.

  ‘Yeah. It’s like everything that’s happened, in the cold light of day it seems weird but at the time it made total sense.’ He finished emptying three packets of sugar into his tea and then laughed. ‘Man, I’ve done some pretty stupid things when I’ve been drunk,’ he said, ‘I got locked out of my student house one time so I climbed in through the window of the downstairs bedroom where one of my housemates was sleeping, then I got into bed with him.’

  Lily giggled. ‘Why?’ she said.

  ‘Fuck knows. I can’t remember. But it didn’t wake him up so I stayed there all night; at least until he turfed me out in the morning. He wasn’t particularly impressed.’

  ‘What about you, Nick?’ Lily said.

  I thought about it. ‘There was the time I decided to fix someone’s TV,’ I said, ‘only, I don’t think it was actually broken. I had the back off it trying to-’

  Suddenly, I was sure I heard the word “Affrayed” from somewhere, and I looked up at the big television on the wall to my right. I couldn’t really hear the story properly over all the noise; the scraping chairs and people talking and laughing, but I could read the headline scrolling across the bottom of the screen, and I could see they were showing a picture of a young couple. They looked maybe sixteen- in any case, they were in school uniform, and hugging each other but with their faces turned towards the camera, both with big, daft smiles. It seemed they’d been involved in some sort of suicide pact between at least ten or so other people and to begin with I thought I’d got it wrong, that I hadn’t heard what I thought I’d heard and the story had nothing to do with us. But then the scrolling headline moved along and the words hit me with a force that was actually painful.