“Okay, you’re done,” you’ll hear one of the guards remark as you fall heavily toward the elevator floor. “Thanks for asking.”
4.
Except, of course, you never get there.
You’re already spinning round before the elevator doors have even closed properly. By the twenty-third floor, both security guards are down.
By the thirtieth floor, you will have stamped on one guard’s head until his nose, mouth, and ears are bleeding.
By the fortieth floor, you will have your own gun back and the other guard will be kneeling before you, begging for his life.
He will tell you he’s afraid. That he doesn’t want this. You shoot him once. Right through the left eye.
It’s only then that you will notice there’s Muzak playing in the elevator.
“Was that absolutely necessary?” she will ask, looking down at the bodies on the elevator floor and frowning. “The only reason I agreed to help you get up here in the first place was to avoid anything like this.”
“Made me feel better,” you’ll reply with a shrug.
* * *
The building’s floors have a compact-steel core surrounded by an outer perimeter constructed from closely spaced columns. It is capped by a pyramid 130 feet high and weighing eleven tons.
The exterior is clad in approximately 370,000 square feet of Patten Hyclad Cambric finish stainless steel.
She will throw her arms around you just as the elevator reaches the fiftieth floor. You embrace. Your hungry mouths will find each other.
An aircraft warning light at the apex of the pyramid flashes forty times a minute, 57,600 times a day.
“Coming with me?” you’ll ask.
“No.”
“Don’t you want to see this through, now that we’re both here?”
“I got you to his office,” she’ll reply. “That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
“That’s what I want.”
You exchange one last look. One last kiss.
“The pass we found in the hotel will get you through to his office,” she’ll say. “But you’d better get rid of the gun. It’ll trip the metal detectors.”
“Fine,” you’ll say. “I don’t need it anymore.”
You toss the gun into a nearby waste bin.
“You’re sure he’ll be there?” you’ll ask.
“He never leaves,” she’ll reply.
You are now entering the main reception area at Virex International, an uninflected machine voice will announce as soon as the main office doors slide open. Thank you for not stopping.
All the rooms but the last one will be empty.
You’ll find him sitting at his desk, a wadded-up piece of human gum, drained and useless, gazing out at the sunset.
“John Frederson?”
His head moves slowly, painfully, away from the deep crimson light still spreading over London.
“No one’s called me that in years,” he’ll say.
“Then you’ll know who sent me.”
And still he’ll sit before you, empty and staring soberly at the sun: a baffling configuration of success and failure that has confounded history.
“A little far from home, aren’t you?” he’ll finally remark.
“We’ve had some … local difficulties.”
John Frederson will nod.
“And the ghost galaxies hired you?” he’ll reply. “I’m almost insulted. I’d have thought I rated better than a mere …” He’ll pause, peer at you. “Do you even have a name?” he’ll ask, looking like the man who just patented cancer.
You know why you’re here and why we sent you. You’re clean, filed down, all biometrics erased so they can no longer be read. The best false identity is no identity at all.
“Betamax,” you reply.
John Frederson will nod again. You notice a moth skeleton still clinging to one of the net curtains over his office windows.
She’ll be taking the maintenance elevator up to the pyramid by now. She’ll remove her cell phone from the side pocket of her black patent-leather handbag and carefully slide off the back. Then she’ll start removing the SIM card. The machinery around her moves with a smooth patience.
“You owe billions to the wrong people,” you’ll say.
John Frederson will shake his head and smile.
“No,” he’ll say. “They entrusted billions to the wrong person … They made an unwise investment.”
“You overdrew your credit.”
“Credit is a matter of confidence, of one party having trust in another,” he’ll say. “We can get that back in a second.”
“You no longer have the time.”
“Fifteen years ago there was nothing here but rusting sheds, dirty water, and oil slicks,” he’ll say, and then wave a stiffening arm toward his office windows. “Everything you see out there took less than a decade and a half to accomplish. In ancient Egypt they couldn’t even get a pharaoh buried in that time.”
You can’t argue with history, especially when it hasn’t been written yet.
You stare at the moth skeleton instead.
Your name is Betamax, and you know what you’re doing.
Banks of fluorescent lights flicker into life somewhere high above you, while the clicking of her high heels on the polished metal flooring continues to reverberate around the inside of the stainless steel pyramid.
She works as she walks, quickly and efficiently taking apart her cell phone, sliding a new card into the back.
You always know what you’re doing.
You grip your left wrist in your right hand and twist. A liquid splintering sound comes from deep within your arm as bone, cartilage, and gristle slide over each other. You’ll watch the hand retract, your fingers folding themselves back into the hard geometry of a gun barrel.
* * *
John Frederson is still talking, but you’re not listening anymore.
“It’s no longer a matter of generating money but of determining how it’s used, creating behavior patterns, displacing populations, altering demographics, shifting perceptions …”
The gun starts to assemble itself from inside your flesh, pieces snapping into place by their own intelligence. Their movement trips a switch inside your throat. You swallow hard. There’s a brief gagging sensation, followed by a mild electrical popping. You reach in and pull out the firing pin.
A pale sliver of movement flashes across a security monitor. She has finished replacing the chip in her cell phone and is preparing it to operate as a weapon. She will enter a numerical code using the phone’s keypad. The device will automatically arm itself.
“Immortality … free-market commodities like reality and fame,” John Frederson continues. “We’re just the universe returning to itself. Humanity is simply another system, a wave of development that expands and dissipates, reaching out who knows how far into space.”
You hold your breath and aim for the head.
He catches a glimpse of her on the monitor, standing at the center of the steel pyramid, clutching the cell phone in a tight white fist.
He’ll point at the monitor. “Who’s she?” he’ll ask.
One last scratchy subtitle appears before your eyes: Those who are not born … do not weep … and do not regret … Thus it is logical to condemn you to death.
“I thought she worked for you,” is all you’ll say.
* * *
Last-minute shifts on the international money markets indicate that an all-out strike against the London business sector is due to take place.
John Frederson will shake his head for the last time.
The framework of One Canada Square contains 500,000 bolts. Lifts travel from the fiftieth floor to the lobby in just forty seconds.
All over the planet, people will be switching on their television sets to watch the dust cloud rising darkly over London.
End transmission.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Daniel Bennett would like to thank Catty May
.
Joolz Denby would like to thank Justin Sullivan & New Model Army, Michael Davis & New York Alcoholic Anxiety Attack, Dr. Christine Alvin, Nina Baptiste, Spotti-Alexander & Miss Dragon Pearl, and Kate Gordon.
Cathi Unsworth would like to thank everyone who wrote a piece for this book. Also for help, support, and inspiration: Michael Meekin, Caroline Montgomery, Ann Scanlon, Lynn Taylor, Mr. & Mrs. Murphy, Paul Duane, and Michael Dillon.
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS:
BARRY ADAMSON (www.barryadamson.com) was born and bred in Moss Side, Manchester, before heading for the West Side of London, where he has written and produced six or so of his own musical albums, including the Mercury Music Prize–nominated Soul Murder. Adamson has also scored several movies, TV shows, and commercials, and he now writes stories and screenplays.
DESMOND BARRY is a rootless vagabond and the author of three novels, The Chivalry of Crime, A Bloody Good Friday, and Cressida’s Bed. He’s been published in the New Yorker and Granta. He grew up in Merthyr Tydfil and moved to London, where he lived from 1972–82. He currently teaches creative writing at the University of Glamorgan.
DAN BENNETT was born in Shropshire in 1974, and has lived and worked around London for the past eight years. He recently finished his first novel.
KEN BRUEN is the the author of many novels, including The Guards, winner of the 2004 Shamus Award. His books have been published in many languages around the world. He is the editor of Dublin Noir and currently lives in Galway, Ireland.
MAX DÉCHARNÉ is the author of Hardboiled Hollywood, Straight from the Fridge, Dad, and three collections of short stories. His latest book is called King’s Road. A regular contributor to MOJO, he was the drummer in Gallon Drunk and since 1994 has been the singer with The Flaming Stars.
JOOLZ DENBY was born in 1955. She has been an outlaw biker, a punk rocker, a Goth queen, and is an academic in the field of body modification. She is an internationally respected poet, spoken word artist, illustrator, and author of the novels Stone Baby, Corazon, and Billie Morgan (nominated for the 2005 Orange Prize). Check out www.joolz.net.
KEN HOLLINGS is a writer living in London. His work has appeared in a wide range of journals and publications, including the anthologies Digital Delirium, The Last Sex, and Undercurrents, as well as on BBC Radio Three, Radio Four, NPS in Holland, ABC in Australia, and London’s Resonance FM. His mind-bending novel Destroy All Monsters is avail-able from Marion Boyars Publishers.
STEWART HOME was born in South London in 1962 and currently lives in East London. He is the author of twenty-one books, including the novels Slow Death, Blow Job, Come Before Christ & Murder Love, and Down & Out in Shoredtich and Hoxton, all of which might be considered twisted love letters to his home town of London.
PATRICK MCCABE was born in 1955. His novels include Carn, The Butcher Boy, The Dead School, and Breakfast on Pluto. He has written for stage and screen and has just finished a new novel, Winterwood. He lives in Sligo, Ireland.
JOE MCNALLY is a journalist and photographer who has lived in London for ten years. He has worked on publications as diverse as Fortean Times and Take a Break. This is his first published fiction.
MARK PILKINGTON edits and publishes Strange Attractor Journal and has written for the Guardian, Fortean Times, Plan B, Arthur, and others. He is currently working on a feature documentary film and performs with experimental musical outfits including Raagnagrok, Stella Maris Drone Orchestra, and Disinformation. More info at www.strangeattractor.co.uk.
SYLVIE SIMMONS, one the best-known names in rock writing, was born and raised in North London. She is the author of Serge Gainsbourg: A Fistful of Gitanes, the book J.G. Ballard declared his favorite of 2001. These days she writes for MOJO and the Guardian. Her latest book is the short story collection Too Weird for Ziggy, and her latest address is San Francisco.
JERRY SYKES has twice won the Crime Writers’ Association’s Short Story Dagger. His stories have appeared in various publications on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as in Italy and Japan. He was born and raised in Yorkshire, but has lived in London for over twenty years. His first novel will be published in Fall 2006.
CATHI UNSWORTH moved to Ladbroke Grove in 1987 and has stayed there ever since. She began a career in rock writing with Sounds and Melody Maker, before coediting the arts journal Purr and then Bizarre magazine. Her first novel, The Not Knowing, was published by Serpent’s Tail in August 2005.
MARTYN WAITES was born and brought up in Newcastle Upon Tyne in the northeast of England, but once he was able to make his own mind up about where he lived, moved to London. He now lives in East London, and his latest book is The Mercy Seat.
MICHAEL WARD was born in Vancouver in 1967 and grew up in Toronto before moving to Hull, East Yorkshire when he was eleven. He briefly studied philosophy at Leicester University and moved to London in 1987, where he soon gave up a promising career sorting mail for the British Council to play in a band. A chance meeting in a pub led him into journalism, a field in which he has worked as a freelancer since 1997. He lives in Notting Hill.
JOHN WILLIAMS was born in Cardiff in 1961. He wrote a punk fanzine and played in bands before moving to London and becoming a journalist, writing for everyone from the Face to the Financial Times. He published his first book, Into the Badlands, in 1991, and his next, Bloody Valentine, in 1994. Following a subsequent libel action from the police, he turned to fiction and has now written five novels, including the London-set Faithless.
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