‘I don’t imagine you know what these are,’ said Judd the Tudor lover.
‘I don’t know, freezers?’ I suggested.
‘It’s what you might think of as a hospital,’ said the Professor. I admit I was surprised, other than the fact that the whole area was a massive expanse of some sort of smooth white material there was no clue that this was a hospital.
‘Okay,’ I said, still baffled.
‘This is a technology first developed about eighty years ago,’ explained the Professor. ‘These machines are Ndoc printers, they produce the essential elements we now use in medicine. We no longer use chemical drugs to try and battle disease and infection, we use nanoscopic doctors although we generally refer to them as Ndocs. These small machines produce even smaller machines, the individual units are all under one hundred nanometres in size and invisible to the naked eye. I believe you may have known the theory for such devices two hundred years ago?’
‘Yes, well, I’d read about the theory, I know IBM had done some work in this area but they didn’t really exist out in the wild.’
‘Well, they do now, in their hundreds of billions. These machines produce about ten million of them every hour, we use them for many different purposes, not only medicine although clearly that’s where they have been of enormous benefit. The ones made here are programmed to carry out specific tasks in the body. The kidonge you took has a small selection of Ndocs within it that will already have scanned your tissues for any potential problem, they will report back to a central system which can alert you for any possible future complaint.’
‘So you really don’t have diseases any more?’
The Professor shook her head.
‘No one has cancer?’ I asked.
‘People still occasionally develop cancer but they probably never know about it, the Ndocs eradicate the damaged cells before any danger occurs.’
It was impossible not to stand in this wonderful white space without being overpowered with the wonder of the achievement. This technology must have changed the human experience more than anything else I’d seen. No more disease, the human race had done it, we had finally conquered our own biology.
‘So what Nkoyo was telling me, no more physical ailments but you still have people who are a bit, well, crackers.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Bonkers,’ I said, but still the same look of confusion rested on the Professor’s face. ‘Doo-lally, barking, mad as a cut snake, insane, lunatic, psychotic, crazy.’
By now the Professor was nodding and she gave me one of her rare smiles. ‘They are not terms we tend to use,’ she said. ‘But yes, we still have to deal with the human condition. Some people find life in the city very stressful, hence the continued development of the talking cure.’
‘The talking cure, what’s that?’
‘Oh, I assumed you would know about that. It’s certainly not new, the talking cure, the process of personal understanding, therapy, psycho-analysis.’
‘Oh blimey, Freud, Jung, all that nonsense,’ I said. ‘No matter what you’re doing or thinking, really it’s about sex or the fact that your mum didn’t breastfeed you properly.’
I laughed as I spoke but the Professor didn’t join me in mirth, she just looked at me blankly.
‘It’s what you’ve been doing with Doctor Markham,’ she said.
‘Have I?’
I couldn’t help it, I felt a bit sick. I was being assessed, I was being head-shrunk and the realisation made me feel mildly aggressive. I didn’t need to be treated, I was fine and whatever problem they saw in me, well, as far as I was concerned that was their own problem. I was busy having an inner rant but this came to an abrupt halt as it dawned on me I was doing just that.
I was like a screaming kid throwing themselves about in a temper, I slowly felt my spirits sink as I started to see myself very clearly. Essentially what I saw was probably one of those special Freudian moments, a sudden vision of yourself from outside, a horrible, spirit crushing realisation that I had a man’s body with a sulking, moody child inside. It was annoying, I didn’t want them to be right about me but I couldn’t deny it.
‘So you think I’m a bit of a nutcase then,’ I said, I was grinning, not to show that I was a nutcase but to indicate that I was partly teasing, although it was a perfectly serious question. The thing I was rapidly coming to understand is that if, after all I’d been through, I had gone bonkers, I’d probably be the last person to know.
‘Doctor Markham is one of the leading figures in mental health in the city, you are very privileged.’
That wasn’t really an answer; in fact it seemed to me to be tacit agreement. They thought I was a nutter, they were keeping tabs on me and it didn’t feel comfortable.
As we walked through the long rows of white printers, the next thing I saw made me spin me into near despair.
‘Now that is a great honour,’ said Tudor boy.
By far the densest crowd I’d seen all day was about two hundred meters in front of us, all of them looking up. It took my eyes a moment to fully comprehend what I was looking at, when I did comprehend I experienced many intense and unsettling feelings.
Hanging from a long cable in a setting made entirely from giant clocks was something I knew intimately.
The Yuneec.
13
Anger Mismanagement
‘Why is my plane hanging in the bloody museum?’
That’s what I shouted at Pete when I eventually found my way back to his store the following day.
‘It’s a bloody exhibit in the bloody London Museum of bloody Human History! How does this bloody city work? Why does no one tell me anything?’
Pete stood with his hands clasped in front of him like a gigantic naughty schoolboy. He said nothing.
I paced around the large empty space; there was nothing in the room that day except a complex array of plumbing made of transparent pipework which presumably Pete was working on.
‘What am I supposed to do?’ I shouted. I really was angry, this wasn’t an act, I could sense my heart rate being way up, I felt my fists clench and unclench. I knew I wasn’t about to start punching Pete, I probably couldn’t have reached his head unless I was standing on a chair. It would have been a bit like a kitten taking a swipe at a full-grown lion.
That said, my anger and volume clearly upset Pete, he was cowering now, he really did look frightened, and I suddenly felt like a school bully picking on a little kid.
I sat down on a toolbox in the middle of the space and held my head in my hands.
‘I thought,’ I said quietly, ‘that the reason you were all busy fixing up my plane, you know, my drone, was so I could fly it out of here, try and get back through whatever it was that brought me here.’
I glanced up at Pete, at first I couldn’t quite take in what I was seeing. I couldn’t tell if he was doing some jokey, big bloke bad acting. After a few moments I realised he wasn’t acting, he was actually crying. A man of probably a hundred and fifteen kilos and at least six foot seven was sobbing. His shoulders rocking up and down as he stood looking a little bit pathetic at the other end of the huge space we were in.
‘Oh blimey,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sure it wasn’t your fault. I just didn’t know what to do when I saw it. It was such a bloody shock.’
Pete was nodding and wiping away the tears with the back of his enormous hands.
‘I didn’t want them to take it,’ he said.
‘Who?’ I asked.
‘The security officers, the ones who sat in the front row the other night,’ Pete pointed to the approximate position their seats would have been in.
‘The four women?’ I asked.
‘Yes. They met with me after you’d left. The advised me that it would be sensible to get the il
legal drone out of my store.’
‘Illegal! I didn’t know it was illegal,’ I said.
‘Strictly speaking it is, heavier than air machines aren’t allowed to be used over the city. Well, it’s a bit silly because there aren’t any heavier than air machines around, it’s an old law I think.’
‘No one ever said anything to me about it being illegal. Why didn’t someone explain?’ Again I noticed I was holding my head in my hands. This really was desperate, seeing the plane come back together had really lifted my spirits and made me hope that I wasn’t completely trapped in this endless city.
‘So they just took it?’ I asked.
Pete nodded, his face wet with tears. ‘They said they’d look after it. Not long after that a transport arrived and they took the Yuneec away.’ He paused for a sob and then said in a rather weedy high-pitched voice, ‘I was really upset, Gavin.’
‘So the women just told you what to do?’ I asked after a moment or two. Pete nodded. ‘And you didn’t tell them to piss off?’
Pete looked genuinely shocked and concerned. ‘No, why would I do that?’
He had a point; it wasn’t a very mature response. I pondered for a moment then asked, ‘Why didn’t you tell them to come and talk to me, after all, it’s my bloody plane.’
‘I did ask about that,’ said Pete. ‘They assured me you’d be informed.’
‘This is brilliant isn’t it. What am I supposed to do?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Pete who started blubbing again.
‘Look, it’s okay,’ I said, I got up and moved over to him. I didn’t really know what to do so I reached up and patted his enormous forearm. ‘It’s not your fault, Pete,’ I said, ‘I know you were under a lot of pressure and the whole thing seemed to get a little out of your control. You know, having a bloody TV crew turn up and transform your store into a TV studio, it was all a bit much.’
‘It was fine, it wasn’t a problem, we do that all the time, usually it’s with toilet systems or heat pumps, you know, strip them down and re-fit them. But your drone was special which is why so many folks turned up.’
‘But there was an audience here!’ I said.
‘Those are all my friends,’ Pete explained ‘I was happy that they all came along to watch and we did a good job didn’t we? We fixed the Yuneec up really good.’
‘You did, it looked amazing,’ I said trying to reassure him.
‘I didn’t want to upset you, I’m feeling so sad that I upset you, I wanted to be your friend, not someone who made you angry.’
More blubbing, I couldn’t believe it, there really was no call for it, why was he crying? Why had I started crying when I’d been in front of all the press women, the worder women? What was all this? Men crying at the drop of a hat, it just didn’t seem right. I started to wonder if the kidonge caused it but then I remembered I hadn’t swallowed the little light blue worm thing when I started blubbing in front of the press. This was something else, maybe it was in the water, maybe the women were pumping oestrogen into the water to make the men less aggressive and assertive. I was really starting to dislike the women of London.
14
An Unusual Proposition
‘We need to talk,’ I said to Nkoyo as I travelled back to the Institute. I sat in the car on my own as it rocketed through the tunnel. At that point it didn’t even occur to me that this incredible machine knew where I wanted to go. I can’t think of a time I have been less interested in how a complex transportation system worked and how the tiny, microscopic wormy thing residing in my bone marrow had communicated with it.
All I knew was I was in a right old stew. I looked down at the small screen at the side of the seat, Nkoyo’s face appeared and she smiled. I hadn’t dialled a number, I hadn’t pressed a button, I thought about Nkoyo and I was sitting next to a phone.
‘What do you want to talk about, Gavin?’ she asked, but I could tell she already knew.
‘You already know,’ I said, and of course, I was right.
‘The drone,’ she said, a very serious look on her face.
I’d never been right about this sort of thing in the past, how come I knew so much about what other people were thinking, even when I wasn’t with them. Derren Brown, you’ve already eaten your heart, time to start on your liver.
‘Yes, the bloody drone, I don’t know why everyone calls it a drone. It’s not a bloody drone it’s an aeroplane.’
‘You’re coming back to the Institute?’ she said, it was a question but clearly she knew the answer and this annoyed me further.
‘I might, or I might not,’ I said, recognising a familiar feeling rushing up from my stomach. I think it could be expressed as immature, maybe even childish. I wanted to hurt her. I wanted to make her feel my pain and disquiet. It was pointless, she wasn’t in the least bit upset.
‘When you get here, I’ll make sure I can put some time aside to discuss it with you. I can see you are upset by the turn of events and I will do my best to explain the situation.’
It was all so sensible; it was what I should have requested in the first place. More than anything else, I think it was being kept in the dark that had been the most upsetting thing. No one had said anything, I suppose I was meant to know why they’d done this but I still didn’t know how to access such information.
‘Okay,’ I said, feeling more than a little crestfallen. ‘I’ll talk it over in a calm and sensible way.’
‘Thank you, I will see you shortly,’ said Nkoyo.
The screen went blank just like that, no shash or signal failure, no little text message informing me that the connection was terminated, in an instant it went from a beautifully lit image of Nkoyo’s face to a flat grey panel. Just as I was about to sit back and relax the screen pinged very gently, a woman’s face appeared on it, not a still image, it was someone looking into a camera and waiting.
‘Hello,’ I said eventually, there was no one else in the car with me so it wasn’t that embarrassing to say something only to discover the face on the screen was nothing more than an advert – not that I’d seen anything resembling an advert anywhere.
‘Hello, Gavin, my name’s Anne.’
‘Hello, Anne,’ I said, only now trying to work out where a camera might be that could be sending my image to this woman.
‘I was at your worder conference the other day, I just saw you were around and dived in, you don’t mind?’
‘Um, no,’ I said. ‘I don’t mind.’
I had no idea who this woman was or how she managed to contact me.
‘You’re not an easy man to get hold of,’ she said.
‘Am I not?’ I asked, I wasn’t being flirtatious, I really didn’t know how easy or hard it might be to get hold of me.
‘The Institute has a block on your coms.’
‘A block on my coms?’ This was getting increasingly weird.
‘People like me aren’t supposed to be able to contact you,’ she said quickly. ‘So I’m on proxies.’
‘Okay, well, just for the record, I probably understand ten per cent of what you’re telling me,’ I said.
She spoke quickly. ‘I was hoping we could meet. I really need to ask you some questions.’
‘Oh, okay. Um, well, I’m staying at the Institute, it seems everyone knows where that is.’
‘I can’t come there, would you meet neutral?’
‘Who’s neutral?’ I asked.
She explained slowly. ‘I mean, would you meet me in a location that is neutral.’
‘Oh, right, I see, like a café or restaurant or something.’
‘How about the Erotic Museum?’
‘The what?’
‘You’ll love it, it’s in Carson Square.’
The screen went blank. Just like that. I didn�
�t know what to do, there wasn’t a re-dial button, in fact there were no buttons anywhere, this place was like the heaven Steve Jobs and the Amish must have hoped for. Utterly button free.
‘Hello,’ I said pathetically. ‘Hello, Anne?’
Nothing. I felt the car lurch and change direction. I cupped my hand at the window to allow me to see out. Other vehicles where pulling back slightly to allow the machine I was in to safely change lanes. We took a fairly sharp turn to the right and accelerated, joining another stream of incredibly fast moving machines. After another minute or so we moved off that flow and went up a small incline, slowing all the time until violently coming to a halt. The doors slid open and I could see a small crowd of young people waiting politely for me to exit.
I stood up and left the car. ‘Sorry,’ I said as I passed the young people.
‘Wow, it’s the flying man,’ said a young lad. ‘You are awesome, sir.’
This lad had an American accent, the first one I’d heard since arriving in London, I stared at him but the doors slid shut and the car was gone in an instant.
15
The Erotic Museum
Imagine if you will for a moment, you were a visitor to Copenhagen in say, 1998 and someone said to you ‘Let’s meet at the Erotic Museum’. I’m choosing Copenhagen because I believe they really did have an erotic museum at one time, and no, I never visited.
Well, for a start you might think the person who invited you was a little odd, or had a slightly dodgy agenda, so you’d be on your guard. Then you’d have to find out where the Erotic Museum was, you’d have to ask someone, a passer-by on the street. Embarrassing. Maybe the receptionist at your hotel. Awkward. And even if they told you, you’d still need a street map to find your way in an unfamiliar city.
If you’d visited in 2011 you could at least have Googled it and used the street map app on your smartphone. In London in 2211 you just go there, you already know where it is. You don’t know how you know where it is but you do, not only do you know where it is but the machine you have been travelling in adjusts its route without any signal or conscious interaction and when you get out of it, you are on Carson Square.
News from the Squares Page 16
