by J Battle
‘Very funny,’ I say. ‘But it was a serious question.’
'You have no need to worry, Phil. Although you will be open to its influence, all of your thoughts and actions will be filtered through me, so you will cause no harm to yourself or others, apart from the that inflicted by your lamentable taste in clothes.'
‘So, to protect me from the mind control of Kleptrip, you are going to control my mind?’
'Yes, but in a nice way. I won't make you do silly things, record it and post it on all of your favorite social media sites; honest, you can trust me.'
‘OK, if we've got to do this, then I want a time limit on it. Let's start with one minute, then the barrier comes down again and we evaluate what we've learned. How does that sound?’
'I'm not convinced we'll learn much in such a short time. Ask Ing what he thinks.
'What do you think?' I ask Ing, after I'd told him everything he'd missed.
'You might find that you want it to last much longer than one minute, Philip, or one minute might seem like an especially long time to you.'
I'm going to do something quite remarkable now. I'm not going to over-think what could go wrong, or spend hours worrying about the possible consequences, or go on about the chances of being eaten. I'm not going to employ any of my usual delaying tactics. I'm not going to sleep on it, or dwell over a pint or a coffee. I'm not going to try to find someone else to take my place, or argue that it's not a good day to do this; that the stars are not correctly aligned or that, for a job like this, I really should be wearing my good pants.
Nope; none of that. Any minute now I'm going to say, go on then, let's do it.
'Your wish is my command.' He knows I'm not ready, but he does it any way.
Now this is… strange. I'm saying strange because it's surely a better word than the first word that came into my head. Soggy. I was going to say this is soggy.
I'm looking at my legs as If I don't know quite what they are for, and I don't think I've got enough fingers on my hands. Five always seemed sufficient before, but now, well, thirty-two is a nice number.
I seem to be on my stomach now; well the floor of the spaceship is very close to my face, so I can't think of another explanation. This close, it looks really grubby. It must be hard to maintain a good cleaning routine when you're whizzing around the universe.
'Hello, Phil. Can you hear me, Phil?'
It's Neville, and of course I can hear him. I think he expects a response, so a wriggle my lower limb frills as if to say, yes, I hear you but I'm a little busy right now.
'Phil, can you hear me, Phil?'
I don't think he understands Frill.
Now it's all over and my mind is clear.
‘Wow,’ I say. ‘That was sort of freaky and weird, but, I don't know, strangely, wow.’
'What did you learn?'
‘Don't load me with that, man,’ I say, still feeling a little disconnected.
'I knew one minute would not be enough,' said Neville, in an 'I told you so' sort of voice.
‘Let's try an hour then,’ I suggest, because I want to do it again.
'We should compromise and try ten minutes,' replied Neville.
‘OK, now.’
Something is looking at Ing through my eyes; I can feel it. I'm looking him up and down as if I'm just about to ask him out on a date.
I've got my strange hands running up and down my body, pausing every now and then to prod and squeeze, just to see how this odd body feels. Somehow my hands are inside my pants and Ing is looking at me and I'm getting …no, it's OK, that's stopped now, but my head feels funny. It's as if cold minestrone soup is being slowly poured onto my head and is dripping down my face and neck; now it's dripping down my back and I want to get a towel and clean it all up, but I can't move my legs.
My mouth opens and, I don't know, it's a noise that comes out. Like a grunt or a groan, as if I'm not sure how to use my tongue and lips to form words.
I'm trying to help, but I don't know what I'm doing. All I do know is that it is very important that I say something to Ing.
'Ing.' There, I've said it. It wasn't that hard after all, but I've no idea where it's gets us.
I'm not sure if he's giving me a funny look, because all of his looks seem strange and unfathomable to me.
'Yes, Phil?' he says very slowly. I think he's saying it slowly but I'm sure my times sense is a little out. I think I've been under for hours, but Neville is supposed to drop the barrier after 10 minutes. That's right, isn't it? You heard him.
Unless he's forgotten, or perhaps he can't. Maybe he and Kleptrip are fighting for control of my mind, and my head is a battlefield.
I should be more worried, I suppose.
What's happening now? I'm moving; good, my legs still work. But where am I going?
Oh, I'm walking towards Ing.
'Hi Ing,' I say, and my voice sounds almost normal, although it's not me speaking.
'Please help me,' we say; at least I'm not trying to kill him, I think, which is good.
'What can I do for you?' his voice seems about right now, speed-wise. Perhaps Kleptrip is getting the hang of this verbal communication lark.
'Ssch, Ssch, Ssch,' we whisper, so quietly even I can't hear what we are saying.
Ing bends down and says, 'Can you repeat that, Phil?'
Then, as quick as something really, really fast, I grab his hat and then I freeze.
Now I can sort of feel the battle raging in my head. In the red corner is some faceless sea monster; I don't know what it looks like but I don't like the way it groped my crotch. In the blue corner is my irritating, wisecracking passenger. It occurs to me that I don't know what he looks like either, but at least he's never tried to slip my hands inside my pants.
Then it's over and I let go of Ing's hat with my perfectly normal and really quite elegant hands.
'Are you OK?' asks Ing, and you know, I am OK, but I'm not doing that again. No way; not in a month of Sundays. It was all just a bit too real for my liking.
'I think we're almost there, Phil. The next time you should be able to open a dialogue between yourself and Kleptrip, and then we can start to influence her.' Neville sounds as if he's actually having fun.
‘No,’ I say. ‘I' m not going back,’ I say. ‘Never, ever, ever,’ I say, just to make my point.
'On the count of five,' says Neville.
‘Look, who's in charge here?’ I snap, although I already know the answer.
'Four.' For someone who loves to show his ability with words, Neville can sometimes be quite succinct.
Chapter 17 - Then…I don't want to talk about it
'We should talk about this.'
Millie didn't want to talk about this; she knew exactly what was going to be said. She'd had Argu's performance streamed directly to her base and had been witness to his greatest failure. At the end, she’d stared at the display, desperately trying to extract the tiniest amount of pleasure or humour from what she'd seen. She even watched it again, in case she'd missed some subtle stroke of genius, a hidden jest that only the most perceptive would detect.
But, if it was there, it was so clever that even she couldn't see it.
Teddy held up his watch for her perusal. Against her will, she looked. Phil's dial was satisfyingly red, but the Universal dial was almost as red, and that wasn't good.
An audience of 120 billion had watched Argu's abysmal joke and the verdict was almost unanimous. Even those few who claimed to see the funny side were unable to be convincing in their support; it was nothing more than loyalty to the old joker.
'Well, I suppose we have to do something about it,' she said begrudgingly.
'That sounds like a good idea to me. What would you suggest?'
'That we reduce the campaign against Chandler?'
'Reduce?'
'I can't stop! There are…things in place that cannot easily be stopped.'
'Then a program of redress should be implemented.'
'What d
o you mean by that?'
'We all have our part to play in moving the Universe towards balance. If we all do our part to move those things that we can influence away from the red towards the black, then, one day, balance will be achieved.'
Millie looked down at her teddy. Why was he preaching to her now? Preaching to a future Lord High Fulcrum; it was an insult.
In any other situation she would have pounced on him and caused him great pain for the affront. But they were in the field and she would have to put her anger on the back burner; for a more appropriate time.
'So, what exactly do you want me to do?' It was hard for her to accept a specific instruction from her teddy, but there was not much she could do about it for now.
'I have an idea which I believe will make a significant shift towards the black for the Universe, and perhaps even for Chandler.'
Millie didn't like the sound of that; not at all.
**********
I've never been so cold in my life. It was so cold I wasn’t even shivering. My shoulders were hunched right up to my ears, my hands were as deep as they could go in my pockets and I couldn’t feel my feet.
If I’d had my mac and hat, I'd have set them alight to get some heat, but that wasn’t an option. All I had was my jeans and T-shirt; I wasn’t even wearing a vest.
‘Can't you do something?’ I asked.
'Knock, knock.'
‘No! No! Something useful! I'm freezing to death here; in a matter of minutes I'll be nothing but a tall, skinny ice-pop.’
'How about this?'
‘What? I can't… oh wait a minute. Yes, that feels a little… no, that's a bit too…no, no, stop it's too hot.’
'I'll just slow them down a little. How's that?'
I was feeling a little better. I went from being as cold as the coldest thing you could possibly imagine, to being really, really hot in a matter of seconds. I was much more comfortable somewhere in between.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked, just to make sure it was something I was comfortable with. If it wasn’t, well, I'd just have to suck it up, wouldn’t I? Blue has never been a good colour for me.
'I'm merely agitating your nanos. The friction will keep your skin warm and extend the time before your core temperature drops to non-positive levels.
I didn't like the sound of that. I wanted my core temperature to be… whatever it's supposed to be. I didn't want it dropping. And I knew what Neville meant when he said 'non-positive.'
I was standing on a slope, but I had no idea how high or steep it was because it was snowing and visibility was only 20 metres or so.
‘What do we do now?’ I asked. ‘And why are we here?’
'Someone is…'
‘What? What's wrong? What's going on?’ Neville had gone all quiet and I didn't like it; not when I haven't told him to shut up, and not when he was about to say something that sounded very much to me like a warning.
I was beginning to panic, and there was no-one to tell me to calm down or tell me bad jokes. I never thought I'd miss the constant chatter, but I was on my own and, really, what could I do without him?
There was a movement ahead of me; just a disturbance in the white blanket that surrounded me.
What should I do? It could have been my rescuers, heroically braving the fierce cold to save a stranded T-shirt wearing traveler, or it could have been a ravening monster coming to rip off my head and suck out my brains.
You're no use at all; at least Neville would have distracted me.
'Don't move.'
Oh sh…I didn't like the sound of that. It was a big booming voice, and there was a big booming body right behind it.
I should have run; I know I should have run, but it was too late. They were here.
There was a big wide hairy creature reaching towards me with great furry claws. On either side of it there were smaller creatures; equally furry and ugly. Did I say it was ugly? I should have mentioned that, because it was.
'Who are you?' This from the beast on the left; from the woman on the left; apparently.
The bigger beast pulled back his hood, and he was a man. That was a relief.
They've come to save me, I thought; it's a good job I didn't run after all.
'Hi, ' I said, smiling. 'Thank you, thank you, thanks.' I was very grateful to them.
'What's that thing in your head?' This was the woman on the left; she didn't sound especially friendly. Perhaps they did this all of the time and she was just fed up at having to miss her favorite TV program again.
'Don't worry; I've fried it with this,' said the third individual in a voice that didn't really give its gender away. It had something like a flimsy crossbow in it hand,
'You've fried Neville!' I know I shouldn't have been so ungrateful, but that was a step too far.
The big guy threw an arm over my shoulder and it was really heavy.
'Come with us; out of the cold,' he grunted and, without a conscious decision on my part, we were walking through the snow.
'Who are you?' I asked, as it seemed the polite thing to do.
He grunted and gave me a squeeze. I wasn’t quite sure how to take it, but I decided to interpret it as a friendly hug and leave it at that, for the moment. If the situation changed for the worse, I could always revisit that evaluation, if I was still alive.
There was a building just ahead of us, looming out of the snow, which was the best thing I'd seen in a while, because I didn't think my nanos were being quite as enthusiastic as they had been in their attempt to keep me warm and, if you ask me, I was pretty sure that my core temperature had dropped.
Then we were inside and it was nice and warm, and I'd started to shiver, which was a lot of use; just like me to be one step behind the situation.
The big guy still had his arm around me, which I thought was a little unnecessary at first, but then it became clear that I wasn’t staying in this lovely warm room. No, there was a doorway on the other side of the room and that was where he was taking me.
Without a word he just pushed me unceremoniously through the door and I ended up in a heap on the floor and the door was slammed closed behind me, and I just knew it would be locked.
I stood up and brushed myself down. There was absolutely no need for that roughness and, when I got the chance, I fully intended to pull him up about it.
My cell was a small room, three metres on a side. There were no windows or other doors and a lighting strip in the centre of the ceiling provided the only light. There was an old wooden upright chair in one corner and a bundle of clothes in another.
I sat in the chair for a while and started work on my escape plan. I needed a plan, and it would occupy my mind whilst I was locked up and, in any case, it would need to be ready to be put into action when the opportunity arose.
I spent a couple of moments with my hand supporting my chin, and my elbow supported by my knee, as I ran through all the opportunities available to me. Then I changed position, because it wasn't at all comfortable, and not conducive to clear thought.
I was slightly handicapped in the development of my extraordinary and world-shaking escape plan, as I didn't know where I was, it was really quite cold outside and the big guy looked like he could handle himself, and me. Also, I had kind of got used to having Neville around. They can't have killed him, can they? I asked myself. I knew he was not really alive but, if he's been 'fried,' that's murder in my book. And I made a mental note to myself to be sure to make them pay for it, just as soon as I could find myself a policeman.
The door swung open after a couple of hours, and there was a figure in the doorway. It was the woman, and she'd taken off her coat and she was wearing a tight jumper and I wasn’t looking; really I wasn’t. Well, I was, to be accurate, but not the way I used to, like a hormone driven 14-year-old slathering at the sight of a pair of breasts.
It's not at all appropriate behavior for a man of my age, so I’ve been working on using my peripheral vision; I have great peripheral vision. You don't
get the same definition you get with full eyeballs on, but then you also don’t get the slap in the face.
'Follow me,' she said and turned away. I followed. What else was there for me to do? I wouldn't have learned anything in my little cell, would I?
It felt very lonely without Neville. And that’s a sentence I never thought I'd say.
Chapter 18 - Then…it’s a fair cop, Guv…
It was late and Julie was getting ready to turn in, although she didn't expect much in the way of sleep again tonight. Last night she hadn't had a wink of sleep, worrying about what she'd done. Selling Phil's business without him knowing was a desperate measure, but what else could she have done?
If she'd waited for Phil to return from wherever he'd gone, it might have been too late; and at least he was now debt free. And they could start up a new business, somewhere else, couldn't they?
She'd kept telling herself that, but it still wasn’t working. She wished that Phil was here, but, at the same time, she dreaded his return.
Somehow she had to find a way of explaining her actions, and that wasn't going to be easy.
She was interrupted by the buzzing of her door.
'Sh… that's not him, is it?' she hissed as she flipped open her wrist-top.
Her screen showed two men outside her door and neither of them was her brother.
More than a little relieved, she spoke into her wrist-top's mike.
'Hello, what can I do for you?'
'Good evening Miss…' The man closest to the camera checked his wrist-top, 'Chandler. Please open the door. We are representatives of the Law and Order AI and we need to speak to you urgently.'
'Can you tell me what this is about?'
'Of course we can.'
There was a pause where Julie waited for him to continue, and he obviously felt that he'd answered her question.
She weakened first and buzzed them in.
