by Liam Brown
‘David!’
Below me, Xan’s face appears in the shattered window. Although his eyes are swollen black and his nose is crusted with dried blood, he’s smiling. ‘Come on, dude,’ he calls out to me. ‘There’s nowhere to go. It’s over.’
I shake my head, hugging the steel cord even tighter. ‘Go away,’ I shout back.
‘This is insane, Dave. Just come inside and we’ll work this whole thing out.’
‘Oh, sure. And you and your hired thugs will just let me waltz right out the front door.’
His smile vanishes, replaced by a dark scowl. ‘And why should I let you go? After you’ve attacked me and smashed up my building. You Brits have got a hell of a way of showing your gratitude, I’ll give you that.’
‘Gratitude? And what is it exactly I’m supposed to be grateful for?’
‘Oh I don’t know? For making you more famous than you could ever imagine? For making you wealthy beyond your most debauched fantasies?’
‘For butchering Katya when she tried to warn me the chip was dangerous? For murdering Sarah when she was only trying to help me?’
Xan laughs sourly. ‘Jesus, will you listen to yourself? You’re sick, David. Sick and paranoid. You need to come down from there before someone gets hurt.’
‘You killed my friends.’
‘I didn’t kill anyone. Now I know you want to believe this is all some Machiavellian conspiracy, but it’s simply not true. All I care about is making the world a better place.’
‘No matter who stands in the way?’
‘No. Listen, Sarah was a great manager with an unfortunate predilection for prescription opiates. It was never going to end well for her. Katya on the other hand was a much-loved employee who was sadly attacked by a deranged member of the public. A fanatic. A digital luddite, lashing out at a world they don’t understand anymore. That’s leaving them behind. Just like that fraud Ed Corvin, they thought that by assaulting poor Katya, they could make a difference. They could halt progress. But you can’t stand against the tide, Dave …’
Xan keeps talking, but I have stopped listening. I look down, searching the courtyard for the giant display. On the screen, I see I’m no longer dying. No longer falling or being buried. Instead, I am stepping back through the window. I am shaking Xan’s hand and returning to my old life, only bigger, richer, more famous than ever before. I see a second season of MindCast playing out, then a third, a fourth. I see hundreds of new contestants, thousands, all of them streaming their thoughts day and night, with new volunteers signing up by the hour, the second. I see me as a pundit, a talking head chattering over choice highlights, offering unique insight and guidance on how to succeed on the biggest show on Earth. The only show on Earth.
I see an endless stream of adverts.
I see a generation held ransom by their thoughts. Edited. Censored.
I see reality smothered, a fake world grafted on top of our own.
Xan continues to rattle on. He is talking about IPOs and market capitalisation. He is talking about new territories and opportunities for expansion.
He is talking about the future.
Without saying anything, I uncurl my legs from around the cable and let myself drop, so that I am hanging above the courtyard by only my hands.
Xan trails off, the colour draining from his face.
‘You know that’s really fucking immature, Dave.’
I don’t say anything.
‘So what? You’re going to kill yourself now? Well be my guest. I mean it. The final thoughts of a dying man streamed live around the world? It’ll be a televisual sensation. This is the moon landing times a hundred. Diana’s funeral times a thousand. The ratings will be through the roof.’
Still I ignore him. My hands are aching now. My fingers cramping. The steel fibres digging into my palms. I close my eyes and focus on the gentle breeze that is playing through my hair, cool and sweet.
‘For God’s sake come inside,’ Xan yells, all pretence of calm detachment disappearing. ‘You’re being ridiculous. Doing this won’t make the blindest bit of difference. The technology inside you is already obsolete. We don’t need it anymore. This thing is going to happen, whether you choose to be part of it or not. We are going to change the world, David.’
At last I turn my head, open my eyes, meet his gaze. Standing in the hollowed window frame, he looks smaller and shabbier than I remember, his tie hanging loose around his neck, his tailored shirt splattered with blood. His bruised face is screwed up tight with rage, but there’s no anger in his eyes. There is only fear.
‘Choose?’ I laugh. ‘That’s the whole point, Xan. I don’t have a choice. Not really. I never have.’
I open one hand. Instantly, my body swings to one side, sending a sharp jolt of pain through my shoulder and bicep.
‘No! Dave, wait. You’re making a terrible mistake …’
My whole body is shaking now, my muscles screaming with the effort of hanging on. With the last of my strength, I lift my head and look Xan in his swollen, scared eyes. ‘You’re probably right,’ I say, my words flecked with spit, spoken through gritted teeth. ‘But at least it’s my mistake to make.’
I let go.
I fall for the longest time.
As I tumble through the darkness, I catch a glimpse of the screen below.
I don’t know what I’d expected to see. Memories? Regrets? A life lived in reverse?
There is none of that.
There is only a single, perfect cloud, getting bigger and bigger as I rush towards the ground, while in the bottom corner, the view counter scrolls faster and faster until it becomes a red blur, two billion, three billion, the whole world watching.
And still the cloud grows bigger, spilling from the screen and then bursting free from it, filling the courtyard, engulfing the building, the entire city, until there’s nothing else. Nothing else.
Turning the night to day.
The darkness to light.
Until there is nothing but beautiful, brilliant, boundless …
White.
PART SIX
Blink.
I’m awake.
Not only that …
I’m alive.
I sit up. Cough. Choke. Look around.
In the far corner of the mirrored room is my sleeping bag. Still rolled out. Still looking recently slept in. Nearby is still my rucksack, spare clothes still spilling from the top. Still the camping stove, the frying pan, the empty food packets.
And there, still standing at the window, peering in at me, are Xan and Alice.
‘Hey dude. So now that you’ve got that out of your system, you’ll understand why we couldn’t possibly risk letting you go. You’re just too unstable. Too unpredictable.’
I’m up and over at the window in four steps. Beating at the glass. Yelling. Screaming. ‘You lied to me. You fucking lied to me again. You let me think I was free …’
Xan chuckles as I continue to thump the glass. His nose is no longer broken. His shirt is no longer speckled with blood.
‘That’s debatable. Like I said, we’re only capable of providing the most basic of scenarios at the moment. Everything else was you. If anything, you lied to yourself.’
This time I punch the glass so hard I feel something give. My knuckle cracking, caving in on itself. I let out a yelp. Double over in pain.
‘For crying out loud,’ Alice chides. ‘There’s no point hurting yourself. It won’t change anything.’
I look up at her, squinting through my tears. ‘How could you?’ I sob. ‘How could you let him do this to me?’
She raises a stern eyebrow. The softness has gone from her face now. She is cold. Uncaring. ‘Oh, do give it a rest. You’ve only got yourself to blame. Perhaps if you weren’t so terminally selfish things might have worked out differently.’
‘Selfish?’
‘You had a chance to speak to the whole world, David. You could have used that position to achieve anything you wanted. You could hav
e used your influence to bring the world together. To champion the weak and downtrodden. You could even have brought down MindCast if you really wanted to. But you didn’t, did you? No, you were content to fill your head up with nothing but white noise. Inane, meaningless fluff. With the bar set so low, it’s hardly surprising that in the end nobody even noticed you’d gone.’
‘I don’t understand?’ I sniff.
‘You mean to say you haven’t wondered why there hasn’t been a global outcry? Why nobody noticed when you went wandering in the virtual wilderness for a week? Why your adoring public haven’t scaled the building and demanded we set you free?’
I blink once, twice. ‘I … I …’
‘Okay, dude,’ Xan says, holding up his hands. ‘You got us. The truth is we switched the feed. All people have been watching for the last few weeks is … Well here, see for yourself.’
He stabs at his phone. Instantly an image appears on the far wall. It’s me reaching for a beer. An ice-cold Budweiser. The bottle clammy with condensation. A hint of foam around the tip.
‘Adverts?’ I croak.
‘Twenty-four hours a day,’ Xan grins. ‘After your disappearance, we had to fill the airtime in a hurry. We didn’t have time to plan anything more sophisticated. So we put the commercials on loop and waited for the backlash from the public. But here’s the crazy thing. Your viewing figures actually improved. More people are watching your show than ever. Not that it’s really your show.’
‘What do you mean?’ I snap. ‘Of course it’s my show. It’s my brain that people tune in to every day. It’s my thoughts that have made MindCast a success.’
Xan shrugs. ‘Maybe. Although, if you’re brutally honest with yourself, I think you know that we could have plugged pretty much anyone into that chip and the show would still have been a hit. Actually, we almost did.’
‘Did what?’
‘Come off it, bro. You didn’t really think you were our first choice, did you? This thing took years to develop. It cost hundreds of millions of dollars. You think we did all that hard work just so we could take a peek into your specific, not-terribly-exciting brain? I mean, sure you ticked a lot of boxes. You were based in the UK for one thing. There’s far less pesky legislation and regulations to get around here than over in the States. And having your own ready-made fan base was certainly a bonus. Then there were your commercial interests, which overlapped neatly with our own aspirations. At least at first. But then, so did lots of people’s. In fact, we had a shortlist of dozens before we settled on you. Hundreds. We just worked our way down. All the movie stars refused, of course. Too much to lose. Too many skeletons in their closets. No rapper or rock star would touch it either. We even asked that friend of yours. What’s his name again? Nadeem?’
‘You spoke to Nadeem?’ I croak.
‘Sure. He’s young. Handsome. Scored highly with our test audience. We thought he’d be a great fit. So we invited him out here. Gave him the whole pitch. He turned us down though. He wasn’t convinced. Thought this was just some novelty that would interfere with his culinary career. I’d imagine he was insanely jealous once he saw you blow up. Thinking about it, that’s probably why he ended up falling out with you …’
‘He never said a word about it.’
Xan smiles. ‘And that’s precisely what we pay the lawyers so much for. Anyway, the point is you were the first one who actually said yes. The only one, in fact. Believe it or not, most people seemed to think this was all a pretty bad idea.’
Xan pauses. Grins.
‘So you see, this has never really been about you at all, dude. You’ve always been … interchangeable.’
I stare at him, open mouthed. ‘So what now?’ I ask at last.
Xan’s smile fades. ‘Ah. Well that’s where things get a little complicated. I mean obviously, we can’t let you go. At least not yet.’
‘What do you mean? You can’t just keep me here indefinitely.’
‘Why not? It’s not like anyone’s going to notice.’ Xan points to the screen. Already the beer commercial has been replaced by a picture of me wearing a pair of state-of-the-art noise cancelling headphones, my head tilted back, my eyes closed in bliss.
I turn to Alice. ‘You’ve got to stop this. You can’t let him do this to me.’
‘Sorry David,’ she says. ‘But I’m afraid he does have a point. We’re working to build a better planet here. It seems you’re simply not mature enough to understand that.’
She gives a final, sad smile and then disappears, the glass window becoming a mirror behind her.
I turn back to Xan. ‘So that’s it? You’re just going to abandon me here? In this … this cage?’
‘Well, I guess that’s up to you, dude. I could send you back to your hut if you like? Hell, I could send you to a tropical paradise if it made you happy? That’s the beauty of this thing, Dave. Here doesn’t have to mean here anymore. It’s only a cage because you’re choosing to see it that way.’
I shake my head furiously. ‘So what? I’m supposed to go and live in some fake bubble? Some fantasy world?’
Xan shrugs. ‘Whatever, dude. If you feel so strongly about it, you can just stay here.’
He turns to leave, then pauses.
‘Oh hey, I wanted to ask you something. How do you know any of this is real?’
I blink. ‘What do you mean?’
Xan spreads his hands, gesturing towards the room. ‘This place. This cage, as you so dramatically call it. Hell, this whole conversation. I could have programmed it all. It could just be taking place in your head and you’d never know, right?’
I don’t say anything. I just stare.
He smiles.
‘Anyway, it’s just something to think about. Seeing as you’re going to have so much time on your hands now,’ he turns to leave again. ‘I’ll guess I’ll be seeing you around, bro.’
And with that, he is gone.
‘Wait!’ I scream. ‘Wait!’
I rush to the window, running my hands over the glass, clawing at it. Searching for cracks. For gaps. For any way out. It’s hopeless though. There is nothing but my face, reflected in every surface, repeated over and over again.
Hours pass. Years.
I keep looking.
Clawing.
Searching.
But there is only ever me, me, me.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book was written quickly, in a state of heightened anxiety. Huge thanks, and occasionally huge apologies, are due to the following:
My family, friends and siblings.
My parents, for their love, guidance and endless encouragement.
Lauren Smith for her helpful comments on early drafts. Dr Chris Jones for his psychological/neurological insights. Chris Oakley at Netitude for his technical input.
Fellow writers, for their support and inspiration along the way: Adelle Stripe, Ben Myers, Sam Mills, Michael Langan, Jim Crace, Stephen May, Kerry Hadley-Pryce.
Also: Jonathan Davidson at Writing West Midlands and all at Room 204, Aki Schilz and all at TLC, LossLit Magazine, Grist Anthology, University of Greenwich, Oxford Brookes University, Absent Fathers and everyone else I’ve forgotten.
Everyone who still buys physical books.
Extra special thanks to Tom, Lauren, Lucy and all at Legend Press.
Finally, thanks to Simone. For everything.
Liam Brown’s debut novel Real Monsters was published in 2015 and long-listed for the Guardian’s Not the Booker prize, followed closely by Wild Life in 2016.
He lives in Birmingham with his wife and two children.
Visit Liam at
liambrownwriter.com
Or on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram
@liambrownwriter
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including printing, photocopying (except under the statutory ex
ceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Penguin Random House Australia. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Version 1.0
Broadcast
ePub ISBN – 9780143788072
First published in the United Kingdom by Legend Press Ltd in 2017
First published in Australia by Bantam in 2017
Copyright © Liam Brown 2017
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
A Bantam book
Published by Penguin Random House Australia Pty Ltd
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Addresses for the Penguin Random House group of companies can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com/offices.
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Cover design by Simon Levy
Ebook by Firstsource
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
