The New Uncanny

by Priest, Christopher

  ‘Do you know the story of Grace S Putnam and the baby doll?’ scarlet-nails asked the hopeful seller and there was Carole, in a smart Art Deco summer shirt in black and white, smiling politely and following the movements of the scarlet nails with her own smooth mulberry ones.

  ‘No,’ said Carole into Fliss’s sitting room, ‘I don’t know much about dolls.’

  Her face was briefly screen-size. Her lipstick shone, her teeth glistened. Fliss’s knees began to knock, and she put down her tray on the floor.

  Grace Story Putnam, the valuing lady said, had wanted to make a real baby doll, a doll that looked like a real baby, perhaps three days old. Not like a Disney puppet. So this formidable person had haunted maternity wards, sketching, painting, analysing. And never could she find the perfect face with all the requisite qualities.

  She leaned forwards, her blond hair brushing Carole’s raven folds.

  ‘I don’t know if I should tell you this.’

  ‘Well, now you’ve started, I think you should,’ said Carole, always Carole.

  ‘It is rumoured that in the end she saw the perfect child being carried past, wrapped in a shawl. And she said, wait, this is the one. But that baby had just died. Nevertheless, the story goes, the determined Mrs Putnam drew the little face, and this is what we have here.’

  ‘Ghoulish,’ said Carole, with gusto. The camera went back to Polly’s face, which looked distinctly malevolent. Fliss knew her expression must be unchanging, but it did not seem like that. Her stare was fixed. Fliss said ‘Oh, Polly –’

  ‘And is this your own dolly?’ asked the TV lady. ‘Inherited perhaps from your mother or grandmother. Won’t you find it very hard to part with her?’

  ‘I didn’t inherit her. She’s nothing to do with me, personally. A friend gave her to me, a friend with a lot of dolls.’

  ‘But maybe she didn’t know how valuable this little gift was? The Bye-Los were made in great numbers – even millions – but early ones like this, and with all their clothes, and real human hair, can be expected to fetch anywhere between £800 and well over £1,000 – even well over, if two or more collectors are in the room. And of course she may have her photo in the catalogue or on the website…’

  ‘That does surprise me,’ said Carole, but not as though it really did.

  ‘And do you think your friend will be happy for you to sell her doll?’

  ‘I’m sure she would. She is very fond of me, and very generous-hearted.’

  ‘And what will you do with the money if we sell Dolly, as I am sure we shall –’

  ‘I have booked a holiday on a rather luxurious cruise in the Greek islands. I am interested in classical temples. This sort of money will really help.’

  There is always a gap between the valuation of an item and the showing of its auction. Fliss stared unseeing at the valuation of a hideous green pottery dog, a group of World War I medals, an album of naughty seaside postcards. Then came Polly’s moment. The auctioneer held her aloft, his gentlemanly hand tight round her pudgy waist, her woolly feet protruding. Briefly, briefly, Fliss looked for the last time at Polly’s sweet face, now, she was quite sure, both baleful and miserable.

  ‘Polly,’ she said aloud. ‘Get her. Get her.’

  She did not know what she wanted Polly to do. But she saw Polly as capable of doing something. And they were – as they had always been – on the same side, she and Polly.

  She thought, as the bidding flew along, a numbered card flying up, a head nodding, a row of concentrated listeners with mobile phones, waiting, and then raising peremptory fingers, that she herself had betrayed Polly, but that she had done so out of love and goodwill. ‘Oh, Polly,’ she said, ‘Get her,’ as Carole might have said to Cross-Patch.

  Carole was standing, composed and beautiful, next to Paul Martin, as the tens turned into hundreds and the hundreds to thousands. He liked sellers to show excitement or amazement, and Carole – Fliss understood her – showed just enough of both to keep the cameras happy, but was actually rigid inside, like a stone pillar of willpower and certainty. Polly went for £2,000, but it was not customary to show the sold object again, only the happy face of the seller, so, for Fliss, there was no moment of good-bye. And you were not told where sold objects were going.

  All the other dolls were staring, as usual. She turned them over, or laid them to sleep, murmuring madly, get her, get her.

  She did not suppose Carole would come back, and wondered if she should get rid of the bed. The headmistress at the school was slightly surprised when Fliss asked her if Carole was coming back – ‘Do you know something I don’t?’ Then she showed Fliss a postcard from Crete, and one from Lemnos. ‘I go off on my own with my beach towel and a book and lie on the silver sand by the wine-dark sea, and feel perfectly happy.’ Fliss asked the headmistress if she knew where Cross-Patch was, and the headmistress said she had assumed Fliss was in charge of her, but if not, presumably, she must be in kennels.

  A week later, the head told Fliss that Carole was in hospital. She had had a kind of accident. She had been unconscious for some time, but it was clear, from the state of her nervous system, and from filaments and threads found on her swimsuit and in her hair, that she had swum, or floated, into a swarm of minute stinging jellyfish – there are millions out there, this summer, people are warned, but she liked to go off on her own.

  Fliss didn’t ask for more news, but got told anyway. Carole’s eyes were permanently damaged. She would probably never see again; at best, vestigially.

  She would not, naturally, be coming back.

  The headmistress looked at Fliss, to see how she took this. Fliss contrived an expression of conventional, distant shock, and said several times, how awful, how very awful.

  The headmistress said ‘That dog of hers. Do you think anyone knows where it is? Do you think we should get it out of the kennels? Would you yourself like to have it, perhaps – you all became so close?’

  ‘No,’ said Fliss. ‘I’m afraid I never liked it really. I did my best as I hope I always shall. I’m sure someone can be found. It has a very uncertain temper.’

  She went home and told the dolls what had happened. She thought of Polly’s closed, absent little face. The dolls made an inaudible rustling, like distant birds settling. They knew, Fliss thought, and then unthought that thought, which could be said to be odd.

  Tamagotchi

  Adam Marek

  MY SON'S TAMAGOTCHI had AIDS. The virtual pet was rendered on the little LCD screen with no more than 30 pixels, but the sickness was obvious. It had that AIDS look, you know? It was thinner than it had been. Some of its pixels were faded, and the pupils of its huge eyes were smaller, giving it an empty stare.

  I had bought the Tamagotchi, named Meemoo, for Luke just a couple of weeks ago. He had really wanted a kitten, but Gabby did not want a cat in the house. ‘A cat will bring in dead birds and toxoplasmosis,’ she said, her fingers spread protectively over her bulging stomach.

  A Tamagotchi had seemed like the perfect compromise – something for Luke to empathise with and to care for, to teach him the rudiments of petcare for a time after the baby had been born. Empathy is one of the things that the book said Luke would struggle with. He would have difficulty reading facial expressions. The Tamagotchi had only three different faces, so it would be good practice for him.

  Together, Luke and I watched Meemoo curled up in the corner of its screen. Sometimes, Meemoo would get up, limp to the opposite corner, and produce a pile of something. I don’t know what this something was, or which orifice it came from – the resolution was not good enough to tell.

  ‘You’re feeding it too much,’ I told Luke. He said that he wasn’t, but he’d been sat on the sofa thumbing the buttons for hours at a time, so I’m sure he must have been. There’s not much else to do with a Tamagotchi.

  I read the instruction manual that came with Meemoo. Its needs were simple: food, water, sleep, play, much like Luke’s. Meemoo was supposed to give signals whe
n it required one of these things. Luke’s job as Meemoo’s carer was to press the appropriate button at the appropriate time. The manual said that overfeeding, underfeeding, lack of exercise and unhappiness could all make a Tamagotchi sick. A little black skull and crossbones should appear on the screen when this happens, and by pressing button A twice, then B, one could administer medicine. The instructions said that sometimes it might take two or three shots of medicine, depending on how sick your Tamagotchi is.

  I checked Meemoo’s screen again and there was no skull and crossbones.

  The instructions said that if the Tamagotchi dies, you have to stick a pencil into the hole in its back to reset it. A new creature would then be born. They said you could reset at any time.

  When Luke had finally gone to sleep and could not see me molesting his virtual pet, I found the hole on Meemoo’s back and jabbed a sharpened pencil into it. But when I turned it back over, Meemoo was still there, as sick as ever. I jabbed a few more times and tried it with a pin too, in case I wasn’t getting deep enough. But it wouldn’t reset.

  I wondered what happened if Meemoo died, knowing that the reset button didn’t work. Was there a malfunction that had robbed Luke’s Tamagotchi of its immortality? Did it have just one shot at life? I guess that made it a lot more special, and in a small way, it made me more determined to find a cure for Meemoo.

  I plugged Meemoo into my PC – a new feature in this generation of Tamagotchis. I hoped that some kind of diagnostics wizard would pop up and sort it out.

  A Tamagotchi screen blinked into life on my PC. There were many big-eyed mutant creatures jiggling for attention, including another Meemoo, looking like its picture on the box, before it got sick. One of the options on the screen was ‘synch your Tamagotchi’.

  When I did this, Meemoo’s limited world of square grey pixels was transformed into a full colour three-dimensional animation on my screen. The blank room in which it lived was revealed as a conservatory filled with impossible plants growing under the pale-pink Tamagotchi sun. And in the middle of this world, lying on the carpet, was Meemoo.

  It looked awful. In this fully realised version of the Tamagotchi’s room, Meemoo was a shrivelled thing. The skin on its feet was dry and peeling. Its eyes, once bright white with crisp highlights, were yellow and unreflective. There were scabs around the base of its nose. I wondered what kind of demented mind would create a child’s toy that was capable of reaching such abject deterioration.

  I clicked through every button available until I found the medical kit. From this you could drag and drop pills onto the Tamagotchi. I guess Meemoo was supposed to eat or absorb these, but they just hovered in front of it, as if Meemoo was refusing to take its medicine.

  I tried the same trick with Meemoo that I do with Luke to get him to take his medicine. I mixed it with food. I dragged a chicken drumstick from the food store and put it on top of the medicine, hoping that Meemoo would get up and eat them both. But it just lay there, looking at me, its mouth slightly open. Its look of sickness was so convincing that I could practically smell its foul breath coming from the screen.

  I sent Meemoo’s makers a sarcastic e-mail describing his condition and asking what needed to be done to restore its health.

  A week later, I had received no reply and Meemoo was getting even worse. There were pale grey dots appearing on it. When I synched Meemoo to my computer, these dots were revealed as deep red sores. And the way the light from the Tamagotchi sun reflected off them, you could tell they were wet.

  I went to a toy shop and showed them the Tamagotchi. ‘I’ve not seen one do that before.’ The girl behind the counter said. ‘Must be something the new ones do.’

  I came home from work one day to find Luke had a friend over for a playdate. The friend was called Becky, and she had a Tamagotchi too. Gabby was trying to organise at least one playdate a week to help Luke socialise.

  Becky’s Tamagotchi gave me an idea.

  This generation of Tamagotchis had the ability to connect to other Tamagotchis. By getting your Tamagotchi within a metre of a friend’s Tamagotchi, your virtual pets could play games or dance together (because of their limited resolution, Tamagotchi dances are indistinguishable from their ‘hungry’ signal). Maybe if I connected the two Tamagotchis, the medicine button in Becky’s would cure Meemoo.

  At first, Luke violently resisted giving Meemoo to me, despite me saying I only wanted to help it. But when I bribed Luke and Becky with chocolate biscuits and a packet of crisps, they agreed to hand them over.

  When Gabby came in from hanging up the washing, she was furious.

  ‘Why did you give the kids crisps and chocolate?’ She said, slamming the empty basket on the ground. ‘I’m just about to give them dinner.’

  ‘Leave me alone for a minute,’ I said.

  I didn’t have time to explain. I had only a few minutes before the kids would demand their toys back, and I was having trouble getting the Tamagotchis to find each other – maybe Meemoo’s bluetooth connection had been compromised by the virus.

  Eventually though, when I put their connectors right next to each other, they made a synchronous pinging sound, and both characters appeared on both screens. It’s amazing how satisfying that was.

  Meemoo looked sick on Becky’s screen too. I pressed A twice and then B to administer medicine.

  Nothing happened.

  I tried again. But the Tamagotchis just stood there. One healthy, one sick. Doing nothing.

  Luke and Becky came back, their fingers oily and their faces brown with chocolate. I told them to wipe their hands on their trousers before they played with their Tamagotchis. I was about to disconnect them from each other, but when they saw that they had each other’s characters on their screen, they got excited and sat at the kitchen table to play together.

  I poured myself a beer and half a glass of wine for Gabby (her daily limit), then, seeing the crisps out on the side, helped myself to a bag. There was something so comforting about the taste of the cold beer and salted crisps.

  Later, when my beer was gone and it was time for Becky’s mum to pick her up, Becky handed me her Tamagotchi.

  ‘Can you fix Weebee?’ She asked. ‘I don’t think she’s feeling well.’

  Becky’s pink Tamagotchi was already presenting the first symptoms of Meemoo’s disease: the thinning and greying of features, the stoop, the lethargy.

  I heard Becky’s mum pull up in the car as I began to press the medicine buttons, knowing already that they would not work. ‘There,’ I said. ‘It just needs some rest. Leave it alone until tomorrow, and it should be okay.’

  Luke had been invited to a birthday party. Usually Gabby would take Luke to parties, but she was feeling rough – she was having a particularly unpleasant first trimester this time. So she persuaded me to go, even though I hate kids’ parties.

  I noticed that lots of other kids at the party had Tamagotchis. They were fastened to the belt loops of their skirts and trousers. The kids would stop every few minutes during their games to lift up their Tamagotchis and check they were okay, occasionally pressing a button to satisfy one of their needs.

  ‘These Tamagotchis are insane, aren’t they?’ I remarked to another Dad who was standing at the edge of the garden with his arms folded across his chest.

  ‘Yeah,’ he smiled.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘My kid’s one got sick. One of its arms fell off this morning. Can you believe that?’

  The dad turned to me, his face suddenly serious. ‘You’re not Luke’s dad, are you?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘I had to buy a new Tamagotchi thanks to you.’

  I frowned and smirked, thinking that he couldn’t be serious, but my expression seemed to piss him off.

  ‘You had Becky Willis over at your house, didn’t you?’ he continued. ‘Her pet got Matty’s pet sick ’cause she sits next to him in class. My boy’s pet died. I’ve half a mind to charge you for the new one.’

  I stare
d right into his eyes, looking for an indication that he was joking, but there was none. ‘I don’t know what to say,’ I said. And truly, I didn’t. I thought he was crazy, especially the way he referred to the Tamagotchis as ‘pets’, like they were real pets, not just 30 pixels on an LCD screen with only a little more functionality than my alarm clock. ‘Maybe there was something else wrong with yours. Luke’s didn’t die.’

  The other dad shook his head and blew out, and then turned sideways to look at me, making a crease in his fat neck. ‘You didn’t bring it here, did you?’ he said.

  ‘Well, Luke takes it everywhere with him,’ I said.

  ‘Jesus,’ he said, and then he literally ran across a game of Twister that some of the kids were playing to grab his son’s Tamagotchi and check that it was okay. He had an argument with his son as he detached it from the boy’s belt loop, saying he was going to put it in the car for safety. They were making so much noise that the mother of the kid having the birthday came over to placate them. The dad leaned in close to her to whisper, and she looked at the ground while he spoke, then up at me, then at Luke.