A Mind of its Own

by Martyn Ford

  As Tim slumped lower and fell asleep, he had an image in his mind of sliding through the bricks and finding himself outside in this blank space and falling and falling and watching their beautiful den in room ninety-eight drift away above until it was a single pixel. Like a star. This jolted him and he opened his eyes. He thought of Elisa – she was probably just a few metres below. He wondered what she might be doing at that moment. Cleaning up, getting ready for bed herself maybe. Or maybe she was already asleep. Did this Elisa dream of having a child? Did she miss him, even though she didn’t know him?

  He smiled at the flickering candle nearby and closed his eyes. It was nearly perfect, he thought as he drifted off again, if only Elisa would be herself.

  In fact, he realised, beating Clarice and putting things right wasn’t the main reason he was so driven. Really, Tim just wanted things back to how they were between him and … and his mum. The word felt natural now. If he could have that, he’d accept defeat and let Clarice Crowfield have everything else.

  *

  Tim woke sometime around sunrise, which was little more than a faint glow on the edge of the table they had pressed against the window. Dee was sitting, wrapped in a blanket, in the corner, squatting low and watching the small TV Tim had created the previous night. Phil was perched on her shoulder and Eisenstone was by her side.

  ‘What,’ Tim said, stretching. ‘What you watching?’

  ‘The news.’ She turned the TV’s volume up a few notches. ‘We’re on it.’

  ‘… considered armed and dangerous,’ the reporter said. ‘George Eisenstone is believed to be on the run with his granddaughter Dee and another child, thought to be Timothy Hart.’

  The news then flicked to CCTV stills of them walking across the car park of Hawk Peak Prison, then another of them in reception. A final frame popped up on screen – it was of Tim looking at the camera right by Fredric’s cell. He remembered the moment well.

  ‘The police think we did it,’ Dee said.

  ‘Did what?’ Tim asked, turning slightly, scared of the answer.

  ‘Fredric is dead.’ Dee sighed. ‘And they’re saying we murdered him.’

  Chapter 10

  Tim stared at his own face on the news – then a photograph of Fredric Wilde arrived on screen. Sure enough, the reporter said Eisenstone, Tim and Dee were wanted in connection with his murder.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Dee whispered.

  ‘Clarice. She must have ordered it,’ Tim said.

  ‘How on earth would we have been able to kill him anyway?’ Dee asked.

  Previously Tim had thought that if they found a way to prove what Clarice had done, they could try and expose her – get it in the newspapers and on the Internet. Let the world know that she was a wrong’un. Now though, that clearly wasn’t an option. Who would believe a group of murderers, especially ones with such insane theories about the Prime Minister?

  ‘That doesn’t matter,’ Tim said to Dee. ‘It’s far-fetched to accuse us of murdering someone in a prison, but it sounds way more believable than the truth ever will.’

  The TV then cut to another familiar face – the multicoloured jumper girl from Glassbridge Orphanage. She was standing outside the building, talking to a reporter – at the bottom of the screen it said she was a ‘Close friend of Timothy Hart’.

  ‘He seemed strange that morning,’ she said. ‘I’ve known him all my life – you can just tell when something is wrong.’

  ‘It’s her,’ Tim whispered. ‘The megaphone girl.’

  ‘Did he say where he might go?’ the reporter asked.

  The girl hesitated, then nodded. ‘Yes, he said he was leaving Glassbridge and heading … heading north. But he didn’t say why.’

  ‘You told her where you were going?’ Dee asked.

  ‘No,’ Tim said. ‘No, I didn’t say …’ And then he realised. ‘I think … I think she’s covering for me. The police, the Grey Guards, they must have asked her. This is good. It’ll divert their attention even more. I think, here, she’s my best friend?’

  Even after everything, the idea that he had a different history muddled his mind in ways he couldn’t explain. And still, for reasons he didn’t understand yet, he couldn’t remember any of it – for which he was hugely grateful.

  ‘You said I was your best friend,’ Dee added. She seemed slightly annoyed.

  ‘You are my best friend.’ He caught Phil’s eye. ‘Best real friend,’ Tim added. The monkey stepped to Dee’s side and copied her expression, although his was far sassier. ‘That was the wrong word,’ Tim qualified. ‘You know what I mean: best human friend.’

  ‘Well, the news is saying she is, so …’

  ‘I’ve never even … I don’t know who … I don’t even know her name,’ Tim said, his voice a little high-pitched. ‘You can’t be jealous. You’ve known me for a day. Trust me, you are my best friend. She’s just some weird creation to make my new life look real.’

  Still, he was oddly comforted to know there was someone here that was looking out for him.

  As Tim created some imperfect breakfast for them all, he remembered a hazy dream he had last night after he’d flown off and out of room ninety-eight in his mind. In the dream Clarice was his mother and, in a weird way, he was Stephen. It didn’t play out in the correct order, but he saw snippets of what Clarice used to do to her son. Shouting at him, hitting him for no reason other than her own anger, her own failures.

  And now Fredric Wilde had been added to her ever-growing list of victims.

  Tim sat in silence on his beanbag, watching a thin strip of daylight on the rug, and felt a strange sadness. Fredric was no saint but he didn’t deserve to die. In fact, despite everything Fredric had done, Tim still thought there was good in him – somewhere, deep down, but it was there. The same could not be said for Clarice Crowfield.

  He wished then, from the bottom of his heart, that there was some way they could just stay in room ninety-eight, this safe space, forever. But he knew that too wasn’t an option.

  ‘Wait,’ Dee said, turning to face him. ‘I have a brilliant idea.’ She threw the blanket off her shoulders and stood up. ‘I am about to deliver a bombshell,’ she said. ‘A laser-guided logic rocket. Are you ready?’

  Tim nodded. ‘Do it.’

  ‘The imagination box – it creates anything you imagine, right?’

  ‘That’s a good explanation, yeah.’

  ‘OK,’ Dee said, pacing. ‘And, as we discussed, the information required to create any of these items, this finger monkey, these wonky croissants and so on … You don’t – you can’t – personally know the atomic make-up of these things.’

  Eisenstone was paying close attention to his granddaughter – he’d clearly thought long and hard about how his invention might work. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘The code, the raw data … the, the blueprints for any item created, even tiny ones, would fill thousands of thick, thick books. Tim couldn’t – at least consciously – know it.’

  ‘Well, then, create a map,’ Dee suggested. ‘A map with the location of the imagination station marked on it. Actually, for that matter, you could just create a booklet containing the solution to every problem you’ll ever have.’

  ‘What impact would that have on the already flimsy case for free will?’ Phil wondered.

  ‘Or,’ Dee went on, ‘could you even cut out the middleman and make a new imagination station?’

  ‘I would steer away from that option,’ Eisenstone said. ‘This technology is powerful, the implications are, well, huge. Grand indeed. Creating conflict between two machines competing for reality? It could well damage the very fabric of space-time. A schizophrenic universe would be no good for anyone. The risk is … is just too high.’

  ‘Fine, but the map could work?’ Dee said. ‘We’d need a simple experiment to test it. If you … maybe … I know, try and create a piece of paper with Granddad’s pin number on it.’

  Tim explained that he had previously used the technolog
y in ways which could be considered ‘psychic’ – like when he’d used his own box to create computer passwords written inside fortune cookies. However, the piece of paper that Eisenstone pulled from the box had three numbers right and one number wrong.

  ‘This, this is still incredible,’ the professor said. ‘I can’t fathom the odds of this being a lucky guess.’

  ‘So, what does that mean?’ Dee asked. ‘Tim can access some information outside of his mind?’

  ‘Hmm.’ Eisenstone thought for a moment. ‘It is hard to say … Perhaps yes, but his own preconceptions, his own knowledge and thoughts and emotions are, are maybe contaminating the process?’ He looked at Tim now. ‘Or perhaps your abilities are waning with age – you’re growing up, which can cause the imagination to fade.’

  Tim frowned – he didn’t like that idea at all. ‘No way,’ he said. ‘It’s gotta be the chip.’

  He turned his head so they could look at the scar on his neck. Earlier he had told them what it did, but the professor seemed compelled to ask about it again.

  ‘According to Rick, who made it, it basically interferes with my imagination,’ Tim explained. ‘It sounds bad but, trust me, it’s a good thing. Without it, anything I imagine simply appears. Nice pattern on the wall, cup of tea, cool breeze on a hot day, megaspiders, fire, sabre-toothed tiger. You name it. No need for a box, or a reader. There’s no barrier between the real world and my imagination.’

  ‘Sounds awesome,’ Dee said.

  ‘It can be,’ Tim admitted. ‘When I can control it. But it can also be extremely dangerous.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Eisenstone said. ‘Not all thoughts are good thoughts.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Tim nodded in agreement. ‘Using the box seems a much safer way – I just have to concentrate, that’s all. So, if I was to imagine a map …’

  He closed his eyes and pressed the button, focusing on keeping his mind clear. When the machine finished he pulled out a small booklet, which he folded open and flattened on the floor.

  ‘Where is this?’ Dee asked.

  Eisenstone put his glasses on and peered down. ‘Some of these streets are recognisable.’

  It looked like a detailed road map. However at the edges the lines faded away to nothing. And some of them clearly weren’t accurate – some numbers and road names were just nonsense, random symbols and letters in strange orders. One lane even curled round and made a face.

  However, in the centre was a red X.

  ‘It’s London,’ Dee said. ‘Look, that’s the Thames.’ She traced the splodgy, blue smear that ran along the map with her finger.

  ‘Then … then indeed,’ the professor nodded, stroking his chin. ‘Then this would be Crowfield Tower.’

  ‘She’s got her own tower,’ Tim said. ‘Of course.’

  ‘So … either the imagination station is in the tower, or that’s where Tim believes it to be?’ Dee said.

  ‘At any rate,’ Phil declared, scurrying across the paper. ‘I think this is where we should set our sights.’ The monkey then began marching clumsily along the map, patting his chest and letting out a quiet roar. ‘Timothy, look. I am Ping Pong. No, wait, King Pong.’

  ‘Kong.’

  ‘Kong Pong?’

  ‘Are you OK?’ Tim asked.

  ‘It’s settled then,’ Dee said. ‘We need to break into Crowfield Tower.’

  Chapter 11

  Of course, breaking into Crowfield Tower would not be easy – in fact, the more Tim heard about the building, the more he felt it might be impossible. It seemed to command London, and for him it stood out even more so, being a completely new feature on the familiar skyline. There was the London Eye, Big Ben, the Shard and then, bigger than the lot, this vast skyscraper – a black, one-hundred-and-fifty-storey column.

  Dee had pulled up some pictures of the building on her phone (Tim had made them all new ones). There was a photo of the lobby. In the entrance there was a huge shield painted on the marble floor. Across it were three black crows, one on top of the other. It was weirdly familiar – then Tim realised he had seen the image before, only a slightly different version. This was England’s coat of arms, but the historic three lions had been replaced by three crows, each with spread wings and sharp beaks. Clarice had put her stamp on everything.

  Tim asked about how far her reach actually extended and was told that not only was she Prime Minister of the UK, but also many, many other nations.

  ‘Indeed, the Great British Empire?’ Eisenstone had said, astonished by Tim’s surprise. They still thought all this was normal.

  Compelled by Tim’s reaction, the professor gave him a brief history lesson, with various photos and videos streaming on Dee’s new phone. Iconic twentieth-century pictures of world wars, marching armies, Grey Guards in formation and even space travel. Things he recognised, things he didn’t, but all things tainted by the Crowfield family colours and badges. The most striking image was a modified American flag, with three black crows instead of white stars, held by an astronaut during the first moon landing.

  ‘She’s … she’s rewritten history,’ Tim whispered, feeling that now familiar queasy sensation in his stomach.1

  They showed Tim a map of the world, with Britain’s – or rather Clarice’s – territory marked out in grey. So many countries, Tim thought, shaking his head, so much power. And Crowfield Tower was, the professor said, the ‘epicentre, the eye of the storm’.

  ‘A heist like this will need some planning,’ Tim had said.

  It was crucial, for example, to have a more accurate idea of where within the building the imagination station would be. Specific details like this were a struggle for Tim to conjure in the box.

  With that in mind, Tim, Phil and Dee ventured up to Cedar Woods, on the outskirts of Glassbridge, to gather some intelligence. It was late in the evening, trees loomed tall and dark all around them as night scared dusk away. Nearby creatures shuffled out of sight – an early owl sung somewhere above. They clambered up a small hill, twigs snapping underfoot, then stepped through some mossy roots and prepared themselves.

  The trees, Tim noticed, looked exotic – ever-so-slightly different to how he remembered them in these woods. A bit straighter, a bit bigger, a bit …

  ‘What kind of trees are these?’ he asked, touching the rough, cold bark and recalling that cool flower he’d seen in the alleyway.

  ‘I dunno.’ Dee shrugged. ‘Tall ones.’

  Tim wiped his hand on his jeans, his thumb sticky with sap, and arched his head to look up through the branches at the half-blue night sky. He turned around slowly, spinning the world. Were the stars slightly brighter too? Or was he just paying more attention now and imagining differences?

  Was he forgetting how things should be? The thought stirred some panic in his chest.

  ‘Right,’ Dee said, pulling her phone from her pocket and bringing his attention back down to earth. ‘Firstly, we need to call the police.’

  This was one of those ideas that sounded completely insane when Dee first explained it. They needed, she said, to hack into the police record system.

  ‘Why?’ Tim had asked.

  ‘Because that will have precise information, maps, layouts, the works – it’ll tell us everything we need to know about Crowfield Tower. I bet it’s got a vault or a safe or something. That’s where I’d hide a secret device.’

  ‘What do they even do in Crowfield Tower?’ Tim asked.

  ‘It’s like the main government building – they have meetings, all that sort of thing. Make laws.’

  ‘Not dissimilar to the Houses of Parliament?’ Phil asked from Tim’s top pocket.

  ‘The what?’ Dee frowned – another slight tweak to this universe. ‘Anyway, it’s also where the Crowfield family live.’

  It made sense to Tim that Clarice would give herself such a prestigious and dominating home.

  ‘So, yeah,’ Dee explained. ‘We’ll need a security drone. The drones are operated by the Grey Guard mainframe. They are programm
ed to respond to incidents, film crimes, give feedback to the police and Grey Guards and so on.’

  ‘How does one learn such things?’ Phil said.

  ‘It’s all online – there’re even diagrams. They are connected to the record system – they have to be. So they fly along, scan people’s faces and number plates and stuff – beep, beep, beep – and if they match with a wanted person, they call it in. Then human police turn up. Or, if they spot us, Grey Guards.’

  ‘Makes sense.’ Tim nodded

  ‘But, obviously, we can’t just hack into the system because it’ll shut down – it’ll have firewalls and security and all that nonsense. Only people with proper codes can access it. And there are only a certain number of IDs. We need an official one. And we can’t kidnap a policeman, and certainly not a Grey Guard. So we’ll grab a drone, smash it open, plug in a laptop, then use its ID to access the records. Bob’s ya donkey.’

  ‘You are capable of hacking the software within a police drone?’ Phil wondered.

  ‘What? No. But Tim can surely create a laptop with the necessary sort of programming or whatever on it? Right?’

  ‘I’ll try …’

  So here they were, in this rapidly darkening woodland, about to phone the police on themselves. Professor Eisenstone, being the most wanted of them all, stayed in room ninety-eight. As an adult, he stood to lose the most. Dee reasoned that she and Tim could always claim to be victims themselves – tricked into doing all of this. Children, she said, could quite literally get away with murder.

  Dee’s face and upper body were lit by her mobile. She dialled the three most serious numbers you can dial and pressed call.

  ‘Nine nine nine emergency, which service do you require?’ The phone was on loudspeaker. The voice was stern. Tim swallowed and felt a tremble of anxiety. This was definitely illegal.