A Mind of its Own

by Martyn Ford

  He thought again of Elisa, of what she said to him the night before everything changed.

  ‘Elisa can’t have babies,’ Tim said, thinking aloud.

  ‘O … K?’ Dee said.

  ‘She told me she was sad when she first found out. Like, really sad,’ Tim said. ‘Not being able to create life … she said it made her cry.’

  ‘I have long pondered the meaning of life,’ Phil added. ‘It seems propagating your respective species is the only answer that comes close to being objectively right. Even microbes, nay even plants, sign up to that.’

  ‘Yeah, getting upset about not being able to have children makes sense,’ Dee said. ‘I saw a documentary on it once. People love having kids. What’s your point?’

  ‘The point is that, in the end, she wasn’t upset,’ Tim explained. ‘She said it was a good thing, really. It meant she got to adopt me, and that made her happy.’

  Dee sat silently for a moment, nodding.

  ‘I completely understand what she meant,’ Tim said. ‘All I wanted growing up was a normal family life. I didn’t really know it, but I think that’s what I wanted. I was always lonely at Glassbridge Orphanage. And the dream, what I hoped would happen – it didn’t have a busy hotel for my home, a stress-ball maniac like Elisa as a mum, a busy dad who’s rarely there like Chris. But that’s exactly what I want now.’

  ‘The unmatched beauty of imperfection,’ Phil added, stroking his oddly striped tail.

  ‘Maybe paradise is impossible,’ Tim said, staring now into the distance. He could see for miles across the ocean, the surface a pattern of glinting white shards in the sun. ‘If I don’t even know what’s best for me, how the hell can I decide what’s best for other people?’

  ‘So, what’s in store?’ Dee asked. ‘What are you actually going to think about when you use the imagination station?’

  Before he was arrested, Professor Eisenstone had actually told Tim what needed to happen. At the time, Tim didn’t really understand. But now it was as clear as this very morning.

  ‘I know what to do,’ he said. ‘I am going to create a universe where none of this has happened. A world where I never even discover the imagination box, a reality where I never go into Eisenstone’s room that day and accidently imagine a sausage into existence.’

  ‘Undo it all.’ Dee echoed her grandfather’s words.

  ‘I’ll … I’ll make it … I’ll make everything exactly as it was, but with one difference,’ Tim said. ‘I’ll still sneak into the function room to steal a cake, I’ll still see the professor. But that day, I went in his room because the door didn’t shut properly. So, I’ll make it so room nineteen’s door does close. Everything the same, but with a single, tiny tweak, one that has the maximum impact.’

  ‘But what about Clarice? What about everything that happened?’ Dee asked.

  ‘They kidnapped Eisenstone because we’d made the box work,’ Tim said, speaking quickly. ‘Without it working they’d have given up. They were waiting for proof. Everything happened because of that precise moment. It all traces back to that day.’

  It seemed so obvious now, Tim thought. It really was the only fair way. If Eisenstone was willing to give up his greatest scientific success, then Tim could too.

  ‘The professor said this machine shouldn’t exist,’ he added.

  Phil looked over his shoulder at the imagination station, and nodded.

  ‘It means you’ll be back to square one with Elisa,’ Dee said. ‘She’ll be all stressed again.’

  ‘We’ll get there,’ Tim said.

  ‘And me and you?’ Dee was frowning. ‘We’ll never meet. We’ll never become friends.’

  It was worse than that, Tim realised, feeling a real chill in the air.

  ‘No imagination box, no talking finger monkey,’ Phil whispered.

  A gloom descended over them, a rain cloud quickly forming above, a flat covering of grey. It happened so quickly that it was obviously the work of Tim’s mind, his emotions escaping into the real world. He thought it was somehow silly, but he couldn’t help it.

  Phil wiggled his tiny feet, putting on a brave face. ‘In summary, I concur,’ he said. ‘It is the only option. You are right about that.’

  ‘I just …’ Tim whispered. ‘Maybe … maybe you could still exist, maybe …’

  The monkey shook his head. ‘You cannot play God. Any decision you make might be wrong, the consequences unknowable. It is a one-way street, irreversible, no way back. So it must be as close to the natural order of things as possible. You must not remember any of it – only you can make that happen.’ He held his small hand out and Tim put his index finger on it. ‘Everything will work out fine,’ Phil said. ‘Just … just not necessarily for me.’

  ‘Then I don’t think I can do it,’ Tim said, feeling a sudden surge of worry and doubt. He recalled how lonely he sometimes felt back then, back before he originally created Phil. The monkey was the first thing he made when given a free go on the box. Without even realising it, Tim had just wanted a friend.

  But it was the only option for this idea to work – he couldn’t have it both ways. Tim’s breathing juddered. Could he seriously do this? Would his mind actually let him? A final goodbye? He felt his lip quivering, but told himself that he wouldn’t cry. He knew he mustn’t – if he wasn’t sure, if he wasn’t strong, then the plan wouldn’t work, his mind would betray him. He had to hide his emotions from himself – all his fears of being alone – he had to bottle them up and bury them deep, deep inside, somewhere dark and unreachable.

  ‘I have never really fitted into this world,’ Phil whispered, wiping a tiny tear from his tiny cheek. ‘Maybe I belong in your imagination – maybe that is my true home? Existing has always been a conundrum for me. Far simpler, perhaps, to not.’

  A few water drops landed around them, speckling the metal on the machine. A pitter-patter, cold and quick. Tim closed his eyes for a moment, but he couldn’t stop the rain. Instead, he created some black umbrellas which opened above them.

  Under this canopy, all three of them sat for a moment, just listening.

  ‘I guess this is goodbye then?’ Dee said. Tim was surprised to see water in her eyes too – surprised that out of the two of them, he was the one controlling his feelings.

  ‘Farewell,’ Phil said. ‘I wish you both warm lives, filled with joy and wonder. May your new branches take you to beautiful places.’

  Tim took a long, slow breath in and, after a few seconds, managed to say goodbye. The ache he felt in his chest was creeping up his throat and almost snatched the word, but he pushed it back down and made a tight fist.

  ‘Let’s do it then,’ Dee said with a sigh, handing Tim the reader and lifting the wire over the main part of the machine. They sat close to one another. ‘Let’s head on down to reset town.’

  Phil sniffed, stood and jumped down on to Tim’s lap, climbed up his shirt, and slid into his top pocket.

  For the very last time.

  Tim’s eyes stung as he put the reader on his head. It was heavy and the thick cable stroked across the back of his neck and hung down his shoulder. He placed his hand on his heart, feeling Phil’s beating too.

  ‘It might not seem like it, but I do understand why you’re sometimes scared,’ Dee said. ‘But I hope you understand why you don’t need to be.’

  Smiling, Tim listened to the rain for a moment – a few puddles forming on the floor at their feet. Dee put her arm round him.

  There was a single button on the side of the imagination station. Tim placed his index finger on it. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Here we go.’

  He closed his eyes, imagined and pressed down. A digital beeping and an odd whirring sound. There was a short pause and he looked again to see a single raindrop falling past his face. It seemed suspended, held in the air, frozen in a timeless place.

  ‘So,’ Dee said, ‘how will we know if it’s even work—’

  Chapter 1

  Timothy Hart was a quiet boy. He wouldn�
��t say he was lonely as such, but he kept himself to himself. He was most happy when he was drawing pictures in his sketchpad. And he was doing just that in the lobby at the Dawn Star Hotel – ten years old and alone, Tim was sketching a bird’s-eye view of umbrellas. A muggy summer storm, warm and cold at the same time, was rumbling over Glassbridge, and yet the hotel stood proud. Even in the rain.

  Elisa shrieked, telling him not to get any pencil lead on the sofa, then ran over and quickly cleaned his hands with a wet cloth. She cleaned him like he was an object, and not for the first time. She also told him to and go draw upstairs, and warned him not to touch any of the cakes in the function room.

  And then, from the spray bottle she was clutching, a single drip of water landed on Tim’s picture. He quickly slammed his sketchpad shut to protect his masterpiece from any further damage.

  Later, up in his room, he was turning this stain into a puddle when he heard a noise, some commotion in the corridor. Through the peephole he saw it was that scientist he’d met earlier. Tim had stolen a cake from the function room, almost exclusively because Elisa had told him not to. There he’d spoken to this old professor – this grey-haired man who mumbled and said ‘indeed’ a lot. And, despite Tim’s self-doubt, he could tell that the drawing was of umbrellas.

  The man was holding a large cardboard box and fumbling to get into room nineteen, the room opposite Tim’s. So Tim decided to step into the corridor and offer some help. They spoke for a while inside the professor’s room. Tim asked what was in the cardboard box, but the professor refused to answer.

  Tim had been so intrigued by this man that, the moment he returned to his bedroom, he was looking again through the peephole. He was endlessly curious, you see.

  The professor disappeared up the hall and Tim watched room nineteen’s door gradually shut, pausing on the hinges at the last moment, dragging across the thick carpet.

  But, then, clunk. It closed.

  If it had got stuck, Tim thought to himself, as these doors sometimes do, would he have crept inside to see what was in that box? Impossible to say.

  Never mind, Tim thought, going back to sit cross-legged on his bed with a bounce. He pulled his sketchpad on to his lap and carried on drawing. The umbrella picture was finished, so he turned to a crisp, fresh page. He clattered his pencil between his teeth for a moment, then placed it on the paper and drew the first line of his next work.

  *

  Years passed. The sketchpads piled up.

  Tim grew a little taller, his artwork improved and he forgot about that professor – just another one of the thousands of guests who passed through the Dawn Star Hotel. It was a long, long time after his adoption and, slowly but surely, he and Elisa found more than just common ground. She became slightly less stressed about running the hotel, and he made a little more effort not to deliberately disobey her. Things were going well for the business too. So well that they were talking about buying another hotel – turning the Dawn Star into a brand.

  Glassbridge wasn’t a bad place to live, with its wonky cobbled streets, iron railings and horse statues. But the idea of moving somewhere else, even though it wasn’t that far, and starting from scratch in a new home with Elisa and Chris did fill Tim with excitement.

  Around the time they were first discussing this expansion, he started secondary school. Glassbridge Academy. He liked science, but art was by far his favourite subject. Not just because he was a creative sort of kid, but because he made a friend. This was a momentous event, really, and one that Elisa was keen to encourage.

  It was strange, actually, how it worked out. He was late for class on the first day, as he’d got lost, and there was a single empty seat left, next to a girl with curly blonde hair and a blue and white polka-dot pencil case. She told him her name was Dee.

  During that first class, they were tasked with drawing a display of fruit on a nearby desk. Always fruit, Tim thought.

  ‘What’s that?’ Dee asked, frowning at Tim’s work halfway through the lesson.

  ‘It’s a finger monkey,’ he said.

  ‘I think we’re supposed to draw the apples.’

  ‘Yeah, but I want to draw this finger monkey,’ Tim said.

  ‘Fair enough.’

  Sometimes, later, when they were chatting long into the night on endless summer evenings at the new hotel, Tim joked that the empty seat in art class must have been fate. They were drawn together, Tim said. But Dee always responded with something logical. She said someone else could have sat there and become her friend and she’d have never known any different. It only seemed to be a perfect turn of events looking back, she said. People spot patterns, apparently, but ignore times when it doesn’t fit.

  ‘If you have lucky pants,’ she once told him, ‘then you’ll remember the times you wear them and something good happens. But if you wear them and no good things happen, you just ignore it and the pants stay lucky.’

  ‘I don’t have lucky pants,’ Tim had said.

  ‘Good.’

  Either way, they both agreed that it was a positive thing that the empty seat was there at the back of the room that day.

  Tim had just passed his thirteenth birthday when, one idle Saturday afternoon, he and Dee were having a great time doing nothing together, as only the best of friends can. They were sitting in her garden, throwing a marble back and forth to one another. The small ball of hard glass had a tiny swirl of blue through the middle.

  ‘Biscuit,’ she said, catching it. The marble came flying through the air, back to Tim.

  ‘Um, chocolate,’ Tim said, the glass ball landing in his palm.

  ‘Milk,’ Dee added.

  They’d been playing word association for the past ten minutes.

  ‘Cow.’

  ‘Pig.’

  ‘Horse.’

  ‘Uh, unicorn,’ Dee said, catching the marble, then flinging it back.

  ‘Danger,’ Tim said.

  ‘No, you can’t have that.’ Dee was strict with the rules.

  ‘Pointy horn.’ Tim put his index finger on his forehead. ‘They could be dangerous.’

  ‘No. New round. Uh, bear.’

  Tim caught the marble. ‘Shark.’

  ‘Your mind is wired up wrong,’ Dee said.

  ‘Both animals.’ Tim shrugged.

  ‘Tenuous. New round. Dog.’

  ‘Cat?’

  ‘Ah, yeah. That reminds me.’ Dee checked her watch. ‘Gotta go feed Jingles.’

  ‘Is that some sort of code for something terrible?’

  ‘Granddad’s cat, remember? He’s gone on holiday. An old-man holiday, like with walking and museums and that. Come with me, it’s not far.’

  ‘All right,’ Tim said. ‘Although, can I borrow your phone? Mine’s flat.’

  ‘Yeah, sure.’

  Tim called Elisa and explained. ‘So, yeah, I’ll be back a bit later, is that cool?’ he said. ‘With Dee. All right, will do. Not sure, maybe like seven? Perfect, see you then. Yeah, bye, Mum.’

  They left that marble, warm from their hands, resting amid the grass, then walked a short distance across town to Dee’s granddad’s house. She’d told Tim previously that he was a scientist, some kind of professor. However, every time she’d pried further, he apparently told her his job was actually quite boring. It was her suspicion, however, that this was untrue.

  ‘Says he’s worked on some interesting things, but not had much success,’ Dee said, crouching to pour some cat food into a bowl in the kitchen. ‘He’s always cagey about it. But … right … in the loft …’ She stood and a ginger cat arrived, rubbed against her leg, then got stuck into its dinner.

  ‘What?’ Tim said. ‘What about the loft?’

  It was obvious there was something she wanted to tell him, but felt she shouldn’t. However, after a few seconds she took in a deep breath.

  ‘There is a box,’ she said.

  Upstairs, they pulled down a ladder from a hatch and clambered into a narrow loft. It was warm up here, the summer
sun coming in through a small round window and radiating off the floorboards – Tim could smell the roof’s wooden struts. Cramped, but still comfortable. A nice place to be, he thought, even with the furniture and clutter.

  Sure enough, there was a cube-shaped object on a table at the end of the space, right beneath the window. It was covered by a purple velvet sheet and looked special, valuable, even before they looked underneath. Carefully, Dee pulled the cover off and leant away, coughing, as the air filled with dust.

  ‘What is it?’ Tim said, wiggling his nose to avoid a sneeze.

  ‘I dunno.’ Dee shrugged. ‘Some kind of machine Granddad’s made.’

  ‘What does he do again?’ Tim asked, inspecting the metal and circuit boards.

  ‘Uh, theoretical particle physics,’ Dee said. ‘Atom stuff? I honestly don’t fully understand.’

  Part of the machine caught Tim’s eye.

  ‘I think that bit goes on your head,’ Dee said.

  ‘It looks … delicate,’ Tim whispered, not wanting to touch the device. Whatever it was, it seemed like it had taken a lot of work to build.

  But Dee lifted the hat-type bit and placed it on Tim’s head. ‘Ha, suits you,’ she said.

  Tim still couldn’t begin to think what this thing might be. However, a green button on the top stood out. He guessed this would turn it on, if this was the kind of gadget that could be turned on, that is. Reaching out, his finger straight like the number one, the button round like a zero. Outside, the birds were singing in the trees but, beyond that, for Tim, it felt like nothing but this warm attic existed. Sometimes, when engrossed in a drawing for example, he felt as though the outside world wasn’t even there. As though it was all a show put on for him, only set in motion when he was there to see it.

  Now Tim’s finger was hovering right over that button and he stood silently wondering whether or not he should press it.

  And in that small moment, in that small attic, he imagined all the things that might happen if he did, and all the things that might happen if he didn’t.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR