Phone

by Will Self

  exam – and a full cavity search, I’m afraid. CAPTAIN PETERSEN:

  But, Boss … COLONEL THOMAS: Gail? CAPTAIN PETERSEN: It’s

  Trooper Bessemer, I’ve just got off the radio net, he’s … he’s dead,

  Boss. THE AFTER-IMAGE (portentously): Their lives cannot repay

  us – their death could not undo – the shame they have laid

  upon our race –. COLONEL THOMAS: Oh, my God – this changes

  everything. The poor boy … the poor bloody boy … Oh, Gail …

  (He looks about for a white plastic garden chair to collapse into,

  but there’s none.) I’m sorry, I seem to be … lagging. CAPTAIN

  PETERSEN: Lagging, Boss? COLONEL THOMAS: Oh … Gail –

  what d’you think … I mean … I mean … (summoning himself)

  … c’mon, yes … You – you’d better tell Dave Cambell and

  McCadie, Gail, but other than that … for now, best the men don’t

  know. CAPTAIN PETERSEN: But, Boss – there’s the detainee in the

  rap –. COLONEL THOMAS: In the rap? CAPTAIN PETERSEN: The

  one who collapsed from heat exhaustion, sir, he’s in a very bad way.

  COLONEL THOMAS: Gail, I shouldn’t have to remind you of our

  obligations under the Geneva Convention – those men should’ve

  been seen to hours ago, it’s important it be established what sort

  of condition they were in when we scooped them up, we don’t

  want any comeback on this. CAPTAIN PETERSEN: I’m not sure I

  understand what you’re driving at, sir – as for the men, I’m afraid

  they already know about Bessemer. COLONEL THOMAS: Know?

  Know about Bessemer? Oh, fuck – oh, God! I ordered a comms

  lock-down on this base … CAPTAIN PETERSEN: Y’know how the

  army is for gossip, Boss. COLONEL THOMAS: Yeah, I know …

  I know … You know nothing, GAYwain – you’ve lost your grip on it

  all. Think of your wife and the tedious mystery her body is to you: a skin

  bag stuffed full of giblets and charged with an unearthly power – think

  of the Rams: passed to you hard and clean – but you’ve fumbled them

  both, GAYwain. You’ve failed to keep possession and knocked them on –

  kids and Jonathan, too … CAPTAIN PETERSEN: You all right,

  Boss? COLONEL THOMAS: Whaddya mean? CAPTAIN PETERSEN:

  Are you feeling all right … physically … You’re white as a –.

  COLONEL THOMAS: I’m perfectly fine, Gail – prob’ly just low blood

  sugar. CAPTAIN PETERSEN: Here … look … Boss … (she reaches

  in the breast pocket of her battledress) … just got it out of the

  fridge. COLONEL THOMAS (receiving the chilly thing): Thanks …

  really … thanks. (He walks away from her without saluting

  and wanders towards the squadron lines, the slogan Work, Rest

  and Play … Work, Rest and Play … spooling behind his glass-paper

  eyelids. Nearing MAJOR TOWNSHEND’S trailer, COLONEL THOMAS

  sees two figures loitering in its shadows, and hears the low

  thwock-thwock of ball bouncing on boot. TROOPER BESSEMER

  (contemptuously): Oh, it’s you, is it … (he neatly volleys the ball

  into his companion’s open hands) … what’s your game? COLONEL

  THOMAS: Who is that? Who are you men? What’re you doing up

  and about when I expressly ordered everyone under cover? TROOPER

  BESSEMER: S’me innit – s’me ‘n’ Asif, innit. ASIF (lightly volleying

  the ball back): You’re definitely you, Bessie – and I’m definitely me.

  COLONEL THOMAS: Wh-What’re you doing here? ASIF: Good

  question, Colonel – I should be on my way to Najaf, to be buried

  within sight of the Imam’s shrine, as were my forefathers and

  their forefathers before them. But Bessie here didn’t want to miss

  the rugby Sevens. TROOPER BESSEMER: Yeah, Rams’ Ingerland

  Seven’ll be mashed without my goal kicking. (COLONEL THOMAS

  tries to hold his eyes on BESSEMER’S eager, guileless, goofy, betrayed

  face – but they keep rolling down to the steak tartare between the

  boy’s legs.) ASIF: Yes, lost without his goal-kicking, just as your

  government’s entire programme of introducing representative democracy

  to Iraq while simultaneously installing a government capable

  of upholding the law and enforcing international standards of

  human rights will begin to seem pretty threadbare if you don’t get a

  grip on your men. COLONEL THOMAS (looking at the Mars Bar in

  the palm of his hand): I … I’m trying to do my best – by you, Asif –

  by the Rams … by your people as well. And I’m trying to protect

  those back at home – Fi, Miffy, my kids and everyone else’s. LAURA

  (MYFANWY THOMAS’S knitted clown doll, grown monstrously

  large – perhaps fourteen feet high. She comes on long red woolly

  legs out from behind MAJOR TOWNSHEND’S trailer, her white-wool

  face looming uncannily in the orangey gloom): The kids

  don’t need you, GAYwain – you can’t help them. Look at yourself,

  man! (COLONEL THOMAS peers down at his softening torso: the

  ceramic plates of his body armour are bending and buckling – his

  battledress is melting into gloopy globs.) ASIF: In the nineteen

  twenties a young man called Harris came here – he was a flyer with

  your ArrAyEff. Harris pioneered a strategy which became known

  as area bombing: systematically destroying civilian housing using

  a combination of high-explosive to blow their roofs off, followed

  by incendiaries to create a conflagration. The effects were predictably

  devastating – and twenty years later Harris employed the

  same method to lay waste to German cities. Now you come here,

  armed with a fucking Mars Bar, and expect us to bow down

  before you … (he steps forward and casually snaps off COLONEL

  THOMAS’S forearm, removes its khaki wrapper and begins chomping

  on chocolate flesh, nougat sinews and toffee bone) … Mm,

  buttery fingers – thing is, there’s so very little of you to bow down

  before. (Gawain’s Flakey knees bend, buckle, then Kit-Kat-snap!

  as he Twixes forward – straight on to his Caramac face. His chin,

  together with a third of his cranium, comes away, and he has the

  queerest experience of seeing from within the mould of himself …

  chinless, that’s me, while witnessing a still-stranger dissolution, as

  scores of milk-chocolate-coated balls of honeycombed malt tumble

  through his eye sockets and roll away across the hard-packed

  sandy ground … I’m losing my Maltesers.) COLONEL THOMAS: Help

  me, lads! Help me! I’m melting! TROOPER BESSEMER: Yeah, well

  … (he steps forward and plants his boot in the sticky-brown puddle

  which was once his SeeOh) … best thing, really – for a chocolate

  soldier who’s standing in front of the odd little carpeted ledge

  beside the flat’s front door, picking up the sweat-stained bush hat

  which tops off his costume … sigh! Oldster togs his youngsters

  affect to despise, but the zoetrope revolves: soon enough they’ll be

  slippering about themselves – ‘though prob’ly not in grey nylon

  tracksuit bottoms and a sweatshirt bearing the slogan SANTE FE

  EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY CONFERENCE NINETEEN NINETY-SEVEN

  on its saggy-blue breast. Reaching deep in the pocket of his

 
Donegal tweed jacket, Busner’s fingernails find twists and twirls of

  tin foil … why? Prowling from room to room of the flat, his eyes

  sweeping more surfaces for keys, wallet and mobile phone, he thinks

  more on’t. Where’d he been when he bit into the chocolate soldier?

  He’d painstakingly picked the gold foil from the soft brown face –

  this much he remembers … never forget foil on filling. Also, he’d

  been slumped down in a white plastic garden chair, on the cracked

  concrete apron Camilla calls “my patio”. Yes! That was it: at Milla’s,

  last Sunday. She’d called up and invited him to: Come and sit on

  my patio, Gramps – it’s been ages … Ben so wants to see you … I’ll

  do a roast for lunch … She had – and Zack had brought the box

  he picked up in Tesco’s on the Kentish Town Road: they’d laid

  there, two layers of sturdy troopers with red foil trews and blue foil

  jackets – and when Ben lifted the lid on them, Zack’d made some

  feeble joke about fighting the next war with the chocolate soldiers

  of the last. Oscar had been in attendance, bullshitting the way lay-therapists

  so frequently do – making references whenever possible

  to “the work”, under the illusion this would ingratiate him with

  his old man. So, it’d been “the work” on “my patio” on the first

  sunny Sunday of spring. Hungry pigeons waddled along the thin

  tendencies of branches – Camilla waddled in and out of the kitchen.

  Zack hadn’t seen her or Ben since Christmas, and he’d been struck

  by her weight gain, or was it … water retention? The poor thing.

  Worse still, mother and son are coming to resemble each other more

  than is healthy: Ben, a hulking fellow of twenty-one, affects an

  Abstract Expressionist hairstyle, his brown locks statically charged

  into thick brushstrokes. His grandfather supposes this an attempt

  to be fashionable on the young man’s part, but if so it hardly comes

  off, since he had indeed been wearing the same sort of charity-shop

  clobber … as me. No elegant arras supporting an ebullient

  jacaranda – and no wittily urbane conversation either: instead,

  two or three spider plants in cracked pots, the pigeons – and Ben

  hunched in another white plastic garden chair, twirling the frayed

  end of a toothpick in front of his hooded eyes ‘cause he still self-stimulates

  … Ben-the-burden … who’ll always need to be supported.

  Ben, who has no more social skills than he ever did, and so had

  either answered his grandfather’s questions with adolescent grunts,

  or else sat surlily silent for the few minutes his mother could compel

  his attendance, before he’d rifled the chocolate-soldier box and

  beat a retreat to his stuffy room, leaving behind a single melting

  one, and a more solid, choicer remark, muttered then remuttered,

  which reverberated in his grandfather’s mind … We’ve been put on

  earth for a reason … We’ve been put on earth for a reason … Busner

  spots the mobile phone, tethered by its white flex to a plug socket

  … charging. Why was he bothering with it at all? But it won’t

  cost you a penny … Milla had chided him when he tried to refuse

  her gift … infuriating! As if money’s the issue. I’ve prepaid for a hundred

  minutes, but really it’s for us to call you – check you’re all

  right, and stuff … Ben, hearkening at least to this tech-talk, had

  unleashed his own data-stream: the phone was nothing special …

  nothing special … You can only send text messages with it and make

  voice calls … and make voice calls … The new three-gee network

  was already overwhelmed with data-streaming … overwhelmed with

  data-streaming … The new network eliminates circuit switching –

  it’s all eyepee now: packet switching using elayenn and doubleyouayenn

  networks … using elayenn and doubleyouayenn networks …

  ‘Course, this is pitifully inadequate, too … ‘Course, this is pitifully

  inadequate, too … Simply to interrupt him, Zack had asked:

  Pitifully inadequate for what? Which silenced Ben for a moment –

  then he’d looked into his grandfather’s eyes. Looked directly into

  them in … a manly and forthright manner, something so unexpected

  Zack had almost called to Milla and Oscar, who were in the kitchen

  to … come quick and see! But, thinking better of it, he held his

  grandson’s fierce gaze and had been gifted with: Pitifully inadequate

  for the Singularity … another queer phrase which returns to him

  now as he untethers the phone and slips it into his jacket pocket.

  We’ve been put on earth for a reason/Pitifully inadequate for the

  Singularity – the two snatches of dialogue revolve around each

  other in his cloistered mind as he locks the flat’s front door, pockets

  his keys and heads down the stairs. There’re hairy dags caught

  in the thick pile of the runner and all along the hallway’s …

  dusty ravine – to where there’s nothing new … under the transom’s

  rectangular sun: a mess of junk mail on the mat, and the letter-box’s

  flap bearded with leaflets and flyers. Then, in the street … all is

  flux! A great envelopment of traffic noise and traffic stink which

  threatens to drag me down. He staggers, grabs the concrete stanchion

  of the bus stop and manages to stay upright. Luvverly day

  fer April, ‘ow long you bin waitin’? Busner oils his rusty jaw with

  saliva – prepares to speak for the first time in hours, then realises

  the street drinker … same tracksuit bottoms as me, isn’t addressing

  him, but an old lady … old? prob’ly same age as you, who stands

  clutching a Yorkshire terrier to her sunken chest, one of the little

  dog’s stiff hind-legs scratching frantically … at nothing. The street

  drinker, who holds a can of Polish lager, carries on crazily: ‘E’s a

  cute wee doggie, can I ‘old ‘im? Once upon a time Busner would’ve

  felt it incumbent on him to intervene – and by this act alone to …

  diagnose? But not any more – the man may be a schizophrenic self-sedating

  with alcohol, or an alcoholic suppressing the first psychotic

  withdrawal symptoms … it’s the same diff’. No, a personality disorder

  is only hysteria or melancholia by another name … The dosser,

  whose smelly neck is now within the terrier’s biting range, might

  even be on the autistic spectrum … whatever that means nowadays.

  One thing, however, Busner knows for certain: there’s no need

  for more epithetic psychiatry – and nor is there for … a pathetic

  superannuated psychiatrist. Wossiss name, then? the dosser asks, and

  Busner thinks: he’s the true mendicant – a real Sannyasi. Snug in

  his seedy Kentish Town flat, the former paterfamilias has been

  reading up on Eastern religions – he fancies himself as a white-haired

  old Brahmin, who, after many years of uncomplaining

  service to family and society, removes his sleeve protectors and

  green eyeshade, picks up his staff and begging bowl and then …

  hits the road. But this ragged travesty of his aspiration – this fool,

  staggering about on the blasted pavement, has … upstaged me!


  Busner lurches again – grabs the bus stop … again – then, through

  his woozy vulnerability, sees the shield I seek! held by a squire who

  steps forward from … the dust cloud of an Icelandic volcano, the grey

  matter lying thick in the creases of his … cotton surcoat. For a

  stretched and gummy moment, Busner struggles to grasp what it is

  he’s seeing, as the young man’s fingers flick ping! and dabble pong!

  against the glassy surface … what is this odd manipulation? If he

  abstracts the shield-of-light with which the young man fends off

  Kentish Town’s flaking stucco, Busner sees only this: one arm

  rigidly extended, the other crooked, its hand fidgeting … he’s

  stimming – like Ben! And the young man’s fixation on the tablet

  computer? Well, back in the day Busner might well’ve diagnosed

  this as an oculogyric crisis … but now? Isn’t this precisely the sort of

  affectless fixation a contemporary clinician would expect … from

  an autist? He’s aware … they can’t be avoided of the panicky reaction

  there is to these new digital technologies – the guilty unease of

  those who once touched and smelt and tasted, but who now sit

  stock-still, seeing the world for the most part through a glass far too

  brightly. His old colleague Harold Sikorski is just one amongst

  a host of psy-professionals and neuroscientists who’ve taken to the

  airwaves to warn the watchers that, because they’ve allowed the

  über-autists of Silicon Valley to feed them their thoughts, visions

  and reveries, and to calibrate their very movements, their brains

  have been rewired. Utter poppycock! of course – and quite extraordinary

  that someone such as Harold should jettison everything

  he knows about genetics and human evolution to begin bruiting

  it about that the gross anatomy of the brain – unaltered for nigh

  on a quarter of a million years – has suddenly begun to mutate

  because … we spend too much time on the phone! And yet … and

  yet … this much Busner would concede: there is something changing

  – not with the brain … but the mind, with the way human

  consciousness, taken collectively, is starting to experience its own

  reality. It’s an experience Busner’s compelled to join in: his eyes

  gripped by the young man’s tablet computer – by this palimpsest of