He also found a handwritten note tucked into his wallet. It read:
“Tonight is the first night of the rest of your life. Sally x.”
Mark cringed when he remembered his outburst to Sally about his less than stellar life. That was a mistake because cringing made his head hurt even more. He stared at the note for a while, wondering why Sally had put an x after her name. Her surname was Simpson. That started with an S, not an x. Mark decided it was yet another of life’s mysteries that he was destined to never understand.
He remembered how good it was last night to be with someone, not just by himself, and to be amongst happy friendly people and be part of them – not just looking at them as an outsider. Despite all of Sally’s strange ways it had been good to be with her and for reasons that he didn’t understand, she seemed to like him too. He couldn’t remember anyone liking him before, not even his friends. Certainly not his parents.
Mark decided the best place for him was bed. He undressed and fell into bed. He eventually fell into a disturbed sleep wondering if the pint of Badger’s Set that he had drunk had been off. He had lurid dreams of his skull being split open by a madman holding a pint of beer in one hand and an axe in the other.
He slept fitfully all day and most of the night. He still felt groggy when he arrived at the night shelter on Sunday morning to do his stint of volunteering. This Sunday he felt even more empathy than usual with the residents he spoke to. A proportion of them should have been in care homes, incapable of looking after themselves, but a lot of them had lived perfectly respectable, normal lives with steady jobs and families. But then things had gone wrong and they lost everything. Now, many of them spent their days getting drunk on cheap alcohol to blot out the memories of what they had lost. That Sunday, Mark appreciated how they felt on their sober days.
By Monday morning, Mark was fully recovered. The alarm went off and after a few minutes of grunting and blinking, he got up. He selected his slightly worn dark blue suit and a pale blue tie, made tea and ate a bowl of cereal. He put his shoes on, pulled a carefully folded carrier bag out of the kitchen drawer, went back to his bedroom and put his dark grey suit into it. “Sally’s right,” he thought, “I am going to make last Friday the first day of the rest of my life and I’m making some changes! Starting with getting my suit cleaned. It’s one small step for a man, but a giant leap for me.”
When he arrived at the office, he didn’t bother checking his email. He knew from experience that there would be nothing interesting there and it would just depress him to find that yet again nobody considered him important enough to be worth sending anything relevant or interesting. “Another small change.” He collected the keys from his desk drawer and went straight downstairs.
When Mark got to the archive door, he saw that Security had fitted the card reader and keypad to the door and that all the other locks had been removed. He was pleased to see that the “Beware of the Leopard” sign had been left in place.
Mark also noticed that the door was open and the lights were on.
He pushed the door open and looked around but couldn’t see anyone and assumed that building security must have left it like that. They often made new security installations and changes at the weekend. They said it was so that they wouldn’t disturb people working but it was generally thought it was because they could claim weekend overtime rates.
Mark was about to leave to go back to his desk and check his email for the keypad entry code, his security pass should work the card reader, when he saw a movement in the distance near the back of the archive. He walked over and saw a very tall man with a leather beany style hat pulled down over his ears, wearing an off-white coat buttoned up to the neck and going all the way down to the floor. He was wearing dark sunglasses, which was really odd as the ceiling light fittings were well spread out and the archive was quite gloomy.
Mark walked over to the tall man and noticed his odd shape, somewhat slim except for a bulge around his middle, like a condensed middle-aged spread. He had a pile of documents in his hands and was leafing through them.
“Can I help you?” Mark asked as he approached.
“Yes,” replied Alan, “I am looking for maps of the tracts of land in Kerala, South West India, that were bought by British and Commonwealth Financial Developments in the late eighteenth century, about seventeen eighty seven. It was in the area around Karnagappaly.”
“Er, the files in here are confidential. You need to have permission to access them.”
“Of course. I have authorisation from your head office in Chicago. Now can you find them for me please?”
“No.” Said Mark, somewhat testily. “I am not a librarian and this is not a library. I am here to manage the scanning and removal of all of these files and I haven’t been notified about anyone being allowed to access them. Until I get something to say you can come in here, I must ask you leave, or I will call Security. Anyway, how did you get in?” He demanded.
“The door was open when I got here. By the way, I haven’t seen your leopard anywhere. I hope it hasn’t run away.”
Mark was put out to be mistaken for a mere library assistant and he didn’t like the look of this stranger at all.
“Have you checked your email this morning?” The stranger said. “You should have had something to say that I was coming. What was your name again?”
Mark wasn’t happy about leaving the stranger there, although he couldn’t see that anything in that vast pile of paper could possibly hold anything of commercial confidentiality, it was the principle of it. However, he had to check his email for the entry code for the new lock on the door, so he could check out the stranger’s story at the same time.
Back at his desk Mark logged on and checked his email. In amongst the junk, he found the passcode from building Security. Mark carefully wrote it onto two Post-it notes, stuck one on his screen and put the other in his wallet. He also found an email from Hank Petersen, head of Corporate Security in Chicago, to Anthony James, the UK IT Director. It was CC’d to his team leader Terry Mason, and to himself. The email said that Hank Petersen had granted Professor Alan Martin from the Illinois State University full access to all the company archives for his research into the development of the British Empire.
It struck Mark as strange that anyone in the management stratosphere in Chicago would know that someone as lowly as him was working on the archive project in the sub-basement of the admin and IT offices in the UK. Particularly when the work he was doing should really have been a task for someone in General Admin. Still, who was he to question the workings of Corporate Security?
Mark returned to the archive and found the tall strange man standing in an aisle rummaging through a box full of papers.
“OK Professor Martin, I’ve had an email giving you free access to the archive, but I have a job to do here so you’ll have to find your own way around.”
“That’s fine, fine. I’m sure that I’ll be fine. By the way, please call me Alan.”
“Fine,” Said Mark, echoing the overuse of the word by the tall strange man. “Er, I mean right, er, I’ll get on then.”
Mark turned away to get back to the filing boxes that he was working with. He felt his face reddening at the way he had answered Professor Martin, or Alan as he was supposed to call him. He must have sounded like an idiot.
Alan’s gaze followed Mark as he walked away. “He sounded like an idiot.” Alan thought, “His suppressed hostility was surprising. I only asked for a bit of help.”
Alan was already realising just how much information there was here, not just documents about the development of the British Empire but also diaries and letters from company agents, some with detailed accounts of everyday life in parts of the world that had not yet been exploited or changed by the pioneers of Empire. This was a hidden historical treasure trove that shone new light on pre-empire India and Africa. He would need several days to sort and scan everything that he wanted from here.
The day dragged on
with just a half hour break for Mark when he went for a walk around outside at lunchtime. The rest of his day was spent underground so the daily foray into daylight kept him at least slightly in touch with the seasons. Today was sunny and although the sun was still weak this early in the year, it warmed his face and brightened his mood. While he was out he dropped off his suit at the dry cleaners. One small step in getting his life turned around. He really felt like he was making progress.
When Sally Met Alan
The following morning Mark found the door to the archive open again. He wasn’t surprised, and when he saw Alan he didn’t bother mentioning it. He hadn’t believed him that the door was open yesterday and didn’t suppose that he would believe whatever he was told this morning.
“Good morning Mark.” Said Alan, meticulously polite despite Mark’s surly attitude the previous day. “I haven’t seen your leopard again today. I do hope it hasn’t escaped.”
“Good morning Professor – er, I mean Alan.” Mark replied. He felt a bit sheepish about being grumpy with the strange looking man the day before. “I shouldn’t worry too much about the leopard if I were you.” He paused. “Look, I’m sorry if I was a bit off hand with you yesterday. It was just Monday morning feeling.” Mark said with a weak smile. “If you need any help finding stuff, just say the word and I’ll give you a hand.”
Alan was surprised. In his experience, people from here rarely admitted that they wrong.
“That’s kind of you Mark, I am having problems finding some things so I would like help from time to time. I realise that you are busy so I’ll try not to trouble you too much. And I appreciate you offering, particularly after yesterday.”
“Yes, I was having a bad day. Well, more of a bad life really. Sorry about that.”
They both worked in silence for a while until the door crashed open and Sally burst in.
“Morning Mark.” She said with a big smile, but then she caught sight of Alan and the smile disappeared from her face in a flash.
“I didn’t think anyone else worked down here.” Said Alan, “It’s a surprise to see you...”
Sally cut him off and said in a rush “Hello my name is Sally – Sally. How do you do.” And walking toward him, held out her hand.
Alan reached out and took her hand. He paused a moment and let out a hiss between his teeth. “So nice to meet you – Sally.” He said. “What are you doing here?”
“I work here in General Admin and I help Mark out two days a week. Is that all right with you?”
“Perfectly, perfectly. May I have my hand back please?”
Sally released his hand and glared at him for a moment while Alan examined his hand. Then she turned to Mark and smiled. “Would you like tea, Mark?”
“Yes please, and the Professor?” He said, nodding towards Alan.
“Professor? Oh, him. Of course. Would you like a cup of tea, ‘Professor’?”
“No thank you. But a glass of water would be nice and please, call me Alan.”
“Yes, of course - Alan.” Sally said, and left the room.
“What an earth was all that about?” Thought Mark. Alan looked at him, shrugged and went back to his work.
When Sally came back with the tea and water, Alan took the glass from Sally, thanked her and carefully sniffed it before sipping it. Seeming to be satisfied with it, he drank the rest in one go.
The morning progressed much as usual while Sally was there. Mark’s productivity increased dramatically as he didn’t spend so much time sitting staring into space wondering why he had got this crappy job and why he was living such a crappy life and why everything was so – crappy. It also helped that he didn’t have to keep stopping to make tea as Sally kept him well supplied. On the downside, some of his productivity gains were lost as piles of paper he had sorted ready for boxing and sending for scanning were knocked over by Sally as she walked past them and she often re-sorted files that Mark had already finished, back into a chaotic state.
Late in the morning, Alan asked Mark to help him find the files for the land transactions that were made during the eighteen twenties. Mark went over and between them, they found the records that Alan wanted. They started to talk about the files and Mark found that Alan brought the dusty old papers to life, talking about the meaning behind the papers, about the people who wrote them and what the purchase and development of the land and properties meant to the people who came after them. Mark ended up spending most of the day with Alan.
Mark worried that Sally might be a bit cross about this, but every time he caught sight of her across the archive Sally seemed quite happy, doing some kind of stretching exercises. “Must be her Pilates.” Mark thought.
As they spent more time working together Mark found that although at first sight Alan seemed to be a bit odd, as he got to know him he realised that he was more than odd, he was downright strange. It wasn’t just his behaviour, he moved awkwardly and sometimes his limbs moved in unexpected ways. The bulge around his waist sometimes moved in a way that just didn’t seem natural. He only ever drank water but never ate anything. There was no one thing in particular that was really far outside of what Mark considered normal but putting it all together, there was definitely something a bit unusual about Professor Alan Martin.
Mark went home that night feeling very uneasy about the day. There was the incident when Sally met Alan. Then there was Sally spending the day doing Pilates – although that may be her normal day at work when she wasn’t in the archive working with him. Most of all though – there was Alan. He seemed a nice guy, and he seemed happy to spend time explaining to Mark the details of growth of the British Empire and had a comprehensive knowledge of history, seeming to know the tiniest details of even the most obscure events in the past.
Mark was so preoccupied reviewing the day’s events, he almost missed his bus stop.
Victory Is In Sight
The invasion was going well. Thirty two thousand troops armed with the latest military technology had no trouble subduing the native armies of the nations on Gnn’Ath. Their soldiers were poorly armed and had no real aggression. It surprised Commander Fangur Rey that the natives managed to sustain any of the frequent wars the Gnn’Athians fought amongst themselves. His troops had taken out the command and control centres of all the native armed forces within two days of landing and only taken a few casualties. The Gnn’Aathians had died in their thousands, mostly killed when running away from his troops, some when they were trampled in stampedes as they ran in terror. The thought of that made Fangur Rey smile.
At this rate they would have the whole planet subdued and under their control within ten or maybe twenty days, then they could start the serious work of genocide. As soon as the planet was clear of this infestation of weak, backward avians, his leader, Tk’ng Dach Rm, would move his headquarter here and start the expansion of the great galactic empire that was to come.
There was no sign that anyone who might interfere knew what was happening yet. The People would know soon enough, but those arrogant bastards would sit on their arses and do nothing as usual. The only real worry was the Ants. If they arrived too soon, Fangur Rey’s soldiers would be wiped out, and so would the Gnn’Athians probably.
Fangur Rey was confident that if any of the independent armies showed up, his troops would easily overcome them. Except, perhaps, the Colonel's little army. They might be harder, but he had such an advantage of numbers that he would at the very least hold them off until the main force arrived.
This was pure speculation though. He had secured orbital space and deployed enough weapons platforms to keep anyone from attempting a counter invasion. Why should he worry? In a few days time they would be so well dug in with defensive positions that they could hold off anyone. And not long after, a military force bigger than the galaxy had seen for millions of years would arrive, ready to spread out, conquering new planets and civilisations, establishing the first galactic empire for over a billion years. If any army, including the Ants, were fo
olish enough to interfere then, they would be crushed underfoot by the ferocious and overwhelming forces of Tk’ng Dach Rm.
Fangur Rey leaned back in his chair and grinned. Tk’ng Dach Rm would reward him well for his success in this operation. He would go down in the empire’s history as the commander who lit the spark that triggered the explosion of conquests that would follow his victory on Gnn’Ath.
He felt his stomach rumble. It was time to eat. He roared an order that could be heard throughout his command centre to bring him food. He licked his lips in anticipation. These Gnn’Athians tasted delicious!.
Revelation
Mark woke up feeling particularly groggy, his sleep had been unsettled by disturbing dreams. When he woke he was still sweating, but even as he struggled out of the well of unconsciousness, the details started to fade from his mind. He couldn’t remember the exact details, but the dreams were about Martian aliens invading Earth to steal the contents of the archive. Mark and his colleagues had fought a losing battle against them firing staples from the office staplers and flicking rubber bands at them. When it got to hand to hand fighting they armed themselves with plastic rulers. Alan was standing behind the Martians shouting orders at them. Although it sounded ridiculous in hindsight, most disturbing dreams do. It didn’t seem funny during the dreams.
He was still mulling over his dream on his way to work and was so preoccupied that he almost missed his stop. Mark believed that dream analysis was nonsense – Freudian and Jungian dream analysis were only devised as a method of parting rich bored women from their money. Mark knew that dreaming appeared to be a by-product of the subconscious mind re-organising experiences and memories in the hippocampus – the part of the brain involved in storing memories. He also knew that the subconscious mind continued to work while the conscious mind slept, trying to resolve problems. He had read that August Kekule had famously discovered the structure of the benzene ring when it came to him in a dream after he had been working on the problem, so he thought there might be some meaning to the images in his dreams, but couldn’t think what that could possibly be.
Unwilling From Earth Page 4
