Hashtag

by David Wake

  “I feel like… shit.”

  “Have some more medicine.”

  The next drink was egg–less.

  “Think of it as a pain killer,” Jellicoe said. “It’s your liver and heart you should be worried about.”

  “I’ll drink to that.”

  Jellicoe found some clothes for Braddon, trousers that needed an extra hole in the belt before they stayed round his waist and shoes that needed two pairs of socks. Braddon’s own clothes had actually set on the lino in the kitchen. Jellicoe found a hammer to break them enough to get them into his flip top bin. He was sweating when he’d finished and took some tablets with a scotch.

  “And drink this?” said Jellicoe, offering Braddon yet another drink.

  “I’ve had enough,” said Braddon.

  “Out there, my lad, is a murderer. Someone who can bump people off with impunity and somehow get round the system. If he knows you’re still alive, then…”

  Jellicoe ran his finger across his throat, and then for good measure pulled this imaginary blade over his forehead and mimed ripping out his iBrow.

  “…best to be thoughtless.”

  Braddon saw the sense in this. “Over the yardarm somewhere I suppose. France perhaps?”

  “That’s the spirit,” said Jellicoe. “Would you recognise them?”

  Braddon thought back, trying to recall events before his iBrow was rebooted. The images in his mind were disjointed, dreamlike, but he saw faces, clothing, and a hand with a Chinese tattoo.

  “Find one, follow him,” Jellicoe commanded.

  Braddon nodded.

  Jellicoe cooked breakfast, all–English, and Braddon ate in silence, favouring his right hand when possible. His left was fine, he had the full range of movement even in the shoulder joint, but it felt numb. When he’d finished, and supped his tea, Jellicoe returned to the kitchen table. He had a number of hip flasks, a set of lock picks and a Taser.

  “Fuck!” Braddon remembered his experience and how lucky he was to be alive. “Where did you get that?”

  “Present.”

  “It’s illegal.”

  “We can be issued with them.”

  Braddon picked it up.

  “You press that button,” said Jellicoe.

  “I know.”

  Braddon pressed it: lightning fizzed between the two electrodes frying the air. A fairground dodgem smell of ozone mixed with the aroma of fried bacon.

  “I’ve only got the one,” the Inspector said.

  Braddon put it back on the table and pushed it away with the tip of his index finger. “You have it.”

  It was strange to realise that Tasers had once replaced firearms as the ‘safer’ option. Jellicoe was probably old enough to remember that, but thankfully they’d reverted to proper bullets: at least with those, there was a wound option. Braddon was glad when Jellicoe packed it away into a small canvas bag along with a few other items.

  “We’re not going to war,” Braddon said. “We’re police.”

  Jellicoe gave him a pitying look.

  “OK, we’re going to war.”

  It was a lovely day outside, far too warm for two pairs of socks, but the trousers, shirt and jacket were loose. Jellicoe got the car out and Braddon sat in the passenger seat.

  “There’s drink in the glove compartment,” Jellicoe told him.

  “Aye.”

  They drove out towards town, skirting Old Tollgate, and reached an abandoned building site. Jellicoe parked some distance away. When they reached the street corner, Braddon could see Chedding Shopping Centre jutting out in the distance.

  “These building sites must circle the city,” Braddon said. He noodled a satellite picture and remembered the pock–marked nature of the area.

  “Come on,” Jellicoe ordered, and they moved across to the construction site. Jellicoe glanced up and down the street and then cut the padlock with bolt cutters. The heavy chain rattled out of the metal gate and they were in. Jellicoe slipped the chain back and repositioned the broken padlock so that anyone looking wouldn’t be alerted.

  “How do you know it’s this one?” Braddon asked.

  “My head!”

  “All right, you deduced it, but how?”

  “You thought ‘My head!’. There were scrambled thoughts, which I guessed were when you were tasered, a long gap and then that. It was the last entry before you started worrying about the ’flu, so I checked the GPS location.”

  “Ah,” Braddon said, and he looked around. “Standard detective work.”

  “Recognise anything?”

  “All building sites look the same.”

  “Hmm… let’s try over there.”

  They picked their way between towers of breeze blocks. It was eerie and, like the remains of ancient temples, the masonry spoke of another age, except this one was an unrealised future. It seemed unlikely that these foundations would ever support a brave new world. In places rusting metal rods stuck out of the ground ready to reinforce columns. Sections of concrete had crumbled and collapsed in miniature landslides, weathered into the ubiquitous grey dust that coated everything.

  Jellicoe was sweating noticeably.

  Further on, around a corner, was a surreal sight of devastation much like a volcanic eruption. A pyroclastic flow had powdered through the site and the wave of lava had frozen in place, a solid sculpture set in concrete. Upstream, there was the burst wooden surround that Braddon had attacked with the knife.

  Jellicoe pointed: “There!”

  At the side, sticking out of the grey like a fossilized man or a victim of Vesuvius, was the misshapen statue of a man, stopped in the act of calling for help.

  They climbed down the metal ladder, Jellicoe panting with the exertion and Braddon wincing because of his shoulder, and then they made their way across.

  The corpse was half–in, half–out of the concrete.

  Braddon brushed at the man’s hand and revealed the tattoos. He showed Jellicoe the Chinese symbols.

  “Any ID?”

  Braddon tried to pat down the jacket, but he only succeeded in generating a cloud of dust. Jellicoe reached inside to the pockets, cracking the layer of concrete much as he’d broken Braddon’s own discarded clothes.

  The Inspector shook his head. “As if there’s ever any ID.”

  “Trouser pockets?” Braddon suggested, but it was a half–hearted idea. They’d have had to use a hammer and chisel or even a jack hammer.

  “If he was alive we’d be able to recognise him,” Jellicoe said.

  Braddon looked at the man’s forehead. “Could we zap him with your Taser? We’d only need it to be active for a second or so.”

  “We’ll have to read the number.”

  Braddon snorted at that idea, it was tucked beneath the man’s skin, but when he saw Jellicoe take out a retractable knife, he realised the man was serious.

  “I think…” but Braddon didn’t think anything. He was technically drunk, so stupid ideas might seem like good ideas.

  “You don’t have to look.”

  Braddon didn’t.

  The sound of cutting and ripping, along with the old man’s laboured breathing, was not pleasant. The patter of falling water made him turn back. Jellicoe was cleaning the naked iBrow with whiskey from his hip flask. Braddon caught sight of the mess and had an image of Unknown 271’s ruined face.

  “We are way out of line here,” Braddon said.

  “Not if we get a result… here.”

  Jellicoe gave Braddon the device, so he could fish in his bag again. He brought out a magnifying glass.

  “Well,” the Inspector said, “all detectives should have one.”

  Braddon actually laughed.

  “Go on, I’m old, your eyes are better than mine.”

  Braddon took the magnifying glass and moved it back and forth to bring the iBrow’s details into focus. It wasn’t strong enough, but then he noticed the semi–circle of thicker glass at the bottom of the lens. This was much better, and he co
uld scan across the device to read the sixteen digit code that had been etched into the ceramic.

  “NL–Z… 189…”

  “Dutch!”

  “3849… 123… slash GHT.”

  Braddon tried to follow it, but he couldn’t hold the whole code in his head at once.

  “Here,” Jellicoe said holding up his notebook, but he jerked his arm down again. “Shit.”

  “What is it?”

  “Nothing.”

  Braddon followed the code: there was nothing in it that suggested he’d been thinking about killing anyone, and this was definitely the same man. Unless they swapped the body for another?

  “They can control thought,” Braddon said, and then the panic hit him. “We’ve got to stop this.”

  Jellicoe took hold of his lapels and pushed him against the wall. “Be quiet, you don’t want to be carted off back to the psych ward.”

  “But they must have changed this man’s thoughts,” Braddon complained. “Thought, it gets in your head, changes your thoughts.”

  “That’s the point.”

  “NO, but–”

  “Don’t join the foil hat brigade,” said Jellicoe.

  “No… but–”

  Braddon shoved Jellicoe away getting a sharp stab of pain in his own left shoulder. “They make you do things! They control you! We killed that woman in the car park! I did.”

  “You did not!!!”

  “This is a mistake.”

  “What?”

  “These things,” Braddon shouted, pointing first at his head and then holding up the recovered iBrow. “Did anyone consider what it would do to us?”

  “They did medical tests – ah, God!”

  “Not the technical stuff, but to us as a society. We’ve no privacy–”

  “We can’t turn back the clock.”

  “We just did things because we could and the more we could do, the more thinly spread we became.”

  “OK, Braddon, calm – ah – down.”

  “The deepest conversations I’ve ever had in my life have been with you, a pissed old man.”

  “Thanks, I’m sure – arrgh.”

  “What?”

  “Ah, I’m all right.”

  “No, seriously?” Braddon said, seeing Jellicoe’s pained expression. The man was holding his left side.

  Jellicoe winced and then stated the obvious, “I’m – ah – having a fucking heart attack.”

  “Jeez.”

  Automatically Braddon thought for an ambulance only to wince at the migraine shadow. He was drunk, they were both drunk. No wonder there had been a drop in alcohol related hospital admissions: there was no damn way to call an ambulance!

  Braddon glanced back in the direction they had come. It seemed a lot further to the gate than he remembered.

  “Come on!” he said, grabbing Jellicoe and practically carrying him along. He turned the corner, Jellicoe’s legs stopped helping and when Braddon checked him, the old man’s face was grey, an impossible concrete–like matt finish, despite the beads of sweat forming around his iBrow crease.

  “Not much further,” Braddon said in a surprisingly light tone.

  “Always thought it would be cirrhosis that got me,” Jellicoe said through clenched teeth. The man clutched at Braddon like a drowning man, pulling and clawing to stay upright.

  The blocks and metal cables were like obstacles, almost deliberately placed to force them to change direction to weave between them. Braddon panicked: where was the gate?

  He stopped, glanced about, noodled his GPS location in desperation.

  “Tracks!” Jellicoe managed.

  Braddon looked down, saw their own footprints in the dust and started off again. The gate appeared to be getting further away with each step and then Braddon was trying to get the chain off. The broken padlock caught. Braddon shook desperately but it wouldn’t come off. He needed both hands and Jellicoe slipped away from his grip, sinking to the floor.

  The chain clattered free.

  Jellicoe was a weight, gasping in short irregular bursts, and too heavy to pick up.

  Braddon went out.

  “Hey! HEY!” he shouted.

  People stopped, looked, moved away.

  “Police!” he added, fumbling for his warrant card. “Call an ambulance.”

  Braddon recognised an office worker going by the ridiculous handle of Moosher.

  Why don’t you, mate?

  “Call an ambulance!”

  Are you drunk?

  “Look, you–” fucking idiot…

  It was the timespan or the exercise or the panic, or all three, but Braddon’s brow came on. His thoughts were desperate: Emergency! Ambulance!

  Hashtag, Moosher thought.

  Hashtag, emergency, Braddon thought as he forced himself to calm down: Hashtag emergency, ambulance, heart attack.

  On our way, came a thought directed in reply.

  Stay here and direct them, Braddon thought at Moosher.

  No way.

  Or I’ll arrest you!

  Braddon stumbled back to Jellicoe: the man’s breathing was staccato and shallow. The Inspector was trying to gain Braddon’s attention.

  “This…” said Jellicoe.

  “Forget it,” Braddon said, but Jellicoe was insistent, waving his working right arm towards the Detective Constable. Braddon took what was thrust towards him, Jellicoe’s notebook.

  “I can’t…” Braddon began.

  “Nonsense.”

  “But–”

  “It’s a game.”

  The man’s skin looked like the whites of his eyes, pale and veined with blood, and a square of his forehead stuck out like something unnatural. Braddon held on, his own hands turning white under his grip as if the old man was infecting the younger man’s extremities and bleaching the life out of him too.

  “Hang on,” said Braddon. “Help’s coming.”

  “Look…” …after Pamela.

  Braddon recognized Jellicoe and flinched.

  A hand landed on Braddon’s shoulders, wrenching him up and around. It was a paramedic. Braddon recognised him and then was awash with the man’s frantic thoughts of so many cc’s of this and systolic that and a sense of failing.

  Braddon stood back, took a few steps away now that he was surplus to requirements, a spare part in a drama of life and death. Another medic came with a stretcher on wheels and they hauled the crumpled, fitful carcass up onto the clean white sheets. There were injections, controlled panic and then they hoisted the Inspector into the back of an ambulance. The doors banged shut and soon they were out of recognition range, hurtling through the streets beneath retina–piercing blue and a screaming siren.

  If life was a game, then Jellicoe had made a bad move.

  Moosher hadn’t stayed around.

  Braddon was on his own now, the crumpled notebook in his fist. He knew so few people: Mithering, Jasmine, Jellicoe (who he still hadn’t followed), Freya, Chen, Mox, Draith…

  He’d started following those few again, but he’d once known hundreds. When he took his Sergeant’s Exam, he recalled unfollowing a whole list, but they’d gone. He could noodle them, but as far as his brain went, they didn’t exist anymore. Out of mind, out of sight. Even here, at the side of the street, he recognised twenty–seven people within range: Michael, Valerie, Jackie, Gwen, Steve, Rory, Tilton, Zoneman, Rex, Templeton, Jane, TerryB, Kriffin, Andy, another Andy, Jessica, Sarah, Bug, Mohammed, Bill… Moosher. He knew them all, or at least he could remember everything about them any time he wanted to. But did he know them? Did he have a connection to any of them? Even Jasmine? He knew what she thought, but it all seemed so trivial and ephemeral now, like everyone else’s thoughts. Like his own.

  He had no real understanding. All his thoughts were fleeting: here… gone. They skimmed the surface just as the iBrow itself skimmed the frontal lobe. The rest of the brain, that unreachable by thought, was ignored. It was reptile or the unconscious or considered ‘unthinking’.

 
; He needed a drink and Jellicoe’s hip flask had gone with him.

  Which pub, mate?

  Braddon was confused until the cab actually pulled up in front of him. Clearly, he’d been thinking without being aware of it.

  Sure… er, the Lamp, he thought getting in, and then, No, take me to Tensing Row.

  Sure, mate. I hope he doesn’t get that dust on my seats.

  The cab set off and Braddon tried to steady his breathing. He needed – someone, anyone – and he knew who, but Mithering didn’t exist.

  As the taxi drove along, passing other drivers and pedestrians, a continual flicker of recognitions spiked in Braddon’s iBrow. When they turned into the Row, one jumped to his attention.

  Stop! Stop!

  He opened the door before the cab came to a halt and he ran back the way they’d come.

  Oi, the cab driver thought.

  Keep the meter going, Braddon replied.

  Braddon caught up with the girl with the long black hair. From the back, she could have been anyone, but her recognition was clear to all.

  Jasmine, Braddon thought, it’s me.

  Yea, yea, push off.

  Jasmine… “Jasmine!”

  Braddon put his hand on her arm to nudge her around towards him. She turned, snatched her arm away.

  Oi, she thought, leave me alone or I’ll think at the police.

  You know me.

  She looked him in the eye and thought, no I don’t.

  “It’s me,” Braddon said. “Braddon. Oliver. Ollie.”

  “Ollie?”

  “I had to change my registration after a denial attack.”

  “Ollie? Ollie!!! I didn’t know it was you,” she said, relieved; her words tumbling out, “because I recognised someone else.”

  Just assign my name to the recognition, Braddon thought back.

  Jasmine laughed. My God, he looks old and filthy. You were in France, why are you back?

  It’s been a difficult… how long?

  Jasmine blinked, a sign that she was noodling. Braddon used to find it endearing, but it just made her look stupid. A couple of days, she thought.

  Difficult days, Braddon thought.

  Yes – that laugh again, grating – only a few days… how are you?

  Fine, still suspended, he thought, peeved, but that’s just routine.

  Am I irritating you?