The Vanguard

by SJ Griffin

Chapter Eighteen

  The hotel looked as boarded up as usual when I brought us to earth in the middle of the road, but Lola was able to push the door open with one finger. The hotel was full of people. On the positive side, it was full of people we knew, but still.

  Roach groaned. ‘Not a party, not now.’

  ‘How did they get in?’ Lola said.

  ‘I might have given Marshall the code to the back,’ Casino said.

  ‘I need a drink,’ Minos said.

  ‘You can’t have one,’ Lola said. ‘They’ll see.’

  ‘They’ll see, freak out and go home,’ Minos said. ‘Perfect.’

  ‘Let’s go to my room,’ Casino said. ‘I’ve got plenty of booze.’

  By the reception desk a group of people were posing with life sized cardboard cut-outs of the five of us. I couldn’t watch, it was only a matter of time before the whole thing descended into some kind of dry humping embarrassment. We picked our way up the staircase, through the crowd of friends and their shouted conversations. I lingered by the door to the ballroom, where I’d stood talking to Loop about getting high and to Marshall about smuggling rum. It didn’t seem like a different lifetime ago, it seemed like a whole different world. Tex and Elijah stood talking instead.

  ‘So, when Prophet tells the Sorcha character about the Cortex Corporation he’s actually talking about Imagination Industries?’ Elijah said.

  ‘Yeah, but we couldn’t use their real name either because they’d, you know...’

  ‘Arrest you?’ Elijah said.

  ‘Kill us,’ Tex said.

  ‘Is that why you didn’t use Sorcha’s name?’

  ‘You know what? I didn’t even know,’ Tex said. ‘Didn’t even know it was them.’

  ‘That’s pretty deep,’ Elijah swigged on a bottle of vodka. ‘And to think she gave me the licences for that party I had, when all the time it was her, she was her, if you see what I mean. She never said a word and I didn’t realise.’

  ‘Yeah, no one realised,’ Tex rubbed the back of his head where his hair was already wearing out. ‘That’s the weirdest thing. No one knew. I had no idea.’

  ‘No one knew,’ Elijah said. ‘Amazing.’

  ‘Well, except Marshall,’ Tex said. ‘He knew.’

  ‘Can I meet him?’

  ‘Sure he’s here somewhere,’ Tex led him down to the saloon bar and I followed in their wake. There was Marshall standing with a bottle of rum in one hand and a tiny plastic Casino in the other, I couldn’t get near him for the crowd gathered around him, hanging on his every word. Given the channel he was on, it could have been the biggest audience he’d ever had. I bumped into Roach, cannoning off him into a drunk Loki. It was like pinball in the hallway, people milling around and frustrating the people trying to get somewhere. Loki was trying to comfort Clara, who was wailing about Minos not being the man she thought she was. She thought he was an honest, simple fellow, when in fact he was harbouring a huge secret. If he lied about that, she sobbed, what else had he lied about?

  ‘Yeah,’ Loki said. ‘He wasn’t the man you thought he was. He was, like, much better. Way better. And, don’t get me wrong, I really loved the original Minos.’

  Clara wailed even louder.

  ‘They’re remembering when we went to the OP,’ Roach pointed at someone I sort of recognised but couldn’t have named. ‘They’re saying it was where the Vanguard first battled the Galearii. I have a horrible feeling that all these people are insane. All of them.’

  ‘I have a worse feeling that we are,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, we go way back,’ Starboy said as he walked by. ‘Way back, I knew Minos and Sorcha from the children’s home. Even then you knew they were different, do you know what I mean? I mean he was really odd and she was, well, she was...’

  ‘Come on,’ I pulled Roach away before Starboy found the word he was looking for, I didn’t need to hear what I was.

  We found ourselves swept along in a group that had decided to move into the ballroom. I’d end up where I’d started but it was the path of least resistance. Roach shrugged as he was buffeted along and tried a grin that froze on his lips. I wondered how we’d accumulated so many acquaintances, done so much business. Haggia was sitting on a beer keg just inside the door, near where the DJ had set up, she’d found a little space so we went and stood near her. She was talking to Crump from the dock.

  ‘I think they’ll come back,’ Crump said.

  ‘Maybe they will,’ Haggia said. ‘Maybe they haven’t gone anywhere.’

  ‘Maybe. Casino could have made them all invisible and they could be here right now.’

  ‘You’re half right,’ I said.

  Roach looked thoughtful for a moment but didn’t comment. When I was ready he’d said and he would wait.

  ‘Maybe,’ Haggia said. ‘I’m keeping the hotel for them, just in case. All their rooms are shut up and safe.’

  ‘We could make it into a museum,’ Crump said.

  ‘He’s big on relics,’ Roach said. ‘He likes the really old ships.’

  ‘Yes,’ Haggia said. ‘What a great idea. I like it.’

  ‘She likes that because it’ll make her some cash,’ I smiled.

  ‘How do you know them?’ Crump said.

  ‘Oh, I used to sell them vegetables,’ Haggia said. ‘And wisdom.’

  I noticed the DJ then. It was Qool DJ Qronos. He had left Queens and his perpetual set to play at the hotel. Roach’s mouth fell open but despite all the languages he knew he couldn’t articulate his amazement.

  Someone was shouting for Loop, really shouting. It was Massey, his voice carried up the stairs with him not far behind it. Loop crowd surfed his way out of the ballroom to the top of the stairs, trust him to know that was the quickest way to move around. We struggled behind him.

  ‘The game,’ Massey said. ‘It’s gone.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Loop said.

  ‘It’s gone.’

  ‘Gone?’ Loop said.

  ‘I don’t know how else to put it. It’s gone. I rebooted the system, because it shut down for some reason I can’t work out and people were moaning and freaking out on me. And it’s not there. The whole game has gone. I need it fixed. I’ve got a massive queue outside my place. It’s chaos. Where’s Sorcha, or Minos?’ Massey looked beyond harassed.

  ‘Haven’t you heard?’ Loop said. ‘Hey everyone, he hasn’t heard.’

  I have never seen anything like what happened then. The place went crazy, people were bouncing off the walls, off each other. Qronos played it loud and hard and his bass was so fierce it cracked the plaster on the walls. And it went on and on and on. It was the presence of hope that made it so strange, the air was thick with the belief that for once, maybe just this once, there existed the slim possibility that everything was going to be all right. There was no place for our weary cynicism, born of confusion and a simmering resentment. Haggia was right, our rooms were still shut off and we all opted for a change of clothes. For some reason it was the sight of my empty bike stand hanging from the ceiling that, after everything, made me cry. Or maybe it wasn’t that at all.

  We reconvened in Casino’s rooms almost at the top of the hotel. It was a little quieter up there but not by much. We sat around thinking our own thoughts, watching Roach mix cocktails that were more cheerful and jaunty than we were. I drank and drank until I lost myself in sleep, I could hear the others talking about Marshall as I drifted off.

  All the optics and bottles were full, like the bar had just opened. The ice was melting into my drink and drops of water ran down the outside of the glass and onto the small circle of linen the barman had placed it on. There was a glass next to mine, with no drink in it just an olive, as though someone else had just left us.

  ‘I thought that was your usual,’ Étienne crossed her left leg over her right knee, brushing my own knee on the way.

  ‘It is,’ I said.

  ‘Do you want something else?’

  ‘No, th
is is fine.’

  ‘If I have another will you think badly of me?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Let’s go upstairs,’ she said. ‘I’ll get room service.’

  I’d been there before. I watched the almost familiar red numbers flicker through the floors until we arrived at the top. The penthouse suite with the amazing view. This time there were fireworks. I’d never seen so many. It seemed as though every street corner laid out in the neat pattern that spread for miles before us was sending up rockets and shells in every colour imaginable.

  ‘Where am I?’ I said.

  ‘You know where you are, you’ve been here before,’ she smiled.

  ‘No, I mean the me in Casino’s room, where is she?’ I sat on the stool at the baby grand piano in front of the window. ‘Because I’m there and I’m not there. No one can see us. ’

  ‘You are becoming more not there,’ Étienne said. ‘With every moment that passes you are less there and more here.’

  ‘And the others?’

  ‘Yes, them too. All of the... what do they call you?’

  ‘The Vanguard.’

  ‘Vanguard,’ she enjoyed the word.

  There were lilies in a large glass vase on top of the piano. They had dropped orange pollen on the shiny black wood.

  ‘And where is here?’ I said after a long pause. I looked at the clock. ‘That clock doesn’t move.’

  ‘It is moving,’ Étienne said. ‘Just very, very slowly now. It will get faster.’

  I sighed but blew the pollen away with my mind. At least that worked here.

  ‘What about Vermina?’ I said.

  ‘Ah,’ Étienne said. ‘Vermina.’

  I looked at her. She looked a little sad. There was a knock at the door. Étienne opened it without moving and a man dressed in a very smart uniform ruined by a ridiculous pill box hat pushed a trolley into the room. More champagne. Two glasses. He’d brought my drink from the bar too.

  ‘May I?’ he said to Étienne.

  ‘Yes, please,’ she said.

  He eased the cork out of the bottle and poured two glasses. He never took his eyes from Étienne. She thanked him and with an incline of his head he stepped backwards through the door and it closed without a sound.

  ‘Vermina is fine,’ Étienne said, handing me my glass.

  ‘And?’

  ‘Stark will look after her,’ Étienne said. ‘He will be unable to find Lola and Vermina will tell him a little of what happened. As much as she knows. And they will become…’

  ‘Close?’

  ‘No. More simpatico,’ Étienne said. ‘I think Vermina is done with the more romantic side of her life, even more so than before. Stark not so much, but it will take him a long time to stop seeing Lola in every woman he meets.’

  ‘That’s sad.’

  ‘It would be sadder if he just forgot about her, don’t you think?’

  ‘I guess so,’ I said. She was right, but it was still the choice between nothing more than two types of sadness. I didn’t think that was any choice at all. ‘Where will they think she’s gone? Where will they think all of us have gone?’

  ‘They will assume that you made the ultimate sacrifice. Because that’s the story Marshall and Haggia will tell everyone,’ Étienne said. ‘Because that’s what they’ll be told to do.’

  ‘I’m starting to think we have,’ I drained the glass.

  ‘You made a choice, that’s all.’

  ‘And now everyone else has to live with it?’

  ‘Given the circumstances I’m not sure what else you could have done. Not many people presented with the ability to choose an alternate life over death would have chosen death. Particularly if it wasn’t only for them, but for their family too.’ She sat in an armchair.

  The fireworks had stopped but the lights of the city were as spectacular, just in a different way. The minute hand on the clock moved. I decided I loved the old clocks, they were so much more evocative that the churning of digital figures.

  ‘An alternate life?’ I said, testing the phrase out. ‘Like in a parallel universe?’

  ‘Kind of.’

  ‘Kind of?’

  ‘Well, parallel lines run alongside each other, never crossing, never getting closer. Just two lines disappearing off into the distances like the rails on a train track. But alternate realities are more like a network, like a spider’s web.’

  ‘So you can move between them?’

  ‘Everyone does, from moment to moment, they just don’t know it. You make a decision, you move paths and the other decision you almost made carries on without you. Some threads will take you right to the end of the web and some will take you around forever. But people can’t choose which thread they take, only a course of action. The reality of it remains hidden, otherwise people couldn’t cope with the truth of it. Although it’s so sensible really, I wonder how other people think anything else could possibly happen. ’

  ‘But you can choose to move between them however you like, can’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she smiled. ‘And so, it seems can you.’

  ‘Didn’t you know that?’

  She laughed. ‘No. I don’t know everything. That would be boring. I told you that it wasn’t any fun anymore.’

  ‘How did I move between?’ I said. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘You bent the web and folded yourself into another part of the web. Like quantum origami if you like.’

  ‘And that’s here?’

  ‘This is just a waiting room, in a way, not subject to the same rules as other places. These stalled places are always hotels. Funny that, isn’t it? You’ve been somewhere else out of your own time.’

  ‘Have I?’

  ‘The hospital.’

  ‘The hospital?’ The facility that didn’t make sense. Of course, it didn’t make sense. We weren’t there, then we were, then we weren’t. What made sense about that?

  Étienne was nodding as though it made perfect sense. ‘You needed some help from another world, so I gave you it. It was quite simple. This time you moved yourself, but not all the way. You didn’t quite make your origami creases clean enough and now an impression of you needs to fade from your world before you can appear properly in the other. It shouldn’t take too long now. Going to sleep was a smart move because it loosens your hold on a specific reality. You dream and remember that it’s all so…’

  ‘So what?’ I said.

  ‘Tenuous,’ she smoothed the leather on the arms of the chair with her hands, deep in thought. ‘When you have faded from that world you will arrive in the next and it will look familiar to you, like this world, here and now, but it will be different.’

  ‘How?’

  The minute hand on the clock moved again. It was almost three in the morning.

  ‘Wait,’ Étienne said. ‘You’ll see. It doesn’t fit into words. Not your words anyway. Roach could understand.’

  ‘How come I can’t?’

  ‘Because that isn’t your purpose, it’s his,’ she smiled. ‘Is the ability to move the earth not enough for you?’

  I didn’t know if I’d ever get used to having a purpose, I’d been so long without one.

  The city beyond the window wasn’t like my old city in my old reality. It was far bigger, more organised. There were two brighter, broader roads running from the top to the bottom of the city, and from one side to the other. A gathering of towers stood out towards the horizon where the early light of dawn was starting to show itself in the purple sky. There were no stars. The towers were too far away for me to make out what the bright logos on the top of the buildings were. I hoped they didn’t say Imagination Industries.

  ‘What happens next?’ I said. ‘In my world.’

  ‘Time,’ Étienne said. ‘Think of it being more like a time than a place. A moment.’

  I sat on the sofa opposite her. ‘What happens?’

  ‘The government that Stark and his technocrats form fulfills its duty and
brings in a new government in six months time, which as far as it can, gets the country back to order. There is enough food and fuel for everyone without the need for civil war. People feel engaged with the new system and the country begins to provide a leading example for the rest of the world.’

  I found that unlikely, of course.

  Étienne smiled at my thoughts. ‘You might be interested to know that the people decide to destroy every historical building in the city and build new structures with the reclaimed material, using the old the foundations. They don’t teach history in the schools that spring up. Our feet point forward becomes a popular slogan. I can’t remember the exact words, something like that.’

  ‘I guess there’s an alternate reality where Stark’s plan doesn’t work out?’

  ‘Yes, a few,’ Étienne said. ‘In one the interim cabinet decides to allow people to put themselves forward for leadership. And, of course, anyone who thinks they should be a leader, or a minister, is by virtue of that belief unsuitable so that whole thing is doomed from the start. It’s one of the fundamental flaws but you can’t seem to get it out of your systems.’

  My head hurt from thinking and some part of me wanted to shout at her to stop, that it was too much to take in but somehow everything she said made complete sense to me. Like she was confirming things I always knew, that I’d already seen.

  ‘You are a good example,’ she said. ‘You are the leader of the Vanguard, according to the material created by Marshall and his army of helpers. This is not disputed by the others because it is true.’

  ‘It isn’t.’

  ‘You’re just proving my point. Sometimes Casino wishes that he were the leader but it is this wish, this desire for people to follow him, that makes him the worst possibility of all of you.’

  ‘Roach would be better,’ I said.

  ‘Yes. But not better than you, because you have no interested in being followed. Of course, if you had stayed in that same reality and people discovered that you were actually real, instead just of hoped for real, they would have made the Vanguard lead, you would have had no choice in the matter. And you just wouldn’t have been able to live up to those expectations. It would have been a nightmare. The whole thing is a minefield, you wouldn’t believe how hard it is to keep under control.’

  ‘Can we go back ever?’

  ‘No. In a way Stark and Vermina are right. You have all made the ultimate sacrifice. Well, maybe not the ultimate, I think that depends on your point of view, but sacrifices certainly.’

  ‘Like?’

  She ran her finger around the rim of her glass and thought for a moment. ‘Lola has given up Stark, he was the one.’

  ‘The one?’ There was a one. Another thing I already knew.

  ‘Yes. That was their chance. Their time. The space where they found what they were looking for, in each other. But they have missed their connection. It will never be repeated. The same is true of Marshall although not in quite the same way. Casino would have taught him something he needed to know. Without that knowledge about himself he won’t ever become what he could have.’

  I thought of Vermina. Maybe in another lifetime, she’d said. Maybe not. I didn’t want to hear about the others and the things I had made them give up. They deserved better.

  ‘What happens in the future in our time? Our original time? The one we didn’t change.’ I said.

  ‘It doesn’t exist anymore. You broke the rules so the game stopped. That thread has gone and it never existed.’

  ‘But if we hadn’t, what would have happened? If we’d made a different decision at some point things would have turned out differently, right? How did they turn out? What if we hadn’t gone to the house, what if we had gone to Riverside Sector and cleared out that deposit house.’

  ‘You don’t want to know,’ she said.

  ‘But you can show me?’

  ‘No,’ she said.

  I thought it was the first time she’d ever lied to me. Sometimes I couldn’t see the truth in what she was saying or she left things out, but that was an outright lie. I realised she was as bad at lying as I was supposed to be. She looked away and then bit her bottom lip, so fast it could be missed, but then her voice spoke the lie and it sounded wrong, like someone else’s voice. She knew I knew it.

  ‘Couldn’t you have stopped it?’ I let it pass.

  ‘No. I can’t break the rules like you. I can only move the pieces around.’

  ‘Why can’t you break them?’

  ‘I helped to make them.’

  ‘I need to know what would have happened,’ I said. ‘Otherwise I’ll think I could have done something differently.’

  ‘You couldn’t.’

  ‘I can’t believe you.’

  ‘You have to. It’s done,’ she smiled and held out her hand. ‘Come with me.’

  I took her hand and the world reared up like an angry horse. I was lying on the rug in her library, in the house in the Cathedral Quarter. I thought we were going to see something else, she’d tricked me. I got to my feet and staggered over to look out of the small window, just so I could hang on to the windowsill for a moment without looking like I needed the support.

  ‘It’s so dark,’ I said, it was darker than I’d ever seen it.

  ‘There’s nothing out there. It’s gone, there’s only this room,’ she opened the door. There was, as she said, nothing out there. It wasn’t dark, it was less than that, it wasn’t anything at all.

  ‘You can shut that,’ I thought I might vomit.

  ‘Yes, there’s a terrible draught,’ said a familiar voice.

  ‘There you are,’ Étienne said. ‘I didn’t know if you’d come.’

  ‘I didn’t know if she’d want me to,’ he nodded towards me.

  ‘Don’t mind me,’ I said.

  ‘I thought you’d blown it there for a minute,’ Tourniquet said. ‘I really did.’

  I put two fingers to my head like a gun and made the sound of small explosion, ‘I did blow it, in a way.’

  ‘Funny,’ he grinned. ‘You’re funny sometimes. And very unpredictable. I like that.’

  ‘You could explain,’ I said to Étienne. ‘Just leap in, anytime.’

  ‘We’re related,’ Tourniquet said.

  ‘We aren’t,’ Étienne said. ‘We’re relative.’

  I looked at them, to compare them. I looked at her red hair, his dark hair. She had green eyes, his were brown. They were both tall but he was athletic and she was slight. Then I remembered that she only looked like that for me.

  ‘What do you look like really?’ I said to Tourniquet.

  ‘She is good, isn’t she?’ he said to Étienne. ‘Very quick to catch on.’

  ‘Show her,’ she said.

  He changed in an instant. There was no hideous transition, no crunching of bones or agonised shrieking. One moment he was the old Tourniquet, my Tourniquet, and the next a smaller, much younger person was sitting on the chair. Her hair was blonde with just the slightest hint of red.

  ‘That’s what you look like as well, isn’t it?’ I turned to speak to Étienne but she’d already changed. There were two of them. ‘I preferred you before.’ There was something about them that made me think of death, as though death were a person.

  ‘We know,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t get angry with me,’ Tourniquet said. ‘I tried to fix everything for you. I told Stark that Vermina would be a good addition to his team. That took some persuading. I don’t know what that man had against me.’

  ‘How is that fixing everything?’ I slouched in a green leather armchair, their fascination was wearing off, wearing me out.

  ‘It’s a start,’ he said.

  ‘It’s not even close,’ I said.

  ‘Well, it’s more than you’re going to get from her,’ he said, nodding at Étienne.

  ‘Stop it,’ she said.

  ‘No, don’t stop,’ I said.

  ‘She’s not on your side, you’re on hers,’ he said. ‘Ther
e’s a big difference.’

  ‘Everyone’s so keen on taking sides,’ I said. ‘I’m on my own side and there’s an even bigger difference.’

  Tourniquet said something but I held up my hand like a beak and made it talk along with him. There was something irritating about him in that form, I suspected there might have been nothing deep about his appeal in his other form. I let him burble on for a bit.

  ‘Stop,’ Étienne said as I tuned back in. ‘You’re like a child.’

  I wondered which one of us she meant.

  ‘Weren’t you going to offer us a drink?’ Tourniquet said. ‘She could do with one.’

  ‘Of course,’ Étienne said.

  Tourniquet stared at me in a way that was supposed to provoke some kind of reaction so I made sure that I didn’t give him the satisfaction. I watched Étienne make the drinks, which she did by some sleight of hand I couldn’t follow.

  ‘Oh, by the way,’ Tourniquet said as I raised the glass to my lips. ‘I wouldn’t drink that if I were you.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It might take the edge off.’

  ‘Take the edge off what?’

  ‘The outrage you’re going to feel. It’s got something funny in it.’

  I took a long sip of the drink just to spite him. It tasted like a long summer evening.

  ‘Can I keep her?’ Tourniquet said. ‘She’s such a lot of fun. And you owe me.’

  ‘No,’ Étienne said.

  ‘That’s not fair, after everything I did for you. You want everything for yourself.’

  ‘I’m not going to keep her either. She isn’t ours.’

  ‘The others were,’ Tourniquet said.

  ‘The others failed,’ she said

  ‘You’re just annoyed about Rowling,’ he said. ‘She let you down, again. Mind you, you just strung her along, poor Rowling. Maybe next time you should take her under your wing like you did this one.’

  ‘Why should I care about her? Someone had to lose, that’s the game,’ Étienne said. ‘Have you forgotten what happened last time you annoyed me?’

  ‘Temper, temper,’ Tourniquet said.

  They didn’t make the rules they just moved the pieces around. All of the pieces, whatever side they were on. Tourniquet was right about the drink I thought as I looked at the bottom of the empty glass. It did take the edge off. I felt a smile shaping my lips.

  ‘I really like her. It’s not fair,’ he said. ‘I hate your experiments.’

  ‘Don’t feel too bad,’ I said. ‘At the end of the game all the pieces go back in the same box, doesn’t matter if you’re the castle or the king.’

  Tourniquet looked from me to Étienne and back again. ‘Or the queen,’ he said.

  ‘Enough,’ Étienne said.

  ‘All she’s done, Sorcha, is even the score so she gets to play one more time,’ Tourniquet said. ‘There’s always one more time.’

  ‘I mean it,’ Étienne said. ‘Enough. I’m warning you.’

  ‘You win,’ Tourniquet said. ‘I’m going. But I’ll be back. Place your bets, Sorcha.’

  Étienne opened the door and as Tourniquet stepped into the black I had to look away.

  ‘So infuriating,’ she slammed the door.

  I didn’t care. It was over. ‘You’re not going to make me do that, are you?’ I said.

  ‘No.’

  She looked like my Étienne again.

  ‘I want to give you something,’ Étienne went over to a shelf. The book she chose was a thick volume bound in green leather with silver writing. She gave me the book and her fingers touched mine, it was subtle but deliberate.

  ‘I’ll have to get Roach to read it to me,’ I said, flicking through the pages. There were a lot of figures that I recognised as numbers but the symbols and words I couldn’t understand at all.

  ‘It will be worth it, it will answer so many questions,’ she said.

  ‘Is it a bible from somewhere?’

  ‘No,’ she laughed. ‘It’s much more useful than that. It’s a math’s book.’

  And then I laughed too. I suddenly felt like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders and everything was as it should be. Étienne walked over to me and stood so close I could feel her breathing. She ran her thumb along the length of my cheekbone, her fingers in my hair.

  ‘Blame me,’ she whispered. ‘Let me give you what I said I would.’

  I woke up in bed, but it wasn’t my bed, at least I didn’t think of it as my bed at that point. Étienne’s green book was on the floor by the mysterious bed. For moment I thought I was back in the penthouse suite, the room I could see through the half open door looked the same, but on further investigation I found no piano. That’s when I also found it was my room. My stuff was there. It was funny how in this alternate time I’d hoarded the same junk. There was no bike though, no amount of searching or wishing would make it appear. I found a panel on the wall with an array of switches and pressed them at random. After a light show and the odd burst of music the curtains swung open revealing the view. It was daytime, the sun just up, in the same city I’d watched fireworks burst over hours before. I could see to the horizon, the tower blocks shimmering in the heat haze. But some of the buildings were blackened and others stopped in abrupt, jagged parodies of the skyscrapers they’d once been. It wasn’t ruined but it was getting there. Smoke rose in slim black pillars, undisturbed by wind, from a building to the west and to the east five gigantic helicopters hovered in formation. They looked as though they had six legs hanging underneath them. I wondered where the other me was, the me that lived here, collected this junk, listened to these tunes, drank that rum, always the rum. The thought gave me vertigo so I moved some things around with my mind. At least that still worked, I figured I might need it.

  The door opened itself on to a hallway, the walls were covered in flyers and posters for events that were so hip and ephemeral no one bothered to mention what year or what city they were happening in. The lift arrived almost before my finger had left the button. Inside, next to the top floors were pictures of the five of us, drawn by the other me it seemed. I had the top floor, then came Lola below me, Minos, Casino and Roach at the bottom. There were other drawings next to the rest of the buttons which suggested we had sole ownership of this hotel too. I was relieved, I couldn’t imagine us sharing and I didn’t want to. I pushed the button for the ground floor.

  The hotel was tall and thin, with over thirty floors yet the same width as a couple of large shop fronts. The frontage was made of black glass, my reflection leapt and jinked in the panels as I walked along the street. I could hear sirens in the distance and birds singing nearby. Their songs had a strange metallic quality. All the buildings I could see were the same tall and glassy affairs. The streets were laid out in a grid. I looked up and down but I couldn’t see anyone. Smoke, or maybe it was steam, came up through a manhole cover in the middle of a road and some lights changed from red to green but there was no traffic to take the instruction. There were craters in the road, some with thick cracks running between them. Shiny bugs the size of my foot scuttled at speed from one crevice to another. It was hot and the sun was bright. I wandered up and down until I felt lonely, like I was the only person on earth. I saw no one. I went back to the hotel, summoned the lift and hit the button for Lola’s floor. I couldn’t see Minos yet. I’d blurt everything out and it would come out wrong. Maybe he’d rather be dead. Lola’s floor was not as big as mine, I really did have the penthouse suite. I hope I’d won it in a game or something, rather than taken it by divine right. Lola still had an extra room for a wardrobe, clothes thrown everywhere. I wandered around, poking through her things for a bit while she snored in the other room. I wondered what happened to the Lola who was here before my Lola arrived, was it an empty shell waiting for her to come and fill it or was there nothing here? I found it hard to believe the book would tell me.

  ‘How the hell am I going to explain this to everyone?’ I said to a stuffed elephant
Lola had when she was child. It wasn’t wearing as well as she was.

  ‘Explain what?’ Lola said, rubbing sleep out of her eyes. Her hair was sticking up, full of static, and she wore a pair of plaid pyjamas.

  ‘Oh, nothing much,’ I sat the elephant on the shelf where I’d found him slumped. ‘We’re in an alternate reality, that’s why no one could see us yesterday, we weren’t really there, that’s all.’ I made it sound like we’d just popped to the shops.

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Oh.’

  ‘Have you got anything to drink?’ I said.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Lola said. ‘Have I?’

  She hadn’t, so we wandered about looking for the kitchen. I figured that it would be set up pretty much how home had been. Except this hotel had five stars and home was in deficit by about seven. We found the pool and it had clean, cool water in it, Lola was quite disappointed about that. We found a games room with a pinball machine and a roulette wheel. There were playing cards and chips all over the floor, it looked like someone had been a bad loser.

  ‘Minos?’ Lola said.

  ‘I should think so,’ I said.

  We found a lounge with a fish tank that was full of fish, they were fluorescent and glowed in the blue light. We found the kitchen. It was a proper gourmet chef’s kitchen, everything was stainless steel and expensive. We walked into the fridge, it was the size of a large wardrobe, and from the meager amount of food crowded on one shelf we took some juice and some bread and butter.

  ‘So, we can’t go back?’ Lola said. ‘It can’t be fixed?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ I shook my head.

  ‘Don’t be,’ she tried a smile. ‘It’s a new start for us. Let’s be optimistic.’

  I tried to let optimism wash over me, I failed. It was only her shock talking anyway.

  Lola gave me a hug. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I’m glad we can still do our little magic tricks.’

  ‘Maybe everyone here can do them,’ I said.

  ‘I’m not sure I would like that. I’ve got used to being special. Besides one invisible person sneaking around is more than enough.’

  ‘It sure is,’ I said.

  ‘Should we wake them?’

  ‘Probably.’

  She went to put some clothes on. Then we would brace ourselves, wake the others and explore our new city together, pretend it was a playground. In the lift, by the button for the third floor the other me had stuck a picture of a bright pink brain beside the words nerve centre. I hit that button.

  The third floor was alive with the sound of technology. It was cool in that dry, icy way that only very conditioned air could be. There was a formal sign on the wall, disrupted by random gig stickers, proclaiming the space before me to be the restaurant. Most of the walls had been covered in dark cloth, beneath most of them was more tinted glass. In the centre of the vast room was a column of monitors. They hung like a hornet nest, suspended between the floor and the ceiling. It was a more sophisticated setup then the one at home, nothing looked recycled or hacked. The monitors were showing footage from news channels and a binary data feed which I somehow knew was from a communications channel. It was hazy but the knowledge was there somewhere in my head. I wondered what else I knew now. I had to admit that was a quite exciting thought. I walked around the monitors. We, wherever, whenever and whoever we may be, were at war with another country. That other country was flying a flag no one had seen at home for years and years. The footage was a riot of khaki splashed with red, white and blue, everything glimpsed through thick smoke. My excitement crashed and burned. I needed some real air, not the recycled chill. Across the room were five sets of doors set in the dark cloth. The middle one was ajar. I opened it onto a balcony and breathed the hot, listless air.

  ‘Sorcha!’

  I looked down to the street. It was Prophet. He wore a crumpled linen suit and had plaited his beard so he looked far more respectable, but it was him. He was lying in the middle of the road under a large something that was all shiny and golden.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Of course he would be here. He wasn’t like us. He never was.

  ‘I’ve got a present for you,’ he said. ‘Come down.’

  He’d managed to get to his feet by the time I got there.

  ‘Did she send you?’ I said.

  ‘Yes, I’ve got to go back in a minute,’ he blew his cheeks out. ‘It’s a bit of a rough trip. They’re having a hell of a row about you. I’d not be surprised if somewhere an apocalypse is being ushered in.’

  ‘How did she send you?’ I said. His back was covered in grit and dust from the where he’d been lying in the road.

  ‘She said go and give this to Sorcha,’ he said. ‘Now.’

  ‘You know what I mean,’ I said. ‘How did you get here?’

  ‘No idea how she does it. She pushed me, shoved me right over. I can’t move myself I need a guiding hand. Not like you I hear,’ he said. ‘Hey, I’m like a courier too, except I go long haul.’

  ‘I hope it’s better than her other present.’

  ‘Why, what was that?’

  ‘Something about the freedom to act without worrying about what would happen next. Or something like that.’

  ‘No good?’ he said.

  ‘I think it was faulty, or I was.’

  ‘Well, your feet point forward for a reason, you know.’

  ‘Yes, otherwise I’d fall flat on my face,’ I said. ‘It’s nice to see you but where’s my present?’

  ‘Over there,’ he said, pointing to the wall.

  There, wrapped in shiny gold paper, was a bike. It was my bike, all silver and skinny. I opened my mouth but no words came out.

  ‘Thought you’d like that,’ he said. ‘Express delivery.’

  ‘It’s perfect, how did it get here? It was so smashed up.’

  ‘Who knows? She’s probably assembled it from eighteen different realities over more centuries that you can imagine. It probably pedals itself or something.’

  I snorted. ‘That’s nothing. I can make it do that.’

  We could hear shouting, the words all jumbled up together, unintelligible. I dragged Prophet and my bike into the hotel and we peered through the crack between the doors, one above the other like a stubby totem pole. The shouting got louder and closer but no clearer. Twenty or so people appeared in the street, they were running at blistering speed. They ran on the road and along the walls. Not along the tops of the walls, but along the face of the wall so their bodies were horizontal to the ground. They ran anywhere and any how they wanted. Every couple of strides one of them would take a huge leap and bound metres ahead of the others. They moved in unison but in discord too, like trout swimming upstream. There was something wonderful in the way that they ran. It made me want to run with them too.

  ‘Who are they?’ I said.

  ‘What,’ Prophet said. ‘What are they, you mean.’

  ‘What are they? What do you mean?’

  ‘Time’s up,’ Prophet looked relieved but did find the grace to shrug an apology. Then all that was left of him was a queasy groan.

  ‘Wait,’ I said, too late.

  There was a sultry purr as the lift doors opened behind me. ‘Don’t say a word,’ Minos half fell out of the lift, the other three behind him. ‘Just get me a drink.’

  ‘Certainly, Minos Fry,’ said a voice. ‘What would you like?’

  A slim figure stood behind the reception desk. His skin was too smooth and too pale, almost waxen. He was dressed in a black suit with a black tie and a crisp white shirt. His black hair lay in a precise parting to one side. He moved without effort of any kind around the counter and stepped towards us with a smile.

  ‘Who are you?’ I said.

  ‘I am sorry. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Raphael. I am a part of the service and entertainment unit, version seven oh five. I’m from the Gargatron built nine series. I am here to serve you,’ his smile was serene and satisfied. ‘If I may say so, Sorcha Blades, it’
s very good to see you. We have been waiting for you for a very long time.’

  I didn’t know what game piece I was, but I had a horrible feeling that I hadn’t been put back in the box with all the others. It was just going round and round and round. Tourniquet said a drink would take the edge off the outrage.

  ‘You’re here to serve us?’ Casino said.

  ‘Yes, it is my purpose. Do permit me to get you those drinks,’ Raphael said. ‘If I may say, you all look like you could do with one.’

  ‘Very well, Raphael,’ I said. ‘I’ll have a mojito. Heavy on the rum.’

  ###

  About The Author

  SJ Griffin became a woman after successfully completing many years as a girl. After stints as an actor, a petrol station attendant, a copywriter, an editor, an amateur bike mechanic, a burger flipper, a playwright and riding an old fashioned bicycle in order to sell melting ice creams it became abundantly clear that the only thing she really wanted to do was write novels. So that's what she does. As a result she is far more pleasant to be around.

  The Vanguard trilogy is the first stage of a long term strategy to remain pleasant to be around, for the general good of humanity. The second part of the trilogy, The Replacement, will be published on 21 June 2013 and the final part of the trilogy, The Perfectionist, will be published in January 2014.

  Blog: https://adventureswiththevanguard.wordpress.com/

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