Normal

by Warren Ellis

  Adam looked down at the smashed bug.

  “Oh, shit,” he said.

  PART FOUR

  “Well, would you look at that,” Darnel said.

  The fat insect had cracked open. But it hadn’t cracked open in the way a fat insect would. It had split and shattered the way a dropped cell phone might. Its carapace had starred like windshield glass around the split. There was nothing wet inside it. Nothing organic.

  Adam was looking at wires. Wires and tiny electronic devices and mechanics. Radio antennae. Shrunken microphones. Something that might be a memory card. A cluster of litter processors. Glassine dust that may once have belonged to a lens. He was looking at a device in the shape of a fat insect.

  Lela leaned over Darnel’s shoulder. “Jesus fucking Christ. Where did this come from? Those look like tiny, tiny KERS systems.”

  “I dunno what that is,” said Darnel, “but I’m pretty sure this here is a microphone.”

  “KERS. Kinetic energy recovery system. We’ve been testing all kinds of versions in cities for generating electricity from people walking on sidewalks. This is just a totally miniaturized version, you can tell by that armature. This thing makes its own energy by walking. I mean, it’d run down in the end, but it could have months before you’d have to plug it into something.”

  “I ain’t looking for the USB port on this thing.”

  Adam sat back and scoured his recent memory. Insect in the hallway. Insect on the skirting board. Spider in Dr. Murgu’s office. Spider in Dr. Murgu’s office that was not spinning a web in the corner. There was no web anywhere. Just the spider.

  Churning mass of insects on Mansfield’s bed. And no Mansfield to be seen.

  The tide of adrenaline almost blinded him.

  Adam stood up, looked around quickly. A recently opened bottle of Buoylent on an adjacent table, its owner reaching for it. Adam lunged over, snatched it away, and sank it in one pull. Gasping, ignoring the complaints, he lurched to the next table, found an unopened bottle and did the same. If Buoylent really was loaded with mood stabilizers, he was going to need as many in his system as possible.

  He clambered up on the table. Eyes came to rest on him from both sides of the patio.

  “We,” he said, in as loud and steady a voice as he could muster, “are going to have to find every single insect, bug, and crawly bastard in this place and smash it. If you want to know why, look over there. Lela Charron and Darnel Booth—one from each side of the aisle—are right now looking at an insect I crushed. It’s got microphones in it. I bet you anything you like that it’s also got radio. It’s a listening device. And there could be more. A lot more. Like a couple of hundred pounds more. We need to find them all, right now, before the investigators get here. Whatever you’ve said in the last twenty-four hours is inside these things, people. Total surveillance in a place that is supposed to be free of all surveillance. If we don’t get them, then whatever you say and do from now until you leave is going to be recorded and sent to people we do not know. Doesn’t matter what side of the aisle you’re on today. I know damn well that doesn’t sound like a good and healthy situation to any of you.”

  He took a breath, and then said, “People. You’re not crazy if there really are robot insects listening to every word you say.”

  Someone said, “I fucking told you.”

  People across the patio started getting up and looking around at the ground. Adam heard a thump: a shoe coming off and its heel striking. Human buzzing, figures hunching and crouching. And then a cry: “Bloody hell!”

  That was it. Everyone was up and hunting. Shoes were coming off for weaponry, full water and Buoylent bottles brandished as truncheons. A swarm of damaged academics given full rein to declare war on the natural world. There was shouting, swearing, a cascade of smacking sounds, some hurried strident conversations, even some crying, but it seemed to Adam, looking out over his works, that the loudest sound was laughter.

  “Shit!” A woman’s voice jumped above the noise. “That one was real! I’ve got bug guts in my eye.” The laughter got louder still.

  Adam got down off the table, having spied a broad roach-like object running for cover under his table. Adam slipped off a shoe, got down on his hands and knees, and galloped after the object, dispatching it with a swift blow of the heel. It split and stopped moving. Adam scooped it up, extricated himself from the table, and left the patio with all speed.

  Adam told himself that he had to work fast. He wasn’t going to keep it together forever. Memories and deductions were clawing at the edges of his vision, monsters on the other side of the wall trying to chew their way through.

  In the corridor, he almost ran straight into Dickson, carrying a tray with a plastic-domed plate of salad on it.

  “We agreed on a lunch for you. Had to talk it over with the nutritionists and your doctor.”

  “I’ll be right back for it. Thanks so much. Really appreciate it. It’s a bit crazy out there right now, but don’t worry, I’ll be back to explain it shortly. Thanks.”

  Adam kept moving. Down the corridors, out the side door, across the grass, over the stepping stones. Asher was standing with his back to Colegrave’s front door, masturbating absentmindedly, gazing blank-eyed at the grass. He only woke from his daze as Adam got within ten feet of him, and even then didn’t put it away.

  “Sorry,” Asher said. “Helps with the stress, you know. Helps me think. I used to be very important once. It was just that, after a while, nobody could stand the way I thought about things. Probably not an outlandish story here, is it?”

  “I need to speak to Colegrave.”

  “Colegrave is communing with the tenebris anima.”

  “I don’t even know what that is.”

  “The dark wind, Adam Dearden. The grim impetus of deep history that looks out of his eyes and tells him what to do. He might be naked, so prepare yourself. It’s been known.”

  Only at that moment did Asher seem to detect the wind himself. He looked down. “Oops. Better pop the Asherino back in, eh? Haha.”

  Adam shouldered the man out of the way and opened Colegrave’s front door.

  Colegrave was, in fact, simply reclined in his chair and staring at the ceiling.

  “Colegrave. I know what’s happening.”

  “That was worryingly swift, Dearden. Are you sure?”

  Adam showed him the crushed device in his hand.

  Colegrave studied it from several angles before picking the thing up with the tips of his fingers. His eyes narrowed as he peered inside its split casing as best he could.

  “Audio pickups,” he muttered. “And that flat black wafer underneath appears to be a style of integrated solid-state drive. I would imagine it’s capable of storing up to sixty-four gigs of audio. For those periods where—ah, yes, there it is—where it can’t use this little wi-fi aerial to squirt out what it’s hearing to a base station, or, perhaps, talk to a cell phone. It can just record and then upload to base when it comes back into some signal. Fascinating.”

  “This,” Adam said, “is a piece of Mr. Mansfield. There are a lot of them. Most of the patients are smashing every insect on the patio area into shrapnel right now. Do you understand me, Colegrave?”

  Colegrave met Adam’s eyes. “I believe I do. I would like to know the identities of the investigators that are on their way here, and who they serve. The many entities who commission research work from Normal Head will have a definite interest in these events. I shall require our internet privileges to be reinstated.”

  “If the internet connection’s up, aren’t we running the risk of these things connecting to it somehow?”

  “That’s the point. I want to know who is behind this breach. With everyone in Staging working at their computers, we can await the moment when any remaining devices connect to the system and call home. We can manage the security of the connection. We trace their connection request and the address they’re trying to reach, and strip out all the information that follows�
��let the stamped addressed envelope go but keep the letter, discovering whom they’re attempting to speak to. For this to work, however, the Director has to give us access to the postal system. He has to restore internet access to Staging.”

  Adam dropped the crushed device into Colegrave’s hand and left.

  Asher was still outside, hands in his pockets and looking heartsick.

  “I have small relapses,” Asher said, not looking at Adam’s face. “I’m not crazy anymore. I just have small relapses. The stress. Everything today. It’s just too much, and I can’t do anything.”

  Adam had a feeling that he was looking at the real Asher. The deceitful tone, the curling smile, the whole unpleasant mien of the man was gone, and what was left was a man who was intelligent enough to be scared and to know that his illness had taken the tools to deal with it away from him.

  Adam’s heart rate was starting to race. He knew he was running out of time. He knew he shouldn’t waste functional moments on something Asher probably wouldn’t remember tomorrow.

  Adam turned around. He saw Bulat standing at the treeline, in the shade.

  Bulat nodded at him, just once, and then stepped back into the forest.

  “It’s Ben, right?” Adam said. “Ben Asher?”

  “Yes,” Asher whispered. “Yes, I was.”

  “I’m going to need your help with the next bit, Ben. I can’t do what needs to be done without a good man from Staging.”

  “I haven’t been a good man in a long time,” Asher said. “I used to work in geoengineering theory. Trying to save the world from climate change. Being a good man didn’t make a damn bit of difference.”

  “Today it will,” Adam said, arranging a very straight face and a sympathetic steepling of his eyebrows.

  An expression crept over Asher’s face that was not unlike that of a lonely child being told that Santa had not in fact been strangled to death in an alley in New Orleans.

  * * *

  Out on the patio, piles of smashed insect-devices were being created on the tables. These people being who they were, the piles were separated by taxonomy: fake spiders here, fake lice there, fake roaches on another. Dickson and five other orderlies were standing around, bouncing up and down on the balls of their feet and looking nervous.

  “I ate your lunch,” Lela said, walking up to Adam. “Where have you been?”

  “Talking to Colegrave.”

  “Oh my God. You’ve been in Staging. Already.”

  “Just visiting. And let me tell you now, you are plenty sane enough to be in Staging. In fact, Ben Asher here is going to put in a word for you with Colegrave, using my name. Aren’t you, Ben?”

  “Absolutely,” Asher said, extending a hand and looking to Adam for approval. Adam glanced at Ben’s hand, then caught his eye and gave a quick little shake of his head.

  “Oh,” said Asher. “Right. Anyway. Yes. Ben Asher.”

  “Lela Charron,” Lela said, picking up on the silent exchange and wrapping her hands behind her back.

  “Darnel,” Adam called. “Got a minute?”

  Darnel, who had been considering one of the piles from a distance, jogged over, arms wrapped around himself against the supposed cold. “What’s up?”

  “I kind of want three representatives for the next bit,” Adam said, and gathered them all up like stray ducklings in his wings, ushering them toward Dickson and the other staffers.

  “Dickson,” Adam said. “We need to see the Director, right now.”

  “That’s not going to happen today, Mr. Dearden,” Dickson said. “I am sorry, really. But you’re not the first people to ask to talk to him today. Everyone just needs to stay calm until help arrives.”

  “The help arriving might be the actual problem. All we’re being told is that ‘investigators’ are coming. Some of us have problems with that. Well, that and what you can see in front of you.”

  “No one will tell us what you’re all doing out here. It just looks like you’ve all gone to war on the insect kingdom.”

  “We need to talk to the Director. We need the internet turned on and we need to draw up some emergency plans. We need to get into the Director’s office, and we need to do that now. This is a request from representatives from both sides of the aisle, and from Staging.”

  “I can see that. But I just can’t help you.”

  Ben Asher drew himself to his full height, and his old smile snaked back onto his lips as he said, “Dickson, we are geniuses. We can get into the med store anytime we want, and we do. If you ever want to see your Ritalin again, you will get your friends to help us.”

  The five other orderlies visibly and audibly clenched.

  * * *

  Adam and a section of the inmate populace were guided by Dickson and his jittery friends through the halls and corridors of the main building. Darnel kept pace with Adam.

  “Did you just enact a coup d’état in a mental hospital?”

  “Just a temporary realignment of management priorities,” Adam said. “A pivot in the nature of the Area of Responsibility.”

  “Damn. You really have worked both sides of the aisle, haven’t you?”

  “Think there’s space for me on the ramparts of your future fortress?”

  “Hell, no,” Darnel said, picking up his pace. “You’re a fucking mutant.”

  * * *

  The Director was not thrilled by a pack of actual lunatics invading his office, and said so, in terms that were not medically professional.

  “We want internet and we want to know who’s coming. Or for you to stop them if you can.”

  “The investigators are already on their way. Apparently some initial group was scrambled together out of L.A., San Francisco, and Richmond. They got into a van at PDX. Why would I want to stop them from coming? I want some answers to this ridiculous situation. And I’m the Director.”

  “Who’s sending them?”

  “Hell if I know,” the Director said. “The board. I don’t need to know. The moment this mess got referred to the board, it was taken out of my hands,”

  Darnel, eyes narrowed, asked, “What exactly do you do here?”

  “Me? I arrange for your backsides to be wiped every day, and I answer to a board, and the board is made up of any number of universities, institutes, NGOs, and God knows what else. It’s one giant organism put together out of a swarm of smaller ones who all transmit a little bit of money, which we gather up and use to keep you people in food and drugs. I keep the cash coming in and you whackjobs from going out.”

  “Is Normal worth so much money to anybody that a team of investigators for some black-swan event at Normal would be on call and ‘scrambled’ to get here?” Lela asked. “I mean, given that you just said that this place is funded by a flock of entities who all kick in five bucks each.”

  “The same flock of entities,” the Director said, “who funded all your research posts and endless parade of conferences and all your other crap. So the answer is evidently yes. I don’t need to know why. It’s all out of my control now. I have a lot of inmates who used to be high-value people before they lost their shit and were given to me to hose down and dose up. Half of whom are probably here because of you, Dearden. You think I don’t read the patient files? You did some dark surveillance-culture shit before you became a people person.”

  “Shut up. We need the internet restored to Staging, and, if you really don’t know who’s coming, we need them checked for communications devices when they come in.”

  “You can have the internet,” the Director said, “because it’s just become less annoying to give it to you rather than withhold it. But if you think I’m going to lift a finger when those people come here to save me from your crazy asses, then you’re crazy. Wait.”

  The Director started giggling at his own “joke.”

  Adam was fast losing the will to live. He turned and looked at the others, hands spread.

  “We,” said Lela, “are going to need some nets.”

  �
��What?”

  “Ad hoc urban event solutions,” Lela said. “Pull all the bedsheets. They won’t let us have anything sharp, so we’ll have to twist them up into thick lengths and then knot them into netting. We’ll fill empty Buoylent bottles with stones from the treeline and tie them into the nets as weights. We throw the nets on these investigators when they arrive, tangle them up, and then swarm them and grab their phones and sit on the bastards until we find out where they’re from and what’s going on.”

  “You’re very organized.” Adam smiled.

  “I feel useful. I feel like I can do things. It’s good.”

  “What you’ve got in mind might slow down your transfer to Staging, Lela.”

  She laughed in his face. “Robot beetles, conspiracies, and a takeover of Normal? I’d trade six weeks at Staging for today in a second. This is the most fun I’ve had in years. This is,” and she jabbed his nose with a finger, “the best day I can remember having since I was seventeen.”

  “What happened when you were seventeen?”

  “I burned down my old school. Let’s get to it.”

  * * *

  Adam watched everyone move. Pulling bedsheets, winding them into soft rods, and knotting them into giant floppy geodesic domes. Academics’ hands all grimy with soil from scraping pebbles into empty corn-plastic bottles still slimed with Buoylent residue. It was kind of wonderful to see these people work. Even the sickest among them found smiles as they, too, watched the industry from safe corners.

  Elected spotters at the main doors heard the trucks coming before anyone could see them. The shout went down the corridors. Adam was very tired, and stood by the serving counter by the medical storeroom as people rushed by him, talking and laughing, many of them trying not to trip as they carried their makeshift nets to the door.

  He heard tires on the driveway. Doors opening. A great whoop and a holler, and then it all got started.