My shoulders begin to heave and I sink my face into my hands like they’re a cold bath.
“Your co-operation’s very welcome, Zephyr.”
“In exchange for full indemnity,” I say.
The agents look like they’ve been served up turds, but Siren almost invisibly nods and I smile grimly and the lawyer relaxes.
“Maybe you’re not as stupid as Ms O’Hagan says,” Liebenthal says.
“Hang in there, chief,” I say. “It’s early days yet.”
*
THE TELEPATH SITS across from me like an A-grade student preparing for yet another exam. I fidget because that’s all there is to do before Siren snaps irritably and tells me to open my mind.
“How do I do that, exactly?”
“You wanted this, Zephyr.”
“Perhaps not as badly as you.”
“I’ve read Synergy’s case notes,” the aged agent replies. “There might be the chance for some closure here.”
A short while later and I am falling into sleep like a long-distance trucker. Each time I start to go into the zone I jerk awake, face leaning towards the interview room table, and Siren growls again telling me to “stay unfocused”.
Easier said than done.
“Holy shit.”
I snap awake again. The room is windowless, so it’s hard to tell how much time has passed through this whole ordeal.
“What?”
“I need you out cold, Zephyr. There’s . . . an unusual reading.”
“How unusual?”
“I’m sorry,” she says and gestures and a train drives through my forehead and they tell me later my head struck the table hard enough to bounce.
To sleep perchance to dream. Of course Shakespeare was drawing an analogy to death and the possibility that escape from this mortal coil might be pointless if it only propels our benighted souls into a worse afterlife. Me, I’m just in snoozy land, though this time it feels a little different.
Light from a naked bulb clicks on and I’m in an interview room in bad need of a celebrity makeover. Nothing has been washed down here in a zillion years and there’s a corpse in a natty little suit sitting propped across from me in a 50s-style chair.
On closer inspection, the blue suit is a marching band uniform cut high beneath the ribs, and the cadaver, sitting upright, wears small round glasses. A wig of hair sits atop his skull. The eyes are awake, alive, watching me, though a layer of almost volcanic dust coats the figure itself, suggesting there’s been no movement in ages.
“Joseph.”
“Dad?”
“Something’s happened,” the corpse says, though when I look again I realize this isn’t some mummy, but simply a very, very old man. He watches me through the glasses and as I fail to respond, the ancient mottled skin relaxes and a hint of color comes into his face.
“They’re . . . reaming my mind,” I say.
“Who?”
“It’s the FBI. Parahuman Affairs.”
Lennon lifts his arm and slowly moves his wrist, curls and uncurls his fingers and lays his hand back in his lap and when I lift my gaze to his face again, he’s no more than a youngish 60.
“You’re looking good,” I say.
“I think this is what I’ve been waiting for,” he says.
The Liverpool accent is familiar and at one and the same time strange, exotic.
“Been here so long I think part of me’s slipped away, yeah. Can’t remember.”
“What did you do?”
He blinks, lifts a hand and removes the glasses. Sixty now. Maybe fifty-five. It’s hard to tell. His hair has relaxed, the heavy bowl haircut starting to grow unruly.
“We were under attack,” he says disjointedly.
“Who?”
“I can’t remember. The far sensor, she tipped us off. There’d been hints. Synchronicities. We didn’t know nothing about the Editors till it was too late.”
“Editors?” I blink for a moment, the lucidity of the dream a pulsing color scheme even if the light is the color of sick and bile is the color of the walls. I’m momentarily crestfallen to think I was going to get a proper understanding and instead the old man is raving bat-shit insane.
“That’s what we call them,” Lennon says. “Called them, I should say. Live in subspace. Extra-dimensional. The other me, he found them on one of his wanders. Meditating.”
He pronounces the -g on the end, which would normally annoy me, but instead I’m all ears, holding the illusion of my breath in case I miss anything else in his speech.
“I thought it was you who did the meditating,” I say.
“Not like he did. Wanted to rule the world. Different, that.”
“Not like you?”
“We just wanted to be loved, Joe. Loved. Adored. Stupid, I know, but we did good.”
There comes a heavy thump on the door and when I look down, for the first time I see traces of water seeping beneath the moldering gap at the bottom. Then the thump comes again, louder. The door shakes in its frame.
“She’s coming,” Lennon says.
“Who?”
“Your telepath.”
“I think you need to tell me about the Editors,” I say.
So he does.
*
I CAN’T GIVE you any pope-in-the-pool moment other than we’re sitting in a tepid dream space unknown to Ikea, a million-year-old police station where something big and ugly is slowly splitting the soaked chipboard door apart. And the man they tell me is my father slowly unburdens himself after an eternity trapped inside my head.
That’s right. My head. Right in here. God knows some of the shit he’s witnessed over the years. I hope he liked Pamela Anderson as much as I did because I sort of went through a phase there, you know, before the Botox and the third boob job and the monkey sex. Or maybe that was just in my parallel.
“I hitched a ride on you, Joey-me-lad. I hope it’s alright.”
“When?”
“August 16, 1977.”
“OK,” I say. My mind is racing. I was three years old. “Where?”
“The island. You know it. You’ve been there.”
Lennon laughs, not a day over fifty now. The door thumps again. The intruder beats against it like a great heart, the force as well as the timing rhythmic, insistent.
“I saw it through your eyes. I’ve seen everything, Joe. Sorry. But spare a thought for me, trapped in here. It was never meant to be like that.”
“What were you . . . What were you doing? You said you were under attack?”
“The Editors. Lennon. They just called him Preacher in that other universe, the shadow one to ours. He was a bastard. I mean, I was a right bastard at times, not the least to your mother, Joe. And the other girls. Lord, God knows, I’ve had long enough to dwell on it all. I’m sorry, but I –”
“Please,” I cut in on him. The door splits a little more. “The attack?”
“Lennon and the Editors made a pact in subspace.”
“Subspace.” It’s barely a question.
“It’s where they live.”
“Go on.”
“I’m not sure what he was up to. We’re . . . different. But they collapsed our worlds at the quantum level. Overwrote us, I guess you’d say.”
“Cut and . . . paste,” I say listlessly.
“The others had a way out, but on the island, there was no time for me to get to Strummer’s Morris-Thorne wormhole and so, well, I thought you would be strong, Joey. Strong.”
“Strong.”
“I didn’t want to be replaced. The others got out, the 101ers, the Goodies and that. I think they even took the King. But I couldn’t. I’m sorry, Joseph. At the last minute, I made the leap. The maharishi showed me how, but I’d never tried before. I left it all behind.”
“Your body,” I say numbly.
“Yes. And the women.”
Lennon starts to cry and it’s about that moment the door splits completely asunder and a squamous, mustard green squid ten
tacle pours flaccidly into the room, filling the dream space and making the single globe explode.
Zephyr 9.4 “The Tentacular Nightmare”
THE TENTACULAR NIGHTMARE resolves itself into Siren and the scene changes accordingly. We are on a British beach covered in stones and dead penguins. There are people in the distance, doing seaside things near the skeletal boardwalk towering like some medieval contraption covered in circussy barnacles over the beach-front, but they seem unreal – or perhaps I should say even less real, given our dreamy locale.
It is cold and there is a wind. Winter. My father stands a few feet away in a tattered white suit with a black wool scarf, his middle age restored. Siren triangulates our position, a thin, ectopic figure with her jet black hair splayed across the flowering open white collar of her jumpsuit. She has the demeanor of a not-too-happy schoolmarm, one arm crossed beneath her elbow and the other hand clasping her chin as she looks disapprovingly sideways at us both.
“What?” I say.
“You’re full of surprises, aren’t you, Zephyr?”
“It’s not me.”
“Did you know he was in here?”
She cocks her thumb as if John Lennon is just a naughty child who can’t really understand what’s being said.
“No idea.”
“You’re also missing some memories,” Siren says.
“I am?”
“Yeah. About six days. Do you want them back?”
“I think so. It depends. Is it because of him?” and I point, joining the game now.
“I don’t think so. It’ll explain why you can’t remember punching out Negator, though,” she says.
I mull this over a second and the FBI agent continues.
“You know they will want to question him.”
“He’s in my head.”
“He’s a known felon.”
“No,” I say. “No, he’s not. This isn’t the Doomsday-Man-Lennon. This is the Preacher Man. A parallel.” Siren looks skeptical, so I add, “The Mirror Act doesn’t allow this, surely? It’s my head. I don’t have to host any damned third-party interrogation session if I don’t want to.”
“Oh, that’s not the problem,” Siren says dismissively. “Lucky for you we can get him out. A few hours at White Nine and we can get a digital replicate. Our technology’s come a long way. Hell, find a host body and we can give life into Johnny Frankenstein over there.”
“I’m listening, you know,” Lennon says.
I stare at him a few seconds, disconnected, disconsolate, not really knowing now what the fuck is going on. Siren’s hardass act shatters and she smirks like a schoolgirl and Lennon’s face softens, the smooth bastard, and that lifts me from my doldrums long enough to be annoyed.
“Fucking hell, old man. You’re still in my head, you know. Keep it in your pants.”
“What’s the matter, Joe?” Lennon says and smiles and walks closer. “She not your type? No red bathing suit?”
I look away, mutter and swear, and Siren titters and I feel myself getting sleepy, which is a shame, as there’s still so many answers and I’m yet to work out the questions.
*
I SLEEP FOR about a day-and-a-half, wiped out by Siren’s mental incursion and the sedatives, and while White Nine’s not exactly a hotel, they do manage to find me a three-course breakfast some time around noon when I wake. I am sitting back, barefoot in my moldering costume on the clinical white bed, sheets loose, when Siren and Tempo walk in and the female agent seems sufficiently comfortable to sit on the edge of the bed as I contemplate a cigarette though I haven’t had one in a few years.
“Well?”
“What?” I snap back.
“Is it all coming back to you now?”
“What do you want me to tell you?”
“Zephyr, we’ve got you dead to rights. Common assault. Threats.”
“Negator’s got a rap sheet as long as my cock,” I tell her.
“A bit longer than that, Zephyr. Don’t fool yourself. I had to help move you, don’t forget.”
“I knew you couldn’t resist a feel.”
“I’d fancy you if you put Lennon behind the wheel,” she says and smirks.
“This isn’t Being John Malkovich.”
“Well, we could arrange that too.”
“I think you’re here to cut a deal. Get on with it.”
Siren looks like she’s about to say something, but Tempo looks gruff and she sighs and flicks away a comma of hair. I spent the break trying to remember her real first name and can’t. Valerie? I have the brief urge to pass wind and refrain, mindful that it’s pretty damned turgid in here already.
“We want access to Lennon. There’s a lot of unanswered questions,” she says. “And we want you to keep him in there.”
“What?”
“If what you’ve said is true, your mind has been a pretty efficient prison for him for thirty-something years,” Siren says. “If that’s true, we’re thinking, you know, if it ain’t broke, we don’t want to have to clean up the puke, you know?”
“I’m not following you.”
“Well, you said this isn’t the Doomsday Man.”
“No. It’s his parallel. Or rather, I think the other Lennon is the parallel and this one – my one – is our world’s original.”
“Either way, he’s got the potential to be what we like to call an omega-level threat.”
“We like to call ‘em that, but there’s no actual classification for that sort of thing,” Tempo says from the side.
“That means he’s safer kept in the box till we know what to do with him. You understand?” Siren asks.
“Yeah.”
“So, deal?”
“I didn’t really think I had any other choice anyway,” I say.
I contemplate the linoleum for a few moments, trying to imagine that the old man is listening to every word we say and sucking up my psychic reactions like a baby in the amniotic sac, filtering every libidinal and unconscious twitter. But despite the knowledge he’s in there, he might as well be a million miles away. Things don’t feel any different than before even with what I’ve been told. It’s almost hard to believe. Like a dream. I bow my head, curiously unafraid the potential barrel-load of phobias pursuant to this idea have slid off me like from a Teflon frying pan. When I lift my face again, I have my patented Zephyr smirk in place even as I realize I’ve been sitting here the whole while with my mask next to my boots.
“Okay,” I say. “Deal.”
Siren nods, pleased like she’s just negotiated a high-powered contract with some interdimensional zaibatsu. Tempo grunts a farewell and they depart from the room and at the door Siren pauses and throws me the phone they confiscated.
“Just press the buzzer when you’re ready to see your woman.”
I nod and they leave and an eerie stillness descends upon the cubicle.
Good going, Joey-boy, my father’s voice sounds disturbingly close in my mind. Just don’t let on that the Jack is out of the box, eh?
I stare straight ahead and try not to think about Pamela Anderson.
Zephyr 9.5 “Witness”
I HAVE THE phone in my hand and my father’s voice in my ear. I feel like a little kid too afraid to pee with other people watching.
What’s the matter, Joey?
“I can hear you,” I mutter.
That’s right, lad. You’re doing great.
“Is this because of what she did, Siren?”
I’m not sure she realized.
I don’t say anything for a moment. Instead, I stand and finish dressing. My costume smells of cheese and my hand of ass. There’s a wash basin and I try and rectify the situation and end up gulping freezing mouthfuls with my head turned sideways under the faucet like the cold water is a metal dish to protect my thoughts from the internal telepath I’ve apparently hosted most my life.
Hehe, don’t feel bad, Joey. It’s okay. I’m cool. I’m just happy to be, you know, a little closer to free.
> “We might have to do something about that too,” I say softly. “I’m not sure how much longer I can take living with that fucking accent.”
Lennon snickers in my head and I fight off a wave of tiredness and sit on the edge of the bed, roughing up my face like a witness who might offer any answers to my current predicament. I think about my mom, possibly still out there somewhere, an intra-dimensional flunky dead in her place. It’s all just a distraction from the phone in my hand. It’s not like I don’t care – that I’m not thrilled to think perhaps I was right all along and somehow there’s a rational explanation to what happened at my parents’ house all those weeks ago – but the cold resonance of logic that tells me I am not imagining the grim reality of death, whosever it was, sits still as the Reaper himself in my thoughts. It’s almost enough to make my jumpiness about my father being perched on my shoulder like a psychic parrot retreat. Before I know what I have done I’ve pressed the button and the White Nine telecom snaps up the signal.
“Yes Zephyr, how can we help you?” comes a woman’s voice.
“I’m ready to see Lioness.”
“Someone will be along shortly.”
I disengage. The palpable sense of not being alone returns, distilling my silence with something somewhere in-between a scent and a flavor, or perhaps outside that sensory range entirely.
“What is it, dad?”
I’m happy.
“You are?”
Thirty years, Joey-boy. Thirty years.
“And now what?”
We make things right.
“You know, Ono tried to kill me.”
No, lad. She saved you.
“That’s not how it seemed at the time,” I say.
I know, but trust me. Spectra couldn’t harm you even if she tried. I made certain of that, in the final stages before my . . . departure. A psychic suggestion, to watch over you – us – and keep you safe.
“That’s why she impersonated my mother?”
Impersonated? Yes. An imposter. That poor woman. Dead.
A noise like static fills my brain as the door snickers open and an orderly appears with armed guards in tow. It’s the sound of my father sobbing, psionically, for the woman I guess was a real person once, before Spectra killed her to replace and stay close to my real mum and I like some deranged, mentally-defective cyborg.
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