The first thing is the sound. Static, fading up into a roar that baffles her ears. Then the twisted black of burnt rubber is in her nose, mouth, lungs, and she’s kicking against the weight that hauls her down, wrapping her tight; she wrestles, jerks her head free of the darkness that’s trying to blind, silence, suffocate her. Stop – she almost thinks it – STOP – and then she remembers. This is what she wanted. Remembers: she is not alone.
Static tightens, condenses into spits of electricity. The dark is not absolute. Flashes, that show a figure – an etiolated body, a swollen head, and on the head a tangled mass, a crown that glitters not with jewels but sparks, that crackles with the burning sound of a thousand flies caught, killed in veins of blue light. And as she thinks of this she sees them: a thick black swirl of insects, buzz-crack-dropping, and in the centre of this, a face. Morgan’s face. Webbed and snared. ‘No,’ she says. Her skinny neck wavers. She holds up her hands. ‘Not me, it doesn’t start with me—’
Cassie closes the distance between them. ‘Why are you so scared of me?’ She reaches, through the mass of flies, the terrified sparks, and a deep, cold ache in her hand rises up through her arm. Her fingers are blunt and hungry for answers. She grabs vicious handfuls of Morgan, of what’s inside: thought, feeling, memory. Tearing through all the layers of her. Snatching and tugging and casting aside, not a careful unzipping, not a neat fish-gutting, but a furious, fabulous violence – till an agonised sound cuts through her frenzy. A high, thin keening. Pain beyond words.
She feels the weight of a hammer in her hand, the crack of a palm-sized skull. Sees fur, and blood – a caved, staring eye. Hears Lewis say: I hurt someone. Realises – this is not a search, not a sorting through. This is nothing but vengeance. And the word is noble, fiery and clean, but the act is ugly, is clinging to her as she backs away from the torn-apart bits of a woman, as she commands with all the clarity, all the strength of mind she can summon:
STOP
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Curled, blanketed, on the sofa. Hands clasped by her head, as if she were innocent in all of this. But her breathlessness told otherwise. The leap of her pulse. For a moment she lay motionless, knees pressed to her chest, fists clenched round soft handfuls of the throw – then she shoved it aside, pushed up from the sofa and into an unsteady run.
Up the stairs, onto the landing. No sound from behind any of the closed doors. One by one she flung them open, feeling for light switches. A child’s bedroom, and a second, both unnaturally neat, and empty. An echoing bathroom. A double bedroom. At first sight, it too was empty: an expanse of carpet spread with discarded clothes, a duvet scrambled on the king-size bed. A small heap, huddled over on the far side of the mattress. Soundless in her socks, Cassie circled the bed to where Morgan’s screen lay on the bedside table, scooped it up from its charging pad. Then she took a hold of the quilt, gave it a yank.
‘Boo!’
Morgan, hunched into a foetal position, didn’t flinch.
‘Oh, am I not so scary in real life?’ Cassie said. She placed a hand on Morgan’s shoulder, and squeezed.
Slowly, like moving underwater, the professor lifted her head. Her face was sheet-white, beaded with sweat; when she wiped a hand across her mouth, Cassie could see she was trembling. Nausea rose up from Cassie’s gut, and she swallowed hard, tasting bile. Reminded herself: the woman deserved it. When Morgan reached unsteadily for where her screen should be, Cassie danced it in front of her, then tucked it into her back pocket.
Like an invalid, the older woman hoisted herself to a sitting position. When she spoke, her voice was uncertain. ‘They’re looking for you.’
A smile tugged across Cassie’s face. ‘I’m quite sure they are,’ she agreed. ‘I’m all kinds of in demand, at the moment.’
Morgan’s clammy brow was creased with confusion. ‘Why are you here?’
‘Information.’ Cassie pronounced the word with exaggerated clarity. ‘When we spoke before – d’you remember? – you didn’t exactly tell the truth, did you. Fair enough, neither did I … Thing is, I know a lot more, now. About Raphael House, the patient trials. The connections in Make-Believe. Tom Oswald has been very forthcoming on all of that.’ She tilted her head to one side. Knocked on her skull – once, twice. ‘What I’m not sure of, though, is why you should be so scared of what I’ve got inside here. And I’d like to know the answer to that – before I decide what I’m going to do with it.’
Morgan’s shoulders twitched, in what might have been a shrug. ‘But you’ve already decided. It’s too late to change your mind about that, whatever I tell you.’ Her voice was dry, scraping from her throat. ‘You can deliver the upgrade in a controlled environment, with people there to look after you, or you can let it happen at random – a week from now, or a month, or whenever you next fall asleep close beside another user. That’s the only choice you have.’
Cassie swallowed. ‘Not necessarily. There are ways to stop it ever getting out of my head. It’s as easy as a handful of pills, right? Or a nice, tall height? The top of the Bray Tower would do it, I should think.’ As she spoke she felt an urge fluttering up through her feet, the muscles tensing in her thighs as if she were bracing for the jump. A giddy desire to get this all over with, one way or another. But if she’d expected Morgan to be alarmed, she was disappointed.
‘Quite unnecessary,’ said Morgan, blankly. ‘There’s nothing to be scared of. I just wouldn’t want to be the first. That’s all.’ Her voice was slowing, thickening, like some mechanism running down. ‘It’s been tested, of course, as far as we can … In vitro, in vivo. Just, not in humans. But chances are it will be perfectly straightforward. A quick connection, and after that … they’ll have what they need.’ The words came flatly. ‘They’ll have the data. The input channel. Everything they need.’
With Morgan’s words, the advantage slid away. Cassie was still the one standing, looking down on a traumatised woman, but her height, her self-possession, no longer felt like power.
‘Input channel?’ she said – but Morgan wasn’t listening. Was retreating instead, sinking from awareness. Cassie recognised the onset of shock; it was like looking at herself, after they’d taken her to Raphael House.
‘Professor Morgan,’ she said. Crouched by the bedside to place a hand on her forearm. ‘Fiona.’ The name too intimate, tasting wrong in her mouth. She pressed down with her stubby nails until Morgan reacted with a slow blink. ‘Do you live alone?’ said Cassie sharply. ‘Fiona. Listen. Do you live alone?’
A slight movement that could pass for a nod.
Cassie crossed the room, moved out onto the landing, and pulled the door closed. Waited, holding it shut, to be sure there was no movement from within. Perhaps she should find a chair to wedge under the handle, the way she’d seen in films – except this handle was round, and this door opened inwards, and this was not a film. The weight of Morgan’s screen in her back pocket reassured her as she turned and jogged downstairs, guessed a right turn and found her way to the kitchen, in the black glass box of an extension where she’d startled herself earlier. Now she turned on a light to erase trees and grass, and a ghost room, slanted and glowing, jumped into existence where the garden had been.
In reflection, Cassie watched herself: a ghostly double filling the kettle, opening cupboards, finding mugs, teabags, lots of sugar. As she moved about the kitchen, she kept circling round what Morgan had said.
They’ll have what they need.
Their data.
Their input channel.
So Oswald had lied. She heard herself say it, and watched herself too in the mirror of the window, acknowledging out loud a deception that felt, now, like something inevitable. He had lied, and her head was alive with possible reasons, possible truths – not one of them anything close to what he’d promised her.
While the water was boiling, she fetched her satchel from the living room. It was a risk to use her screen again, and the ads seemed endless. Skip – skip – skip – till at
last she was able to send a message, a request for Nicol to add the phrase ‘input channel’ to the list of search terms she’d given him. As soon as the message had gone, she turned the screen safely off again.
What she needed, now, was for Morgan to be lucid, but not fully alert. She let the tea brew strong and black, tipped in sugar – three spoons for Morgan, one for her – listening all the while for sounds from upstairs: for the thud of footsteps, the groan of a floorboard. The fridge she opened in search of milk turned out to be a family-sized freezer, spotless and empty. Or, not quite empty. Down at the bottom was a plastic drawer. It pulled out smoothly, but there was no milk inside. Instead, there was a silver canister.
It looked just the same as the one from the Imagen lab, the one that had held the upgrade: it seemed Professor Morgan was in the habit of taking her work home with her. When Cassie lifted the canister, turned it in both hands, she saw it was labelled in neat handwriting.
REMEDY. Version 1.3.
The lid was secured with a clamp; she drew out the pin, and lifted it off. Nestling inside was a blunt-nosed needle, like the one Sam had used to administer the nasal spray. Cassie stared, cold creeping up her fingers, gathering round her wrists. Then she shut it all away, the needle, the canister, the freezer, leaving it just as she’d found it.
The milk, when eventually she found it, was hidden away in a fridge disguised as a cupboard – a child’s drawing stuck to the door, a photo of Morgan with another woman and two small, grinning boys. Cassie studied it for a minute. Then she collected up the mugs. Pushed the light switch with her elbow as she left the kitchen, so the ghost room vanished behind her.
Back in the master bedroom, Morgan was still propped against the pillows, her face glassy and smooth.
‘Drink,’ said Cassie, thrusting the tea towards her.
The mug shook as Morgan took it, slopping onto the quilt so that Cassie had to grab her hand to steady it. Morgan took a sip, then another, Cassie’s hand shadowing hers as she lifted.
‘I’ve got it,’ she said, eventually. ‘Thank you. I’ve got it now.’ Like a child she drank it all up, then held out the empty mug for Cassie to set on the bedside table. Cassie looked around for somewhere to sit. Two armchairs occupied the bay of a shuttered window. She’d already begun to manoeuvre the closest chair over towards the bed when Morgan pushed the quilt aside. Her gaze was still loose, but as she blinked she seemed to gain focus. ‘Wait,’ she said. She stood, unsteady, pale and unselfconsciously sagging in vest and shorts – and Cassie felt an unwelcome stab of pity. Muddled in with the rest the clothes on the floor was a discarded dressing gown. Cassie bent to pick it up, handed it to Morgan, who didn’t notice till she tried to tie the belt that it was inside out. Instead of making the Herculean effort to turn it right way round, she left the gown hanging open. With the tentative movements of a much older woman, she made her way to the window and lowered herself into one of the chairs, leaving Cassie to take its opposite number.
There were studies that had shown people were more forthcoming, more emotionally open, when they had their hands clasped around a mug of hot liquid. Cassie handed her barely touched drink to Morgan. ‘I think you need this more than me.’ She waited till the professor was settled with the tea, its warmth radiating through her palms. Then, ‘What I want to know,’ she said, ‘is, how’s it all going to work? With the data, and the input channel. Tom Oswald couldn’t really explain it to me, not properly, so … I thought I’d call on you.’
‘How it’s going to work.’ Morgan sipped at her tea. ‘Alright then. In simple terms: the upgrade is designed to modify the individual biomolecular networks, and harness the electrical activity in the inner ear to act as a transducer. This will essentially create a biological receiver/transmitter that should allow Imagen to, obviously, track the connections, to measure them. And it’s this same biological receiver that will allow the company to make use of the connective capacity – by inputting the kind of data that will make them more competitive in a commercial entertainment context.’
Cassie worked to hide the ripples of her reaction. Kept her surface smooth and still, as Morgan’s explanation sank in.
‘So let me check I’ve understood: I deliver the upgrade, which allows the connections to carry on as normal’ – the words filled her with disquiet, but she managed a matter-of-fact tone – ‘but adds the capacity for Imagen to capture the data generated by those connections. And then the capacity to input data, that’s something different. That’s intended to …’ She took a guess. ‘To shape the user’s Make-Believe.’
Morgan nodded confirmation. ‘What they have in mind, I gather, is a kind of virtual product placement – a model whereby an enjoyable connection between two users would be registered as emotionally positive, which would then trigger the insertion of commercially sponsored material into the user’s experience – with the aim of attaching positive emotional associations to that particular product. It can be done very unobtrusively, or so I’m told. The user remains completely unaware, which is seemingly what makes it so effective.’
Cassie mirrored Morgan’s nod, as if this was no great surprise. ‘Of course,’ she said easily. ‘That all makes sense. At least—’ She hesitated. ‘It makes sense to monetise positive connections. But what about … the others?’ Even right up close to Morgan’s sweaty pallor, her inside out gown, Cassie shrank from acknowledging what had passed between them in Make-Believe: the damage, the darkness. She cleared her throat. ‘To let the negative connections continue – that can’t be commercially viable?’
‘It’s unsatisfactory, of course,’ Morgan said, with a slight grimace. ‘We will eventually devise a means of managing the connections. That’s the hope, at least. But in the meantime, Imagen are deploying some very basic mechanisms to protect the most profitable subscribers from unwelcome connections.’
‘Human analysis,’ guessed Cassie, aiming for an authoritative tone. ‘Individual intervention.’
‘Monitoring the connections in real time,’ Morgan agreed, ‘so that potentially traumatic experiences can be manually terminated. Extremely resource intensive; reserved, therefore, for high net worth individuals, rather than being scaleable across the whole customer base. But as I understand it, the benefits to Imagen of exploiting the connective capacity in this way would significantly outweigh the projected costs of losing those ordinary subscribers who terminate their subscriptions based on negative emotional connections.’ A thought seemed to strike her, interrupting her flow. ‘Surely, though, you’ll know more about all of this than I do. Isn’t that your area of expertise – the marketing side?’
It was – precisely so. Which was why Cassie could see it all so clearly, the implications of what Morgan was telling her; why, bound up with her dismay, there was a bright twist of professional excitement. Because this – this was the perfect marketing channel.
A direct route to the core of you, to your absolute essence. Hijacking a connection so intimate, so intense, it made the real world into something desolate. Any hint of return to that Make-Believe state of bliss, any association with its warmth, its light, would be something no one could resist. Buy this, act like this, believe in this … A series of choices that were no choice at all, of promises – the pain erased, the emptiness filled – that could never be delivered. This was a different proposition, way beyond what Imagen had sold until now, the data they scraped from the surface of a two-hour fantasy of flight or sex or violence. This – this was the muscle that moved beneath the skin. This was more than persuasion. This was control.
She could see it so clearly, as if she herself had created the marketing plan. Imagen, the only player in the market. For such a service, they could name their price. Even traumatic connections could be turned to their advantage, if they could persuade their clients to pay for negative product placement. For a competitor’s brand to be associated deeply, indelibly, with traumatic experience.
It was a simple business calculation. Imagen had meas
ured the torment of all the patients in Raphael House, and of numberless Make-Believe Basic subscribers, and set it against the money to be made from virtual product placement: concluded the profit outweighed the loss.
Morgan was still talking. An effect of the shock, perhaps, or else the sugar and caffeine had made her garrulous. ‘… associated efficiencies on a smaller scale,’ she was saying, ‘for instance, the input channel will provide a means for delivering further upgrades. The projected savings on the cost of manufacturing and delivering new nasal sprays are apparently not insignificant. And of course, future upgrades delivered through the connective capacity would be automatic, so doubtless there would be a far higher rate of compliance. But they’re most excited, at Imagen, about the emotional aspect of the connections – the emotional narrative, as they have it, though I must say the significance of that escapes me rather. Again, that’s probably your territory.’ Her expression hardened, as though she were remembering that Cassie was not, after all, a student at a tutorial. ‘Is that what Tom promised you, in the end? Your old job back?’
Cassie could tell a window had closed. Morgan’s tea was drunk to the dregs, the mug in her hands cold and empty, and she was looking at Cassie with something like distaste.
‘I must hand it to Tom,’ the professor said. ‘He’s an astute judge of character. I wouldn’t have guessed you were the type to put personal gain above everything else.’
The words were a blade slipped neatly into Cassie’s abdomen, withdrawn with a twist. Cassie almost gasped at the audacity. You don’t get to fucking judge me, she almost said – but smiled instead. ‘I think you must be describing yourself, there.’
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