‘Hindenburg,’ he whispers, and the thing goes up. It ignites and suddenly there is just a mass ball of flame eating the giant structure as it plummets to smash on the ground. He’s seen this. He has seen this same thing, but something is different now.
‘You saw it in black and white on old newsreel,’ she tells him as people stream past screaming in panic. That’s it. He gets it. This is colour. This is real-life. He can smell the burning and feel the waves of heat wafting across the ground that make him take a step back.
‘We’re time travellers…’
‘What?’ his features become stricken, stress in the lines around his eyes and his mouth tightens with confusion and shock.
Then it’s gone and the lake is back. He staggers away, dropping to a knee and thinking he will vomit.
‘Are you listening?’
‘Minute,’ he says in a strangled whisper.
‘Not in a minute. Now,’ she moves to his side, gripping his arm to pull him up. ‘Humanity is fucked in the future. The Old Lady is fixing it. We don’t know where she is situated or in what form. She might be a computer or a fucking toaster for all we know. Hell, we might be a couple of Japanese schoolkids pissing about in a virtual reality game in the local arcade after school…look at me…LOOK AT ME! You need to know this. You need to hear this…’
A change and they’re back in the coffee shop and Roshi strides off to the chiller cabinet, taking a bottle of water.
‘Five bucks.’
‘Five bucks for a bottle of water? Are you being a cunt on purpose?’
‘Take it or leave it, lady…’
‘Fine! Fucking bellend…’
Back to the lake and his head spins, his mind spins, the world spins, everything spins. ‘Come on tiger, drink some water…’
He glugs deep, relishing the cool liquid cascading in his mouth and down his throat, which isn’t real. How is he feeling it? How is he tasting it? She takes it from him, upending to drink deep and earning a look from him in the process. ‘Cost five bucks,’ she says as though that explains everything and hands it back. ‘Besides, we’ve shared just about every bodily fluid apart from semen and vagina juice…whoa!’ she jumps back when he sprays his mouthful.
‘We have access to the real world but only through the Old Lady. We go to places and we change things. Look at me…show me you’re listening…’ she comes too close, grabbing the front of his blue coveralls too hard. He pulls away but she goes with him, refusing to let him rest or give him time to think.
‘I need you to focus,’ she says. He slips on the pebbles, landing on his arse but she goes with him, pushing him down onto his back to sit on his chest like a child demanding attention. ‘Look at me…’ she taps the side of his face, annoying, irritating, persistent and determined.
‘I’m listening,’ he says, prickling with a touch of anger.
‘Don’t get angry. This is bigger than your anger. Imagine a student in their final year of university…boy or girl, it doesn’t matter. The student is gifted. I mean super smart. They could cure diseases or become a great politician…but one day the student walks across the road and gets run over by a taxi. Killed instantly. Great shame. Awful tragedy. What effect does that have on the world? What could have happened if that student didn’t get run over? What would have happened if they lived? The Old Lady says the world didn’t fuck up because of any single thing but a whole sequence of things. So, we go back into the real world and we make sure that student doesn’t get run over. Then, the Old Lady assesses what impact that has and the changes it causes. She does that with every single living person in every single situation. Then she compares it, works it out and sends us back to change something else. Little tweaks here and there. Small stuff. No great change. No great shakes but those changes add up and it’s all of those things that the Old Lady hopes will stop us all from dying…tell me you understand what I said. I need to see it in your eyes.’
He stays still, not knowing anything but knowing enough right now. ‘It’s not possible.’
‘Good,’ she says as though he said the right thing, which he did.
The world changes and he’s lying on a polished marble floor in the foyer of a grand hotel with Roshi still sitting on his chest. He looks round seeing opulence and wealth in the furnishings, the fixtures, the design and in the clothes worn by the people. Men in suits with wide lapels and shiny black shoes. Women in dresses and hats and his mind immediately forms the judgement of being in the 1920’s.
‘See that woman?’ Roshi asks.
He follows her gaze to a beautiful woman making eyes at a man in a military uniform lighting the end of a cigarette held in a long black stick that she sucks from seductively, inhaling the smoke to release in wispy coils.
‘She has sex with that army guy tonight and gets pregnant…’ Roshi says, leaning close and whispering in his ear as though staying secret and quiet. ‘Their son grows up to become an evil shit that poisons loads of people. We could kill him, or we could get in the way of these two doing rumpy-pumpy in her room later and making a baby in her belly.’
He snorts a dry laugh at the way she speaks as another man in a military uniform flanked by two armed MP’s stride past and on a signal given the two MP’s rush forward to grab the arms of the guy talking to the woman, dragging him away while he protests and demands to know what is happening. The woman looks horrified at the attention, rushing away from the scene.
‘We planted evidence that he’s a spy,’ Roshi says. ‘Look again,’ she adds when he glances up at her. He blinks in surprise at the scene now reset and the military man back to lighting her cigarette. Another woman walks past them, double-takes and rushes to the man.
‘John? What are you doing? Who is she?’ she demands angrily. ‘Unless you had forgotten we’re getting married in a month…’
The woman with the cigarette blanches, rising from her chair to walk briskly away.
‘Same end result,’ Roshi says. ‘We paid that woman.’
A blink of an eye and it resets to the woman lighting her own cigarette and staring round as though bored.
‘We slipped a very strong laxative in his coffee this morning,’ Roshi says. ‘He’s currently shitting himself to near death…’
Reset and the sofa is empty. ‘We gave both of them laxative this morning…are you getting the point my happy little budgie?’
He frowns up at her in response to the new term of endearment as the world changes back to the lake. A question in his eyes.
‘Go on,’ Roshi says.
‘Every action has a reaction and if you change…’ he says.
‘It does,’ Roshi replies, cutting him off with a pat on the head. ‘Who’s a clever twat?’
‘Fuck off,’ he pulls his head away as she laughs.
‘Let the Old Lady worry about those things. We’re ground troops. End of. The Old Lady tells us the point we can tweak and we get some freedom in how we do it but yes, that tweak ripples out like that stone you threw in the lake…but then we tweak somewhere else, change something else and on it goes. Got it? Say yes Roshi my grandmaster and wonderful teacher of wisdom…’
‘I’m not saying that.’
‘Ungrateful,’ she says with a lift of one eyebrow.
‘What the fuck!’ he yelps at the huge explosion nearby that sends clods of earth raining down on them. Another change and he flinches as men in camouflage carrying assault rifles run past, screaming orders and commands. A tank trundling behind them and a fighter jet thundering down with chain guns blasting into the soldiers running by. His heart ramps again as the jet roars overhead leaving a trail of destruction behind and more explosions sounding near and far.
‘We go to war often,’ Roshi says, her voice suddenly hard. ‘Changes are easy in war. The Old Lady will always look to find a war she can use.’ A body lands next to him, smouldering and torn into chunks of flesh. ‘Get used to it, you’ll see that a lot.’
He jerks his head free to see men on horseba
ck wearing bright red tunics charging across the field holding swords out in front as they yell and scream. Behind them march dense lines of more soldiers and teams of horses pulling cannons on big spoked wheels. Smoke drifts over them, making his eyes stink and he coughs as he twists to see men in blue tunics running from the other side. Seconds pass as the two armies charge then the air fills with the awful, terrible sound of meat on meat and the clang of weapons mixed with the screams of injured and dying.
‘There are places men can go that women can’t…’
He gasps when it changes again to a huge room filled with beds on which lie men bleeding and broken, whimpering and crying out. Uniformed orderlies run here and there, carrying water and stretchers while doctors wearing thick blood-stained aprons saw at legs and arms while more soldiers hold their patients down. A woman in a white smock rushes past, her arms filled with dressings. She stops suddenly to turn and look at them. Grinning a sudden wry grin and winking a hazel eye flecked with green before rushing on.
‘That’s you,’ he blurts.
‘And there are places where a woman is better suited.’
Another change and he squeezes his eyes closed, his mind struggling to compute and deal with it all but her hand comes back to his chin and she lowers to speak quietly in his ear while turning his head. ‘Look…’
A bar. Music playing. The lights low. Discrete dimly lit booths border the edges, couples in shadows sitting close to each other. He squints, frowning and trying to understand what he is meant to be seeing. Then, he spots her in the closest booth. Roshi in a low-cut black dress staring lovingly into the eyes of a man with wide shoulders in a dark suit and slicked-back hair. An instant reaction inside him. A tensing of his muscles. The man’s hand comes up to touch Roshi’s cheek and she smiles coy and bashful.
‘There are things I can do that you can’t,’ she whispers in his ear, seeing his expression harden as he watches the couple in the booth, seeing Roshi over there while feeling the press of her warm body on his. ‘We’re trained in all ways to achieve our aims,’ her words come in a warm breath over his ear, making a shiver run up his spine. He shifts underneath her, hating the way the man is touching her in the booth and she notices his fist clenching when the man in the booth drops his hand to her shoulder.
‘Personally,’ she says in an entirely normal conversational tone of voice, sitting up a little. ‘I can’t stand blokes being all grabby and pawing at me. They left that in as part of the training package, but I refuse to do anything like that. Unless he’s like super fit and…I’m joking,’ she says at the look on his face. ‘Don’t you ever be a grabby twat, my little bear.’
The world blinks around them, changing back to the lake and she smiles down as he shakes his head in wonder at it all. Trying to discern what’s going on, why, how and all the millions of things that he should be asking, but there’s too many and too much.
‘Lot to take in,’ she says. ‘Think you’ve got it?’
‘No,’ he says wanly with such a look of wretched confusion she can’t help but reach down to stroke his cheek.
‘My poor pumpkin. Do you like whales?’
‘What?’ The world shifts underneath him and there is motion where previously there was none. A raft in the middle of a flat sea. The two of them in the middle as it bobs up and down. ‘What’s happening…SHIT!’ he tenses, flinching and ready to scoot back off the raft but she grabs hard, laughing and holding him tight as the black and white killer whale flies free from the surface just metres away to hang glittering in the air before slamming down with a huge splash that sends plumes of icy cold water over both of them. Another one comes up from the other side, flipping as it sails up then hits the water. Then more behind and in front, all around them and he marvels at the size and majesty of the creatures so agile and graceful.
The show goes on for minutes and in that time, he forgets everything and becomes mesmerised by the dance surrounding him. Laughing with delight and holding his arms round her waist as the raft bobs up and down. She watches too but glances frequently at him until the whales move off, still diving up and sinking down as they continue their journey.
‘Oh my god,’ he says, grinning at her before sinking back to lie down on the raft with his hands rubbing the water from his face. ‘That was incredible.’
‘And we’re back,’ Roshi says, she finally gets up from his chest and holds her hand out. ‘Up you come…I think we’re just about done.’
‘This is insane,’ he says, taking her hand to get up. ‘I mean…how…I…’
‘Was I heavy?’
‘What?’
‘On your chest, was I heavy?’
‘On my…no…not at all…’
‘Feel like I’m getting a bit porkier,’ she says, clutching her bum cheeks in her hands. ‘Feels a bit too padded.’
‘Er…’
She turns to present her backside to him, ‘is it big?’
‘What?’ he says, barely able to keep up.
‘My bum, is it too big?’
‘No, it’s…it’s fine.’
‘Just fine?’
‘What? It’s fine…it’s nice. You’re very beautiful.’
‘Aw, my handsome tiger, that’s so sweet,’ she says, turning back to face him with an apologetic look and for the first time since meeting her she looks suddenly vulnerable and exposed, swallowing and biting her bottom lip. ‘I hate not being first.’
‘First? What for?’
‘The women in Disco…they’ll be all over you. You’re really hot.’
‘I don’t…’ his words cut off as she steps in quickly, pushing her hands round his neck to pull him down as her mouth finds his with a hunger that makes him freeze, not quite knowing what to do but the scent of cherry blossom fills his nose and in that second, he gains conscious awareness of just how familiar she is to him now.
The time they spent together is immeasurable without the passage of a clock or the transition of day to night, but he knows it was a lot, he also knows she’s killed, hurt, patronised, humiliated, taunted, tortured and degraded him so by rights, he should grasp her head and snap that slender neck, but he doesn’t because the kiss is rather nice.
The feel of her lips. The sensation of it. It’s more than nice and he softens into the kiss making her gasp while her heart thunders and a tremor runs through her hands that push through his hair as their bodies press on a pebble beach next to a glittering lake.
‘I haven’t named you yet…’ she pulls back an inch, but he closes the gap and the kiss goes on. ‘Gotta shoot you to reset,’ she murmurs, pawing at the gun in her holster.
He mumbles something between the kisses, pushing her hand down to keep the gun in the holster before reaching up to cup her cheeks and the kiss goes on.
A minute. Maybe two but finally she pulls free, pushing against him to step back, breathing hard and fast, her hair tussled, her lips still feeling the press of his.
‘Fuck,’ she whispers, ‘I wasn’t expecting that…’
‘What?’ he asks, feeling almost drunk with everything that’s happened.
‘Nothing,’ she pulls the gun and aims.
‘Don’t…’
9
A TOWN CALLED DISCOVERY
He wakes flat on his back an instant after being shot and in his mind, he’s still there at the lake with the feel of her body against his, but his heart was booming before and his legs were trembling. Now he just has the emotional reaction with no physical reverberations, instantly rendering the experience to a memory, which makes him think of memories and how he didn’t have any when he fell from the sky but now he has rather a lot. Most of which are unpleasant.
‘Discovery leads to salvation,’ he murmurs, reading the old-fashioned signboard above him.
WELCOME TO: DISCOVERY
Bright yellow lettering over a sky-blue top half and a grass-green lower half. It’s big too, and bold in a sort of retro kind of way. It’s also very definitely American. Like the sort
of sign on the outskirts of a small mountain town, or one near a big valley, or waterfalls. A place with one main road running through where everyone knows each other, and the sheriff drives a big old four-wheel drive with a shotgun clipped in a frame on the rear-window.
He turns his head while lying flat on his back, to see the main road running through the town and the people within said town walking about their business, greeting, calling out and stopping to chat, because, you know, they all know each other.
He pushes up to his feet, noting he is still barefoot and still in blue coveralls and also noting, with a dismayed groan, that his blue coveralls now have a new embroidered patch stitched over the left breast.
I AM BEAR
‘No way,’ he groans, looking about as though expecting to see her smirking nearby but seeing only a rough track leading away to a dense treeline that stretches off in both directions as far as he can see.
He doesn’t want to be called Bear. He doesn’t know what name he should have, but only that it shouldn’t be Bear, or Tiger, or Honeypot, or Buttercup or any of the other names she called him. He ponders those names and decides that maybe Bear isn’t the worst one she could have given him. Roshi is quite a cool name. Maybe everyone in Discovery has outlandish names.
‘Maybe,’ Bear says to himself and sets off to towards the town. He reaches the edge where the rough track gives way to smooth blacktop and hesitates, wondering what would happen if he didn’t go into the town but walked off into the forest.
Dogs.
That’s what would happen. Or Wolves.
He crosses the threshold and starts padding along the road as the air fills with the sounds of engines and voices calling out. High-fronted buildings on both sides in muted pastel colours or red brick. Striped awnings in bold primary colours over stores and shops set back on wide pavements and an abstract notion enters his head that Americans call them sidewalks whereas he thought of them as pavements.
A junction further down the main road and he remembers, without knowing how he remembers, that Americans call them intersections but then Roshi said this is a constructed computer-generated world made by an artificial intelligence posing as an old lady that might be a toaster.
A Town Called Discovery Page 6