‘Sleepwalking is fairly rare, isn’t it?’
‘I believe it’s on the rise. The therapy detects REM brainwaves and activates a chemical that stops you sleepwalking, apparently. They may have gone a bit beyond that, actually. I haven’t read the papers, only the abstracts.’
Reading abstracts sounds strenuous. I guess this is why I have a 2:2 from Excelsior-Barking. I struggle to apply myself.
‘Very nice, but like I told you, Mel’s problem isn’t sleepwalking. It’s the other thing, the creepy guy.’
I take a look anyway. I’m curious. O sometimes mentions Imperial, but she’s never been clear about what she did there: whether she taught, or studied, or worked. By her own admission she hasn’t got a degree and she doesn’t come up on their website. I’ve already snooped. So I’m kind of assuming she’s hacked into the alumni website, which is normal for someone like O. It must be hard for her not to hack into everyone’s everything, like Superman resisting using his X-ray vision.
‘My contact’s name is Meera Bhango. She’s very gifted and much in demand, and she has the backing of a silent partner.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Someone with deep pockets is behind this. Anything Bhango is involved in has got to be worth a look. If you click through you’ll get the company website, but they haven’t put any of what I’m telling you up publicly yet. They’re only looking for participants for their study.’
The logo is a purple Celtic spiral and the company name is Little Bird. I go to their website in case it jogs my memory, but there isn’t a lot to see. Under ‘About Us’ there are photographs of a woman – Meera, I presume – and a guy. He’s very tall, dark-haired, hirsute and serious-looking.
‘I know that guy,’ I mutter. ‘Where do I know him from? He’s so familiar. Not a client. Not from school. Not from work. How do I know him?’
O leans in to look over my shoulder. ‘Bernard Zborowski. Never heard of him.’
‘I wonder if I know him through Shandy . . . Oh, it’s so close, like I can almost get it but—’
‘Stop trying to remember. Think about something else and it will come to you.’
I gather up the plates and glasses and carry everything into the kitchen, accompanied by Edgar, presumably still rattled after Jez’s visit. I offer him a piece of cheese but he only sniffs it.
‘Do you want generic-brand-addictive-cat-treats?’ I say in my baby-cat voice. Edgar’s pupils dilate when he hears his favourite word. I get the generic-brand-addictive-cat-treats out of the tippy-top cupboard and shake two into my palm. Then it comes to me. Where I’ve seen Bernard Z before.
What a bloody coincidence. I almost can’t believe it. Excited, I raise my voice.
‘He was from the study. The drug I took for BigSky, for the trial. Damn. He came in once during a consultation with a string of medical students following him like baby ducks. If it hadn’t been for that trial, I’d still have my nasty little job like a normal person and not be cluttering up your life with my problems.’
There’s a long silence except for the sound of Edgar’s powerboat-volume purring as he chews his treats. Then O’s voice comes in via my earring, even though she’s only in the next room. She can’t stand shouting, says it’s uncouth.
‘It seems that the trial you were involved in was no great success. Zborowski has left BigSky, and no papers have been published, not even in preprint,’ she says. ‘I have an alert on my system. The project appears to have been binned.’
‘But he’s moving up in the world if this Meera Bhango is as hotshit as you say she is.’
‘Leaving BigSky to go to a start-up is risky. He’ll only move up in the world if Little Bird can produce something of real value. It’s possible he’s jumped ship because his work was stonewalled at Excelsior-Barking, but BigSky are unlikely to let go of the intellectual property so easily.’
I bring the teapot out into the sitting room, which is now bathed in amber sunlight from the west.
‘Do you really think this Meera could help me? She’s probably super busy.’
O sighs. ‘I don’t know, darling. She certainly can’t help you if you don’t approach her.’
We sip our tea, O using her good hand. She’s thinking hard. I know because she frowns more than usual when she’s concentrating. The frown isn’t as deep as her debugging-code frown but it’s deeper than her reading-novels-in-their-original-Russian scowl.
Finally, she says, ‘Well, this is crazy, but.’
I put my hands over my face. Whenever O says, ‘This is crazy, but—’ it means either she wants to do something slightly illegal (usually involving motorbike stunts), or she’s going to send me to the British Library to do research on a crazy theory. Like her hypothesis that the Incas invented quantum chromodynamics diagrams before Richard Feynman. Or that bear meat cures lung cancer. Don’t get me wrong – O’s brilliant at IT, but she’s got a flamboyant streak and an ego roughly the size of Greenland (as it appears on a map). Whenever she says, This is crazy, but, or, I’m sure I’m wrong about this, I just know it’s kicking off.
I watch her cup shake in her hand. I wish she didn’t have to be so old, and I wish she weren’t ill. I feel a mad affection for her, even if I’m not certain it’s mutual.
‘I’m sure I’m wrong about this.’
You see? She’s said them both. Here we go.
‘It’s just that, looking at their work, knowing that they are surely able to induce certain kinds of brainwaves, then they might be able to tamper with dreams.’
‘Using nanotech? That’s a thing? How?’
‘I don’t know.’ She won’t look at me.
‘Come on, O. Loads of drugs affect your dreams. My uncle took something for dementia and it gave him horrible nightmares. Or how about Daphne, for that matter.’
O’s sister has dementia, but O doesn’t like talking about it so she ignores my remark.
‘If the treatment works with AR, then control could be a possibility,’ O tells me. ‘Using live imaging alongside a BigSky database of millions of brainwave samples correlated with subjective experience. One could add nano-delivered agents implanted in the body with the ability to operate on brain tissue to rebuild, or to build anew. Have you seen the work on remyelination done by nano-engines?’
‘No, I haven’t, because I’m being manipulated by BigSky and their sinister mind-control programme. Must. Buy. Apps.’
I stick my arms out in front of me like a mummy in a Carry On film and shamble around the flat. She isn’t laughing. Not even a little smile. Wow, she hates BigSky. So I give up joking with a sigh, and (a little sarcastically) I recite the words I know she wants me to say:
‘That sounds sinister, O. Is there any science for that?’
‘I just said. Remyelination. Look it up. But you must understand this much, darling: some of these nanotech guys aren’t scientists in the highbrow Ivory Tower sense of the word. They’re engineers, some of them self-taught. You know, the days of Big Science mean that the Victorian scientist who pottered in his shed may be long extinct, but a new subclass has sprung up in the last ten years.’
I don’t believe she’s slept since the night before last. I can tell she’s overtired because she’s waxing philosophical.
‘The New Potting Shed Avengers?’ I quip, because I really don’t want to go back to looking for bear meat on the black market and we’re headed that way now.
‘If you’re clever and have a little money, you can get up to quite a lot these days – that’s why I’m always saying you have to be so careful about drugs. A start-up like this isn’t much more sophisticated than a garage drug factory. The drugs are 4D, of course, but—’
‘4D? What even is 4D?’
‘I don’t really mean 4D, I mean that the drugs aren’t drugs – as I said, the delivery system isn’t a chemical. It’s more like an infection in that it alters itself and its host, it evolves over time. The drug has a different effect after a month than after a day. You�
�ve seen that yourself. Your dream abilities are evolving.’
‘I suppose they are . . . I thought that was down to my effort, though.’
‘Chickens, darling. And eggs. The brain is a feedback system. Now. Try to follow my thinking. Meera is an engineer. They build things. If she and her team are messing around with certain kinds of devices, they may well discover something first and then figure out how it works later on. That’s what this sleepwalking study is about. They’ve found something that works and they want to see if they can legitimize it scientifically.’
‘OK . . . but it’s my client who’s sleepwalking, not me.’
‘You’re landscaping other people’s dreams.’
I smile. ‘Inception is my middle name.’
‘So, what if they’re working with something that impacts dreams and Bernard Zborowski has exposed you to it?’
‘Then I’m calling Scully for a check-up!’ I think I should get bonus points for working so hard to keep this convo lite. It’s never easy with O once she’s got her teeth into an idea. ‘But seriously, that would mean other people in the study might be suffering like I am. If you were looking for something to do, O, you could try tracking down those people and finding out if any of them have narcolepsy. Or if they can hack dreams.’
‘What makes you think I can do that?’ Her tone is so blithe that I stare at her for several seconds. I don’t know how to take her at all.
‘Nothing, O. Nothing makes me think you can do that.’
She wheels herself around to the plate-glass window and looks out over the rooftop. She has a big nose and a receding chin with a little white goat beard starting up, and the skin of her neck hangs like a wattle. She reminds me of a bird. She has given up too much information too quickly for my comfort. I wonder what else is going on in her head. She’s still chewing on something but she’ll never tell me what.
‘Go to bed,’ I say aloud. ‘You’ve had enough.’
‘I hate being in bed,’ O says. ‘I won’t be able to sleep. I’ll just lie there with my brain spinning.’
She gets like this sometimes. O is not cut out to be old, much less sick. She has this restlessness about her, a fierce focus. People are supposed to mellow with age, but if O can dial it back, I’ve never seen her do it.
Then she says, ‘You know what really gets to me? Those post-surgery bras my great-niece sent me. They don’t fit right across the back, not one of them.’
‘So return them.’
‘Can’t. Edgar sat on them. They’re furry.’
‘I’ll ask Shandy to alter them if you want. She’s brilliant. Give me the one you’ve got on that does fit and she’ll match it.’
‘What, now?’
‘Yeah, just shimmy on out of it. I won’t look.’
When she hands it to me, still warm, I shove it into my bag before collecting the others from her room. My problems are tiny compared to hers.
‘Ah, I feel so free. Let’s go outside,’ she says. Having removed her bra, she is now left holding the little flask of schnapps she usually keeps hidden there (and which could explain most of her discomfort with the fit, but I can’t say anything because she thinks I don’t know about it).
It’s windy out on the roof, which is probably what we both need. O puts the brake on her chair to stop herself being blown across the flat rooftop, and I check to make sure all the pigeons are roosting and that their water bottles are full. The pigeons have a lovely, calming effect. Once I made an ASMR pigeon video up here; I wonder how many hits it’s had since I last checked. I miss doing ASMR. Wish I could get back to it. I felt better about my life when I was making things for people. Even if your own life is a mess, it’s lovely to be able to help others.
There’s a bird from O’s sister Daphne today. I turn to smile at O, but her expression flickers into a sort of wary tension. Then I remember that she did sprain her wrist in a pigeon-related incident, and she’s probably still in pain. So I grab ahold of Daphne’s pigeon myself and divest it of the message attached to its leg. This is a routine thing. The message will be addressed to ‘Agent O’ and O will write back to ‘Agent D’.
‘We’re the Pigeon Sisters,’ O explained when I first moved in, and she chuckled so much that I looked up the reference and traced it to an old American TV show. Honestly, both O and Daphne are the most unlikely Pigeon Sisters you could ever imagine – maybe that’s why she thinks it’s so funny. Daphne lives in a high-tech care home in Dorking where they let the residents keep pets. Apparently O arranged for the birds to be installed in a dovecote where Daphne can visit them, and they fly back and forth regularly with messages.
I give O the message and then cross the roof to let her read it privately, and that’s when I spot the new bird walking around near the chimney pipe, pecking at the roof tiles. It’s speckled white and brown, but there’s something funny about its back. There’s a big brown splodge between its wings. A lump. I squat down and squint at it, yawning. There’s something strapped to it, like a tiny little backpack. It looks like brown felt.
I’m so excited! I want to tell O. But she’s staring down at the message, frowning deeply. I see her take a little swig of schnapps from the flask. I wish she wouldn’t drink. If I am honest, schnapps in particular makes her a bit crazy, but I try not to be judgy.
I put out some corn for the new bird that it pecks right up, unafraid of me. I am a little afraid of it. I know O’s birds pretty well, but this one is larger. Different species? I want to catch it so I can take off the backpack, but it feels really rude to just, you know, grab without asking.
‘I think you’ve got the wrong address, mate,’ I say.
‘Who are you talking to?’
O comes gliding over, her pupils slightly dilated with gathering darkness, plus schnapps.
‘Carrier pigeon! Look, he has a tiddly backpack and everything!’
‘Tiddly what—?’ She comes closer. ‘Oh my.
Sidney.’ Sidney?
‘See if you can catch him and hold him for me. We’ll take off his harness.’
‘Wait . . . you know this bird?’
‘Of course I know him. He’s my bird. I haven’t seen him since . . . Just catch him, Charlie!’
It takes me a fair few tries, but in the end I get hold of Sidney without hurting him and hold him steady while O undoes his backpack straps with trembling hands.
‘You’re a good bird,’ she tells him. ‘Charlie, put him in the small coop with plenty of grain. He must be exhausted.’
O has more than one coop. The main one has seventeen adult birds and mostly they are free to come and go as they please. The second cage is larger and has a wire ceiling and several perches, and the four birds in there are her specials that she mostly keeps in. She says they used to race. There’s also a separate cage that we use if we have to isolate a sick or injured bird. I open this last one and pop Sidney inside with a few handfuls of corn for good measure. Then I feed the other birds. Sydney struts around the cage, exploring.
I turn to O. ‘Where’s he been, then? Has someone sent him to you?’
‘He obviously hasn’t teleported.’ O clamps her mouth tight shut around the word and her hand tight around the little backpack. Then she wheels back inside and disappears into her room.
‘Well, this is mysterious, Sidney.’ I finish closing up for the night, shut the cage and go into the flat to find O in her room, staring out across London from her bedroom window.
‘So what was the message? Who was it from? Was it from a lover?’
O snorts but doesn’t say anything.
‘Seriously, I’m dying to know. Are you going to send one back? This is so much fun, why are you being grumpy?’
She takes off her specs and rubs her eyes with an air of strained patience. Instead of answering any of my questions, she says, ‘I’ve asked Muz to bring the hog around from the lock-up in the morning.’
The ‘hog’ is O’s high-performance custom motorbike for wheelchair users. She drives
it when she wants to visit her sister in Dorking. I usually ride as a passenger, which is . . . interesting.
‘Tomorrow isn’t your usual day. Is Daphne ill?’
‘I can go by myself, darling. You get on with your clients.’
The fortnightly trip to Dorking is actually part of our Roommate Agreement. O is fine with the driving and parking and all of that, but she needs the moral support. Pigeon Sisters jokes notwithstanding, Daphne doesn’t bring out the best in O, let’s just put it that way.
‘Of course I’m coming. Suggest you not drink, though, or you’ll have a headache in the morning. Maybe some nice ASMR instead?’
O glares at me and takes a defiant swig before nestling the flask right back against her now-braless bosom. I want to ask her what’s upset her so, but with O the more you pry, the less you get out of her. So I go to bed.
That’s when the fun really starts.
Not.
Secret Diary of a Prawn Star
Entry #50
Codename: Chaplin
Date: 17 September 2027
Client: Self
Payment in advance: N/A
Session Goal: None/involuntary
Location: My own damn bed
Narcolepsy status: Thought was OK but obvs not
Nutrition/stimulants: Tea, salad, two coffees and a Mars bar
Start time: 12.17 a.m.
End time: 12.42 a.m.
It’s a disembodied voice. You don’t get those dreams often. Dreams where the only thing you hear is a voice giving you instructions or messages, those are like the holy grail of dreamwork. They are said to be direct messages from the deepest layers of your unconscious, the actual shizzle.
The voice belongs to the Creeper. It’s right here inside my head, American accent and all. The voice goes, ‘Predators avoid each other. Consider it professional courtesy.’
I want to laugh because it’s so pretentious, but I’m already getting scared.
I tell it, ‘I’m not a predator.’
‘Then I must assume you’re prey. These things are drearily binary, I’m afraid.’
I’m starting to see what Mel meant about the Creeper. It has a way of getting to you – its voice is more than a voice, it’s super-condensed freeze-dried malevolence. My heart is racing, I’m cold, the tension in my dream body is rising. The voice has this certain quality where, whatever it says, if the Creeper is the one saying it then it must be true. It’s pretty fucked-up.
Sweet Dreams Page 7