‘Telepathy.’
‘In a word. It’s only a matter of time before we have it. The leap between reading someone and feeding back to them is even smaller. The brain heavily reconstructs sensory input. Everything you see, hear and feel has been highly processed by your cortex before you’re even aware of it. The reason why headware works so well is because it interferes with your perceptions, makes you see things that aren’t really there.’
‘I get all that. But I don’t need headware to hack dreams. I only use it to record content. I told you, I first learned I could dreamhack when I fell asleep next to someone on the bus who was also asleep.’
‘Were you wearing your earring?’
‘Yeah, probably, but—’
‘And the other person must have been on a BigSky platform. Nearly everybody is.’
‘I’m an alternative therapist. I’m not into tech.’
‘Well, I am, and I’m telling you that your earring is significant. There’s been oneiric crime ever since headware got started. It’s just not generally noticed, that’s all. It’s very hard to separate your own unconscious content from an intrusion by a dreamhacker. That’s why Mel’s case is of so much interest to us. If you hadn’t got involved, there would have been no question that her death was a suicide. But Donato and I think she could have been sleepwalking and acting out a dream.’
‘Whoa,’ Shandy interjects. ‘That’s messed-up.’
I kick her under the table.
‘I don’t believe for a moment that Mel’s death was suicide. She probably had no idea what she was doing. But Charlie, you’d be in the best position to tell us what she was dreaming. You were there.’
‘Charlie didn’t kill her, Roman,’ Shandy bristles. She leans across the table, glaring at Roman.
‘I never said that.’
‘You just bloody well implied it. You questioned her for hours. So let’s have it. I don’t even understand how you got referred to this case. What made you think there was dream crime?’
Roman answers patiently, or perhaps I should say condescendingly, ‘Antonio told the police at the scene that Mel had been receiving therapy for nightmares and sleepwalking. My colleague Yemisi – you met her at the crime scene – she tipped me off. She knows I’m studying sleepwalking deaths.’
‘It’s a thing?’ I blurt. ‘People sleepwalking and getting killed?’
‘Have you heard of Sleepwalkers Anonymous?’
Shandy stifles a laugh, but it’s obvious that Roman’s dead serious. I feel the blood drain from my face. One of the greyscale sleepers mentioned going to Sleepwalkers Anonymous, right before stepping into the Thames.
‘They meet online,’ Roman says. ‘I’ve traced most of them to Greater London. Donato went in undercover and found a whole community of lost souls. People with very similar experiences, all within the last year. We’ve been tracking sleep-related deaths for the last eight months, and they are on the rise throughout London. Oddly, though, the numbers are stable nationwide. Whatever is going on, London is the epicentre.’
And the international business domicile of BigSky.
‘What kinds of cases have you seen?’ Shandy’s bright-eyed and bushy-tailed now. Leaning forward, bracelets jingling, all ears. Roman stays stiffly upright, avoiding eye contact with her. But he looks straight at me.
‘A man in Clapham walked to his lock-up in his nightclothes, let himself in and drank a litre of antifreeze. It was treated as suicide, but the man’s husband told Donato he’d been sleepwalking a lot in the lead-up to the event. Then there was a young actor who lay down on a railway line – everything to live for, she’d just landed a role in a new series. We checked it out and she was a serial sleep-app abuser and had a system of alerts set up to stop her sleepwalking, but they’d been deactivated that night. We investigated a couple of drownings in the Thames, too, where the sleeping person appeared to have climbed over a rail or just stepped off the bank into deep water and didn’t wake up. Charlie, are you OK?’
I’ve choked on my coffee. I have a coughing fit and need to wipe my eyes. Roman hands me a napkin, watching me closely.
‘I’m fine,’ I rasp, waving him away. Sleepwalkers stepping into deep water. It’s my dream come to life. But how . . . ? I say, ‘Go on.’
‘The trouble with this is that it’s impossible to prove they were asleep without witnesses, and so far the closest thing to a witness that we have is you, Charlie.’
‘So . . . are you police, or are you not police?’ Shandy can be very persistent.
‘We are consultants to the police. We work in tech-based emergent crime. Sleep crime is a new area and there aren’t a lot of funds about, but both Donato and I have experience in more conventional cybersecurity. The murderer – or murderers – here are going to be very difficult to identify, and of course impossible to prosecute. Even if we knew who it was, we wouldn’t be able to stop them. The best we can hope for is to work out how the killings are being done, to devise protections. It will be some time before the law catches up to everything that can go wrong with BigSky.’
Shandy is openly baiting him. ‘I’ve heard BigSky is funded by crime syndicates.’
There’s an edge in his voice. ‘Who told you that?’
‘Can’t remember.’ Of course it was O, who was one of the original funders for BigSky back in the day.
‘Hmm. Well, the potted history of BigSky is that it was an anonymous start-up and purely crowdfunded on anarchic principles.’
‘Yeah, that never ends badly.’ Shandy snorts. He ignores her.
‘The whole idea was to get away from corporate greed and government bureaucracy, and for a while they did. But the bigger the organisation became and the more influential they got, the more opportunities arose for anyone with money to buy an anonymous stake and potentially leverage control in the direction they chose. So you could say BigSky have become a victim of their own success. But even if there is criminal money buried in there somewhere—’
‘If? Everyone knows there is!’ Shandy interjects. ‘I work there. It’s practically a joke. Necessary evil and all that.’
‘Even so, the company still has to offer transparency about their technical practices under the law. Especially where health and safety are concerned. I don’t personally think that this sleepwalking issue is coming out of BigSky management, I think it’s someone taking advantage of BigSky technology in ways that BigSky probably didn’t foresee.’
‘OK, well, here’s the thing,’ I say. ‘You can’t protect me. You can’t catch the killer—’
‘Or killers.’
‘Or killers. So all you are doing with your investigation is endangering me more. Because now the killer knows about me, knows you are hunting him or her or them, and I’m out here with my arse exposed.’
‘I agree your positioning is bad.’
‘Well, thanks, mate. Your opinion makes all the difference in the world.’
‘I’ll give you my advice, Charlie, and I want you to take it seriously. Remove your headware. Don’t use it for a while. See if anything changes.’
I nod and make affirmative noises. He smiles. I smile. Of course I have no intention of doing anything of the kind. My headware is my livelihood now, plus it’s the only thing that keeps me safe, because it gives O access to my bodycam, and O has Muz, and Muz can rescue me if there’s trouble. But I’m not going to disagree with Roman, because then he’ll think I’m stupid and I don’t want him to think that. Hate to be so obvious, but there’s something about him that I like, and I want him to think well of me.
And it’s on these little stupidities that matters of life and death have been known to turn, I’m afraid.
* * *
When I get home, O is tied up working. At first I think she’s coding, because she’s in her coding pattern of movement; that is, she rolls up and down past the sitting-room window, one side to the other, looking out over the roof. It’s like watching someone obsessively pace. Every so often she will call
up her screen and enter a little bit of material or maybe take some out – always on the physical keyboard, she refuses to use a direct reader or anything else platformed on BigSky – and then she stares and stares at the code, and then she goes back to rolling.
But after a long time of this, while I clean the kitchen and the cat box and do a bit of dusting and respond to various messages (there are sixteen from Antonio and I ignore them all), O suddenly goes to her keyboard and starts typing one-handed but fast as an Uzi. So she’s not coding, she’s writing something. I wonder what. O usually dictates her correspondence; she’ll have to ice her hand afterwards and probably take painkillers. But I also know better than to try to tell O what to do.
So I lie on the sofa in the end and watch some more ASMR, just to feel a little better. I listen to some of my own recordings; strangely, I can never put myself to sleep, but I can give myself tingles, and that’s what I’m looking for right now. I need that lightness on the top of my head, that sparkling sensation in my scalp, the feeling of my skin thrumming that makes my eyelids droop and my mind go blank, makes everything all right.
But it doesn’t work. All I can think of is Mel in the bathtub. Mel on the roof. Mel on the pavement.
Antonio, sobbing on me, holding my body in that intimate way he has, that way which doesn’t seem to understand any social boundaries at all. He makes me feel like an animal. Can I trust him?
‘Why should you have to?’ O says suddenly.
I startle.
‘Sorry?’
‘Why should you have to trust Antonio?’
She’s rubbing cream into her hand – it is sore, that’s obvious, and this is the hand that isn’t injured.
‘Are you reading my mind?’
She laughs. ‘No, you’re muttering loudly enough to be heard. Didn’t you know?’
I get up off the sofa.
‘Must have been half-asleep.’
‘Anyway,’ O says, ‘you don’t have to deal with Antonio any more if you don’t want to. You’ve got clients stacked up like aeroplanes. This thing with his girlfriend—’
‘Mel.’
‘This thing with Mel, it’s tragic and awful, but why you would want to get involved is beyond me.’
‘Well, Roman seems to think there was foul play. I have an obligation.’
‘You aren’t obligated to anyone but yourself, darling. People play you like a harp.’
I wince.
‘Sorry. I meant no disrespect to Melodie. People play you.’
It’s not what I want to hear, even if it’s true.
‘I have to see Melodie’s mum tomorrow,’ I say.
‘Have to? Why?’
‘Well, because it’s the only decent thing I can do.’
‘Huh. Are you sure no one is blaming you? Because you might want to take representation with you.’
‘O, seriously, you’re so dark.’
O snorts. ‘The situation is dark. I’m merely realistic.’
‘No one is accusing me. This poor woman just wants answers. She’s come all the way from Canada. It would look worse if I refused to talk to her.’ I shudder.
‘But you have a booking.’
‘Can’t you just cancel tonight? I don’t know if I have it in me.’
‘Of course, darling. But you know what they say about getting back on the horse. It would be good for you. You need to take control. Look at yourself. Every way the wind blows. What do you want to do?’
‘I don’t even know.’ But I do know. O’s right. I’ve been struggling to build this business, it’s been basically a disaster, and now despite the terrible thing that happened to Melodie, I have an opportunity here. Enquiries are flooding in. If I blow this, another chance isn’t going to come along. I’ll have to move to my mum’s place in Stourbridge and work in the Co-op. She’d love that, bless her. But I can’t just give up; it’d be going backwards.
‘I just want to be a bit careful with new clients.’
‘In case one of them turns out to be the Creeper? I am vetting everyone carefully. There’s one rather famous person who wants to consult you, but I won’t book until I’m certain it’s safe for you.’
‘I can’t do a famous person tonight, O. I’m not up to it.’
‘Not tonight. It’s only Emile from downstairs. He feels he’s making progress and he wants another session.’
‘That gives me time to pre-sleep, then.’
Because I find that I have a plan. I’ll get back on the horse; I’ll help Emile. But after that . . . I have a cunning plan. Remember how I said when I first go into someone else’s dream and say they are in their house, I dream it as though it’s happening in my house? And then it slowly changes until I can see and feel what they can feel?
Well, now that I’m watching out for the Creeper, I reckon I can turn that to my advantage. Because if the Creeper is a person hacking into my dream, there will be moments in the beginning when they are acclimating to my reference frame. And if I’m quick and smart and daring, maybe I can get a glimpse of who they really are. Where they are in their dreamspace. What the inside of their head looks like.
At least, that’s the plan I have when I start.
What really happens is that I fall asleep in my own bed and wake up in a hospital bed beside a corpse.
Secret Diary of a Prawn Star
Entry #52
Codename: Chaplin
Date: 23 September 2027
Client: Me
Payment in advance: N/A
Session Goal: Identify Creeper by reverse-hacking it
Location: My bed
Narcolepsy status: Fair
Nutrition/stimulants: Tea Start time: 1.01 a.m.
End time: 1.18 a.m.
The corpse is very old. He has wrapped his arms around me and they are cool and floppy. His eyes are wide open, unseeing, and his blackish tongue droops out of his dry mouth.
I suck in air with a ragged squeak. I shoot out of that bed so fast that I guess I actually push off the dead body to get leverage, because it topples to the floor as I back away from the bed in panic. I grope around me for anything I can use for a weapon. My hand lights on a fire extinguisher and I brandish it defensively. It turns into a hatchet.
I have to get out of here. I have to change the setting. Make something happen to save me.
Wait. Think, Charlie. We had a plan.
I remember now. I’m here for a reason. I have to learn everything I can from the setting. It’s definitely not anywhere I’ve ever been, in a dream or otherwise. I’m not even sure this is really a hospital, because the room looks more like a hotel room except for the bed. If it’s a hospital, it’s a posh one. There are enormous windows looking out on . . . ? Where are we?
I see the building opposite through the window and my earring rapidly cross-references it against my street maps.
We are in the London Clinic. The big room right over the front door.
OK, that’s something. This person has set their dream in an expensive private hospital. But why are they pretending to be a corpse?
The body is definitely dead. But it gets up off the floor and walks around stiffly, with home-made-horror-movie squishy cracking noises. Now it is blocking the door.
‘You again!’ the corpse says, folding its arms with an unreal shuffling sound. ‘Not dead yet.’
I don’t know which one of us it’s referring to.
‘When is it going to start working?’ the corpse says.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘The medicine, the damned medicine. Isn’t that why I’m here? So you can rebuild the dead networks? Aren’t you going to monkey around in my circuits or something? Why else would you be carrying that toolbox?’
I look at the axe in my hands and sure enough, it’s become big red metal workman’s toolbox. The kind that probably contains a full set of socket spanners. What on earth is the corpse talking about?
‘So go on and fix me, then. I’m not dea
d yet.’
Then it turns to the door, opens it and walks out.
‘Hey! Where are you going?’
‘To find my target and kill them, of course.’
‘Why would you do a thing like that?’
Now I’m in therapist mode. I’m not even scared any more, even though there’s a strange smell coming from the corpse. It’s not a dead-body smell, not even an organic smell. It’s a sharp, chemical tang. The smell makes my little hairs stand up in my dream. I can see them on my dream forearm.
‘Because it’s the only thing I can contribute. Other people have working brains and mine is a ruin. Can’t remember things. Head full of nightmares.’
‘Nightmares are horrible,’ I say, just to keep it talking. ‘But you clearly have a working brain. We’re standing here talking to each other.’
‘No we’re not.’
And now we’re in the Dream City. We are in a rundown park near one of the canal bywaters, where neon-bright canoes are moored for repair. It is all very familiar in the way that you ‘remember’ things in dreams even though you’ve never really experienced them. There is deep backstory in the Dream City, as if I’ve been coming here all my life even though I haven’t. Someone obviously has, because everything about it is vivid. I can smell the trees and even the fruit on the trees. Greyscale people are sleeping in their branches, draped like leopards.
‘Why did you assault me?’ I ask the corpse. Its body and face still look the same, although now it has trainers on in addition to its velvet dressing gown.
‘Just trying to get your attention. Parts of my brain are dying. When can I expect results? I’m a results-oriented individual, you know. Get it done.’ The corpse turns and starts to shuffle off into the parkland.
‘Wait!’ I say. ‘Who are you? What do you mean, I’m supposed to rebuild your networks? What’s the matter? Why are you a corpse? Can’t we just talk about this?’
Sweet Dreams Page 14