‘I used meds to sleep last night,’ he says. ‘My dreams, they were very strange, I am getting chased by the police, of course, and there’s one dream where animals are biting my hands. But I don’t . . . you know, I don’t think there’s anything to it. I’m just . . . processing.’
‘Have the police asked you more questions?’ My voice goes up in a very unnatural way and I feel like the world’s worst actor. He glances at me sharply.
‘No. Have they questioned you again?’
‘Well, not exactly . . .’ Why am I so bad at this? He could be a killer, he could be the one who tried to make me stab myself, and I’m just standing here with my teeth chattering, talking to him like everything is normal.
‘Listen, Charlie. I wasn’t going to tell you this, but I have to tell someone. Please, I can trust you, right? We’ve been through so much together.’
I give a frozen nod. What’s he going to confess? Oh god, those dark eyes, look at his skin, I can see the pulse in his throat, I can smell that lovely scent he has around his neck, must be pheromones or vaporised testosterone or something.
‘I paid for the suite Mel was staying in that last night. I let her think it was the person who usually pays—’
‘The Russian patron?’
‘Yeah, usually. But this time it was me. I had broken down the door, so we couldn’t stay in the first room. I didn’t want to cause her embarrassment, I wanted her to feel better, to feel safe, and the only available suite was one of the most expensive in the hotel. If she had been on a lower floor it would not have been so easy for her to get on the roof, we could have stopped her—’
I grab his hand to stop him blaming himself.
‘Where would you get that kind of money?’
‘It was my savings. I was foolish. I used all the money I had. My sisters are paying for my flight home. I am broke. I am just a yoga instructor. She was a goddess. I wish—’
He breaks off, shaking his head. Tears stream openly down his face.
‘I know. I wish, too.’
‘Charlie, there is more.’
‘OK,’ I say, but I feel a yawn coming on.
‘I am leaving on a false passport. The police have me on a no-fly list.’
‘Oh, fucking hell.’
‘I did nothing wrong! There was a contract dispute between BigSky and the orchestra over sponsorship terms. It was going on for months. The police think BigSky paid me to be with Mel. They think the Russian patron is me and that I slipped up and used my own money for the higher suite, that all the time I was trying to undermine her career and the orchestra. They think that I was involved in her death but none of that is true. None of it, Charlie.’
‘How would that even work?’ If I focus on the facts, I won’t get upset, right?
He shrugs elaborately.
‘The police think BigSky are harassing Mel in her dreams, trying to send a message to the orchestra by intimidation. The Pilates studio where I met Mel is owned by somebody who is connected to BigSky, so the police think this means I work for them.’
‘Harassing her in her sleep – so this really is a thing? There are other dreamhackers, not just me, and people know about it?’
‘Again, I do not know, Charlie. But it’s BigSky. They work in these technologies, they do business with everybody. You must draw your own conclusions. All I know is, I have never taken anything from BigSky. I am not a materialistic person, I cannot be bought. For the love of god, everything I own is in this bag!’
He’s getting agitated, waving his arms around, showing me the discount-brand sports bag that holds all his worldly possessions minus four condoms, but I’m still thinking.
‘But so . . . are they saying you whispered in her ear at night, made her doubt herself, made her anxious . . . how?’
‘They are painting me to be the villain. And I brought you in, that was my big mistake – no offence, Charlie – but it looks like I was using you to hurt her. But I would never harm Mel. Or any person I was with. It’s not how I was brought up. It’s not the code of how I live—’
‘Wait, Antonio. They really think I’m involved? On purpose? But they didn’t arrest me.’
‘They don’t have to. They will watch you. They are watching us now. Charlie, I am sorry.’
We stand there silently, both of us staring at the ground. In my peripheral vision I check for CCTV cameras. Stupid. It’s an airport; they are everywhere. Antonio has just implicated me in his getaway, and I’m standing here as if that’s fine with me because he’s cute and sexually satisfying. I am a dick.
‘Happy yoga, then,’ I say weakly.
Antonio throws his arms around me, bites my neck, ruffles my hair, kisses both cheeks. I’m trembling and my armpits are damp, and I yawn out of pure stress.
‘I’m so grateful for your friendship,’ he says. ‘I wish I were not such a coward.’
Then he leaves me standing there, watching his retreating arse and aching up inside myself, and yawning again and again.
Unique and impactful
‘Another one bites the dust,’ O says. I am straining the chicken soup she made while I was out. She is brushing Edgar. The evening news roundup is running on the surface of the fridge, so that my story of Antonio’s planned flight is interspersed with reports of the latest spasm in the stock market due to politics I don’t understand. ‘Of course, he’s just a hireling. Probably he’s been told to leave the country.’
I smile. ‘You know who you remind me of? Roman.’
‘Really.’ Her tone is so arch that the single word makes me laugh out loud.
‘Well, I mean, you both have such dark minds. Always imagining the worst possible motives for people.’
‘I didn’t get to this age without learning how to watch my back,’ O says. ‘Now, let’s have our soup and I’ll show you some footage I found for you.’
Meera Bhango is both photogenic and likeable. She’s plump, thirty-ish, dressed stylishly with gold trim on the edge of her hijab that picks up the warmth of her skin tones. Her smile looks genuine and her voice . . . she’d be good at ASMR. I get tingles just listening to her and it’s hard to focus on her words because her tone is making my scalp purr. She’s being interviewed by a nasal Swedish journalist wearing rimless vanity specs; he pretty well kills the tingles every time he opens his mouth.
So Meera, you’re out there on the neural frontier, exploring that innerspace with your company, and is it safe to say that there are few laws on this frontier because lawmakers don’t really understand it?
Well, Bryson, it’s not that we’re living on a frontier, that’s the wrong way to think about it. A frontier implies there’s an undiscovered land just out there beyond our knowledge. No, we’re living on the growth edge of an organism. The creature that our noosphere is becoming is actually creating itself as we speak. Human knowledge keeps pushing outwards, making more connections, and new regions of understanding form and light up.
Noosphere, now there’s a word we don’t hear every day!
Well, if we have our way at Little Bird you’ll be hearing more of it soon. ‘Noosphere’ is a funny word that has never really caught on, but it comes from the Greek ‘gnosis’ meaning simply ‘to know’. The noosphere is the knowledge-space that we all share.
What are you hoping to do with Little Bird?
We wanted a way to work outside academia, to make a contribution to the public interest without having to work off the increasingly Byzantine system of grant applications and so forth.
Wait a second . . . that sounds just like BigSky.
BigSky started out just like us. But because they are crowdfunded, they have a much wider remit. I respect BigSky, but with Little Bird we’re trying to do something different.
Hence the name?
We are intentionally small. We’re privately funded, but unlike BigSky we have a narrow focus. Our goal is to build bridges between the fast-growing sector of neurotransmitter regulation and shared AR-space. We’re bridging me
dicine and neural tech.
You recruited Bernard Zborowski from BigSky, and let’s be honest: since the global success of Spacetime, Big Sky has deep pockets. How did you get a developer like him to walk your way?
Most people in this field aren’t as concerned with money as they are with creating something new. Don’t get me wrong – you have to pay people – but for someone like Bernard who can write his own ticket, how we attracted him was to say, ‘Look, your work and our work would go really well together. We can do something unique and impactful.’ We’re looking to find ways to personalise digital gating codes so that people can better control their own minds, using AR as a feedback system or, in some cases, maybe even as an electrochemical triggering system. That’s a fairly narrow focus compared to the broad-brush commercial techniques of BigSky.
Whenever we start talking about mind control, we’re into the realm of science fiction where governments control people through the chips in their heads.
Yeah, this isn’t that. I mean, with any system, whether you carry it in your pocket, in your body tissue or wear it as jewellery, any communication system can be used to surveil you and control you, but it’s more likely to be used by marketers than the government. Actually, what we’re realising is that governments can barely control things like taxation and voter registration, so they don’t have time to be getting inside people’s heads! But what we are starting to see a lot of is exploration of consensual realities, sharing of virtual spaces. Much of this is surprisingly proactive and positive and not at all sinister. Other uses of shared space are definitely commercial – we’ve all been accosted by AR spambots and some of them can be quite convincing—
I know, I nearly bought fake Arsenal tickets from a kid who looked so real!
Exactly. We’ve all been there. With Little Bird, we’re looking to give people back control of their minds, equip them with tools to stay free of these large-scale hypnotic effects that characterize our age and affect us all. We want you to reclaim yourself from the groupthink – that’s our mission.
* * *
O switches off the recording and pours some more tea. I’m still tingling from the sound of Meera Bhango’s voice. I would be more convinced by her sweet and reasonable demeanour if I hadn’t seen her colleague Bernard Zborowski’s signature on the letter informing me that BigSky couldn’t take responsibility for my narcolepsy and that I’d waived my right to complain about side effects.
‘What do you think?’ O says.
‘I can’t see any point in pursuing Bernard now that he’s not at BigSky anymore,’ I say.
‘Of course you can’t pursue Bernard; you signed what you signed. But how about Meera Bhango? Would it be worth speaking with her? Maybe they can do something for you.’
‘My narcolepsy, you mean? Yeah, maybe.’ I’m actually not thinking about myself right now. I’m thinking about Mel, and Mel’s mum. And Antonio shagging me senseless before leaving town.
My Spacetime pings. It’s Roman. Blood rushes to various body parts, seemingly at random, and I’m suddenly conscious of the state of my hair.
‘Excuse me, O, I’m just going to take this Spacetime in my room.’
‘Enjoy,’ says O in a deeper baritone than usual.
Roman is sitting on a bus when he Spacetimes in. I position myself so that I’m on the edge of my bed, opposite him. I edit out most of the mess in my tiny room and brighten up my own appearance quickly before letting him see me.
‘So I searched the hotel records to find out who had rooms on the same floor as Melodie, especially the ones adjacent to hers. I’m working through the names, but so far I don’t see anyone suspicious. Thought you’d want to know.’
‘Thanks,’ I say. Then I stammer, ‘A-and I’m going to take off the earring tonight, I really am. It’s just that I need it for certain things.’
‘I reckoned you would ignore me,’ he says placidly. ‘Now, about her patron. The one who paid for the room?’
‘Yeah?’ I squeak. I can feel myself flushing.
‘Well, get this. Both rooms – the first suite where the door got broken, and the second one as well, were paid for by Antonio.’
I feel like Roman’s reached into my ribcage and grabbed hold of my insides, and how could that not show? It’s only Spacetime, so he can’t possibly notice how agitated I’ve got, or how my hands are shaking – right? And he definitely can’t know I’ve just been banged repeatedly by Antonio and his emergency condoms. I’ve got to get a grip.
‘But . . . Roman, that can’t be right. Antonio hasn’t any money. I mean, yeah, he’s a high-end yoga instructor, but none of those people have money-money. They rely on patrons themselves, they stay in rich people’s pool houses or spare villas. Antonio lives out of a backpack year-round.’
‘Maybe yes, but the payment for Melodie Tan’s rooms traces to his bank account. So . . . be careful, OK, Charlie?’
‘Someone might be trying to set him up,’ I bleat.
‘They might. We’ll know more when we bring him in.’
‘But he left the country.’
‘He left the country? When?’
Oh shit. Fuck me.
‘I . . . I think I’m going to fall asleep.’
Roman leans forward, and even in Spacetime I can feel his calming vibe coming through. Those solid hands, clasping his own knees as he bends towards me, or the image of me, in his own Spacetime.
‘You’re OK, Charlie. Have a drink of water or something. We can’t be sure Antonio is responsible for this, even if he did pay for the rooms and lie about it. It’s just that, when it comes to murder and relationships, Occam’s razor usually applies.’
He looks truly grim. And I feel truly . . . sleepy.
‘I have to go.’
I switch off the link, but before he vanishes he says, ‘Charlie, get off your headware!’
I said the same thing to Melodie, and she didn’t listen to me.
Maybe I should listen.
I don’t know what to believe about Antonio. On the one hand, it’s a point in his favour that he came clean with me about the second hotel room. On the other hand, if he was going to tell me about the one hotel room and the false passport, he may as well have told me everything. Why didn’t he?
I’m not cut out for this kind of intrigue.
I call Shandy and babble at her. About Meera and Bernard and Little Bird. About Roman telling me to remove my headware. She listens for a while. Then she says, ‘I’m taking a sick day tomorrow. We’re going to go deal with this Bernard Zborowski character once and for all. I’ve had enough of seeing you messed about and scared.’
‘You can’t bunk off work for me—’
‘Why not? I worked overtime four nights last week. I’ll say I have a doctor’s appointment for exhaustion. May as well, if I’m honest.’
‘But you’re never tired.’ I’m yawning as I speak.
‘Take off your earring for the night,’ Shandy says. ‘Just get one good sleep with no corpses and no threats and no nothing. OK?’
‘But O told me to leave Bernard alone. She said there’s nothing to be gained.’
‘She obviously hasn’t been introduced to my cricket bat.’
‘I’m not good at confrontations,’ I say, wincing.
‘No kidding. But I am. Now go to sleep.’
I pull off the earring and lie in my room listening to the cars going by outside. The din from the pub down the road reaches me faintly up here. I feel small and remote and horribly naked without my headware, but sleep comes just as quickly as ever.
Doctor Lady Reverend
Because I’m sleeping without my earring, I can’t access Sweet Dreams – or any BigSky technology. Yet I have to remind myself that this dream is really ‘only a dream’ because it has the heightened vividness of an enhanced dream.
I’m looking down on the Sweet Dreams platform from a balcony in the Dream City. Here the platform is a literal one: a smooth, grey plane transecting the metropolis, a cheesy
intrusion of 1980’s-style graphics on the messy, high-resolution splendour of the place. When I pay more attention, I notice that technically Sweet Dreams consists of multiple platforms, several tiers with the largest on top like an upside-down wedding cake. It has been under construction since I can remember, but I have never seen it from this outside perspective – from a bird’s-eye perspective, as it were. It looks so real that I have to keep reminding myself: without the earring, my dream is only my dream and everything in it is purely my own interpretation.
It has to be.
Well, in that case, I’ve become surprisingly fluent in dreaming. Maybe it’s the cumulative effect of all the sessions I’ve been doing for others, because even my own dream is more lucid than before I got sick. I can metacognate even inside the unfolding events. I can control what’s going on.
A bonkers amount of scaffolding surrounds the platform, whose surface is pierced intermittently by cranes and decked with ladders. The infrastructure for the finished construction stretches for kilometres into the distance, so that Sweet Dreams will ultimately transect a great swathe of the Dream City – if it all gets built. The completed regions feature greyscale people wandering around acting out their inner fantasies; I guess these are supposed to be the beta-users, but I can’t forget the other dream in which they were drowning themselves. Here they just wander around aimlessly, having imaginary conversations and performing routine actions that make them look like a drama class doing warm-ups.
That’s when I realise I’m not alone. Meera Bhango is standing on the balcony with me. She’s peering into a telescope trained on the Dream City.
No, wait, it’s not a telescope. It’s a microscope.
The patch of balcony under her feet is unresolved grey, just like the Sweet Dreams platform, as if she’s been transposed here from Sweet Dreams.
A complicated series of emotions threads through me, from hope to shame and back. I want to talk to her, but I’m afraid of how she’ll react. In the video she sounded so positive, so hopeful about the future of technology. Yet listening to her talk made me feel ugly and unwanted, like a shadow or stain. I am ashamed of my condition. People like Dr Bhango are in charge of things, they are important. I am an outsider, a scavenger, a chancer. A fox in a Hampstead rubbish bin.
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