Unless Little Bird is not under Meera’s control after all.
Bernard is dead. O is dead. There’s no one else alive at Little Bird capable of wreaking so much havoc.
Is there?
I’m torn between the compulsion to wake Meera and save her, and the need to hunt down the entity that has got hold of her. I have to find out who is really behind the killings. I can’t keep peeling the onion. Sooner or later, I must arrive at the centre.
‘Stay awake, Meera. Something has hold of you. Everything you do in this dream, you’ll do in real life. I’ve seen too many people die. You need to sit down and stay still.’
She doesn’t listen. Now she’s wearing a mask – the same symbol-covered white mask, distorted like a scream. With an icy grip, she seizes hold of my arms. The navy suit she was wearing has morphed into a long black dress. She’s looking more and more like the Creeper. I want to break away from her grasp but at least if she’s holding me, she can’t throw herself off any heights.
‘Charlie. At last we meet.’ It’s the American voice from Mel’s dreams.
In a shaky voice I ask, ‘Who is speaking?’
Meera’s arms come around me. Her white mask bends over me. The American voice is laughing, too. I take one more step back in reflexive horror, but I haven’t realised how close we’re standing to the edge of the Sweet Dreams platform.
I go over the edge.
The platform, the scaffolds, the ledge of safety provided by BigSky are gone. Meera and I are tumbling arse-over-teakettle through the darkness. Her body goes slack, like a puppet’s, and as we fall it deflates, so that by the time we hit the water she’s just a black dress and a mask. Like the witch from Oz.
It doesn’t hurt to hit the dream water. So there’s that. I go under. Bubbles. Cold green. I come up in an impotent fury. I’m in a canal, still in the dream, clutching the empty black dress and the white plastic mask.
‘Where are you?’
No American voice. No answer.
I’m angry with myself for stepping back off the platform’s edge when I should have stepped forward into Meera. Now I’ve lost her. It’s like Mel all over again.
I’m not waking up yet. I have to trust Shandy to do her job. My job is to get inside the Creeper, find out where it really lives, what it really is. I’m so accustomed to running away and hiding that I must force myself to hunt, to pursue, to aggress. I swim to the bank with burning muscles and labouring breath. I haul myself out.
‘Where are you?’ I shout it into the general darkness. The architecture of the Dream City crowds around me. I’m standing under an iron bridge that spans the canal, and high overhead the neon cycleways scroll in vivid pink and green, parting around the scaffolds that cloak BigSky’s nascent platform. Down here it smells like algae and sump. I cup my hands around my mouth.
‘Hey! Creeper! You! Show yourself!’
But nothing happens. After a while, I find a flight of cracked steps that leads up to a roadway where shuffling greyscale dreamers walk by in bowler hats and eyeless white masks like a twenty-first-century Magritte painting. All along the road, buildings poached from real-life London march higgledy-piggledy, complete with chimney pots and subsidence; above their gables, the sleek curves of the Dream City shine like a long-exposure night shot of highway spaghetti. Past and future grafted uneasily upon one another.
I start walking, noisily because there’s water in my trainers. The streets themselves twist as I move, leading me around corners and down flights of stairs and over bridges. I keep going, choosing the way by instinct. It all feels like I’m unravelling a tangled cord or solving an algebra problem. Like following a dangerous thought to its logical conclusion.
Eventually, I come to a courtyard. Its once-grand stone buildings are worn and subsiding, its paving stones buckled. A defunct fountain sits in the centre, once bronze but now pale green, carved in the shape of a broken harp and presiding over a half-full pool of moondark, mossy water.
I am spooked out right now.
Above me in the darkness there’s a noise of wings, and then a gothic creaking sound as a door opens in the building to my left. A wedge of yellow light falls across the pavement of the courtyard. In the half-open doorway, I glimpse part of a person in silhouette, but before I can focus properly, they turn and disappear inside the building, leaving the door open.
I’ve seen enough to know who it is. Who it has to be.
Still carrying the sopping black dress and mask, I bolt forwards and stumble through the door.
The lighted room is decorated like an early-twentieth-century salon. The furniture is gleaming cherry wood with Prussian-blue velvet upholstery, and there are delicate incandescent lamps and a fire burning in an open hearth. On the walls are oil paintings depicting Bernard, Melodie, O, Martin Elstree . . . And one empty frame. For Meera?
Or for me?
Opposite the fire stands Mel, dressed in a sheer red empire-waisted gown as if she’s attending the opera, one hand resting lightly on the strings of a great harp. When I enter, she takes her seat and begins to play softly with her head bent, in her own private world.
I drop to my knees on the floor, dripping. I’m shaking with silent sobs.
‘I’m sorry, Mel,’ I say, over and over. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’
She lifts her hands off the strings. ‘I’m glad you came,’ she says. ‘Why don’t you sit down?’
There is nowhere to sit that I won’t ruin because I leave a trail of river water everywhere I go. I settle on the hearth. Its heat beats on my back. Mel swivels on her stool to face me.
‘Let’s consider our mystery,’ Mel says in her sweet Canadian voice. ‘Who are the victims, and who are the suspects? Of course, I’m the first victim. We’ll get to me in a second. But what about Bernard? Who killed him, and why?’
‘Daphne did,’ I tell Mel’s ghost, or dream-representation, or whatever she is. ‘Daphne killed him because a little bird told her that he’d killed you as part of an experiment. The old dear had been made to sleepwalk herself, so naturally she was outraged.’
Listening to my own delivery, I realise that I’ve fallen into the speech patterns of a character in an Agatha Christie story.
‘Very good.’ Mel inclines her head. ‘And what about Martin Elstree? You thought he was the Creeper who attacked me, am I right?’
I’m nodding. ‘He had a room directly below your room the night you died. At the time, it seemed obvious that he’d hacked in and made you sleepwalk.’
‘True,’ she says. ‘But your evidence was only circumstantial. In fact, Martin was in that hotel room meeting with litigators from BigSky to iron out the IP deal with Little Bird. You know that BigSky don’t use offices. When there are long negotiations to be done, hotel suites are ideal for everyone.’
I say, ‘Someone came after O and someone came after me. In both cases they failed, but only just. When the pigeon led us from O’s house to Elstree’s, it seemed clear that they were working together and he’d turned against her.’
‘They were working together. But he never dreamhacked anyone in his life. He wouldn’t know how.’
‘That’s not how he made it sound,’ I said. ‘He threatened me.’
She’s nodding. ‘He’d been using the dreamhacker bot to attack anyone at BigSky who got in his way. That was how he won the IP fight. And he used it against you, twice. You were right to be afraid of him. But he wasn’t the Creeper.’
‘I know that now, of course.’
‘Of course. What was done is done. It’s almost as if someone has been one step ahead of you at every turn.’
‘At least one step,’ I agree glumly.
‘So. Whodunnit?’ Mel asks. ‘That is what you are determined to comprehend. You understand that the Agency is running the show. Who controls the Agency?’
‘Daphne calls herself an Agent. She says I’m one, too, now. But I didn’t join anything. I don’t report to anyone.’
‘So who killed me?’
Mel asks. ‘Why would someone want to kill me? How did you and I meet?’
‘Antonio. He dreamed about my dreamhacker card. But it was before I had a dreamhacker card.’
‘Almost enough to make you believe in precognition, isn’t it? But Shandy plugged your dreamhacker details into the system for research purposes. BigSky had you in the system, and from there it was just a matter of sending a dreambot to make the suggestion to Antonio.’
‘Who sent a dreambot to Antonio?’
‘Who would want to test you? Because that’s what it was. It was a test of your abilities. It was a test to see if you could be kept out of the Dream City or if you would insist on participating.’
‘Mel, what are you saying? Did O set me up?’
She shakes her head slowly. ‘O did a lot of bad things, but my death isn’t one of them. The Creeper was sent by the Agency itself.’
I’m leaning forwards, hands extended. ‘Who are the Agency, Mel?’
She’s enjoying this.
‘I’m going to reveal the big secret now,’ Mel says. ‘It’s what you’ve been trying to find out all this time. I’m going to tell you. Are you ready?’
Suddenly I feel not-ready. I gulp.
‘I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.’
She leans towards me, warm firelight bathing her décolletage and gleaming on her loose, silky hair. Her sharp eyes fix on me. She is distinctly unghostlike as she says in a flat voice: ‘It’s all in your head. All of it. Even the Agency. Especially the Agency.’
Just like that, the room is gone. The building is gone. Melodie and the fire, both gone. I’m standing on a narrow street hemmed by old buildings interspersed with new. The sopping dress is still wrapped around the mask and clenched in my hand, as if the interlude with Melodie never took place.
I glance down at my wet trainers and that’s when the writing appears, first in the cobbled roadway:
I AM THE AGENCY.
The message bubbles up from the stone itself. I walk past it uneasily, and then I see the writing on the wall. Literally:
I AM THE AGENCY.
And in the sky, bleeding through in a vapour of cloud:
I AM THE AGENCY.
There’s a tickling in my palm. When I glance down, my palm has been written on:
I AM THE AGENCY.
I start to run.
Don’t know where I think I’m going. It’s already been well established that I can’t escape myself, not even here. Not even now. I’m running blind.
While I was studying at Excelsior-Barking, we learned about complexes and how they can act like independent entities that control you, but in reality they’re just sort of psychic parasites. Maybe this is what the Agency is. Maybe it’s not a full-blown AI, but a mental or emotional parasite that lives in collective consciousness. It advances its own interests by using us like pawns.
Maybe the Agency is making me think this. How can I even know? I’m not at all sure my consciousness is located inside my body, at least not any more. Apps are in the cloud; why can’t consciousness be in the Dream City?
I can’t escape the knowledge of what is going on, either. I run but I have this terrible feeling of being overtaken, of being in the path of a wave, and it’s too late but I just can’t face the truth.
Meera’s black Creeper dress slaps wetly against my thighs and back as I run, gasping. Then I catch a glimpse of myself in a shop window, and I don’t see my own reflection. I only see the Creeper, running, stopping to stare at itself, then running again. Maybe it’s the dress. I fling it away from me. The mask bumps down the road and disappears in the shadows, but the dress turns back into Meera. She’s running alongside me, her eyes wide and fearful.
I look in another shop window and still see the Creeper, now with Meera running alongside.
‘Charlie! Where are we running to?’ Meera gasps. ‘What’s happening?’
‘You put the Agency in my head!’ I scream at her. ‘It’s inside me now. I can’t get away!’
I can’t run any further. Already I’m out of puff. I stop, bending over, gasping for breath. I shield my eyes from my own reflection. Meera stops, too.
‘I’ve been trying to help you,’ she says. ‘I didn’t put it in your head. BigSky did, remember?’
I want to blame someone, I need to blame someone, but the truth is it doesn’t even matter who did it. Or, as Mel put it, whodunnit. It’s too late for blaming.
My eyes are everywhere. My ears are everywhere. My skin is the sky is the stone.
I can feel the writing in my flesh.
I can feel the writing in my bones.
I am the Dream City.
I am the Agency.
And the Agency is me.
I tell Meera this. I say: ‘It can’t exist without me because it’s in my marrow and in my myelin. For better or worse, we are wedded and we are one.’
I am starting to cry, and not just because my alliteration is so poignant.
‘Meera, if the Agency and I are entwined with one another, does that make me accountable for its crimes? What the fuck am I going to do?’
Dream-Meera is soaking wet and shivering. Her face is confused and she’s displaying an annoying lack of interest in my distress. She’s completely preoccupied with herself.
That’s when I notice: she’s in full colour. She’s not greyscale, not like everyone else here.
‘Is this still my dream?’ she says. ‘Am I lucid-dreaming? I’ve always wanted to do this but never could.’
Oh, man. It’s like watching someone trip. I have to pull myself together and do a bit of adulting. This is not the time for me to break down.
‘Turn around, Meera.’
She obeys. Thank goodness, there is no key in her back this time.
‘You’re not sleepwalking. You’re safe, for now.’
Meera is taking in the sight of the Dream City in wonderment. Even as I’m shitting myself in the wake of the Dream City’s revelations, she is playing the kid in a candy shop.
‘This is the most incredible thing that has ever happened to me. What is this place?’
‘The Dream City. At first I thought it was the collective unconscious, but it’s more than that. It’s the Agency, or the bit of the Agency that we can perceive.’
‘You just said you were the Agency.’
‘Yeah. And you. And everyone. It’s bigger than all of us, but in a way it also has to be less than any of us because it’s distributed across everybody. The Agency is the interconnectedness of humanity, through tech and biology and culture and all the ooky hivemind stuff we’ve been accelerating towards since the Internet was born. It’s like an overintelligence, a meta-thingie.’
She laughs. ‘A meta-thingie, got it. Important to know the technical terms.’
But I’m not laughing.
‘The thing is, the Agency is very young. It’s only just forming, and it’s aware of us but until now we haven’t been aware of it. I think it behaves on instinct, and it’s been using people to protect itself.’
‘Well,’ Meera says, slowly, ‘if the sleepwalking deaths are deliberate, if the Agency really is targeting people somehow, then we will have to disable it one way or another.’
‘If by “disable it” you mean you want to kill me and people like me—’
‘That’s not what I said! But Charlie, if what you say is true, then how can you ever know if you are acting under your own volition or not?’
‘I can’t. I don’t even know what I am any more, much less why I do what I do. But nor does anyone. Stand here with me and look. I see all the people in black and white. Do you see that?’
‘Yeah, I see them.’
‘Those are dreamers. They’ve been corralled by BigSky on its “safe” platform, wearing their masks with eyes wide shut. They don’t stand a chance in the Dream City. They may as well be suspended over a shark tank.’
‘Yes,’ she says in a hollow voice. ‘The monsters are coming. I can feel it. We have to warn them.’
Even as I say it, across the canal there’s an ominous grinding noise. A grate in the pavement slides open and shadowy forms begin to come out. They climb the scaffolding, monsters of the Dream City, hungry and ready to prey on the unwary. So it’s Monsters versus Robots, is it?
Where is the humanity, then? I wonder.
At its best, Sweet Dreams is supposed to be a refuge, but it’s now surrounded by a self-aware, self-constructing environment in vivid colour and smell, with urban canyons and towers, canals and ghost pigeons, all under the direction of the Agency. People don’t even know that the Agency exists, much less that the Dream City represents its developing consciousness. What easy marks they are, and all for a monthly subscription fee.
Here’s the bottom line: I am being used for unknown purposes by an entity I don’t understand, by a thing that is building itself into existence using my tissue, my thoughts, my imagination. It is eating me alive so it can be born. And it’s only a matter of time before it devours or exploits everyone who finds themselves here, because no one can even see it coming.
‘We have to stop it happening,’ Meera says decisively. ‘We’ll tell BigSky. We’ll make them put the brakes on. It can’t go forward.’
But the Dream City stands over us, under us, around us. It is already here. Whether or not BigSky expand their platform, all of this interconnectedness is going somewhere and it’s taking us with it. Whether we know it or not.
We are standing beneath an ultra-modern building that arches over the old roadway in curves that resemble organic structure. On its smooth skin appear words:
NO GOING BACK. TOO LATE.
Meera grabs my arm. ‘Charlie, it’s talking to us now.’
Usually a baby’s first words are the cutest thing ever, but I’m swallowing against a cold lump of lead in my throat because I can feel what the words will be even as they are appearing. It’s almost as if I know what the Agency is going to say before it happens. The words are already inside me.
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