by M. T Hill
‘Okay.’
‘Next question,’ Mallory Junior says. ‘You know what a space elevator is?’
‘A space elevator.’
‘Elevator. Lift. Not powered access, see – an actual elevator. Like the ones you get in hotels.’
Shep scratches his head. ‘I’m lost,’ he admits.
‘Hold the thought,’ Mallory Junior says. ‘Final question. You ever met a treehugger? People who like to chain themselves to fences and wallow in muck?’
‘Like the people outside Fawley?’
‘Aye. Like that bleeding mob outside Fawley.’
Shep nods. ‘They threw paint on our crew transport.’
‘They did. As is their right. Except we’re talking pro treehuggers, here. Top tier. Because there’s a particular family of crusty-backers called the Vaughans, see. Made their fortune in digital storage, encryption, cloud tech. Bought a bunch of ancient North Sea rigs to make them bloody “data principalities” or whatever they’re called. Solar, wind, bio. We’ve had the odd contract with them.’
‘Name does ring a bell,’ Shep says. ‘Think some of the Fawley crew worked on a Vaughan wind farm.’
‘Right. They bang on about blood-oil and fracking and energy monopolies and the rest of it. Except they go in harder than that. The Vaughan estate’s so deep, they actually bankroll these mobs we see on the ground. Sponsored disobedience to put off Chinese investors – that kind of thing. Fun and games. It’s tough at the top. But what people don’t know is, it’s all a ruse. Deflection. Right? And genius at that. What the Vaughans are really doing is clearing the decks so they can go top-dog. Smear the trad-energy market, undermine shale gas extraction, shaft their competitors, shift into the vacuum. And trust me, they’re ballsy about it.’
‘But how are they competitors if they’re in different markets?’
‘Because,’ Mallory Junior says, ‘they’re actually not. The Vaughans want to create maximum distraction so they can get on with mining the moon.’
The office falls silent.
‘On my old dear’s life,’ Mallory Junior says. ‘Lunar mining ops. Future of energy. They’re saying—’
‘Hang about,’ Shep cuts in. ‘As in the moon moon?’
‘Oh aye. Helium-3 mining. You can’t keep flying shuttles out from bloody Guiana and back. Expensive business, getting private rockets off the ground – escape velocity’s a sod. Dirty job too, is rocketry – unreliable, dangerous. So, what they’re planning is a bona fide space elevator. Powered lifters going from an Earth-surface tower to a platform out towards the stratosphere, where gravity doesn’t trouble you so much. From there you get to launch your shuttles, ferry lunar minerals back down to Earth, and, I don’t know… Have tea parties with what’s-his-name – that tuneless Irish wanker – and the rest of your rich pals.’
Shep sniggers.
‘Not even funny,’ Mallory Junior says. ‘They’re cracking on with it.’
‘What does that have to do with me?’
‘Feasibility studies, Shepherd. And a bit of hard graft.’
Shep goes on staring.
‘The Vaughans bought up a whole bloody island in the Pacific. Proper Tracy Island stuff. They’re flat-out on the base tower’s beta frame right now – a big-arsed scaffold, just to see how it all hangs together. Whether it’ll work. We got the call last year. They want safety sensors on it, the lot.’
‘They want us to work on their space lift?’ Even the question is ridiculous.
‘Not quite,’ the boss says. ‘The scaffolding system for it, at least to start with. And it gets better. This space lift won’t work on an island. It needs to be on a mountain – right? It needs all the altitude they can get.’
Shep nods slowly.
‘They bought a mountain as well. In the Himalayas.’ Mallory Junior sucks in a breath. ‘A mountain. When the beta scaffolding’s signed off, they’re going over there for the gold build.’
‘But—’
‘I know,’ Mallory says. ‘I know. And the thing is, you’d be right. The project’s surely doomed. Probably only come this far thanks to Daddy Vaughan’s aides paying engineers to hear the right things – old bugger must be surrounded with yes-men. Even if they get a quarter of the way up on a mountain, the weather’ll raze the structure. Or before they even need to think about crampons, some tropical storm or typhoon or tornado’ll come wash the beta scaff off the island. And all these gullible whapnecks going along with it, investing their millions, they haven’t clocked it’s a massive Ponzi scheme. The longest con. And yet – and yet – it might still be lucrative for us. At least in the short-term.’
‘We’re already out there, aren’t we?’
Mallory Junior’s mouth tightens to a line. ‘The island beta stage, yes. Only for NDT at the minute. Small crew went out through Los Angeles last month – they’re analysing the rig. Next up is flight warning systems, gyros, lightning protection. Your bread and butter. The Vaughans are offsetting their setup costs by letting the US Navy field test new drones out there. It’s on us to make sure they don’t crash into the structure.’
‘Christ,’ Shep says.
Mallory Junior breaks eye contact to consider the picture on his desk, then angles it back towards Shep. ‘They’ll never make it,’ he says. ‘No chance. It’s the fucking Himalayas. Fucking Everest. Never mind that you’ve got to get the cable down from orbital space, land the bastard’s nasty end – bearing in mind it’ll whip about like nobody’s business – and stick it all together. I got eyes on plans for their counterweight, too – might as well be an extra moon floating over us. Good bloody luck towing that into place.’
Shep shakes his head slowly. The whole thing sounds like it’s been lifted from a book.
‘That said…’ The boss holds his arms apart, palms facing each other. ‘The engineering’s sound. Your satellite, the counterweight – my right hand, see – goes in geosynchronous orbit around the Earth, right above the Vaughans’ mountain, with the cabling connecting to the peak, my left hand. When it’s online, you run your lifts out to a midway point in nearspace, launch your miners, snap your selfies, all that shite. But this means the magic’s in the cable, because the stresses up there are plain daft. And that’s where your diamondoid comes in – it’s the only material strong enough. And the crux of Daddy Vaughan’s lie is here, because as far as I can see, nobody can make anywhere near enough of the stuff. No one.’
‘Lofty, then,’ Shep says.
‘Can you imagine insurers signing off on it? Amount of testing it’ll take? You’re talking sixty, seventy years to get close to that kind of tech, easy. A hundred, even. How many deaths, accidents, cock-ups? Never mind the brains and resources you’ll burn through – paying for food and board alone is a nightmare. And what if some mad fucker comes along and manages to cut the cable free? It’d be like sending a cheese-wire round the planet. And that’s before you talk special tooling –’cos your twenty-one-mill spanners’ll do bugger-all when they compress in the cold. And what do your contractors wear? Spacesuits? Don’t tell me those Heighter twats’ll have their robots ready in time.’
Shep, alert now, focuses on the photograph. The cold void of space seems appealing. Soon things slide into place; he’s looking at a picture of Mallory Senior. The old jack from the Pea and Ham. Here on the desk as a message.
‘The island beta would be perfect experience for someone like you,’ Mallory Junior says. ‘Keep you out of trouble, get your debts clear – it’s good money, being in the remote Pacific and all. Warm, to boot. And who knows. By the time you’re as old as me, you might land a contract for the Himalayas.’
‘I haven’t even got my full jacking ticket yet,’ Shep says.
Mallory Junior laughs. ‘That’s bureaucracy talking – thought you were better than that. We put in a good word here and there, you get the training you need. Box ticking. You’re better on the job, like the olden days. Not like offshore stuff, either. None of that chopper dunking malarkey.’
‘How soon?’ Shep asks.
‘Well, we’re still pulling together a subcontract abseil team.’
‘Not Heighter…’
‘No, Shepherd, not Heighter. We’d bunk you apart regardless. Plus, you’d get the rep back here. You know this industry – incest isn’t far wrong. You’d be the envy of many. Crawl back into your elders’ good books, anyway.’
‘How long’s the contract for?’
‘Few months.’
‘Months?’
‘With theory and practical training down in Portsmouth on the training stage. While your finger’s mending itself.’
Shep clenches his fist. The bunker with the ache of an old injury; a stab in the guts; phantom pain in his ears. A misremembered dream.
‘Can I think about it?’
‘Can’t do much else when you’re out in that yard.’
‘I don’t know…’ Shep says. ‘How far up would that be?’
Mallory Junior shrugs. ‘Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.’
‘I’m not. I’m asking about height—’
‘Listen,’ Mallory Junior cuts in. He taps the picture of his father. ‘Do me and this old codger proud. Go home. Go to bed. Get down the hospital and get that finger seen to – on our insurance. We’ll firm the rest up soon. Sound good?’
Shep looks away from the photo. He owes the old man for all of this. ‘I’m going to the climbing wall,’ he says.
Mallory Junior shakes his head. ‘You must be mad,’ he says. ‘But aye, go on. And pick up a new phone from IT on your way out.’
The Journalist
Freya has new momentum after the garden centre. All she thinks about over their Sunday roast, on her Monday morning commute, is the strange man in the crowd. Of how she’ll stay right out of nothing.
To get started, she plans to build a sort of case file on Stephen. She’ll have to systematically message the people behind the tributes on his public stream, join the dots between family members, dig for relatives’ contact details. Send a freedom-of-information request to her father’s motor insurance company, so she can check the footage from his car’s rear-facing camera and hopefully ID the staring man’s registration plate. Approach the Parsons family direct. And, most importantly, find out more about the woman in the picture.
But as the week unfolds, her day job keeps getting in the way. Thursday is the paper’s publication deadline, which means her shifts run late and hectic. There are no gaps in which to properly research Stephen on the side, and her compulsion to investigate turns into low-level anxiety, complete with uneasy guts, jittery legs. It’s a kind of suffering, to be held back. To have to wait.
Stay well clear.
In bed, after work each night, she immerses herself in Stephen’s reports. It relieves some of the pressure. Like method acting. A new ritual, too, of poring over his words, the picture of the nest.
A galaxy in span, this journey, under the banner of mitosis and promulgation.
Of course, this isn’t simple curiosity. And Freya isn’t naive. Lying there, she’s all too aware of something unhealthy taking root: of becoming a voyeur. She’s starting to obsess, and she can’t help herself – she’s too adamant there’s a story. Or too scared there might not be one.
On the Tuesday and Wednesday nights, Freya tries to do press-ups in her room, remembering what Shep told her about muscles, about practice. She’s still given to wondering how she might’ve spoken to him differently. In the night stillness, it’s like Shep had been a conduit for Stephen in Big Walls. She projects onto Shep her impression of the dead man, so that Shep carries both of them. He’d spoken for Stephen as well as himself. Yes, bizarre and ridiculous – not least because she’s only met Shep once – but that’s the generosity of private thought. And, again, she can’t help herself. It makes her want to go back to Big Walls and practise on the traversing walls. Climb until her fingers are so raw that when she sucks on them, she can taste the salt and chalk and iron.
* * *
When Thursday finally arrives, Freya sits agitating at her workstation. She only has to keep herself busy until the paper goes off to print. Then she’ll be free. Then it can happen.
After subbing and uploading her pages, she mucks in with the news desk juniors and their news-in-brief – typing up petty crimes, lost cat stories, other mundane flotsam. In the gaps, she slips into daydreams: climbing a blank wall whose monoform shifts behind an intricate lattice of rope. No obvious route up this wall, no extremes. Freya grows long, tapering hands that seem over-articulated – an extra set of joints, a hinge at the first set of knuckles. Shep – or is it Stephen? – climbs way above her, and she follows.
Still, these daydreams aren’t fantasies by the fullest definition. While Shep was friendly enough, it’s hard to imagine sex with him. His body was over-forged, mechanical: a system going up and down a rope. Even if he appealed in some archetypal way – a body like Grecian sculpture, a swimmer’s build – the idea makes her uncomfortable.
The afternoon passes. The paper goes to print. The office turns mortuary-still. Febrile with purpose, Freya clocks off and heads into Manchester.
* * *
From the park-and-ride at Middleton, Freya catches the Met towards Altrincham. The tram takes her through the city centre via Mosley Street, where she notices some freshly installed bollards and barriers. She’d seen the press release – ‘hostile vehicle mitigation’ spun as postmodernist seating. Party political conference season is close, and the city tends to hunker down. In the coming weeks they’ll be flooded with PR about ‘unprecedented security measures’ and ‘police operations involving personnel from across the region’.
Freya alights at St Peter’s Square, where the vast cylindrical body of Central Library stands opposite the tramway. The library’s stone is clean yet stubbornly of an older world, its rounded aspect a warming sight. It’s no small miracle it hasn’t been inhaled by private developers and turned into flats yet.
She comes off the platform and crosses the tracks. It’s quiet in the square for a weekday evening, her heels loud as the tram draws away. She goes under the library’s portico, held aloft on its white columns, and towards the stairs to the entrance. She fishes in her bag for her membership card and takes out her phone to turn on flight mode.
As she unlocks her phone, a familiar red coat catches her eye. She looks at the owner and lets out a soft gasp. Her ex is crossing St Peter’s Square towards her.
Freya reels against the nearest column and doubles over, convinced she might collapse across the damp slab steps. She edges around the column as if letting go will hurt, trying her hardest to melt.
Did he see her? She peers round the column, chest tight. She recognises the gait, the bag, the thinning crown. He hasn’t. She wills him on.
A whole galaxy of conflicted feelings about to pass beyond an event horizon. He pauses and kneels down to tie his laces. Another man, sprinting to catch a tram arriving on the square, trips over her ex’s bag. Her ex stands to apologise.
It isn’t him. The nose, the height of his forehead – not him. And now she sees what else doesn’t tally: his height, the direction of his parting, the longer chin, the width of his shoulders. Dickhead. Confirmation bias isn’t a new concept to her, but its effects are always stupefying.
Ruffled, Freya heads straight for the front desk. The librarian recognises her and smiles questioningly. Freya offers her library card to be scanned.
‘After a quiet spot?’
‘Please,’ Freya says, worrying at her sleeves.
The librarian pinches her nose as she searches the booking system. ‘You’re in luck,’ she says. ‘Few rooms up in Mauve.’
Freya nods and flashes a smile.
‘All sorted for you.’
Freya takes back her card and hurries to the nearest toilet, her neckline damp and bits of hair sticking to her face. In a cubicle, bag on her lap, she sits on the lid and lets it out. Angry, stinging tears, owing more to frustratio
n than sorrow. She’s spent so many months retrenching, consolidating and rearming that her reaction to the man she thought was her ex has upended her. Does it mean she misses him? If it does, it’s only because he represents a broken habit. Does she still love him? Can she imagine forming new memories, fresh domestic routines? Will they ever sit together on a sofa again, or go out for a meal and promise not to look at their phones during all three courses?
She doesn’t have it in her. Going back to their failed project would be devastating. A harder regression than moving back into her parents’ bungalow. Not that it’s possible: the recession of emotional tissue is too great. If they meet in the future, there’ll only be small talk. Everything else will be held back.
Freya blots her forehead, reapplies her mascara. In the mirror, the red eyes of someone afraid of dreaming. A stress rash up to her neck. She wraps herself in a light scarf and holds in a breath until the cubicle darkens, sparkles.
* * *
Freya’s library card unlocks the study room. The door’s window is covered with a piece of paper reading NO INTERNET. She settles at a computer and plugs a slim USB stick into the tower. She waits.
After a spate of gang fights turned into countrywide riots, a change in the law made it much harder for ordinary people to use social networks anonymously. Not all was lost, though: loopholes exploited by newspaper offices – mainly on the grounds of protecting sources – still afford some degree of privacy. Senior editors continue to enjoy backdoor access to social networks when there’s a front-page-worthy event, or an obit to write, or information to ‘cascade’ across the news floor. It’s how Freya was able to access Stephen’s public stream without worry. But if you’re a reporter who comes up short when you’re at home, in the field, or working out of contract, you’re bound by the same rules as everyone else. Which means if you go looking for somebody on a social network, the network will tell them.
For Freya, these changes initially required her to create fake profiles she could switch between. Then the mobile providers agreed your handset could only be tethered to one account, locked to its IMEI. Here, sophisticated proxies did the job – deepweb devs always a step ahead – and Freya learned how to run a profile sweep without much hassle.