“So?” Quark’s barely paying attention to her; instead he’s now selecting eye-shadow. Kohl for moodiness or turquoise to highlight the depthless grey-green of Daisy’s — no his — eyes?
“With a single change to one of the factors that led me to be in that precise place at that precise time, I might have been saved from all this grief!”
Silence from Quark who now had one kohl eye and one turquoise and was flipping Daisy’s head from side-to-side to work out which suited his colouring and which would make the impact he desired.
“Quark?”
“Mmmmm?” Kohl gave a certain moody-oomph, but turquoise made him appear … mysterious?
“Am I the chosen one?”
Still nothing from Quark.
“I mean, if it hadn’t been me, it would have been someone else. But would that be a good thing? Though I do say so myself, I have made a pretty good job of holding you at bay until now. If you’d landed in some random person in London or Amsterdam, Cairo or Kolkata, or even in one of the other kids in the playground, then who knows?”
Quark had just realised that such a thing as nail varnish existed; a whole new part of his body to decorate! Now — Wanton Red or Flaming Coral … which was more him?
“Surely if you’d picked Mr Ford, it would be all over for him — and for the whole planet by now. He’d have rolled over and surrendered like a flailing beetle. But maybe Mrs Griffin would have kicked your butt and saved us all!”
“Huh?”
“Quark, have you been listening to me at all?”
“What? Of course I have!”
“Then why do I suddenly look like a sun-burnt panda then?”
“I think I look rather fetching, actually.”
Daisy looked deep into her own eyes, trying — and failing — to see the demon there. She looked for the darkness, the brooding nemesis that hung over her — that had stalked within her. She failed to see him. Could be hiding behind the kohl and turquoise eye-liner, of course!
“And how did you do what you did to me so quickly? Get so deeply into me, into my head and into who I am? You took me over in an instant.”
Quark rested Daisy’s hands on the sink for a moment as he thought about this — and pondered his appearance in the mirror. “Why you? When I approach a planet, I receive a kind of signal, a notification if you like from the surface that reaches out to me. It indicates intense neural activity, detectable from the moment I enter the atmosphere. It is the intensity of that being’s signal that powers the subject’s own becoming.”
“I matched your criteria?”
Quark nodded, focusing on his reply, but still taking time to admire the different tones of dazzling red he’d painted Daisy’s fingernails. “The level of synaptic energy radiating from you was higher than I have ever encountered before. I think it is possible, from what I have learnt since, that you were emitting the greatest emotional intensity. It wasn’t physical strength I sought; it was the force of the electricity given out by your brainwaves.” He paused and frowned. “I had not realised that equated to moral strength, courage and determination too. I chose you and you alone. But if I had known better, I would have selected someone else.”
“Really?”
“Yes, but I do not think Mr Ford would have made a good subject.”
Daisy laughed. “Why?”
“He has insufficient moral fortitude; he would make a poor becoming.”
Quark wondered whether to get Daisy’s ears pierced so he could add further decoration to the body that is now his. “Daisy?”
“Yes?”
“What was it like for you?”
“My near becoming?”
Quark nodded.
“A blankness and confusion that cascaded through me. Like dominos collapsing down upon each other within by mind, forcing me deeper and deeper within myself.”
Daisy’s lips pursed as Quark absorbed this. “It sounds … hard.”
Daisy didn’t reply.
“Daisy Jacobs, I do not appreciate how you have temporarily prevented your planet’s first becoming.” He paused. “But I commend your courage and bravery.”
“My moral fortitude, huh.”
In the mirror Daisy’s lips formed a tight smile. “Yes.”
The smile loosened a fraction, “and Daisy … ”
“Yes?”
“I admire the way our molecules have coalesced. You are a remarkable accumulation of atoms.”
It was impossible, as he himself made neither sound nor movement, but Quark could have sworn that he actually felt Daisy’s sudden intake of breath.
“Why, Quark,” she said, “I think that’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.”
Chapter 37
NO
The Earth is our home: steady, solid, dependable, and taken completely for granted. That’s obvious, isn’t it? It’s just there, beneath our feet and all around us. Except right now, I can’t even feel the earth beneath my feet. It’s like my life’s over. But there’s a major problem with that; not only would the world not get to enjoy my presence and my myriad achievements over the next seventy or eighty years … the world would miss your accomplishments too. Since, if my life ends, yours will too.
Because that’s all Quark needs: the boost of power, the oomph from me to generate the impetus he wants to get to you and everyone you’ve ever known and so on and so on until there’s nothing left on earth but floating atoms and space dust.
You’d understand, though — yes? If I gave in, I mean. I’m just so tired. Tired of being alone. Tired of being in the dark. I’ve already held Quark back for longer than anyone in history. Quite an epitaph, I’m sure you’ll agree. Of course, it’s still an elegy that would end with — “but still failed … and died”.
And that’s the big issue here: I can give up. I can surrender; I can just … go to sleep, I guess, and wake up dead. But I can’t make that decision on your behalf. I hold your fate in my hands; in my little locked room. And so — for your sake as much as mine — I’ll fight on. I’ll exert all the powers of my tiny mind. I won’t give in.
Quark’s been around for the entire history of the universe, yet what he’s seen of actual life is less than the blink of an eye! He’s had so many opportunities to live. But that’s not the way he works. He becomes quickly and moves on. Sitting around for eighty years is not the way he operates; it may be a moment to him, but I don’t think he has it in him to just sit inside my head and wreck my life for all that time. If he does, we’ll really drive each other bonkers!
We’re in my bedroom, at the dressing table mirror. Quark’s smile has disappeared like it’s outlived its usefulness. On my face, the smile is replaced by a steely glare. “You need to be logical about this,” he insists.
“You forget, I am a mere human; I can’t always be logical. And by the way, it’s unlikely I’m going to faint away under the pressure of that glare. I mean, first I don’t think I could possibly squeeze what’s left of me into a smaller space. And second …” I pause and take what would be a raking breath, had I lungs of my own to use, “I know my face too well, and I practised scarier looks in the mirror long before you were a blip over the horizon.”
“My, you are a clever girl.”
“Don’t patronise me.” I give him my meanest inward scowl, which naturally has zero impact. “Anyway,” I continue, “sometimes the mind’s a bit wayward. We aren’t always logical. And sometimes the mind’s not even in control.”
“How can that be?” He’s baffled.
“When the heart rules the head.”
“The heart? Your heart pumps blood around your body, it does not decide what you do.”
“Yeah, well mine sometimes does. And right now it’s telling me to hold out. To be strong. To fight my corner. My heart’s telling me I’ll win.”
“Well, I do not understand how it can tell you anything at all. And if it does, then your heart — which, incid
entally, I control — is clearly as misguided as the rest of you. You are being illogical … even for a human.”
“You only think that because you’re cold-hearted.”
“Cold?”
‘Yes, and I am warm-hearted.”
In the mirror, I see him hold out my arms and look down at my body. “I am in your warm bedroom and for some reason, I seem to be wearing a fleecy onesie that looks like a teddy bear, Daisy. I feel utterly ridiculous, but I do not feel cold.”
“Well, I rest my case. You don’t even know why you are wearing one of the most desirable items of clothing I own. You are cold and hard.”
My head shakes from side to side, as Quark, who seems baffled by my argument and saddened by my attitude, reverts to his usual point of attack. “You will stop this nonsense, this prevarication, and surrender right this minute!”
“Do you know who Rosa Parks was?”
“What? No, I do not and what is more I —”
“Rosa Parks was a great and fantastically brave woman. She changed the world.”
Quark sighs, forced for the moment to accept my diversion. “And how did she do that?”
“With a single word.”
I can see my eyebrow do that quirky thing in the mirror. Despite himself, Quark’s curious. “What word?”
“No.”
“You will not tell me?”
“The word was ‘no’. Look it up. It’s important; and it will tell you all you need to know about the capacity of a single individual to do something amazing. About the power and bravery of one person, an incredibly vulnerable woman — or girl — to refuse to give in to the inevitable. To face down seemingly impossible odds and win.”
“These odds are overwhelming, Daisy Jacobs.”
“I disagree. To quote Rosa Parks’ inspiration — ‘I will not be trampled over by the iron feet of your oppression’. Overwhelming or not, my answer is the same as Rosa’s: ‘no’”!
Chapter 38
WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE
Become, move on, become. That is … life.” Quark pauses in the middle of Daisy’s bedroom, and strikes a dramatic pose.
“Doesn’t sound like it to me. It sounds like existence,” Daisy says.
“Excuse me,” says Quark huffily, “I was thinking. This is not a conversation for you to join in.”
“So why can I hear you? See those little squiggles in the sentences up there? They’re quotation marks. You’re even present tense now. And you spoke those words out loud, not in my head, which you should leave — right now!”
“In the words of Rosa Parks: ‘no’!” Quark smirks. But it’s wasted on Daisy because he’s not looking into the mirror at the moment, just walking about Daisy’s room and occasionally lying on her bed. He’s talking to himself. And he’s talking out loud, because he still gets muddled over the difference between this thinking and talking lark.
It’s been a tiring day at school, with much food for thought, so he’s in a contemplative mood. Should he need to talk to Daisy — or harangue her — he’ll do it later. Now he’s thinking about the meaning of life.
(I’m not certain, but I suspect this next bit might be a bit … well, dull. By now you know what Quark’s like — all equations and logic. And I’ve got the feeling he’s going to go all philosophical on us. If you’re sticking with it, I’ll make sure Daisy wakes you up before the next interesting part; if we’re lucky, she may even save us altogether.)
Life and existence are synonymous for Quark. Is ‘life’ actually necessary at all, he wonders? Does anyone or anything really need to do more than exist? From his position now, inside a living, breathing human, it appears what he’s done in the past has been to just go through the motions.
He can’t resist going all dramatic and Shakespearian again. “In retrospect, the brief flashes of what passed for life now look like just being alive rather than living a life.”
“You’re right — that’s just what you’ve being doing.” Daisy’s voice once more interrupts Quark’s contemplations.
“There you go again! This is my bit,” huffs Quark. “This is my chance to put my case. To make people understand the reality of being Quark … just a teensy, tiny single point of matter.” He speaks in as insignificant a voice as his colossal ego will allow.
“That’s as maybe, but you keep spouting this gumf out loud,” Daisy says. “I think you’d secretly like to know what life really is, rather than tell people about misbehaving objects that complicate the laws of physics.”
“Right then, oh, wise oracle, I guess you think you are the one who can explain the meaning of my existence … of my life.” Quark feels Daisy’s — his! — body swell with annoyance. He’s an impossibly ancient, infinitely wild … thing from the very heart of the universe. He’s lived countless lives; well, okay, not exactly lived — he’s very, very briefly existed billions of times in a wide range of creatures, forms and beings. Yet this pipsqueak human feels able to teach him about life! “I can barely restrain my frustration,” he says.
“Well, you’re doing a good job of voicing it, but I think you’re beginning to lose control. You need to learn more about the world around you and about yourself. Being truly alive is about growth — at any age. About being more than you think you can be.”
Quark laughs. “That is so far from reality! You are looking for meaning when there is no meaning. You question the justice of what is happening to you with that typical teenage ‘it is not fair’ attitude.” Quark’s mockingly exaggerated teen voice is pretty good — apart from his inability to use contractions. “There is no fair and unfair. There is no meaning or message or explanation. There is just existence. And lack of it. So, Ms Oracle, it turns out that I am here to teach you the meaning of your soon-to-be lack of life. Ha!”
He pauses dramatically, expecting something cutting from Daisy.
He’s now at the dressing table mirror to better continue his lecture and avoid more parental interventions over Daisy’s ‘shouting at herself’. But Daisy is unforthcoming. He can sense her simply staring out at him.
Finally, she breaks the silence. “You should really give a stagey laugh at this point. Deep from the belly, you know. Like some kind of Evil Bad Santa — ‘ha, ha ha’ and then kind of rub your hands together with glee at placing me in such a perilous predicament.”
“Daisy, I am trying for serious here. Trying for apocalyptic menace. I’m trying to scare the bejesus out of you and all you can do is mock me.”
“Oh, sorry, sorry! Okay, straight face.” Daisy makes a sound that, if she were in control of her body, would be a deep, steadying breath. “Right, I’m now taking your terrifyingly intense menace absolutely seriously …”
“Good, because you will not find laughing in the face of adversity in any survival manual, you know,” Quark says with a hard edge quite unlike Daisy’s usual dulcet tone. “It is not a suggestion of what to do when confronted with your imminent oblivion.”
“It’s a coping method.”
“Well, that is facing by not facing.”
“Yes, sort of facing with a squint.”
“That makes no logical sense.”
“I know, sorry. That’s my pesky humanity again, screwing with the universe instead of just lying down in abject surrender. And it’s extraordinary that you make such sense; you being a singularity that goes around the universe ending the life of every living creature that’s struggled to haul itself out of the primordial swamp and into precarious existence. After all, it’s such an important job you do.”
“It is not a job.”
“Oh, sorry! Did I accidentally undermine the fundamental purpose of your existence? Awfully sorry about that, old boy. But ultimately, you’re talking about death and destruction. Don’t hang a fancy label on it. You’re just a cosmic vacuum cleaner, that’s your job.”
“What?!” Quark sputters.
“Just a scaled-up Hoover.”
“Ho
w very dare you! I am hurt.”
“Oh. Dear. What. A. Shame. Never. Mind.”
After the near bantering tone of the past few minutes, a heavy silence hangs between them.
Finally, Daisy speaks again with weighty anguish. “I know you think I’m little more than a child, but there’s so much I want to do. So much I will do.” She pauses and then her voice rings out, louder in his head than it has so far been, “today I am stronger than I was yesterday. I feel it, and I know you do too. I am getting stronger.”
Quark sighs inwardly, keeping the truth of this to himself. He feels sure that he is stronger than before; a little less in control, maybe, and he does truly feel the power of Daisy’s redoubtable spirit. She still refuses to bow down, refuses to give in. And her life-force remains resolute.
Her voice continues to echo from the room in her head she still occupies. “Tomorrow I will learn something new. I will grow. I will be more than I am today. And this will continue until I am dead. And until I am dead, I am alive!”
Chapter 39
A SPADE
Listen, Daisy, when I came here, I had no intention of causing you any trouble at all. I really hate to be the bearer of bad news —”
I interrupt him, “oh, no you don’t. You just love it. You picture yourself in a big black hood, carrying a scythe. You’re the Grim Reaper made real. And you just love it!”
Quark shakes his head sadly. “Not at all, this gives me no pleasure.”
I make a “pfffft” noise.
I know I’ve made a fuss about my age — and being proud of it; being a teenager and not a child, but as a teenager by definition I’m not fully formed and so I admit — reluctantly, obviously — I’m not always equipped to make the best decisions (although being an adult doesn’t guarantee infallibility on that count — see recent political decisions around the world for proof of that), or to cope in the most stressful situations … such as having the entire future of the world on my shoulders.
Daisy Jacobs Saves the World Page 15