Distortion

by Gautam Malkani

  I try not to topple Dad’s leaning tower of rotting Domino’s pizza boxes as I once again lift up my rucksack.

  “It wasn’t a big deal, Dylan. It wasn’t fake news stories, it was just fake names. Fake quotes. It was merely misinformation not disinformation. The motive wasn’t malicious.”

  After they first got divorced, I used to reckon it must be pretty cool that Dad could order a pizza whenever he wanted – that he could tip the delivery man whatever he wanted.

  “In any case, most fake news stories don’t even contain things like quotes or names, just as they don’t contain numbers or statistics. Makes it harder for people to verify the facts. So, you see, if I’d been involved in writing fake stories, I wouldn’t have included any quotes at all.”

  His tower of pizza boxes is low-rise compared with the floor-to-light-switch stack of newspapers. We’re talking call the structural engineers.

  “Come on, Dylan, this whole stinking century started with a bullshit news story. You ever heard of the Y2K bomb? Not many journalists checking the facts on that one. It was just too good a story.”

  Instead of just owning the fact that he’s clearly full of fake news and bullshit, Dad keeps switching back to dissing the “dishonest mainstream news media”. I mean, how fucking childish is that?

  Stare again at all his newspaper stacks and it’s like some video glitch in my head – all them mental video clips I’d put down to Mum’s side effects start making a little more sense. That time she got upset that I’d started watching Channel 4 News. That time she’d caught me spending my birthday bucks on The Economist. Her full-on meltdown when she found out I’d been saving my copies of The Economist – stashing them under my bed like a stockpile of painkilling porn.

  “But I thought you’d been putting all these out with the recycling, Dhilan …?

  “ … I’m not saying don’t use them for your coursework, darling, but these days you can get everything on the internet …

  “ … All these piles of them here – they’re a health hazard …

  “ … Stop being such a smart alec, Dhilan – a fire hazard is a health hazard.”

  And then starting up with her howling and weeping and howling and screaming and howling and banging her head against my bedroom wall.

  The sight of Dad’s stacks makes me wanna tell him the exact same thing: that these days he can read any story he needs online – on all them digital archives.

  The sight of Dad’s stacks makes me wanna pull out my own fone right here and now and dial my mum. Tell her that maybe my own stacks were just genetic – like birds got genes for building nests and spiders got genes for building webs. Ain’t no more significant than my hairy knuckles. That I ain’t nothing like my dad.

  26

  SO WHY THE fuck would anyone do this? I mean even anyone in their wrong mind. It’s like the scene in the horror film where the characters think, Oh look, there’s a creepy, derelict house in the middle of the forest – I know, let’s go inside.

  I’ve got my office security pass. Ramona’s got her student card pinned to what I think might be her bra strap. Cos a student ID card ain’t just some ticket to cheaper cinema tickets: if you use that shit correct, it’s a VIP, access-all-areas-cos-I’m-only-on-work-experience pass.

  What’s that you said? The switches in this creepy, derelict house are busted? No sweat – the windows will let in the light from the full moon outside.

  The late-night security guard spends more time checking out my pass. Holds it up to a light that catches her blingy shoulder epaulettes. Kind of light that says, Go to bed now; go to sleep. Bag-checks my coffee cup as well as my rucksack.

  Guys, check out this red splodge of modern art they’ve painted directly onto the floorboards. Neat. And that spillage of strawberry syrup. Awesome. Come on, let’s go upstairs – it’ll be fun.

  Security guard writes down both our names. Claims it’s some fire-regulation shit in case the office burns down while we’re inside it. Says goodnight as she lets us through.

  Inside, most of the night staff are now stuck on power-saving mode. Just feeding the website with stories from America. They do that up in the newsroom, though – the IT department should be dead.

  In the stairwell, a wall-mounted security camera swivels. Ain’t ever noticed they swivelled before. That settles it, then: we’re dropping the lift plan and taking the stairs.

  “So this is what a white-collar working environment looks like,” goes Ramona. “I should take a photo for posterity. Put on my CV that I once set foot in one.”

  She holds open the door to the IT department and starts scoping around for a light switch. I tell her the lighting is motion-detector; she starts busting out kung-fu moves.

  “Fuck’s sake.”

  “You wouldn’t complain if I was twerking.”

  Turns out the lighting is on some kinda double-lock type shit: we have to play Hunt the Light Switch in order to activate the motion sensors. Shoulda just brought my brand-new single-function flashlight. Ever been to a wedding when something goes wrong with the lighting or the mic or whatever and so someone yells, “Technical hitch!” and then everyone else starts LOLing? Why the fuck is that funny?

  While we try and fix our lighting issues, I realise I been rolling out the wrong horror movie cliché for what we doing here tonight. This ain’t like entering some creepy derelict house. When people in them films voluntarily walk into the creepy house/ attic/basement, they’re flexing shit like choice and judgement – stupid dumbfuckulous idiot judgement, but still choice and judgement. Whereas me, I ain’t choosing to do this. Wouldn’t be such a fool. What’s going down in this office tonight is closer to the more modern-day horror movie cliché – the one where the person’s hand is forced by a technical hitch. Lost in a forest full of werewolves? Damn, no network coverage. Stuck in a haunted mansion? Fuck, no signal. No battery. No data allowance. All those handheld hotlines to the cops or your mummy or Google turned into uselessness slabs of plastic. But whereas in the horror films people are forced into doing things cos their tech has been disabled, I’m being forced into this thing here tonight cos the technology enables it. Compels it. It’s like that unwritten law for every illegal file-sharer: if you’re able to do it so easy, then surely you must be allowed to?

  You’d be dumb not to.

  You have to.

  All the same, I deploy the whole belt-and-braces approach.

  Just in case.

  Belt: Ramona stands by the doors to the department so she can warn me if someone heads this way.

  Braces: I clip a mirror to my laptop screen in case someone approaches from the other direction.

  Belt: Plug in my laptop at some desk I ain’t never been known to use before – i.e. one of the ones by the coffee-dispensing conversation machines.

  Braces: I log in as someone else – this other freelance data-enterer who always annoys the shit outta everyone by reading out loud as he types up the corrections to craply scanned stories. Doesn’t do this cos he’s some thickshit who can’t read without moving his lips, though – he does it cos he reckons the scanning errors are just fucking hilarious. Helpfully, the dipshit also mumbles what he’s typing when he enters his username and password.

  Belt: I disable the automatic email notifications that get sent to the Project Manager whenever archive stories are created, modified or updated.

  Braces: Just in case this don’t work, I already created a batch of brand-new stories earlier on – during normal, non-dodgy office hours.

  Belt: These stories that I created from scratch ain’t just blank or empty templates – otherwise someone else might’ve noticed they were nothing and hit delete.

  Braces: Instead of just filling these stories with gobbledegook, I filled them with text from a bunch of random other stories that are already on the online archive – i.e. it looks like they just been duplicated by mistake.

  Staple-gunning the trousers to the waist: I gave these duplicate stories the exact
same filenames as the originals. Technically that shit shouldn’t be possible, but the system lets you do it if you just replace all the full stops in the original filenames with italic full stops in the duplicates. Apparently there’s a night editor on this paper who’s famous for being able to spot an italic full stop at fifty paces. That’s how I got me the idea.

  As a result of all this prep, what I do next is as piss-easy as it is inevitable. Remove my dad’s cuttings book from my rucksack, open it up at the first page.

  Because you’re able to.

  You’d be dumb not to.

  You have to.

  The book is proper heavy. Leather-bound. A latch, but no lock. I open it up at the first page.

  Leather on the cover is old and frayded.

  I open the book.

  Ain’t no markings on the cover – no gold-leaf initials or branding or nothing. I open it up at the first page and start typing his stories directly into the digital archive.

  But as a favour to both him and my client, I make sure to leave out all the stuff Dad told me he’d faked – i.e. all his made-up names of eyewitnesses and all their bullshit made-up quotes.

  Another belt: Don’t include my dad’s byline. This means his stories look like the ones you see in The Economist – where they don’t tell you the name of whoever it was who wrote the story so you just assume they was all written by some big-dog uber-being called The Economist.

  Another pair of braces: Don’t fix up any of Dad’s stories with character-recognition software or metadata – i.e. they don’t contain any keywords – i.e. they won’t come up in any search results – i.e. they probly won’t even be read by anyone ever again in the history of ever.

  But now that they been digitised, at least they’ll still exist.

  And another belt: Because Ramona’s standing over by the door, she doesn’t know what I’m actually doing. Reckons I’m just downloading and printing out stuff for free to help me with my dissertation.

  And another pair of braces: Even though Ramona ain’t clued in on what’s really going down here, I made her swear to keep tonight’s doings on the hush. Told her don’t even mention it to her friend Naliah the foot model – i.e. ain’t no way word will get back to the Botox men.

  Even without including Dad’s fake content, typing up and digitising a whole year’s worth of press cuttings ain’t exactly a cakewalk – even for some turbo-typist like yours truly. Even though I’m using one of them detachable ergonomic keyboards. Even though I pre-rubbed my fingers with Nurofen ibuprofen gel to stop them cramping with the speed. Even though I already read, reread and practically memorised all his stories at least fuckty-two times before we came here.

  The stories themselves fall into three general categories: boring, less boring and weird-but-boring.

  The boring stories are mostly about commuter misery and struggle and suffering.

  The less boring stories are mostly about transport accidents that disrupted people’s commutes, strike threats that might disrupt people’s commutes, plus various civil disturbances, campaigns, marches and demos that disrupted traffic, public transport and other forms of commutes.

  The weird-but-boring stories are about one of them campaigns in particular. I ain’t wanting to make a big deal outta them just cos they weird. After all, some stories always gonna be weirder than others – that’s just the way shit goes. And, anycase, only about seven or eight of Dad’s stories actually fall into the category I’m calling weird. All of them are about this crackpot who was campaigning to force the government to change every single internet domain name. My dad had reported on the whole campaign – from the initial petition to some final fancy-dress protest. Could probly paste some of the newspaper clippings right here to give you a picture. Or I could include some web links. But who the hell’s got that kinda time? According to my dad’s stories, the crackpot’s problem was basically this: turns out that in ancient Hebrew there ain’t no numerical signs – instead, numbers are repped by letters. And apparently the letter “w” – as in “www” – represents the number six. Given that, back then, everyone and every organisation was falling the fuck over each other to stick the letters www in front of their names, this crackpot was freaking out cos he thought that the biblical warning made famous by various assorted Hollywood horror films was finally kicking off – the one about everyone bearing the three-digit number of the beast. So obviously when I read these stories, I was like, duh, maybe this might possibly be of some significance? Maybe I should start getting scared or cold or anxious – or at least grow a few goose-pimples outta respect. But, way I saw it, the guy was just another of them whining cranks who reckons the whole internet is some big, bad force of evilness. For starters, his campaign only got about as far as second base – Dad’s stories about it stop after the guy gets arrested for climbing up some random town hall wearing a pair of red tights, plastic horns and carrying a pitchfork. Secondly, according to Dad’s stories, various linguists and theologists were having bust-ups over whether www actually meant the number of the beast anyway – some of them reckoned www simply meant six multiplied by three. If you punch that into the calculator on your fone, you’ll find it works out as eighteen. Thirdly, turns out that the protestor was locked in some longed-out battle with a cyber-squatter who was sitting on the www domain name that the protestor wanted for his own internet start-up – a company that just happened to be in the business of selling, yep, internet domain names. Dad’s cuttings book also contains another bunch of weird stories about red herrings. For real, though, he literally wrote stories about these red-tinted herrings that they found in the Thames.

  So I’m uploading the last of Dad’s stories onto the digital archive and truthfulness I can’t wait to be done with them. Not just cos of their boringness or pointlessness. Not just cos I wanna get a move on for security reasons. And not cos Ramona is now getting antsy and starting to rush me something serious. It’s cos I’m getting antsy. Don’t even send a goodnight text to my mum. After I’m done with Dad’s stories, I re-rub my hands with Nurofen gel, then actually do what I’d told Ramona I came here to do: I download and print out about 200 pages of dissertation research using the client’s printers and paper and staplers and basically anything that could be defined as Misuse of Corporate Property. Make sure to sign in as myself for all this in order to leave a decoy digital footprint. After all, who’s gonna suspect me of doing something I shouldn’t be doing if I get caught doing something else I shouldn’t be doing? Something pretty bad but not technically criminal. Something that’ll inject this whole 1am mission with a dose of alternative truthfulness. Young Carer’s Playbook #456: When engaging in necessary subterfuge, always make sure your bullshit can blend with the truth to form an alternate truth in case you get busted. And in the same pulsating vein, it’s now time for my belt-and-braces coup de slam-dunk. You see, when I said Ramona had pinned her student ID pass to what I think is her left bra strap, what I forgot to mention was there weren’t hardly anything else on her torso for her to pin it to. When I’d run this part of the plan by her, she took some serious arm-twisting. Asked me if there was something properly wrong with me. And then, all sudden-like, she said she was up for it. Even suggested she’d wear fishnets – but we figured they might not let us in if they thought she was a hooker.

  Removing the belt: First we make out in the stairwell and then in a meeting room named after the newspaper’s founder.

  Removing the braces: We don’t bother with the bathroom cos ain’t no security cameras in there.

  Removing the bra straps: And maybe cos we on camera, I steer clear of both her footwear and the feet inside them.

  Removing her high-hip, lace-trim briefs: And cos I steer clear of her feet, we’re basically miming actual, standard-issue, non-dysfunctional sex. I think the technical term for it is dry-humping. Next thing, shit gets real. As in proper. I mean, it ain’t like I can just use my fingers cos my hands are still covered in Nurofen gel.

  It happens
in the kitchenette rather than the stairwell. Ramona reflected in the rows of microwave ovens. Saying the words “Don’t stop, Dillon” like she’s asking a question.

  As we exit the office, we can tell we been busted from the look on the faces of the ground-floor security desk. None of them saying nothing – I guess cos it would involve talking about sex.

  While we’re in kitchenette doing whatever it is we’re doing, I keep replaying those three words in my head: “Don’t stop, Dillon.” And eventually I end up hearing a full stop between the words “don’t” and “stop”. And so of course, what I do is I stop. Both of us still pumping some horror film adrenalin rush as I buckle up my rucksack and stuff.

  No one’s calling the cops on us, though. The late-night security desk will just hand a report to the day desk like a scribbled-down note of some hazy 3am dream. Maybe throw in some security camera footage so they ain’t gotta actually write the word “sex”.

  Next, I try and think of things I could maybe do for her – make her feel more comfortable. But it’s hard to make someone feel comfortable in some scuzzy kitchenette. Dirty coffee mugs and the stink of expired milk cartons. Skirting boards lined with plastic boxes of rat poison.

  We say goodnight to the security desk and carry on walking out the exit. Tomorrow they’ll literally report my ass to HR. Then they’ll probly bust me for misconduct and kick my butt off the online archive project. But fuck it. My work here is done.

  I step towards one of the vending machines and ask Ramona if she’d like anything. Even open the fridge – some big fuck-off chocolate cake with icing that says “Good Luck in Your New Job”.

  “Dillon, did we just? For a minute or so just now. Did we just have actual sex?”

  I tell her there are lots of different definitions of sex.