by Tom Pollock
“My point is that thoughts are chemistry.” I tossed the lorazepam onto the bed beside her. “And chemistry is physics—electrons swapping around—and physics, at least where it counts, is mathematics.
It doesn’t matter what we’re made of—carbon and hydrogen, protons and electrons—so are bananas, so are bloody oil wells. What matters is how much of it there is, and how it’s arranged. What matters is the pattern, and patterns are the stuff of maths.”
I sucked in a breath and held it for a second in a silent prayer—please don’t tell me I’m crazy—then let it go.
“There’s an equation that’s you, Ingrid, and an equation that’s me. I’m going to find it, and I’m going to prove it.”
She watched me for the longest time.
Please.
“Okay,” she said. “Where do we start?”
We. My grin made my face ache. I opened the notebook, flicked to the second page, and passed it to her.
“Here.” On the page were scrawled some simple sums.
0 + 1 = 1
1 + 1 = 2
2 + 1 = 3
3 + 2 = 5
5 + 3 = 8 . . .
And below it, the general formula for the series:
n = (n − 1) + (n − 2)
Ingrid frowned.
“The Fibonacci sequence?”
“Yup, every term the sum of the two before it. It’s the simplest recursive formula I know.”
“So?”
“So”—we were getting to it now, and my heart felt like an old-fashioned alarm clock ringing in my chest—“think about it. What are you, Ingrid?”
“A . . . girl?”
“No.”
“No? I really am, Pete, but if you’re looking for me to prove it to you, wow, you are heading in the wrong direction.”
“I—I—I . . .” Great. Not only was I severely tongue-tied, but the way she rolled over, blew the hair off her forehead, and smirked at me made my blood abandon my brain for a dramatic surge southwards. I breathed out hard.
“I mean,” I said, speaking slowly so as not to stammer, “what makes you different than anyone else?”
She frowned, stretched out her arms, and propped her chin on steepled fingers.
“Okay,” she said, “I’ll play.” She thought for a moment. “My memories, I guess,” she said. “They’re the only thing I have that no one else does.”
“Exactly!” I resisted the urge to air-punch. “And what are memories? They’re experiences that changed you, and then you remember them and they change you again; the sound of your mother’s heartbeat, the first time you eat a strawberry, the first time you step on a Lego and fall down swearing . . .” I groped for more examples.
“The first time you have sex?” Ingrid offered.
I flushed. “You did that just to see what colour I went, didn’t you?”
“Or maybe I got tired of waiting for you to find a mathematically perfect way to ask me out.”
I blushed harder. “The point is, your memories drive your choices, pushing you into your next experience, which becomes your next memory: a self-extending set, always adding itself to its endlessly recurring past, always the sum of those before it, just like . . .”
But she didn’t need me to lead her there. Her eyes were already on the formula, her mouth open in a little O.
“So, if the essence of us is memory, and the essence of memory is recursion, then what if recursion is the essence of us?”
“A-R-I-A.” I drew the letters in the air as I said them. “Autonomous Recursive Intuition Algorithms. Songs that sing and hear themselves. I just need to listen hard enough to work out the notes.”
I became aware of my voice, desperate, filling the room. I shoved my hands into my pockets, suddenly shy.
“And then I’ll know,” I said.
“Know what?”
“What I’m so afraid of.”
She looked at me for a long time, her brown eyes wide.
No, don’t say it, don’t . . .
“Pete, it’s impossible.”
I felt myself shrink. No.
“I mean, it’s a lovely idea, but even if you’re right, the complexity of the calculation, the number of variables, it’s . . . it’s unrealistic.”
“It’s science.”
“Sounds more like science fiction.”
“Doesn’t everything?” I pleaded. “We live in a world where we can drag hundred-tonne trains along at hundreds of miles an hour by harnessing the motion of electrons that are ten million times too small to see. We can blast people into space and calculate their return trajectory precisely enough to get them back not crushed, not asphyxiated, and not fried to a crisp. We can steal memories from rats by giving them a chemical while they’re remembering them. You think ARIA’s impossible, Ingrid?” I held her gaze. “With all the insane things that happen in the world every day, how could you possibly know?”
I crashed down beside her on the bed, suddenly very tired, and closed my eyes. I thought about all the times I’d hugged myself on that Nightcrawler duvet, unable to stop shaking; all the times I’d shoved myself full of food and waited waited waited to vomit it up, my stomach an overripe fruit ready to burst; the plastic taste of all the capsules of Laura I’d ever swallowed, and the way it slowed my thoughts like a muddy river bottom; all the times I’d seen people chatting, heard them laughing, and held myself back, stood away, scared of having an attack around them, scared of their judgment, their contempt, until my world had shrunk and shrunk until it was basically just me, Mum, and Bel . . .
. . . and now Ingrid.
“Undeniable, mathematical proof of who we are.” Ingrid almost sounded like she wanted it more than I did.
Please, I thought, just let me have this. Please believe with me.
I felt a hand, the palm clad in scratchy wool, creep into mine.
“Pete,” she said quietly. I didn’t open my eyes.
“Yeah?”
“If . . . if you ever were looking for a mathematically perfect way to ask me out, you know, for real . . .”
I took the shallowest breath I could and held it so she wouldn’t notice.
“I think you just found it.”
NOW
I vomit into darkness.
My stomach muscles buck, and bile burns up my throat. The vomit spatters into a fabric barrier close to my face, flecking me. I . . . where . . . what?
I can’t see, I can’t breathe. I gulp for oxygen and suck fabric and chunks of acid puke back into my mouth. I want to scream, but I can’t let it out.
I can’t move. Christ, help me, I can’t move. Something vicious bites into my wrists as I struggle. I huff sick, astringent like glue fumes, and blow the cloth as far from my face as I can. But there’s not enough air. Not enough. Not . . . enough.
Where am I?
“Shit.” The voice is female, hard and familiar. And then I remember. Rita. 57. I’m stretched out on my back, swaying in time to footsteps. I think I’m being carried on some sort of stretcher.
“He’s having some kind of seizure. He’s going to suffocate.”
Fingers snare the fabric, peel it up above my mouth.
Fresh air chills my vomit-caked chin, and I suck it down greedily; one frantic breath, two, and then finally I scream.
Why? I want to ask. Why? But my jaw muscles don’t work anymore. And going around and around in my head, over and over and over, are numbers:
172013172013172013172013172013172013172013172013
RUNRUNRUNRUNRUNRUNRUNRUN
A door slams open near my head. The swaying stops. Cold metal is pressed against my wrists and my bindings are cut free. I’m carried by my wrists and ankles. Rough hands shove me, making me gasp, pressing me to a bed. A blistering cold frame.
“He tried to b
ite me. Secure him.”
Four hiss-zipping noises. My wrists are held again. Help me. Help me.
17-20-13. My legs try to move, but my ankles are bound too.
Oh god oh god oh god oh god. Breathe, just focus on breathing; a respirator beeping, in and out, in and out, every two point five seconds. Mum.
They have Mum.
I remember Rita telling me, Sometimes the obvious answer’s the right one, and then, only a handful of minutes later, on patterns, It’s our job to obscure them, to make sure they’re as complex and confusing as possible.
I trusted her. I trusted her when she as good as told me she was lying to me.
They have Mum, but she’s alive. She survived, Pete. You can too.
My breathing calms just enough that I can make out voices.
“Get the damn machine in here.”
Stricken as I am, I can hear the shock in the silence that follows.
“Do tell me,” Rita adds acidly, “if you have a better idea.”
Another second’s hesitation. Then the squeak of rubber soles on a concrete floor as Frankie leaves the room. The door slams.
Nothing. Silence and panting breath and blindness. A suspended moment. The door bangs open again and I jump. Shoes on concrete, different shoes. The whir of runners as something heavy is wheeled in.
“I’ll prep him.” Rita’s voice, solid and expressionless as rock.
Air burns in my retch-raw throat. I twitch and jerk at every sound.
A scrape of metal on concrete. The click-clack of scissors below my chin and my chest is exposed to the air. Goosebumps pucker on my skin. Something sticky is pressed down hard on my chest. Fingers, startlingly warm, creep up under my hood and press more sticky pads to my temples. I want to struggle, but I can’t. A high-frequency jolt shakes my skeleton, and I scream with the shock of it.
“Dose one,” Rita says.
“Dose wha—”
FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK
I can’t think. Everything seizes up. White noise. Searing, sickening pain. Black ink blooms in front of my eyes.
“Dose two.”
Whirring pain, like a drill boring into my temple, spitting fragments of skull, a red spiral of brain curling round the bit. I can feel myself dying.
“Hold.”
My lips peel back from my teeth with a horrid, adhesive sensation, and I start to keen.
“Dose three.”
A sound like a whip crack inside my head, and I’m sagging, plastic ties buried in the flesh of my wrists. I can feel bruises blooming along my spine where I must have slammed back through the thin pad onto the bed frame, but I don’t remember doing that. I must have blacked out.
“Okay, let’s try him.” Rita’s voice is muzzy in my ears.
My head lolls back. I am spent, the same exhaustion I feel at the end of a full-on five-alarm panic attack. It’s almost a relief. My endocrine system has left it all out on the field.
Shreds of light creep in at the bottom of my hood. The fabric is being rolled up over my face. Fingertips check my pulse. The light dazzles me and, through watering eyes, I see a hand retracting from the side of my neck, a hand with white fingers but a black palm.
No, not a black palm, a gloved one.
The hands are clad in fingerless gloves.
She’s standing over me. Her face is tense, her blonde hair scraped back behind her head. Her eyes lock onto mine. Seven long seconds pass.
“I . . . In . . . Ingrid? No! NO! Don’t you d-d-dare f-f-f-fucking hurt-t-t-t her . . .”
The syllables come out like Morse code, but then I tail off, because she’s not zip-tied to a bed. Ingrid doesn’t look like a prisoner.
“Wh-wh-why? What? W-wh-what are you . . . What are you d-d-d . . . ?”
“What are you d-d-d . . . ?”
I hear another voice echoing my words, flat and emotionless as a speaking clock. I see Ingrid’s lips moving in perfect time, matching mine, dot for dot, dash for dash.
I fall silent. My throat is full of broken glass.
“How are you doing that?”
And even though I’m only thinking the question, it’s Ingrid who voices it, in that flat, sterile voice. I watch the piercing in her lip bob as she shapes the words.
Her eyes flicker up over my head, and only then do I remember Rita’s still behind me.
“I’m tuned in,” Ingrid says.
Tuned in? I think. Tuned in to what? What the fuck, Ingrid?
“My name’s not Ingrid, Pete,” she says. “It’s Ana.”
She’s looking at me, scrutinising my face, her eyes flickering back and forth as though she’s reading.
“Peter,” Rita asks, still behind me, “where’s your sister?”
But I can’t take my eyes off Ingrid’s face.
Why is she doing this? Ingrid, no, I think. Please, we’re friends.
“We are friends, Pete,” she confirms. “You’re my best friend and I’m sorry I had to lie to you.” Now her voice throbs with sincerity. “I’ll explain everything, I promise, but you have to tell us where Bel is.”
Shit. She is. She actually is. She’s actually reading my mind. How? Ingrid? Please get me out of here. Help me. Help Mum. She gave you chicken Kiev. Ingrid. Ingrid. Christ!
She looks up at Rita and shakes her head.
“You pushed him too hard. He’s confused. I can’t get him to focus on the question long enough to pick up an answer.”
Rita leans in close, studying me. I feel her breath washing over my neck. It smells of pepper.
“Maybe I’ll dose him again,” she ponders.
“No!” For a second I think Ingrid’s voicing my thoughts again, but she’s halfway towards Rita, hand extended in protest. “No, there’s no need, just let me . . . just let me talk to him.”
My head feels like soft clay. Through my blurred vision, Ingrid’s blonde hair gives her a halo.
This can’t be happening. This is impossible.
“With all the insane things that happen every day”—the familiar brown eyes are calm—“how can you possibly know that? Come on, Pete, you’re a mathematician, a scientist. This is the scientific method; adjust your theory to fit the evidence. I’m here. I’m evidence. So adjust.”
I grit my teeth. Then how? Explain it to me. How are you reading my mind?
“Do you know how many distinct sounds there are in English?”
I do not.
“Forty-four. Do you know how many muscles are involved in your facial expressions? Forty-three. Add in micro-gestures and your body is more than capable of broadcasting every thought in your head without you speaking, Petey—especially yours—and I’m . . . I’m just particularly well calibrated to receive them. Well, reflect them, really.”
Reflect. A memory wells up through the exhausted mess of my brain. Mum, years ago, hands bridged over her potato waffles, trying to explain something she’d been looking into at work.
“M-m-mirror?” is all I manage to get out, but Ingrid understands—of course she does.
“That’s right, Petey.” She nods. “Mirror neurons. The same thing that lets you intuit when your sister is having a bad day, or when your mum needs a drink. Everyone has them. I just have more—two hundred percent more. I’m a mirror. What you feel, I feel. What you think, I think.”
Suddenly, absurdly, all I can think of is the sticky tissues in the bin under my desk and me thinking of the tissues then and me thinking about me thinking about the tissues now. And then I remember a maths textbook open on the acknowledgments and how proud, how outstandingly elated I was to have a friend who got me, who was so on my wavelength that it seemed—and I want to laugh and scream and claw my face off—it seemed like she could read my mind.
No Jean Grey?
The idea of telepathy always freake
d me out.
My face is hot and tears of humiliation spill down my cheeks.
“Yeah,” she says, and there’s a catch at the back of her throat, as if she wants to cry too. “Sorry.”
I turn my head away and the suction pads on my temple pull at burned skin.
“T-t-t-tort . . .” I begin
“This isn’t torture, Peter,” Rita almost tuts.
It fucking feels like it is.
Ingrid looks as stricken as I feel. “I know it hurts,” she says. “And I’m sorry. I know it hurts so much. But we have to. You were panicking and we can’t communicate with you when you panic. Your pulse was at 220; you were spiralling. We needed to shock you to interrupt that, to the point where I could read you. Do you understand? I’m sorry, but it was the only way. We have to find Bel.”
Every word throbs with sincerity. Or maybe that’s imagined. I look up at her with eyes that feel heavy, and think one word.
Why?
Ingrid swallows hard before she answers. Her eyes flick to Rita behind me. “You know why.”
And I do know: a faceless man in a dusty black suit with meaty, thick-palmed hands; that expression of horrified recognition on Mum’s face in the museum CCTV footage.
Wolf.
My dad, I’m afraid of my dad.
“I know, Petey, I am too.”
I look down. Red-raw bracelets encircle my wrists where I’ve pulled against the zip ties. My jaw feels loose and a long string of drool descends from my bottom lip like a spider on a web.
Watch, listen, think. Look at what they’ve done to me. We had to. Could they be telling the truth? Could I still trust Ingrid? Hope kindles in my chest. Could she still be my friend?
As that thought crosses my mind, I swear I see Ingrid flinch. For the barest fraction of a second, her mask slips and I see her as I saw her at school, reflected in the girls’ bathroom mirror. Scared and vulnerable and scraped raw.
No. She’s not my friend. These people are not my friends. They’ve exposed themselves with zip ties and hoods and the fucking car battery they have wired up to my skull. When Bel told me to run, she didn’t mean from Dad; she meant from them.