by Tom Fletcher
Lowther Street took him up to the harbor. There he looked briefly at the dark water of the marina, which made him uneasy, and then turned abruptly left and headed for the building in which Yasmin lived. All of the lights were off, but then it was late; so what did he expect? She was probably in bed, but still, she wouldn’t mind being woken up by a friend. A friend in need.
Arthur raised his finger to the buzzer and then leaned on it with all his weight. He heard the sound of it from her flat up above. Like an insect or something. It went on for a long time. He released the buzzer and waited. That must have woken her up. Must have.
He pressed the buzzer again.
Still no answer.
He heard the ocean lapping at the man-made shore behind him and pressed the buzzer again, feeling more urgency now. Still no answer.
He turned around, but could see nothing untoward. The Wave was lit tonight, and the swans bobbed in the water, heads tucked under their wings, lit up either blue or green, depending on where they were positioned in relation to the neon strips of the sculpture.
The boats moored nearby rattled and clacked and jangled, their rigging starting to sing as a breeze picked up.
Arthur could not bear to remain there near the sea any more. Yasmin was definitely not answering the door. She must be sleeping very deeply. What time was it now? He didn’t know. He staggered away from her building, and made an attempt to run along past the Vagabond—now closed—to Strand Street. He turned left, then right back on to Lowther Street, and ran clumsily until he came to Michael Moon’s bookshop, where he stopped and put his hands on his knees, and threw up. That won’t do my red eye any good, he thought.
Michael Moon’s bookshop. The shopfront was a rich blue with the words “OLD BOOKS, MAPS & PRINTS” painted in a yellowy cream. Arthur wiped his mouth and peered through the window at all the local history books and curling maps. It was a wonderful shop, closed now obviously, it being whatever time it was in the middle of the night. Arthur hadn’t been inside it for years, not since his mother had last taken him there. And where was she, anyway? Why was she dead? Why had she jumped?
Of course he could never know. A couple of boy racers flew past in their little cars and, still gazing in through the window of that little shop, he realized the truth. He could never know. He would never know—that was what it meant. That was what her jumping meant. She was dead, she was gone, and with her had gone the explanation. Anything but an explanation direct from her would be speculation and nothing more.
Arthur turned around and crossed the road. He didn’t check for traffic, but there wasn’t any, so he made it safely to the other side. He opened the gate into the tiny little bit of parkland that surrounded the old church building between Church Street and Queen Street. He lay down on his back, on the cool green grass beneath a young tree, and tried to sleep.
BRACKET’S DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNITY
Usually Isobel got up and went to work before Bracket, but for some reason Artemis had rung Bracket’s mobile late the previous night, waking both Bracket and Isobel up, and requested—demanded—that Bracket turn in for work at 6 a.m.
“Sorry,” Bracket had replied. “It’s a bit short notice, isn’t it?”
“Don’t you need this job?” Artemis had said.
“Artemis,” Bracket had protested, “you can’t just make threats like that. I could go to the union. You’re talking about unfair dismissal.” He wasn’t in the union, of course, but hoped that Artemis wouldn’t call his bluff.
“You can go to the police, for all I care,” Artemis said. “I’m not sure you understand who or what you’re dealing with here. Come in tomorrow and I’ll explain in more depth.”
Bracket had opened his mouth to reply, but just then Artemis had hung up. Isobel was now sitting up in bed, too.
“Who was that?” she said.
“Artemis,” Bracket said. “He wants me in at six tomorrow.”
“He shouldn’t be ringing you at this time,” Isobel said. “He shouldn’t want you in at that time tomorrow, either. You’re not going, are you?”
“Yeah,” Bracket said, after a moment, “I’m going.”
He then didn’t sleep at all.
And now here he was, spooning soggy cereal into his mouth at the kitchen table at half past five in the morning, the room bathed in the dim orange glow of the street-lamp outside. He’d left the light switched off because his eyes felt so sensitive; his whole being felt sensitive at this time of day.
“Hey!”
Bracket nearly jumped out of his seat. He turned to see Isobel standing, swaying, in the kitchen doorway.
“Please stop being so noisy,” she said tiredly, her eyes still more or less closed. She was clearly still half asleep. “You’re banging your spoon about on the bowl.”
“What?” Bracket said. “I’m sorry. Yeah, I’m sorry. I’ll be quiet, I promise.”
“No, I’m sorry,” Isobel said, and shook her head. “I just didn’t sleep, because I was worrying.”
“I know,” Bracket said. “You go back to sleep. I’ll be quiet now.”
“Sorry,” Isobel murmured once more, then she turned and melted into the darkness of the hallway. Bracket listened to her footsteps as she ascended the staircase.
Tuesday. Fucking Tuesday.
The call center was empty of staff save for Artemis himself, who was seated on the command center and tapping away feverishly at his laptop. Bracket slowly approached him through the maze of desks, uncertain whether or not Artemis realized he was there. He noticed a piece of A4 paper taped to the screen on Oscar’s desk. The sheet of paper was almost filled with just one word, in capital letters thick and black, made up of many heavy, repeated biro strokes:
BREATHE
This was unexpected because Oscar came across as such a snide little bastard—not the type to let the job get to him. But, Bracket supposed, customer service could be a great leveler.
“Bracket!” Artemis said, without looking away from his screen. “You’re here!” His voice was stern and deep and loud, and he made the statement sound like an imperative, somehow.
“I’m here,” Bracket said. “Yeah. I’m here.” He felt slightly sick, probably because he hadn’t had enough sleep.
“I’m ready to tell you more about what we need to do,” Artemis said. He looked over toward Bracket, who was still standing amongst the desks, looking a little lost. “About your development opportunity.”
“My development opportunity?” Bracket said. “What’s that?”
“An opportunity for you to develop,” Artemis said. “An opportunity for you to progress your career. To take your career to the next level within the Interext hierarchy. Within the structure.”
“A promotion?” Bracket almost felt a little hopeful.
“No!” Artemis said firmly, and laughed. “Not a promotion! A development opportunity! It means you get to experience the superior role without committing to it.”
“O-K,” said Bracket. He waited for Artemis to elaborate, but after a moment it became apparent that no further elaboration would be forthcoming.
“Are you coming up here or not?” Artemis’s gesture indicated the command center.
“Yeah, sure,” Bracket said, hurrying forward. “Look, Artemis, I’m still not certain I understand.”
“All right!” Artemis threw both hands up in the air, feigning exaggerated exasperation. He swiveled around on his chair to face Bracket, who now stood beside him on the command center platform. “I’ll be honest with you. A development opportunity is where you’re given extra responsibilities, but your pay—and everything else, really—remains the same. But, truly, it does stand you in good stead for when jobs at the higher level become available.”
“So … if I take on a development opportunity, and then a role that matches my new responsibilities becomes available, would I automatically get that new role?”
“What? No, you’d still have to apply for it.”
“Then …
” Bracket frowned and shook his head. “I’m not sure I want this development opportunity, really. Doesn’t sound that great.”
“This is how companies work these days,” Artemis agreed. “It’s standard industry practice. You’d still have to apply for the job, but if you don’t take on these development opportunities, then you may as well not bother.”
Bracket nodded. What a world of shit, he was thinking.
“You know how we identify employees who might be suitable for a development opportunity?” Artemis asked.
“How?”
“We identify a need,” Artemis said. “We identify employees who desperately need their job.”
“Doesn’t everybody?” Bracket said. He shifted uncomfortably.
“Well, they do, but everybody also has a moral or ethical line drawn in the sand over which they will not step unless circumstances prove exceptional. So we look for people in those exceptional circumstances.”
“I see,” Bracket said. “OK.”
Artemis grinned.
“I’m not going to pretend that you’re going to like your new role, Bracket,” he said.
“I could say no,” Bracket suggested.
“Will you?”
Bracket sat down. “You still haven’t told me what my development opportunity is,” he said.
“I need to start at the beginning,” Artemis explained. “We will get on to the specifics of your role all in due course. Also, I need to remind you of the confidentiality clause you signed when you first started working here.”
“OK,” Bracket said. “But that was for Outsourcing Unlimited. Not for Interext.”
“Yeah,” Artemis said, “but it’s all transferred over. Don’t worry about it.”
“OK,” Bracket said. He felt like he was becoming an “OK” machine.
“So. You signed a confidentiality agreement, and what I’m about to tell you cannot be disclosed. It’s covered by the terms of that agreement, understand?”
“OK, yes, I understand.”
Outside the sun shone brightly. There were no clouds in the sky, as if they had all rained themselves out of existence last night. It was a cold day, though. Cold and hard like a stone plucked from the seabed.
“A good few years ago, Interext embarked upon a very large project,” Artemis said, as he leaned back and entwined his fingers behind his head. “Do you want a drink, by the way? You look fucked.”
“A coffee, maybe,” Bracket said. “But the canteen won’t be open yet.”
“Go and get one from the machine,” Artemis said.
Bracket went and fetched one from the machine. OK, he was saying in his head. OK. OK. OK.
Artemis then explained that Interext had spent years developing an advanced call-analytics system. This was not the very large project that Artemis actually wanted to talk about; in fact this was a separate project, but one which was to play a key part in the greater project.
“It is fucking amazing,” Artemis said, gesturing extravagantly. “You wouldn’t know—you would not know—that you were talking to a program and not to an actual human being. It’s like science fiction but it’s not, Bracket. It’s loaded with so many pre-recordings that every time you ring up you get the words spoken differently, in a slightly different tone. And what is being said is different every time because it depends on what the caller, what the customer says in the first place. In essence, it’s AI. It’s clever stuff. But it works.”
“Then why aren’t Interext using it?” Bracket asked.
“We will,” Artemis said. “We’re just a bit ahead of our time. It’s all a bit sensitive, because all the subsequent redundancies wouldn’t do our corporate responsibility profile any good. To be honest—you know me—I couldn’t give a fuck about the workers—no offense—but that wouldn’t be my decision ultimately. And, besides, it needs testing.”
“OK,” Bracket said, uncertainly. It sounded fascinating. It genuinely did sound fascinating, Bracket had to admit. But alarming, too, for all the obvious reasons.
“My wife was involved,” Artemis continued. “She was the project lead, but she was … what would you say?”
Bracket didn’t know what you would say. He widened his eyes and tried to think of a suitable response, but Artemis was now looking upward, thinking hard, as if grasping there for an answer to what was, Bracket now realized, actually a rhetorical question. The room—seeming especially massive when there was practically nobody in it—hummed with the electric sleep of hundreds of dormant computers, their power cables and connective wires alive with power and energy and information and yet totally immobile.
“What would you say?” Artemis repeated, with an expression almost of wonder, one that Bracket had never witnessed before.
Artemis seemed to finally settle on something. “You would probably say that she was not afraid to get her hands dirty, or something equally as inane. That sounds a bit too tawdry, but you see what I mean. Toward the end of the project, she herself contributed her voice. She recorded herself speaking. She spent hours of every day for months—for years, Bracket—recording her voice for this project.”
“I didn’t know you were married,” Bracket said, but he was already thinking how Artemis’s wife must have been trying to get away from him. Either that or she was obsessed in some way. But, then, a lot of highly successful business people are successful only because they are totally obsessed.
“Well,” Artemis said, “Eleanor is dead now. She died in hospital shortly after giving birth to our daughter.”
“I’m sorry,” Bracket said. “God, I totally put my foot in it. I’m really sorry. That must have been awful.”
“Yes,” Artemis said. “It was awful. You might find it hard to believe, but we had a very loving relationship.”
“So … you have a daughter?”
“Bracket,” Artemis said, firmly, “stop asking questions. Our daughter was stillborn.”
Bracket didn’t say anything to that. He just swallowed, and then swallowed again.
“Eleanor spent most of her last year alive in that one little room, making all those recordings,” Artemis continued. “She spent the final months of her pregnancy on that project. She didn’t spend any of her time with me. She didn’t spend it resting. She spent it here. Not here in Whitehaven, but here, at work, do you see?”
Bracket nodded.
“This work is so very important,” Artemis insisted. He was now leaning forward, his face closer to Bracket’s face. He grinned mirthlessly. “Do you see?” he repeated.
“Yes,” Bracket said, “I see.”
“Good,” Artemis leaned back. “I loved her very much, Bracket.”
“Of course,” Bracket said.
Artemis pinched the bridge of his nose. “We’re drifting off topic,” he declared. “Where were we?”
“We—”
“Ah, yes, the voice! The system’s voice, it is my wife’s voice. It is female. This is important.”
“OK,” said Bracket.
“We’ll come back to that, though. The other project—the big one—relies upon it.”
“OK.”
“So, there is the AI. Then there is something else: the Interstice. Now, the Interstice is a place.”
“Yes!” Bracket said. “When I answered your phone that time, that’s what they said! ‘We have made contact with the Interstice,’ or something like that.”
“It is actually a place,” Artemis continued, as if Bracket hadn’t spoken, “but it is very hard to reach. You can’t travel there by everyday means. Being there is about perception. It is about total faith.”
“Faith” was not a word you usually heard thrown around the office environment. Bracket wasn’t sure what to make of it, how to take it. He felt uncertain. He looked uncertain, too.
“Wait,” Bracket said. “How do you know about the Interstice, if you can’t know about it without perceiving it?”
“You can simply know about it,” Artemis said. “People have known abo
ut it for centuries—for thousands of years. And people have been there, too. But to open up a channel of communication, or an actual reliable route in or out—those things have never been done, as far as we know. So, we need to access the Interstice, and we need to communicate with that intelligence, that entity. We have made contact with it—we had the AI calling out through the telephone network in order to attract its attention—but we now need somebody that can report back.”
“Me.”
“No, not you. The subject was identified years ago.”
“What? Who?”
“Harry.”
“Harry! How? What do you mean?”
Artemis frowned. “Harry has been receiving phone calls,” Artemis said, “from his dead wife.”
“No,” Bracket replied. “I don’t actually believe that. Now I think you’re making things up.”
“Bracket, you pillock,” Artemis said, “of course they’re not really from his dead wife. They’re from the AI. We’re not using it commercially, but it’s been dialing him for ages. We know whenever he’s not at work, see, and it just rings him in accordance with his shift patterns.”
“Why Harry?”
“We were looking out for somebody susceptible,” Artemis said. “We were waiting for an employee to suffer a bereavement.”
“But Harry didn’t even work for Interext then!” Bracket exclaimed. “He would have been working for Outsourcing Unlimited.”
“He was not working directly for Interext, no, but ultimately he was. Many, many people work for Interext, without knowing it. That’s just the way the world has gone.”
“So the AI is ringing Harry up in order to … what? I don’t get it.”
“In order to trick him into believing in the Interstice,” Artemis said.
“Why? Why do you have to trick anybody into believing in it, if it’s real?”
“Do you believe in it?” Artemis asked.