by Tim Maughan
College understood that, that’s why he came down to the Croft and got with those guys all them years ago.
Melody got it too.
Melody got it more than anyone.
He reaches into his inside jacket pocket and pulls out the spex Mary gave him. Laughs to himself. She picked him out a nice pair, some old Nikes. Of course. Dirty and busted up, sure. Tinted lenses, not too scratched. Check mark logo on the arm. He touches it and it glows a dull green. Charged.
He turns them over in his hands, looks out at the crowd. Sighs and slips them onto his face.
The air around him fills with windows and doorways, images and words, rumors and opinions, music and politics. Lies nestle with facts, jokes with atrocities, the exotic with the mundane. As his eyes fall across any spex wearer in the crowd the air around them explodes with data, tiny blinkable squares orbiting their heads like unswattable flies. Most of them have only been on the network for a few hours max, but already they’re broadcasting their own insignificance, filling their profiles with the trivial facets of their lives, transmitting their half-formed thoughts and feelings, insisting on becoming their own self-important nodes in the network. Bubbles float up from skulls and hang above the crowd, trailing their owners like unwanted odors, filled with soundbites, video clips, unrequested proclamations. A never-ending spewing of content. It’s too much for Grids, too much static, too much noise, already threatening to drown out what matters, what he’s built—to distract these people from the stark reality he knows they need to face. It’s almost like he can feel the radio signals being bounced between the wearers, see them polluting the air with triviality, like background radiation silently eating away at the order he’s brought to the Croft. Too much insignificance, and it’s contagious.
He rips them from his face, rubs his eyes, curses quietly to himself.
Fuck.
From down the street he hears music start up, a slo-mo dub rhythm. Synthetic bass rumbles, the tick of ancient, processed drums. Detuned 808 hits vibrate up through Grids’s shins. Full-on nostalgia rush, threatening to sweep his legs from under him. Ghosts in the crowd, then he’s back there, in the brutalist shadows of Barton Hill, waiting for her to call him, to yell his name. For a second he closes his eyes and lets himself drift, reverse vertigo, as the towers circle and sway around him, synced to the distant filtered breaks that ebb from unseen speakers.
He slips the spex back onto his face.
Avoiding looking at the crowd of insignificance, he instead pulls menus down from his periphery. Deep-diving options, it takes a few blinks to find what he wants. Dials in the day and time Mary told him.
The world around him starts to shimmer and flex. Architecture shifts, graffiti murals washing across walls, geometries shattered by stray tank shells fading back into existence, regrowing like lizard limbs. The crowd morphs, grows stronger, even more spex on faces that are smeared with that look everyone had those few, short days down in the Croft. A mix of confusion and relief, panic and liberation. Significance. He remembers it well, he’d seen it on everyone flooding in. He’d come down here with his crew to see what the fuck was going on, to see if the rumors were true.
Of course they were true. Of course she was already gone by then.
And then the sound comes in, that reverse-suck rush, like air refilling a vacuum. Sirens, distorted police announcements from orbiting quadcopters, the crowd chanting, air horns.
And then the beat hits, that first sub-bass analog kick, and in the long-drawn-out space filled with sampled air before the snare hits he knows it’s her. It couldn’t be anyone else. Nobody else could ever craft melancholy out of reverb like that, breathe that much soul into ping-pong echoes. And then her voice is here, not full words—never full words—just cut-up vowels and breaths, stutters and sighs. The crowd moves with her, hands in the air, ghost faces he recognizes between the raised limbs. Anika dancing, College nodding his head, joint hanging from his lips, stoned grin on his face.
Just not Melody, because by then Melody had already gone.
He lets it play out, the DJ slipping into another rhythm, and he reaches out for the nonexistent jog wheel. Rewind.
He lets it wash over him again, and for the first time that day he feels a smile crack across his face, the kind of smile he hasn’t flexed in years. The smile he used to save for her. Involuntary, real. Like when he’d catch her looking at him, or when he’d tell a joke and she’d laugh. He can hear that now, her laughter, echoing through the waves of white-noise dub, the spaces between the beats. And for a few long minutes it’s like she wasn’t gone, like she was there, standing behind him, like she’s got his back, and he feels one mile tall.
He finds himself drifting away from the crowd, drawn toward the secrets he has buried, toward the lies he’s told. Toward the truth he’s hidden for a decade, hidden from College and Mary and the whole city.
He stops in an alleyway, alone, the sound of the party almost fading away.
It was here, he tells himself.
He blinks in a date two days after that final show.
And then he can see himself, his own back to him now, hurrying up the alleyway. He glances back at himself, looking to make sure he’s not being followed. He looks scared, worried, and young.
So very young.
He’s got an arm around a shorter figure, a hood fully covering the head and face, as he guides them up the alleyway, to a parked car. He opens the rear door, takes a bag from the still-anonymous figure, throws it in.
Grids is standing behind them both now, close, struggling to breathe.
She’s about to get in the car, when she pauses, turns back to young Grids, and pulls back her hood.
It’s her, looking exactly like that last day, exactly like he remembers her. Tired, scared. But still alive.
It takes all Grids’s strength to not pause it there, to not just stand and stare into her eyes.
“C’mon, you gotta go,” then Grids says, gently.
“Come with me,” she replies.
The sound of her voice. All the air leaves now Grids’s lungs.
“I can’t, Mel. I gotta stay. I got people I need to look after.” Grids mouths the words, perfectly in time with the hidden memories, words that have echoed around his head every day for ten years, full of regret and self-doubt.
She’d come to him, a few days before that final show. Told him that things were going to get bad, that she was going to have to fake her death to keep the cops from coming after her again, that she was going to have to get out of the city. That he should too. She’d given him money, told him she needed a car—an old one, one that didn’t drive itself—and someone to drive it, who wouldn’t ask any questions, wouldn’t breathe a word to anyone. And that he mustn’t either, not tell a soul. Told him he was the only one she could trust, that nobody else knew what was going to happen. Nobody in her crew, nobody in her production team.
Now she’s getting into the car, and then Grids is closing the door behind her and nodding to the unseen driver, as the car pulls away, and now Grids has to fight the urge to run after it, to follow it, to try to stop it.
Instead he, and his young self, stand together and watch it go, both consumed by regret and lost possibilities.
At the other end of the alley the car crosses the border of the Republic, escapes the recording’s all-seeing eyes, and vanishes.
Grids instinctively reaches for a virtual jog wheel, starts to rewind it, then stops himself.
Not again, not now.
Some other time.
There’ll be times when he’ll need her back, but not now. Let her have her peace, let her be gone.
He taps the Nike logo, shuts down the simulation, steps back out onto Stokes Croft and watches the crowd flowing around him like a stream around a rock, splitting itself naturally and re-forming behind him, keeping a respectable distance while nodding back at his smile, but he keeps the spex on so they can’t see his tears.
* * *
&nbs
p; As Anika walks past the tank she pauses, glances over. Music she doesn’t recognize reverberates from the huge speaker stacks that flank it. Something new, yet old at the same time. Hints of the grime and jungle she used to dance to, but somehow different, weirder time signatures and polyrhythms. Flexible tempos, the groove holding while the BPM noticeably shifts. Somewhere, amid the percussive cacophony, what sounds like rain. Wind passing by a high window. The distant sound of voices through urban spaces.
She peers over the swaying crowd and sees the kid, Tyrone, standing in the top of the tank’s paint-splattered turret like a triumphant general, facedown over the decks, one headphone shell covering an ear, the other tucked behind. And as she squints against the sun she notices something else—spex on his face, some jury-rigged mass of cables tumbling from them into the mixer. She smiles. Clearly College’s handiwork. What he must have been doing with that soldering iron when she passed out last night, high.
She thinks about stopping, dancing with the crowd, trying to pursue some lost memory of youth. When was the last time she danced? Maybe in Wales. Maybe in those long, boozy nights on the farm before the Land Army arrived, the silhouettes of trucks and troop carriers rising on the horizon. Dark angular shapes against dull, damp skies.
And then. In the crowd. She catches his face. A quick glance as he turns away from her. She knows it’s him, the same guy she saw that first day here. The suit might be gone, but the baseball cap and spex are hiding nothing. The same guy, the same VIP she’d seen when she first got here, the same potential target. The same chance to strike a blow for the resistance. And this time without his security detail.
Her hand goes into her bag.
She closes her eyes briefly, slows her breathing, recalls her Bloc training.
With zero bandwidth there is no calling for backup.
With zero bandwidth the advantage is ours.
With zero bandwidth there is no many.
With zero bandwidth there is no legion.
With zero bandwidth we are singular.
With zero bandwidth there is no time to hesitate.
With zero bandwidth there is only opportunity.
With zero bandwidth opportunity is our only weapon.
Eyes open again.
Not here. Too many people.
He’s slipping away into the crowd now, heading out the gates, heading toward the Bearpit.
She breathes again. Repeats the mantra. Pulls her hoodie up over her head and follows him, leaving the last new music she’s heard in a decade behind her.
* * *
Walker pauses in the shadows of the tunnel under the 5102, the darkness echoing with the chatter of the crowds still pouring into Stokes Croft. A quick glance over his shoulder, a paranoid flash of being watched. Maybe he shouldn’t have come alone, maybe he should have brought his security detail with him. But then that would have alerted the LA, and they’d be down here trying to work out what was going on in their usual ham-fisted way. The time for their depressing bureaucracy and gunboat diplomacy would come. Maybe later today, maybe tomorrow. Maybe next month. He had no idea how the increasingly erratic Bristol command worked anymore, but when they did get down here they’d try to fuck everything up for everyone, including him.
He glances around again, reaches into his bag, takes out and unrolls the picture the girl had given him as they left the shop, stares at the sad eyes, feels the quality of the paper between finger and thumb.
Blinks.
The spex trace outlines of the drawn face, countless nodes where chalk and pen lines interact. A window pops out of the paper, floating a few inches in front of his face. A request for more details. He dials in the time, as best as he can figure.
The inside of the tunnel starts to shimmer and distort. The crowd disappears, replaced by the reflective glow of flashing blue lights. Silence at first, then the weird rush of sound. Music, police radio chatter, shouts. Behind him, somehow piercing it all, the whisper of panicked, scared voices.
They’re not going to let us out
They will
Ahhh god my arm god I think it’s broken
We’re best just getting to some first aid
Ahhh please
Be careful
They’ll let us out really trust me
“Jane!” he hears himself shout, as he spins around. His way is blocked by an impenetrable wall of armor-plated riot cops. Polycarbonate shields and science-fiction face masks, dystopian silhouettes against the whiteout of smoke-filtered daylight. And behind and between them, there she is, she and her friends, like tiny crumpled figures.
Please, my friend is injured, we need to get to safety.
Step back! Step back immediately!
Please
I’m sorry
Please, his arm is broken, look
Walker wants to grab the cops by the shoulders, pull them out of the way to make room for the kids to pass—
Step back!
Please! Look! I’m Jane Walker! Jane Walker! My dad is Chris Walker! Chief Constable Chris Walker!
I said, STEP BACK!
Chris Walker is my dad! I’m Chris Walker’s daughter!
Sarge?
What?
Please!
Says she’s the chief’s daughter, Sarge?
What?
It’s true! I’m Chris Walk—
Fuck. I don’t know. Okay. Fine. Let ’em through.
Let them through! Make way and let them through!
And suddenly the wall parts, armored bodies shuffling aside, and she’s there, Jane is there standing in front of him, and he starts to cry, tears rolling down his face from behind the spex. More than anything he wants to reach out, hold her to him, feel her—
Take your friend through to the Bearpit. There’s first aid there. Should be, at least.
Thank you, thank you.
He watches them limp past him, and through the blur of tears follows them, stumbling into the bodies of partygoers intersecting his reality. Follows them through the dark, out into the light.
In the Bearpit he watches her, standing back and useless, as she lowers her friend onto the ground. Around them all is chaos, injured and stunned-looking police, civilians. Exhausted-looking paramedics. Blood pooling in the gaps between paving slabs, concrete stained crimson.
I’m going to see if I can find someone to help.
The girl, Jane’s friend—Walker faintly recognizes her: Gemma?—disappears off into the crowd, leaving Jane alone, crouching next to the boy. She holds his hand.
It’s going to be okay.
My fucking arm—
Yeah. I think you broke it.
It’s killing me.
He crouches next to her, unable to take his eyes off her. Tears still flow.
Hey, you’re going to be fine. I promise.
Everything is so fucked-up—
It’s fine. It’s all fine. We got out and we’re safe. We’re going to get someone to check you out and then we’ll get you back up to Clifton.
Time to go home?
Time to go home.
She smiles, and his heart flips. So much kindness. Who is this kid? Is that her boyfriend?
Something rips the sky above them apart, something screeching as it rips through the air, and then a boom that dulls eardrums.
He glances up—up through the geodesic dome, now (then) whole and complete—just in time to see the top corner of one of the nearby brutalist office towers dissolve into dust, a point cloud of masonry pixels.
What the fuck was that?
Running, screaming. Shouting.
Incoming!
Walker wonders who could have been responsible for shattering a building, the dread realization falling across him that it was probably friendly fire, or another rogue round from the malfunctioning drone.
Everyone is moving around him, but he’s transfixed again, unable to take his eyes off her.
We need to go.
No, just stay here! Don’t move!
But—
We’re safe here, don’t move! Just hold my hand.
Walker looks up again, through the geodesic lattice of the dome. It seems alien to him, like this. He got so used to seeing it shattered for the last decade. Through the recording it looks like an ode to a forgotten, lost future—smeared with bird shit and graffiti, glass panels missing here and there, CCTV cameras retrofitted to its frame. For some reason his mind fills with Buckminster Fuller, that book he read about him, the way he was heralded by designers and architects as a neglected hero, the one that would have built us a utopia if he’d been given half a chance.
And how someone had told him that was all bullshit, and people thought of him so well only because his plans never got built. If they had been, he would have made the same mistakes as Le Corbusier and Goldfinger and all the others—the mistake of believing the myth that architects can build futures full of people as simply as they make their little models, sketch their little plans.
He knows what comes next.
The air ripped open by screeching, the thunderclap, the ceiling above them exploding into a billion shards of glass and steel.
But he doesn’t see it, because he’s staring into her face when the rain hits.
* * *
Anika releases her grip on the gun, slips her hand back out of her bag.
She watches her target sprawl on the floor of the Bearpit, hammering concrete with fists, sobbing as the crowds heading into the Croft flow around him. Most of them barely see him, avoiding him on autopilot. They’ve had ten years of public nervous breakdowns, of people screaming at floors and architecture, of trying to fistfight the confusion and the chaos and the loss.
Most of them have probably done it themselves, she thinks.
PTSD on a civilization-wide scale.
She takes a deep breath, pulls her hood up tight. Adjusts the bag full of spex on her back, and heads into the crowd like a fish swimming upstream, not looking back, just heading for Cabot Circus and her ride back home.
EPILOGUE
Lajune climbs down from the jeep and steps over dead bodies in the parking lot, follows waypoints dropped by Kareem, pulsating pale blue arrows hanging in the air, pointing to the shattered glass of the low building’s entrance. Five members of the assault squad are waiting there, their outlines made amorphous by what hangs from their bodies; armor, assault rifles, grenades. It’s too much to fucking carry, she finds herself thinking. Need to sort this shit out.