Plume

by Will Wiles

  There were three of them. I had been dimly aware of them behind me, laughing and larking, but I had not paid much heed, too tied up in the ligatures of miserable thought, the choice between abstaining and suffering or relapsing and suffering. Then, on a walled-in bridge crossing the railways, they rushed past me, as if in a hurry to be elsewhere, to be off that eyeless street. But they did not rush on, and fell into step around and ahead of me, choking off my pace. One of them asked me the time, which was odd, because even as he asked me he was holding his phone, but perhaps he had no battery, perhaps none of them did. For some acute fears, we are slow to believe they are coming true, because we do not want to believe. I took out my phone and told them the time, but that wasn’t what they wanted of course, as I was late to realise. There was that moment of dislocation, of confusion, as the interaction changed shape, the threshold was crossed and I entered the other city. I was being mugged a second time.

  This time, however, it was different. The whole business is supposed to be a fairly straightforward emotional transaction: threat, fear, valuables changing hands. We fear violence against us, but we also fear being held in a prolonged state of fear, being terrorised, as Pierce was. That usually makes mugging a brisk business, which suits everyone – it’s a reliable formula, until it breaks down.

  I was not afraid. I laughed. The hard hand on my shoulder made me grin, and the shine on the blade – what was that, a craft knife? – was comic genius. The timing was absolutely faultless. Life was shit, why not get mugged? They were knocked off their script for a beat, as they considered the possibilities: crazy? Druggie? Off-duty police officer? Charles Bronson psychopath? But they quickly regained their equilibrium, and felt the urgent need to push me off mine. I was slammed against the brick wall and a fist connected with the arch of my eye, a blow I can still feel at times. A foot hammered me on the side of the knee, and I was struck again on the face, across cheekbone and nose. But I continued to laugh, even as I fumbled the contents of my pockets out onto the paving slabs, because I had that feeling. I was free.

  I could drink again. I had my excuse – it was perfect. I was released. Elise, my own conscience, they would all be powerless to stop me. This was what I was waiting for, and every blow, every bruise, every visible injury, only helped.

  I was delighted – giddy, and not just from the head trauma. The second mugging, the second attack, was the worst thing and the best thing that could have happened to me. I still remember the spreading red drop of blood in the pint I was served in the pub I managed to reach, as the landlord called an ambulance. As if it were being reunited with my body.

  Elise couldn’t say no to me, and of course she couldn’t stay. She was gone before the leaves went from the trees. I had made my choice and we knew it. It was a relief for us both.

  I took the Central Line to Liverpool Street and walked up Bishopsgate. Tamesis knew my destination. I had made sure to tell it. And it obliged, showing its birthplace as a spear of heat, an unbelievable concentration of T-plus potential. I would see someone I knew there.

  The pubs were near closing, and multitudes spilled into the streets and alleys, despite the cold, to smoke and vape and whinny at each other. Suits rampaged towards the station, where the trains that would take them back to Chingford and Basildon were unloading excitable young people. In Shoreditch the clientele was beardier, more plaid, but the edge was the same. The night did not have long in it, but neither did winter.

  Though it was painted in acid colours, in a fractured dazzle pattern, Bunk’s headquarters had a more sober air. It was a converted warehouse, and, despite the hour, light glowed behind its grid of large windows. The glass front door was unlocked, though the lobby space was illuminated only by the blue neon logo behind the unstaffed reception desk. I knew where to go – I had been here before. I walked up an echoing concrete stairwell to the fifth floor, aware of the winking red lights of cameras and other sensors in every corner above me. The only sound, other than my footsteps, was a ubiquitous low-intensity hum. At every floor, I could see people in darkened offices, faces floating in screenlight, intent on their tasks.

  Electronic locks held shut all the exits from the stairwell, but on the fifth floor the door was propped open, despite red signs warning to check in with security and have BunkMate identification ready. What kept the door from closing was a stack of copies of the magazine I worked for. Used to work for. This topmost floor had fewer desks than the others, and they all pointed the same way. Half the space was given over to clutches of mismatched stools, benches and bean bags, surrounding a low dais on three sides. Behind the dais, filling an immense expanse of warehouse wall, was a map.

  Quin called it the ‘God Board’. We had been forbidden to photograph it when the magazine came to visit – or rather, it had been temporarily switched over to show an innocuous Tamesis interface. But tonight the God Board was in God mode, showing the seething hive of London. Thousands of symbols and icons crawled and pulsed across its heat-marbled surface – individual Tamesis users, on their way home, out for dinner, going to clubs. Buses, taxis, Tube and trains, even emergency vehicles, all had their own symbols, and information overlays slid and flickered, showing traffic speed, user density and other metrics I couldn’t guess at. Jittering data scrolled at the edges of the map, arcane readings of Tamesis performance, presumably critical to its operators: system latency, request response speed, average social velocity, T-link completion. Just as with Pierce’s wall-map, the bombardment of information was at first overwhelming, and I had to pause and take it in. But it was possible to skim meaning off the surface of this deep, churning well of data. The city was visibly cooling, the T icons trekking outwards and coming to rest. London was going to sleep.

  What would it be like in here in a few hours, when it began to wake up? Just imagining it gave me a pop of serotonin.

  The room had changed in the months since I was last allowed in. The God Board had been moved to one side, and a second screen of equal size now stood beside it. This showed the entire British Isles, and while the London screen fizzed with information, the new map was cool and grey and empty. Waiting. There was only one readout that was not resting at zero: a countdown, ticking towards a couple of weeks in the future.

  ‘He’s waiting for you,’ a voice said from the ranks of desks. I had registered that I was not alone – about a third of the desks were occupied. But none of the workers sitting there had so much as glanced at me when I entered. They were lost in communion with Tamesis, suckling on map-glow.

  The BunkMate who had addressed me was seated at the far end of the room, his voice carrying easily through the Wi-Fi-heavy hush. His desk was at right-angles to the others, facing the doors, facing me, and he sat back, picked out by a shaded task light. I recognised him, or half recognised, the glitching partial memory of the drunk. He had been Quin’s chaperone in the pub the other night. And we had met before then, exactly here, the first time I had come here.

  Behind him was an etched glass wall, containing a private amphitheatre of light. Quin’s office.

  Quin’s desk was a long, wide strip of a glossy composite material, supported by four wooden trestles. I was reminded of Pierce’s story about the sheet of mdf he wrote on; but while that was parsimonious and utilitarian, Quin’s set-up had the fingerprints of an architect or a designer on its spotless surface. Money had been spent to make it appear unconsidered and practical. Underneath was a dustless labyrinth of toy-bright cables, canalised in wire trays and banded by fat, colourful zip ties. These fed into the four large screens arranged on the desk – three in a triptych at one end, for private devotions, the last at the other, with a wide gap, giving airspace to facetime. The rest of the office was expensively spartan: unshowy leather seats, a thriving fern, little else. The only decoration was a few old Bunk signs on the wall, salvaged from past offices, showing the leaps the company had made in its graphic design and image management since its days as an early millennium start-up.

  At
first I thought I was alone, that my quarry was not here after all – which led to the ghastly whisper that he might be nowhere, another apparition of paranoia and software. But, of course not, I had met him before, and there he was, behind the group of three screens, like a birdwatcher in a hide. As I entered, he emerged, sliding along the line of the desk on chair castors engineered to total silence.

  ‘That was more difficult than I expected,’ he said. ‘But we got there in the end.’

  I stared at him, and he smiled back at me, satisfied.

  ‘Pierce is dead,’ I said.

  He glanced back towards his private fan of screens, as if referring to an open document or a video feed. The smile tilted into a rueful expression.

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid so,’ he said. ‘Not the worst career move. He’ll trend. Terrific numbers. Tragedy and mystery do well together. People like to speculate. He’d have been pleased.’

  ‘The police will investigate,’ I said. I was only just starting to think it through for myself, and fear building in my gut. ‘They’ll link me to him, I’ll be blamed. Or those guys in the park, they’ll get the blame. They didn’t do anything, not really.’

  Quin shrugged, he actually shrugged, and I quaked with restraint, halting short of launching myself over the desk at him.

  ‘The knife came from Pierce’s pocket, he had brought it with him. His will be the only prints on it. You don’t have a record, do you.’

  The last line wasn’t a question – he knew. So I didn’t answer.

  ‘The police will interpret the business as a freak accident, or a suicide. A man overcome by his demons, returning to the scene of a terrible event from his past, searching for meaning – and, I suppose, finding it. It’s a good story. The investigators will probably be satisfied with it. The loose ends don’t matter, they rarely do. Pierce understood that. He wrote a book about it.’

  ‘Bullshit,’ I said with vehemence. ‘He’s dead. Don’t you dare try to make that into some satisfying narrative arc. He’s fucking dead. He didn’t find meaning, or get overcome by demons, or any of that crap. He was just … fucked up, he was a fucked-up person and there was a stupid accident, not even a fight, and … he’s dead.’

  Quin closed his eyes and gave a single nod. ‘Yes. An entirely reasonable interpretation of events. But not the one that the reporters and obituarists and biographers will choose. As you know. Why don’t you sit down?’

  ‘Fuck you, Quin.’

  Another nod. ‘Fine. You earned that. Please do sit down, though.’

  I did not. But I could not be still. My frame shook with undirected energy and tension. Sweat scored a line down my back and stickied my palms. I clenched and unclenched my fists.

  ‘What do you want to do?’ Quin said, looking at my hands as they worked. ‘Do you want to hurt me? You don’t of course. That would be stupid. Or do you want answers?’

  ‘I can listen standing up.’

  Quin pursed his lips. ‘Listen, then. As it happens, earlier today we were able to regain the signal of the police drone that, ah, went off-grid earlier this week. The Met will be pleased, it was a very costly prototype. Since then we’ve been doing some testing of its systems for them. And you should be pleased as well, because it has video footage that clears you, and anyone else, of blame for Pierce’s death.’

  ‘You’re such a fucking liar,’ I said, unable to withhold a laugh at Quin’s brazenness. ‘Been flying around on its own all week, has it? Recharging itself from lampposts, I suppose? Only just found it? And it just happened to be over me and Pierce, right? You’ve been using it to spy on me.’

  ‘We’ve had it running a variety of errands. It did look in on you. But your peregrinations have not been my highest priority. We’ve got a lot to do, preparing to roll out Tamesis nationally. We’re busy.’

  An orb of rage spun in my core, throwing off instincts that went nowhere. Quin’s casual, condescending dismissal of the possibility that I might attack him only made me want to lash out all the more. But lashing out would be the sum of the act – a sordid little flash of action that would achieve zero, or worse than zero.

  Instead, I sat down in one of the leather armchairs facing the desk. This made Quin smile – not a nasty patronising smile, but one of the more human expressions I had seen from him: undisguised relief.

  ‘Answers, then.’

  ‘The truth,’ I said.

  He grimaced. ‘Answers.’

  ‘What did you want from Pierce?’

  ‘The truth.’

  I ran my hand over my face, exasperated, abruptly tired. Sensing my annoyance, Quin cut in before I could say anything: ‘How about you tell me what Pierce told you. Your understanding of his actions.’

  ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Pierce was helping you with Tamesis – you were integrating his research into your model, all that esoteric information he had collected. But you were going through the notes for Night Traffic and he became troubled. He thought you had uncovered evidence of fraud.’

  I frowned, staring down at my hands, which had long stopped making fists, and were meshing together restlessly. It was hard to stay on top of which version of events was the truth.

  ‘So he confessed to you,’ I continued. ‘Later you told me that the confession was unprompted. You told me that you hadn’t found any evidence of fraud. That’s because there wasn’t any. He didn’t make it up. It happened as described.’

  ‘So it appears,’ Quin said with a nod. ‘Not what I expected, but a useful result. And it came from your work.’

  Scowling past Quin’s satisfaction with this ‘result’ and the blood it had entailed, I pushed on.

  ‘You were angry with him and you wanted him to “set the record straight”,’ I said. ‘That was the expression he used, more than once. I was brought in as a tame journalist who could be manipulated or bullied into writing the story that you both wanted. You would have written it yourself in the end, wouldn’t you? That’s why you stole the recordings.’

  ‘Stole?’ Quin said, wrinkling his nose. ‘I wasn’t going to write anything. Our communications manager here has a way with words, he used to be a journalist like yourself. You would have been pleased with his copy. On deadline, too. But I explained all this to you, in the pub. That’s why you gave us the recordings.’

  ‘I did,’ I said. It didn’t feel quite right, but the capsizing possibility that that was exactly what happened could not be ignored. Pushing the DVRs across the table, a win-win proposition … ‘So, that’s my understanding of what happened. Except I don’t really understand it.’

  ‘What part?’

  ‘Any of it, really. Why were you so furious with Pierce? Or rather, why were you so eager to remedy it this way? If you thought he was a fraud, why have anything to do with him? Why involve me, why go to all this obsessive trouble? You could have just walked away. He didn’t matter. Neither did I. But you kept … messing with us.’

  The light around Quin had dimmed while I had been speaking as his various screens went to sleep. They were the only illumination in the room, apart from the cast-off light coming through the glass wall from the God Board, and the technologist had fallen into shadow. With a tiny twitch of one wrist, he woke a screen, and was back, seemingly more pale and stark than before.

  ‘As I told you, we didn’t have proof of Pierce’s fraud, and I wanted it,’ Quin said. ‘We needed proof he had invented Night Traffic. Because we couldn’t find anything. If it was a fraud, it was perfect. No incriminating detail, no inconsistencies or problems in the chronology. His edit of reality had been exquisite.’

  ‘Because it was all true.’

  ‘So it transpires, but we couldn’t tell, and it was infuriating. All we had was his confession, and his apparent sincerity. His emotion.’

  A shaving of disgust dropped from the last word. I felt a pang of sympathy for Pierce, to have had this crisis, this fracture, in the presence of the calculating mind of F.A.Q.

  ‘But why did it matter to you?’ I
insisted.

  ‘When he confessed, when we imagined there was this elaborate fiction in play,’ Quin began, ‘there were possibilities. We were interested in Pierce for more than one reason. But I had to know.’

  ‘Why me, though?’ This was really the question foremost in my mind, not just for Quin. It’s a routine question for an addict, for whom self-pity comes naturally; and it’s a nasty, sticky question, because all too often there are a number of very convincing answers, and we’re inviting them to carousel around in our minds. What we mean is: Why not someone else?

  ‘You were pliant, as you say,’ Quin replied, with an apologetic shrug. ‘Sorry about that. After you made that dishonest dog’s dinner of an interview with me … I was annoyed, and I had people go through more of your articles, looking for inaccuracies and plagiarism – we found them, too. We were going to do quite a number on you.’

  ‘Pierce told me,’ I said. When he had told me, it had come as the most awful news, an abyss opening up. Days later, I hardly cared.

  ‘You got away with a lot. And it was seeping into reality, doing real harm. Your mistakes had made it through to Wikipedia, for instance. You were corrupting the record.’

  ‘If you think I’m the only one, you’re more naive than I imagined.’

  ‘It’s been a steep learning curve, for sure,’ Quin said. He didn’t seem at all annoyed or judgemental about it – a transformation from the infuriated, self-righteous F.A.Q. who had complained to Eddie an Ice Age ago. In fact he smiled, and I didn’t like it. ‘But learn we have, oh yes.’

  He rose from his seat and walked around the desk, passing behind me to the door. At the door, he gestured again for me to follow, and left the office.

  ‘Jonathan, I’m taking her for a little ride, if you don’t mind,’ Quin said to his assistant as he passed. The statement did not leave scope for objection, but Jonathan gave a formal nod anyway.

  Quin entered the seating area at the foot of the God Board and perched on a stool. His phone was in his hand and he was thumbing through menus and options at speed, looking up at the board as he did so. The board moved, tiling through overlays, then tracking in on Shoreditch, our location.