Experiment With Destiny

by Carr, Stephen

  The pages were blank.

  He stood numbed by the shock of finding nothing but page after page of nothingness.

  With a growing sense of urgency he reached for another, and then another, until he was pulling them randomly from the shelves. Every single volume, whatever size and thickness, contained empty white pages. He stopped.

  In the stillness of the library, now the clattering of falling books had ceased, he could hear the rapping of wood against wood, a distant banging. He followed the sound, moving quickly between the heavily laden shelves, darting between the towers of vacuous tomes. At the back of his mind, behind the last row of bookshelves, he found a door. It was ajar…and banging raucously in the wind. He felt a growing sense of unease. If the door was open…who had opened it? Had it been left open when someone went out…or came in? Was there someone else inside the library with him? Or had someone else been there…and left? The possibilities began to fill him with alarm.

  Fergus reached the door and pushed it open…half expecting to see the intruder waiting just beyond it.

  But there was nothing.

  A void.

  A nameless colour he couldn’t recognise that stretched out forever.

  No beginning and no end.

  And as he stood on the precipice of eternity he could see something swirling around his head…a cascade of tiny black letters, words and sentences…millions upon millions of them…the writing that should have been on the pages of the books…

  Fergus began to read them as they crawled like an army of ants through the void.

  His words…his thoughts…the story of his entire life…slipping away.

  Fergus was at the edge of the forest. The library and the great void with its swirling thoughts had gone. How had he made it here? He had no recollection of walking the distance between the ruined fortress behind him and the wall of trees before him. Perhaps he’d gone into some kind of trance-like state? Maybe he’d been walking on autopilot while his mind explored the conceptual library searching for a reference point, some framework of logic? Was it a conceptual library, where his very existence drifted out through the back door, out of his control, or was that real? He remembered feeling alarm…a sense of horrible foreboding. It was still with him, clinging to him, feeding off him. He was in danger, but he could not tell why.

  Fergus studied the trees.

  He was following someone, wasn’t he?

  A woman?

  His thoughts were vague and oppressive, like dark, shifting clouds.

  Yes…a woman.

  Fergus tried to picture her but she remained out of reach. He sensed he’d been doing something vitally important…and it involved her…but now he couldn’t remember what that was. Perhaps she was in there…in the forest?

  He walked into the shadows.

  The leafy canopy swallowed him. In the half light he picked his way between scratching branches, dew-soaked webs and yellowing leaves and pine needles. Fir cones crunched beneath his feet and he could hear the trickling water of a nearby stream. He caught glimpses of incongruous images between the trunks and boughs – a tumble-down red brick cottage, overflowing with trails of ivy; a transparent vidiphone kiosk, Perspex cracked and graffiti-sprayed; a pale white king-size bed, its silky sheets drawn back to reveal a collection of brittle branches and twigs. They all seemed familiar. Every time he saw something he would change direction and walk toward it, but would lose sight of it within the thickness of the foliage and it would be gone.

  As he walked on, he could here the sound of the stream changing. Instead of the gentle trickle, it began to sound like the distant wash of waves rushing to greet the shore. Soon he could smell the salty breeze and taste the brine on his lips. The sea was close and he knew he must find it. The sea always had an answer. The sea always soothed him.

  Daylight was waning as he finally approached the edge of the forest where the trees became smaller, sparser and the thick undergrowth broke and rolled lazily away to meet the first dunes of pale sand. The blue waters rumbled across to dash themselves against the beach and froth away to nothingness. The breeze was sharper here. Fergus gazed out toward the distant headland and the tiny fishing village nestled in its shadow, oil lamps starting to flicker against the encroaching night. He could hear the distant chime of the masts of the fishing boats berthed in the harbour, and the call of the gulls.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it? So peaceful.”

  Fergus spun around. There, standing just a few feet away, was a man. How long had he been there? Or had he just arrived? Did he come through the forest? Had he been following? There was something strangely familiar…

  “Who are you?” snapped Fergus.

  The man simply smiled, then crouched down, turning his attention back to the ocean. “The sea always soothes the troubled soul. Do you remember how you used to look out across the sea and imagine what life was like on the other side? All those seaside holidays spent dreaming of setting sail like little Max in his boat and leaving all your boyhood cares and worries behind, finding a new and exciting life on distant exotic shores…where the wild things are.”

  Fergus began puzzling about the man’s attire…jeans, sweatshirt, coat, scarf and trainers. The unease crept back like a tingle along his spine. “Finding out what’s on the other side of that big blue ocean…it’s never as exciting or exotic as you imagine…and it spoils the mystery, don’t you think? Much better to go on wondering, imagining, conjuring fantastic worlds of adventure that await…but never to be realised.” Fergus frowned, wondering how this stranger knew about Max and his boat, the wild things, the yearning. “Imagination is always much better than the truth. It’s what keeps us going…us humans…the misguided belief that there’s always something better to be found…so we keep on searching, keep on believing.”

  Fergus followed his gaze and stared out to sea. “But if it isn’t real…what’s the point in continuing to believe? What’s the point in…setting sail?”

  “Ah!” The man shrugged. “The paradox of life…the crossroads of existence. Welcome to enlightenment, my friend. The question is…acceptance…or denial? Awakening…or delusion? Which is it to be?”

  Fergus felt irritated by him, like an itch he couldn’t scratch, though he could not understand why…other than he was spoiling this moment of hard-earned tranquillity. “So, basically, you’re telling me that life is fundamentally…fucked up…a big…steaming…pile of shit…and we can either…live with it…or…pretend otherwise.”

  The man chuckled, then reached out and picked up a pebble. “Well…I wouldn’t have put it quite like that…or maybe, on reflection, I would.” He began turning the pebble over in his hand, studying the patterns on its water-polished surface. “It doesn’t really matter, either way.”

  “If it’s the truth…no point beating about the bush!” Fergus wanted him to throw the pebble, skim it across the waves like his father, like he’d never been able to despite years of trying. “Might as well face facts.”

  “Funny how we all talk in clichés, don’t you think? A common language…to give us a common understanding of our common reality…or unreality. Imagine…if we broke free from the confines of conformity…if we threw off the shackles of social order…what would we discover about ourselves?”

  “You’re contradicting yourself now…” Fergus smirked. “You just said there is nothing to discover…there is no meaning…no purpose…no…destiny.”

  “Contradiction…paradox…they are one and the same…the very lifeblood of the universe. All things possible…and impossible. God makes man in his own image…man makes God in his. We seek a destiny…our destiny is to seek. We awake to reality…we cease to exist.”

  “You’re talking shit now!” Fergus snapped. “Who are you, anyway? What are you doing here?”

  “You don’t recognise me then?” The man stopped toying with the pebble and stared intently at Fergus.

  “No! Are you going to skim that thing or not?” Fergus was becoming agitat
ed. He remembered a woman, an elusive woman, a mission…a task he’d forgotten, an open door that should be closed…thoughts escaping. “And anyway…Max came back!”

  “What?”

  “Max came back! He sailed across the sea to where the wild things are…and came back again! He realised he wanted to be with someone who really loved him. But how did you know about Max anyway? How did you…?” The man let the pebble fall to the sand. Fergus felt a wave of disappointment wash over him. “You should have skimmed it across the water!”

  “I can’t!” The man stood. “I’ve never been able to…you know that!” He started walking toward Fergus with slow, measured steps. Fergus began backing away. “You want to know who I am? I’ll tell you! I’ll tell you who the fuck I am! I am Fergus McFae…a student at Cardiff University…son of Angus and Teresa McFae. Angus is on the board of Community Monorail Shuttles and he is one mean, wealthy bastard who’d sell his mother for a healthy return on his bottom line! Teresa is a brainless, insipid bimbo socialite who is known for her tireless fundraising for charity. She won a beauty contest when she was 18 but, thanks to the marvels of plastic surgery, looks nothing like she did back then. I am an only child but, despite that, neither my mother nor my father really love me. How can I be so sure? They fucking told me, that’s how! I was an accident…I wasn’t meant to happen…they see me as a burden…a nuisance…a distraction to their search for some kind of fulfilment in their fucked up lives. I don’t have a brother or a sister because they learned from their mistake and Teresa had her ovaries ripped out…Angus saw to that! Just over an hour ago I came home from my lecture, swallowed two capsules of a powerful hallucinogen called Dream Weaver and loaded a new VR fantasy role-play game into my state-of-the-art VR console, got into my VR suit and climbed into my VR tank.”

  And Fergus remembered.

  The man stopped. They stood and stared at each other…Fergus and Fergus.

  “So you’re saying you are me?” he said, the blood draining from his face. “But how…?” The ocean washed against the shore as the sky darkened. The village began to light up, home by home, in the deepening shadow of the headland. It was starting to drop cold…bitterly cold.

  “Not quite,” said the other. “More a case of we are us…two halves of the same person, different sides and different perspectives…different personalities, you might say. Without me, you are only half of us…and vice versa, of course!” The other Fergus sneered. “Although it would be fascinating to see how long the other would last if one of us…well…perished!” His tone was clearly threatening. “My money’s on me being the survivor!”

  “This isn’t happening…can’t be!” Fergus protested. “I’m not a fucking schizophrenic!”

  “Oh yes it is…and oh yes we are!” The other grinned. “Think about it…every time shit happened, you’d escape into some fucked up fantasy world…dreaming of sailing across the sea, becoming an elite space pilot or rescuing damsels in distress. You’d run away and leave me to feel the pain, get mad, plot and scheme about getting fucking even! You were the flight of fancy and I was the fist of fury!”

  “No!”

  “Oh yes! I kept trying to drag you back, make you…make us…face up to things, work things out…make things change but no…you just kept running away and hiding in fucking neverwhere! I’ve spent so long hunting you down, trying to break through…trying to get you to see the delusion!”

  “It was you!” Fergus snarled at him. “It was you all along! The glitches in the programme…the voices…the…the transcendental mirror…thing!” The darkness started to swarm around him, the breeze becoming a chilling wind and the lights of the village melting into blackness.

  “It’s time, Fergus, time to wake up! Time to accept! Max isn’t sailing back…and you know why. Fergus…think! Remember…”

  Fergus McFae remembered.

  He remembered the pain of growing up. He remembered his mother and father – Angus and Teresa – giving him everything he ever wanted…except love. Whatever he asked for, he got. No expense was ever spared in his pursuit of happiness…but happiness somehow always eluded him. He remembered trying to talk to them…individually, together…to tell them about his toys, his games, his stories, his friends, his dreams…but they were always busy…too busy. He remembered bringing his first girlfriend home to meet them…but they were just off out to a corporate function, so he went upstairs with her and they kissed and fumbled and she’d laughed at him when she’d reached inside his pants and he’d ejaculated there and then. He remembered everyone laughing at him the next day at school…she’d told them, everyone, even his friends. Everyone laughing…calling him ‘Dicky damp patch’. His golden-haired maiden had betrayed him. He remembered lashing out at her…and the bruising and swelling of her face as she sat there silently accusing him in the headmaster’s office. He remembered his father arriving…summoned from his busy day at the office, making it all right with his money. He remembered…he swore he’d never touch a woman again after that…not in lust and certainly not in anger.

  Fergus remembered…and felt the hollow ache inside that would not go away.

  But he also remembered the excitement, the sheer thrill, of getting his first VR machine…nothing compared to the latest version, but a pleasure nonethe-less. The machine, and the worlds it had taken him to, had allowed him to forget the pain…the dull hollow ache of never being loved. But the ache kept coming back, stronger and stronger. His appetite became voracious – every new game, every new gadget, every new upgrade that made the unreality ever more real…and then the drugs that blurred the boundaries of artificiality and took him to another dimension altogether.

  And he’d forgotten the pain…until now.

  “There’s nothing for Max to come back for…” said Fergus, quietly, “…he might as well stay with the wild things.”

  Fergus reached up and pulled away his mask, the voice of protest in his head instantly drowned by the roar of the sea. He felt as though he was falling and, as he looked up, he thought he could see the stars shining down on him.

  *

  Part 5

  Jennifer, Your Red Hair’s Burning

  XIII

  JENNIFER stared into the mirror…Jennifer stared back. She looked different; dark lines beneath her cold grey eyes, skin taut across her sharp, angular features and she looked pale with the promise of a white winter. Her lips, once full and vivid red, were now thin and dulled by an unhealthy plum hue. It was as if a premonition of age had crept up on her tender years and drained her of warm colour. Only her auburn hair, which framed her face in delicate curls, burned with vibrancy and gave life to the funereal visage staring back at her from the mirror.

  Jennifer wanted to smile. She wanted to cry. She wanted to feel something. But instead of feeling there was just a hole – a crack like the night in her broken life where the fear seeped through. Behind her, the flickering image of a television screen poured out its relentless discourse on human existence in the 21st Century; mostly tragedy. It numbed her senses to the grief of daily life, but it could not distract her from the image in her mirror – the image of a girl who had stared too long and too hard at the darkness of her own soul. Distantly, like someone numbed by narcotics, she registered the information spewing from the screen, storing them randomly in the tangle of her mind, however useless and futile the cataloguing of disjointed facts might seem.

  “Good morning Eurostate Britain. It’s six a.m. I’m Ted Hallder and this is International News Broadcasting with the breakfast bulletin. The headlines…” And Jennifer knew instantly what was coming next…she had that sense of the inevitable. They must know by now. They must have seen…and sent the cameras there to record it. And now the world would awake to the awful horror of it and she wouldn’t be alone any longer. She turned her head and tried to focus her sleepless eyes on the screen. “…a Cardiff man is recovering from shock after waking up this morning to find a human foetus pinned to his bedroom wall.”

 
Jennifer watched…and she knew. All across the world televisions would be tuned to a broadcast that would shock a generation from stupor – an assault of words and images to be repeated over and over again in so many countless languages…until revulsion subsided and the subtle transition to mild discomfort at the horror unfolding. As yet the story was still unrefined, almost sketchy. The graphics people hadn’t had time to go to town and researchers were hastily hitting the phones to summon any and all available experts-on-tap who could add the colour of speculation, postulation and moralising judgement. But for now, this was raw, real news. She stared at Ted’s studio lit face, a handsome face perfectly formed for TV, as he introduced the ‘live’ link from the on-scene reporter.

  “It is Tuesday, November 4th and most of us in British Eurostate are waking up to our routine daily normality. But I’m standing here on the streets of Canton, a trendy suburb in the Welsh capital, where just a few hours ago it was anything but a routine start for Italian Eurostate born artist Gino Dereloni…who woke to find a human foetus pinned to his bedroom wall.” The reporter let the words hang in the air for maximum effect, red-rimmed eyes set in shadow cast cheeks, staring out from the screen with precisely the right level of solemnity required for such a story. “A preliminary examination by police forensic scientists suggests the foetus was approximately 24-weeks-old and blood samples have revealed traces of the controversial new DIY abortion drug Endterm Six.”

  The camera zoomed out to reveal the wider panorama behind the reporter. Other journalists and camera crews were visible at the edges of the shot, forming an orderly arc around the police cordon that marked out the front of a Georgian mid-terraced house that Jennifer had seen before, with her own eyes. The familiarity, translated through the TV screen, felt surreal…like déjà vu. “Now recovering from shock here at his parents’ house, Mr Dereloni says he believes the foetus was pinned to his bedroom wall by his former girlfriend as part of some bizarre vendetta. Police have so far refused to name the woman or confirm that she is wanted for questioning in connection with the incident, but she has been named locally as Jennifer Myers.” She shuddered involuntarily at the mention of her name. “A police spokesperson released a statement a short while ago to simply confirm that the matter is unprecedented and specialist investigators have been called in. Officers are yet to determine if, indeed, a crime has been committed. Until a conclusion is reached, they do not have plans to make any arrests in connection with the incident. In the meantime, Mr Dereloni is understood to be seeking his own legal advice in relation to pressing charges against his former girlfriend or seeking damages, which could also include a civil action against Endterm Six manufacturers Global Chemical Industries.”