by James Roy
‘You won’t believe it, Jacq. It’s you.’
‘What do you mean, it’s me?’
‘This card! This code on the card! It’s you! It’s Jacqueline Felicity Graves.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘I’ve never told you my middle name. Or my last name, for that matter.’
‘I know. It was all on the card. When I scanned it, it brought up a picture of you, and your name, and that’s all it would say. But you know what this means?’
‘No. What does it mean?’
‘That you’re lost too.’
Jacq shook her head. ‘No, I don’t think that’s what it means. Why would it … ?’
‘Something Lloyd said the other day made me think.’
‘The new kid?’
‘Yeah. He said that he came to Verdada because his father was told that he’d lose him if he kept drinking. And that’s what happened – he came here.’
‘So?’
‘So he was lost as well. Don’t you see? It’s not just the stuff in the crates that’s lost, but it’s all of us. You, me, Ben, Toby, everyone, lost. Jacq, how did you come here?’
‘I … I don’t really know.’
‘Think. Try to remember.’
‘I can’t. It’s all … blurry.’
Edsel sat beside her. ‘Think really hard, Jacq. It’s important. How were you lost?’
‘I don’t know! I don’t even know if I was!’
‘Listen, the day that I arrived here, when Man told me that Verdada was the place of Lost Things, I said something smart like, “I suppose I’m lost as well, am I?” and he said, “Maybe” or “We’ll talk about that later”. At the time I thought it was a weird thing to say, but then I completely forgot about it. Until now.’
‘Never mind me – have you worked out how you’re lost?’ Jacq asked.
‘You’re the one on the card,’ Edsel replied. ‘And there’s got to be a lot more information we could find. But how?’
Suddenly Jacq clicked her fingers. ‘You know who we need? We need Ben. He’s the only person I know who might be able to help explain this for us.’
‘No, no, no, I won’t do it,’ Ben said, rocking back in his chair. ‘We’re not supposed to, and it’s not worth getting busted for.’
‘Don’t you know a way around the system?’ Jacq asked. ‘Everyone knows how good you are with computers.’
‘So?’
‘Can you get into the system?’
‘Sure I can.’
‘Without being detected?’
He smiled slyly. ‘Of course.’
‘So what’s the problem, if you won’t get busted?’
‘I just don’t think it’s right.’
‘You don’t think it’s right? What’s right about people being treated like Lost Things?’
‘We don’t even know if that’s true.’
‘But you’re the only person we know who could find out.’
‘Besides, what if we’re all Lost Things?’ Edsel said. ‘Who’s making the decisions about us? Richard? Man? The Mira, whoever they are?’
‘But why even try to find out?’ Ben asked. ‘If everything is fine, and everything works, why change it?’
‘Because it’s about me, and I want to know,’ Jacq said. ‘I’m entitled, Ben.’
Edsel nodded. ‘And we need to do it before anyone realises this card is missing.’
‘Please, Ben?’ Jacq pleaded. ‘For me?’
Ben slowly drew in a deep breath, then blew it out. ‘All right, but make sure that door is locked. And we won’t be scanning anything, all right? That’s far too risky, and to be honest, Robert, I think you were a bit crazy to do it in the first place.’
‘I was curious.’
‘Even so, we’ll use the code. There’s this trick I know, and I’m pretty sure it’s undetectable for now, at least. If they knew that I could do it they’d find a way to stop it, but since they don’t …’ He went over to his wardrobe, opened the door, and began to feel around under a pile of T-shirts. ‘Is that door locked?’ he asked.
‘It’s locked,’ Edsel replied.
From under the pile of shirts, Ben withdrew a small black box, with a black cable coming from one end, and two silver knobs on top. He set his little Braille monitor to one side, then plugged the cable of the strange little box into the back of his computer. It made a small, piercing sound, like a TV starting up.
‘What is that thing?’ Edsel asked.
‘Not all lost electronic components get found again, do they?’ Ben said, winking in Edsel’s approximate direction. ‘A lot of computer geeks have very messy workstations. All right, shush now.’
Ben’s fingers rattled the keys, and his monitor began to fill with patterns, swirling and fine, like tiny, colourful spiderwebs, or wispy, drifting clouds, which quickly evolved into globs of bright lights exploding and effusing around the screen, constantly changing.
Edsel found himself catching his breath. ‘Whoa. That’s beautiful, but I can’t read that, Ben. Can you make it a bit more like real words?’
‘No, I can’t. Our activity on the system is only undetectable if we do it this way. Those images are fractal flames.’
‘They’re amazing,’ Jacq breathed.
‘Yes, they sound good,’ replied Ben. ‘The algorithms in the main processor set up these fields of interaction with each other. That’s what I’m reading now.’
‘Reading?’
‘Listening to, I mean. Each pixel in the screen emits a very faint, unique frequency.’
‘And you can hear that?’ asked Edsel.
Ben smiled. ‘I told you the other day, blind people sometimes over-develop their other senses.’
‘So what do these pixels sound like?’
‘Like really strange music.’
‘Beautiful music?’ said Jacq.
‘Not beautiful like in the way you’d imagine, but still beautiful in its own way. Now I need complete silence. Actually, can you turn off that light? The tube is buzzing and making it hard for me to hear.’
Jacq flicked off the light, while Edsel watched the screen, with its dancing colours and flittering patterns. It was hypnotic, and he almost managed to convince himself that he could hear the pixels.
It took some time. Ben would type something, then stop, tilt his head slightly as he listened to his fractal flames, then go back to typing. Each time he did, the swirls would change. It was a slow process, and Edsel watched with a mixture of suspense, wonder and boredom.
‘All right, I think we’re ready,’ Ben said at last. ‘What’s the code?’
‘G, R, A, dash, zero, one, zero, two, N, three,’ Edsel read.
The keys rattled beneath Ben’s fingertips. Then he stopped and concentrated for a moment. ‘Jacqueline Felicity Graves? Is that you?’
‘That’s me.’
Ben listened some more, tapped a couple of keys, and listened again. ‘Yes, here it is. Huh,’ he said.
‘What is it?’ asked Jacq.
‘You were lost, it’s true. But not in the way you might think. And it’s different from that Lloyd kid as well. It says something here about your parents, and how they tried to reach you.’
‘Reach me? I don’t remember—’
‘Yes, and you were there, and they had you, but at the same time …’ Ben bit his bottom lip, as if he was reluctant to say it out loud. ‘But at the same time they didn’t have you.’
‘What? I don’t understand what that even means.’
‘It says something here about an accident.’
‘An accident?’ Jacq repeated with a frown.
‘That helmet you’re wearing – it mentions that.’ Instinctively, Jacq’s hand went to her head. ‘It’s been so long since I thought about it, but … but it’s starting to come back, I think.’
‘Are there any other clues?’ Edsel asked.
‘Something about a coma,’ replied Ben. ‘Watching movies all day, but not being able to laugh at the funny ones or cry at the sad
ones? Is any of this ringing a bell at all?’
‘Of course,’ Jacq sighed. ‘Oh, I see now.’ Tears sprang into her eyes. ‘I think I understand.’
‘You do?’ Edsel said. ‘Then can you explain it to me?’
‘Excuse me,’ Jacq said, her voice choked, and standing up hurriedly, she rushed to the door. She struggled to unlock it for a moment, but then the latch moved, and she was able to swing the door open and lurch out into the corridor.
Ben was still staring blankly at his swirling screen. ‘Aren’t you going after her?’ he asked.
And Edsel went.
He found her down on the beach, sitting under one of the Norfolk Island pines, spotting her from a distance thanks to her ever-present red helmet. She was poking in the sand with a stick, and she didn’t even look up as he sank down beside her.
He didn’t say anything for a while. Then, eventually, he asked, ‘Can you explain? I’d like to know, if you’d like to tell me.’
‘It’s true. I was lost too. I get it now. I guess I’d forgotten all about it.’
‘Did you die?’
‘No! No, people who are lost in that way don’t come here. I’m pretty sure they go somewhere else, but I couldn’t begin to tell you where that is. But it’s not here. No, I didn’t die. Oh, it’s all so clear, all of a sudden!’
‘So what happened?’
She tapped her helmet with the stick. ‘Have you ever wondered why I wear this all the time?’
‘Yeah, but I didn’t want to ask.’
‘I remember I had an accident. I was skating, and I had this on, but I mustn’t have had the strap done up, because the helmet came off. Stupid, huh? But I stacked it really bad on the half-pipe near our house, and I went into a coma. They didn’t even know if I was going to survive for ages. But then I came out of the coma, sort of.’
‘What do you mean, “sort of”?’
‘I could hear everything people were saying. I could see them as well. But I couldn’t speak. My voice just didn’t work.’
‘Couldn’t you write down what you wanted to say?’
‘No, my hands didn’t work either. Nothing worked. It was just me, in a bed. I could move my eyes, and that was it. I just lay there and listened to people talking to me some of the time, and about me the rest of the time. All I could do was watch TV. Do you have any idea how boring it is to do nothing but watch TV all day, every day, without being able to talk about what you’re watching?’
‘It must be terrible,’ Edsel said.
‘It’s the worst. It was like I was a baby again, except even babies can smile and laugh and cry. And I think that’s when I was lost. My parents lost me. I didn’t lose them – they were still there, washing my face, combing my hair, reading me stories and putting DVDs on for me. But I wasn’t there for them.
‘So when I came here, I had to choose between staying in Verdada with my Heart’s Greatest Desire, or going back to … to that.’
‘And what was your Desire? Can you tell me? Do you remember?’
‘Oh yes, I do now, and it was so simple. To communicate with my parents and my sister and my friends again. But that’s the problem. To have that I have to stay here.’
‘Oh,’ Edsel said, seeing the situation clearly for what it was. ‘And can you communicate with them back there, even though you’re in a coma?’
She shrugged. ‘How would I know? That was my Desire, but I have to stay in Verdada, and I miss my family, and … and I think I’d rather have just died, you know? At least then …’ As her voice cracked and trailed away, Edsel found himself swallowing, and blinking a lot.
‘Couldn’t you desire something else, just to make life a bit more interesting here? Like being able to fly, or breathe underwater or something amazing like that. I mean, if you have to be stuck here anyway …’
She looked at him with red, puffy eyes. ‘Robert, don’t you see? You can’t just choose something to be your Heart’s Greatest Desire. Either it is, or it isn’t, and you can’t pretend.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because that’s not how it works.’
‘But if you could have both …’
‘To have both.’ Her eyes glistened, and she was almost smiling again. ‘That would be some Desire.’
‘Robert.’
Edsel turned his head. Man was standing there at the edge of the sand, his suit reflecting the bright sun, and Jacq immediately twisted away and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
‘What do you want?’ Edsel asked.
‘Richard wishes to see you. Now.’ Man turned and walked away a short distance.
Jacq’s voice was so sad that if made Edsel’s skin feel suddenly cold. ‘I really, really wish you’d never scanned that card.’
So, Robert, talk to me,’ Richard said, leaning back. The chest between them was empty, but the room felt strangely full, with Man standing behind Richard’s couch, and the awareness of why they were meeting hanging between them.
‘Talk to you about what?’
Richard smiled. ‘You know what. The card you found. Do you have it here?’
There was no point in lying, and Edsel took the card from his pocket and held it out. Richard didn’t reach for it, so Edsel simply laid it on the top of the chest.
‘Any reason why you scanned it, when it said quite clearly that it was classified?’ Richard asked. ‘It even says “Do not scan”. It is pretty clear.’
‘I was just curious. Honestly, Richard, that’s all it was – curiosity.’
‘And what did you discover?’
‘It wouldn’t let me in.’
‘Of course not. But you still got in, didn’t you?’
‘Um …’
‘It’s okay, Robert. We know that you now have information about Jacqueline. It’s nothing that she didn’t already know about herself, even if she mightn’t have understood it terribly well.’
‘So you’re not angry?’
Richard smiled again. ‘No, Robert. Our processes are pretty good, but sometimes things get into the wrong places. After all, you were working with pens, correct? And you found a card that was clearly marked as secret, so it was obviously some kind of mistake. So, Robert, if you do come across one of these classified objects again in the future, would you kindly do the right thing and return it as soon as possible?’
‘Yes, of course,’ Edsel said. ‘And I’m sorry.’
Richard raised his hands. ‘It’s forgotten.’
‘I did it, Robert,’ Ben said, moving one of his pawns two squares forward. ‘And it’s true. What you said is right. We’re all lost. We don’t just sort lost things – we are Lost Things.’
‘You looked yourself up?’ Edsel asked, his voice low.
‘I couldn’t help it. My memory was all … pale, and I couldn’t quite remember, so I went back into the system. I didn’t really want to, but I had to know. And now I kind of wish I didn’t.’
‘What did you find out?’
‘It was all there in my file, and it all came back, even stuff that wasn’t in the file. It was such a stupid accident.’
‘What happened?’
‘Me and this other boy got hold of some fireworks, and we were playing with them, being idiots. You know, taking them apart, making them bigger, combining them, creating these monster crackers. Then my friend decided to do something, and I realised how dumb and dangerous it was, and I told him not to do it. I said, “Seriously, dude, don’t do that”, but he did do it, and …’ Ben pointed to his blank eyes. ‘That’s what happened.’
‘But the other guy was fine?’
‘Yeah, perfectly fine. But I lost … my sight.’
‘Okay, but how were you lost?’
Ben scratched his leg as he thought about how he should say it. ‘I got angry, and it was a bit like Jacq, you know? It sounds corny, but I think I was lost to my parents. They lost me, not because I died or anything, but because they couldn’t get through to me anymore.’
‘So what was yo
ur Desire? Are you stuck here like Jacq, wanting to go back and fix things between you and your family, but not being able to because you have to stay here?’
Ben shook his head, and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. ‘No, it’s much worse than that. My Desire wasn’t to stay. It was for revenge.’
‘Oh.’
‘And it came true. That boy who blinded me is blind too, now. It’s in the file.’
‘Oh,’ said Edsel. ‘That’s pretty big.’
‘Yeah. And I feel terrible, and I wish I’d never gone into the system to find out, because I reckon I’ll probably think about it every day now forever. Forever young in a place of forever feeling guilty. Some slogan.’
‘You’re seriously going to do this?’ Jacq asked.
‘I have to know if it can be done,’ Edsel replied, glancing over his shoulder at the Domus. They were still alone, and safe to talk. ‘I have to know if I’m the only one.’
‘I don’t think you are, but I don’t think you can do anything about it.’
‘I need to know how many of the others wonder about this stuff.’
‘Why?’ Jacq asked. ‘Why do you have to know?’
‘Because if I’m the only one I’ll accept it. But if everyone thinks it, maybe something can change.’
Jacq sighed. ‘Do you have any idea how long Verdada has been doing what it does?’
Edsel shook his head. ‘No. How long?’
‘That’s my point! No one does, Robert! But it’s longer than you or I have been around. So what makes you think you’re the one who can change it?’
‘I don’t even know if I do want to change it. I just want to know, that’s all. Is that such a bad thing, wanting to know?’
‘Of course not,’ Jacq said. ‘But think about all the stuff you don’t know. There’s so much! What will happen to the balance of things?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What will happen to all the lost stuff if Verdada stops working the way it does?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What will happen to you or me?’
‘I don’t know. But don’t you think it would be okay to at least ask?’
‘So what do you need?’
‘I need as many as possible to come to the Common Room. Tomorrow, at five.’