The Relic Keeper

by Anderson, N David

  It was because of this that the new porter seemed to stand out from the rest. He hadn’t actually done anything; just come into the room briefly, moved some objects around and left. In fact he hardly seemed to have a job at all, but merely moved things for their own sake. He was tall and thin and seemed a little vague at times, but he was friendly, and he’d smiled at Mathew and asked how he was feeling. It had struck Mathew instantly as the first time that anyone apart from a few well-trained medics had spoken to him.

  The movement in his legs made him feel like a human again. Whatever his future in this world was, it wasn’t confined to this small room anymore, and that could only be good. He sat upright in his bed practising moving his legs in turn for the day when he’d actually be able to walk again. He didn’t even notice the door slide open and the friendly porter enter until he was nearly next to him with a tray of food. Mathew looked up at the man. He was young, early twenties he’d reckon, and had a dark olive skin and black hair that gave him a Mediterranean look. He was thin, and when he opened his mouth one of his teeth was crooked. That was the first time that Mathew really noted that everyone he’d seen here seemed to have perfectly aligned teeth. Everyone apart from this man.

  “Morning. How are you today?”

  “You know, I think I’m better than I’ve been for quite a while,” said Mathew. The tray of food was placed in front of him. He’d been on liquids for the first week after he regained consciousness, and then gradually the food had become more solid until now he was getting what passed for real food every day. Mathew still sometimes thought that he felt the solid food passing within him, but it could have been his imagination. He looked at the unappetising plate in front of him.

  “Tell me,” he said to the porter, “does anyone here eat anything that isn’t noodles or rice with fish?”

  “Good stuff that, sir,” said the porter enthusiastically. “Could do a damn sight worse. All the nutrients that you could possibly ask for in there. It’s all critical stuff. And you can feed a lot of people with just a few fishes. You should know that.”

  “Yeah, but it doesn’t taste of anything.” The porter tilted his head but made no reply. “It doesn’t matter,” carried on Mathew.

  “Do you want me to try to get you something special? I can get anything.” He lowered his voice and bent down to Mathew’s ear, as if he suspected that they were being listened to. “I can get you anything you want, just ask, but keep it secret.”

  Mathew felt a small rush of anxiety run though him. He briefly thought about the first time a friend’s older brother had brought them hash when they were 14. It was a strange feeling.

  “What could you get?” he asked, curiosity getting the better.

  “Anything,” came the vague reply.

  “I’ll let you know,” he whispered, sensing that the promise was somewhat hollow.

  “Let me know,” echoed the porter as he turned to leave.

  “I tell you what I would like,” yelled Mathew after him as he reached the door. “Some music. Rei promised she’d get some, but she never brought any. Could you do that?”

  “Yes sir, I can get music.”

  “Thanks, err, sorry, I never caught your name.”

  “James. James Peacock.”

  “Well thank you James. You could be my saviour.”

  “No problem sir. You could be mine.”

  18

  Sometimes a story comes to you; others you have to go out and find. Philip’s first ever editor caste this pearl to him, and he’d always remained conscious of it. A good story could appear right before your nose, and a promising lead could vanish into thin air. It was the nature of the job. If he’d stayed with the armed forces, like he intended when he left university, he’d be on good money, with a secure position, probably have travelled, he’d have a pension, and chances are a much better social life than he had now. That was a laugh. He had no social life. There were no friends, just acquaintances, and he spent most of his time either locked in the condo or out chasing stories that vanished like ghosts into the ether. Every time we watched the ethervision images from his c-pac disappear he was reminded of that. Not that he minded as such. And he did make a living – just. But that’s the nature of freelancing. And of course it had to be remembered that most people were prize fucking shits and he was better off without them. God, they really didn’t see the big picture, did they? And it took journos like him to at least try to educate them. A little story about the great foreign world, the industrial East, the collapsed Americas, and you could drop in a few lines about history. Each story let you drip a fraction of education to the ill-informed public, and that had to be good. Didn’t it? Yeah, facts were the panacea to the opiate of the masses. But you had to remember that each morsel that arrived at your c-pac was just a part of the big picture and it may just up and go leaving you nothing to relate to. You just had to be able to tell it apart from the titbits that grew into real gems.

  “Bollocks,” Philip said as he drained the last of the malt. He looked around and remembered the bottle of blended he had in the bathroom, in case of emergencies. The story was going nowhere. A whole religious community blasted out of existence. Two survivors; both of whom had vanished, understandably. And some encrypted message to the police from some Islamist group. Then nothing. The key to this had to be with the two survivors. Nasreen had been a radical Muslim, and if she’d seduced this Deon character into joining her, well, between them they had the ability and background to arrange something like this. It was a bit above their previous escapades, but violence, arson and anti-Christian behaviour were quite possible with them. But why no follow up or direct admission. This was out of keeping with the type of attack he’d come across before. This sort of thing used to happen, maybe not in Britain, and not in recent years, but elsewhere it had happened. And it had nearly always been followed by retaliation strikes and an escalation of tension. But there had been no trigger for this. No catalyst. Why on Earth would anyone want to blow up a commune and then just leave it at that? It had to have a personal angle, but Philip was fucked if he could see it.

  “Fuckin’ bollocks,” he said again, and closed down the system he was working from. His c-pac beeped merrily at him, and activated the response.

  “YOU HAVE TEN ITEMS READY FOR VIEWING,” it informed him in its annoyingly cheerful, mechanically produced voice.

  “List,” he commanded tiredly. The unit began to catalogue items stored in a pleasant tone that annoyed Philip. Why can’t machines have an ironic or sarcastic mode, he thought as the index rolled on. He let the titles play, but ignored the stories for the moment. An earthquake in Mexico, a shooting at a political rally in the Middle East, no one would be interested in those. Another riot in Zurich. Elections in China, a scientific expedition to the South Pole, an escaped bear in Hamburg, that one raised a smile at least. And then one caught his attention: a broadcast from the Walden Centre where Mathew Lyal was being shown to the world properly for the first time since his resuscitation.

  “Play,” he said into his ring. It clicked and then started the playback, although the first 5 seconds showed twice, a little glitch his c-pac had that he had to have checked out at some time. The picture showed a man in his 30s in a wheelchair being brought before an entourage of hacks. With him were two men, who obviously felt they were the centre of attention, and a small Japanese girl who looked completely baffled by the entire experience. Philip watched the two men with a wry smile as they competed for the cameras and tried to explain the process in layman’s terms; an effort that they failed at completely. The man, Mathew, watched the proceedings with a haunted look in his face. He seemed genuinely overawed by the fuss, which suggested to Philip that maybe this wasn’t a hoax after all. He just looked scared, and the way he kept looking for reassurance to the girl and another man who was mostly off camera suggested that he didn’t really trust the two men, Malik and Warwick. And watching them, Philip couldn’t say that he blamed him. As the broadcast ended,
with Warwick unashamedly plugging the Walden Centre, Mathew was allowed to speak briefly, and rather well-schooled, before wheeled around and back into the clinic.

  “This is all very strange for me, but I feel very lucky to be at the Walden Clinic, I mean Centre,” he said. “And I would like to thank Dr Malik and Dr Warwick for their pioneering work, which has enabled me to be here and the staff here for their support.” He turned to acknowledge the two people by his side. The girl nodded quickly and avoided making eye contact with the journos, while the man skulked back into the shadows a couple of paces. Now Philip knew a few things about people, and he knew that most people like recognition for their work, and those who don’t often have a reason.

  “Pause,” he commanded. “Re-run last 10 seconds, pan right, focus and enhance, zoom 30 per cent. Play.” The machine obliged. He watched the figure jump back out of the way of the camera. He was definitely trying to avoid being filmed. Philip took his input pen and sectioned off a portion of the picture where the man’s identity badge fell into shot.

  “Still picture, zoom 70 per cent and focus.” The badge filled the picture. James Peacock. Didn’t mean anything to him, but he’d a run a check on him anyway. “Still picture. Raise 40 millimetres, pan back 50 per cent. Focus.” The face came into view; he centred it on the screen and sat back. He thought he recognised that face. He allowed the slow-mo to move it around as the man jumped back, and there he caught a glimpse of that angled tooth.

  “Jesus, you’re Deon Underdown ain’t you. What the fuck are you doing there boy?”

  Sometimes the story comes to you.

  19

  Mathew looked at the small black ring that sat awkwardly on his finger. He slipped it off and turned it over, looking for conspicuous buttons, but couldn’t see any.

  “Ok then James, how does it work? Do I have to plug anything in?”

  “You don’t know how to use a c-pac?” came the reply, delivered with suitably smug smile. “I’ll set it up for you,” said James, taking the ring from Mathew with a smile. “It’s really easy. I’ve got a small selection of about 250,000 music tracks in the memory. All you do is access the main menu, select the genre, then narrow it down from there. I thought it would be easier than accessing direct from the bank.” Mathew looked at him blankly. “I’ll show you.”

  He gave a selection of verbal commands and the ring illuminated and began to emit noises. At first Mathew assumed that the unit had malfunctioned, but watching the porter’s reaction he quickly realised that this was the music he’d been promised. The sounds were fast and sounded to Mathew like a series of unrelated noises over a beat with no discernible tempo. He could make out voices, but not words, and no recognisable instrument was present in the music.

  “Switch it off, please,” he shouted over the noise.

  “You don’t like it?” James seemed disappointed.

  “I just don’t think my head’s ready for that yet.”

  “Tell you what I’ll do. I’ll leave it for you and you can try to get the hang of it. Trust me, you’ll need to know how to use one of these things.”

  “Why’s it so important to be able to operate a glorified Walkman?”

  “Sorry, don’t know what a Walkman is. But a c-pac, well they’re critical ain’t they? It’s one of life’s necessities. Bit old fashioned this one, but I like them. Don’t get on with all that stuff in your eyes. Look, I have to go, I have other duties, but you keep this one, it’s a DP100-z, top of the range for a unit of its time, over two hundred and twelve million moving parts!” He tapped the unit lovingly and left Mathew alone with the unit.

  He was still turning it over and trying to remember how to access the main memory half an hour later when Rei entered.

  “Where did you get that?”

  “That porter, James, he leant it to me. Can’t really work it though. I asked him to get me some music and he produced this thing. Made out that I would be considered a sort of social leper if I couldn’t use one.”

  “If by ‘social leper’ you mean that people would expect you to know how to use a c-pac then he is probably right. What music did he play you?” She took the ring and checked the back memory, occasionally tutting loudly as the machine’s voice related the music stored in its memory.

  “Don’t take it as an insult, but for you to listen to this would be like, I don’t know, like Chopin coming into the 1950s and hearing punk rock. Did you know that the audience at the first performance of Beethoven’s Fifth booed because it sounded discordant to them? Here, this may suite you better.” She put the ring on the cabinet beside Mathew’s bed and it began to play an orchestral sounding piece, although the instruments still sounded strange and synthesised.

  “Beethoven?” asked Mathew.

  “No,” said Rei with a smile. “This is the Enigma Variations. It is one of my favourite pieces of western music, along with The Lark Ascending. It’s quintessentially English. You don’t know this?”

  “Oh, right. Er, no, I don’t recognise it.” It meant little to Mathew. “So what’s the big deal with these things?” He enquired, turning the small unit over in his hands while Elgar played from a speaker that he couldn’t locate, but which appeared to come from somewhere in front of him, rather than the ring itself.

  “It is like a computer, and a television, with a phone, a bank, a diary and one of those personal music systems that people had in the twentieth century.”

  “A Walkman!”

  “If you say so. I was thinking of an iPad.”

  “What’s an iPad?”

  Rei ignored him and carried on. “It’s a c-pac. There’s something of a test of social hierarchy in the c-pac that you own. It’s rather childish if you ask me, but no one ever does. It was quite prestigious to have a high number of moving parts. It can be linked to a mainframe and sends and receives information from it, or it will operate on its own, only obviously with less memory space. Or they can be linked up, you know, for parents and children. This one appears to be a slave unit, so I would guess it is paired to James’ own one. I must say it is a nice unit. I am slightly surprised that one of our porters could afford one such as this; especially to let out on loan.”

  “I get the impression that James has his fingers in several pies.” Rei looked lost. “He deals in lots of things at the same time,” Mathew explained.

  “Oh, I see. Yes maybe. He must have some influence if he’s been allocated to this ward. I haven’t seen him on the other floors much and I believe he is relatively new. He shouldn’t really be in here alone with you though.”

  “Well, I’ll look after his ‘slave c-pac’ and try and learn how to use it.” Mathew drew speech marks in the air with his fingers, but noticed the blank look on Rei’s face and quickly dropped his hands. He flicked the device over in his hands. Where are the buttons? They’re really very small, aren’t they?”

  “Buttons? Quaint.” Rei, spoke into the machine a series of controls appeared above it, hovering in the air. “It uses ethervision, Mathew. It is a projection system that allows you to see and interact with the image. Or you can use the voice activation, or combination of both. You can use an inout pen if that’s easier. This stuff has been around for years, people will expect you to know about it. I will try to send you some files from a parent machine for you to examine. It would be a bit like a cross between reading a book and watching television for you. You could learn more about the world today than you would lying here.”

  Mathew touched the transparent controls that floated in the air. The sensation of touching and moving something you could see but not feel was odd. “So this is old technology?”

  “It is essentially the same as most people use, but we don’t tend to use these big clunky packs,” Rei indicated to the unit in Mathew’s hand, which he though was probably about the size of a large ring, but lighter. Rei held up her hand to show a metal band, more like a piece of wire, wrapped around her thumb. “This is what I use, as do most people. Unless you are an addict
or a Roamer. It is an integral c-pac. An ICP. The ring contains the most moving parts, which is why it is external.”

  “External to what?”

  “To me. The internal part is a subcutaneous implanted. It is a very small, nano-mechanical implant, that connects directly with ocular end of the optic nerve. By activating it I am able to see data directly in my line of site. Or obviously to one side if you are doing something else. Then by activating the ethervision system, I can share that you. Like this. Command: Ethershare: Walden.” A picture appeared in front of her of a large grey building with an illuminated – and, Mathew thought, rather tacky – sign that read The Waldon Clinical Centre for Medical Excellence.

  “Nano-mechanical means really small machine right?”

  “Yes. Sort of.”

  “And you’ve got that in your eye?!”

  “Everyone has. I can get one fitted for you, if you would…”

  “No, no, you’re fine. I’ll stick with the ethertele.”

  “Ethervision!”

  “I’ll stick with that, yes. But I do want to learn how to use it more. You said I could use it to find out stuff.”

  “‘Stuff’, that is funny. Yes, as you become more mobile you will need to start to think about leaving the ward, and eventually leaving the Walden Centre all together. You will need to know about the modern world and its ‘stuff’.”

  “I was just thinking about the world outside the centre as it happens,” added Mathew cautiously, placing the c-pac on the table by the bed, the controls still shimmering above it like a rainbow. He was unsure about having it strapped to his fingers for longer than necessary. “It occurred to me that there may be people that I could contact, and perhaps that you could help.”