The Cairo Pulse

by B. B. Kindred

“An impenetrable electro-magnetic storm. It extended when you came here, The Situation senses it. Otherwise, all the contents of your original world remain much as they’ve always been.”

  “Where are my companions, Harry?”

  I’m on the dunes where I see Cairo Shore, wild hair streaming behind her as she runs along the beach laughing as the spray gives her a salty shower. I see the child in the woman. I could watch her all day.

  “I can only tell you that that their memories haven’t ended.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Your connection to them.”

  “Will they be okay while I’m here?”

  “The Situation is unable to answer this question.”

  “It’s important to me that their memories don’t end.”

  “The Situation will advise you on what is known.”

  I’m looking at a house with my ex-wife, Cathy, an eighties mock Tudor nightmare, the only thing in Didsbury we can afford. I’d much prefer a great house in a less fashionable area. We’re arguing and bitter breath fills the air. She’s right about location, of course, never mind the humiliation and depression I’ll feel when forced to live in a home created by the architecturally challenged. The spite is shattering.

  I’ve no wish to sit in the mock Tudor fait accomplis, but it persists. I concentrate on an environment I love, which I would have assumed to be my office, or apartment, or the atrium of the Spencer building, but it turns out to be Cairo’s house, although that awkward turn to the stairs that grated on me has been resolved.

  “How do I know when it’s me talking or you?”

  “Is this relevant?”

  “Am I the first person to be in this situation? Excuse the pun.”

  “There have been others who experience heightened communion. They are impressed upon The Situation.”

  “So, this isn’t the first time this has happened?”

  “It’s the first time. Their communion came via the unconscious, in their own time and space. You, Gabriel, are manifest and conscious.”

  “Is there any way out of this?”

  “The Situation is unable to answer this question.”

  “Why me? There’s nothing special about me.”

  “On the contrary, Gabriel. Evolutionary leaps happen from time to time – A cell divides, gills become lungs, an ape stands upright. It’s either random or inevitable, depending on how you look at it. I believe scientists call it the fateful encounter.”

  “But where are you getting this information from?”

  “From the contents.”

  I’m like a flea trying to understand the dog I live on.

  I decide to call him Harry. I don’t know why Harry, but in any case, I can’t go on thinking of him as the Monkey God, or The Situation, forever. When I first set eyes on him, I assumed he was a superior being with all the answers, but it seems he isn’t, he just has all the information. This brings relief and disappointment in equal measure. I theorise that he’s a sort of baggage handler, or maybe it’s more accurate to say he’s the hold. I think Harry exists in the oil on which the sum of human memory floats, the light from which the shadow play of memory comes into being. He’s of the source, but not the source. I’m curious about the source, but I have other fish to fry. There’s no way of assessing his real state of mind, for want of a better word, or his capabilities. Still, a lingering fear of infecting him with something haunts me.

  “Are you one thing, Harry?”

  “Is the internet one thing or billions of things? We’re all cells in the cosmic body Gabriel.”

  I’m with my dad in the nursing home. The scent of gravy and rice pudding co-mingles. They’ve laid on a belly dancer for the afternoon entertainment although she looks like she could do with a sit down herself. It seems an odd choice, but I suppose you take what you can get for free. Mrs Dalbeattie is displeased by the belly dancer and throws a pot containing a plastic peace lily at her flexible friend. My dad, who has shown not a flicker of interest in the proceedings starts to laugh.

  When I’m in the memories, it’s like I’m standing just behind myself. Beyond me doesn’t even begin to cover it. It’s all way too much, I need to find a way out of it. But first, the Big Mac, the latte and the chocolate ginger, followed by a cigarette. It would be a shame to waste them. The condemned man eats a hearty meal.

  Twenty-one

  My hands try to hold on, but the cold, cream tiles of the school toilet are slippery and there’s nothing to grasp. I’m bigger and stronger than the other boys who drag me forward, but I’m outnumbered. Their snorts and giggles echo through the voluminous hall of cubicles. They’re all so ordered and certain as they go about their business, it’s more of a team sport to them. My head is forced into the piss stinking bowl. I hear the flush before I feel it. The water and the smell are as nothing to my rage and humiliation.

  I’m walking out of the school gates keeping my head down in a quest to remain incognito as the pupil plague heads for freedom. It doesn’t work and I’m harangued by a group of born-to-rule boys a couple of years up from me. They call me oik, ask if my mum can come over to clean their house. It’s not long since she died and I can’t stop myself from crying, but they think I’m crying because of them and I never hear the last of it.

  I open this month’s Journal of Architecture to find that my employer, Roland Stenkesson has claimed credit for my Pankhurst Library extension. I go into his office, which is pretty much indistinguishable from any other senior architect’s office, God forbid there should be anything like colour or personality in it. When I confront him, he laughs his stupid, horsey laugh in my face. He even picks me out amongst the hopeful masses and winks when he goes to collect the Award. My rage is bloodthirsty, but I wink back and bide my time.

  The tail end of a thought trail. I see now that it started with feeling overwhelmed. The discovery of what’s really going on inside my head is disconcerting. It all happens so fast I’m not usually aware of it, but because I’m literally living in the manifestation of my memories, I see the process as it happens, like when a film gets slowed down to show you the beat of a hummingbird’s wings. There are a host of unconscious thoughts between stimulus and response. It hardly feels like I’m a conscious being at all, but a form forged only from instinct and experience. The stream of memories conspires to decide my next reaction, then my next move. I’m grieved by the weight of what lies beneath, the stories we don’t even know we’re telling ourselves. I’ve managed to stop myself from descending fully into the oblivious hornets’ nest of emotional slurry, but the fact remains, the silent-tick time bombs have become a reality. Now I wonder about a baser self, about how that storeroom filled with rage and vengeance might be bursting at the seams. They say we all have a chimpanzee in the cellar. How long can it be before my thoughts manifest into the cataclysmic? There is no escape, nowhere to turn. I dare not feel, or think, or remember, but there’s no straitjacket strong enough to withstand the workings of my own mind. I dare not even fear, for fear of what will manifest if I do.

  “Harry, when I first met you, you said long time no see. Why did you say that? When did you see me before?”

  “When you were a child, you had an unusually strong connection, much greater than anyone who had gone before you. That’s how you knew all those things.”

  Knew all those things, what things?

  The urge to surrender lurks like the kraken waiting for my attention to wander so it can drag me under. I’m tempted to lay down and find a way to stop the rotten memories and swim in the happy ones in the time I have left. At this moment, I could cheerfully spend each day with a delighted Cairo Shore running along the beach or accommodating my attentions on a warm night washed in the scent of privet flower. But therein lies the danger. If I sink into a world of memories, I could be lost forever. There are five people caught up in the limbo-land of my creatio
n, seventeen innocent bodies at the bottom of the imagined sea and an electro-magnetic storm that clearly can’t be left unchecked. And then there’s Harry. The trouble is I keep thinking of Harry as a person, but he isn’t, he’s more like a place. Harry is my construct, my feelings and thoughts about him are merely a projection. Nevertheless, I believe there’s a fundamental difference between us. Harry doesn’t judge. Not just morally, or emotionally. It’s obvious he can access all the memories, which he calls contents, but I suspect he doesn’t really understand how to make connections or insights from them. It’s probably just as well, considering what’s in there. I think that part’s coming from me.

  “Gabriel, the world as you know it will become re-ordered in alignment with the contents of your mind. The electro-magnetic storm is expanding; The Situation estimates that within seven months, it will have consumed the planet. Each time it expands, the area it takes in will become part of your personal universe. There will be end of memories for many people. Each time the outer expansion comes to rest, those who are caught within its edge will forego the memory life and those who are not will carry on.”

  Let’s just pile a little more on, shall we? I see the dream I kept having, the one where I’m in the water and there are people on the beach as far as the eye can see. There’s a figure by the shore and I ask him who all the people are and he says, “Why everyone, Gabriel.” The figure on the shore is Harry. This is what I’ve created out of my own stupidity, my own reluctance to let him in.

  “How do I get out of this, Harry?”

  “Harry is unable to answer this question.”

  “Is my every single memory here?”

  “Nothing is ever lost, Gabriel.”

  No wonder I kept putting it off.

  Twenty-two

  I have an idea that all I need to do is look for the door and I can leave, but even if that’s possible, I might just be back on the beach. I haven’t the faintest inkling how to get out of this, it’s like trying to play a game without knowing what the rules are. I could try a door, though, a door leads to somewhere at the very least. But what if I find the door and it leads to the storeroom of rage? My thoughts have already created the metaphor, planted the seed in fertile, soggy, brain soil. I’m paralysed by fear of my own lack of control, but I must make a move. The door I came through is no longer there, in fact, there are no doors or windows in the room I’m currently in, a bland facsimile of the lecture room where I sat my very last exam. I don’t remember how I got here, but try not to dwell on it or I might find myself lost in another swathe of memories, which I really don’t have time for. I visualise a door, but nothing appears. I’m trying an abracadabra method and that’s not the way it works. I think about the food and cigarettes, merely remembered and appeared. I recall a door, a memorable door, like the door to Manchester Cathedral, but that isn’t it either. It’s as if the memories can only manifest when they happen spontaneously.

  Before the decay of my youthful, narcissistic desires, I might have enjoyed the idea of everyone living in Gabriel world, ridding my kingdom of bad architecture and the likes of Roland Stenkesson, having big ideas about ending war and poverty, making it a kinder, gentler place. But I’m old enough not to fall for it. Now I see obsequious eyes that will never dare to challenge for fear of the consequences. I had a taste of that in Another Place. An eternity of no surprises; the burden of what my primitive thoughts might do to the existence of others, to existence itself. Only tyrants long to rule the world and whatever else I might wish to be, tyrant isn’t on the list. However much I’d like the world to change, this is not the way I’d like to change it. This matter must end.

  *

  The library is old, filled with solid, floor to ceiling shelves of oak. The smell of paper and dust comforts in its memorial solidity. Books appear as ghostly tomes, fluid, pouring out random excerpts, voices, hushed, the crimp and rustle of turning pages. Hefty tables and chairs creak and scrape as if complaining about the constant traffic. An image seeps from a bulky reference book and I draw towards it. A man in his later years, head and shoulders, wise, sad, merry eyes behind round glasses halfway down his nose. This man is familiar, Carl Jung, I got waylaid by him when I was doing all my brain research. A quote paints beneath the grainy, black and white photograph.

  “Show me a sane man and I will cure him.”

  Further quotes dance like butterflies across the room.

  “Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.”

  “When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate.”

  He knew. Carl Jung, psychological pioneer, Edmund Hillary of an interior Everest, the man who boldly went where no-one had been before and nearly lost his mind in the process. I have a new respect for him, a sense of camaraderie and gratitude. He developed a theory he called the collective unconscious, a reservoir of all human experience. He must have been one of the people Harry was talking about when he said there were others with a strong connection. Maybe the quotes aren’t random. Maybe he’s trying to communicate, or he at least knows a thing or two about this place.

  It appears outside as fate. This palace of memories is reflecting my inner state, whatever that is. I don’t really know what it looks like, what it’s made of, how many rooms it’s got or what’s in them, it’s not like I’ve got a detailed plan to look at. I don’t even know if it’s fit for purpose. The fact that I didn’t get to sit down and design it, or at least choose it irritates me beyond reason. Christ, that’s why I had the memory about Cathy and the mock Tudor nightmare. Is that what the inside of my head is, a mock Tudor nightmare? Is the great architect just a Jerry-built fake?

  A door. I sprint for it.

  The empty room is dingy and disarrayed, plaster falls from the ceiling, a musty smell, remnants of books and clothing a solemn litter. Another door, another room, this time beams have fallen, criss-crossing the floor, water seeps through the wall, voices faint and incomprehensible echo from the liquid ooze. Another door, dank, ragged floorboards, dead trees pushing through them, mould climbing from rotten skirting boards, tattered building plans crumble as they decay before my eyes. Another door, red bricks strewn across the floor, walls of rusty gabions. Another door, lengths of twisted metal poking from every surface, tarnished awards hanging from them like a macabre Christmas tree. Another door.

  I wipe the sweat from my face with my t-shirt. It looks like a building, but it’s really a labyrinth. If I go through that door, it’ll just be more of the same. There’s no way out, I can’t even get back to the library. And where the hell is Harry?

  Think like an architect, man. It’s a series of compartments that connect to form an endless loop, but I can’t work out the dimensions from the inside, there are no reference points. Even if I see it from the outside, or above, it doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll be able to work it out. I can’t try keeping left and I don’t see the length of twine trick being of any use.

  “What is the point of this?” I shout. “No, really, what is the fucking point? There must be a reason, purpose, plan, design, surely? I can’t have been through all this just to end up in a maze. Don’t you understand what’s happening? I need to stop this. I don’t care what I have to do, but it needs to stop.”

  I half expect a bolt of lightning.

  I’m in a bad place because I’m in a bad place.

  “When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate.”

  What inner situation?

  It’s always been there, a purring in the background, a patient companion, the only thing between me and it is my own intransigence. I’ve been distracting myself for the longest time. First with all the study, then with all the achievement and when that finally began to wear out, I started to hear all those songs in my head, so I wouldn’t… what? Then the beach. I had to stay away from everyone for the same reason, but what was the reason? If I was avoi
ding Harry, then I must have been…

  I’m holding a sledgehammer. I take to the wall and strike. The blow has power, my muscles hardened by beachside labour. The billow of plaster tastes dry and chalky. I strike several times until the room is covered in a white film, my skin a slop of mingled powder and sweat that frees the smell of gypsum. I can hardly breathe, but I see the rough brickwork beneath. I strike again. I break through.

  Twenty-three

  Multi-storey car parks are a major cause of architectural depression, at least in my case. I’m on level minus one, apparently, if the oversized red letters that adorn the pillars are to be believed. I guess that means I’m in the basement. Bristly, grey concrete offends every surface. A lot of architects rave about bare concrete, I understand why, but it’s generally unforgiving on the eye and repulsive to the skin. I weave between the utilitarian columns as a footfall of grit and oil resounds in the cavernous space. The far side seems different. I have no idea what it is, but dread wells up and reveals itself in beats and shivers and reluctance.

  Ice covers the walls, cracks and crunches as I creep forward embraced by a mist of my own breath. It thickens into the corner and moves in an unearthly manner. A ghoulish grey arm pokes through the cracking surface, followed by a body, female, limbs twisted in unnatural form, face covered by shards of flint-like frozen concrete. It falls to the floor, thudding and fractured. Bile rises and has me swallowing hard. Staring at the inert figure, there’s a familiarity to the incongruous sky-blue dress grinning through the melting ice. I creep forward, retching and remove the shards as the slate body arches and twists with such unnatural rapidity it begins to blur. Tears freeze before they’re halfway down my face. I recognise my mother and all is still.