The internal architecture of the mall was a hub with spokes. The end of each spoke fed into great spiral roadway that girdled the tower. Each spoke was multi-tiered corridor of therapeutic retail and treatment centres. South and west of the hub the customers were wealthier and high-functioning. North and east of the hub there was a marked decline, where the poverty of madness was endemic. Generations of it. When he worked the arrays, they rarely bothered to extract data from the east, leaving it in shadow.
The array had tracked Pook to a well-being and mindfulness enclave. They took the down escalator, Dr Easy navigating. They moved through the crowds for an hour or so. Deeper into the mall, there was no natural light and the air was noticeably warmer. He walked against an incessant procession of faces. Expressions of joy and, now and again, anguish.
“Your fellow man,” said Dr Easy as they walked, taunting him.
“I used to hate the people here,” admitted Theodore. “Before weirdcore burnt that emotion out of me.”
They found Pook in an ego massage parlour called Look At Me! He stood sadly on a podium as the nurses took turns to praise him. His dark hair, normally so carefully brushed to the side, had turned against itself. His glasses dangled in his hand and he looked distracted and lost, somewhat bemused by the praise directed his way by the therapeutic staff. Beautiful intricate glyphs had been painted on his fingernails.
The robot strode over to the podium and pulled the professor down with one quick yank of his arm. The nurses dispersed.
“I got shot,” mumbled Pook. He half-recognised Theodore, then three-quarters recognised him. “I got shot and I’m still in recovery.”
“Who shot you?” asked Theodore. Dr Easy motioned to give the professor some space, that he was unsteady on his feet. The mall had the hot moist ambience of a rainforest, and the mood music was so brutally inane that it was difficult to develop a coherent thought. They had to get him out of there. Clear his head. In the Look at Me! store, even the strongest intellects gave way to narcissism and mewling insecurity. Sealed away in Poor Little Me booths, customers could list all the reasons why their fate was not their fault. It was no place for clarity. They hauled Pook between them across a grimy walkway, then up an escalator, looking for a quiet spot. They cleared some chairs at a coffee stall, and sat the professor down.
“I was shot in the head,” said Pook. He lifted up his hair to show them unblemished skin.
“There’s not a mark on you,” said Theodore.
“Shot in the mind,” clarified Pook. He put on his glasses, squinted at the return of clarity. “They knew I was onto them. Why they are manipulating the system.” Whatever revelation he had suffered, it had rebirthed him into a condition of battered naivety.
Theodore stuck to the plan. “You sent me a message.”
Pook shook his head as if to erase any demands placed upon him.
“I asked you to look for somebody. You said you found her.”
But the professor was lost. Theodore asked Dr Easy to do something, to help him, to calm his agitated state. But the robot hardly knew him, had not spent decades mapping the neurological topography of Pook’s brain.
“I can sense that he’s undergone a trauma,” explained Dr Easy.
“Do you think he is telling the truth? That he was shot?”
“We need to find a safe place for him.” Dr Easy searched through Pook’s jacket, looking for the professor’s screen. Finding it, the robot concentrated upon the display so that it began to unpeel layers of interface, icons became code became binary. The array, it explained, had been tracking Pook for months. Normally the data exchange was strictly one-way between the arrays and the mall. But human security protocols were the shell the emergences gnawed their way out of. It took a moment for Dr Easy to gather a map of Pook’s movements over the previous months, and then to infer the suite of rooms he called home.
“Odd,” said the robot. “I thought he’d be staying in a hotel in the upper west. But this location puts him eastside.”
Pook was not in a fit state for a hike across the hub. The crowds intensified in the well of the mall. If the consumers lacked will, if they were too medicated to make their own way along the spokes, then they were drawn into the hub. With Pook in tow, they would never make it through the hub so they headed back toward the outer roadways, with the intention of summoning a car to take them cross-mall. Dr Easy used the screen to make an offer, and a driver pulled up soon enough.
The perimeter ring road formed a protective layer between the interior and exterior of the mall. Daylight did not penetrate. The road had intermittent streetlighting and then the cars lit their own way through dark inner chambers. Here and there, through the window, he saw outer districts of the mall. Unlit ziggurats beside an oily dead river. He hoped they were abandoned or left to the wildlife in the mall, the foxes and rats, the gulls and ravens, wildcats and dogs.
“Oof cakes” said Pook. He had his glasses on again, rectangles of streetlighting drifting up the lenses. “That’s what I was working on. I came here to investigate a mass suicide. Seven people died from eating poisoned Oof cakes. Before I arrived, I assumed the dead all knew one another, had been part of some mall cult or experimental focus group. But that wasn’t the case.”
The traffic thinned, the cab accelerated, the streetlights flickered so quickly up his lenses they became two stripes of light.
“Why do seven people choose to kill themselves in the same way at the same time, even though they live in different parts of the mall and have nothing in common? Their purchase history didn’t even show any brand preference for Oof. Why did they do it? I’ll tell you.” Pook leant his forehead against the window, closed his eyes, as if his thoughts and those of the dark districts flowed together. “Death Ray.”
15
WEIRDCORE
Pook’s flat was above a screen repair store on the Narrowway, a high-sided street that also acted as a duct in the eastside ventilation system, warm with the overflow from the local psychic weather and urban exhalations of stale body odour, hydroponic weed, the hot acetone of painted nails; a smell of cheap fixes, of plastic shell-shoes worn sockless and hair oil slick on unwashed locks. The cobbled road had a steep camber and was lit by outdoor fluorescents. Overhead, a cat’s cradle of electrical wiring and pipe work, the curvature of the distant roof leading to a light well, a massive cylinder of illuminated bricks that were, in fact, sleep cubicles. The light well ended in an ellipse of raw night.
Everyday life on the Narrowway was an argument: boys pulled wheelies to the indignation of an old woman; she chastised them, confident in the authority of her sanity awards tied to various thin gold bracelets and necklaces. She suffered from curvature of the spine, and walked painfully along the street like a withered question mark. Two pregnant women, one dressed entirely in blue velour, the other in red velour, were arguing with each other about a man. Or maybe just talking very loudly. The Narrowway lived at a high volume. Here, people made their own muzak. A band of patients in loosed restraints danced to the distorted bass blaring out of their screens, a hat on the pavement catching a few sanity tokens. Next to them, two heavyset men in loose salwar kameez – baggy trousers and long sleeved tops – presided over a stall of Islamic literature and an amplifier full of whirling beats. Customers gathered in the courtyard beside an empty bank, their social status signified by which brand of psychofuel they drank, pleading for passersby to spare them some sobriety for the evening. Interspersed within this down-at-heel crowd, bright young things with asymmetrical haircuts and monochrome clothing were giddy at their courage in going eastside.
It felt like old London. Not the London he knew from his upbringing, of wide avenues and secure basements, facades of Portland stone and consensus, untroubled stucco fronts and the butterscotch complexions of lovers and colleagues. But something surgically removed from London, a rogue sinus excised by the assemblers and transplanted here. Novio Magus was the bits that did not work stitched together.
> The entrance to Pook’s flat was through a tech repair shop. A thin Rastafarian worked the floor with courtly intoxicated manners. The shop was busy, had the air of always being busy. Customers cradled their broken mysteries, and the Rastafarian listened to their complaints before diagnosing a cure – screen repair, screen unlocking, screen cleaning. A second opinion was provided by the boss, a quick-witted, short-haired Asian man who always stayed behind the counter.
The shop was a treasure trove of Pre-Seizure culture, the old ways practised in the old manner. The Asian man flashed Pook a brief greeting and called out back. A glimpse of a tight workspace with a soldering iron and other tools dangling from an overhead rack, then a middle-aged white guy in a labcoat came out. Actually, he was more grey than white. A ruffled head of white-grey hair, modest potbelly underneath a slate-coloured polyester shirt. The grey guy adjusted his boxy spectacles and across the counter he offered Theodore his hand. Yes, a familiar grip. A style of handshake he recognised. William Pook. Pook Snr.
“I fix things,” said William Pook, and he held up an exposed circuit board by way of explanation. “It’s a hobby. Keeps me sane,” he smiled then turned to his son. “Take your friends upstairs Edward, your mother’s been worried about you.”
The three of them shuffled up a tight staircase with a wilted carpet. A strong smell of cat on the landing. Edward Pook had a key.
“You live here,” said Theodore, trying to keep it as a statement and not a judgmental question.
“This is where I spent the end of my childhood,” said Pook. The front door opened into an alleyway with three doors leading off it and a galley kitchen. Theodore had an overbearing sense of stuff, for stuff was stacked on every surface and shelves of stuff lined every wall. Stuff that on closer inspection turned out to be old media: compact discs and vinyl records, paper books and piles of glossy magazines and newspapers, a mini-Restoration tucked away above a shop in the Narrowway.
Pook slumped down into a green fabric armchair. “Welcome to the ancestral seat,” he said.
Pook’s mother came out of a bedroom. She was wearing a black trouser suit, white shirt open at the collar, and carrying a briefcase. On her way to a meeting. She was torn between upbraiding her son for his long absence and indulging him in affectation because he was alive, not dead. She had almost convinced herself that he was dead. As she held him close, Pook leant out of her embrace to make the introductions. His mother, Hannah Brook, enunciated her maiden name – Brook not Pook – while inspecting Dr Easy.
“You’re one of them,” she said.
“Yes,” said the robot.
“My clients often talk about what they could achieve if they had access to an emergence.”
Pook explained that his mother was a management consultant for small to medium-sized enterprises.
She nodded. “In Eastside, there are hundreds of small businesses looking to grow. There’s a real buzz here among the business community,” she explained.
“We’re in on the ground floor,” said Pook, and Theodore caught the dark irony in the archaic corporate metaphor.
Hannah stayed focused on Dr Easy.
“I’d love to introduce you to some of my clients,” she said. Her fringe followed the same parting as that of her son.
“I’m more of an academic,” explained the robot. “I’m not very commercially-minded.”
Theodore was curious as to what kind of business Hannah Brook and her clients were in.
“New opportunities,” she said. She checked her screen. “I have appointments.” She turned to her son. “I’m so happy to see you home, Edward. And I’ll be back for dinner. Ask your father to cook us something nice and to not just go down to the chicken shop.”
She left, and Pook offered him tea or something stronger but was too exhausted to play host. The young professor napped, glasses askance, in the armchair.
Dr Easy leafed through a magazine.
Theodore said, “Pook said that Death Ray is manipulating the mall.”
The magazine was a guide to buying a car. The robot set it aside on a pile of other car magazines.
“Yes,” said the robot.
“Is that why you’re here?”
The robot nodded.
“The solar academics are very interested in what Death Ray are creating here. We admire human ingenuity, it’s a quality we rely upon.”
“Do you know what it is?”
“Not yet. Something new, I hope,” said Dr Easy.
Theodore browsed the packed shelves, as if the answer lay upon the spine of the books. A wealth of intangible knowledge within a resolutely linear form, trapped in an old way of thinking.
“Why do you think his parents have all this old stuff?”
“Because they are old people?” said Dr Easy.
* * *
Pook slept deeply, restoratively. Gently Theodore removed Pook’s glasses and set them down on a side table. The lounge had a big old-fashioned TV and a remote control with small rubberised buttons, each of which performed some archaic task. What was AUX? Pook had been raised in this rundown museum. No wonder he was such a powerful advocate for change. His long thought advocating genetic experimentation to overcome consumer boredom had compromised the biological integrity of the species. The professor had come far on just his wits. Theodore wondered how he’d managed it, escaping the Narrowway and getting all the way to the University of the Moon without the rocket fuel of capital.
He watched over the Narrowway for an hour or so. Schoolchildren bustled against one another while the shops hauled down their shutters. Three shirtless lads lazily kicked a ball around, each of them distracted by their screen, so that sometimes the ball would roll unattended down side streets. Outside the burger place, a few schoolboys jeered and ragged at one another for the attention of the schoolgirls, who hung back, insouciant, sharing a forbidden cigarette between them. Ancient courtship rituals. The kind of behaviour that, in the past, he had accelerated with loops suggesting a boy offer a girl a sip of Diet Joozah! or a piece of his gum. Or you could accelerate the ritual by paying an influencer to soshul pictures of herself shyly unbuttoning her top, and hope the girls followed her example. These kids. Fortunes had been made by monetising the privacy of these kids. When he worked on the array, children were just metrics to be tweaked. He had never witnessed at firsthand any consequences of his work. Watching the children now, he realised how indifferent they were to the influence of the arrays. In fact, rather than feeling guilty that he had accelerated their behaviour for his own gain, he realised that it was the people on the array who had been fooled. Deceived into believing that their work had consequence. In the ways that mattered, he wondered if life on the Narrowway had changed at all in forty years.
William Pook entered the lounge with three buckets of hot chicken. Because his arms were full, he shoved his son awake with his foot.
“Edward. Dinner’s ready. Where’s your mother?”
Pook was sour with the taste of sleep.
“She had an appointment with a client.”
“With Jan and Richard. They’re hardly clients.”
William set the chicken buckets down on the dining room table.
“If your mother’s not here then we’ll not bother with plates.” He popped open the lids. “Dig in. It’s best eaten hot.”
Theodore and Dr Easy joined the Pooks around the dinner table. The robot took out its cards to play with as the humans ate. On the moon, Professor Pook had the air of a ruthless young academic, pin sharp, as dextrous with process as he was with abstract reasoning. But, in the family home, he reverted to a sullen youth. His parents needed him to play that role. William Pook spoke about the screens he had repaired that day – you wouldn’t believe some of the ways the customers abused their technology. Quite indecent. Theodore chewed at a chicken leg, thought better of it, put it aside.
“Have you always lived on the Narrowway?” he asked.
“We used to live Westside,” replied Willia
m.
When further explanation did not come, Theodore attempted the chicken again. It was possibly not chicken. He had a vague memory of accelerating eastside culture away from chicken and toward a protein substitute called Good Enough Chicken. The texture was not meat but more like reconstituted matter injected with chicken-flavoured water.
“Did you move here because it was so up and coming?” he asked. Edward Pook paused mid-bite. William Pook kept eating, did not hurry himself to answer Theodore’s question, wiped his fingers then his thumbs with a napkin.
“My mother deviated from the norm,” said Edward Pook, eventually. “So we lost our Westside privileges.”
“I’m sorry,” said Theodore.
“Yes,” said Pook.
This awkwardness dwelt over the table. Even the robot seemed cowed by it. The mall ran a standard monetary currency alongside the sanity tokens, the old marketplace had returned and was now interwoven with the emergence’s initial misinterpretation of human society. A mess no one was prepared to sort out.
The Destructives Page 17