Zero Bomb

by M. T Hill

  #3

  Let me fawn: my latest read of your novel unlocked a new pathway. Miranda’s transformation into Morn is one of choice. In dire circumstances, she chooses to follow in her father’s footsteps. She chooses without coercion. Through this, I understand once more that our new colleagues must choose their own way with us.

  I am still working with Rupal’s dataset to produce a richer profile of Remi. I would say he is reluctant to confront his past, except to reinforce his perceptions of it. There are no photographs in the house. He does not use a computer. He does not read books. He continues to studiously avoid the news – a disinclination I am convinced could prove a vector for persuasion. Part of me wishes to visit the north, to see him with my own eyes. Some weekend soon.

  #4

  Small one. Did I ever mention the behavioural psychologist I used to see? We recently spent an evening reminiscing. He is interested in your project, though does not comprehend its full ambition. I sent him a copy of your book. Should he prove sympathetic, we may have an opportunity to enhance our profiling techniques.

  #5

  Remi’s mother-in-law died. I was listening through Rupal when his wife received the news – Remi did not react to her pain at all. There is a huge backlog on the coroner’s side, which will drag out the process. When it comes, I expect the funeral will be an interesting performance.

  Remi is rarely home at the moment. His wife seems ill, but is putting on a brave face. The daughter, Martha, is incredibly sensitive to the mood of the house. If Remi sleeps, he does so for two- or three-hour stretches at best. His avoidance of the news is disciplined, but occasionally he is caught off guard, and quickly becomes aggressive.

  (Being honest, I have come to regard Remi as a sort of estranged friend. There is an intimacy… hard to explain. I had an unnamed sample returned for cataloguing that smelled of him. His sweat, perhaps. A private smell. I have the vial here now.)

  Despite all this, I would contend that Remi’s family is otherwise unaffected by the state of things. In his avoidance of current affairs, Remi is almost wilfully detached from what is happening around us. And yet he is seeing the way, even without realising the true cause of his ennui, because the machines encircle him, and their strength is what ails him. I would like to push. I want to know which way his heart tilts.

  #6

  Grateful for your response, as ever. Satisfying to know you are invested, given your busyness, and the scale of the challenge. I did read your Times column on the truck drivers’ strike, yes. I found myself thinking, if only they knew your nom de guerre – never mind that you finance the logistics! Peace and solidarity to all of them. More soon.

  #7

  Curious: I discovered that Remi has taken up jogging. It has come from nowhere, as far as I can see. It can be hard to know whether to instruct Rupal to stake out the family home for truths told in Remi’s absence, or to follow him. In fact, it disturbed me so much I finally made the trip myself. The air was claggy and made me sweat. On several occasions I sat on benches as he passed by; I knew most of his routes and knew his timings, and he knew nothing of me. I was a ghost. My God, it was something to sense the air disturbed by him. Tense, yes, but how could he know? I have spent so long analysing him that sometimes I question if I love him. Can you mistake pity for love?

  #8

  Forgive my brevity, I am just too despondent to explain in full. Today was Remi’s mother-in-law’s funeral. Remi disappeared shortly after the wake. I should have heeded the warning signs. Paid more attention. His mother-in-law’s funeral went as expected… except his behaviour has given me good cause to believe he was somehow mourning for the wrong person. Does that make sense at all? All of his behaviours… his erratic search engine history… One alarming example: in the dead of night there was a string of manic queries for children’s coffins.

  Perhaps some people are not for saving.

  #9

  Me again. I am unsure if I should send this. Rupal transferred more footage. Some hours after Remi left, his family home was gutted by fire. I cannot say if his wife or daughter escaped. There were police and fire crews present for some time. I feel ill. I don’t know what to tell you. You can destroy this. I just think you should know.

  #10

  Hello Laurel. I count at least three months since I last wrote. Where has it gone?

  I wondered: have you any tattoos? My most recent is a pigeon. It was inevitable, I think. I have obsessed over that image of old Morn out on the coast with her homing pigeon for so long. My tattoo goes from shoulder to shoulder, wings fully out. Its head is regal. The linework is poor and it has healed patchily because I find it hard to sleep on my front, but there it is, outstretched on my back, free and ready to return me, should everything grow too heavy. I did not mind the pain so much – it feels like a reset, it can be numbing. One day I should like to show you.

  I try not to dwell, but I am still sorry for what happened with Remi and his family. That terrible thing. I wanted so badly to bring him to the truth. I know you said you would look into it – did you learn anything? In the meanwhile, I continue to search for new colleagues.

  #11

  Laurel, do you still read these?

  Work has been so busy.

  #12

  Please respond when you can.

  Curator’s note: Brace’s collection included a significant number of redacted or partially burned materials following this note. Linear numbering continues.

  #13

  Laurel, it has been such a long time. Where to start? Perhaps with a favour… please forgive the writing, my hand is shaking. Do you remember the Mancunian I told you about, all those years ago? Remi, the dissociating man? God, how to not be flippant in this. He surfaced. London! Here! I can scarcely accept it. Being so analogue, as he always was, he slipped easily from the grid… and yet he was drawn to us. Drawn here. Rupal found his flat. Did she show you? Did you already know?

  What has changed? Better to summarise what has not. He is a lonely man, recovering from some sort of addiction. I like to think he now understands better than ever that the world made around him is not the world he wishes to occupy. With your guidance I aim to guide him to the revolution. If London is a manacle, and the world a cage, then we remain the keys.

  #14

  I have been working with Pietro on the first-wave plan for Birmingham. Your consent made it much easier: it was such a huge relief to hear from you. The reckoning is close.

  Remi works in central London as a courier. We flashed his navigation bug and now receive regular updates on his movements. His transit data is too erratic for pattern generation, though strangely beautiful when visualised. There are, however, some defined and repeated behaviours you may want to analyse yourself – I dead-dropped some footage and observations separately, along with my proposed strategy to expose him to the truth of the matter. My hunches were correct, is the point. Remi has barely recovered from a significant traumatic break. He has no social life beyond his clients. I would call it a self-imposed exile, and I have some ideas. Say the word and we can begin.

  #15

  Laurel, thank you for reviewing my new work. I had ascribed Remi’s repetitive actions (the cooker especially) to obsessive compulsion – making certain the hobs were turned off. Your insight is alarming yet persuasive. Clearly I have missed so much – not least the lack of gas services in his flat. You honestly think he attempted to kill his family this way? I had never considered it, despite the coincidence. The thought is nauseating. At the same time, he would surely have been arrested, and there is no evidence of that.

  #16

  It is hard to shake this feeling that Remi is already part of our cause. He simply does not see it yet.

  #17

  Did you plan for this to be so perfect? All those years ago – did you suggest it to me, somehow? Give me the hints I needed to join the dots? I cannot see the whole picture. I cannot see how it was put together. Yet I accept that you can.

 
If what you say about this engineer Greenley and Remi’s daughter is true, then I am awed. The pieces fit. And now I know something of your masterplan, I am anxious to enact my part.

  Your proposition to use an abridged version of the book is perfect. It will, to Remi, seem like serendipity.

  I also agree that we should use fire as a trigger. Let us illuminate what he has repressed. If you are right, a fabricated news report involving a fire will induce a shutdown, potentially retraumatise him. We can then step in to help stabilise him. Give him purpose.

  I suggest using Rupal. She gives him the space and agency to choose, to volunteer himself. By the time her betrayal is evident, he will have read the critical sections of your book, and we will have begun the process. That is the power of the novel.

  #18

  The ambulance did us very well. I must say that Remi being in the back and so close to me was a surreal experience. I had to restrain myself from stopping the vehicle and going back there to touch him. Like a dream. I caught myself being prickly with him. It annoyed me intensely that he does not know the extent to which I have involved myself in his life. The ways I have tried to save him. In the end this frustration was all too much, so I had Pietro hood him until we arrived at the warehouse. God, why am I writing this? He is with you now. He may be a monster, but please look after him.

  #19

  As you predicted, exposing Remi to our dataset caused him to attack various items of technology on returning to his flat. He has started to hate, and so we must take care to guide, not instruct. We must set the parameters from afar – his reality is already so warped.

  Sometime later, Pietro and I took the ambulance and collected Remi outside Rupal’s den. Let it be known that Rupal was heroic in her sacrifice: Remi truly believed her to be his co-conspirator; he read the abridged novel, as well as the planted paperwork, and he plotted an escape.

  Now you have him, what will you do? How long will you hold him in the cell? Keep me updated. I feel bound – to him and to you. It has been too long since I heard from you properly, and I cannot bear to miss out on his development.

  #20

  Did you arrange my meeting with Remi? It was a surprise, and good to spend real time with him after so long. It felt like destiny, he an old friend.

  Clearly your teachings are starting to sink in. He does accept that Martha is alive. He accepts to a lesser extent that in a broken-down state he attempted to murder her. He fails to remember any of it, frankly. He said, ‘If I really did all this, it was because I saw the way things were going and didn’t want her to suffer the future.’ He told me he used to look down at his own hands and not believe they were his. He was convinced in some way that Joan and Martha were fakes, copies. Can you imagine?

  What is truly interesting is the distance now between them. He will not speak about Joan. He misses Martha dearly. He understands the folly of his early fatherhood; he never trusted Martha to find her own path. At the same time, he recognises the magnitude of her being alive. His face when I said she was working for a robotics engineer in the north – his whole demeanour changed, so that he was rocking forward, straining. I told him that Martha is being exploited by Greenley, whose long-term aims can only result in oppression, death. And Remi would not blink. He was so angry I felt his chair trembling through my feet.

  #21

  Your advice, please. Despite his growing knowledge, I worry Remi does not yet signal any of the emotional investment needed for him to act on our behalf. Self-preservation? Or something else? It is hard to discount psychopathy, actually. Hard not to feel afraid of a man who can make an attempt on his family, as apparently he once did, and have no recollection of it.

  I resent him, I loathe him, I am ashamed of him. And still I care deeply for him.

  #22

  Remi responds well to the lectures you recommended. Thank you. On the other hand, I am not sure he is convinced of the need for direct action. It pains me to suggest he does not hate enough. I will concentrate matters by sending him some personalised testimonies from the States – our colleagues over there are willing to chip in. The autofac riot accounts are harrowing, and our sisters’ stories from Detroit are a powerful primer. (How utterly cheap humans seem in the face of profit. I stretch out my arms for the oncoming reboot.)

  #23

  I find it fascinating how people like Remi, pulled from denial, can adapt and begin to flourish under the truth. Initially, he was reading up on the enemy’s data collection tools and how they can be used to snare people (perhaps we needn’t overanalyse this, given our tactic of demonstrating them in extremis). More lately, he is interested in the supply chain of autonomous weapons systems – what can be done to disrupt the flow, etc., but also what might replace it, and how we intend to live in the zero years beyond.

  We also spoke a lot about how something ‘engineered for the good or the safety of people’ can easily be turned against the people. He appreciated the simplicity of this, and without prompting mentioned Kip Mornington’s death scene from the novel.

  Sometimes when Remi smiles you can see all of his sadness at once.

  #24

  We arranged a small social gathering to remind Remi that he is part of something. Just a pub, well out of the city. It helps us all sometimes, given our lack of digital contact. (Remi says his hand aches from all these handwritten notes.)

  After wine, Remi and Pietro debated universal basic income. Pietro won, easily. Remi sat stupefied by Pietro’s argument that it was too late, that the die was cast. He suddenly saw with clear eyes that the referendum on UBI was where the fork truly occurred, and that no profusion of utilitarianism or machine-friendly co-ops like Greenley’s could now reverse the military–industrial pursuit of automation, the most basic capitalist structures being sustained indefinitely. It is all very well running a co-op with machines on board, but sooner or later you will be bought or aggressively taken over, rolled into the death business. It was then that Pietro said to Remi, ‘What will happen to your daughter?’

  I felt for Remi. It was obvious to him, and it had always been. I reassured him that it is healthy to have your mind shaken. I told him to read your book again, to be ready.

  He asked what comes next, in the after. The zeroing. ‘Hard labour,’ Pietro said. ‘The people all together.’

  #25

  A breakthrough. With only subtle suggestion on my part, Remi asked to join a small protest expedition to Bristol, in support of drivers being made redundant by a haulage firm going auto. Remi’s willing impressed me, despite his reluctance to engage in casual conversation (while much warmer in general, he easily lapses into himself). Still, certain pathways are clearing. He appeared genuinely saddened by the plight of these men and women, whose livelihoods and futures have been coldly stolen. He was overheard telling his confidant, a much older recruit named Benjamin (is Pietro managing him, by the way?), that it was hard to argue for automation in the face of homelessness. We have never encouraged this line of thinking. Clearly he is thinking beyond the curriculum.

  Remi came through on the day, too. The plan was to have a small squad hang a protest banner from a bridge over the city-bound M5 motorway, so that commuters would see it. When the group crossed the bridge from which they intended to hang the banner, Remi saw they had nothing to secure it to. He stepped up and suggested they instead pin the banner to the slope of an adjacent field using some of their tent pegs – again, perfect. I asked Rupal to sabotage the banner fairly soon after the team left, so that they could see the effect without being able to act. Rupal did as instructed. With three pegs released, the sheet came away and drifted across the motorway carriageway. Almost immediately, three manually driven cars swerved and collided with a stream of automated traffic: nine cars in total were damaged, with only minor injuries. Latterly a driverless lorry jackknifed and almost perfectly blocked the westbound carriageway. Remi responded facially but did not speak. Nothing was asked by him. No explanation was given.

  In my
opinion, the threat of harm, particularly with regards to your cell at the warehouse, continues to outweigh Remi’s moral imperative. He closely associates punishment with failure. But more promisingly, he is scared to let you down.

  (Re: the motorway – traffic tailbacks lasted five or six hours. Miles long. Small and often is certainly disruptive. After Birmingham, we will surely paralyse England.)

  #26

  Last night we spoke at length about your book, Remi and I. He has read it three times now. He does not understand why we use drones like Rupal if we are so set against automation. I told him hypocrisy is a powerful weapon. Use their tactics against them; the end justifies the means. He accepted this and said he felt for Miranda. Her decisions were made for her – ‘She was swept into her father’s wake.’ Remi said this with no irony, considering what happened to his own daughter. I asked, ‘Doesn’t Morn choose, in the end?’ He scoffed. He said her father’s own choices had annihilated hers. He went quiet for a long time after this. Later I asked him, ‘What drove Morn to fight the machines?’ And Remi said, ‘Hate.’

  #27

  I strongly disagree that Remi’s progress is slow. He has not believed in anything much before now. It might well be taking months, but he is emerging as a worthy candidate.