A New Start

by Morris Fenris

  What troubled me was that this succession of a different ‘you’ never seemed to make you happy. Not that you weren’t ‘happy’ at all; you were plenty happy. But a new outfit or haircut never seemed to bring its own smile to your face, that surprised or satisfied look that I’ve seen women – and men – exchange with their reflection or image never found its way onto your features in our three-sixty mirror. So, inevitably, I had to come to wonder why you did it.

  Was it for me? Possible, but shortsighted, as an answer that I couldn’t be certain of. No, it was something inside you, something that you wouldn’t tell me. And, in a way, maybe something that I didn’t really want to know. Something that I couldn’t help you with anyway.

  ****

  One afternoon we went for a walk up to the High Street Complex. It was a beautiful, clear day, the sun shining down strongly but its heat tempered by a cool breeze. The idea of summer was in the air and, on days like that, I always feel myself drawn towards the seaside, like a sudden compulsion to smell salt on the breeze. But your movement restriction prevented that without us having prearranged it, the nearest sea being more than three kilometres past the extent of your habitation zone. We could have gotten close enough to get the smell, sat on the side of the Exe as it widens into the estuary. Of course, sometimes ‘close’ is just about as far away as you can get.

  We didn’t have an agenda, nothing that we planned to buy, so we window shopped, doing that thing where we fuss excitedly over expensive luxuries, gadgets and toys, knowing inside that we’ll probably never waste our money on any of them. After a while I noticed that you were pulling us ever eastward towards a section of the complex that I hadn’t been in for a while, probably since we had moved into our house.

  The east and some of the southeast sectors of the High Street Complex were the more upmarket section of the city centre, its architecture allowed to meld with the restored Victorian-style townhouses and skirt around the Roman remains from the city’s ancient incarnation as a fortress town in an occupied land. It made that part of the complex feel like a museum and the white-collar office-goers who worked in the various solicitors, accountants, property developers and insurance companies seem like living mannequins in a working display, contrasted against those visitors from the modern world in their casual clothes and with their racy haircuts. Stand still too long in that part of the complex and dust would start to settle.

  I never really needed to go there, and I was glad about that as I found it rather creepy, like the horrible ‘educational’ theme park that, as a child, you might have a nightmare about your parents taking you to, where you can hear all the shrieks of excitement from the kids in the proper theme park next door.

  But it was Egg Day and the offices were all empty, so I let you drag me that way along the top level of the complex. A store-lined corridor opened out on a vast space with a huge, lagoon-shaped hole in the centre, above which the roof coned upwards in undulating lines towards a skylight almost the size of a football pitch. Light from the clear day outside poured in, casting vaguely familiar images and patterns throughout the cavernous space and down on to the building which occupied said lagoon-like hole.

  A couple of walkways spanned the gap and we walked out on one of them, stopping halfway to look down at the dizzying sight of the building’s front face falling away from us.

  “Isn’t it beautiful?” you asked rhetorically, a hint of wonder in your voice.

  The front of it was covered in stone carvings, but this angle wasn’t the best one to see them from. It was big, that was for sure – swallowed up by the great mass that was the High Street Complex, maybe, but my current dizziness was testament enough to it being fairly impressive.

  “It’s definitely something,” I replied.

  “It’s called the 'Cathedral'.”

  “I know.”

  “Do you know why they let it stay when they built this part of the complex?” you asked me.

  “Don’t know. There are plenty of old buildings in the complex.”

  “I do, I read up on it.”

  “Uh-huh...?”

  I waited a few moments and, when you weren’t forthcoming, supposed it must be time to prompt. Sometimes we all like to have a lead in, I get that.

  “So, you gonna tell me?”

  “It was a religious building, a Christian one to be exact.”

  “Really?” I said. Feigning... I don’t know, feigning something. “I didn’t know that.”

  “Still is, actually. They can still hold religious services there a couple of times a year. There’s one on today.”

  “Uh-huh...”

  “Don’t be angry, please. It’s just after, you know, what you said... I got curious and did a little research.”

  “You mean you researched religions on our home Cymedia Centre? Well done, there goes your next travel request.”

  “Don’t be like that,” you said, a note of pleading in your voice but a look of defiance in your eyes, “you’re being paranoid. They can’t do that, I looked into it, there’s nothing illegal about religion, and certainly no laws against looking it up in CySpace.”

  “You’re a really bright woman, Mina, but sometimes you’re a little naïve,” I replied. “It doesn’t matter whether things are legal or illegal. Laws are pretty much irrelevant in our world, that is unless you are a real, you know, ‘regular’ criminal robbing banks and killing people. Liberty for the rest of us is about attracting as little negative attention to ourselves as possible; whether accepted, recorded laws are involved makes no difference at all. That’s just the way of the world.”

  You looked at me, something inside you genuinely a little shaken by what I had said. It seemed a little ridiculous that this should be so, considering the conditions and restrictions under which CyberG and the government let a being like you exist.

  You turned and stared back down again for a few moments, then suddenly looked back to me. You played your cards beautifully – those deep brown eyes and that slightly broken look, “Please.”

  “No,” I said firmly, and a little desperately – those eyes were working their special mojo and I had to fight the strong impulse to give that face anything it wanted.

  “Just for two minutes.”

  “Why? I mean, No!”

  Now you were giving me a winning smile. But was it a smile of gracious concession or the beginning of the sex angle? Neither, as it turned out.

  “Fine then,” you said cheerfully, “I’ll go without you.” And with that, you crossed to the other side of the walkway, which overhung the top of the cathedral, and climbed up onto and over the railing. “What do you think?” you asked, staring down at the cathedral’s roof, its now pointless guttering choked with litter. “Five, maybe six metres tops, I can do that.”

  “Yeah, if you don’t go through it. Come on, Mina, come back over.”

  “Come and get me.”

  “This is blackmail.”

  You laughed at that as you swapped your arms around so that you could lean forward over the drop to the cathedral roof. “Does that make me a ‘real’ criminal?”

  Yeah, fucking hilarious.

  A couple of people had started across the walkway from the other end and I worried that they would notice you at any moment.

  “Please Mina, come back.”

  “Shush!” you said straightening, as if readying yourself to jump. “I’m trying to concentrate.”

  “Alright, alright! We can go to the service. For crying out loud, come back over.”

  You hopped back over with the heedless confidence of a ten year old, making me feel... well, my age, I guess, as that fearful part of my mind envisaged you slipping and crashing straight through the roof below. And you didn’t miss the chance for victory celebrations either, as you came back to join me, kissing me on the cheek and whispering to me in a fake American accent, “Why thank you sugar-daddy, you’re mighty fine to me.”

  The accent worried me a little, and I wondered what else
you had been looking up in CySpace. The Uncle Sam’s over at the other side of the complex had closed just over a month ago, along with all the others across the country. If even a restaurant themed to berate Americans was too American for the EU, then any sort of American accents, even funny ones, might soon prove to be not so amusing. It was the sort of thing, for all the wisdom you had gained in your three years, you had not lived long enough to see. But I was old enough to know that nothing which happened between powerful nations was ever innocuous.

  Every moment of our waking lives we are subjected to propaganda in preparation for the next thing that we will need to accept as truth. No one in any position of authority had ever denied me anything that I asked for, and that was because I was on the ball with what propaganda was telling me to think. Or to show, anyway. Actually, does that distinction matter? Does it matter whether you know that you are playing the game? Did I even care?

  With Mina – that’s you by the way, babe, I was getting all third-persony on you there, I’m sorry – I had more of a life than I had ever hoped for, and I intended to keep it that way.

  ****

  Inside, the cathedral was beautiful, in a sort of overpowering, scary way. All its lines seemed to curve overhead sooner or later, so that the building towered over you with maximum leer. There was hardly anyone at the service – half a dozen robes at the front and about twice that sat all in the first couple of rows.

  A teenage boy was singing some sort of classical lament-

  ...What? Sorry...

  -hymn as we entered and that allowed us to sneak up and take seats in the fifth row unnoticed. As the singing finished, a sober-looking grey-haired man dressed with just a little more ostentation than the others stepped up to read from a giant book, the likes of which I had not seen since my childhood.

  “Two-Corinthians, chapter three... verses seventeen and eighteen: Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”

  It was only a brief passage, but afterwards the man stood there for a long time, looking across the gathered faces as if to say ‘I know with certainty that you all feel exactly the same way about that passage as I do’.” I found it a little arrogant.

  “ ‘Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom’,” the man quoted. “Does that mean that we are free here in the Lord’s house? Because surely, if the Lord’s spirit exists anywhere on Earth, then it is here in a magnificent building built to celebrate his glory?”

  He gestured toward the doors at the far end of the cathedral through which we had entered. “But I’m sure it hasn’t escaped your notice that the Lord’s house now rests in the belly of the wolf, its continued existence dependent upon the good graces of others and the ever-more difficult work of the few. And this was how it was in the beginnings of the new Christian Church, struggling for its place in a world which thought that it didn’t need it.

  “In those times there were no cathedrals or churches, no fixed places maintained purely for the needs of worship. The early Christians worshipped on the roads or in each other’s homes. And this is how it was meant to be, how the Lord intended for his people to worship. For he knew that if they carried their faith with them, this also meant that they carried the Lord’s spirit with them.

  “Cathedrals can be taken away, and there have been times when the right of the Christian flock to worship has been taken away, when keeping your faith could mean losing your life. And who knows, the world of men is forever chaotic and those times may come again. But no one can ever take away that which you carry in your heart. You don’t have to wait to come here to worship. Or to any of God’s houses. You are all God’s houses, and every moment of your lives are a service, an act of devotion to he who gave up his son so that we may one day stand at the gates of Heaven. It is this that makes us free.”

  ****

  The service finished, and almost immediately someone from the front row got up and turned round, gliding towards us with an overly-cheery look of interest. It always puts my back up with people like that, it’s like ‘I’m just not interesting enough for you to be that fascinated, mate, so what’s your game’?”

  You, however, were quite different to me in this way. Shy as you could sometimes be, any friendly person would light up your face and fill your cheeks with colour. I could see you falling into this world of wide smiles and accessible empathy, and I didn’t enjoy the thought one bit.

  “What did you think of the service?” he asked, after introducing himself as Daryl and exchanging pleasantries with that intense look of concentration which purposely tells you he thinks that every word you have to say is of immense interest to him.

  “We only caught the end of it,” you replied, “but what we saw was beautiful.”

  He leaned in confidentially towards you – an awkward gesture that looked rehearsed. “This isn’t the real service, this is the... official part of our Easter Sunday. The real party comes tonight.” Daryl said ‘party’ as if he was trying to sell us on the idea of religion like it was a cheeky line of coke. Yeah, you’re bad to the bone my friend. Bad to the bone.

  “What’s that?” you asked.

  “We call it the ‘Resurrection Party’; it’s the way that the Children of God like to spend their Easter night.”

  Children of God? There was something familiar in that, something raising its hand and bobbing around at the edges of my memory.

  “If you wanted to come,” he continued, “you would be welcome.” As Gardner had done a couple of months before, he suddenly remembered me like a ‘plus one’ and perfunctorily acknowledged me again with the briefest of looks. “Both of you.” Yeah, I’m pretty sure he felt how unimpressed I was. You, on the other hand...

  “Oh, we’d love to, wouldn’t we Tim?” You didn’t really wait for my answer, so much did this dullard’s soiree of which you knew nothing excite you. “That would be lovely, Daryl.”

  “Well, we’ll have to see if we can make time,” I chimed in with insincere apology in my voice.

  You scoffed. “What else have we got on, Tim? Playing Maximo Soccer on the Cymedia?”

  Simmer, grrr, simmer.

  “We’ll be there,” you continued, “wouldn’t miss it. Where is it being held?”

  “Drewsteignton,” he replied.

  Your face fell and – definitely not to my credit – the blackness in my mood lifted a little.

  ****

  Drewsteignton was more than twenty kilometres away, well beyond your habitation zone. You weren’t going anywhere near that so-called ‘party’.

  One of my problems is that sometimes I just can’t help gloating. I suppose that at the time, in my head as it were, I kind of think that I’m trying to be conciliatory. Or that this is how you will see it, anyway. Must look very pompous.

  “It’s crap, I know, but it’s probably for the best, Mina. You saw that film Cult of Evil, nothing good can come out of religious people getting together in the woods at night. For all you know, they could be grooming you as a sacrifice. This shit happens.”

  The sun was set and only the very last of the light still hung around; you were stood at our rear window, staring up at the silhouette of the great oak tree. I didn’t think you were going to reply, but suddenly you spun round to look at me and flashed me a cynical smile. “Didn’t they only take virgins? I’m not a virgin, Tim. ‘Course I’ve only got your word that we’ve been doing it right.”

  Not strictly true, but nevertheless... ouch!

  You turned back to the window as you continued. “And anyway, your astonishing ignorance aside, sacrifices are usually made as an offering of the victim’s soul – can’t help them there, either.”

  “You seem to know a lot about this witchcraft.” Weak, really weak.

  “Witchcraft!” you exclaimed to the world beyond the window in what
was almost a scream. Then you turned and stepped towards me and, just for a moment, I thought I saw something in your eyes which I had never seen before, and had never thought I would: real, genuine fury.

  But you stopped suddenly, just as you were about to speak. Your face relaxed and was instantly warm again, instantly you.

  “You know what?” you asked. “Let’s just forget it. What’s the use in arguing about something that can’t be anyway?” And you hugged me tightly. I remember realising that you hadn’t hugged me that hard in quite a while.

  * * *

  Chapter 13

  It was the middle of the night and the com was going. As I sat up, I closed my eyes and buried my face in my hands, waiting for my head and the world to stop moving. It took me two attempts to hit the answer button on the bedroom’s com screen.

  “Hello? Tim McNamee speaking.”

  In my half-conscious state I had accidentally hit the wrong answer button and the video kicked in too, revealing a square-jawed man in grey uniform with thinning blonde hair. He would also see me in my half-naked state, barely concealing my annoyance.

  “Mr. McNamee, my name is Mr. Rowe. I am CyberG’s Head of Security for Sector 9G. May I ask you where your Companion Model is, sir?”

  “Sorry?” My head was still a little cloudy.

  “Mina, Mr. McNamee. Where is Mina?”

  “She’s right-” But, of course, you weren’t.

  “No she’s not, Mr. McNamee. Mina has left her habitation zone.” He was like a school teacher telling me off. Oddly, it reminded me of Mrs. Aldridge, my favourite teacher in middle school. And I felt like I was her favourite too, until she was the one who walked around the corner during my one and only act of bullying. I had only ever heard her use that voice to others, then suddenly she was using it to speak to me. She never looked at me quite the same way ever again. But then, I never did bully again either.