Sparks

by David Quantick

  What Kaye was not doing, and this was the beating heart of his plan, was reading any non-fiction. Now that he had decided that being mad or not mad made no practical difference to his life, Kaye was feeling quite clear about things. He was particularly clear about one thing above all else; that, if he started taking out books with names like A Universal History of Weird Insects or How Mysterious Beings Have Lied To Us, the authorities would infer that he was still mad, and therefore could not be let out into the world to live in a sleeping bag on a street corner. If, however, Kaye developed a new interest in books about doctors who have their children kidnapped and so forth, they would conclude that he was all right in the head, and let him go home.

  It was a good plan, and Kaye’s faith in it was confirmed one day when, taking out a novel where an idealistic young architect realises the SS are somehow running his local yacht club, he saw the library trusty write the book title down on a piece of paper headed FTAO DR ALLMAN. Kaye was being monitored.

  “I have struck the first blow,” he said to the library trusty, who, being a former axe murderer used to interpreting random words as signals to go culling, spent the rest of the morning in a state of confusion.

  Dr Allman rubbed his lens-filled eyes and tried to focus on the list in front of him. It was a list of some of the most popular novels of recent years, all of which had been taken out of the library by Joseph Kaye in the past few months. Several of them Kaye had kept for weeks and then taken out again apparently to re-read. This had happened so often that other inmates had complained.

  Allman read and re-read the list. There was no mention of any kind of insect or conspiracies. He fumbled about his desk for a telephone, found one or something of a similar size, and dialled.

  “Hello?” he said. “It’s Dr Allman. Yes. Yes, quite safe. Yes.”

  He rubbed his eyes again as he listened to the voice at the other end.

  “True,” said Dr Allman, “But in that case you can always kill him. Yes.”

  Kaye was given a lot of tests. One of them was of an inkblot, folded over to make it symmetrical. DOES THIS INKBLOT REMIND YOU OF ANYTHING?, it said underneath. The inkblot looked like a beetle. It had six legs and antennae. Kaye wrote IT LOOKS LIKE MY MOTHER next to it. The next inkblot also looked like a beetle. Kaye wrote IT LOOKS LIKE A BEAUTIFUL FLOWER next to it. The next eight inkblots also looked like beetles. Kaye wrote anything next to them but the word BEETLE.

  On the final page, there was a photograph of a beetle. WHAT IS THIS? said the caption. Kaye stared at it for a few minutes, then wrote A BEE.

  Joseph Kaye’s cell door opened. A carer appeared with Kaye’s belongings in a box and a suit on a hanger.

  “Blimey,” said the carer. “Look at this suit. You must have been in here for 50 years or something.”

  Kaye took his things in silence and changed into his suit.

  “Is it a retro thing?” asked the carer, who sensed he had been tactless. “Oh,” he added, as if it had just occurred to him, which, him being not too sharp, it had, “you’ve been released.”

  Kaye smiled, thinly.

  “Good,” he said, “follow me,” and led the way from the cell towards the main door.

  “Why am I following you?” said the carer, “I work here.” But he followed him anyway, and when Kaye paused at the gates of the institution, let him out back into the world.

  Joseph Kaye’s mother was emptying a lot of cold tea leaves into a bin when the back door opened and her son appeared.

  “I’m home, mother,” said Joseph as his mother dropped the teapot.

  “Joseph,” said his mother. “Are you all right?”

  His father appeared, drawn like an earthenware ghoul to the sound of a breaking teapot. “It’s him,” he said. “The madman. What do you want, madman?”

  “Leave him alone,” said Kaye’s mother. “He’s been ill. Come in, Joseph. I’ll make you a cup of… a cup of coffee, I suppose.”

  “Huh,” said Joseph Kaye’s father. “You wouldn’t make me a cup of coffee if I’d gone mad.”

  “They came and took your books away,” said Joseph Kaye’s mother. “And your computer. They said it was for charity.”

  Joseph Kaye sat at the kitchen table. It felt all right to be home.

  His father appeared in the doorway again. “Oh,” he said. “I’ve arranged for you to have your old job back.”

  “Thank you, father,” said Joseph Kaye. “That’s very good of you.”

  His father looked surprised at this emotional outburst.

  “That’s all right,” he said. “Just buy your mother a new teapot.”

  Back at Joseph’s workplace, some people were pleased to see him. This was because they were new to the office and hadn’t been there when Joseph lost it. The people who had been there when he lost it were really hacked off.

  “Nice to have you back,” said his old boss, who didn’t mean it.

  “The place hasn’t been the same without you,” said his head of department, leaving out the end of the sentence, which was “because you are a nutcase.”

  “We kept your desk exactly as you left it,” said his workmate, ushering Kaye to a beaten-up metal and wooden thing with legs and piles of paper strewn all over, under and round it. “Only we’ve removed your computer.”

  “Get these done by four o’clock or you’re out on your ear,” said a man from accounting.

  Kaye sat down and began working. By half past three he was done for the day.

  “These are fine,” said the man from accounting. “Good to have you back, Kaye.”

  Kaye tidied his desk and went home.

  “He didn’t mention roach cocks once,” said the head of Kaye’s department to his boss.

  Joseph Kaye’s work routine became gradually more and more normal. He got up in the morning, had breakfast with his parents, went to work on the train, and came home again in the evening. His life returned to its old path so much that his father stopped grunting at him and his mother started asking him when he was going to get a girlfriend.

  After a few weeks of establishing this pattern, Joseph Kaye broke it. Telling his parents that he was planning to investigate a particularly enticing new chess club in the area, Kaye instead went back to the main library.

  “Oh no,” said the head librarian when he saw Kaye at the counter. “Please don’t hurt me.”

  “I didn’t hurt you last time,” said Kaye. “I just locked you in a cupboard. It wasn’t my fault a load of books and cleaning equipment fell on you.”

  “Well, technically it was,” the librarian said, and then stopped. Perhaps it would be better to not pursue this line of complaint. After all, the man had been sent to the funny farm. “I trust you are a reformed character?”

  “Yes,” said Kaye. “They did terrible things to me in there. Mostly involving small, sharp hammers.”

  “Good,” said the head librarian before he could stop himself. “I mean…”

  “No,” said Kaye. “You’re right. I deserved it, especially the sharper hammers. And I have come back to apologise. What with my obsession with… with those things, and the harm I caused you, I feel very bad. And sorry. I’m sorry,” he added. “I really am.”

  The head librarian nodded, trying to look sympathetic. He wasn’t at all a sympathetic man, but he liked being apologised to.

  “Would you like to be reinstated as a full member of the library?” he asked, with a reptile’s kindness.

  “Yes,” said Kaye. “And to use the computer facilities.”

  Joseph Kaye sat in the computer room. Everyone else had gone home. He had about ten minutes before the library was closed. He closed the files he had been pretending to work on and went online. He used the head librarian’s password, which he had written down earlier (the head librarian was not the sort of person who heeds warnings like DO NOT WRITE YOUR PASSWORD DOWN ON A BIT OF PAPER AND LEAVE IT LYING AROUND FOR ANYONE TO SEE) and he had a computer textbook with him, which told him how to remove a
ny obvious trace of where he had been.

  He was ready. He cracked his knuckles, winced, and typed in a word.

  When Sparks woke up again, he was in a very nice restaurant. Tinkling piano music wafted around the slightly scented air, low lights reflected off crystal wineglasses, and to either side of him sat Jeff and Duncan, each behind porcelain plates gently heaped with expensive food.

  “Why haven’t I got any food?” said Sparks. By now his life had become so confusing that asking questions like “Why am I in a restaurant now when I was in a helicopter before?’ or “Oughtn’t you be murdering me now?” was nothing more than a big hairy waste of time. Whereas asking “Why haven’t I got any food?” was, in comparison, amazingly practical.

  Jeff didn’t answer. He was busy eating as quickly as possible. Duncan put his fork down.

  “Because you’ve been on a drip for two days and rich food might kill you,” he said. “Also because Jeff doesn’t like you.”

  “Two days?” said Sparks, unwillingly falling back into the whole pointless quest for sanity thing. “I’ve been on a drip for two days?”

  “You were starving,” said Duncan, as Jeff was involved in not so much swallowing as swallowed by some sort of difficult scallop thing. “So we put you on a drip. So you can’t eat this delicious meal, which is a shame, because it’s very expensive and because where we are it’s also very hygienic.”

  “Why is it very hygienic?” Sparks asked, but at that moment, Jeff grabbed Duncan from behind and started rabbit-punching his throat.

  “Heimlich manoeuvre,” he said, as Duncan began to choke.

  “That’s not the Heimlich manoeuvre,” said Sparks. “For one, you’re not meant to punch people in the throat. And for two, it’s supposed to make people stop choking, not start.”

  Jeff let go of Duncan, who instantly began choking some more and massaging his throat.

  “He talks too much,” said Jeff. “Here, have his dinner.”

  Jeff pushed Duncan’s dinner over. Sparks, despite feeling sorry for Duncan (despite their previous history), was extremely hungry. He ate Duncan’s dinner.

  Hygienic, eh? Sparks thought to himself as he chewed massively. He wondered if it was a clue. He hoped not; Sparks was rubbish with clues.

  After dinner, Jeff and Duncan took Sparks outside for a cigar. Even Sparks thought this was absurd. As they walked around the restaurant’s pleasant grounds, Jeff occasionally stopping to sniff a gardenia or whatever the big plants with fat leaves were, Duncan occasionally stopping to rub his crumpled trachea, Sparks began to suspect that something was up. On previous occasions when he had met Jeff and Duncan, they had often tried to hurt him, or kill him, or make him spend the rest of his life in a loony bin. Now they were rescuing him and feeding him, or at least letting him eat Duncan’s dinner. And now, right now, Jeff was actually lighting Sparks’ cigar, which was apparently a very expensive Cuban one named after a Shakespeare play (“Is it Hamlet?” Sparks asked, and got an unpleasant look from Jeff). Unless the cigar contained a bomb or thousands of tiny, flame-fearing spiders ready to run into Sparks’ mouth and sting him, Sparks had a feeling that he wasn’t going to be killed.

  “The fabric of the universe is about to be screwed up by one man,” said Jeff.

  “Thank you,” said Sparks, puffing fiercely at his cigar.

  “Pardon?” he said, his thoughts catching up with the sudden conversational shift. “The fabric of the what did?”

  “The fabric of the universe is about to be screwed up by one man,” said Jeff again.

  “Oh,” said Sparks, suspecting that “Oh” might be the wrong answer. Jeff took Sparks’ cigar and threw it into a bush. “Oh,” said Jeff, in a mimicking voice. Sparks’ suspicion was right. He tried to look more comprehending. “I see,” he said. Jeff looked at him, hard.

  “No, I don’t see,” said Sparks. “I don’t see at all. I have no idea what you are talking about.”

  “Good,” said Jeff, nodding thinly. He looked at Duncan, who began scrabbling in the bush for the cigar.

  “The universe is a very delicate thing, you know,” Jeff said, as Duncan dusted some crap off the cigar and returned it to Sparks. “All these worlds exist in a…”

  “Delicate balance?” said Sparks, finding some insect grit on the end of his cigar and flicking it off.

  Jeff shook his head. “He’s trying not to say ‘delicate’ twice,” explained Duncan.

  “These worlds exist in a complex state of equilibrium,” said Jeff.

  “Well done!” said Duncan.

  “And,” said Jeff, looking pained and triumphant at the same time like a dictator with piles, “if anything should happen to throw these worlds out of kilter…”

  “Off balance,” explained Duncan.

  “Then that fabric, the fabric of the universe, that I mentioned before, would be ripped,” said Jeff. “The universe would be irreparably harmed.”

  “You can’t mend a broken egg,” said Duncan.

  “And that’s what’s about to happen,” Jeff said.

  “Someone’s going to mend an egg?” said Sparks.

  “No,” said Jeff. “Remember this sentence? ‘The fabric of the universe is about to be screwed up by one man’. That’s what I have been talking about for the last two minutes.”

  “Hang on,” said Sparks. “I’m still not up to speed on this.”

  “Bloody hell,” said Jeff. “I wish we’d brought a dog. At least you can train a dog. Look. Someone is messing about with the – I can’t believe I’m going to say this again – the fabric of the universe. On this world. Here. And this is going to affect not just this world but others too. I can’t explain how but it is.”

  “No,” said Sparks. “I got that. That was easy. What I don’t get – and don’t roll your eyes at me, please – what I don’t get is when we first met, when I beat you up and all that, you told me that this couldn’t happen.”

  “What?” said Jeff.

  “When I beat you up,” said Sparks, enjoying the reiteration no end. “You told me all that thing about someone stepping on a butterfly and changing history was nonsense.”

  “No I didn’t!” said Jeff.

  “Yes you did. You said all you got if you did that was butterfly on your shoe. In fact,” said Sparks, “you said you did it.”

  “He’s right,” said Duncan. “He’s absolutely right, you know.”

  “Shut up,” Jeff said. “All right,” he added after a moment, “I might have said that.”

  “You did say that,” said Sparks.

  “I did say that,” said Jeff. “But it’s different.”

  “Why?” said Sparks. “Because I was beating you up?”

  “Stop saying that,” said Jeff. “No, it’s different because – oh, you tell him.” Jeff turned to Duncan. “If I have to say ‘fabric of the universe’ again, I’ll split down the middle.”

  “All right,” said Duncan affably. “I don’t mind. Right,” he said. “What Jeff means is that if you do something in a world that’s… that’s of that world, it’s OK. But if you do something in a world that’s not of that world, it’s not. OK.”

  “Oh,” said Sparks. “No, I don’t get it.”

  “Flaming gumboils,” said Jeff, a little heatedly. “Listen, you twit, it’s really simple.”

  He leaned in towards Sparks, his thin nostrils flaring alarmingly. He breathed heavily and spoke slowly.

  “Me go to world,” said Jeff. “Me see world. Me see local flora and fauna. Me tread on local flora and fauna. No harm. But! Me am local flora and fauna. Me see me. Me go mad, tell everyone, ‘Look! Thin man from other world!’ Fabric of universe collapse.”

  “But I saw you,” said Sparks. “I saw you, and I beat you up, and the fabric of the blah didn’t change.”

  “Because you didn’t tell anyone,” said Duncan. “Because you didn’t seem to care very much.”

  “You are a moronic exception,” said Jeff. “No offence.”

  “Wha
t?” said Sparks.

  “For generations, we’ve been taught, don’t let the locals find out there’s such a thing as the Society, don’t go round telling them you come from another world, all that. And why? Because the theory is once the locals find out, they’ll want to join in. They’ll all be noncing about an infinite amount of worlds, muddying the waters and making the search for God’s Perfect World impossible,” said Jeff. “And what if some fool stumbles on God’s Perfect World, and messes it up?”

  “It doesn’t bear thinking about,” said Duncan.

  “But instead, we meet you,” said Jeff. “And while you’re a pain in the arse, trolling round like a drunk in a barrel making a fool of yourself, you haven’t told anyone what you’re doing.”

  “I told Alison,” said Sparks. “In the bear world. And I told my mum, in the world where they thought I was a serial killer.”

  “Anyone important,” said Jeff, caustically.

  “Oh,” said Sparks.

  “So, you’re a sap. You’re like some kind of homeless person of the universe, going from world to world not making much sense and definitely not having any impact.”

  “Thanks,” said Sparks. He didn’t mean it.

  “Not at all,” said Jeff. “I mean, it’s almost an achievement. Discovering a way to travel between different realities, involving yourself in those realities, and having absolutely no effect on those worlds. It’s like building an atom bomb and then forgetting where you left it.”

  “Which actually happened on one world,” said Duncan. “You see…”

  “Be quiet,” said Jeff. “So there you are, Mr Useless. We had to stop you, of course, because that’s part of our job, but you were pretty low on our damage limitation list.”

  “Have we got a damage limitation list?” said Duncan.

  “Yes,” said Jeff. “I expect. Anyway, you’re not the issue. You’re not the problem. You’re an idiot. Someone else is the problem.”