by Claire North
A family of three in one room next door. He’s a salesman, she serves fries at the drive-through. He says, Babe, babe, I promise, next week, next week I promise…
She says, You said that last week, and the week before that, and the week before that.
Honey, honey, I know, but I can do it, I can get the money together…
You always say that, she sobs, you always say the same thing.
They row into the small hours of the night, and I lie awake, listening through the cardboard wall.
A man in a cowboy hat on the TV, skinny as a stick, strong as a stone, moustache quivering on his top lip, sideburns to the jaw.
“Let’s talk reason; let’s make a little sense. Crime is committed by the blacks, that’s math, that’s statistics. So if the police want to use racial profiling I say, yeah, yeah that’s right, because they’re just using a truth we all know to help keep us safe.”
“The FBI say that nearly 70 per cent of crime in the USA is committed by whites.”
“No, I think you’ll find—”
“… but there is a higher percentage of blacks imprisoned for the same crimes…”
“I’m not racist, this is me, having a debate, I’m not racist, you call me racist and I’ll take you to court…”
Types of code: Caesar shift, monoalphabetic, polyalphabetic, single-key encryption, one-time pad, book code, prime number encryption, SSL, etc.
Of all the ciphers it seemed likely that Byron was using, the most obvious was polyalphabetic with a code word. Slow to write, slow to read, but speed could be acquired with practice and, if the code word were known, a computer could break it in a matter of seconds.
Without the code word, frequency analysis would take time, but Byron had written a great deal of material and, usefully, hadn’t bothered to break her words down into five- or six-letter groups, but left all the grammar and spacing in, as thus: bwuwm xi sw ehtjaur pjcfv xdlmcknbn sfvcey adbam.
There is no problem human ingenuity cannot solve.
I looked for repetition of word patterns: “xi” “sw” – It? Is? On? If? “imd” “wix” – The? She? Her? I looked for repetitions of four-letter words, seeking the word “Hope”, and in the end instead found a repetition of the same three-letter word, uxl, and decided it was Why. Crossing “Why” with “uxl” on an alphabetic square gave the letters “edo”. Another three-letter combination, glq, I tried crossing with “the” and found the letters “fre”. On the ancient PC in the foyer of the motel, I typed in a sample sentence from Byron’s diary with the keyword “freedom”, and watched the plaintext appear in an instant.
What I do is unethical, it said, and in the service of humanity.
“It’s two bucks an hour for the PC,” said the manager, mop over his shoulder, bucket in hand.
I left ten dollars under the keyboard, and kept on typing.
America doesn’t have enough public libraries. I end up using the printer at the local fixit store, which also doubles as a seller of beer, milk, toiletries, stuffed animals and guns. It’s a dollar a page, but who cares, the decrypted reams of Byron’s diary fall from the machine into my hands.
Alone in the motel, surrounded by paper, the news on low, the couple next door fighting, fighting, always fighting.
I can’t do this anymore, he screams, I can’t do it! I was meant to be a banker!
“There are cities in England now, whole cities, which are Islamic, where they have Sharia law,” explained an expert on the news, and the anchor looked shocked, aghast, how could this happen, how could Islam have spread so far?
“There are good Muslims, of course, but the faith itself, the religion…”
Change the channel.
My actions are monstrous, and I will not seek a moral justification. History is my guide, Byron wrote. Oliver Cromwell killed a king; the French revolution was led by terror. The serfs were freed and democracy was born; Lenin waged civil war and the Allies fire-bombed Dresden. History is full of vile acts and strange consequence.
I am afraid of Why. Hope – her name is Hope, but I remember her as Why. And why is that? I recall conversations carried out with a figure called Why, her gift, it seems, does not extend to computers, I have data which remembers her, where I cannot. Nor is it fair to say I am afraid of HER – I cannot remember her to be afraid. I am afraid of the concept of her. Of the woman I cannot remember. But that is foolish. My imagination runs wild with the question of the past and the possibilities of the future, but only now, only when I perceive her, is the question real. She is made real by perception, this world is made real by perception of now, of this instant, and that is all that I can permit to matter.
She is free, and does not know it. She is a god, looking at the world from outside the world. Her gift is beautiful. What I am doing to her is vile, but it is both of her own asking, and necessary. The basic structure has been superficially successful. If we can implant the trigger in Why, then we can implant it anywhere.
She is sublime; she is enlightenment.
I slept heavily one night, but my diary had not been disturbed, and you said you lost the phone I gave you.
In my nightmare, you are everyone, and I am alone in the world as you laugh at me.
Hope?
The word written, plaintext, embedded so far into the notebooks that I almost missed it.
Hope? If you read this – perhaps you have already – know that you wanted treatments. You agreed to all of it. I have stripped Filipa’s programming from the system. You will not desire to be beautiful, you will not be made ambitious, a drone, a doll, a perfect woman, I will not kill your soul. But every day you sit in that chair, we come closer to understanding Filipa’s work, and your mind.
And then, encoded, immediately after,
No More A-Roving.
Terror, alone in the night. I locked myself into my motel room, sat down with a new mobile phone, counted backwards from one hundred, cross-legged on the end of the bed, and looked up the words of the poem, “We’ll Go No More A-Roving”, by Lord Gordon Byron, 1788 – 1824.
So we’ll go no more a-roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.
For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have a rest.
Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we’ll go no more a-roving
By the light of the moon.
I read the words, and finished the words, and nothing happened, though my heart was racing fast, so fast, not even breath, not even counting my breath could slow it. I put my phone down, went into the bathroom, washed my face, my hands, cold water, stared at my own reflection in the mirror, found it ragged and grey, stood up straighter, defiant, proud, glared my face into submission, looked down at my phone and saw that washing had taken nearly two and a half hours.
Shaking on the bathroom floor.
fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckGETUPfuckfuckfuckGETUPNOWfuckfuckfucketyfuckfucketyfuckfuck
The desert.
The train.
And what is worthy, and what is justice, and what are words, at the end of the day?
Fucking get to your fucking feet, Hope Arden. Fucking get this done!
I crawled back to the end of the bed, drank a sip of water, I am warrior, I am runner, I am professional, I am discipline, I am freedom, fuck you all, searched for the poem on YouTube.
Various people had done readings; I chose one by a woman who’d recorded it for her son as part of a family festival on Skye.
“We’ll go no more a-roving,” she said, and her voice was untrained but her meaning was clear. “For the sword outwears its sheath, and the soul wears out the breast,”
and I was sitting on the floor by the TV, and had been crying, though I didn’t know why.
Hours, lost in a second.
I listened to the poem again, and this time I held a rubber band around my wrist, and snapped it hard, burning against my skin, and the reader said, “The soul wears out the breast…”
I was on the balcony outside my motel room, watching Route 101 rush by beyond the pines, and my wrist was red and raw, and only thirty minutes had passed.
Again.
Again.
I pinched my skin hard enough to cry out with the pain, and she said, “The soul wears out…”
and I was on the floor, gasping for breath, and I’d clearly turned the TV on, but that was okay, because only fifteen minutes had gone by and on the screen a man said, “So two hundred bucks and we’ve turned that into six hundred and that’s skill, my man, that’s expertise, that’s us rising to the occasion when the pressure’s on…”
Again.
Again again again until it’d done, again, getting this thing out of my head again again again!!
I listen to the recording and now
on the bed, silent, eyes open, lying flat on my back, I’m at forty-three counts of my breath and appear to be counting downwards from one hundred, who knows where the last fifty-seven breaths have gone?
Again, the soul wears out the breast and
reading the Bible, calmly now, calmer, though the impression of my nails in the palm of my left hand has raised a hard red lump, and there is bruising around the tops of both my arms where, perhaps, I clung too tightly to myself but
again
the heart must pause to breathe
and the sun is rising, beautiful California day, not grey, not like home, not a sunrise of mists and shredding clouds, but goddess-golden, a thing to worship, Amaterasu, Bast, Bridgit, driving out the dark.
Again
I sing along to the words, tuneless, dancing round the room, “The soul wears out the breast oh yeahhhh!”
and stumble, but do not fall, dizzy, head aching, head killing me but fuck that, fuck this, screw you all, I am Hope, I am Why, I am a thief, I am forgotten, I am me, I am fucking me and this is now, this now I dance and I sing again again again
Again!
“The sword outwears its sheath…”
Barely a stumble this time, barely a gasp, I press myself to the wall for a moment, wait for the moment to pass, then turn and turn again, dancing on the spot, wild, limbs flailing, breath shaking, knees bending, the sword outwears its sheath and I am dancing, dancing, dancing, my body is stone, I am dancing stone again!
“… the soul wears out the breast, and the heart must pause to breathe and love itself have a rest HEY MACARENA! The soul wears out the breast hey Macarena!” Words replacing words, fuck this dancing fuck this the soul the breast replace repeat repeat until it’s done Macarena! “The heart must pause to breathe and love itself fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck fuck fuck Macarena!”
A hammering on the door, dawn light through the sheer polyester curtain. “What the fuck is going on?” screams the manager of the motel and then, when I answer the door, gleaming with sweat, laughing, shaking, wheezing, “Who the fuck are you?!”
“I’m Hope!” I exclaimed, holding back a shriek of laughter. “I am Hope!!”
Chapter 71
A question for the floor, asked by the man waiting for the bus back into San Francisco: “How do you know if you’re mad?”
He’s maybe in his early thirties, but with a hunted innocence in his eyes that makes him seem much younger. He clings to a single sky-blue suitcase, and wears a grey sweater with a hood, and torn shoes, and says earnestly that he used to study philosophy, but the philosophers missed the point, that it wasn’t about the rules, it was about the absences, the places where the rules broke down, that was the truth of it, the truth of the universe.
“We all pretend we’re not mad,” he whispered, “but that’s because we’re afraid!”
A question I mulled over on the bus, clutching my meagre travel bag close, my clothes dirty, hair wild, face set. How do you know you’re not mad?
How many lives had I touched, who now considered themselves insane? My parents, slowly forgetting their own child, papering over the wallpaper in my bedroom, something they’d always meant to do. People I’d stolen from, the police in the interview room – she walked right up to you, she spoke to you, how can you not remember her face? Princess Leena in Dubai. Gauguin, who’d held a knife on me; people I’d robbed and people I’d bought. A passport forger on a boat in the Sea of Marmara, a girl playing video games in Tokyo, a lover drunk on the bed of the one-hour hotel. Men whose bodies I’d pressed close to mine, Parker in New York, a maths teacher who’d wondered if I counted cards, company, warmth, association, companionship – discipline.
Am I mad?
I have discipline to protect me. The discipline of thoughts questioned, of company sought, another pair of eyes, a different outlook on the world, they are my discipline, humanity is my discipline, Luca Evard is…
… a lapse in judgement.
I know that, have always known that, see it very clearly now. Not discipline. Anti-discipline. A burst of irrational obsession which, having nothing long-term to measure the term against, I called love. How I needed him now. How he must hate me, if he remembered anything about who I was.
I counted, until only counting remained.
Chapter 72
Byron was not at the apartment; of course.
She’d left an envelope taped to the wall by the door, the word HOPE written on it in large letters.
Dear Hope,
It would appear that either you have vanished, or I have ceased recording our interactions. If the former, I do not know why you have departed, though I can speculate. If the latter, then you should know that fear of not knowing who you are or why I am no longer recording our relationship has prompted my departure. If I have left you, then I hope I clarified beforehand that you have been receiving treatments. Not the full schedule as embarked on by Filipa and Rafe; not Perfection. But an experimental set of techniques designed to map and alter your brain chemistry. You have requested this; you may also not be fully aware of it, as the process is still being developed.
If you have left me, then it is possible that a side-effect of this process has driven you away. If so I hope you will believe me when I say that I mean you no harm, and would be honoured to continue to work with you to understand your condition, and wish in time we may collaborate again.
Much of what is in this letter you may know, or may not know, or may know more, or think you know more, or may simply not care. I can perceive you only through my records, and they are insubstantial. I see from my notes that you once said you needed to meet me face to face to know me. I share this sentiment, but unlike you I cannot build up a picture of you from these encounters. Thus who you are is a blank to me, and I cannot trust a blank. I do not say this with rancour. Yet my mission is essential and discretion is paramount, and so here we are.
Know I wish you well and safe, and implore you to avoid all use of treatments save by those protocols that you and I have modified together. Your life and soul are too precious to be destroyed by Perfection.
yours sincerely,
Byron
There was a USB stick in the bottom of the envelope. I took it to my hotel, plugged it into the computer, put headphones on, listened to the audio file within.
Nothing surprising; my stomach tightened at the sound but I did not flinch, did not run, did not move.
“The sword outwears its sheath,” said Byron’s voice, steady and resigned. “The soul wears out the breast. Trust me. I am your only hope. You will come to me.”
She said this last several times, then repeated the poem, and I listened, unmoved, and felt okay. Hey Macarena.
I went to Daly City, to the empty office up its little concrete path, Hydroponic Fertilizers Ltd., Water Is Our Future. The sign was still there, but the office was empty. I broke in through the back door, wandered past the place where Byron’s c
hair had sat, a place of needles and drugs and…
… other things I had forgotten.
Did I feel horror?
I ran my hand over walls, under the window sills, and didn’t. Thought perhaps I should, tried to force myself to feel queasy or angry at what had happened, felt nothing. I looked for anything, something, a sign, and found everything bleach-clean, empty, gone.
I looked up Hydroponic Fertilizers Ltd., but the company had vanished as quickly as it was created, the records blank. I knocked on the houses next door, asked if they’d seen anyone leave, lorries or faces, but they’d seen nothing, except for one old woman with insomnia, who’d been woken at 3 a.m. by a white van pulling away, and thought it was thieves, but no, you didn’t get thieves round here, not where everyone was so nice.
In the end, I fell back on a stake-out.
For two weeks, I sat outside the house of Agustin Carrazza, the ex-MIT professor of dubious ethical practices whom Byron had visited during those long, long weeks of experiments. I watched him come, watched him go, followed him to meetings and dinners, and hid, not from him, but from CCTV cameras and mobile phones, hiding from the machine, for the machine never forgets.
Discipline; all things, discipline.
If he was working with Byron, he showed no sign of it, until one Wednesday afternoon, when he drove to a lab with no name, in an industrial estate off Route 24, where bright young things in slacks rushed out to meet him and shake his hand, before leading him inside to admire their operation, their well-guarded, locked-door operation. And when the lab was dark, I broke in, and found the self-same chair and the same needles and the same drugs and the same everything, electrical, brain-altering everything that had been in Byron’s little office in Daly City, and unwashed coffee cups and cutlery left in the sink, and a glass full of green washing-up liquid that was beginning to crystallise from neglect, and a Giants calendar, because everyone here supported the same team, and a password-protected PC that didn’t yield to anything obvious – password1, 123456, Giants001, etc. – and in a yellow biohazard bin, needles caked with freshly dried blood, waiting to be taken away and incinerated.