Breathe

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘Okay, but if I’m not convinced, promise you’ll drop the whole thing?’

  ‘That’s up to Miranda,’ says June. She doesn’t explain why.

  Apela Tamarak is Fitch’s PA. She moves her mobile phone closer to her computer, until it suddenly emits a piercing shriek. ‘Watch,’ she instructs Ben. The noise from the mobile subsides into an old pop song. It sounds like an early Manfred Mann hit, then there’s a station ident from Radio Caroline.

  ‘It keeps picking up old pirate radio shows from the sixties. How is that possible?’

  They listen to the long-forgotten voices of the Radio Caroline DJs for a minute. Apela is enjoying the show. Maybe she’s nuts as well, thinks Ben. He resolves to talk to some other staffers.

  ‘I get these red dots before my eyes whenever I stare too long at the company screensaver,’ says Alison, Clarke’s PA. ‘Then I pass out. Watch.’

  Alison’s head drops forward. She’s out cold with her face on the desk. She opens one eye. ‘Sometimes I pass out right on the keyboard. It leaves marks, you know?’

  When she sits up, all her hair is standing on end.

  Jake in Invoicing is more embarrassed about talking, but Ben is good with people. Finally he opens up. They’re standing over a toilet in the men’s room, staring into it. Jake grabs the handle and flushes.

  ‘It flushes back to front,’ Jake explains. ‘The water goes down the hole anti-clockwise. It’s only supposed to do that in Australia, isn’t it?’

  Harry, the mailboy, is happy to talk to anyone, particularly if they want to discuss shows on the Sci-Fi Channel. He points to some scratch-marks along the wall. ‘There’s, like, all this tiny grafitti everywhere. Check it out. Triple sixes, man. The mark of the beast. The ghost in the machine. Messages from another place. Warnings? Could be.’ He shakes his head sadly. His hair wants washing. ‘I get these weird headaches when I see them. Like something’s trying to take control of my brain.’

  ‘Do you smoke a lot of dope?’ asks Ben.

  Jake is puzzled. ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

  Ben looks at his chaotic notes. None of them makes any sense. He studies the building blueprint, and reads the brochures. Words jump out: STATE OF THE ART – UNIQUE STRUCTURE – TWENTY NINE FLOORS OF NEW TECHNOLOGY

  – TWENTY NINE FLOORS –

  He cross-references the blueprint. Then he’s walking through the building’s lobby to a map of the floors. He has a readout of the building’s blueprint in his hand. He looks at the map and counts the levels, running his finger up the panel. Twenty-nine. The blueprint says there are thirty.

  He returns to his workstation, feeling beaten. As Miranda passes, he stops her. He has the feeling that he’s getting involved, despite himself. He points out the notes he has taken.

  ‘Buildings don’t make people behave strangely,’ he reasons, ‘other people do. You really think there’s something wrong with the place, or is this some new kind of urban myth?’

  Miranda pulls a pen from behind her ear, displays it to Ben and places it halfway up the wall, where it stays. ‘You tell me. Should it do that?’

  They stand there looking at the pen as it starts to spin.

  Ben decides to have a quiet word with Meera. ‘Don’t get me wrong,’ he begins, ‘I don’t buy into any of this –’

  Meera raises a pencilled eyebrow. ‘But?’

  ‘Okay, I went outside the building and counted the windows. There are meant to be twenty nine floors, but I counted thirty. Where’s the extra floor, Meera?’

  ‘Ah, now that’s the big secret isn’t it.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning, first of all, that they didn’t build a thirteenth floor. What you have here is a shrine to rationality built by irrational people. There are two floor twelves. Also, when I first joined, I went through the cabling with a fine-tooth comb and came up against a blank. I mean a real blank: a room that cables come in and out of, but nobody seems to know what’s in there. Room 3014 … but it’s on the thirtieth floor. A floor that doesn’t officially exist. But I’ve been up there. The door’s always locked. Suppose it contains some kind of weird technology we’re not allowed to know about? It’s just sitting there, right above our heads.’

  Suddenly they hear a rhythmic thumping noise and look up to see Clarke heading their way. Clarke stops by Meera’s desk. Sweating and annoyed, the supervisor studies Ben as if he is some kind of peculiar biological anomaly. ‘Mr Harper. Step into my office, would you?’

  Clarke offers Ben a seat. The supervisor paces back and forth past his son’s sports trophies. Clarke’s elevated boot makes his clumping gait lop-sided. He is unpredictable when he’s like this.

  ‘I want you to know I was against your appointment here. But the law is on your side. You’re here to fill a European requirement. You’re a legal statistic.’

  Ben shifts uncomfortably. ‘I know it’s only my first day, but it seems to me that people are experiencing low-level symptoms of illness, and they apparently think the building is at fault.’

  ‘If someone comes to you with a problem, you report it to me. Just stick to your job description and we’ll get along fine. Don’t give me bad news. I want solid factual evidence, not your vague opinions.’

  Ben is already having a crisis of conscience. He wants to fit in, but he hates dishonesty. ‘You expect me to falsify my findings?’ That isn’t what he meant to ask, but it’s out now.

  Clarke’s eyes bulge unpleasantly as he looms close. He’s been eating onions, and there’s an under-scent of lard. ‘Listen, you little prick, you stick to being a keyboard-monkey or I’ll leave you twisting in the fucking wind. How clear is that?’

  ‘Pretty clear. I’m just trying to do my job. I don’t want to get the boot.’ That didn’t go so well, he thinks, not daring to look back as he leaves the office, mentally biting his fist.

  A building like SymaxCorp is analogous to the backstage area of a theatre set. In the same way that Disneyland’s miles of service corridors are not seen by the public, SymaxCorp’s basement remains hidden from view. Beneath the lobby, spotlights reach off into the distance. Two servicewear-co-ordinated workmen study them.

  ‘What are we looking for?’ asks Tony Cox, not because he’s interested but because it’s nearly time to go home and he’s starving.

  ‘Damage from a power surge,’ Ray Sturgiss, his supervisor, tells him. ‘It came up on the board. I don’t see any.’

  ‘How do they keep everything so clean down here? You could eat off the fucking floor.’ Tony snaps his gum and blows a bubble.

  ‘Suction system removes all the dust. Howard’s the only janitor for the whole building. One day, all places will be like this.’

  ‘The hippy bloke? He never does any fucking work.’

  As the workmen watch, the lights go out all the way along the corridor.

  ‘Shit. That’s a big one.’ Ray looks up nervously. They descend and try the switches, but nothing happens. They flick on torches, illuminating a path. ‘I don’t understand. The system is brand new. There’s nothing to go wrong.’

  ‘Then where are the lights?’ asks Tony.

  ‘It must have damaged the sub-station.’ They stop before a tall steel box, the door of which is raised. ‘This shouldn’t be open. It’s hyper-sensitive equipment. It must have unsealed when the electrics crashed.’

  Tony peers in. ‘So what do we do?’

  ‘Trip the relay from the mains after I’ve checked this.’

  ‘Can you smell that? Something burning.’ Tony sniffs the air.

  ‘I’ve got no sense of smell, mate.’ Ray rolls up his sleeves and reaches in to the rerouters. ‘Was a time when they’d employ a bloke with a broom to keep a place clean. Now even a sweeper needs a fucking degree in electronics to figure out. Give me some light here. Tony? Coxie?’ He looks around. Tony seems to have vanished. Suddenly, the lights come back on all the way along the corridor.

  Relays trip. Electricity arcs. Machinery moves. Th
e hum of new air starts up. Ray still has his hand inside the sub-station as the lid is reactivated and starts to close. There’s no way he can get his hand out in time. He struggles, but the heavy steel lid is still coming down on his fingers.

  ‘Coxie! Coxie! Shut it back off!’ The metal sheet closes on his hand, crushing then snipping off his last two fingers at the first joint. Ray’s agonised cries echo along the corridor, but his hand is free and the shield is back in place. The system’s designed to do that, after all.

  The built-up boot. You hear it coming from the other end of the corridor. You get to recognise the loping walk. Clarke clumps to the front of the seated workers and barks at them.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he looks from one expectant face to the next, ‘this Friday, SymaxCorp presents its office systems via the top floor satellite link to the New York Board Of Commerce. This will be the most important presentation in the company’s history. The later you stay, the harder you work, the more likely you’ll be to win promotion over your colleagues. Don’t trust them, because they won’t be trusting you. This isn’t a business. It’s a war that we intend to win. Get a good night’s sleep. You have a very tough week ahead of you.’

  Ben and Miranda are seated near the back, like kids who talk in class. They eye each other with some suspicion. ‘He should have been in the military,’ says Ben.

  ‘He was,’ Miranda tells him. ‘Desk job. The boot. But you never lose the discipline.’

  Clarke is watching them.

  3. TUESDAY

  The building glints blackly beneath gathering storm clouds. Sometimes movement can be glimpsed within; it looks as though a great creature is shifting. The darkest part of the sky is touching the SymaxCorp roof. On the twentieth floor, Ben dons a headset and runs the SymaxCorp DVD he has been given. He finds himself watching more streams and woodland scenes. ‘SymaxCorp creates integrated electronic office environments to suit any size of business …’ says a wholly insincere voice.

  Ben wanders away through the open-plan floor. What should be ordinary is now becoming mysterious to him, because he sees it with fresh eyes.

  A girl is on her hands and knees taping a cable along the floor.

  A senior staffer is thumping his computer with his fist as the screen fills up with images from old porn films. John Holmes has a moustache, and is alternately fucking two overweight girls. The staffer is mortified with embarrassment.

  ‘SymaxCorp sets new standards in office efficiency, allowing you to work – ’ Here the DVD voiceover sticks and phases oddly, distorting. ‘– faster faster faster faster faster faaaasterrrr … and better than the best from your staff … no matter how urgent your deadline …’

  A secretary touches a scanner and her hair stands on end with static.

  A worker is lying with his head on his desk. He is surrounded by aspirin packets and bottles.

  Another secretary finds her cardigan sticking to the wall behind her. She pulls it free, but it floats away from her body again.

  Ben examines a window covered with a spiral of small insects. He presses his hand against the glass and the insects drop away. He returns to his computer screen, where the DVD is still playing. The images are increasingly absurd and divorced from reality. He looks up and imagines the discreet ducts that supply air to the entire building, forming an X-ray of the building’s walls, a maze of tubes he can hear hissing above his head as he works.

  ‘… creating the ultimate electronic environment. One day this is how all first-world offices will operate …’

  Ben watches and listens, and gets jumpy despite himself. There’s something wrong with his chair. It won’t slide forward. The wheels keep catching on the carpet-square floor tiles. He bends down and looks closer. Someone has turned one of them around. He turns it back and finds he has pieced together a large brown bloodstain. What happened here? It seems a lot of blood for a paper cut.

  Miranda catches up with him as he swipecards himself out. If he’s honest with himself, he’s been avoiding her all morning. ‘Wait,’ she calls, ‘where are you going?’

  ‘Outside, to get some fresh air. I’ve got a headache.’

  ‘Did you know we have a garden here? Okay, it’s kind of indoor, but it smells like real flowers. Really.’ She smiles hopefully at him. She is – he has to admit – incredibly sexy. And she needs him.

  The garden is in another part of the building’s great atrium, an eerily pristine leisure area of walkways and flowers. No dogshit. No fag ends. Nothing real at all. It was built as an after-thought to the main building, once the architects realised that they had failed to provide any space where the staff could go to calm down. A completely secure leisure-area, a contradictory concept invented, unsurprisingly, in Los Angeles.

  ‘Did you hear?’ says Miranda. ‘One of the electricians lost like his entire fucking arm or something last night. Industrial accident. They fired him. Can you believe that? Negligence. They may even sue.’ She seats herself on a green plastic park-bench affair. ‘You’ve seen things for yourself, haven’t you? Are you going to put them all in your report?’

  Ben feels bloody-minded today. She pushes, he pulls, that kind of thing. ‘All buildings have quirks,’ he snaps. ‘They’re by-products of advanced technology.’

  ‘The place is controlled by computers that purify the atmosphere.’

  ‘Sounds like a good thing.’

  ‘Not if they’re killing you.’

  Ben stops and turns on her. ‘How do you know they are?’

  ‘Come on, I know, all right?’

  ‘But how?’

  She decides. ‘Felix told me about the radiation. It was in his report to Clarke.’

  ‘If you’re so damned sure you’re being poisoned, why don’t you tell the management?’

  ‘Are you kidding? That’s what he did. SymaxCorp has its own security staff. They’re armed with Tasers. This is private property. It’s outside police jurisdiction.’

  ‘If you think it’s so dangerous, maybe you should just leave.’

  ‘That’s what they want me to do. If you leave here, you get a black mark on your temp record that stays with you wherever you go. Nobody leaves unless they’re forced to.’

  Ben stops and looks at Miranda. She seems determined that he will help her, and he is equally determined to resist, although his determination is taking a few dents. But she’s dangerous to know. Getting into trouble is the last thing he needs to do.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says finally. ‘I’ve lost too many jobs for talking out of turn. This is my last chance. I can’t let you screw it up.’

  ‘And I’ve had enough jobs to know when something is fucked. Come with me.’ She gets up and takes his hand. Looking around, she opens a door at the side of the lobby. It leads to a darkened stairwell where timer lights switch on. They walk down a ramp into the underground car park. It’s gloomy, claustrophobic and concrete, with the kind of shiny floors that squeak as you turn the wheel.

  ‘Someone’s been scratching these all over the place,’ Miranda explains, pointing out triple sixes surrounding a crucifix. She looks meaningfully at him. ‘Evil besetting good. And they leave little notes. Look at this one: “GOD IS WATCHING YOU.”’ The words are scrawled all around the basement. In a shadowy corner stall stands a blue BMW covered in dust. ‘You know I told you that Felix left his watch? That’s nothing. He loved his car. He drove it into work but he never drove it home. Why would he have left it here?’

  ‘What? What? You think the big bad corporation had him whacked? Do you realise how incredibly stupid that sounds?’

  ‘He isn’t at home, Ben. I checked with his neighbours. He hasn’t been seen. He isn’t anywhere.’

  ‘Where are the car keys?’

  Miranda hasn’t thought of this. ‘I think they were on his belt. On a ring with his flat keys. I know he had only one set.’

  Ben stops. ‘And how do you know that, exactly?’

  ‘I just know, okay?’

  ‘When wa
s the last time you saw Felix?’

  ‘He was working late, writing the report for Clarke.’ They look up into the darkness of the basement roof, where the air ducts hiss. ‘And he never left the building.’

  ‘You want me to start nosing around for his sake?’

  ‘No. I want you to do it for my sake.’ She peels off her blue shirt and throws it over the TV camera. Then she removes her bra.

  ‘Jesus, Miranda.’

  ‘Let’s keep religion out of this,’ she warns, kissing him as she pushes him back across the hood of a car. Resistance is futile. He pulls her down on top of him. But before her nakedness fills his vision, he can’t help but notice that the space they’re in belongs to Clarke.

  Later, they return to the garden. The river glistens like silver foil. Above them, a handful of stars have escaped the light pollution of the metropolis. But they are still behind the great glass wall, in the leisure area of the SymaxCorp atrium. Ben wonders if he will ever leave.

  ‘Chaos and order,’ he tells her. ‘The universe has to be governed by one system or the other. The one you choose to believe in decides the kind of person you are.’ He looks up through the glass at the night sky, at a blood-red moon. ‘You can live in an entirely random way, going wherever you want, taking whatever work comes along – or you can build the world. I thought it was all about taking a stand. But it’s about being part of something.’ He says this admiringly as he tips back his head to look up at the illuminated rows of offices, each little box containing a person lost in concentration.

  ‘I don’t understand why you would choose to be a battery hen. Always knowing what’s going to happen next.’

  ‘I’ve tried the other way and it doesn’t work,’ he explains. ‘One day you wake up and find you’ve done nothing with your time on Earth. This way I can make some money, start to create a future.’

  ‘You think this is order? You think because you’ve entered corporate life, everything else is going to fall into place? This is chaos. That, up there, that’s order.’

  ‘At least my way I’ll get a little respect.’

  Miranda gives a derisive snort of laughter. ‘You could spend twenty years here then get fired. Two days later, no-one would remember you.’