Networked: A gripping sci-fi thriller

by LK Chapman

  ‘No,’ Lily said, ‘I haven’t done nearly enough, I...’

  She stopped talking and instead began to dig her fingernails into the soft skin of her palms, pressing so hard that her knuckles turned white.

  ‘Don’t do that,’ I said. I tried uselessly to prise her fingers back open again.

  ‘Lily, please, stop it,’ I said.

  I pulled again at her fingers but with a sigh she released them herself and I briefly saw all the deep half moons on her palm before she picked her pen up and started writing again.

  It took a further fifteen minutes or so before tears began to splash onto her notes and she accepted that she wasn’t in a fit state to work.

  ‘Just forget about it tonight,’ I said as I helped her put all her books away. ‘We’ll have a relaxing evening together. I’ll cook us something and you can have a break, then you can do your work tomorrow when you’re feeling better.’

  Lily frowned at me as she put the final book back on the shelf. ‘I’m not going to feel any better tomorrow,’ she said.

  The rain had eased off a bit by the time we started walking back to my student house but Lily huddled up to me wearily, her every pace sluggish and effortful.

  Not long after we got inside the rain began to fall in dense sheets, streaming down the kitchen window and making it hard to even speak. Lily seemed calmer inside the house and sat at the long breakfast bar in the middle of the room, watching as I cut up a big yellow pepper and defrosted a couple of chicken breasts in the microwave. For a while I thought perhaps we really would be able to have a nice evening together, that she’d let herself relax, but all that changed when one of my housemates turned up. She seemed to disappear into herself again, even physically hunching over as if to make herself small and inconspicuous. Carl still spotted her straight away though and said, ‘hey, Lily.’

  ‘Hi,’ she said, in a little voice. She looked up at him briefly and I saw she was pulling the left sleeve of her hoodie down protectively over her cuts, clutching the cuff in her hand. Carl wasn’t paying much attention to her though. He’d got soaked walking back and he was peeling off a beige jacket that looked like you could wring the water out of it.

  ‘What are you cooking?’ he asked me, as he hung his coat on the kitchen door handle. His arms were blotchy red from the cold and his straggly hair, normally a sandy blonde, was plastered over his face in long, dark ribbons.

  ‘Curry,’ I said.

  He looked at me expectantly for a moment.

  ‘Do you want some?’ I asked.

  He grinned. ‘Great, thanks.’

  ‘Me and Lily are probably going to eat in my room though,’ I said, ‘so, uh-’

  Carl waved my explanation away, ‘yeah, alright, I get it,’ he said, ‘you don’t want me cramping your style.’ He ran his hand through his sopping wet hair. ‘I think I’m going to grab a shower. How long’s it going to be?’

  ‘Twenty minutes. Maybe thirty.’

  He turned to leave but then looked across at Lily again.

  ‘You and Sophie are still coming out with us on Friday, aren’t you Lily?’ he asked her.

  ‘Yeah,’ Lily said and she gave him a smile which I knew must be fake, but which was pretty damn convincing. ‘I’m looking forward to it.’

  Carl left and as I took another chicken breast out of the freezer Lily leapt down from her stool and ran across to me, her dainty patent red shoes making a pitter-patter sound on the lino. She looked cute in what she was wearing, the baggy hoodie reaching down almost to the hem of a denim miniskirt, her legs in a pair of thick, floral-patterned black tights.

  ‘I don’t want to go to Carl’s birthday thing on Friday,’ she said, ‘I really, really don’t want to.’

  ‘I know Lily,’ I said, as I took the original two chicken breasts out of the microwave to inspect their progress. ‘But we’ve been over this. It’s going to look really weird if you don’t go.’

  The chicken breasts had done their usual trick of being rock solid in places and cooked in others and I was trying to decide my next move but Lily was getting more and more agitated.

  ‘Make it go away,’ she said, ‘please, Nick. I don’t want to do it. I can’t do it. Please think of something, please help me.’

  Her eyes had filled up with tears and she was wringing her hands together in distress.

  ‘I can’t keep making up excuses why you can’t go to things,’ I said, ‘I know it’s hard but I’ll be right by your side all night, there’s nothing to worry about.’

  Lily just stared at me and I watched as tears pooled at the bottom of her eyes, eventually swelling so much that they spilt out and trickled down her cheeks.

  ‘It’s making me cry,’ she said, ‘I shouldn’t have to go to things that make me cry.’

  I popped the chicken breasts back in the microwave and washed my hands, the sink so full of dirty dishes that to get my hands under the tap I had to move a saucepan and succeeded in slopping a load of grubby grey-brown water over the side and onto my feet.

  ‘It’ll be okay,’ I said, ‘all we’re doing is going out for a pizza and then heading into town. Carl’ll get drunk and make a prat of himself and then we’ll go home. It’ll be over before you know it.’

  ‘But I don’t like being around people,’ Lily said, ‘I used to, but... not anymore. I feel so trapped. I hate it. I hate it.’

  I finished washing my hands and wiped them partially dry on the front of my jeans. I was about to put my arm around her but she fixed her tortured eyes on me and I thought she’d probably push me away. ‘Make it so I don’t have to go,’ she said, her voice beginning to carry the whine that went hand in hand with her depression talking.

  ‘It’s not going to help you to hide away, is it?’ I said, ‘people like you, they want to see you. They want to talk to you.’

  ‘But I’m no good for that anymore,’ Lily said. She caught hold of my arm in her desperation to get me to understand. ‘I don’t want to talk to people. I don’t want to be around them. I just want to be left alone.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s true,’ I said.

  She started to sort of moan incoherently and buried her hands in her hair. ‘It is true,’ she said, ‘none of them want me. None of them like me. You don’t even like me, you don’t love me. I just embarrass you and wreck your life.’

  This had gone far enough. I stopped cooking entirely and placed both my hands on Lily’s shoulders to make sure she was concentrating.

  ‘Lily,’ I said, ‘I want you to listen to me now, okay?’

  She wouldn’t look at me, she just stared down at her body, her curls falling forwards over her face. ‘I’m no good for anybody,’ she said, ‘I’m just a stupid, ugly, useless, horrible, selfish-’

  ‘Lily, look at me.’

  Finally, she raised her eyes to mine.

  ‘I want you to stop this. You’re not any of those things you said. It’s silly to talk like that. And as for me, I love you and I’m not going to let you say otherwise, okay?’

  Lily carried on staring at me with something like defiance, or perhaps it was just scepticism.

  ‘I know you don’t want to go out on Friday,’ I said, my voice a little softer, ‘but it’ll be over before you know it and it’s days away yet. Let’s just forget about it. Right now, everything is fine.’

  ‘No it isn’t,’ she said, ‘nothing is fine. Everything is just completely shit.’

  ‘No it isn’t. Say something good.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Say something good,’ I repeated, ‘anything,’

  ‘There isn’t anything good.’

  ‘I know that’s not really what you think. You’ve been happy before. I’ve seen you happy.’

  She took my hands off her shoulders and made towards the door.

  ‘Something good,’ she said, ‘well, maybe I’ll die in my sleep tonight. That’d be good.’ She gave me a cold smile, and left me to cook on my own.

  …

&
nbsp; When we’d finished eating, I tried again to get Lily to admit she could remember times she’d been happy, but she wasn’t having any of it. Then I had a sudden flash of inspiration and I grabbed my laptop.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Lily asked.

  ‘I’m going to see how many people have played Cactustrophe,’ I said.

  Lily sighed as if she wasn’t interested. But I was pretty sure she was, and when she saw the crazy green, yellow and blue title screen of the game I saw the corner of her mouth twitch slightly.

  ‘Look how many people have played, Lily,’ I said, ‘thousands. And it’s still rated almost four out of five.’

  Lily made a little noise in her throat as she tried to dismiss it. But I knew she’d been happy when we’d made Cactustrophe together.

  It had started out just as me telling her about the process of making games- about design and mechanics and how to make games “fun”. But she’d been so fascinated by the whole thing that in the end I’d thought, screw it, why not just make a game with her?

  Cactustrophe wasn’t really representative of the sort of games I wanted to make in the future, but it had been a lot of fun and working with Lily had actually been a pretty good collaboration. Normally I could only make games that weren’t visually that exciting, but Lily could draw cute little cartoony things quite well- certainly far better than I could. I can’t remember exactly how the idea had come about, but we’d ended up with a game where flying psychedelic beetles had to steal miniature fruits from between the spines of cacti and the jaws of venus flytraps. The game had done pretty well amongst similar offerings on a free games website, and since the rating of almost four out of five had come from the players themselves, I think it would be fair to say it was a success. I was sure if anything could make her crack a smile it would be thinking about Cactustrophe.

  ‘Come on, Lily,’ I said, ‘you have to admit you were happy back then.’

  She twisted her hands in her lap and wouldn’t meet my eyes.

  ‘I was happy then,’ she said very quietly, ‘but I’m not anymore. And I never will be.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ I said, ‘you’ll get better. This depression, it’s just difficult right now, but you’ll beat it and we’ll have a wonderful and happy life together.’

  Lily wasn’t buying it though. Instead she got up from the desk where we’d been sitting, lay down on the unmade bed in the corner of my room and wrapped the duvet around herself.

  I sat down next to her and touched her shoulder.

  ‘You will get better, Lily,’ I said.

  She shook her head.

  ‘You will,’ I repeated.

  She was silent for a while and I saw that tears were beginning to spill from the corners of her eyes and run down the sides of her face into her hair.

  ‘Tell me a story,’ she said eventually.

  ‘A story?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What kind of story?’

  ‘Just a story.’

  I thought for a while. I didn’t really know what to say, so I just began and made it up as I went along.

  ‘Once upon a time, there were two people called Nick and Lily.’

  She looked up at me. ‘It’s about us?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said.

  Before I could continue, she seized on this and twisted it. ‘And Nick and Lily loved each other very much,’ she said, ‘so Nick didn’t want Lily to suffer anymore, because she was in so much pain.’

  I knew what was coming.

  ‘No, Lily,’ I said, ‘I thought you wanted me to tell the story.’

  ‘So one day,’ she continued, ‘Nick helped Lily to die, and he held her while she slipped away, and she felt safe because he was there, and Nick was happy because she wasn’t in pain anymore and he could get on with his life.’

  ‘No.’ I said firmly, ‘Nick knew that Lily would get better. So he worked really hard and sold loads of games, then him and Lily got married and they lived in a house together and-’

  ‘-and was Lily okay?’ she asked, and I was surprised at the sudden, childish hope in her voice.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘she was more than okay.’

  ‘Did they live in the middle of a field full of flowers?’ Lily asked. For a moment I thought she was making fun of me and I felt stung, but then I realised she’d actually become quite captivated with this fairytale reality, taking comfort in something so simple.

  ‘Yeah, if you like,’ I said. I was so pleased that I’d managed to distract her that I hurriedly tried to think of more detail to keep her interest.

  ‘What kind of flowers?’ I asked.

  ‘Sunflowers,’ she said, ‘and daffodils. And we’ll grow strawberries, and pumpkins.’

  I laughed. ‘Okay, that’s what we’ll do. And you’ll never have to worry about anything, because I’ll always be there.’

  ‘So is Lily happy?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘she’s really happy.’ I paused for a moment, wondering what would be the best kind of life for her. But I wasn’t too sure, because she never really talked about what she wanted, only what she didn’t want. So I started with that.

  ‘Because Nick never makes her do anything she doesn’t want to,’ I said. ‘He makes games, and Lily does whatever she most wants to do, and he supports her.’

  ‘You’re making me go to Carl’s party and I don’t want to do that,’ she said, ‘so you’re lying. It’s all lies.’

  I sighed. ‘Lily-’

  ‘I don’t have anything I want to do,’ she continued sadly and I realised I’d completely blown it, ‘apart from die. That’s my dream.’

  ‘You will get better,’ I said, trying to convince myself as much as her.

  ‘When?’ she asked.

  ‘Soon.’

  ‘How can you know that?’

  ‘I just do. This is a tiny little bad patch, and then we’ll have a wonderful life together.’

  ‘Do you promise?’

  What a question.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘I promise.’

  2013

  Affrayed is quite simply brilliant.

  Gamingchoice 10/10

  Without a doubt, Affrayed will be the best game you’ll play this year.

  Euroreview 100/100

  A compelling, addictive and beautiful game.

  Onlyvideogamer 98/100

  From the creators of DreamChase, a game you just won’t want to wake up from.

  Indiehit A++

  Affrayed is an astonishing achievement.

  Perimeter Magazine 9.9/10

  Almost unbelievably good.

  Gamesnight A++

  An incredible, immersive experience.

  Pixellated 10/10

  This will take over your life.

  Geekspawn 5/5

  Superbly well designed down to the smallest detail, everything about Affrayed is excellent.

  Gamesreport 9.9/10

  Chapter 7

  ‘I always said there was money to be made in this games business,’ Lily’s dad said.

  I almost choked on my mouthful of roast chicken and although Lily gave me a knowing glance everybody else round the table carried on eating as though there was nothing at all odd about what had just been said.

  ‘I mean, how much have you made on Affrayed so far?’

  I stared at him. Not only had he spent the entire time I’d known him telling me what a waste of time he thought my games were, if I had ever dared to ask him how much money he made he would have hit the roof, yet for some reason it was okay for him to ask me.

  ‘I don’t really know, exactly,’ I said, trying to avoid everybody’s eyes. I knew they were all curious.

  ‘Come on,’ Lily’s dad said, ‘you must know how much you’ve made. Are we talking five figures, or six, or seven?’ He was leaning forward on the table, his big meaty arms looking almost absurd next to the snowy white table cloth and the long stemmed champagne glasses. His eyes were fixed on me now, smiling yet insincere in his red
face.

  I pushed my food round my plate and tried to think of a way to get out of answering.

  ‘Stop it, dad,’ Lily said lightly, ‘I don’t think Nick wants to talk about money.’

  For a moment he looked at her in surprise, then he let out a huge, booming laugh.

  ‘Quite right too,’ he said, slapping my shoulder like I was his best mate or something, ‘it’s a lot though, right?’

  He was still sort of gripping my shoulder and I found it so unbearable that for a moment I was tempted to get up, storm out of their house, and leave them to have this ridiculous farce of a family celebration without me.

  Instead I just grit my teeth and said, ‘yeah, it’s a lot.’

  In sympathy, Lily pressed her leg briefly against mine under the table and I tried to pull myself together. I was so determined to get through this meal without any drama, but I couldn’t fake being happy and I was sure my lack of excitement over Affrayed wasn’t going unnoticed.

  ‘A toast,’ Lily’s sister Poppy said suddenly, raising her glass of orange juice, ‘to Affrayed, and to Nick.’

  I smiled at her briefly, but looked down at my plate as they all repeated Poppy’s words with varying degrees of enthusiasm.

  ‘It’s alright for some, isn’t it,’ Lily’s dad said, having taken a swig of champagne. ‘Work on something you enjoy doing for a couple of years and make a bloody fortune on it, while I’ve worked every hour God sends for forty, fifty-odd years-’

  ‘Nick’s worked very hard,’ Lily said, ‘he was working twelve or thirteen hour days sometimes with no guarantee he’d ever get anything back.’

  ‘Yes,’ Lily’s dad said, ‘but only because he had you supporting him.’ He fixed his eyes on me again. ‘Must be nice to earn your own money for a change, eh?’ he laughed hugely again and I held my breath and counted to five to calm myself down. Lily and Poppy both looked uncomfortable, but Poppy’s husband, Lily’s mum and even Lily’s grandma laughed right along with him. For a moment I was close to telling them how glad I was that they found my life so damn hilarious but mercifully Poppy intervened.

  ‘Come on then,’ she said to me, ‘why don’t you say a few words? It’s not every day I get to have dinner with someone famous.’