The House Next Door Trilogy (Books 1-3)

by Jule Owen

  “I saw him today, staring out of his front bedroom window.”

  “It’s not a crime, is it? You’re always doing that.”

  “But he looks odd.”

  “Again, pot and kettle.”

  Mathew grimaces. “Thanks.”

  Hoshi smiles, leans across and touches his face, “You know I’m just kidding. To be honest, I haven’t laid eyes on him for ages, although he’s lived there since before you were born. In all those years, I think we must have spoken to him once. We used to occasionally see him in his garden, but then he put the extension on the back of the house, with the conservatory. He’s a bit of a recluse.”

  “What does he do?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, some kind of historian, I think.”

  “A historian?”

  “Don’t quote me.”

  Hoshi has finished her dinner. Leibniz comes to take her plate.

  “It’s nearly midnight,” Hoshi says, checking the Nexus clock in her Lenz. “We should get to bed.”

  Lying in bed, Mathew watches the dragons dogfight in a blur of movement under the ceiling of his bedroom, circling the light shade, lit now by the streetlights.

  Thinking about the cold eyes peering at him from the bedroom window next door, he recalls the strange, immobile face, the neck snapping towards him, reptile-like, as if it sensed him there before it saw him.

  Sleep washes over him, and the circular movement of the dragons lulls him.

  He thinks, as he falls asleep, Lestrange doesn’t even seem human.

  5 Psychopomp

  DAY TWO: Tuesday, 23 November 2055, London

  “My car’s here,” his mother says, peering around his bedroom door. “Don’t let O’Malley out, will you?”

  “Of course not,” he says.

  “And let Leibniz prepare your meals. What’s the point of having him, if you don’t let him help?”

  “Leibniz is an ‘it’, not a ‘he’.”

  “Where are the dragons?”

  Mathew points to his wardrobe. Yinglong is climbing on the top. Shen is hanging from a door by a clawed foot. Mathew can switch them on and off as he wishes. These days they mostly follow him everywhere.

  “They’re very good. What are you working on? New project?” She gestures to the scattering of tiny electrical parts on his desk, the 3D micro-printer and nano-assembler.

  “It’s an acoustic amplifier microphone.”

  “I won’t ask.”

  Mathew smiles.

  “I’d better go. They’re nudging me,” she says, pointing to her eye. She means she has received a reminder message in her Lenz. “See you later.”

  Mathew watches his mother’s car drive to the end of the road and disappear around the corner. The windows of the house next door, where Mr Lestrange lives, are dark and fathomless. O’Malley jumps onto the windowsill and butts against his hand, mewing. One of the dragons swoops at him but grasps thin air, and O’Malley purrs loudly, oblivious.

  In the Darkroom, Mathew searches the Nexus for Clara Barculo, pianist, Bach, Gen Lacey, and gets the usual results: the Consort profiles, the personal web pages full of videos and photos, the official government ID records, all floating in front of him the full width of the room; he lays them out, steps back, and takes it all in.

  Gen Lacey is Genevieve Lacey of the Royal Academy of Music. Clara Barculo is a fifteen-year-old piano prodigy, known in particular for her interpretation of Bach’s keyboard masterpieces.

  He finds a holofilm of Clara performing in the Wigmore Hall and runs it.

  Suddenly, he’s in the audience, rows of seats behind him with enough virtual individuals to fill the room, mostly wearing evening dress. They cough, shift in their seats, and fiddle with their programmes. Someone comes in late and makes the people behind Mathew stand. In front of Mathew’s seat a stage appears, with waist-high dark wood panelling on the back wall and two doors. He raises his eyes and sees the distinctive mural of the Soul of Music in the cupola.

  A grand piano materialises.

  There is a moment’s silence and then applause.

  Clara comes onto the stage in a simple black dress, her hair piled on her head. Someone in the audience whistles. She takes a small, nervous bow as the applause dies, sits, and abruptly starts to play. She is so close, so real, he feels he could reach out and touch her.

  Her large hands no longer look awkward; they fly across the keys, so fast and fluidly it is barely possible to see them. The span of her hands reaches across unfeasible distances. Her arms are bare, and Mathew notices for the first time how muscled they are. A strand of hair breaks away from the bundle upon her head and falls on her shoulder. She doesn’t even seem to notice. Her face wears an extraordinary expression of peaceful concentration. She is somewhere else, lost in her head, and the concert hall and the audience have disappeared for her. He recognises the experience of being transported by an utterly absorbing task; he has felt it himself. He watches the whole thing; but it is just one piece, and too soon the holofilm clip ends.

  Still in his seat, he uses an encrypted script to open Charybdis, the main software portal to the Blackweb. His mother doesn’t know he accesses the Blackweb in the house. It’s not exactly illegal, but it’s the sort of thing she would class as dangerous, not least because the government propaganda endlessly bangs on about how insecure it is and how much criminal activity happens on it. Mathew doesn’t believe the propaganda, not all of it anyway.

  The Blackweb is the alternative Internet, created on a matrix of independent networks. The authorities find it harder to snoop on than the Nexus. It was founded by people who didn’t want the web to be entirely under corporate and government control. The establishment says those rich enough to launch satellites to provide an alternative Internet infrastructure must be criminals, which is probably partly true. People on the Blackweb say corporates and governments own the Nexus, and everything people do on it is watched and recorded. His mother wouldn’t approve of what he is planning to watch.

  He initiates Psychopomp.

  A seated figure appears in the centre of the Darkroom, hands on its lap, feet flat on the floor, head bowed. It has the head of a donkey. Not a pantomime donkey but a real living, breathing donkey, with rotating ears reacting to sudden noises, long eyelashes, and huge black eyes. Its body is human: a young woman. She is called Nicola Bottom, although it isn’t her real name.

  There are sometimes other commentators, including a man called the Snout, sporting a pig’s head, who’s famous for leaking state information and exposing corruption; a rabbit-headed girl called Snug; a skinny, tall man of indeterminate age with the head of a starling, called Starveling. There is also a commentator who wears Venetian style masks or whose many faces are masks – it’s difficult to tell which, if any, are real. His name is Peter Quince, and he does political satire and exposes personal hypocrisy and corruption. Along with the Snout, he is the main reason Psychopomp is always moving its headquarters and has a complex system of access. It’s the subject of innumerable undefended lawsuits. No one knows who the Psychopomp are. Their critics often complain about their theatricals, saying it undermines their message, but Mathew, like many others, thinks it’s part of their appeal.

  Nicola Bottom is wearing a summer dress, white plimsolls, and ankle socks. She raises her eyes, and it feels to Mathew like she is staring him directly in the eye, addressing him personally. “Today we have an exclusive interview with Cadmus Silverwood, leader of the Garden Party,” she says.

  Cadmus Silverwood magically appears from nowhere in a chair next to the donkey girl. He is a silver-haired man, thin and spry-looking, his face youthful although he’s in his eighties. Hardly anyone seems old anymore; no one stoops or shuffles, and no one gets dementia. There are members of the House of Lords and CEOs well over a hundred years of age, but then some people joke that this was always the case, at least in their attitudes.

  “Cadmus, thank you for joining us.”

  “A pleasure,” h
e says, not in the least disconcerted by the idea of talking to a half-donkey in a dress.

  “You were not always a politician.”

  “I don’t like to think of myself as a politician now, to be honest.”

  “But you lead a political party, and you nearly won a general election. Some people say, you did win a general election, but the vote was rigged. What are you, if you’re not a politician?”

  “A frustrated man, father, scientist, citizen of the world, who wouldn’t stand on the sidelines any longer. I spent many years being angry with governments and their policies, puzzled about why no one was doing anything. Then I woke one morning and realised I couldn’t reasonably expect others to solve problems I wasn’t willing to deal with myself.”

  “And what is frustrating you?”

  “An age-old thing – the inevitable ascendancy of the rich and powerful, the one-sided battle to protect their interests at the expense of the rest of us.”

  “You say this is an age-old inevitable thing. Why do you think things will change now?”

  “I have to believe, because of what is at stake. It used to be human lives and morality at stake, now it’s all life on the planet. We’re facing the extinction of human life.”

  “You think it will come to that?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Wow. Okay. I want to know why you think that, but first can we take a step back?

  We’d like to hear the story of your life before you founded the Garden Party and why you think you’re qualified to say these things?”

  “Years ago, I worked for NASA. My work there led me to become a climate scientist, gradually being dragged into policy meetings with international institutions, trying to get commitments to a reduction in the global dependence on fossil fuels and greenhouse gas emissions.”

  The donkey says, “That’s top of mind for everyone right now, as this is the fourth time London has been flooded in ten years. Floodwaters are not retreating from increasingly large areas of southern England. The US, Europe, and major coastal cities around the world, including Shanghai, have suffered similar fates. This summer, the US was hit again and again by mega hurricanes on the Gulf Coast and Eastern Seaboard, and we’ve experienced unprecedented super storms in Europe, plus other extreme weather, including severe droughts and water shortages.

  “But our leaders claim it is all in hand. They have given tax breaks to various private initiatives investing billions in carbon fixation technologies, artificial induction systems, and precipitation control. They say this policy is a great success.”

  Cadmus interrupts, “Forgive me, but I wonder if any of the people made homeless last week after years of promises feel like things are under control? Many of the technologies the government has poured billions into may actually be making things worse. The problem is we simply don’t know.”

  “And what is your solution?”

  “Adapt. Stop pouring money down the drain trying to defend cities and towns inevitably to be drowned. Retreat and build for what we know is coming in the future: even more extreme weather, sea level rise, more storms, rain, heat, water shortages, crop failures.”

  “And you’re not against fusion power, GM food, or even lab-grown food?”

  “Not at all. We need to leverage all our human strengths to survive into the future, including technology and innovation. We are technological animals. We need electricity. We need food. Given what has happened to the climate and to our water supply and the population, we simply cannot sustain people using naturally grown food. People will starve if we rely on traditional agriculture.”

  “Isn’t Elgol experimenting with traditional agriculture?”

  “Elgol is my wife’s project, not mine, but you will find a range of technologies being trialled there. You have to understand, we have a different agenda from the corporations producing food, energy, and managing the environment. We aren’t driven by profit. We are driven by the desire for our species to survive and to live as harmoniously as possible within the complex systems comprising our world. Because we are not driven by profit, we do not drive innovations to market before they are properly tested. We don’t make claims for our products beyond their capabilities. We don’t use technologies we even suspect may be harmful to humans, to other living creatures, or to the environment.”

  “Let’s turn to the election. Your party took a case to court, claiming evidence there was widespread vote rigging, corruption, and coercion.”

  “I’m afraid I’m unable to comment.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the court not only ruled in the Universal Popular Party’s favour, it issued an injunction against me, which stipulates I can’t speak of this matter in public.”

  “Some people say the judges who heard the case were bought.”

  “I’ve no comment on what others said or say. I will be violating the injunction if I talk.”

  “You will be arrested?”

  “Yes.”

  “We have reports saying you’re being watched. You are under effective house arrest.”

  “I try to live my life as normal, but yes, I do have an unofficial armed guard – but none of us have any privacy anymore. Every communication channel is being intercepted.”

  “Not this one.”

  “Of course this one, from time to time. Some of us get away with privacy if we have the right technology, know-how, and luck, but it’s becoming harder and harder. When the government introduces its new national biological identity system . . .”

  “This is the bioID passport? In the run-up to the debate on bioIDs, the government hailed them as a great step forward and said they will make life more convenient: fewer queues when travelling across borders; less financial fraud, as you will be able to use it as authentication for your bank account, to get paid and pay bills, and manage all digital accounts. You will even be able to use it as the means of security for your house. Why is this a bad thing?”

  “The government is made of men. All men are frail. You should never give all your power to another human being. If we allow this thing to happen, it will mean no person in this country will have a private moment from this day forward. The minute you displease anyone happening to be in authority, you are at risk of becoming persona non grata. Your bioID will literally be marked. When they introduce this, the government will be able to track your movements day and night. Combined with what is already being tracked about you through your medibot, it will know everything about you. It will know where you go, who you talk to, what you say, what you watch, what you read, and how you feel about it.”

  “But medibot data is private, according to the terms and conditions of the agreement with Panacea.”

  Cadmus laughs, “Panacea has been passing people’s medical data to the government for years.”

  “That may be so, but having a full bioID is still a long way off, surely? The bill to introduce it was only just rejected in Parliament.”

  “It will happen anyway. We’re heading for war, and when that happens, the government will declare a state of emergency. With its new powers, it will steam-roller in the legislation to turn you into a node on a network . . .”

  “Why do you say we’re heading for war?”

  “All the signs have been there for a long time. The Japanese have fixed their gaze beyond their own geography and population in order to get the resources they need to remain preeminent in the world economy. They have been economically and politically aggressive in their region for years – especially in China and Korea. The Chinese have naturally resented this, and there is, of course, historical animosity there, as well. The Americans have done what they always do and have agitated against the Chinese in order to maintain, depending on how you look at it, a balance of power, or chaos, in order to ensure American world dominance.

  “The world wrote off the Russians after their collapse in the twenty-twenties. They were always overplaying their hand because they felt so threatened. But for a long time geopoliti
cal analysts advising governments failed to factor in what would happen to Russia when the climate changed. Probably because years ago, you will remember, there used to be so much climate change scepticism. The West underestimated Russia.

  “Initially they were as badly hit as the Americans, especially with uncontrollable forest fires, drought destroying their agriculture and threatening lives as millions struggled with heat waves in the South, much in the same way southern Europe has suffered. Turkey took advantage of their weakness in the Caucasus, and they lost all control over their old Soviet satellites. But then the sea routes in Siberia, previously blocked by ice, became clear for their war and merchant ships. Even if the world’s fresh water resources are massively depleted, the Russians have a quarter of what is left – and although they’ve lost their agricultural land, they have enormous new territory in the north now available to them for food production.

  “They want what they have always wanted. To control access to the Black Sea and to put as many buffer states between themselves and Western Europe as possible. Now, I think their ambitions may be greater, but they may have acted a bit prematurely. These are well-known facts available to any citizen of this or any democratic country. There are many published works on the subject. If the rumours about the new Battlestar are correct, then it will be a huge provocation to the Russians and the Chinese. It will be a huge miscalculation on behalf of the USA. That is why I say war is coming.”

  6 Mr Lestrange

  Still in the Darkroom, Mathew closes Psychopomp and calls a virtual space he created himself.

  He is on a vast ocean, in a small wooden sailing boat. The Darkroom chair moves appropriately, so he feels like he’s floating. It’s night, and he steers the boat by the stars. The pattern he has placed in the constellations leads to his destination. The wind catches the sails, and he moves through the water, the only sounds water lapping at the bottom of the boat and the canvas flapping. After a few minutes, he sees land on the horizon. A small island, an oasis of yellow sand, a single palm tree. He runs the boat ashore and climbs out, in the Darkroom, standing, stepping forward. He kneels under the tree and digs in the sand with his hands, uncovering an old wood and leather trunk. When he has cleared enough sand away, he takes a key from his pocket and unlocks the large brass padlock that hangs from the clasp on the lid and throws the trunk open. Inside there are documents, old books, which he takes out and places on the sand and then goes back to his seat.