by Tim Scott
“And plug into his feed.”
I felt the nurse jam in the jack plug and then slop the cold gunge of the gel across my head.
“Head hack in three,” said the doctor. “Nice and relaxed. Look at the picture of the lovely puppy. Pretend you’re stroking the lovely puppy. Isn’t he cute? Two, one. Imagine you’re holding the puppy. Fire!”
chapter
EIGHTY-FOUR
Sir!” cried Kahill, breaking into Mendes’s office in a rush. “It’s up! We have the system running again. Sir? We turned the system off and then on again…” He trailed off but still some words continued to fall from his mouth. “We got the idea from a girl who works here. She told us about her…lawnmower?”
But Mendes was gone.
Kahill looked around, as though he might find him hiding behind the door.
Eventually he picked briefly over the bag and bottles that were on the desk, then he sat in the chair.
He rocked it back and forth, leafing through the pamphlets by the upturned bag. They were from an herb fair. A card slipped out from someone called Pulitzer. As he held it at arm’s length between his fingers, the phone rang.
He stared at it for a moment, then picked it up. “Mendes’s phone,” he said. “The Pentagon? No, he’s not. Can I help, sir? Really? No, we’ve not had any problems at all. The computer is sweet as a moose, sir. Yes, sir. I have the latest list of people who have gone DST in my hand, sir, and agents are out there intercepting them as we speak. Yes, sir, we’ve even worked out the settings on the document destroyer. The document destroyer. No, sir, the document—Oh, it doesn’t matter, sir.”
He talked for a little longer, but as he was ending the call, an automated voice cut in and berated him for selling towels over the New Seattle phone system and the line went dead.
He put the receiver down in the cradle.
“Sweet as a moose,” he said.
chapter
EIGHTY-FIVE
I felt my head release from the boards and I forced my eyes open, but all I saw was a blaze of colors.
“Your vision will return in a moment,” said the nurse, pulling out the jack plug from my neck feed. “I’ll put the picture of the puppy right up in front of you. We’ve had a little problem. The doctor will explain.”
“Mr. Lindbergh. We couldn’t get any memories from you from the last twenty-four hours. I’ve called the engineer and he’ll run a test on the equipment. I’m afraid you’ll have to wait until we get it fixed. Someone will escort you back to the holding area.”
My vision slewed back, and I saw the doctor holding up one of the printouts. It was white except at the very edges.
A cop came in to take me back to the holding area, and I noticed his eyebrows had been stained red. He cuffed me again and shepherded me back down the corridor, unlocked the cage, and motioned me inside. The girl was sitting there already. “Let me guess. Your printouts had nothing on them, too?” I said, still trying to clear my vision.
“The machine was faulty.”
“No, something is wrong. And we’re in it together.”
“Look, I have a spectacularly bad headache, and I’d be grateful if you’d let me wallow in it.”
“I’ve written a hymn!” cried a man, lurching over to us. He had drunk more than enough for an entire stag party. “A fucking hymn, because God forgives everyone, even really nasty people. Listen.”
He took out a sheet and began singing in a gravely, late-night, whiskey-sanded growl, to the tune of a hymn that escaped me:
“I’m really sorry.
I’ve done something incredibly stupid,
But the innate fallibility of the human condition,
Means it’s surely not my fault.
Not entirely anyway.
It’s just generally a bit of a mess.
Presumably insurance will cover most of it.”
Then he staggered toward the bars and collapsed.
“Hey, what’s going on in there?” called one of the cops.
I turned back to the girl.
“We need to get out of here.”
“We do?”
“That cop at the police check was convinced he saw us both last night, we’ve both got headaches from hell. I’m wearing a suit that isn’t mine and my hair is shorter than I’ve ever known it. Something is wrong. We’re in a world that isn’t the one we should be in.”
“Honestly, I feel a little tender for this kind of conversation…”
“The machine is fine,” a voice called down the corridor.
“Please. They’ll start poking further back. I used to work in a Memory Print store. Once you start to reach back more than twenty-four hours, things go wrong quickly. We need to get out.”
“The engineer says the machines are fine,” said a cop, unlocking the door to the holding area.
“I’m sorry if you have something to hide,” said the woman as she got up. “Your past has got you trapped, hasn’t it? But that’s not my problem.”
“They’re going to destroy us,” I said.
But she just smiled.
chapter
EIGHTY-SIX
A cop led us down the corridor, past the framed certificates, and back to the head hack rooms. Nena walked through the door to room one.
The same nurse met me and ushered me through the corridor that still reeked with ammonia. “Would you like another glass of wonker?” she said.
“It’s like water—”
“But not as good. I remember you saying.” I said as I grabbed a cloth lying by a bucket. I was guessing they had used it to mop up the spilled ammonia. As she turned, I held it to her face, hoping the solution contained enough ether to knock her out. She tried to scream and then staggered as the fumes overpowered her. Finally she collapsed.
I felt a stinging wave of the vapor wash over me and I crashed against the door. The doctor must have heard, because he came rushing through.
I took him out with one clumsy blow to the head. My fist ached with the impact. My eyes were streaming now, and I found a sink and washed them out as best I could.
Then I searched through the cupboards until I found a new bottle of the ammonia solution. I poured more onto the cloth at arm’s length, until I could barely breathe. The ether in the solution began to make me light-headed.
A minute later I was stumbling through the entrance to Head Hack One. Nena was sitting in the chair with the boards clamped onto her cheeks. I lunged at the nurse and pressed the cloth over her face. The doctor made a clumsy attempt to grab me, but I fended him off long enough to see the nurse collapse. Then I knocked him out.
I scanned the head hack unit and pressed the abort controls. Nena fell forward as she was released, springing the jack plug from her neck.
“What’s happening?” she said weakly, and I realized she had been in the middle of the hack. I looked at the pictures, but they were all blank, with only a faint blurring at the edges.
“We’re getting out of here,” I said. “Nothing in your memory still, you see?” I held up the pictures, but her vision was still scrambled.
“You’re crazy.”
I picked up a knife and put it to her throat.
“No,” she said.
I cut off her red collar, and then mine.
I grabbed her hand. “Something is wrong.”
“No,” she said, trying to stand, but she was still dizzy from the head hack.
“We have to move, now. I was a cop once. I can get us out of here.”
“I’m not going.”
“Nena…”
“How do you know my name?”
I wasn’t sure.
There was shouting from the corridor. “Don’t you feel anything?”
“No.”
“So you want to stay? Is that it?” I said, sensing this all going very wrong. “Okay, you stay. What do I care? I don’t even know you.” I crashed out of the room. She would have to take her chances.
Ten seconds later, I strode bac
k in. She was still dizzy from the head hack and I knocked her out cold with one gigantic blow. She fell limply to the floor. “The thing is, I do care. I just don’t know why.”
I pulled the white coat from the doctor and slipped it on. It was tight across the shoulders. I poured more of the ammonia solution over Nena, picked her up, and staggered through the door to the main corridor. A cop stared at me, his mustache obscuring his mouth.
“Dropped bottle of ammonia,” I said holding her toward him. “A little fresh air, and she’ll be fine.”
He grunted and then backed away as he smelled the vapor, and I took this as my cue to move off.
More offices.
And a line of prisoners hanging in sacks from a track in the ceiling. “I’m innocent!” shouted a man at me wildly. “I would never kill anyone in Fresno! Who in their right mind goes to Fresno? No one goes to Fresno.” I shouldered past him, found the stairwell, and headed down.
It was two flights to the basement.
When I got there, I found the place was a jumble of dusty service pipes and junk lit by large, naked bulbs. I knelt down and put Nena on the floor. My back ached like hell. Then I moved around until I found the power supply junction box and kicked in the metal safety cage.
The cover on the box was rusty and bent, and sparks spat at me as I pried it away. Then I grabbed an old swivel chair and threw it as hard as I could at the tangle of wiring.
A smattering crack of electricity wound around the room, then the box exploded, sending showers of white-hot sparks flopping onto the floor. I ducked away as they landed like burning matches on my hand.
Smoke curled up, gathering in a thick foul-smelling cloud and I began coughing as another welter of sparks slashed across the room. For a moment, they lit up Nena. She’d staggered to her feet and was staring at me in shock.
Then darkness.
I fumbled my way over to her and found her standing like a statue. I pressed her ammonia-and-ether-soaked sweater to her face until she passed out again.
Why the hell did I care about this girl? What had happened to my life? I lifted her limp body in my arms and carried her up the dark stairwell, ducking into the shadows to avoid some cops.
A smell of burnt wiring knifed through the air. Cops were everywhere, brandishing flashlights in the darkness.
“She needs air. She dropped a bottle of ammonia. She’s covered in it,” I said, thrusting her toward the nearest cop as we reached the first floor.
“Hey, get her out of here.”
The feed readers were all dead at the entrance to the main lobby, and they were too busy stopping people coming in to monitor those going out. I forced my way through.
The lobby was lit by the glow of red emergency lights, but a choir was still singing near the main doors.
“New Seattle Health and Safety,” they sang. “Stay safe, watch out, stay safe, watch out, stay safe, watch out for that—”
“Arrrhhh!” cried a man. “New Seattle Health and Safety. Remember, please don’t die for no reason. I mean, what’s the point? Right?” I froze, and those last words hung in the air, mocking me.
My mind segued.
And suddenly, it was Abigail’s limp, soft body I was holding in my arms.
“She’s gone and I couldn’t stop it!” I shouted as I held her body. And then I was standing in the lobby of Head Hack Central holding Nena. People stared, keeping their distance.
I staggered out through the main doors into the night air with Nena in my arms. A few stars were out. A bunch of kids were milling with the crowd waiting to take drongle receipts. “Hail a drongle, and I’ll give you five dollars,” I said.
They all ran madly ahead of me. By the time I had reached the sidewalk, they had one stopped.
“The end of the world is reasonably nigh!” shouted a man on the sidewalk as I lifted Nena into the drongle. “The end of the world is nigh enough for there not to be any point doing big jobs. There might be time to paint the garage, but it’s too nigh to bother with the undercoat. The end of the world is pretty nigh. Who wants a sticker?”
I pulled the door closed, muffling the sound, and the drongle juddered off through the traffic. I stared at Nena, lying limp across the seat.
Why did I care about this girl? What had happened to my life? Why did the world seem different but only in the smallest of ways? Why could they find no memories of the last twenty-four hours in my head? Or in Nena’s?
I had been back in the city for less than an hour, and already I had attracted enough trouble to feed a family of badgers for a year.
And then it struck me. It was obvious why they couldn’t find any memories.
We had been mind wiped.
chapter
EIGHTY-SEVEN
Wires hung from the drongle panels in shrouds, and the screens were missing.
I stared at Nena, then out at the city.
I tried to work out how much time I had lost, but I had no idea what day it was. My mind skidded about, pulling out useless information and brandishing it in front of me as some sort of displacement activity, so I didn’t have to deal with the whole situation.
The drongle lurched to a stop across the street.
“This is South Jefferson Apartments. Please leave the drongle now. Your lucky color today is green. Your lucky thing with a handle is a spade.”
I swung open the door and lifted Nena out of the drongle into the chilly night air. I was out of shape and my arms ached like hell as I stumbled awkwardly across the street, sidestepping drongles, and into the apartment block’s main entrance.
The door to Gabe’s apartment had been kicked in.
“Hello? Marcy? Gabe? Hello? I shouted. The place was empty. I laid Nena onto the sofa and sat down.
Then I went through my pockets and placed everything I had with me on the table. I was intending to examine them, but I suddenly felt drained. A raw emptiness invaded my head and sucked the energy from the rest of my body.
I closed my eyes.
I wouldn’t sleep. I would just rest. And only for a moment.
chapter
EIGHTY-EIGHT
The mayor looked at the man as they walked down a corridor. He was bald and wearing a red bow tie.
“You want me to be there during this song by Rusty Ragtail the Safety Squirrel?” the mayor said. They were in part of the main-gate complex of the new city wall.
“Yeah, we thought it would be a nice touch to open the show with you being serenaded by the safety squirrel,” said the bald man as a knot of people in outlandish costumes pushed past in a flurry of crackling, shiny material.
“We felt, in terms of marketing, that we’d be presenting a strong image. The two big voices of Health and Safety in New Seattle, together. The cuddly furry animal on one side, representing life and vitality and beauty, and you the mayor on the other representing—you know—whatever it is you represent.”
The mayor stopped. “‘Whatever it is I represent?’”
“Yeah. It’s all been rehearsed. Please,” said the bald man.
“I’m the mayor,” said Cicero. “I represent power. I represent this city. Who the fuck are you? I’m not doing this. Get my drongle,” he said to the cop following them.
“Please, think about it,” said the bald man. “The safety squirrel is very popular. What if it was to run for mayor against you next time?”
“What?”
“Marketing surveys show he’s more popular than you. I didn’t want to say anything before, but…this way you’ll be tapping into his appeal.”
“Your drongle is ready to take you to city hall, sir,” said the cop.
chapter
EIGHTY-NINE
A raven screeched.
I stood up before I was awake. The world spun and I staggered, griping the sofa arm.
The raven was sitting on the table in front of me. For a moment, my mind was too thick with dizziness to comprehend what it was. And then I watched it hop nonchalantly out of the open door of t
he apartment. Events came back to me in a jumbled rush.
Nena.
She was still lying there and I felt my shoulders release. Probably I had only been out for a few minutes.
The sudden rush of adrenaline met the remains of my headache, and the two mixed badly. I needed coffee.
I yawned and my eyes ran with sleepy tears as I closed the apartment door and walked to the kitchen. Then I caught sight of my face in the mirror by the door and saw I had short blond hair. I stared. For a second, I had the sensation I was nothing but a tenant in my own body.
I made coffee, hoping I might get something out of Gabe and Marcy’s appliances, but they were all nonspeaking. I recalled how his washing machine had become pretty depressed once because it didn’t like going round and round and wanted to be a fridge instead, and they’d had to retire them all to a home someplace because using the kitchen made them too emotional.
I stared out the window, wondering what I thought I would find in New Seattle. A mulch of fading apartment blocks led away into a ramshackle haven of run-down streets, blinking lights, and spewing wood smoke.
Maybe Mending Things with Fire was still out there, serving half-decent mojitos.
When I came back with the coffee, Nena was standing and pointing a gun at me. It was a police-issue weapon, and I guessed she’d found it in the apartment.
“Don’t follow me,” she said.
“Nena, we’ve been mind wiped. Take a moment to think about this. Have some coffee and think about it.”
“Coffee? If you make any move to follow me at all—at all—I fire.”
“Listen to me. We’ve both lost time. I don’t even know what day it is. We’re mixed up in something together.”
“Any move at all. You got that?” And she edged toward the door.
“Nena. Okay, they’ve taken the memories, but not all the feelings. Look at me. You feel something?”
“No.” She didn’t move. Her expression didn’t change.
“But you haven’t left yet. You do feel something, don’t you? But you don’t know why. This is where the story to find out begins.”