The Book That THEY Do Not Want You To Read, Part 1

by Andy Ritchie

  ‘You know that that is not a problem,’ I answered, checking the scrambled eggs and giving them one more blast in the microwave because they were still a bit runny. ‘But what about the timing of that Protocol of yours? If I learnt one thing from yesterday, it was the fact that you Confederation lot are sticklers for your procedures.’

  ‘The timeline is not a problem at present. We have until Tuesday morning to meet. But I remain a little worried about the fact that the Researcher’s URG is de-activated. I don’t know what to make of it.’

  ‘Did he say anything else in his message?’

  I checked on the bacon, sausages and tomatoes. They were almost ready.

  ‘Only that he would find another suitable location to meet and that he would contact me some time today to confirm.’

  ‘Has he contacted you yet?’

  The scrambled eggs were ready. The fried bread was ready.

  ‘No. But it could be that he is still identifying a place to meet. As I said, Researchers are extremely cautious and he would take time to choose a suitable location...’

  He said it as if he was trying to convince himself, but it didn’t really seem to be working. His features still betrayed the fact that he was troubled.

  ‘Tell you what. Let’s have some breakfast, a proper, cooked breakfast of succulent pork sausages, smoked bacon, vine tomatoes, scrambled free-range eggs and bread fried in extra virgin olive oil. All organic, I might add! We can then have some more tea and, with our nutritional needs satisfied, we can think of a plan of attack. How does that sound?’

  It may have sounded disgusting to Tukaal, but he was too courteous a guest to say otherwise.

  To me, it sounded heavenly...and it tasted heavenly.

  I do a good fry-up, even if I do say so myself.

  Interestingly, a hearty breakfast and another couple of cups of tea seemed to lift Tukaal’s mood considerably.

  We discussed a little more the various possible reasons why the Researcher may have de-activated his URG, our explanations ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous, from the dark and ominous to the amusing and bizarre. And whilst none of these explanations were either wholly satisfactory or acceptable, they did seem to convince Tukaal that there was likely to be a completely innocent explanation for the current set of circumstances, and that he should avoid reading too much into it.

  -----

  Post-It Note 1

  [Collator’s Note: There was a Post-It note attached to this hand-written entry which I’m certain JP attached many days later, maybe even when he was pulling all the information together to give to me. It’s written in red ink and it has been underlined so many times, and so aggressively, that it has ripped through the paper.]

  -----

  Diary Entry 4

  [Collator’s Note: This was on the ‘Diary’ CD and was, I suspect, typed by JP on his laptop at the end of Sunday. Its tone is a far-cry from the hand-written note of earlier in the day.]

  I never thought I would find myself saying that my life changed irrevocably on the car park at Sainsburys in Darwen.

  But it did.

  Up until then, the day had been really good. Cracking breakfast, fears about the Researcher allayed, a little bit more discussion about the Confederation, a few more scribbled notes.

  It was about 1.30 I guess when I mentioned that I needed to go to Sainsburys to get a few things, particularly bread and milk (Tukaal’s presence and his insatiable appetite for toast and tea had left my stock seriously depleted).

  ‘Can I come along? I’d very much like to experience a shopping activity. I’ve examined it as part of my wider studies of mankind’s obsession with consumerism, but there’s no substitute for the real thing.’

  ‘Sure,’ I replied, ‘Just promise me that you won’t do anything...weird.’

  He smiled and promised that he wouldn’t.

  Once at Sainsburys, Tukaal seemed less like an inter-steller ambassador and more like a child in Toys ‘R’ Us, his eyes wide in wonder, his face adorned with a grin of real enjoyment as, just like in the park yesterday, he seemed intrigued by almost everything he saw, spending an eternity looking at almost everything; magazines, clothes, fruit and veg, ready meals, packaged meat, etc.

  I think it was the impatient tapping of my finger on the handle of the trolley which prompted the suggestion that I go ahead without him, something I did with a mixture of reluctance and relief.

  Barely seven or eight minutes later, my trolley full with the basic essentials, I returned to the part of the store where I had left him, only to find, for one heart-stopping moment, that he was no longer there.

  In a panic, like a mother looking for a child that has suddenly wandered off, I hurried along past the check-outs, looking somewhat desperately up each aisle...

  Thankfully, I spotted him almost immediately, emerging through the double doors at the far end of the bread aisle, deep in conversation with one of the store’s employees.

  As I made my way towards them, I saw Tukaal shake the employee warmly by the hand and heard him say:

  ‘Well, thank you very much, Graham, that was very, very interesting. I appreciate you taking the time to show me.’

  And with that, he hurried up the aisle towards me, his eyes alive with excitement.

  ‘Do you know they bake their own bread here?

  I was going to answer ‘yes’, but I didn’t get the opportunity.

  ‘Whilst I was looking at all the different varieties of bread on the shelf over there, I got talking to Graham, and he kindly offered to show me the baking facility at the rear of the building.’

  ‘Do you mean you’ve been in the back there?’ I asked, my voice tinged with surprise and, I have to admit, just a little indignation.

  ‘Yes. Is there a problem?’

  I was on the point of sulkily mentioning that I’d been shopping at this particular Sainsburys store ever since it was built and had never been taken for a tour of the stores and the bakery, when Tukaal asked if we could go and look at the teas and the coffees.

  Considerable though his interest in bread apparently was, it was nothing compared to his interest in beverages.

  He spent at least a minute looking at each different packet of tea and each different packet of coffee, muttering occasionally to himself as he did so. He looked as if he was on some sort of field trip.

  Eventually, having finally become bored of listening to him recite the descriptions of every type of Sainsburys’ Taste The Difference coffee, I said:

  ‘You haven’t seen the frozen food section yet, the wines, beers and spirits and, oh, there’s the pet food section, now that really will give you a window on mankind, the fact that we breed one type of animal so that we can kill it and eat it, whilst another type of animal gets pampered and loved and treated to a diet which is more healthy and varied than most of the human population of this planet. Talk about bizarre.’

  Tukaal held a bag of Columbian decaffeinated coffee in his hand and was reading the label intently.

  ‘The point you make, Jeth, is very valid but, at this moment, it is western society’s obsession with refreshing beverages which interests me. So many varieties of tea and coffee, not just the flavours, but where they are sourced, how they are sourced, decaffeinated, fair-trade, organic. In essence, they exemplify the contrariety of mankind. For some, the choice of which beverage to buy will be down to flavour and to brand, but for many the type of beverage they purchase is a statement of lifestyle, a statement of personal values. It is a way for some to emphasise their wealth by being seen to buy the most expensive brand available, whilst for others it is a way for them to assuage their guilt, either by compensating the impoverished Columbian farmer for the fact that people in the West have so much whilst he and his family has so little, or by compensating the world for the fact that resources are used and pollution is created just to get some ground beans halfway around the world and onto a supermarket shelf. It is wonderfully hypocritical!’

  I
think I just stood there, staring at him.

  I’d never had a socio-economic lecture on the hypocrisies of western consumerism before, and certainly not whilst stood in a supermarket aisle.

  ‘I prefer the Sumatran coffee myself,’ I said, taking a pack off the shelf and popping it into the trolley, ‘and no, I don’t want to debate the morality of my lifestyle choices, not here anyway!’

  And so we proceeded to the check-out and then began to walk to the car which was parked on the car park across the bridge over the River Darwen.

  And that was where normality ceased, at the moment when his URG-thing went off. Rather bizarrely, it played ‘Golden Brown’ by The Stranglers. This was apparently his attempt to fit in and be inconspicuous which, I guess, was no bad thing. After all, if it had played some bizarre alien techno-beat moon music which instantly gave everybody a cerebral oedema, that wouldn’t exactly be inconspicuous, would it?

  Anyway, it went off and, with a mixture of surprise and relief, he answered it.

  By now we had reached my car and, fortunately, the immediate area was devoid of people. This was a good thing because I suddenly found myself privy to a very strange, one-sided conversation which went thus:

  ‘Cha ku ra ta kala mar kra ha pa craw craw Sainsburys mee lee ka tee far muk English just in case.’

  Apparently, this was Tukaal suggesting to the Researcher that, as he was stood on the car park at Sainsburys, it would be better if he spoke English so as not to attract too much attention. However, given the way the conversation went subsequently and the things which I was able to overhear as I loaded the shopping into the boot, maybe they would have been better speaking in their original alien gibberish...after all, I suspect most people who may have wandered by would simply have assumed that Tukaal was Polish or Romanian anyway.

  ‘I got your message last night, apologies I missed your call. I did try to ring you back, but your URG was de-activated...’

  ‘Encryption...do you think that is necessary...okay...just a moment...’

  Tukaal took the URG away from his ear and then touched the screen a couple of times. Then he continued.

  ‘Okay, encrypted...yes, you said...at your house...’

  He nodded a couple of times, made ‘mmmm’ noises.

  ‘...when you sent the message yesterday evening...at the bus station...you’re sure it was them...not the local police...’

  He listened intently for a few seconds and I saw his eyes narrow visibly.

  ‘...you think so...but they’re supposed to be untraceable...I guess it’s a reasonable conclusion...yes, I understand...but it’s been on since I arrived, so if they are able to use it to track, then they’ll know where I’ve been staying anyway...’

  I really didn’t like the sound of that!

  ‘...where will you stay tonight...okay...are you sure?...we could meet later today if that’s...okay...tomorrow...no, no, I understand...no, don’t worry about the Protocol, we still have time...you be careful too...I know...I know...we can get to the bottom of it then...yes...okay.’

  And with that he hung up (or whatever it is you do with an URG interstellar mobile phone).

  Then all manner of things took place at once.

  Tukaal held his finger against the URG for a moment, seemed to nod in confirmation of something, and then seemed to turn his communication device off. He then proceeded to take the thing apart on the bonnet of my car, snapping it open to reveal several strangely shaped components, two of which, shaped like spheres, glowed fiercely. He took both of these spheres completely out of the device and, after about ten seconds, the fierce glow began to fade until, eventually, they resembled a couple of large glass marbles.

  All the time he was doing this, by the way, he wasn’t looking at the device in his hands. Instead, he was looking around the car park, both this one and the one adjacent to Redearth Road, his eyes alert, narrowing every now and again as if he had seen something...and all the time his fingers were dismantling the URG, like a well-trained soldier taking apart a gun without having to look at what he’s doing.

  ‘Er...what’s going on?’

  ‘Best not to talk now,’ Tukaal said in a hushed voice, gathering up the pieces of his URG and putting them into his pockets. ‘I suggest we leave.’

  As we both made to get into the car, I noticed Tukaal stop. He was looking across to the other car park. There were, as usual, quite a lot of cars on that car park but one of them looked strangely out of place. It was a big black Range Rover with all its windows blacked out. Whilst it could quite easily have been a blinged-up chav-mobile, it seemed to scream, in the classic cliché manner, clandestine government department surveillance vehicle, even to those like me who simply have no idea of what a clandestine government department surveillance vehicle would or should look like.

  Somehow, it seemed to induce a shiver to run up and down my spine. It looked... menacing and, as I stared at it, it seemed to stare straight back at me, its gaze unblinking and strangely baleful.

  I did not like it at all.

  Tukaal finally got into the car and indicated for me to start the engine. At the same time, he placed his finger to his lips, indicating that I should not speak.

  I didn’t.

  With the car engine running, Tukaal reached into another pocket of his suit and pulled out...well, it was a small metal box...actually it looked very similar to an iPod nano. He activated it (which is a posh way of saying he switched it on!)

  ‘There,’ he said. ‘I suggest you drive us to your home now, Jeth.’

  I put the car in reverse and pulled out of the parking space. As I drove to the little roundabout on the car park, and then up to the junction with Redearth Road, I noticed that the black Range Rover was also moving.

  ‘They won’t try to hide their presence anymore,’ Tukaal said, watching the Range Rover intently.

  ‘They...who the fuck are they?’

  My voice was a little higher pitched than normal, emphasising the sudden sense of fear that had overcome me.

  ‘I’m not exactly sure,’ Tukaal replied, once more studying his iPod nano thing.

  I was about to seek clarification on this when he said something really scary.

  ‘There are four surveillance devices in or on your car. One is...here...’

  He pulled what looked to be a small square of plastic off the back of the rear view mirror.

  ‘...that’s probably the obvious one, I think...and there’s another one...here...’

  he reached down into the footwell on my side and, after a couple of seconds, pulled out another bit of plastic.

  ‘...there is also one somewhere on your back and, interestingly, somewhere on mine...’

  ‘Surveillance devices...what do you mean, surveillance devices? You mean, like, bugs...?’

  He nodded and smiled broadly.

  ‘That’s right, Jeth, they are what you call ‘bugs’.’

  I was amazed at how calm he was being in light of this rather scary revelation...and it made me angry.

  ‘Bugs...in my car...how the fuck do bugs get in my car...and on my back...and on your back...who the fuck are the people in the black Range Rover...?’

  ‘The one that is still following us?’

  I looked in my rear view mirror. Sure enough, there was the dreaded black Range Rover with its blacked out windows, about a hundred yards behind me and looking very fucking sinister indeed.

  ‘Look, what the fuck is going on?’ I shrieked, my hands now gripping the steering wheel so tightly that my knuckles had turned white.

  ‘We can talk freely now,’ Tukaal replied. ‘This device neutralises surveillance equipment as well as locating them. It will also work against any exterior surveillance devices that may be used on the car, such as laser mics.’

  It’s not too far from Sainsburys to my house (but too far to carry a load of shopping), so pretty soon we were turning into my street and heading for my usual parking space a few doors down from my front door.
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br />   ‘Just slow down a little please, Jeth,’ Tukaal said suddenly, looking again in the passenger wing mirror and seeing the ominous shape of the black Range Rover turn into the end of the street.

  ‘Do you want me to keep driving?’ I asked.

  ‘No point really,’ Tukaal replied. ‘They undoubtedly know where you live by now. They’ve probably already been in the house, searched it, planted a couple of cameras, a few listening devices, that sort of thing. They may actually have done it last night whilst we were out.’

  He made it all sound so matter of fact, as if this sort of thing happened to him all the time.

  ‘Oh, this sort of thing happens to me all the time,’ he said, as if sensing what I was thinking. ‘When you are visiting an alien world to get involved in all manner of negotiations on all manner of things, you expect to have your hotel room under surveillance, your every movement monitored, your every meeting observed. I guess I should have checked the house and the car as a matter of course, but I have to admit that I didn’t expect there to be a need...’

  ‘So none of this is a surprise to you!’ I exclaimed indignantly, ‘The fact that strange people may have been rummaging through my stuff whilst I’ve been buying a Warburtons Toastie and some organic milk doesn’t concern you at all.’

  Quite bizarrely, I was suddenly quite concerned by the possibility that those whom Tukaal suspected would have already been inside my home would have found my small stash of porn mags on top of the wardrobe in my bedroom, along with the two DVDs I’ve got — Star Virgin and Breeders.

  ‘It concerns me,’ Tukaal responded, ‘but as it is something I am used to, it does not upset me.’

  He seemed to be implying that I was getting upset...which I was.

  ‘And you think they may have placed things in the house last night, whilst we were at Sukhis?’

  ‘It’s a possibility.’

  I have to admit that, at that moment, in spite of all the potential ramifications of what was happening, I had only one thought.