by Liam Brown
‘… I’ve found something out … in danger … Xan …’
‘Sarah? What do you mean? What have you found out? Hello? Hello?’
There’s a roar of static.
And then the line goes dead.
I try calling back again and again, but I only reach her voicemail.
Somewhere nearby there’s an explosion of sirens.
‘Some kind of attack, apparently,’ the driver said. ‘Terrorists, they’re saying. Islamists I wouldn’t wonder. Bloody fruitcakes.’
I turn back to my phone, trying to find out what’s going on. I refresh the feed, keep scrolling.
A lone female employee.
No one seems to have any information. No one is naming names.
They don’t need to.
I refresh the feed.
Refresh the feed.
Refresh the feed.
Another report. Breaking news. Information. Misinformation. The victim has been taken to a local hospital for treatment. She’s alive but in a critical condition. Someone mentions stab wounds. Someone else mentions hearing gunshots.
Information. Misinformation.
One agency is claiming to have an exclusive. An insider at A&E. They’re reporting that the victim has been badly mutilated. That their tongue has been cut out.
I think I’m going to be sick.
‘Right, it’s just up here, son. Looks like they’ve blocked off the road. They need to round up the lot of them if you ask me. Line ’em up against a wall. Make an example of ’em. I’m no racist, but …’
I refresh the feed.
Refresh the feed.
Refresh the feed.
And then, nestled between the memes and puns and links and comments, another news agency has posted another exclusive. A picture. A photograph of the victim’s employee ID card, sealed inside a zip-lock evidence bag and splattered with what looks like blood.
The picture is small and out of focus, and the name on it has been redacted.
Still, there is no mistaking it.
Her sharp features. Her black hair.
Her piercing, slate-coloured stare.
It’s Katya.
By the time I reach the MindCast building, most of the police have already gone, though there are still a fair few reporters loitering around, looking for a scoop. I wave away their questions with a mumbled ‘no comment’ and slip past the barricades and under the yellow cordon tape, offering only the vaguest of answers to the few detectives and forensic investigators who are still mopping up the scene. All of them seem to know who I am. One of them even asks me to pose for a selfie with him so he can show his kid.
At the security desk too, the guards seem relaxed. Even they seem to recognise me for once, laughing and joking with each other as they half-heartedly pat me down, waving me through when my belt buckle sets the metal detector whining.
‘Have a good evening, Mr Callow.’
Over here, Dave. Looking good, Dave.
I nod, keep walking, until suddenly here I am, standing in the centre of the marble courtyard, looking up at the giant glass bubble floating high above me.
At the place where this story began.
I look around. As ever, the courtyard is completely deserted. Other than the fact it’s night-time, it looks the same as it always has. There’s certainly no indication of an attack or investigation. No pools of blood. No broken glass. It’s as if nothing has happened. For a moment, I dare to wonder if there could have been some mistake? If all the chatter online is simply a case of hearsay, of fake news. The rumour mill working overtime. What is it they say?
Don’t believe everything you read.
Then I remember the photograph. Katya’s face staring back from the blood-stained ID card. And before that, the Skype call. With everything that’s happened, I’d almost forgotten. That’s the reason I’m here, at MindCast HQ in the middle of the night. To meet …
Who?
I check my phone.
22.58
I start to panic. What if no one shows up? If Katya’s really in the hospital, then what am I even doing here? The last thing she said was that it wasn’t safe to talk to me. Am I in danger? Maybe I should just leave?
22.59
I should go.
No one’s coming.
I should go.
It’s probably all just a big misunderstanding.
I should go.
23.00
Across the courtyard, I hear a sound. A small gasp, like air escaping from a tire. An elevator door sliding open. Footsteps echo across the empty floor as a figure appears from behind the shadow of the furthest pillar, Katya’s spikey silhouette stalking towards me, the gun-shot crack of her high heels firing off the walls.
Only it’s not Katya.
As the figure shuffles closer, I see that it’s an elderly homeless man, his face swathed in an enormous, filthy-looking beard, his shoulders hunched around his ears, his clothes little more than rags. No, this is someone I definitely don’t know. Someone I don’t want to know. I look around awkwardly, wondering if security have spotted him yet. Surely this man is not supposed to be here. He must have stumbled in off the street during the confusion earlier, looking for a bed for the night. Somewhere warm to drink away his troubles.
Instinctively I tap my pockets, hoping for loose change or, better, something sharp to defend myself with. As the man gets within ten feet of me, he stops dead and stares at me, his face folding into either a smile or a grimace. Up close he is even more disgusting, his clothes streaked with dirt, his long hair clumped into thick, misshapen dreadlocks. He smells so bad that I can practically taste him.
I am torn between calling for help or simply turning and running, when the man extends his hand towards me. I stare at it in horror, as if he has just brandished a log of fresh excrement in my direction.
‘Can I … help you?’ I stammer.
‘Jesus, I frickin’ hope so, Dave. It’s been a hell of a night.’
At the sound of his voice I recoil in shock.
I blink once, twice.
And now there’s no mistaking it.
The dark circles around his eyes, the lazy Californian drawl. And there, just about visible beneath the tangled thicket of his beard, that famous scar.
‘Xan?’
He smiles. Steps closer. Slides an arm around me, enveloping me in his stink.
‘It’s good to see you, buddy. We’ve got a lot to catch up on. But right now, I could do with a drink. What d’ya say?’
‘You sure you don’t want one?’
I watch uneasily as Xan wrenches the cap from his second Budweiser, his crud-encrusted fingers working their way around the neck of the bottle, streaking the label black.
I shake my head. ‘Really, I’m fine.’
‘Suit yourself.’
As we’d travelled together in the elevator – me pressed against the far wall, breathing through my mouth in an attempt to escape the smell – Xan had volunteered the details of his remarkable transformation. It had become a burden, he explained, being a public figure. The constant attention. The photos. The favours. The fame. It had gotten so bad lately that he could hardly go outside anymore. Especially while he’d been stuck over in the States, where he was liable to be harassed by rabid activists and protestors. It reached the point where he could no longer even take his early morning stroll around Central Park to clear his head. Couldn’t pop down to his favourite Japanese restaurant and pick up a bento box. It was unbearable. Then he stopped washing and shaving and cutting his fingernails, and suddenly his life was transformed. He could go anywhere he wanted. Whether shuffling between the shoppers on Fifth Avenue or slumming it with the agonisingly boho in Greenwich Village, nobody blinked. He was, for the first time since he was about twenty-three years old, utterly anonymous. A complete nobody.
‘It’s glorious,’ he explained. ‘The freedom is exhilarating. These days, people actually scramble to get out of my way. I can go anywhere I like. Although
I guess I may need to reconsider my disguise now that I’ve let you in on it. After all, you never have been any good at keeping secrets …’
I kept silent as I was led through the deserted offices. Like my apartment, the lights here are automated, tracking our movements as we cut through an endless maze of corridors and stairs before clicking off the moment we pass, leaving only darkness behind us. The effect is disorientating, the usually transparent walls, floors and ceilings transformed into dull mirrors, reflecting us as we move ever deeper into the bubble. Though I didn’t recognise the route, I eventually found myself back in the large room where I’d first met Xan. Tonight though, there is no sign of a guitar, the amplifier replaced with a mini fridge stocked with beers, along with two brightly coloured exercise balls.
As Xan takes a chug from a second bottle, half of which disappears in a single gulp, I at last pluck up the courage to speak. ‘So how’s Katya?’
Xan continues to drink, finishing the bottle. He puts it down. Wipes a lather of foam from his beard. Reaches for another.
‘That’s the problem with the Internet,’ he says once he’s got the bottle open. ‘No respect for the victims. I mean the police have hardly finished dusting for fingerprints and already her name and picture are circulating online for everyone to gawp at. It’s her poor family I feel sorry for. All that endless speculation.’
‘So it’s true then? What they’re saying about her?’
Xan sighs. ‘Sadly, yes. Although I hardly know any of the details yet. As fate would have it, I got back here a few hours too late. I arrived to find the police already here. Nasty business.’
‘And is she still …?’
‘She’s expected to pull through. Dr Khan is personally treating her, so at least she’s in good hands. But who ever really knows right? She’s suffered an enormous trauma. These fuckin’ activists are something else, man. First there’s you with the sheep, and now this? I suppose you heard what they did to her? Those sick bastards. Even if she does make it, she’s never going to talk again. Such a shame. She was a smart girl, too. I guess maybe they heard about the scanners and were trying to gain entry to the main building?’ He pauses, takes another gulp of beer. ‘Either that, or they were trying to shut her up.’
‘So they’re saying it was definitely an activist who attacked her?’
‘Hey, I don’t know the official line the police are taking, but I don’t think you need to be a rocket scientist to figure out who the perp is. Or a brain surgeon for that matter.’
He snorts, drains the bottle.
‘Anyway, as unfortunate as the whole situation is, I know you didn’t come all this way just to talk to me about Katya. And when I say I know, well, I know …’
The exercise ball creaks underneath me as I shift my weight to one side. ‘The thing is Xan …’
‘I know what the thing is,’ he says.
‘You … You saw the call?’
‘Oh come off it David. You know I saw the call. That’s the whole point. I see everything. We all saw the call.’ He snorts again, a single huff, somewhere between amused and annoyed. ‘Anyway, I want to put you at ease and say that we have precisely zero concerns regarding the safety of the M900 chip. The materials used in both the casing and electronics are certified as one hundred percent safe to be implanted in the human body. Titanium. Stainless steel. Medical grade silicone. So you see, this talk of adverse side effects – what was it? Amnesia? Dementia? It’s really nothing but scare-mongering. An attempt by some very sad and disturbed people to discredit the show. I have to say though, I’m surprised you took such, what is it that you Brits say, bollocks, so seriously. I mean, do you really think I’d risk everything we’ve been working towards just so I could save a few bucks on shoddy materials? Do you honestly think I’m that dumb?’
‘No, it’s just … The caller. I thought it might have been …’
Katya.
‘An activist,’ Xan says, finishing my sentence for me. ‘Probably the same one who broke in here earlier this evening. And far be it for me to start pointing the blame stick around, but perhaps if you’d come directly to us as soon as you were contacted we could have traced the call and Katya would still have her …’ He grimaces. ‘Would be in better shape than she is now. But who’s to really say?’
I feel my cheeks flush.
‘Now, is that everything?’ Xan asks.
I nod. ‘Sure.’
He sighs ‘Jesus, David. When are you going to learn that lying isn’t your strong suit? What you really want to ask about is the adverts. Am I right? You want to know what’s going on?’
‘So you admit that adverts have been showing up on my feed?’
Xan chuckles, reaching for his phone. ‘Honestly, David. Anyone would think you hadn’t read through the terms and conditions properly?’
He pauses for a moment, scrolling, then clears his throat:
‘Section 6.2(g): User Content. Use of the SERVICE automatically grants MindCast (THE COMPANY) an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reformat, translate, distribute – and here’s the important bit, Dave – modify and/or fabricate USER CONTENT for commercial, advertising or promotional purposes. Your continued use of the SERVICE is deemed acceptance thereof … yada yada yada …’
He kills the screen, slips the phone back into the folds of his rags.
‘So in other words, yes. I admit it. As we’ve said all along, content is supported by the occasional advert appearing on your feed. Though, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, they’re all super sympathetic and on-brand. After all, spots on MindCast come at a premium. Hey, don’t look at me like that. You’re the Super Bowl, Dave. We don’t let just any old e-retailer advertise with us. We’re talking about a select few. The world’s biggest names taking advantage of your universal reach. Brands you can believe in on a platform you can trust. It’s a perfect match.’
‘But …’ I say, finally managing to dislodge the words that up until now have been caught in my throat. ‘But what does that mean? That you just make stuff up? The car. The beer. The burgers. You just put those thoughts in my head?’
‘Made up is probably a little strong. As it happens we’ve found that outright fabrication usually looks a little weird. It never seems entirely real. So instead we aim to “seed” thoughts. We get the ball rolling. You do the rest.’
‘Oh, I do the rest? Well I guess that’s alright then …’
For the first time Xan’s smile begins to look a little forced. ‘You’ll have to forgive me here, but I’m sort of struggling to see what the issue is? I mean, it’s all there in the Ts&Cs. Plain as day. There’s nothing untoward here. No hidden agenda. We have been open and honest with you since day one about occasionally using the MindCast platform to promote our carefully selected commercial partners. You agreed to all of this when you ticked the box and signed your name.’
I take a deep breath. Then another. ‘I know that. It’s just … I don’t know. I need to think. I need to speak to Sarah.’
I reach for my phone, only to find a blur of coloured pixels, Xan’s jammers rendering it an expensive brick.
‘Do you want to borrow mine?’ Xan asks gently.
I shake my head.
‘Look,’ he says, his voice soft and low. A mug of hot chocolate. A long bubble bath. ‘Do you have any idea the costs involved in hosting a live feed twenty-four hours for an audience this size? Servers. Bandwidth. Maintenance. We pick up the tab for it all so that we can keep the service running free. And that doesn’t begin to cover the six years of planning, research and development before we were in a position to launch the show. We’re talking hundreds of millions of dollars. More. But we just swallowed up the costs. And then there’s you. We could have charged a fortune for what you’ve got implanted in your brain. People would have been lining up in the streets to give us their money. But we didn’t. We chose you. And it didn’t cost you a penny. In fact, w
e actually paid you. We made you rich, dude. And it doesn’t stop there. We’ve pumped millions into promotion, ensuring the show’s a hit. And it worked! MindCast is the most talked about show on the planet. Which by default makes you the biggest star on the planet. We’ve picked up medical bills. Security bills. I’ve personally given you my home to live in. I don’t like to blow my own trumpet, but I think we’ve been very, very generous. But we’re not a charity, David. We can’t perform all of this good work, this magic, at a total loss. Our shareholders would crucify us. And so, we have to be pragmatic. We have to strike a compromise somewhere. In this case, by allowing a very small number of carefully selected and artistically executed adverts onto the feed so that we can keep the lights on.’
I take a deep breath. ‘Look, I appreciate everything you’ve done for me. And I understand the costs involved, and the need to turn a profit. I really do. It’s just I think it might be for the best if I stopped for a while. It’s nothing against the show. Or even the adverts. It’s about me, you know? I’ve said the same thing to Sarah. I’m tired. Exhausted. I don’t think I was quite expecting things to take off in the way they have. So much has happened lately that I can hardly think. It’s not fair on the viewers. So I was hoping we could maybe arrange for me to have the chip … removed?’
Xan is silent for a moment.
‘Dude,’ he says at last. ‘You’re going to need to do better than that. You’re really going to sit there and ask to give up the greatest opportunity in the history of entertainment because you’re tired. I mean, come on.’
I shift uncomfortably, the exercise ball beginning to cut off the circulation to my legs. ‘Fine,’ I snap. ‘It’s not just that. I don’t feel like you’ve been straight with me. You told me the show was live and unfiltered, right? Yet you’re adding things in, passing them off as my thoughts. It’s … It’s … unethical.’
‘Unethical? Really? And how is it any different to what you were doing before? Don’t give me those wide eyes. You forget that I was a huge fan of your videos long before MindCast. I remember you unboxing the latest phone or console. And what about those bottles of aftershave or trainers that always just happened to be in shot. That was product placement at its finest, my friend. And I’m not judging you for it. Like I said, I get it. We’re all forced to make sacrifices in the pursuit of beautiful content. Besides, the show is live and unfiltered. Or at least, it’s nearly live. And as for unfiltered?’ He smirks. ‘Well, let’s just say, I’ve seen the raw footage. And trust me when I tell you that a little bit of editing is better for everyone involved.’