Isle of Noise

by Rachel Tonks Hill

  The ghost of a sunset hovered on the edge of the city, but Lena wasted none of her attention on it. Instead, she poured the boiling water over the instant coffee, put the kettle down, picked the mug up, and walked back over to the couch, wondering where to start. As well as the case notes, which were simultaneously too cryptic and too vague to be of much use, she’d been given a name, an address, a date of birth, and a mugshot in an envelope. Tomorrow, she would start. Early. Maybe this Scott Corsetti (she was trying to think of him as Participant #729001, because that felt right, somehow. Scott Corsetti was a person, and Participant #729001 was a thing) would leave his apartment early for work, and if she missed him then, she would be fated to spend the rest of the day sitting, waiting, watching.

  She cast her eyes over the case notes again. She had been given a week to report any abnormal behaviour that she saw. Rolling her eyes at the case notes, she thought, ‘There is so much wrong with this.’

  * * * *

  “Sorry,” Scott apologised again, not looking at Pete as he took the bacon and eggs out of the fridge.

  “Stop apologising!” he replied, blearily. “I’ve told you it’s okay, haven’t I?”

  “Yeah. It’s just… I hate that I can’t help it.”

  “Well, you can’t help it. So you really have nothing to apologise for.”

  He turned to him, looking slightly hopeless. “I just… I wish I wasn’t… like this. I wasn’t always, y’know, like… this, and now I am, and it’s a lot to deal with, and you shouldn’t bother, and…”

  “Hey,” Pete said. “Hey. It’s okay. It’s alright. You’ll get better.”

  “And what if I don’t?”

  “You will,” he said with the sort of confidence that Scott wished he had. “You can go to a doctor, they have effective treatments these days-”

  “And say what?” Scott interrupted, and this silenced him.

  He cracked the eggs into the frying pan. In the back of his mind, he was reliving last night. Part of him could still feel Pete’s warmth next to him in bed, but mostly he was fixated on the noises. He didn’t hear them every night, only most. Every time he heard them, the scraping of metal on stone floor, large iron doors opening and closing, he knew that they weren’t real. That didn’t stop his hair standing on end every time he heard them. Most nights were bad, but last night was worse than most. He had heard keys turning in imaginary locks and he had heard footsteps on hard floors, despite knowing that the bedroom was carpeted. Somewhere in the back of his mind, somewhere that sounded far away, an alarm had sounded, and Scott had panicked. He hadn’t meant to hit Pete at two in the morning. He hadn’t meant to hit him at all. But his mind was not always his own, and he was very much aware of this.

  “And say what?” he repeated, as Pete stared at the dead television. “That my mind was probed by some scientists a few years back and I can’t tell them who or what or why and since then I’ve been slightly unhinged?”

  “Why not?”

  “Huh?”

  “Why can’t you tell them the whole who-and-what-and-why thing?”

  “Confidentiality contract,” he replied, poking at the eggs with a spatula. “They seemed pretty serious about it. Kinda threatening, actually. Besides, they didn’t really tell me enough to be able to… know who they were.”

  “I still can’t believe you let a menacing and mysterious bunch of people mess with your brain.”

  He threw him a look, his eyes daggers. “Well, I hardly knew what they were going to do, did I?”

  “Ethics, Scott,” he said. “They should have told you. Or you should have reported them. Or… Did they really not mention any of, well, this to you?”

  “What, the batshit crazy? No. No, they did not. I’m pretty sure I would’ve thought twice if I’d known.”

  Pete sighed. He could sense this turning into a fight, and days when they fought like this were days that they wasted. “Still. You could go to a doctor. There might be something they can do to help-” And heaven knows he needs it, he thought, but his better judgement advised to keep this comment to himself.

  He was right, of course. He knew that he was right. But he’d tried going to a doctor before, when he first started hearing the noises, forgetting things and becoming disoriented in familiar places. They’d called it stress, and they gave him some drugs to relax him, but they just made things worse. So he had stopped taking the drugs and never went back. Maybe it was time to try again. Maybe this insanity was a thing he could leave behind. He pondered, as he put the fried eggs onto plates, if insanity could be a thing, something quantifiable, that could be taken or left or destroyed. It could be. Or it could be a presence, something that lingered, like a devil on your back that could never be shaken. Knowing insanity, it could be both of those things. He put the plates of eggs on the table, and started to eat quietly.

  “Think about it for me, okay?” he asked.

  “Okay,” he said, not looking up from the eggs. He could hear somebody else walking around the kitchen, pacing up and down in heavy boots, and he didn’t want to know if he could see them or not. “Okay.”

  * * * *

  There was a coffee shop opposite from the building where Participant #729001 lived, one of those quaint ones that made Lena feel guilty about every Branded coffee she’d ever bought, with an awning and outdoor chairs. It was a cold morning, chilly, and there had been a thin fog in the air when Lena had left her apartment just after six. Two and a half hours and three lattes later, she was still the only person sitting outside the coffee shop, determined not to miss him. Which, with only an old mugshot to go on, was highly possible.

  There had been four guys about his age who had already left the building, but she was certain none of them had been Participant #729001. The first had been Asian, which definitely didn’t match the mugshot. The next two had left together, talking very loudly about how lost they were and their plans to visit tourist spots, which made her think that they wouldn’t have been at USF two years ago. The fourth was carrying a white stick and wearing dark glasses, and apart from the fact that he happened to look nothing like the man in the picture, Lena was pretty sure that she hadn’t noticed anything in the brief case notes that would indicate blindness.

  Lena’s eyes were starting to glaze over when the door of the building opened again. It was him. It was Participant #729001. She was almost sure of it – his hair curled like the man’s in the picture did, his face was the same shape, his eyes were the same dark shade. There was a man with Participant #729001, not much taller than him, carrying a briefcase. She quickly checked her watch and scribbled on her notepad.

  ‘8:37 – P.729001 leaves building, accompanied with man. Dressed casual smart.’

  Then she stood up, rushed across the street without looking, much to the annoyance of the drivers, and fell in step behind them, just close enough to hear their conversation.

  “One of the guys in my office sees a shrink, apparently he’s pretty good, I could ask for his number for you?” the man suggested.

  “What, and have your whole office think I’m crazy?” Participant #729001 retorted.

  “Well, you are crazy.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome. Look after yourself today, okay?”

  “When don’t I?”

  It was a struggle for Lena to note all their words down whilst walking, even though she was attempting to use some sort of shorthand. She was intrigued by their conversation, though. What were the odds that during his first ‘encounter’ with Participant #729001, she’d hear him talk about something that might actually be of use to the Institute?

  He hugged the man, who kissed his forehead, and Lena tried not to be too conspicuous as she watched. They muttered goodbyes and the man turned right down another street whilst Participant #729001 walked straight ahead. He seemed tired, on edge, as if he hadn’t quite managed to get enough sleep to feel comfortable with himself. Lena noted this down in her pad, and kept on following him. He walk
ed faster now he was on his own, and when she caught sight of his face in the reflection of a shop window, it looked like he was lost in thought. Again, she noted this down. After walking for about five minutes, Participant #729001 entered a bakery, and greeted the girl behind the counter with a wave, before going behind the counter himself.

  Lena wasn’t entirely sure what to do next. She hadn’t bothered reading any books about stalking before now, and she’d thought that looking up ‘stalking’ on the internet might alert the authorities, especially after the increase of observation on internet searches the government demanded four years ago. It was highly likely that Participant #729001 would work nine to five, and what was she going to do during that time? Sit outside and wait? No, she couldn’t do that. People would give her funny looks. Besides, he might notice her then, and that was not what she wanted. Maybe she’d leave, come back in an hour or so, buy something from the bakery, interact with him for a little while, see if she could pick up on anything interesting. It was odd, she thought, that he’d been talking with the man, his partner maybe, about being crazy. From what little information Lena had gathered about the Institute, they dabbled in crazy every now and then. And they had, at some stage, dabbled in his mind. But the case notes had indicated that there wouldn’t be any side effects. Something wasn’t adding up.

  It was then that Lena was struck yet again with the notion that her life was no longer one that could really be classed as normal.

  * * * *

  The bakery was a quiet little place to work, and Scott liked that. He couldn’t do with working somewhere noisy and fast paced and cut throat. It was slow work, and it gave him enough money to pay his half of the rent, and he didn’t mind at all that it was easy. What he did mind, just a little bit, was his father telling him that it was ‘not the sort of job a graduate should have’ every single time he called, despite his explaining to him that his degree was in catering in the first place, and eventually he’d make his way into the kitchen. There were never that many customers for the bakery, either. That was what had surprised him when he first started working there. It was a nice place, friendly, the mom’n’pops sort of store that had all but vanished from the high street, and the cakes they made were beautiful. But people rarely stopped for beautiful things any more.

  That morning, whilst everybody else was working on the cakes in the back, Scott tried to blot out the sounds of the prison in his mind. It didn’t interfere with his work (much), but it interfered with everything else. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been completely relaxed, or carefree, or content with the world; he was always existing around his own personal hell. There was some tragedy in it, he supposed, if he’d caused his own downfall and all that. He should have asked what they were doing with his mind, because it could have been anything. They could have been rewiring his brain and this nightmare he lived in might be proof of a successful experiment for all he knew. What he hated most was how the insanity seemed to have become him. It had taken over all the little things he’d found pleasure in, all his quirks and traits, and just wallowed in their place. Whatever had happened during those experiments, it had ultimately resulted in him losing himself.

  At some point in the middle of the morning, the little bell above the door jangled, pulling Scott out of his train of thought. A woman walked in, looking tired, and made her way up to the counter.

  “Hi, can I help you?” he asked, putting on a smile, but she didn’t reply. She just stared at him intently, in a way that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. “Can I… Are you alright?”

  “Oh, yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” she said, composing herself. “I’ll have… One of those éclair things from the window, please. And a Cola.”

  “Regular, Diet, Zero, Plus, Detox, Energise, or some sort of flavoured Cola?” Scott asked as he fetched an éclair from the window display, wishing for simpler days when there weren’t so many different types of one drink.

  “Erm… Diet, please,” she said, and he noticed that she was still staring at him.

  He put the éclair and the drink upon the counter, and said, “That’ll be $3.50, please.”

  As she fumbled about with her purse, he noticed that she was holding a scrappy notepad, with things like ‘8:49 – arrives at work’ written on it. A part of him wanted to read more, to ask about what she was doing, but he stopped himself. That would be rude and intrusive, and he desired to be neither of those things. So he just held out his hand for the money, and smiled at her when she gave it to him, and wondered why she was still looking at him so intently.

  “Thanks,” he said, sorting it out into the cash register as she took the éclair and drink.

  “No problem,” she said, slightly awkwardly, and added, “Erm, you too. You too. Thanks.”

  And with that, she left the shop, and Scott was distracted from his anguish for a while, trying to figure out what her problem was, and why she could have had reason to act so strangely. Maybe, he theorised, she knew. She knew that he was crazy. Maybe she knew because she was suffering too, and she’d hacked the computer systems at USF to find other people who’d taken part in the same experiment. Unlikely. Maybe she was just her own special sort of crazy, and that was just the way in which she interacted with the world. Whichever, it had been a disconcerting experience for him, and he frequently experienced disconcerting experiences.

  An alarm sounded in his mind again and, flinching, he leaned against the counter and squeezed his eyes shut. When it ceased – he couldn’t tell how long it had sounded for – he opened the phone book that had lain on the counter untouched for so long, and took Pete’s advice from earlier.

  “Hi? Yeah, erm, I think… I’d like to book an appointment, please.”

  * * * *

  Lena’s week continued in very much the same manner. She’d wake up early, go to the coffee shop, follow Participant #729001 to work, linger, follow him home again, and then go home herself. On Wednesday evening, she had followed him as he’d gone shopping with a friend, and the only strange thing that she’d noticed was that he’d seemed to have a headache. And really, the only truly strange thing about that was why he hadn’t bothered taking some painkillers. It wasn’t like they had any side effects. Scientists had managed to wipe out side effects from over the counter pain medication fifteen years ago.

  It had crossed her mind a couple of times that even when she saw things that she thought were slightly odd about Participant #729001, they might not even be that strange after all. Normality, as she had been told many times, was very much a relative thing, and she knew that she would be experiencing some sort of observer bias. There was also something painfully unethical about the entire thing, and she hated that. She had been raised to stay within the rules, to colour between the lines, and it was against her nature to do something she was so uncomfortable with. But she had known since the Orientation that working for the Institute may have led her to do such things, and she was definitely in need of the money.

  And the money was very, very good.

  Besides, she only had one day left to follow Participant #729001 around before writing her review and sending it in. Despite her long list of detailed notes, she still wasn’t entirely sure what she was going to say. Something told her that simply writing, ‘I’m sorry, but following Participant #729001 around for a week did not provide me with suitable information to evaluate his current mental state, please don’t fire me’ wouldn’t go down a treat. Unless this was all a mind game, and that was exactly what they wanted to hear.

  Her brain hurt.

  It was nearly five o’clock, and Lena was standing across from the bakery, her hat pulled over her eyes, waiting. Participant #729001 left the bakery a few minutes earlier than he normally did, and Lena hurried across the road, noting this down as she fell into following him, a few paces behind. Never closer. Closer was dangerous. When he reached the top of the street, he turned left instead of going straight ahead, which Lena noted down, and she kept on following hi
m. His pace was faster than it usually was during the evening, and Lena found herself having to dodge around people to keep up with him. He walked faster and faster, and Lena almost thought that she had lost him, until she saw him walking up a set of steps into a building. He turned and looked behind himself cautiously and then entered the building. Damn. More waiting now, then – and there didn’t appear to be any sort of place where waiting could be done in peace on this street. She kept walking, trying to decide what to do, when she glanced over at the building he had entered, and her eyes caught sight of a metal sign. It was well polished, new looking, gleaming proudly in the evening sun. Lena read it, and stopped in her tracks, a frown forming on her face.

  ‘Dr. R. M. Martyn B.A.Hons Psy.D A.B.P.P.’

  Participant #729001 was in therapy. He could have been in therapy for the past two years. He could have been in therapy for longer than that – no, the Institute wouldn’t have experimented on anybody who already had issues, she reasoned. Unethical they may be, but they wouldn’t do that. Would they?

  She crossed the street, leant against a building, made a note of where the Psychiatrist’s office was, and waited.

  * * * *

  “So, Scott. How can I help you?”

  Scott had found himself sitting on a worn leather couch in the dimly lit room. If he had been told years ago that he’d end up in therapy for something, then he would have laughed at you, saying that he’d always be fine. Looking away from the shrink, a man in his late thirties with thick rimmed glasses and slowly balding hair, Scott tried to compose his words.