by Ben Jeapes
“Yeah?”
She nodded.
“You’ll … you’ll stay, right?”
“For the time being,” Stephen said equably.
Ted could not remotely claim to like the witch, but based on his previous experience he did trust her, and he certainly trusted Stephen. So he sidled towards the King, with another backwards glance, like a small child knowing it always has a parent to run back to if things get heavy. Then he walked forward with increasing confidence until he stood in front of the man with his hands on his hips.
“So, what are you going to do?” he demanded. Abruptly all the frustrations of the last twenty-four hours came boiling over and Ted’s voice grew louder and louder as he spoke. “Thanks to you … oh, let’s see. I’ll probably never be able to talk to my stepdad again, and you’ve wrecked our family, and there’ll be others like us, and you’ve made her over there ruin her career, and there’s a riot going on in the market place with people hurt and injured and maybe killed–”
He thumped both his hands hard on the King’s chest.
“So, what are you going to do?”
The King blinked and looked at Ted with a mild expression.
“I don’t remember any of that,” he said quietly, and while Ted struggled to find the right words of outrage, he suddenly started walking so that Ted had to jump out of the way. The King drifted over to where the police car had been before the storm caught it, and where Ted suddenly realised the King still lay … the King they had brought here, the King who wore the ill-fitting tweed suit rather than robes. How many Kings were there?
The standing King’s arms hung limply at his side as he gazed solemnly at the body at his feet. For a moment it looked to Ted like the King on the ground had moved but then he realised, no, he had gone. The movement was his clothes deflating, as if the body had just been teleported out of it. Now there was just an empty suit lying in the road.
The King looked up towards Salisbury, then turned back to Ted, gazing into the distance as if picking up information from a hidden earpiece. Slowly his expression clouded. “Unacceptable,” he agreed. He gazed solemnly at Ted. “Utterly unacceptable. You have my sincerest apologies.”
“Your apologies? But it was him–” Ted gestured helplessly at the clothes. “So … so … how many of you are there?”
“Just the one. Do you know where I came from? The first men who came here–”
“–expected you and so you emerged yadda yadda yadda, yeah, and?”
The King gave him the kind of look he sometimes got from Malcolm: a look that said, watch out boy, I’m a patient man, but …
“I was the deity of a small community of hunter-gatherers, and physically unable to move more than a few miles in any direction. Naturally my horizons and actions were small and petty.” Then he nodded at the witch. “Her people took me away and thanks to them I know the world is vastly bigger than I had ever realised, the span of history even more so. Her people taught and educated me in worldviews and philosophies I could never have dreamt of. I am as different to my former self now as you are to the baby you once were.”
“They took you? Why?”
The King smiled a rueful smile.
“They had their own plans for this world which did not include the likes of me.”
“He was a sentient being,” the witch said in the background. “We could hardly just erase him.”
Ted flushed red. Even if it wasn’t meant as a rebuke, it was one. That had been exactly what he intended to do.
“And what about your lady friend? You just dumped her?”
“Ah yes. The Queen.” The King looked wistfully misty-eyed for a moment. “I would have taken her if I could but she belongs to the water. Time passes differently for her. Memory depends on cause and effect, one thing coming after another, but her river is timeless. She is back in her own kingdom where she rules uncontested and has no memory of me. Why don’t we leave her there?”
“Okay–” Ted was sceptical, able to see the flaw in the argument. “But you came back.”
Suddenly the King’s smile was savage, humourless, only bared teeth, as he looked Ted in the eye.
“The power that had formed me in the first place recharged over the millennia, until someone called it forth again and I emerged once more, with none of the memories of what had happened since I left.”
Ted closed his eyes and groaned inwardly. He had called it forth – not the Knowledge, him, the pillock who couldn’t be arsed to stop for ten seconds and put his gloves on. And what he had got was a duplicate King with none of the refinement this one had acquired since leaving the world behind. A King completely unsuited for the modern world.
“So what are you going to do?” he demanded again, to cover up any hint that he should be held responsible for a stupid accident. “What can you do? Can you undo all this?”
“Undo?” The King laughed but it was not unkind. “No, nor would I want to. What else has happened since yesterday morning? Babies have been born. People have fallen in love. Do I have the right to undo all that too?”
“Can’t you make them–” Ted waved his hands helplessly. “Forget?”
The King laughed again. Apparently he was finding Ted hilarious.
“Forget they fell in love? Forget they had a baby?”
“Forget they rioted in the centre of town!”
But even as Ted said that he knew it was a non-starter. The physical evidence would be a little hard to erase.
“And even if I did,” the King pointed out as if reading his mind, “what would give me the right? They never chose me. I have no right to make them do anything, and in fact I don’t believe I could. The spell you planted has done its work. I have no authority over my royal subjects now. Congratulations.”
Ted fought back a scream of frustration. He looked yearningly back in the direction of Salisbury. How much damage was there? How much had he caused? Starting with his own family?
His family. Well, at least they were okay, he thought bitterly. His mum and Barry and Robs would go home, and Malcolm would deliver Sarah back, and they would all be safe and happy and King-free. And him?
Instinctively he shied away from considering what might happen to him. It was just easier to assume he was completely screwed. He had assaulted Barry. He had made his mum cry. These were not minor sins to sweep under the carpet.
He smiled without humour. He could write it as a line of code. SETVAR($MUM&BARRY, $INCLINATION = FORGIVE TED).
Ah.
He glanced sideways at the witch. She gazed impassively back.
“Um–” She didn’t speak, or move, so he sidled over to her. “There. Um. Is a way. I think. If it’s all right with you …?”
One of her thin eyebrows twitched a little.
“I wondered how long it would take you,” she said.
“Told you,” Stephen said with a broad smile. “He’s a quick study.”
*
And abruptly they were no longer standing in a layby next to the A36 leading to Southampton. The sudden silence after the road noise was like a thundering in the ears, and it was made deeper by the fact that nothing here ever made a sound. Ted and the King stood in a place Ted had been in twice before, and hoped never to see again.
He knew he wasn’t really here. His body, the place his mind liked to call home, would be lying in the layby on the A36 waiting for him to return. It would be an empty shell, living and breathing but that was all, oblivious to the traffic that rushed past or the cold and damp of the ground.
This was meta-Salisbury, the place that underpinned the Salisbury of the real world. This was the realm that held everything that had been and was and would be in the solid world which was all that human beings saw.
Buildings and people twisted all around Ted’s perception. The wood and plaster huts of Salisbury’s first hunter gatherers co-existed with gleaming office blocks of the future that had not yet been built, and they managed to exist all at the same time and in the sa
me place. People came and went, more like flows of energy than actual bodies, each one the full set of information that was that person. If Ted reached out and touched one then immediately it was like he had known that person forever.
And something, or rather someone, was very prominently missing from it. Ted twisted around to look.
“Where is she?”
“I think she expects us to work it out between ourselves,” the King said wryly.
“Right.” Ted puffed out his cheeks as he looked around. “Christ. Where do we start?”
It was going to be different this time. The last time he had been here it had been to retrieve enough information to rebuild Robert’s mind. Robert was one person in one place at one time, and Ted had known him pretty well so it had been easy to pick him out. Now he wanted to do something quite different – he wanted to make changes. He had root access to the entire city of Salisbury and he had no idea where to begin.
“I was hoping you could tell me.”
“Eh? I thought you said they taught you?”
“Not about this place. Oh, I know what this place is. I was just never trained in its use. I am a minor deity. There are things it’s probably best I don’t know.”
“Oh, great. I’m just a novice and I know more than you.” Ted folded his arms, hugging himself tight. “She’s probably watching us to make sure we get it right.”
“Or to make sure we do no harm. Yes, indeed.”
Ted shuddered. They could do a great deal of harm here. Someone with the right – or wrong – attitude and training could probably change Salisbury’s very history. What he intended was already quite ambitious enough for him. Fiddling with the time-space continuum could wait.
“What exactly did you hope to achieve here?” the King asked.
“I hoped to–” Ted thought of the best way of putting it. “To implant an idea, one that no one can resist but which doesn’t, you know, brainwash them either. I want … well, you were right, we can’t just make people forget about the last twenty-four hours – forty-eight, maybe, be on the safe side – but we can make them not mind.”
“We can encourage them not to mind,” the King corrected. “Very well, that’s a start.” He looked Ted up and down, as if estimating the size of clothes he wore. “From the time you drew your first breath, you’ve lived for six thousand and sixty-two days. We have a point of reference within the full range of Salisbury’s history.”
In fact, Ted thought with a sudden grin of understanding, they had six thousand and sixty-two of them. He closed his eyes and thought about himself, and suddenly he saw himself as a composite of each of those days. Each day was an object built up of new experiences and thoughts and memories and influences, and each of those was built up of further objects too … but he made himself pull away from getting drawn into too much detail. It was the last two days that counted.
“Good,” said the King. Ted opened his eyes, and saw that the world had shrunk down. It was still meta-Salisbury but it was his meta-Salisbury: the life and times of Ted Gorse for the last forty-eight hours.
He could narrow it down further. Friday evening and first things after waking up on Saturday weren’t important. It all started when he fell off his bike, shortly after 8 o’clock in the morning.
“Good,” the King said again. “Now expand it.”
The chains of cause and effect that bound Ted’s life led away into a void, and Ted followed them. He was zooming out into the life of Salisbury over the same narrow time period, all its quirks and events and details, all the comings and goings of its people. They were surrounded by the history of the last two days – a small bubble of all that Salisbury was.
Ted laughed, the King smiled, and Ted fought the temptation to give him a high five. It was brief moment of shared, triumphant collaboration and it felt good.
“And the idea you want to implant?” the King asked. “I could give each one of them a full and complete understanding of the work of any religious or secular ethical philosopher you choose to name … you probably have something else in mind.”
“Uh,” Ted agreed. “Yeah.”
Really, he had been improvising up to this point, hoping that inspiration would come to him. He knew the kind of thing he wanted. He wanted to expand his dream line of code to include the whole city. SETVAR($SALISBURY, $INCLINATION = FORGIVE PEOPLE).
Only, he wasn’t sure how. He was up against the simple fact, again, that he could retrieve data from this place but he didn’t know how to make changes. What had set him along these lines in the first place?
Oh, yeah. Mum and Barry. Thinking he could write a line of code, only …
… only, she would forgive him anyway.
It was like a small voice whispering a long way away, so quiet he could just make out the sense rather than hear the words, and it lifted a five-ton weight from his heart. He stared without seeing into the distance as he worked his way through it.
She would forgive him anyway. Why? Because she was his mum. She wouldn’t pretend it hadn’t happened, she would just choose not to dwell on it. She would choose to forgive him.
And if she did that then so would Barry – eventually, after making him sweat a bit – because Barry always stood by her, and anyway, Barry himself didn’t have the reserves to hold a grudge for long. And it wouldn’t be a fake forgiveness, quietly gritting his teeth and harbouring deep-down resentment. It would be the real thing. It wouldn’t be easy, and it might take longer, but Barry would also make that act of choice.
“Perfect,” said the King, and Ted suddenly realised he was standing there with a foolish grin on his face. The thought processes of the last minute clustered around his head as a field of energy. Ted could recognise the concepts that floated within it. He had shown the King what he wanted to do. The King moved his hands, as if he were spreading something flat with both palms, and the field dispersed. It expanded in all directions and was absorbed by the mass of Salisbury-data around them.
“It’s done,” the King said simply. “Thank you.”
“Uh–” Ted wasn’t quite sure. “You know, there’s quite a difference between a mum forgiving her son and, well, some of the stuff that went on–”
The King shot him a sideways, patient glance.
“The difference is in scale, not concept.”
“And it needs to be more than just your royal subjects–”
“From this place we can reach everyone. Ted, stop worrying. It’s done.”
“And so no one ever gets angry with anyone, ever again?” Ted couldn’t quite believe it.
The King snorted with laughter.
“Not entirely.” His face grew serious again and Ted sensed he was about to say something very important. “Ted, I want to–”
And meta-Salisbury dissolved and suddenly Ted was lying on a cold, wet, gritty road surface with the inspector’s face inches from his.
“Bloody hell, Ted, you just collapsed! I was about to give you mouth to mouth!”
Ted just managed to suppress a snigger but he couldn’t help the smirk that crept over his face. She scowled, but what wiped his smirk away was seeing the witch and Stephen over the inspector’s shoulder. The witch had her hands folded in front of her and was staring into the distance with a face like thunder. Stephen, after a glance at her for permission, came forward. Ted propped himself gingerly up on his elbows.
“You still here, then?”
“Do you two know each other?” an incredulous Inspector demanded.
“Since we were little kids,” Stephen answered amiably. He offered a hand to Ted to help him up. “Look, just go back to the traffic, why not?”
She looked from one to the other, then threw her hands in the air and stalked off. Finally, Ted and Stephen had time for each other.
And found there was very little to say.
“So.”
“Yeah.”
“Right.”
“How’s it going?”
“Oh–” Stephen’s fa
ce cracked open in a smile. “It’s bloody brilliant, mate. You?”
“Crappier. Uh. Your house. It’s sold.”
“Well. Not like I needed it anymore.”
A pause, during which neither of them took his eyes off the other and Stephen’s smile slowly faded.
“So … what’s it like?” Ted asked. “It’s everything you hoped?”
Stephen’s face lit up again.
“Hell, yeah! And more. I mean, I’m the lowest of the low–” Stephen waved a hand to indicate himself generally. “The funny hair’s a sign of rank and the robes are – well, they’re part of the magic, so you only get to wear them once you’re practiced enough – and that’s why I’m like this.” This meaning the simplest of robes, and short hair. The old man who had swapped bodies with Stephen had been naturally bald anyway, so Stephen now just had a ring of white tufts around a bare scalp. “I’m basically her PA and that’s all I’ll ever be. But a bloody good one, though I say it myself.”
Another pause. The brief surge of enthusiasm faded away.
“I do miss you, Ted.”
“I miss you, mate. Uh.” If there wasn’t an elephant quite in the room, there was one standing at the door, maybe sticking its trunk in, and it needed to be faced. “Last time we saw each other. You. uh. Said something.”
I love you, Ted …
It had been how the thief had groomed Stephen for takeover. He had needed a brain with neural channels similar to his own, practiced in iron-willed self-control. And so he had picked on Stephen, who loved and yearned for his best friend with all the intensity his teenage hormones would allow and who would never, ever do anything about it.
“Yeah.” Stephen shuffled his feet and gave a lopsided grin. “Still do. I’m living with it. Like, I had a lot of practice, living with it. And now … we all, uh–” He coughed and Ted’s eyes widened slightly with dread expectation. We all … what? Swing? Gang bang? “We’re all celibate. Like monks.”
Phew. “Bummer!”
“Well, I dunno.” Stephen glanced down at himself, and again swept a hand to indicate everything from his head to his feet. “You may have noticed this body isn’t exactly bursting with hormones. I’m not sure I could have sex if I wanted to.” He glanced up at Ted from under his eyebrows, almost coyly. “Still mean what I said, though.”