Joyride

by Patrick Ness

  ‘If you could just follow me?’ The kid starts walking off down the street and Fletcher sighs. This is a pain in the arse, that’s what this is. But then he wonders if the kid’s lost or something. Maybe he can get a reward out of it. He gets up off the wall and shuffles along behind him.

  ‘Where do you live?’ Fletcher asks him. The kid just points, which Fletcher doesn’t think is particularly helpful, especially as the kid seems to be pointing straight up into the night sky.

  ‘Christ’s sake,’ he mutters, still following the kid.

  After a few minutes, Fletcher’s drunk enough that it all just starts to feel normal. Him and the strange barefoot kid out for a stroll. All good. One foot and then the other. No problem.

  He stares at the buildings around him and wonders where they’re heading. They’re cutting towards the little industrial estate off Swallow Avenue. He looked at a place there once during one of his frequent bouts of entrepreneurialism. What was it that time? The T-shirt printing company or the stainproof-carpet thing? Damned if he can remember, all he knows is that he didn’t get the money together and that was that. That is always that as far as Fletcher’s business empires go. You can’t fault him for enthusiasm, can’t even fault him for ideas, but when it comes to holding on to the cash . . . Well, nobody’s perfect. Last he heard the industrial estate was nigh on empty, the landlord had got done for building regulations or something. Now there was just a little courtyard of abandoned buildings with peeling TO LET signs on them.

  The kid crosses Swallow Avenue and, sure enough, aims for the narrow passageway that leads through to the industrial estate.

  ‘I nearly rented a place here,’ Fletcher says, though why he thinks the kid would be interested is anyone’s guess.

  ‘Sensors showed it was free of intelligent life,’ the kid says.

  ‘You can say that about most of Shoreditch,’ Fletcher replies, before the words even really sink in. ‘Wait . . . what?’

  ‘It is this way.’ The kid vanishes into the shadows along the estate entrance and Fletcher jogs after him. For a moment he loses the kid. He’s spinning around, robbed of the streetlights, adrift in the darkness of the courtyard.

  ‘Where did you go?’ he shouts.

  ‘Please,’ says the child from right next to him, ‘it would be better if you were quieter. Our records show that this planet may not welcome us—I wouldn’t be talking to you if it wasn’t an emergency.’

  And with that, the kid walks over to one of the buildings, opens the door, and steps inside.

  Off his head, Fletcher thinks, completely and utterly off his head.

  But he follows anyway.

  He steps inside the building just in time to see the kid heading through a dilapidated reception area and along a corridor beyond. It suddenly occurs to him that this might be a setup, some kind of mugger’s trap. ‘Hang on!’ he shouts. ‘How about you explain what’s going on here first?’

  The kid stops and turns to him. Fletcher can’t see his face and right now that feels like a step too far, as if by seeing his face he could trust the kid more. ‘There isn’t time. Please, come.’

  ‘No,’ says Fletcher, leaning against the door. ‘You explain to me what’s going on or I’m leaving. Simple as. You could have a load of mates in there waiting to kick my head in, for all I know.’

  The kid just stands there for a moment, weighing it up.

  ‘But I need your help, you can’t leave,’ he says.

  ‘So tell me what’s going on. Then I’ll help you. Promise.’

  ‘We are explorers to your world.’

  Fletcher laughs, but doesn’t walk out; this is almost fun.

  ‘Explorers? In what, your spaceship? Parked out back, is it?’

  ‘Our ships don’t work that way. We don’t work that way. We are . . .’ The kid pauses, trying to think of the words. ‘We blend.’

  ‘Blend? What, like blend in? That’s why you look like that, is it? So this ship of yours is hidden or something?’

  ‘No.’ Then a pause. ‘Yes, in a way. You are standing inside it.’

  ‘This place? It’s just an empty old business unit, mate, you couldn’t fly this to the moon.’

  ‘We appropriate matter. We transfer. Our sensors showed that this space was empty of intelligent life.’

  ‘Oh yeah, you mentioned that bit.’

  ‘So we appropriated this location,’ the kid continues. ‘We do not use travel structures as you would think of them. We appropriate new space, moving through space/time locations. It is still your . . . empty business unit, but we now occupy it, along with our equipment.’

  ‘Yeah, well . . .’ Fletcher is heading back towards the doorway. ‘This has been fun, but I’m bursting for a slash and I need to get home so . . .’ He stops, a thought bubbling up through his corrupt little mind. ‘Wait, you said equipment?’

  ‘Yes. While we do not use travel structures, we are an exploration party, we carry a great deal of scientific equipment. It is with that equipment that I need your help.’

  ‘What sort of help?’

  ‘I will show you, but please hurry.’

  ‘Two ticks . . .’ Fletcher dashes outside to empty his bladder and have a quick think. Obviously this is all rubbish, isn’t it? I mean, you hear stuff these days, weird alien stuff. It’s not just conspiracy nutjobs either—lots of people say they’ve seen things, alien things. Maybe this is on the level? Maybe?

  His mind is turning over and over, trying to imagine how he might be able to profit from this.

  He steps back inside. ‘Right you are then, lead the way.’

  The kid walks down the corridor and opens a room on the left. ‘Our equipment has located itself in several of the rooms, but our power source is the main problem.’

  Fletcher is staring at the huge sphere in the centre of the room and all doubt is gone. ‘You are kidding me . . .’ he whispers. ‘Would you look at that?’

  It glows with a pale, pearlescent light. Faint, pulsing, and moving across the walls in a way that doesn’t quite make sense to Fletcher’s eyes. When the light reflects, it seems almost to have substance, a glutinous thing that splashes onto the walls, then drips off with each pulse.

  ‘It is failing,’ the kid says. ‘It has been unable to lock onto a local power source and can only last a short time in isolation.’

  ‘A local power source?’

  ‘We appropriate,’ the kid says. ‘We have occupied this space to use as our own. In the fullness of time, we would bond fully with it, but to do that we need stable power. Power from here. We understood your planet had plentiful power reserves—we would not have come here otherwise. But there is not even enough to relocate. We are stranded unless we can appropriate more power.’

  ‘And how are you supposed to do that?’ Fletcher asks, walking around the sphere. ‘Plug it into the mains?’

  ‘The mains?’

  ‘Yeah, you know, electricity.’

  ‘Electricity would be perfect, but there is none here.’

  ‘Yeah, well, they’ll have been cut off, won’t they?’ Fletcher replies.

  ‘If there had been a source of electricity within these walls,’ the kid continues, ‘the sphere would have connected to it automatically. This space is dead. It has no power.’

  For a moment the sphere pulses brighter.

  ‘Wait!’ the kid says. ‘It has found a power source! You must have something with you? Some form of electricity perhaps?’

  ‘Nah,’ says Fletcher, then feels something glow warm in his jacket pocket. ‘Oh, hang on, there’s my phone I suppose.’ The sphere grows dim again. ‘It is no use,’ the kid says, ‘there wasn’t enough power in it, it has drained it already.’

  ‘No kidding.’ Fletcher is poking at his phone. ‘It’s dead, no battery life at all.’

  ‘The sphere consumed it, but it was insufficient.’

  ‘It consumed it?’ Fletcher can’t get his head around this. ‘No wires, no nothing? It just sensed t
he phone in my pocket and sucked it dry?’

  ‘We appropriate.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, so you keep saying. So, if I brought a generator or something into the room, this thing would just connect to it and power up? Like electricity over a Wi-Fi connection?’

  ‘Yes. I think. I’m not sure what a Wi-Fi connection is.’

  ‘That’s amazing.’

  ‘Thank you.’ The kid actually smiles. ‘So you will do that? Bring this generator?’

  ‘Yeah, of course, as soon as you’ve told me what I get out of it.’

  Fletcher then walks out of the room, crosses the corridor, and walks straight into the room opposite. Inside there is a pyramid-like structure, again glowing with a pale light. There’s a wire leading from it and into the shadows.

  ‘Do not touch that!’ the kid shouts, running in after him.

  ‘Keep your hair on, kid,’ he says, ‘I’m just looking. What, is it then?’

  ‘It is how I look like this.’

  Fletcher is following the wire into the darkness. Digging his cigarette lighter out of his pocket he ignites it and can suddenly see what the wire is attached to. ‘Jesus Christ, what’s that?’

  The wire extends to a flat bench, on which lies an amorphous, vaguely humanoid shape. If you sculpted a human being out of a boiled sweet then sucked on it for a bit, Fletcher imagines you’d end up with something like this.

  ‘That is my flesh,’ says the kid, ‘we use the machine to appropriate other bodies. Bodies like this one.’

  ‘But why?’ Fletcher can’t take his eyes off the thing in front of him. He’s wondering if he might be about to bring up what remains of his night’s drinking.

  ‘Our form is not made for extreme physical exertion, so, when need be, we temporarily use others. We app—’

  ‘Appropriate, yeah, got that. It’s kind of sick. And you stole the body of this kid?’

  ‘I needed to find someone who could help. I would have preferred someone older, but with the power drain it favours the young, and this body was the closest.’

  A small thought begins to grow in Fletcher’s head. ‘So, you can just leap into other people’s bodies? Take them over?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But I couldn’t do it, could I? Because I’m human.’

  ‘It is the machine that performs the appropriation. I am sure you could do it perfectly successfully. But there is no need; you are here, you have no need of another body.’

  ‘And while you’re in control, you can do whatever you want? That kid you’re in, he can’t fight back?’

  ‘He is not even aware. We are not cruel.’

  Fletcher stares at the form on the bench again. ‘Poor sod. So what would happen to him if you got hurt?’

  ‘Regrettably my consciousness is prime. If that body were damaged beyond repair, both he and I would perish. But that is not likely to happen, not now you are here. So please, can you bring this generator? There is only a short time left.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, one more thing.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You keep saying we. I’ve only met you, where’s the rest of your lot then?’

  ‘They are in stasis. Only the pilot remains active during transfer, it saves power.’

  ‘Stasis? What, they’re asleep?’

  ‘Yes. Inactive, until the sphere is fully powered and I consider it viable to activate them.’

  ‘Brilliant.’

  ‘So you will now bring us power?’

  ‘Sort of,’ says Fletcher. ‘Yeah.’

  Because Fletcher knows a golden opportunity when he sees one. Already his mind is calculating what he could achieve with equipment like this. It’s staggering. To hell with selling meat and creaming a few quid off the top. To hell with T-shirt printing or stainproof carpets. Garry, old son, he thinks, you just became a millionaire.

  The fact that two lives stand in the way of that bothers him not one jot. In fact, the only consideration he gives the whole thing, as he kicks the alien creature on the bench to death, is relief that it didn’t take over the body of someone that might have been able to fight back.

  Later, he realises it might have been a good idea to ask the alien if there was an instruction manual. Or maybe even forced it to give him a quick tutorial. That night though, with a head full of pound signs, he doesn’t even give it a thought. That night is all about getting things done.

  The first thing he does is take a stroll around the rest of the building, checking the other rooms, seeing what else there might be on offer. When it comes to profit, the answer is precious little, though he does briefly wonder how much he might get for the inactive alien forms he discovers in the final room off the corridor. There are four of them, hanging from a metal frame, a network of rubber pipes connecting them. Like the body in the transfer room, they have a smooth, unformed quality to them. Leaning in as close as he dares with his cigarette lighter, he tries to figure out how they work. There are dimples where eyes, nostrils, and mouth should be, but no obvious break in the skin. How can they see, breathe, talk? Is everything they do done through borrowing a host body? Bunch of alien thieves, he thinks, completely immune to irony. I’ve done the world a favour getting rid of them.

  It’s fear that overpowers his greed in the end. What if one of them—or all of them—wakes up once he gets the power going? They don’t look like much and everything he’s seen suggests they can’t act independently, that they would need to borrow another body to become a threat. But . . . But . . . But . . . It’s a risk. He doesn’t like the way they look either, or the way they smell: sweet but with a chemical undertone, like nail varnish remover.

  No. They can’t stay; he’ll have to deal with them. He drags the broken body of the alien and the empty, dead kid into the room and shuts the door on the problem. He’ll figure it out later. But first, the power; he’s got nothing unless he can sort out the power.

  The scariest thing about leaving the building is the fear that somebody else might come along and take what’s his. Who owns this place? Is it all still caught up in that legal mess with the landlord? Is he even remembering that right? He’ll have to find out. But what about tonight? What if someone stumbles on this stuff now?

  Who’s going to come here? he thinks. It’s abandoned, forgotten, hidden.

  But what if he’s wrong?

  There’s nothing he can do about it, that’s what gets him finally moving. He’s got to go; his phone’s dead, he doesn’t have a car, standing here all night will get him nowhere. Still, as he jogs back onto Swallow Avenue, he can’t help but keep looking over his shoulder, half expecting someone to come walking along. By the time he’s on a main road and hunting for a phone, he’s almost crippled with panic. Someone could be raiding the place right now.

  He spots an open takeaway with a phone and runs inside. He’s already accepted that he needs help. He doesn’t like the idea of cutting someone else in—hates it in fact, because there’s not a living soul in this city he trusts—but he can’t do everything by himself. He checks his pocket and finds he doesn’t have any change.

  ‘I need to use the phone,’ he tells the bored Chinese girl behind the counter. ‘Can you change a twenty?’

  ‘Not unless you order something,’ she tells him, waving a hand vaguely at the lit-up menu board above the counter. For Christ’s sake, food is now the last thing on his mind.

  Still, he orders a chicken chow mein, takes his change, and goes to the phone, while out the back someone starts hurling noodles around.

  He dials, no answer. Hangs up, dials again. No answer. He looks at his watch, it’s only just gone midnight, why won’t Mike answer his damn phone? He dials again. Finally it’s answered.

  ‘Who’s this?’ asks Mike, angry but tired. ‘Do you know what the bloody time is?’

  ‘Shut up, Mike, it’s Garry.’

  ‘Garry? What do you want, man? It’s gone midnight! Call me in the morning, will you? I was on a late one yesterday and I’m knackered.’

/>   ‘Just listen, Mike, this is serious. I need your help, and there’s money in it.’

  There’s a pause. ‘How much money?’

  ‘I will give you two hundred quid in cash if you do me this small favour, and there’ll be more down the line too if you want in.’

  ‘Want in to what, Garry? This another one of your crappy business empires because, seriously man, I’m a bit tired of all that, you know?’

  Normally, Garry would be tempted to tell Mike where to go with a comment like that. It was a fair point, but that doesn’t mean he wants to hear it. Still, he needs Mike.

  ‘This is the real deal, mate, seriously. But I need you to get moving now . . .’

  He tells Mike what he wants, grabs his chicken chow mein, and runs back to Swallow Avenue.

  Heading into the courtyard, he’s looking around for signs of life, but the place is as dead as earlier. Inside the building, all is as he left it, so he heads back out to Swallow Avenue, sits on a wall, and eats his takeaway while waiting for Mike to show up. Considering he hadn’t even wanted the food, it goes down at lightning speed and he feels all the better for it. By the time Mike does pull up, half an hour or so later, he’s sober and got his swagger back.

  He waves for Mike to turn in to the courtyard, all the while wishing the man’s van was a bit quieter. Hopefully everyone’s in bed; the last thing he wants is twitching curtains from nosy neighbours. If anyone is looking, Mike’s van is hardly subtle, ‘Sparkz Mobile Disco’ it announces, with Mike’s phone number stencilled underneath.

  Mike gets out of the van. Fletcher notices that Mike has shaved his head again. Mike thinks it makes him look cool, but he hasn’t got the head shape for it; he just looks like an ugly egg.

  ‘Turn your lights off and keep quiet,’ Fletcher tells him. ‘We don’t want people to see us.’

  ‘See us doing what?’ Mike asks, though he reaches into the cab and flicks the lights off. ‘You got my money?’