A Mind of its Own

by Martyn Ford

  The window.

  Outside he saw a courtyard. Trees. A few benches. It was familiar.

  ‘Oi,’ a voice yelled from behind his door. ‘Oi, Tim, you up?’

  He turned and cautiously approached. Gritting his teeth, he gently opened the door, peering round. A girl he’d never seen before was standing there. ‘Tim, I got this awesome— Whoa, you all right? You look pale. You look awful, if I’m honest.’

  This girl was tall, taller than Tim. She had short spiky hair and was wearing an overly colourful patchwork jumper.

  ‘Who are you?’ Tim asked.

  The girl smiled. ‘I’m King of the Goblins. Who are you?’

  ‘No. Don’t joke. Really, who are you?’

  ‘Stop mucking around, Tim. Come on, breakfast is ready, but I wanna show—’

  He slammed the door shut.

  ‘God,’ she yelled from behind the wood. ‘Rude.’

  Swooping back to his bed, Tim started to search for clues. Pillow seemed normal. The mattress was a bit lumpy, but otherwise fairly reasonable. He looked underneath. There was a large wooden trunk, which he slid out and opened. It was full of stuff. Clutter. Magic 8 Ball, broken watch strap, playing cards, rubber chicken. He dropped things back inside. Loads of it was his, but some of it wasn’t. It looked like someone had come into his room and taken items at random, then mixed them with a load of other nonsense.

  He sat for a moment there on the floor, with his eyes shut and his hand on the edge of the wooden chest. Calm down, he thought, what would Dee do?

  She would be logical. She would assess the problem and solve it.

  Facts. What were the facts?

  He was at home but then woke up somewhere else. How did he get here? Did he sleepwalk? Unlikely. Had someone kidnapped him? Maybe, but who and why? Was he dreaming? Again, could be the case, but it all seemed too vivid. Pinching is the classic test, but Tim gave himself a firm slap on the face instead.

  ‘Ouch.’ It just hurt – he rubbed his cheek. So he wasn’t asleep.

  Had he come here of his own free will and then forgotten? Possible. But how? Something would have had to screw with his memory, something like—

  The chip!

  Tim’s fingers scrambled to his neck. He felt the scar and moved the small piece of metal around under his skin. It must have a glitch or something and it had wiped his memory. That’s it. This thought, although dodgy, did settle his nerves. Very simple solution – he’d contact Rick Harris and get it sorted out. Can’t very well be waking up in strange places.

  Still, he wondered where he was.

  The very second he stepped out of the bedroom door, a bright light above stung his eyes. It was accompanied by a weird, haunting wailing noise. The walls seemed to sway. The sound was coming from the multicoloured jumper girl who had knocked earlier. She was standing at the end of the long hallway holding a megaphone. She was singing into it. ‘Tim, Tim, Tim,’ she yelled. It seemed somehow too loud and echoed in his skull. ‘Tim, Tim, Tiiiim.’

  ‘Please be quiet,’ he said to the stranger.

  She lowered the megaphone. ‘Sorry, I found this in the basement. I thought you might want to come down the pond, shout at some ducks?’

  ‘Look, I don’t know who you are, but can you at least tell me where we are?’

  ‘It’s not funny any more,’ she said. ‘You’re actually being kind of freaky.’

  He sighed. ‘Just tell me.’

  ‘We’re in Glassbridge? Which is a town in England? Planet Earth?’

  ‘Yeah, where in Glassbridge?’

  ‘Do you want coordinates?’

  He glared at her.

  ‘Glassbridge Orphanage,’ she said. ‘Where you live?’

  All he could think was ‘no’. Just no. It felt as though they were on a boat and it had just been hit and lifted by the tallest wave imaginable – the walls lurching towards him, the ground falling away from his feet. He steadied himself and took a breath. But then he shook his head and told himself it was impossible. This girl was simply insane, he thought, and he had a sudden urge to get away from her.

  ‘That’s enough from you,’ Tim said, turning on his heel and running off down the hallway. ‘Crazy, crazy people,’ he mumbled under his breath.

  When he got to the bottom of the stairs, he realised that the strange girl was at least half right – he had woken up at Glassbridge Orphanage. He recognised it now. However, he had no interest in hanging about, so he decided to run home – he could figure things out there.

  As he passed through Glassbridge, he felt dizzy again – he had a sort of lingering déjà vu. Everything looked the same, but different. The cars were all a bit strange, like they were from the past – they had a weird 1950s retro vibe about them. Big bonnets, bulbous curves, round headlights. However, they were shiny and futuristic at the same time. And, weirdly, almost silent – gliding along the road smoothly, as though on invisible rails. They were obviously electric, Tim thought.

  On the high street, a double-decker bus stopped to pick up some passengers. The side of it was alive with a moving advert: a woman’s eyes blinking at Tim, trying to sell him make-up.

  People’s clothes too – it wasn’t that they were wildly different, but just as though fashions had changed overnight. Men’s shirt collars were a smidge bigger, women seemed to be wearing more hats and everywhere he looked he saw little high-tech gadgets. Nearby, a man entered a block of flats, a camera scanning his eyeball for security. A tall policeman strolled past wearing sunglasses that had flowing text on the lenses – a digital head-up display, giving him information about the world.

  And yet it was all familiar, all totally normal, at the same time. It was as though all of Tim’s memories were wrong. The feeling was impossible to comprehend, impossible to put into words.

  After the mile or so run, which soon became a jog and then a fast walk, he arrived at the Dawn Star Hotel, where he caught his breath and felt incredible relief, despite the sick, swaying feeling in his stomach. Home, he thought, as he pushed his way through the revolving doors. Luckily, this place just felt familiar. There were all the nice, comforting sights and sounds of the lobby – people checking in, a faint radio playing gentle music nearby, someone reading a paper on the sofa by the window. He went through the oak doors, along the hallway and ran upstairs, to the second floor, to his bedroom.

  Tim had a bad habit of leaving his door unlocked, so when he pushed the handle and it didn’t open, he banged his head and shoulder into it. Startled, he grabbed it again and gave it a real shove. It was locked. And then he heard that someone was inside.

  He knocked, hard. Then again.

  A man wearing a white hotel bathrobe, complete with the fancy little gold DS sewn on to the breast, opened the door. ‘Yes?’ he said.

  ‘Who are you?’ Tim demanded. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I was …’ The man seemed confused. He pointed over his shoulder. ‘I was having a shower?’

  ‘In my room?’ Tim said, pushing past him.

  ‘Now hang on a second,’ the man said, his tone different now. No confusion, just anger. ‘You can’t go barging into people’s rooms. If there’s been a booking mix-up we can— Hey!’

  Tim tugged open the top drawer, expecting to find Phil in his miniature bed, but it was empty.

  ‘But …’ Tim whispered to himself, leaning closer and touching the bare wood on the inside of the drawer in case something was wrong with his eyes. He stood up straight, covering his mouth.

  And then he noticed his bedroom had been redecorated. It looked bare, plain, just like any other hotel room.

  ‘Aw, what is going on?’ he said, turning full circle, grabbing his hair. The room kept spinning even when he stopped.

  He turned back to the man, but he’d left. So Tim checked the closet, every drawer, even the man’s suitcase, searching for any clues. By the time he’d finished, the room looked trashed.

  ‘What on earth are you doing?’ a voice said. It was Eli
sa.

  ‘Oh thank God.’ Tim ran and grabbed her, squeezing her hand. ‘Listen, Elisa, something weird is going on. My room … it’s …’

  ‘This isn’t your room,’ she said. Elisa pushed him away, holding him by his shoulders.

  ‘Yeah, I can see that. I’ve gone all wonky … confused. I think the chip … it’s messed my memories up or something.’ Although still terrified, just having her nearby helped Tim keep his composure. ‘Sorry about the mess,’ he added.

  ‘That’s fine.’ Elisa was glaring, though she looked worried. ‘Where did you come from?’

  ‘I … I was … I was at Glassbridge Orphanage.’

  ‘All right. I’ll call them, OK. Someone will come and pick you up.’

  ‘What? No,’ Tim said. ‘I don’t want to go back.’

  ‘Listen, young man, I don’t know what’s going on, but—’

  ‘Young man? Elisa, it’s me, Tim?’

  Hesitating, she turned her head slightly. ‘I’m sorry, but … I think you’ve made a mistake,’ she said. ‘I don’t know who you are.’

  Tim was fending off tears now.

  ‘But, you’re my … you’re my mum?’ he said to her, for the first time in his life, his voice straining at the end. Although he’d said the words aloud, they somehow didn’t seem to be true.

  He knew her well enough – Tim could see that Elisa wasn’t joking. She wasn’t lying. She really didn’t recognise him.

  ‘Listen, kid,’ the man in the dressing gown said. ‘You’re in the wrong place, now help me clean all this up.’

  ‘I …’ Tim started, then he frowned. ‘I have to go …’

  ‘Yes, I think that’s the best idea,’ Elisa said. ‘Have you a number for the—’

  But Tim had bolted off down the hall, down the stairs, through the lobby and back outside. Panicked, he ran along the pavement, huffing as he went.

  At the end of the street he bumped into an old woman who was riding a mobility scooter. Catching his balance, Tim held her shoulder and apologised. As she grumbled something and weaved off up the pavement, he saw that over her legs was a tartan blanket.

  Tartan like Scotland.

  Scotland like Rick Harris.

  Tim shot down into an alleyway and squatted by a bin. Even the bins looked somehow different, he noticed, as he leant against it. He needed to get his thoughts in line. All the panic had clouded his mind. Right, he had to get on a train and go to London. That was all that mattered. Go and see Rick and get this chip removed or get a software update or whatever. Then it’d all be fine, he thought. Everything would go back to normal. It was all in his head. It was all in his head. It was all in his head. Tim rested the back of that mischievous head on the large bin behind him. It made a hollow donk sound. He turned and looked – the bin was square and made of dark grey metal. It reminded him of something … A drawing he’d seen.

  He was breathing like he’d just emerged from deep water as he dared to think it.

  A drawing of an all-powerful machine. A machine that shouldn’t exist. A machine that—

  ‘Oh no,’ he whispered, resting his face in his hands.

  He knew he shouldn’t have trusted someone with such indulgent facial hair. Rick was too ambitious. Of course he built it. Of course, he wanted to impress Harriet, rise up the ranks at TRAD. The imagination station could change everything, create a world, a universe.

  But how, Tim wondered, would a machine like that even be possible. Rick would need some kind of, some kind of—

  Oh, of course. Rick had the replica of Tim’s brain. He had Tim’s abilities from the moment he made that copy. That’s probably what that glass compartment on the sketch was for …

  This theory made at least a bit of sense. That’d explain the weird cars and clothes. Rick must have reinvented them, pictured everything this way. All for his very own universe.

  After he’d calmed himself down, Tim peered back towards the street and began to notice all the other tiny differences, feeling a twitch of fear with each one he saw. It was a bit like being in another country. The font on the road signs was different, but he couldn’t say quite how, the traffic lights were different, but again he couldn’t say in what way.

  Some of the buildings had a sort of eerie Gothic feel to them, built from big grey stones, covered in rough lichens and strange rashes of moss. Like a graveyard. And yet, at the same time, it was all modern, with neon lights glowing on shop fronts and high-tech gadgetry wired into everything, as though the past and future had fused together and turned Glassbridge into a truly foreign place.

  Tim looked down at his feet. Even the tarmac was a slightly different shade, especially in the sunlight, which, like everything else, was odd – maybe a tiny bit bluer than normal? He put his hand out into a patch of light and opened his fingers, feeling the warmth. But it was subtle, he thought, like the blurry moment in a dream when you realise that something’s not quite right, and yet continue to sleep.

  Something buzzed near Tim, beyond a fire-escape ladder above, interrupting his thoughts. It was a weird drone thing – a little larger than a football, with spiked antennae, a flashing light and what looked like a camera. The hovering bot came down into the alleyway, then flew off and round the brick corner.

  When it was gone, he checked his phone, which looked completely different to how he remembered – it was after 12 p.m. now. All this insanity had taken it out of him. He wasn’t hungry, but he was thirsty.

  Stepping back out on to the busy street, Tim could only wonder what kind of lavish life Rick had made for himself in this new reality. He was probably sipping cocktails on a beach somewhere, swinging in a hammock, watching the sun set over a still, crystalclear sea.

  Tim had to grab his forehead when he thought about it too hard. To think – everything, the pavement, the cloudy sky, the quiet cars that whispered past, even the earth itself. That bird. This corner shop Tim had arrived at. All of it had changed. All of it was new – all created in an instant by a machine Tim didn’t understand. And yet, weirdly, so much was the same.

  They still had water, which was lucky. Tim grabbed a bottle from the fridge at the back of the store, and queued to pay.

  ‘That’s one pound ninety-nine,’ the clerk said, beeping it through the till.

  Corner shop prices were still stupid, Tim thought. That’s something.

  Did he have any cash? He patted himself then pulled out his wallet and felt it had no coins. However he did have a ten-pound note.

  ‘There you go,’ he said.

  But, as Tim handed over the cash, he flinched – this was like a real sleep twitch, the sudden jolt that would have woken him up had this been a nightmare. He stood there, frozen, holding the paper, the clerk holding the other end, neither letting go.

  A familiar face was staring up from his fingers – a portrait he’d seen before, a smile he’d never forget. The straight black hair, the skeletal cheekbones – that proud, proud gaze. Right there, right on the front of the crisp bank note, it was her.

  Clarice Crowfield was on the money.

  Chapter 5

  Tim downed his water then threw the empty bottle in the bin outside. With a cold ache in his throat, he crossed the street. He was standing in front of Glassbridge cathedral now – the tall spires and stone arches towered above. The afternoon sun was low, shining both in and back out of the building, every colour of stained glass on the pavement at his feet.

  ‘Excuse me,’ Tim said as he grabbed the arm of a passer-by.

  The man stopped and pulled his wireless earphones out. ‘Hmm?’

  ‘Sorry, I’m not from here and I noticed Clarice Crowfield is on the ten-pound note?’

  ‘Yeah, she’s on ’em all, mate.’

  ‘I see,’ Tim said. ‘Why is that?’

  ‘Cos she’s the Prime Minister of the Great British Empire …’ The nearby cathedral door opened and the jarring chords of a busy organ and a hundred voices from a choir echoed on to the street. ‘Enjoy your stay,’ t
he man said, as he left.

  ‘What?’ Tim replied, staring wide-eyed. ‘Oh yeah, I’ll try.’

  After a few seconds, he stepped out from the glowing orange and green and blue light and did the dream test again, slapping himself in the face. Once. Twice. But nothing. This was real.

  Not for the first time that day, Tim took off running. Except now he wasn’t panicking. Well, he was. All right, he admitted, he was on the verge of a full-blown breakdown – part of him wanted to lie on his side, on the pavement, hug his knees and just rock backwards and forwards, screaming, until someone came and took him away. But, as well as this temptation, he was also finally getting some clarity. Today had been a bad day – maybe one of the worst – and the feeling he had, the dread terror of being totally and absolutely alone, made it ten times harder. It felt like he was in a suddenly wingless plane. Trapped, just falling and falling.

  There were loads of problems that would need addressing, but the first one he had to solve was this awful loneliness. He needed a friend. He needed Dee.

  Of course, however, he suspected she might not know who he was. That fear went back and forth in his mind until he arrived at Glassbridge Academy. It was a normal school day so everyone was in uniform, besides Tim. He worried someone would spot him and ask why he hadn’t been in class, but then he realised he had far bigger issues on his plate. Plus, did he even go to school here? It didn’t matter.

  It was lunch break when Tim arrived – the playground was full of students, some talking, or playing football, or running about the place, yelling and laughing. Hidden in a nearby bush, he watched through a chain-link fence, scanning faces, spotting blonde girls through the busy crowd, searching and searching and—

  There. There she was. Sitting alone on the back wall near the field. Tim positioned her in his vision so she was perfectly framed in a square of fence wire. She was watching other kids playing and seemed sad, sitting all by herself. She looked kind of lonely – which was weird. Maybe she did remember him, he thought, hopeful. Maybe she was just worried about where he was?