Acts of Vanishing

by Fredrik T. Olsson

  In a last desperate lunge he stretched one arm out in front of him, fumbled the door open and grabbed the chassis with his other hand. He pulled for all he was worth, and eventually he heard the nylon rip and slithered out through the opening on Rebecca’s side. As he thudded onto the ground with no way to break his fall, there was not a single part of his body that wasn’t sore, yet there was no time to lie there, and he crawled across the rain-soaked tarmac towards the ditch.

  He pressed himself into the grass and the mud, the ice-cold damp seeping through every seam. And then, only then, did he notice that he hadn’t closed the door properly. He lay there perfectly still, quite convinced that as soon as they noticed the door the game would be up. With his face in the dirt he counted each passing second, and only when the tone of the conversation began to soften, when he heard Rebecca’s licence being returned and then everyone helping to give her a bump-start, did he dare to hope that they’d got away with it.

  Eventually she drove past the red flares. The HGV had driven on, and the road ahead was empty. That’s when he hauled himself up, soaking wet, freezing cold, and started walking back in the direction they’d come from. From now on, it was all down to Rebecca.

  It was only after two hours of walking that he could see the illuminated logo of the petrol station he’d remembered from some time earlier. It was hovering there, like red clouds in the damp air, and he stopped well short of it, studying the aging premises until he was quite sure that the two cameras on the forecourt were the only ones they had. After that he slipped in along the frontage and carried on through the squealing door, hiding his face behind his elbow as he dealt with a coughing fit that was only partly faked.

  Apart from the ones outside, there was just one more camera, behind the till, facing whoever was paying, and directly behind the sleepy shop assistant were three monochrome monitors which showed exactly what fields the three cameras covered.

  Finally, William chose a soft drink from a vibrating refrigerator, walked over to the till and pointed at the hot dogs slowly rotating on the rollers, making sure to stay out of camera view as he paid. Lastly, he asked about the three computers. They stood at the other end of the store, in what was, according to the sign, a cafeteria but was actually no more than a few battered chairs and tables on an equally battered section of floor. Four zloty got him a code for an hour’s surf.

  He chose one of the terminals, sat down with his meal, and read the headlines from the world’s newspapers as he ate. He had ploughed through all the major international titles, then the Swedish, and finally Christina’s own, when he realised that the words were all merging. He couldn’t remember when he’d last slept. On the ferry? On the vehicle deck on the way to Poland? Sandberg peered over at the man behind the till and thought to himself that four zloty was a reasonable price for an hour’s sleep in a chair.

  ‘The bastard!’ Tetrapak’s voice echoed down the long hallway, full of something that lay between joy and admiration and pride, and while his legs powered towards William’s room as fast as they could carry him, he turned towards Christina and Palmgren, who were close behind. ‘That bastard knew exactly what he was doing! And if it hadn’t been for William we wouldn’t have had a clue!’

  Christina could still taste sleep in her mouth, and was busily trying to piece together where she was and why.

  ‘He was right,’ grinned Tetrapak as he sat down at William’s desk. ‘When you listen to them, they sound identical, but if you go through the content of the discs as binary data, and compare them, digit by digit—’

  ‘Did it work?’ she said, rubbing her face to try and wake up.

  Strandell smiled at them.

  ‘I’ve never heard of information being concealed that way before, but William was right. They’re there–tiny, tiny deviations, impossible to notice. Right up until you put them side by side.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Palmgren.

  ‘What do you know about logical connectives?’ The silence that ensued was an answer. ‘Okay, I’ll keep it short. Data is stored as ones and zeros, we know that. Logical connectives are a way of comparing series of ones and zeros to get a new result. If you put two series next to each other and compare them digit by digit, there are two possibilities. A: both digits are the same–two ones, or two zeros, it doesn’t matter which.’

  He demonstrated both possibilities with his hands: two palms, two backs.

  ‘Or B: they’re both different.’ He turned one hand over, then both, so that when one hand was showing its palm, the other one was showing the back. ‘A one on one, a zero on the other. Do you follow?’

  ‘Uh huh,’ Palmgren answered. The universal sign for No, I haven’t got a clue what you’re on about, but you go on.

  ‘If both are the same we call that true. Different and we say false. If we then let the digit one represent true and zero represent false, then we have a whole new series of ones and zeros that wasn’t there to begin with.’

  ‘And this new series,’ Christina said, without having understood any more than Palmgren. ‘That’s the message?’

  Tetrapak shook his head. ‘I struggled with that for a while,’ he said. ‘What I got was only the difference between two series. And the zeros just tell you where the differences are. How could I turn that into a message?’ He picked up the CDs on the desk in front of him. ‘That’s when I got it. That’s why there are three of them.’

  Tetrapak was sitting in William’s office chair, glowing with pride, while Christina and Palmgren stood in the doorway, radiating cluelessness.

  ‘Is there any point in us asking you to explain?’ said Christina.

  ‘It’s not as difficult as it sounds. Put a disc in the middle. Let’s call it disc zero. One on the left, one on the right. We’ll call them true and false respectively. Okay?’

  He arranged them on the desk in a line.

  ‘And then we go through all the discs. Digit by digit, bit by bit, sector by sector. If all three are the same, we do nothing. We move on to the next one. If the one on the left deviates? We say false. If the one on the right does? True.’ He let his finger swing back and forth between them as he said it: ‘True, false, true, false. One, zero, one, zero. And that way, we get a new series.’

  ‘And if the one in the middle deviates?’ asked Palmgren.

  ‘I know. I was terrified that might happen, because then the whole thing would’ve collapsed. But these two’–he pointed to the outer ones–‘never have the same value unless the one in the middle does too.’

  Several seconds of silence, as Tetrapak waited for someone to ask the right question.

  ‘Okay,’ Christina said. ‘What’s the upshot of all this?’

  ‘The upshot is this,’ he said, then touched the keyboard to bring the screens to life.

  ‘What are we looking at?’ Christina said eventually.

  ‘I wish I knew,’ said Tetrapak.

  The entire screen was filled with endless rows of ones and zeros, nothing more. No text, no message, nothing that seemed to have any kind of logic to it whatsoever.

  ‘It’s a digital sequence, but of what I don’t know. I’ve tried everything I can think of. I’ve tried converting it to sound, to an image, to every kind of file I’ve ever heard of. And a few more besides.’

  ‘Text?’ Palmgren’s voice, dry and crackly and obviously not used for a while. ‘Isn’t it just ASCII?’

  ‘That’s where I started,’ said Tetrapak. ‘I’ve used every kind of character code in existence’–he pointed at the screen, pressing a key for each new utterance. ‘ASCII. ANSI. UTF-7. UTF-8. UTF-16.’

  With each keystroke, the screen changed form. Instead of ones and zeros it shifted to displaying rows of symbols and letters, incomprehensible and arranged in what seemed to be a random order. Each new kind of character code caused the letters to be replaced with others, but always lacking any kind of discernible pattern, and always completely illegible.

  At a stroke, Christina could feel the
energy drain out of her. All the expectation and hope that she’d allowed herself to build up since Tetrapak dragged them out of the living room disappeared, to be replaced by something else. Disappointment? Perhaps. Frustration? Certainly. Rage? No, actually. But she was tired and full of emotions, and one fucking way or another it was all going to have to come out.

  ‘You seriously mean to say that this is it?’ she said, and realised that she was shouting. ‘Do you really think that you’ve solved anything, that we’ve made a single step forward, that this helps us in some way?’

  ‘I’ve done everything I can,’ Tetrapak shot back. ‘Whichever format I choose, the result is nonsense. Text? Nonsense. Sound? Noise. Image? Blur. Noise, nonsense, blur. That’s it. What I think about it all doesn’t change a bloody thing.’

  He hammered the space bar again, causing the screen to hop back to ones and zeros. And then he took a deep breath, letting his voice settle before he spoke again.

  ‘This is all I can get out. What we are looking at is what is hidden on Piotrowski’s discs. And yes, there’s something stored here, it could be a message, maybe something else. But how to make it readable…?’

  He shook his head, resigned. I haven’t got a clue. It was as though he suddenly recognised himself again, realised that he was still the same person he’d always been. The one that no one believed, who made mountains out of molehills, who time and time again was left standing with a phone to his ear when the caller hung up, the one who knew that they were laughing at him. Palmgren saw that.

  ‘You’ve done a great job,’ he said. ‘But I don’t think we’re going to get any further on our own.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Tetrapak, staring at him.

  ‘The text is encrypted,’ said Palmgren. ‘That’s the only logical answer. We’ve received a coded message, but we don’t have a key. What we do have is people whose only task is to crack such codes–people like William. But we can’t get hold of him right now, can we?’ He looked at the time. ‘It’s almost morning. Headquarters is only a couple of minutes away. I think it’s time we stopped trying to do this on our own—’

  His wince of pain tore at his chest where Acetone had knelt on him. He had reached across the table to pick up the discs, and the last thing he’d expected was for Tetrapak to grab hold of him, a tight grip around his wrist, two eyes staring straight into his own.

  ‘Leave them where they are,’ said Tetrapak.

  ‘What are you playing at?’

  ‘I don’t know you. I know that Christina says you’re a good person. I hope she’s right.’

  Palmgren felt that a snigger was the most appropriate response. What the hell was this?

  ‘And I know you call me conspiracy theorist. I know you’re always laughing at me, I know all of that. But for once–listen to me. Listen to the madman. And see what happens.’ No one said anything. Eventually he let go of Palmgren. ‘I think Piotrowski sent them to us, and only us, for a reason.’

  ‘Are you trying to suggest that it might be dangerous for Swedish Armed Forces to find out whatever is on those discs? Because if you are, I’m afraid I’m going to have to disappoint you. The Swedish Armed Forces haven’t been particularly dangerous to anyone for a very long time.’

  ‘I’m not saying that your colleagues have anything to do with this, Palmgren. I’m saying that Piotrowski was afraid of something. So afraid, in fact, that he sent this in such a way that it could never, under any circumstances, be read by the wrong person. Nevertheless, someone is after us. Per Einar Eriksen is dead, Piotrowski himself has disappeared. William is alive, but on the run without even knowing why.’ He paused. ‘Is it really that strange that I want to find out what this is? Before we tell anyone else that we have it?’

  ‘So what do you think we should do?’ said Christina.

  When he looked at her, his eyes seemed to have lost their energy. As though their pointless fight had eroded his determination, as though what he had planned to say next had lost its appeal.

  ‘There is one question that you haven’t posed, one that I have the answer to.’

  He looked back and forth between the two of them.

  ‘I think I know why Piotrowski chose us. William, because he would be able to crack the code on the discs; Professor Eriksen, because his research concerned the same fields as Piotrowski’s; me…’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Maybe because of the conversation we had in Warsaw, maybe because we were both worried about the same sorts of things. I don’t know exactly why. But I’m glad he did. I need the keys to your car.’

  This last was directed at Palmgren, and it had come so suddenly that for a moment he didn’t know how to reply.

  ‘Why? Where are you going?’ said Palmgren.

  ‘Nowhere. I’m going to get my box.’

  Palmgren hesitated, then pulled the key from his pocket, gave it to Tetrapak and watched him hurry for the door.

  ‘What’s this question we haven’t asked?’ Christina shouted after him.

  ‘William,’ Tetrapak replied without stopping. ‘If William’s in Poland, how are we going to get the codes to him?’ He carried on backing out of the hall while he waited for them to understand.

  ‘Shortwave?’ said Christina.

  ‘Yup. It will take me a couple of hours to transmit the codes over to Warsaw.’ Then he turned around, continued towards the front door, and spoke knowing they could still hear. ‘Once that’s done, we just need to think of a way to let William know they’re there.’

  63

  As dawn began to break over Europe, the world was waking up to bigger and bigger news stories. On channel after channel, maps, charts and numbers filled the screen. It takes this long for a meltdown to occur, the radioactive fallout will travel that far, and everywhere the panic was bubbling away under the surface. In the areas closest to the power stations, cars and overnight bags were being packed, in the shops people were hoarding water and food and toiletries, and in some places stocks had already run out and people were turned away.

  And then there were those who had no such problems.

  The man who hobbled down the steep wooden staircase was one of them. Sure, he couldn’t walk as well as he used to, his spine had curved and his joints ached, but the alternative–as he often said–was not living at all, and that wasn’t something that appealed to him in the slightest. On the contrary: standing there in his cellar, he felt a mixture of melancholy and pride.

  At the bottom of the stairs, he turned the lights on with the old black switch on the wall. He breathed in the basement smell, carried on into the warm yellow light and looked around. There it was, all of it, in exactly the place it had been for as long as he could remember. The basement storage.

  There was a wood-burning stove that could be lit to generate heat and to cook. There was fuel and medicine and batteries. There was an emergency radio, capable of receiving all kinds of frequencies, but most important there were tins and water and dried foodstuffs, and by keeping a close eye on use-by dates, he always knew that he would be able to survive at least six months down here, no matter what happened up there.

  People called him the merchant of doom. Fine. He’d seen the war, and not the ordinary war where people shot each other and died, but the other one, the one they called politics and that is constantly being fought and can escalate without warning. That everything was going to end in disaster came as no surprise to him. He just hadn’t expected it to be like this.

  He walked over to the table and chairs and turned up the volume on the transistor radio. It was working as it should, and he sat himself down in front of it, listened intently to everything that was being said. Maybe this was it? Maybe this was the time for him to move down here indefinitely, and for his plans to be tested in the real world? For a moment he wasn’t sure if the thought scared him, or if, in fact, it was actually something he looked forward to.

  He sat there for a long time listening to the voices on the radio.

  Speculation, the risk
s, what happens now.

  No, he thought. No, it wasn’t something he was looking forward to.

  He would be okay, but how many others? What would it be like, to be the lone survivor in a world where everyone had disappeared? Where fellow humans were desperately roaming around without food, suffering radiation sickness, what else? How long before the looting began, before people started stealing from each other? How long was it going to be before they came after him? The crazy guy who they’d all laughed at, always buying ravioli and tinned tomatoes because he was convinced the world was going to end. How long would it take before they were standing outside his door, smashing their way in?

  At the very moment that thought occurred to him, he heard the dogs outside.

  He kept the weapons right under the stairs, and after a moment’s indecision he chose the hunting rifle, not because it was most effective, but because hopefully it would scare them off before he was forced to use it.

  He limped silently up the stairs, floated between the shadows down the hall and opened the back door without so much as a creak.

  Outside it was cold, wet, a morning like any other–apart from his dogs. They were jumping against the rattling steel mesh fence, competing to bark loudest, paws shaking and clawing at the metal, longing to do the same thing to whatever person they’d just caught sight of.

  Person? Persons?

  He walked around the outside of the house in a wide arc, slowly, silently, just a shadow among many. The rifle butt against his shoulder, all his senses on high alert. Soon he’d be able to see the road, the driveway, the farmyard between the house and the barn.

  But before he even got that far, he heard the footsteps. It sounded like one person, shoes on gravel, feet walking without sneaking, straight across the yard towards the house. He was running now, crouched and turned sideways and with his finger on the trigger, then an evasive manoeuvre to stay in the shadows and ensure he wasn’t seen before he had the intruder in his sights.