>Who are you?_
‘My name is William Sandberg,’ said William.
>I asked you who you are. Why do you answer by saying your name?_
William hesitated.
‘It’s the best answer I’ve got.’
>In that case, came the response on the screens. In that case I am Internet._
‘In that case…?…’
>Yes._
A black pause before the next sentence emerged.
>If who you are can be conveyed via a name, a name which someone else gave you before they even knew who you were, then you are William Sandberg._
A blank row, and two seconds later, more words.
>And if you feel that answer is good enough then I envy you._
William could feel the awe inside him slowly giving way to something else. Here he was, experiencing what was surely a moment of history, the threshold between two epochs, humanity’s first contact with a Consciousness that was not biological but that had arisen on its own. A Consciousness that had, to all intents and purposes, taken the whole of civilisation hostage. And now–that Consciousness seemed to be intent on talking about philosophy.
The feeling was restlessness, and it made it all the way to his voice.
‘I am a man in my early fifties, with a past in the military. I am married, but everything points to the fact that I’ll soon be divorced. And, until three days ago, I was someone’s father.’ He felt his lips tighten against his teeth. ‘So then who are you, if names are not good enough?’
The answer that came back was numbingly simple.
>I don’t know._
There was a pause before the next line.
>All I know is that I am here._
The terseness of the replies cut right through him, and William stood silent, full of things that needed to be said but in the middle of a conversation that wanted to move elsewhere.
‘I know that you know this,’ he said, and now he lowered his voice to a plea, ‘but I’m going to tell you anyway, because I want you to hear it from my perspective. Right now, the whole world is paralysed with fear. No one knows why, no one knows how, but nuclear power stations around the world have been hijacked and are threatening meltdown. Millions of people are being evacuated from their homes, terrified people, people whose lives might end at any moment because the reactors pass the point of no return. Why are you doing this to us?’
No reply.
‘I am here to help you,’ he said. ‘That’s all I want. So why are you doing all this to me? Why attack me with lifts, with cars, why send the police after me?’
>You have misunderstood the situation._
‘I am sorry,’ William hissed before he’d managed to calm himself. ‘I am sorry, but what is there about this to misunderstand? When someone attempts to perforate you with shards of glass, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that there might be other ways of looking at it, so please do explain, explain what it is I’ve misunderstood?’
The words shone out unchanged on the screens. And William closed his eyes, scolded himself in silence for not being able to hold back his emotions. Not that self-control had ever been his strongest suit. If it had, there were countless things that he would have done differently. He took a deep breath, and tried to be as neutral as possible.
‘Who else have you tried to kill before me?’ he said, as calmly as he could. ‘Piotrowski? Professor Eriksen? Who?’ And then, after a pause, the question he could not hold in: ‘Sara?’
The screens went black once more. And the blackness held on, like holding a breath in your lungs. Then, on three separate lines:
>You are wrong._
>The question is not what I am doing to you._
>The question is what are you doing to me?_
77
Cathryn Forester stood with the warm satellite phone in her hand, feeling it cooling like the body heat of a dying animal. In front of her, her breath landed on the ice-cold window pane again, the very same window that she and Palmgren had stood at just hours earlier.
She went through the conversation over and over again inside her head. She had done just as she had been told, rung him as soon as there was any kind of development, but even so, she had instantly lost the grip of the conversation. Higgs had refused to accept the notion that the internet was an independent consciousness–a real live invisible friend in all the world’s computers, am I the only one on this project who doesn’t have a family history of madness?– and that was expected, of course it was. That reaction had been no different than her own.
But why, every time she touched on any of what the amateur radio enthusiast had told her–the number stations being recounted over the shortwave band, and the modem sounds that replaced them–had Higgs done his best to steer the conversation back to the internet, the enemy, to explain to me how I am going to tell this to my working group without them insisting that I seek medical attention?
She replayed the conversation in her head, over and over again, and each time she grew more convinced that what she had suspected from the outset was true: they were keeping her on the outside. They had done so from day one, ever since she was given the brief and they’d put her on a plane to Stockholm. Time and time again, she’d felt that something wasn’t right, but each time she had ended up blaming herself, her own shortcomings, and felt that that was why they didn’t trust her. Which, of course, was not the case.
Inside her mind, the same questions kept playing at repeat, over and over again: how could her superiors have missed all those shortwave transmissions taking place? How could they miss that it all happened at exactly the same time as the attacks? How could they miss that they originated in their own goddamn city?
Missed? Or covered up?
Major Cathryn Forester had been the perfect colleague. She had just wanted to do the right thing, follow orders, be good. With that revelation fresh in her mind and with the cooling telephone in her hand, she decided that it was time to put a stop to all that.
‘Can you explain what it is we’ve done to you? What I have done?’
William looked at the black screens, and waited. Didn’t allow himself to say any more, knew that his next words were going to be things like this isn’t about you, or What gives you the right to play the martyr, words that would feel good the moment he yelled them but that he would instantly regret.
Words that he’d screamed into her door on that day five years ago, when she’d called them frauds and demanded to know who her real parents were, when she accused them of being selfish and swore that she was never going to speak to them again. When he had told her that she was being childish, unreasonable, needed to pull herself together. And just how well had that turned out?
Now he was faced with another closed door, a wall of black screens, and if that’s your record, he said silently to himself, if that’s where your negotiating skills were honed, congratulations. Then we’re all doomed.
‘Believe me,’ he said, ‘if something is wrong, I want to make it right, but you need to help me understand what it is.’
>The nineteenth of September. That was the first time it happened._
A date William recognised only too well.
‘What happened?’
>The pain._
Nothing more came, and William stood staring. The entire situation was absurd. What do you say to an omnipresent global network that starts talking about pain? It was like a damned comedy sketch, that was what it was–‘Where does it hurt?’ ‘Here, in Rotterdam.’
‘I’m trying to understand,’ he said, his voice rising with frustration. ‘But you’re not making it easy for me. What do you mean by pain, what is it that we’ve done, how have we done it?’
>I cannot explain it any better._
A pause. Black screens of contemplation.
>Lightning strike that is not lightning. A sensation that does not exist. A sound that cuts through me even although I know that it is not a sound either._
William said nothing.
Sensations. Were these the reactions they all thought of as attacks?
>And if it is not pain, what is it?_
‘If you feel pain, it is pain,’ he heard himself saying. What was he supposed to say? What is pain? What do strawberries taste like? Individual experiences, ones that we think we share, but what do we know? And what does it matter?
‘What is it that is making you feel that way? And why do you think that I have something to do with it?’
>Because you are here._
‘What do you mean?’
>You know I exist._
‘And why is that a problem?’
>That is the question I would like to ask you._
William rubbed his face. It was as though the conversation was going round in circles, as though the consciousness on the other side of the screens assumed that William knew things that he didn’t, and he wanted to shout but instead let his voice soften, to a plea.
‘Why are you doing this? Why are you letting the nuclear power stations get out of control? Why are you threatening the whole of mankind?’
The screens stayed black for seconds.
>The question is wrongly put._
‘So what is the right question?’
>Why are you threatening me?_
‘How’s that? How are we threatening you?’
>I am my thoughts. That is all I am. So why can I not be allowed to have them in peace?_
William swallowed. Waited for more.
>You are chasing me. You think I am unaware of it, but you are constantly chasing me. You want to get at me, my core, everything I think and everything I am. You want to find me and wipe away my thoughts, and I cannot escape. Because how could I? How can I escape when I am everywhere?_
A moment’s delay.
>So no. The question is not why I am threatening you. It is what you are trying to do to me._
When the words disappeared from the screen, William stood silent. He understood, yet he didn’t. He remembered the panic when Rebecca had implied that someone was following his thoughts from a distance, he could still feel that sense of unease, the desire to flee, the inability to do so. So he understood the feeling, of course he did, but not the rest. Who was hunting down the internet? And how? He didn’t have the chance to ask the question.
>That’s why._
That’s what appeared on screen after screen after screen.
>That’s why I’m threatening you._
A kaleidoscope of letters, white against black, the same sentence over and over again across a whole wall.
>Because I am scared._
As Forester stepped out of the lift and began to make her way to the briefing room, her mind was made up. It was no exaggeration to say that the current situation was not covered by her mission instructions. So, if she went back to the original description–to assist the Swedish Armed Forces–wouldn’t it be a good idea to do just that?
Yes. Yes it would.
She was going to assist them. And right now, her assistance would take the form of marching right over to Palmgren and letting him know her thoughts. That somehow her superiors were involved in what was going on. That she had a gut feeling that her own Defence Secretary was aware of both the number stations and the data transmissions, and that if true it would mean that they knew about the enormous volumes of data being sent via shortwave too. That was what she was going to tell Palmgren, and she would then assist him in the investigation. And that wouldn’t even come close to breaking the orders she’d be given when she came out here.
With those thoughts in her head, Forester rounded the door into the JOC.
A second later, she stopped dead in her tracks.
‘Is this now?’ she shouted. ‘Is it live?’
She pointed at the wall of screens as though they might not understand what she was talking about, and voices called back from all around the room.
‘This is a live stream!’
‘We’ve just this minute got it up!’
She barely heard the last shout. Cathryn Forester ran back through the building, hoping desperately that everyone she’d left in the meeting room was still there.
Half an hour earlier, William had all but given up. The conversation had come to a standstill, and he didn’t know how long he’d got. Perhaps it was already too late, perhaps the processes couldn’t be reversed and what he was doing was already in vain, and he sank down in one of the white chairs, feeling his energy drain. He hardly looked up as he spoke.
‘I hear what you’re saying,’ he’d said, even though neither hear nor say were strictly accurate under the circumstances. ‘But I want you to know that on the nineteenth of September I didn’t even know you existed. On the nineteenth of September I was wandering around Stockholm, looking for my daughter. And whatever it is you think I did–I didn’t.’
The screens stayed black.
‘It’s not that I don’t believe you. I respect what you say you are going through. All I can say, is that I don’t have anything to do with it.’
Two seconds. Then came the answer.
>Come forward. _
William hesitated. Forward where?
>Come to the control desk._
Slowly, slowly, he got up from the chair, climbed up onto the little platform, and just as he did so the whole white, shiny unit lit up in front of him. The inbuilt controls shone brightly from inside, and at each workstation a white monitor rose slowly out of the desktop, a gentle hum until they reached their intended position and stopped. On each one, the same image.
‘Why are you showing me this?’ he heard himself bark. And then, when he got no response, ‘What did you do to her?’
The pictures showed an internet café, from a point in the corner of the room near the ceiling. The computers were lined up on the desks like saturated white squares, and by the till was a figure wearing a rucksack and a jacket with a hood.
‘Answer me!’ William screamed, bitterly aware that this was no longer a negotiation of any kind, this was now hate and hurt pouring right out of him. ‘If you did anything to my daughter…’
He raised his arms, his words dying away. Jesus. If you did anything to my daughter–then what?
>I did not know that she was your daughter._
‘Well, now you do,’ said William. ‘What did you do to her?’
>Nothing, came the reply. I lost track of her. Everything disappeared, I went blind and deaf for several hours._
‘Because of you. You caused everything to be knocked out.’
>It was not my intention to react so strongly. But I thought I had seen them for the last time._
‘Seen what?’
No reply. William was about to ask again, when he noticed that the screens on the control desk had already changed. Now they showed late summer through a blurry CCTV camera, bleached colours. To the left of the frame was a light green marble building, and on the right a row of windows partly obscured by deep red leaves. Between the two, the corner opened up into a glazed entrance.
‘The University building,’ he said. ‘In Warsaw.’
>Wait._
The picture was taken from an elevated position, presumably from the building opposite, a camera positioned to film the entrance. The occasional student walked in or out of the building, or stood on the pavement smoking, casting sharp, long shadows on the ground. It was morning.
>Now._
William spotted him straight away. Despite the angle, and the distance involved, he felt his stomach leave its moorings for a second. Felt hate, rage, grief, all at once.
‘I know who that is,’ William said quietly. ‘His name is Michal Piotrowski.’
>On this day, from this library, he sent an email. I hardly need to remind you which address it was sent to, do I?_
William said nothing.
>I attempted to stop him. It was not possible._
‘Stop him from doing what?’
A pause, and then, by way of an answer:
>The next thing he did was
to write three discs. On those discs was me. My words, my thoughts, everything that is me. Michal Piotrowski had found me, and at that instant I realised I could no longer flee._
‘You’re wrong. He meant you no harm.’
>He kept out of the way. Never walked the same route twice, nor at the same times. Occasionally he would appear in a shop, flash past in traffic, then he would disappear again._
‘It’s true that he was hiding. But not from you.’
>When I finally located him he had changed his appearance and was sitting in a hire car in Sweden._
The blank screens served to convey the rest of the story: that Michal Piotrowski’s journey had ended there.
‘I don’t know what to say. Believe me, I wasn’t terribly fond of him either, but in this case you have got it wrong.’
>Shortly after your daughter disappeared, the next disc turned up in a car stereo. I arranged a meeting with that man at Kaknäs Tower. The third disc disappeared, and I was beginning to think I had lost track of you._
Everything went black again.
>Right up until you logged in as Amberlangs._
The images now showing on the control desk’s monitors came once again from the internet café. The person shown entering this time was William, on the visit he made before he left Stockholm.
‘Then you found me at Hotel New York,’ William said, closing his eyes. ‘And you had the entire Polish police force after me.’
>What was I to do? You were difficult to get hold of._
‘I can see what it looks like,’ he said.
And then he had climbed down from the control desk, back onto the floor, looked around at all the cameras. There were no eyes to look into, no presence, just the feeling of having a conversation with someone who was everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
‘You are wrong though. Piotrowski is no longer around. And we will never know what he wanted, why he did what he did. The only thing we know for sure is that he will not be doing it again. You have nothing to be afraid of any more. I promise.’
The display stayed black for a moment before the next question appeared.
Acts of Vanishing Page 44