by Andy Ritchie
And each time one of them thrust their memory upon me, the thread I had been following would be broken and the memories I had been tracing would slip away, back into the swirling mass. Some times I would be able to follow them, to track them, to chase them and eventually re-connect with them...but all too often they would be lost amidst the swirling ocean of lemonade and I would be forced to start again, studying each passing bubble in the search for clues as to what part of the Researcher’s life they were related to.
It was exhausting and it was frustrating...and, judging by the state of my clothes and the interior of the car, it was something my body did not take kindly to me doing one tiny little bit.
‘We need to get you out of those clothes,’ Tukaal said.
‘I’ll need a wash...’
‘Don’t worry about that. I’ve got something in my case that will clean you up. Have you got any more spare clothes in your bag?’
I had a spare tee-shirt, but no spare trousers. My other pair was still wet, let alone being covered in all sorts of crap and soiled with my own piss.
‘I’ll lend you a pair until we can get you some more. We’ll need a change of vehicle as well. I noted that there were some cars parked a couple of hundred yards down the road. We’ll take one of them.’
I guess it’s a measure of how the priorities of my life had changed that I was more relieved at the prospect of stealing a car than I was at the prospect of driving around in a vehicle that smelt of half-digested breakfast.
‘So can you access the Researcher’s memories?’
Tukaal had eventually asked the question that I knew he had been itching to ask ever since I had come round.
‘Yes...but it’s difficult. They’re...like...in bubbles...inside my head...and they just swirl around...some are connected, but many of them are just floating on their own...it’s just bizarre. I...that’s me...I can remember the memories I saw, if that doesn’t sound mad...it’s hard to explain...’
I took a deep breath and gathered my thoughts.
‘It’s as if I’ve looked through a photo album of the Researcher’s life, and I can remember the photos I’ve looked at. But a lot of the photos are damaged, with bits missing...and the order of them is all jumbled up...and I know there are a lot of them that are missing. Does that make sense?’
Tukaal nodded.
‘But you can recall the details of the memories you were able to find?’ he asked earnestly.
‘More or less,’ I replied.
‘So we won’t need these then.’
He handed me a sheet of paper (part of Stella’s National Trust bumph) on which he had written with a pen he had found in the glove compartment along with, quite surprisingly, a pair of black, lace knickers and matching bra.
I read down the list.
Each word unlocked a door into a memory, a memory crisp and fresh and clear.
They were not my memories, of course, but they were memories nonetheless.
‘I think we’ll keep this, just in case. It’s a bit chaotic inside my head at the moment, so anything that can help create a bit of order will be useful.’
Tukaal nodded, pocketing the sheet as he got out of the car and opened the rear driver’s door so he could get to his metal case on the back seat.
I, on the other hand, just sat there for a while, gathering both my strength and my wits, trying to make sense of both my physical state and my mental one.
Eventually, I decided that, of the two, I would probably have more luck improving my physical state, and so I girded my loins (as they say) and opened the car door.
There was a welcome blast of fresh air, emphasising how putrid and vile the stench inside the car had become, and I greedily breathed in lungfuls of forest-scented air.
‘I can’t believe you didn’t open a door or a window,’ I said to Tukaal, who was still messing around in his metal case on the back seat.
‘I did not want to do anything that could interrupt what you were doing. I was worried that, with the window open, you would hear sounds which might distract you.’
‘Well, hat’s off to you for spending so long in a car that reeks of my puke. Now all I need to do is get that smell off me!’
‘I have a solution for that,’ Tukaal said, closing his case. ‘You’ll need to strip off those soiled clothes, though.’
I needed no second invitation to get out of my vomit-covered tee-shirt and pants (and my boxer shorts as well, because it had soaked through into them). Unfortunately, as I did so, a little bit of what I had regurgitated did manage to re-locate itself from my tee-shirt into my hair, something I only became aware of when Tukaal pointed it out.
After a moment spent cursing and rummaging, I eventually found it.
It looked distinctly like a piece of chewed sausage.
I tossed it disdainfully away, then turned, shivering now, to face the alien. I was conscious that I had adopted the classic cold-naked-male-pose: both hands covering my crotch, knees turned inward, shoulders hunched.
‘Does it take long, this...whatever it is? I never really warmed up properly after last night, so standing here bollock-naked isn’t helping!’
Tukaal shook his head.
‘No more than thirty seconds. You can go behind that bush over there if you would like some privacy.’
I decided I would like some privacy and so, yes, I did go behind a bush.
And what did I take with me?
A capsule no bigger than a headache tablet.
When Tukaal had passed it to me, I had expected him to tell me that I had to swallow it. When he didn’t, I was momentarily worried that it was some kind of suppository, which was why I was relieved when he told me that all I needed to do was crush it on my chest and then smear the contents over myself.
‘But there’s hardly anything in it, and I’ve no water...’
‘You won’t need any water. Trust me.’
So, hidden behind a bush and now literally shaking from the cold, I did as he instructed, crushing the capsule on a chest that reeked of stale vomit and then rubbing the tiny bit of liquid that emerged (hardly enough to cover my left nipple) into my chest...
For a disappointing moment, all the liquid did was transform into a small patch of froth which just about covered the few chest hairs I have, and I was about to ask Tukaal whether I was doing something wrong...but then, all of a sudden, the small patch of froth began to expand, like shaving foam from a canister, expanding and expanding until, within just a few seconds, I felt completely engulfed by it...
And it was warm...ooh, wonderfully warm...
And the smell, oh, it was bloody gorgeous...
It was like a combination of citrus fruits and lavender and sandalwood and geranium and God knows what else.
I just stood there, savouring the twin sensations of heat and smell until, after about thirty seconds, I realised that the foam was vanishing, simply disappearing into nothingness as suddenly as it had arrived.
Frantically, I tried to rub those parts of my body that I felt most needed ‘washing’...but I was too late. It took no more than three seconds for all the foam to simply vanish. I was about to shout to Tukaal to ask if I could borrow another capsule when I noticed that not only had the foam been luxuriously warm and fabulous smelling, it had also somehow managed to cleanse me of its own accord, regardless of the lack of effort on my part.
With the foam now gone, I ran my fingers up and down my arms and my legs like they do in commercials for body lotions, marvelling at how silky smooth my skin now felt.
And not just soft, but moisturised too...and my hair, that felt healthy and well-conditioned, even my armpits felt as if I had spent the last five minutes applying a soothing roll-on deodorant.
In fact, I felt cleaner than I had ever felt in my entire life.
Ever.
Bizarrely, even my teeth felt clean!
‘What the hell was that?’ I asked as I scampered from behind the bush back to the car, already starting to shiver
once more.
‘It’s officially called an Instant Carbon-Based Life-Form Cleansing, Exfoliating and Invigorating Capsule from URG Pharmaceuticals. But it is often referred to as a Blast.’
I could see why. It was like getting a blast of cleanliness across every square inch of your body, and, because I suddenly felt so clean, I also felt invigorated for the first time in several days.
‘Now, you wait here, Jeth. I’ll go and get us some alternative transport.’
And with that, he hurried off towards the barrier and the road, leaving me to sort myself out.
Interestingly, I did not even attempt to stop him, or tell him to wait for me, or anything like that. I simply let him get on with stealing us another car whilst I got dressed in clean underwear, clean socks, clean tee-shirt, and a pair of trousers from one of Tukaal’s spare suits (which were a bit on the big side and for which I needed my belt).
I did wonder what I should do with my discarded clothes, both the vomit covered set which now lay in a heap beside the car, and the damp, soiled set which I’d hung over the back seat in a vain attempt to get them dry.
It took only a moment to conclude that they would have to stay behind.
Fortunately, my Converse trainers (which had been on the floor behind the driver’s seat) had escaped unscathed from the splattering vomit and, although they were still pretty damp, I was somewhat relieved to put them on, if only because the stony ground was uncomfortable beneath my bare feet. And they were, I reminded myself, the only pair of footwear I now possessed.
Still shivering in spite of the fact I was now clothed, I gathered up from the back seat my duffel bag, Tukaal’s metal case and the two caps Tukaal had bought the previous evening.
Then, having checked over the somewhat disgusting interior of the Passat one last time, I made my way down towards the road where I waited, out of sight, for Tukaal to return.
Which he did, a couple of minutes later, at the wheel of a green, 08-registered Ford Mondeo, into the boot of which I put both the duffel bag and the metal case before I jumped into the passenger seat.
‘Where are we heading?’ I asked, handing him his Manchester United cap.
‘Hayfield,’ he replied, waiting for a couple of cars to go by before pulling out and accelerating away. ‘It’s on the road from Glossop to Chapel-en-le-Frith. Not far, really.’
Hayfield. From what I could remember of the memories I had seen, it seemed the logical next step.
As I fastened my seat belt, I turned to Tukaal and said:
‘There were other memories, Tukaal, hundreds of them, things which I think are from a long time ago. I caught glimpses of other worlds, some were bizarre, some were actually quite pleasant, but some, well, some were...hideous, frightening, full of screaming and crying and desperate, desperate anguish.’
Tukaal said nothing. Instead, he simply concentrated on the road.
‘What the hell did this Researcher see? Where in God’s name do memories like that come from?’
‘Not all the worlds which a Researcher visits are as relatively calm and peaceful as this one. Most Researchers have witnessed things which the rest of us dare not even imagine...’
‘...and now all that shit is swimming around inside me, eh?’
I rubbed my face, suddenly feeling tired again, the boost of the Blast seeming to wane abruptly.
‘Who knows how much the Researcher injected into you, Jeth. Hopefully, little more than you have already managed to see, though by the sounds of it, there may quite a lot more besides that.’
He turned to me, his features now empathic and concerned.
‘I’m sorry that you have had to go through this, Jeth, sorry that you have this burden to carry.’
I thought about saying that he was damn right to be sorry, but I didn’t.
Why?
Well, because, for this time at least, I genuinely felt he meant what he said.
-----
Diary Entry 23
[Collator’s Note: As with the account of Tukaal’s escape from his cell in the detention centre, nowhere in the written documents which JP passed to me was there any detail of exactly what happened during JP’s ‘excursion’ into the chaos of the Researcher’s memories. So, for the sake of completeness, I have repeated what I did for Tukaal’s escape, which is to watch the video on the DVDs that were downloaded from Tukaal’s neural net, and then describe them. The only difference is that, as the situation around JP and Tukaal (sat in a car) doesn’t change, I’ve written it as a transcript, like the section describing the conversation between Tukaal and Mendelssohn. Where something of interest happens, I’ve noted this in italics.]
Tukaal - 'I need you to start at the end, Jeth. I need you to start at the moment you get hit by the bus...'
JP - 'But I don’t like it...'
Tukaal - 'I need you to try.'
JP takes a deep, juddering breath, settles into the passenger seat and closes his eyes. Thirty seconds or so pass. JP’s face looks strained.
Tukaal - 'Tell me what you see, Jeth.'
JP - 'I can’t see anything...nothing’s coming...'
Tukaal - 'Concentrate on the bus. Think about something connected to the bus; the shape, the colour, anything.'
Another thirty seconds or so go past. JP is frowning.
JP - 'I see...bubbles...lots of bubbles.'
Tukaal - 'Bubbles? What sort of bubbles?'
Another long delay. It’s almost as if it takes time for Tukaal’s question to register.
JP - 'I’m swimming...'
Tukaal - 'Look at the bubbles, Jeth. Tell me what you see.'
JP’s frown deepens, as if he is really concentrating.
JP - 'Colours...shapes...but there’s more...I can taste blood...I can hear...wait...I feel...frightened...'
There is quite a long period of silence. Tukaal is clearly leaving JP to find his way.
JP - 'I see something...Sorry. Not in Service...the woman, the driver...that expression on her face...shit, it’s going to hit me...'
At this point in the video, you see JP convulse violently.
Tukaal - 'Okay, Jeth, you’ve found it, good. Now, I want you to look for the restaurant inside Debenhams. I want you to see if you can find where I am sat with you.'
JP moans a little. Again, twenty or thirty seconds pass. This is the case almost every time Tukaal asks a question, so I won’t keep commenting on it.
JP - 'I’m asking for a double espresso and a slice of lemon meringue pie. You’re in front. You’ve got a pot of tea and a sandwich...shit...it’s all starting to swirl again, starting to go...no...wait...it’s back again. You’re paying...we’re moving over to a table...no, it’s going again...'
Tukaal - 'Jeth. See if you can go back to earlier in the day, to when you wake up...'
JP - 'Hold on, that’s me! I’m shouting to you ‘We’ve got company’...fear...I’m afraid...I’m looking round...anxious...what to do...they’re coming...'
Tukaal - 'Jeth. I need you to see if you can somehow go back from that memory to the start of the day...try to go back...'
JP - 'Shoes...I can remember putting on my shoes...brown leather...I’m sat down...I can hear music, classical music...it’s the Flower Duet by Leo Delibes...I’ve finished tying my shoelaces...looking up...I’m in a...it looks like...like a camper van...I’m putting on my jacket, getting out...I’m walking out...I can see caravans...'
Tukaal - 'What else can you see, Jeth. Can you see any names?'
JP - 'Shit, it’s swirling again...what’s that...Hayfield...was it?...hold on, a bus, fuck, I’m back with the bus...'
JP starts to shake. Tukaal places a hand on his shoulder.
JP - 'Wait...it’s a different bus...number...358...travelling...worried, I’m worried...something’s not right...nagging away at me...no, I’m losing it...it’s all going...'
For a moment, the image moves away from JP’s face to a notepad which sits on Tukaal’s lap. He has just written down ‘358 bus’ under
neath where he has written ‘Hayfield — caravan site?’.
Tukaal - 'Try to think of the camper van, Jeth. Think about driving it, think about parking it.'
JP - 'Debenhams...I’m back at the restaurant at Debenhams...just going round in fucking circles, seeing the same thi...no, wait, no lemon meringue pie, just a coffee, sitting in a different place...it’s a different day...I’m outside Debenhams now, I’m speaking to someone...it’s you, I’m speaking to you, Tukaal. Go to encryption, I’m saying’ you’re asking if that’s necessary...yes, yes it is. Now I’m telling you about the URG, that they may be tracking my position through the comms unit, that they nearly got me last night, at the bus station, they were there almost immediately after I called you...I’m telling you to be careful, that they’ll probably be tracking you...you ask where I’ll be staying...I tell you not to worry, I’ll be safe enough...then I ask how this will affect the timing requirements of the First Contact Protocol...you tell me not to worry...then I’m telling you, Restaurant, third floor, Debenhams, Market Street, Manchester...I tell you to be careful, that something really serious is going on, that I’ve never been caught up in anything like this on Earth before...and now the conversation’s ended and I’m taking apart the device, taking out the power cells...I know they are power cells...now I’m walking away, I’m looking around all the time, looking to see if anyone is coming for me...I’m frightened...now it’s going, it’s really swirling this time...'