by Andy Ritchie
‘Anything springing to mind, Jeth?’ Tukaal asked hopefully.
I shook my head.
‘Shame,’ he said. ‘If we could get access to the Researcher’s P.I.U. we could find out an awful lot about what he found at Stirling.’
I tried to clear my mind, tried to will a memory to come to the fore...but I knew, deep down inside, that I couldn’t force it. This would have to be something that came of its own volition.
‘Well,’ Tukaal said with a heavy sigh, ‘Let’s put it away for now. But this means that it is even more imperative that you write down anything and everything you remember that is not yours. The access image may be...I don’t know...a place the Researcher was stationed before he came to Earth...or it could be something here...somewhere he went, something he did. You need to make a note of it all and then, every day, we’ll fire up the P.I.U. and go through what you’ve written down and see if any of them work.’
‘But won’t my brainwaves be different to his? I mean, he was an alien in a shell.’
‘Probably, but that shouldn’t prevent us from trying.’
I nodded in agreement. Then a thought hit me.
‘Look, doesn’t your Confederation have an I.T. department? Couldn’t you get in touch with them and get them to hack into it?’
Tukaal seemed to consider this for a moment.
‘It’s a thought. The only flaws I can see are, one, actually getting the P.I.U. to our ‘I.T. department’, as you call it, may prove a little difficult and, two, the standard turnaround time for something like this would probably be in the order of 11 Pink...’
‘That’s about five weeks,’ I commented absently.
Tukaal looked at me in genuine surprise.
‘That’s right, just over five weeks. I’m impressed.’
Not as impressed as I was. I had no idea where that little snippet had come from. None at all.
‘So, the Confederation I.T. is not really an option.’
‘Afraid not,’ Tukaal confirmed.
‘Well,’ I sighed, ‘I guess there’s nothing for it but to keep a pen and paper handy and write down whatever crap comes into my head!’
This wasn’t a problem — after all, I’ve been doing that for several days now!
[Collator’s Note: JP seems to have failed to explain that P.I.U. is an abbreviation of Portable Information Unit.]
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Diary Entry 33
[Collator’s Note: I’m not quite sure when JP wrote this (typed sheet, no date); therefore, I’m not quite sure if this is the correct place, chronologically, to put it. But seeing as JP finished the last entry talking about the need to write down ‘whatever crap comes into my head’, I thought this reasonably short entry fitted here pretty well.]
It’s strangely addictive, this idea of recording for no-one in particular what it is you are thinking and feeling at any given time. I guess that’s why blogging and tweeting and all the other —ings which the socially interactive seem to do on-line are all the rage, though I would consider myself a diarist rather than a blogger.
Quite why ‘ordinary’ people feel the need to share their lives with others so openly, I’m not exactly sure.
Celebrities (a term which nowadays seems to encompass everyone from the truly gifted whose natural God-given abilities are, without doubt, something to be celebrated, to those who are utterly bereft of talent and whose only ‘gift’ even remotely worthy of celebration is their unwavering belief and deluded conviction in their own, absent abilities), I can understand; they make their living from media exposure; the greater the level of exposure, the more lucrative the contracts for all manner of products — cars, shampoo, deodorants, bras, etc. For them, blogs and tweets are just another means of maintaining their visibility, promoting their brand.
But ‘ordinary’ people have no brand to promote, no visibility to maintain. So why do so many of them feel the compunction to so regularly and so openly bare their soul to the cyberworld...and who, exactly, is really interested in what a slightly-bored, 34-year-old mother-of-two living in Barnstable has to say about a day spent shopping at Asda where she found a particularly good deal on fresh asparagus?!?
What are these bloggers looking for?
Are they lonely?
Are they bored?
Does blogging and tweeting give them a sense of belonging, make them believe that they have ‘friends’ who are genuinely interested in their utterly banal existence?
As someone who has never blogged and never tweeted, I guess it’s hard to understand why people do it. Perhaps there is no single reason for it. Perhaps the reasons are different for each individual and, if the act of blogging enables them to experience something positive that they wouldn’t otherwise have had, then I guess there’s nothing wrong with that.
But I can’t help feeling that, for many, the need to blog and tweet, or maybe to keep a diary, is indicative of a deeper, more desperate desire to convince themselves that the life they are living is something other than ordinary, that it is, itself, worthy of being noticed, celebrated and appreciated.
After all, there can be no more disturbing a feeling than that of the pointlessness of one’s own existence.
We all, whether we care to admit it or not, seek not only to do something remarkable with our lives, but crave the recognition for having done so.
Which brings me to this diary.
Am I simply chronologing events (is chronologing a real word?), or am I also craving recognition for my part in those events?
I like to believe that I am doing the former, but I would be naïve if I thought that I was not affected by the latter.
Am I doing this for posterity, or am I doing this for me?
Well, I’ve already recognised how cathartic this process is for me, so I know I must recognise how much this is for my benefit.
But for posterity?
I guess posterity itself will be the judge of that.
As it is, I can only hope that what I have to say to the future will stand the test of time better than the millions of pointless, inane blogs that litter the world of cyberspace. If it doesn’t, then that probably says something about the chronicler of events rather than the events themselves because, let’s face it, so far we’ve had spacemen and spies, experienced torture and terror, witnessed death, committed crimes and seen a life once so ordinary transformed into something that, to be honest, could only really be seen existing in the world of fiction.
If I am unable to make all that sound more interesting than a whinging blog about how difficult it is to park at Morrisons, then...
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Diary Entry 34
[Collator’s Note: Notebook entry. This entry may, I suspect, be out of sequence, written later on pages which JP originally missed. However, I can’t be sure so I’ve inserted it in line with other entries from the Notebook.]
I guess it’s inevitable when you are ‘on the run’.
You begin to think that THEY are watching you ALL THE TIME, that THEY actually know where you are ALL THE TIME.
You start to think you are under constant surveillance from satellites in the sky, from cameras on every street corner and in every building, and from bugs and listening devices in every nook and cranny.
You begin to think that THEIR eyes are EVERYWHERE!
But the worst thing is that you start to imagine that EVERYONE is one of THEM.
A woman pushing a pram.
A granny out for a stroll with her zimmer frame.
Muscle-bound men walking their pit-bull terriers.
Hooded youths clustered at a street corner.
All it takes is a glance in my direction, nothing more than that, and I’m suddenly convinced that they know who I am, that they’re contacting some sinister control room, that soon the sky will be full of helicopters and the streets will be full of suited men leaping from black Range Rovers.
Of course, none of that ever happens, at least not so far.
But that doesn’t gi
ve me much re-assurance because that feeling, that paranoia...it’s always there.
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Diary Entry 35
[Collator’s Note: This was a Word document on the CD that, I assume, JP wrote late in the evening. It covers the events of Wednesday following their arrival in Stirling.]
Disappointment and frustration.
That was what we both felt as we walked around the Thistle Centre in Stirling.
We’d parked the camper van in a side street about 10 minutes walk from the centre, still conscious of the fact that Mendelssohn and his cronies would be looking for us and keen to avoid leaving the van anywhere within view of a surveillance camera. We were both once again wearing our caps, and I would have been wearing my sunglasses if those bastards at the interrogation centre hadn’t swiped them (still a sore point, that).
So why were we both disappointed and frustrated?
Simple, really.
I had no memory of this place.
When I’d gone into the Researcher’s memories, there had been some key images that stood out from the swirling maelstrom:
Chimneys — 2 — one tall, one short, flashing lights
Cliffs — near the sea
A 40 mph speed limit sign
A sign saying ‘Stirling’
As we approached Stirling, it became pretty clear that something wasn’t right.
For a start, we were nowhere near the sea.
The only ‘cliffs’ that could be called such were the cliffs on which Stirling Castle was standing or the cliffs on some of the Ochil Hills just to the north-east. But if you stood atop of these, neither would afford you a view over a wide and endless expanse of water.
There were chimneys. A power station further east [Collator’s Note: Longannet Power Station.] had a chimney, but only one. The huge Grangemouth refinery had hundreds of stacks and chimneys belching out steam, smoke and fiery flame, but that was nothing like the memory I had.
There had been some 40 mph signs on the approaching roads, and there was even a sign saying ‘Stirling’...but these were wrong, the signs themselves, the backdrop to the signs, nothing about them matched what I could see inside my head.
After a good half hour spent wandering around the Thistle Centre, one thing had become obvious:
This was simply not the right place, and what we needed to do now was to try to make some sense of why things just weren’t adding up.
The sign in the memory had clearly said Stirling, I was certain of that. But I was also certain about the cliffs, the sea and the chimneys.
Tukaal asked if I could recall anything else.
Only McDonalds.
So he suggested we find a McDonalds in Stirling and see if that prompted any other memories to re-surface. I mentioned the fact that there were probably half a dozen McDonalds in a large town like Stirling, but that didn’t seem to dissuade him. This made me wonder whether his desire to go was prompted as much by his ongoing quest for taste sensations as it was to assist us in making sense of things.
The fact that, once we found a McDonalds on Murray Place just outside the Thistle Centre, he ordered a Quarter-Pounder and a McChicken Sandwich and a Fillet-o-Fish, along with large fries, curry dip, large Coke and one of those strange McFlurry desserts confirmed my thoughts on the matter.
I contented myself with a Cheeseburger, medium fries and hot chocolate...and didn’t really enjoy those!
My appetite had gone, stolen from me by a sudden and overwhelming sense of futility and utter pointlessness.
How could it be so wrong when it had all been so clear.
Stirling.
Perhaps that specific memory, the memory of the sign, did not belong with the others. Perhaps the Researcher, on his way to wherever the chimneys and the sea and the cliffs and the answers were, had passed through Stirling, stopping to get fuel or some food, and that memory had somehow gotten mixed up with the others...
Possible...Christ knows how mixed up my memories and the Researcher’s memories are...
But somehow, that explanation didn’t feel right. The memory of Stirling belonged with the memory of the chimneys and the cliffs and the sea and McDonalds and the electrical equipment and the goggles and the black tendrils...they were all one.
Stirling was right.
And yet Stirling was wrong...but how?
Unless...
That was when it occurred to me.
The blindingly obvious.
So stupid.
So fucking stupid.
‘What if there’s more than one Stirling?’
Tukaal was just slurping the last of his Coke.
‘More than one Stirling?’
I nodded.
‘Don’t you see? It’s the obvious explanation. When I saw the sign in the Researcher’s memory, I’ve just assumed that it’s this Stirling which he must have been to because it’s the only one I know. But what if there’s another one?’
Tukaal took a final slurp of his coke and popped the last of his fries into his mouth.
‘So you think there may be more than one town called Stirling.’
‘It’s possible. We know this isn’t the right place, nothing else from the memory fits, not even this place.’
I gestured to the McDonalds in which we sat.
‘How can we check?’ Tukaal asked.
‘Can’t you check, y’know, do that thing you did with Rochdale when we were in Manchester, pull up street names...’
Tukaal shook his head.
‘Not any more, Jeth, not since we disabled the neural net. What about the map-book back at the camper van? Won’t that be able to tell us?’
Yes, it would, but that would mean walking back to the camper van. I had a better idea.
‘I know what we’ll do,’ I said. ‘I saw a WHSmith in the shopping centre. We’ll find a map-book there and have a look.’
And we did.
And I was right.
There is another Stirling, just the one, a much smaller one, right up in the north-east beyond Aberdeen, on the outskirts of Peterhead, close to the sea...
Then it all came flooding back to me. The sign was suddenly so much clearer, so much more complete in my mind. Rather than just a hazy, swirling image of the word ‘Stirling’, I could now see it in its entirety; I could see that it said STIRLING VILLAGE. Above it was the 40 mph speed limit sign, whilst underneath the word ‘VILLAGE’ there was a request to ‘Please drive carefully’.
And there were two of them, one on each side of the road.
As the tidal wave of memories sorted themselves out, I remembered other signs, slightly before the ‘Stirling Village’ sign:
a large green junction sign indicating a right turn ahead to Boddam on the B9108 whilst the A90 continued north to Peterhead
a brown tourist sign indicating that Boddam was a ‘Fishing Village and Harbour’, that they had a toilet, somewhere to eat and somewhere to sleep.
Why couldn’t the swirling maelstrom of the Researcher’s memories have shown me one of those signs? The one for Peterhead would have been especially helpful, but I’d have been happy with the one for Boddam. [Collator’s Note: There is actually another Boddam...on the Shetland Islands!]
Beyond the signs were the chimneys, tall one to the left, short one to the right and, between them, the huge bulk of what I presumed was the power station itself, steam rising from the upper left corner, high into the sky.
It was so clear now, so absolutely crystal clear!
All it had taken was the slightest of jolts for the memories to appear in their droves and to coalesce into something far more substantial than the fleeting, swirling images I had glimpsed whilst I was sat in Stella’s car.
There was also a little lesson there for me in all this. When I ‘remembered’ the word Stirling, so convinced was I that I knew where we needed to go that I didn’t for an instant consider the possibility that there could be another place with the same name. That was serious muppetry.
Maybe n
ext time I’ll remember to take a breath and allow myself to question my own misguided certainties before dragging us off on a wild goose chase!
Excited though we were at the discovery of another Stirling, we did not rush back to the van and set off northwards immediately. There were several things which we needed to get:
Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ10 (with two 16GB SD memory cards), to enable us to take pictures and video
Olympus VN-5500PC Digital Dictaphone (and batteries), to enable me to make voice notes of things I remember — Tukaal thinks it will be even better than Post-It Notes and the Buzz Lightyear notebook he got me
A Mountain Equipment down sleeping bag for Tukaal
Two pair of Craghopper pants, two Animal tee-shirts and an Animal hoodie, a couple of pairs of socks, some more underwear
Various toiletries, including Head and Shoulder shampoo and conditioner, Lynx deodorant, Lynx shower gel, Oral B toothbrush, Colgate Fresh Stripe toothpaste
Various items from an electronics shop
Two towels
Two pillows
A lot of groceries, including cereals (Tukaal insisted on more variety packs), fruit, veg, meat, crisps (multipack, various flavours), biscuits, tea, etc, etc.
8 cans of John Smiths Bitter
Pair of new sunglasses for me
Tilley hat for Tukaal (who had decided that wearing a cap with his suit was not only a fashion faux-pas, but also rendered him more likely to be noticed than if he didn’t — personally, I think wearing a Tilley hat with a suit looks just as odd as wearing a cap, but there you go
Tukaal paid cash for everything.
Back at the camper van, we stowed our purchases, got out the Researcher’s map-book, turned to the index, and checked once more that there were only two Stirlings in Scotland.