by Andy Ritchie
‘Stirling Abers’ was on page 55, square U8.
Just south of Peterhead, near the amusingly named village of Boddam, on the A90.
‘We’ll not make it today,’ Tukaal said. ‘This vehicle is only capable of 50 mph at best.’
I’d noticed. But then, camper vans were never renowned for their speed.
‘We’ll have to try to get as far north as we can tonight,’ I responded, turning to pages 50-51 so I could study the best route.
I did not want to go on the A9 or the A90; both had far too many speed camera symbols on them. For some reason, I didn’t want to drive through Perth; again, the potential for cameras (am I getting paranoid?)
So, eventually, after a little debate, we decided to take a circuitous route on the A822 via Crieff to Dunkeld, the A923 to Blairgowrie, and then up the A93 towards Aberdeen via Braemar.
Given the fact that it was already mid afternoon, I suggested that we didn’t need to plan any further than that because there was little chance we would get beyond Braemar.
We didn’t.
In fact, we are now parked on a small side road off the A93 somewhere just north of the fantastically named Spittal of Glenshee, watching the sun drop down below the mountains.
It’s quite late.
We’ve had some supper, a rather satisfying meal consisting of Bird’s Eye Simply Fish, garden peas, oven-baked potato wedges and tartare sauce, all washed down with a beer (just the one for both of us!)
We also sampled two of Tukaal’s countless Kennedy chocolates. I have to admit that I just scoffed them down, unlike Tukaal who seemed to savour every different layer of chocolate, every change in texture, every subtle nuance of flavour, like a wine-taster...only with chocolates!
Whilst I’ve been typing up these notes, he’s been tinkering with some of the electronic equipment he bought today.
I’ve asked him what he is doing, but all he has said in response is:
‘Just an idea I’m trying.’
I’ve noticed that about Tukaal; he does like to keep some things mysterious.
I’ve also asked him about my memory and the fact that I think I can remember more things more clearly, and whether this is something to do with the memory oil.
He stroked his chin thoughtfully before he answered (see...that’s what I mean...I not only remember what people say, almost word for word, but I remember what they were doing when they said it, what expression their faces held, what their body language was saying...and I can also remember everything around them, the sounds, the smells...everything! It’s not normal, I know it!!)
Anyway, he stroked his chin thoughtfully, then eventually answered:
‘I’m afraid I can’t be sure, Jeth. I guess only you can know for sure whether your memory is somehow better than it was...’
‘It is,’ I insisted.
‘Even if it is, it’s not absolutely certain what the cause of it is. It could, as you suggest, be something to do with the memory oil, though how that would work, how the alien memory oil inside you could interface with your memories, I simply have no idea. It could be that something in the oil has triggered an enhancement in your own body’s ability to record and retain detail, sort of kick-started an ability that has always been there. Or it could simply be the case that, because of the circumstances you find yourself in, constantly on edge and running on adrenaline, the keenness of all your senses is heightened, and you are just simply finding yourself becoming more aware of more of the world around you.’
It wasn’t really an answer, more a list of possibilities.
It did nothing to make me feel any better, though why the thought of being better at remembering things should make me feel worse, I simply don’t know.
Maybe it’s the worry that, if this better memory is the result of all that memory oil ‘interfacing’, as Tukaal put it, with my own body, what else might happen?
What if it makes all my hair drop out?
What if it makes my skin change colour?
What if it gives me cancer?
What if it gives me some terrible alien version of chicken pox or something which makes my skin erupt with pus-filled blisters?
Shit...what if it makes me impotent?!?
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Diary Entry 36
[Collator’s Note: I think this was typed late on Wednesday 15th September, but I’m not entirely sure. I’m also not sure why it was not included in the files on the CD. Instead, it was on a memory stick.]
Ever since I met him, Tukaal has rarely been parted from the metal case he arrived with. In fact, the only time I can recall when he didn’t have it with him were the couple of times he left it at my house when we went out, the time he left it in the boot of the Peugeot at Manchester Victoria and today, when he left it in the camper van whilst we went shopping in Stirling.
Apart from those occasions, it has always been with him and he has been constantly producing from within it all manner of hi-tech extra-terrestrial gizmos.
Well, this evening I managed to have a good rummage around inside it when Tukaal decided to ‘take in the night air’ and go for a walk after he’d eaten. I’m pretty sure he didn’t mean to leave it open, but the fact is that he did...and I wasn’t about to let such an opportunity pass.
Inside I found the following items:
the URG sub-space communicator which Tukaal had dismantled on Sainsbury’s car park, along with its two power cells.
the inter-galactic Swiss-Army Knife thing that I had used to unscrew the plate in the back of his head [Collator’s Note: This is the URG Multi-Tool.]
the piece of equipment that he used to control the nanites after he injected them into my face, etc. [Collator’s Note: This is the SICPad (Systems Interface and Control Pad).]
more than a dozen packets of nanite pods
the medical kit he used to treat my injured ankles and wrists
a spare suit, vacuum packed
what looks like a credit card, but without any name or number on it
a US passport, a District of Columbia driving licence and a ‘Certificate of Live Birth’, all under the name of David Ray Williams
a towel
a packet of those Blast things [Collator’s Note: the Instant Carbon-Based Life-Form Cleansing, Exfoliating and Invigorating Capsules.]
the remnants of his neural net, and the three...no, four loose power cells.
Two things intrigued me in particular.
Firstly, there were the passport, driving licence and birth certificate. Why would he need those? I can only assume that, if circumstances dictated it (though what those circumstances could be, I’m not really sure), he would be able to use them to pass more easily as a human. It did make me wonder a little whether Tukaal, and the Researchers for that matter, were all a bit like Jason Bourne, able to call upon different identities as and when required.
Secondly, there was the fourth neural net power cell. I had only managed to remove three from inside Tukaal’s head. The fourth had tumbled down inside his chest.
I was not aware that Tukaal had any other power cells like this and so I resolved to ask him about it when he came back.
Unfortunately, my attempts to subtly drop the question into the conversation turned out to be as subtle as throwing a brick through a stained-glass window.
‘I was just wondering about that fourth power cell that I dropped into your chest? Is it still in there...?’
Tukaal seemed a little surprised to be faced with such an unexpected question almost as soon as he returned (with hindsight I should have waited a while before asking!) and I think it immediately aroused his suspicions. I’m sure I saw his eyes, just for a moment, look towards his metal case; and I’m equally sure that I saw the faintest of wry smiles appear upon his lips.
He knew that he’d left his case open.
He knew that I’d taken the opportunity to sneak a peak at what was inside.
He knew that I’d seen there were four neural net power cells in there, no
t three.
For a second or two we looked at each other like gunfighters across the dusty expanse of a lawless Wild West town, wondering who would crack first, wondering who would be the first to make an admission.
Almost inevitably, it was my nerve which failed.
‘Okay, okay, I saw that your metal case was open and I took a peak inside. It’s not a crime to be inquisitive, is it?’
It was interesting that Tukaal chose that moment to make a point of locking his metal case and putting it on the floor. I got the distinct feeling that he was sending me a clear and unequivocal message, that the contents of his metal case were strictly out-of-bounds.
I suddenly felt very embarrassed by the fact that I had looked through his things without permission. After all, how would I feel if I found out he’d been rifling through my duffel bag while I’d nipped off to the loo?
‘Sorry, I should have asked.’
‘And if you had, I would have shown you, Jeth.’
That statement made it worse. I’d actually have preferred it if he had said something like:
‘Don’t be such a nosey bastard, Earthling!’
There followed a brief, uneasy silence which Tukaal eventually chose to break.
‘I managed to get the power cell out during the night, whilst you slept. It had lodged at the top of my right leg.’
There was a finality to the way Tukaal spoke which suggested that I should not enquire about this further. But I chose not to take the hint.
‘So how did you manage to get it out?’
Tukaal seemed to think for a moment, perhaps debating in his own mind whether he should enlighten me further. In the end, rather annoyingly, he chose not to.
‘Let’s just accept that I did, and leave it at that, eh?’
A little part of me wanted to push the matter some more...but a larger part of me, the part that realised that I had been guilty of the initial transgression and that, as such, Tukaal was perfectly entitled to play the role of aggrieved party, counselled against it.
There would surely be opportunities in the future to find out what had happened. Now was the time to exercise patience.
‘Do you want a cup of tea, now that we’ve got some Earl Grey?’
‘Excellent idea,’ Tukaal responded, slapping me amiably on the back, my former sin seemingly forgiven and forgotten.
But whilst Tukaal may have forgotten the sin, I had definitely not forgotten the fact that he had been deliberately cagey about how he had gotten the lost power cell. As I made the tea, I found myself wondering more and more whether, at some point last night, Tukaal, the real Tukaal, had somehow emerged from his shell to do a little bit of moonlight maintenance work.
If he had, then I was bitterly disappointed that I had not been awake to see it.
-----
Diary Entry 37
[Collator’s Note: This was written in JP’s notebook in very scribbled handwriting. I think he wrote it very late on the night of Wednesday 15th September, presumably after he had slept for a while.]
Like I said, I never used to remember my dreams because I never wanted to.
Most of the time, when I used to wake, the remnants of my dreams would scatter like cockroaches when the kitchen light is turned on.
Not any more it seems.
Now my dreams stay with me, refusing to yield to the realities of the waking world, insisting instead on being noticed, on being recognised, on being remembered.
Maybe that’s because they are not really dreams anymore.
Maybe that’s because they are memories pretending to be dreams.
So was this a dream, or was this a memory?
It started with me flying.
I know it was I, Jethro Postlethwaite, who was doing the flying because when I swept down from the mountain covered in purple mist and skimmed across the lake of orange water, it was a reflection of me that I saw, not the Researcher, not the ‘shell’ in which he was clad, but me.
I saw my face smiling back at me from the mirror-like surface...no, I wasn’t smiling, I was grinning, a wide, almost idiotic grin because I was able to fly and there’s nothing better in a dream than finding you are able to fly.
To fly so low that my feet could trail in the water.
To fly so high that I could see the curve of the world.
To fly through purple clouds, cold yet refreshing, and feel as if there was nothing else in the universe.
To fly through skies so clear that they afforded views unparalleled in their extent and their diversity: mountains, plains, oceans, deserts, cities, unspoilt wilderness...
The cities.
The cities.
It was when I saw the cities that I felt the dream begin to change...felt myself losing control.
It was no longer a dream anymore.
It was a memory.
The Researcher’s memory.
Suddenly the skies were alive with others just like me, hundreds of them, like a flock of starlings, seemingly chaotic but not.
For a while I’m flying above suburbia, and I’m talking to another...an Utal Fring... holding a conversation that is so ordinary, about the weather, about the number of others flying today, about this and about that and about the other...I have to be seen to be one of them, to act as one of them, to think as one of them, lest I give myself away...
Yet there is something I am desperate to do, something they all seem too pre-occupied to find time for...
Then I’m flying again, soaring over the mountains, swooping into the valleys...only, this time, it isn’t me, it’s the Researcher, locked inside his Utal Fring shell...and he is consumed by the wonder of what he is able to do, of what they are able to do, the contentment of rising effortlessly on the thermals that sweep up from the vivid red canyons bathed in the warmth of the twin suns, the exhilaration of diving headlong towards the seemingly endless fields of gently swaying blue grass, the joy of twisting and tumbling through sky and clouds and sky, in control yet just a little out of control...
I feel his emotions as if they are my own, experience the sensations as if it were my own body. I am buffeted by the wind and warmed by the suns...and, for a while, I lose myself in his memory as I would lose myself in a dream...
And that was when I awoke.
That was when I found I could remember.
Dream or memory?
Memory or dream?
In a way, I guess it doesn’t really matter.
If it’s a dream, then I’m thankful that I have been able to recall it, and hopeful that I will be able to recall others like it in the future.
If it’s a memory, then I look forward to the time when, like the memories of the camper van, those reminiscences begin to surface and coalesce into something more substantial, more structured because, for now, I feel like a cinema-goer who has seen the trailer of a fantastic new film and is now desperate to see the whole thing. My appetite has been whetted, not really for knowledge of the Utal Fring themselves, but for those times when the Researcher was able to soar and swoop and glide and dive, for such memories are as good as any dream I’ve ever had.
-----
Diary Entry 38
[Collator’s Note: This is the very next entry in the notebook which I presume JP also wrote late in the night of Wednesday, maybe as a result of him struggling to get back to sleep.]
A couple of days ago I came up with a definition of THEM:
‘A faceless, menacing and intangible organisation of people who will ruthlessly exercise their power for their own ends, without prejudice and regardless of the cost to others.’
I chose it because it was dark and sinister.
Now I have a new one:
‘A menacing and intangible organisation of people who will ruthlessly exercise their power for their own ends, without prejudice and regardless of the cost to others, run (in total or in part) by Patrick Mendelssohn on behalf of Bad Guys.’
Still can’t get over what a shit name that is — Bad Guys.
Who are the rest of THEM?
[Collator’s Note: I have had to read JP’s answer to this particular question several times in order to understand what JP is saying. The next few pages have clearly been written in the early hours of the morning by a man who is very tired and who is very troubled. I do, however, believe that it is important to understand JP’s logic with regard to deciding whom he thinks is his enemy and, who, therefore, is deserving of his wrath.]
Difficult question.
I know that Mendelssohn is one of THEM, that’s he’s probably top dog, because he’s the one giving the orders.
I know that these Bad Guys are THEM, because they are the ones who are telling Mendelssohn what to do.
But who are the other THEM, because there has to be more of THEM, lots more.
I suppose you could argue that it’s anyone who follows the orders given by Mendelssohn and the Bad Guys, but I think that is too simplistic.
And let’s face it, not all of Mendelssohn’s orders are going to result in people like me having black bags put over their heads, getting strapped to wooden seats and having their balls electrocuted!
No, there has to be an element of personal choice in there somewhere, because it is the act of choosing which defines the person.
That’s why I think THEY are not only the ones who give the orders, but THEY are also the ones who carry out those orders even when they know them to be wrong.
Take Sandford for example.
I guess some would say that he wasn’t one of THEM because he was just a minion doing his job.
But I would argue that he was one of THEM because he knew that what he was doing was wrong, and yet he chose to be part of it!
He was a guard at what was clearly a clandestine detention centre that routinely tortured and brutalised its prisoners.