by Alex Palmer
‘Lucy, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Not now, okay?
Look, I’m not going back to work until this is over. I’m going to be home tomorrow and you can talk to me then if you want to. But I’m too tired now,’ he said, and was gone.
Lucy shut the door and pushed her bedside table against it. She turned off the overhead light and sat at her desk next to the heater, which filled the room with the odour of burning dust as the bars glowed with red heat. Liar, liars, liars, she said to herself as she logged on, thumping the keys. Everyone lies, don’t they? Fucking, fucking bastards, that’s all any of them are. Why do that to me, Dad? Did I ever do anything to you?
Between mouthfuls of Melanie’s food, she went out on the Net, in search of Turtle, moving into their own particular space where she usually met him.
Turtle, are you out there? It’s me, Firewall.
Are u there at last????? I’ve been here all day Where have ubeen?
You don’t want to know.
Don’t joke I do
No, you don’t. Because I’m right down here in the dirt now. Right here in the shit. We don’t ever treat each other like this. It’s like we’ve always said — we always talk to who we really are, don’t we? No lies, nothing like that.
Yes we do Heart 2 heart Mind 2 mind That’s wot we always do It’swot we’re always going to do
You talk turtle to me, don’t you? You never lie to me?
No Firewall I dont lie 2 u I never have I trust you, Turtle, I do. Have you told anyone about this?
No
Well, you can. If you want. You don’t have to carry this by yourself.
You can tell whoever you want.
Yeah? Well u tell me first Wot do we do????? Before I tell anyoneabout u why don’t u tell me?? Wot now??? Because that has got 2
come from u No one else can decide that In her room, Lucy lit a cigarette.
I’ve got to sort out a few things first.
Are u going 2 tell me wot?
Family things, mainly. A few things for myself with my dad.
Why? Firewall don’t do that 2 yourself Don’t waste your time Yourdad = 1 big fat 000000 He is not worth ruining your life 4 That’s yourrevenge on him My dad says that U dont let them hurt u Otherwiseall u do is hurt yourself
It’s not just him. I’ve got a friend I’ve got to think about too. I’ve got to make sure he’s okay before I do anything else. But the thing is I don’t know how. I’ve got my gun but I’m stuck back home again and I don’t how I can use it to help him. You know, I feel so … Do you still think I should go to the police?
Yes I do I do. Because maybe they can help your friend Sitting at her desk, Lucy laughed aloud.
I don’t think so. They’re the last people to do that. But I am going to go public, Turtle, one way or the other. Whether I go to the police or the media, I don’t know yet.
Why media????
So everyone will know why I did what I did. I’ve got to explain it to them.
U really think they care Firewall? Really think they care???????
They won’t understand where u are coming from U have to see thatIt won’t change how they think about u
They can’t ignore me. Not after this. I wasn’t killing for the sake of killing someone. That’s what she does, she kills. I’m protecting people. So no one has to go through what I went through.
Not your job
If it’s not mine, then whose is it? Don’t say the police again because all they ever do is bash you up. And don’t say they don’t. I know they do, because I’ve seen them do it.
Lucy waited.
Turtle, are you there? Have I lost you?
I’m still here Firewall u can’t think like that U don’t kill people U
know wot people say about me? They come up 2 my dad and theyask him why didn’t he let me die when I was a baby They say it infront of me They don’t think I can hear them Wot’s the fuckingdifference??? Killing me and killing her?
She was evil. You’re not.
Bullshit Bullshit Bullshit amp; I don’t believe u think like that U tell mewhat u think 4 real U tell me that
Do you really want to know? I wish I’d never shot either of them, Turtle. I really do. Maybe I could’ve lived with just shooting her. I don’t know. But shooting that man, I wish, I just wish I’d never done that.
It’s as simple as that. I told you it was simple from the start. It’s just that there’s nothing I can do about it now.
You got 2 go 2 the police Go now!!!! Just call them I can’t. Not now, not yet. I just can’t …
Before Lucy could type any more, Turtle stopped her. Endfirewall, their emergency close-down signal, flashed across her screen. She backed out quickly and found herself on his home page.
It was a dazzling place: seas of high glass-blue Japanese waves with the wind blowing the foam back, seagulls swirling about the sky, and a small boat with transparent sails, sailing into the bright red sun. A figure in the boat waved and smiled out of the screen. ‘Hi, I’m the Turtle,’ the figure said as he sailed against a bright sky.
Then the image dissolved into a photograph of a boy in a wheelchair with the written words: Hi, I’m Toby Harrigan. I callmyself the Turtle, because I’m like a turtle on its back when I’m outof my wheelchair. I can’t move at all then except to shake my handin the air, but out on the Net I can do what I want. I can sail, fly,do anything. Come and talk turtle to me because inside I’m justlike anybody else. The buttons, Meet Me, Meet My Family, Life at Cotswold House, Why I am the way I am, flickered into being one after the other but Lucy had other places to go. She wanted to work on her own site and slipped away out of cyberspace, taking the precaution of working offline on her own machine where no one could disturb her.
The kaleidoscope of her interior world opened out and she immersed herself in its electronic images, unwinding the tension in her neck, assuaging some of her grief and reducing the world outside to a succession of shadows. As she worked, she passed quickly over her representations of Dr Agnes Liu. Lucy was looking only for consolation.
15
‘What’s all this?’
Toby felt his father’s hands on his shoulders, the familiar light pressure of the heel of his father’s palm on the muscle, it was their greeting. He knew his father’s individual odour, a tinge of sweat mingled with his familiar aftershave. His father’s presence, the sound of his voice, and the touch of his hands soothing the twisted muscle down Toby’s spine, were his first memories. His good hand flickered over his custom-made keyboard with its built-in mouse but it was too late to close the window. His father was reading aloud from the screen.
‘She was evil. You’re not. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. And I don’t believe you think like that. You tell me what you think. For real. You tell me that. Do you really want to know? I wish I’d never shot either of them, Turtle. I really do. Maybe I could’ve lived with just shooting her. I don’t know. But shooting that man, I wish, I just wish I’d never done that. It’s as simple as that. I told you it was simple from the start.
It’s just that there’s nothing I can do about it now.’
Harrigan repeated the final words and then stood there in silence.
His spoken greetings, his apology for arriving unannounced like this, were lost.
‘What is this, Toby? Is it a joke? Are you and a friend doing a bit of role-playing over the Net? Is that it? Or are you going to tell me this is real?’
Toby had a file in which he kept his one-way conversations with his father, a silent recording without a playback option, a series of responses which begged the other side of the conversation. He opened it to a smaller window. He reached out to type, Yes just a joke dad, and stopped. His father pulled up a chair beside him, they sat in their common silence. Harrigan, who had never really heard his son speak more than a few disjointed words, always listened in his mind to the voice that he imagined Toby might have had.
‘Do you want to tell me?’ he eventuall
y asked.
If I do, Dad, will you cut me out of this? If I could have just one more talk to her, then I could get her to give herself up to you. I could have said to her, you call my dad. He’ll come and get you, he’ll make sure they won’t hurt you.
Words which Toby did not type, which instead, like so much of his speech, found no way into the atmosphere, living and dying like small moths in the hermetic seal of his thoughts.
If I tell u — then u have 2 let me talk 2 her when I want 2
‘Talk to who, Toby?’
U have 2 promise
‘I can’t stop you doing anything on this machine. We’ve been down that road before. That’s your world in there, not mine. I know that.’
How come you’re here anyway???
‘You’re prickly tonight. What is it?’
You are asking me amp; I am asking u Ok???
‘Do you wish I wasn’t here? Do you want me to leave? I can go if you want.’
No dad I’m just asking have U got a reason yeah??? U always do Harrigan reflected that his son was better at reading his thoughts than anyone else had ever been.
‘I haven’t been able to concentrate, mate. I was worried about you.
Something was on your mind this morning and I didn’t know what it was. I wanted to see if you were okay.’
Toby did not type anything for a few moments.
U haven’t promised dad
‘I said I’m not going to stop you doing anything on this machine.’
That’s not the same thing I was going 2 tell u anyway U just had 2
wait But u asked so I’ll tell u It’s no joke It’s 4 real I wish it wasn’tDad I am telling u this because she’s my friend I know wot she’s doneBut u have to remember she’s my friend Now u watch Tell u somethingu didn’t know
In Toby’s room at Cotswold House the screen flickered into life with the warning: You are in Armageddon. The time starts now. A clock was ticking down, second by second. A dark-haired figure in a short black coat and jeans appeared on the screen, she was in a long dark corridor of a house filled with rubbish. ‘I am the Firewall. Stay with me, I’ll keep you safe,’ the figure said and stretched out her hand. Seven small glittering stars appeared, balanced in a diamond shape over her outstretched hand. The figure spoke again: ‘We are in the darkness, you and I. Come with me and I’ll show you the way to the light.’ She reached out to Turtle in his wheelchair and drew him to his feet. They hugged each other and he walked with her down the corridor.
Toby tapped out words for his father. She wants me 2 walk Saidshe’d give her life for that I said no one can do that 4 me So she didthis instead
Reduced back to his professional role as a watcher, Harrigan found himself excluded from the electronic scenario. This hurt him much more than he could have expected. He wondered how images as crude as these and voices so tinny had this kind of power.
‘She can’t want you to walk any more than I do, Toby,’ he said in his neutral voice.
Within the confines of the monitor, Lucy led Toby past dirty rooms towards a distant doorway. A man and a woman followed them, grinning, carrying knives dripping with lurid fake blood. The corridor was truncated and the door opened. The Firewall stepped out into the open sky with Toby and together they went soaring among the glittering stars while the house burst into flames below them.
She only ever takes me this far She said it was too dangerous 4 me2 go any further I said 2 her this isn’t real She said it was And it is 2
her I say to her that’s OK I can talk to u where u are I didn’t think she’ddo more than this I thought it was just the website and nothing else The scene dissolved. Harrigan saw the sky split open and the four horsemen of the apocalypse raged across the screen. The scene switched to a back alley of terraces and warehouses where the Firewall appeared on the street, armed. A woman in a white coat walked out of a building and the sight of an end of a gun filled the screen. Light exploded within the barrel. The scene turned side on and bullets punched through the air. The woman was shot dead and the Firewall held a smoking gun. The buildings and the streets around them both were consumed by nuclear fire.
‘Can you stop it?’ Harrigan asked. ‘Can you roll it back so I can see that again?’
Wait dad
As the whole city descended into devastation, an angel in gun-blue armour came to the Firewall and handed her a book. Its pages had been cut out and, instead of words, a gun was stored between the covers.
The angel gave her the weapon and said to her, ‘Knowledge is bitter.’
‘I know that now,’ Lucy said aloud, alone in her room, immersed in her images. ‘I know what they mean now, when they say knowledge is bitter. Turtle, you don’t understand — I did have to do what I did. I just have to be strong enough to live with it. You have to forgive me for it.’
On the screen, humans became monsters prowling the earth, murdering the living, eating corpses. The Firewall roamed amongst them, shooting them down. As they died, they evaporated into particles of light. In the end, there was nothing left other than an empty wasteland and the quiet sound of the wind, moaning like the voices of young children, fading into silence.
In her room, Lucy was working. She was building a new city in the middle of this empty place, a vision of towers, fountains and trees. A garden, rows of terraces with rhododendrons and camellias, azaleas and gardenias, sloping down to the edge of a eucalyptus forest. Out of the commands of computer language she was fabricating a place to be safe and happy, somewhere that was home.
In Toby’s room, the screen was frozen on the image of Dr Agnes Liu dying in a backstreet. Harrigan sat staring at it for some moments.
‘How long have you known about this website?’ he asked.
A while A few months
‘Has that picture been there all that time?’
Yes
‘You didn’t tell anyone?’
Tell them wot??? I never believed she would do it
‘Do you know anything about this person at all? Her name, where she lives, anything?’
No she won’t tell me She’s just the Firewall She says she’s got nohome We talk dad, we talk all the time She said she knows what itslike 2 be treated like she’s just a thing and she does We talk turtle dadJust like u amp; me
‘Like you and me? You know what she’s done and you say that.
She’s a murderer, Toby.’
No she’s my friend
‘Someone like this comes to you from out of nowhere on the Net and you trust her with everything about you. She knows how to get under your skin, doesn’t she? How do you know she really did this?’
She told me the morning she did it Before it was on the news oranywhere else
‘She told you. She told you and you didn’t tell me and you didn’t tell anyone else?’
No I couldn’t She hadn’t told me I could yet
‘Does she know who I am?’
No
‘How do you know that? You’ve got my picture all over your website with ‘my dad’ written underneath it. I’ve been on TV tonight, and the night before. I’m just as likely to end up in the newspapers or on the Net tomorrow. She’s going to see me one of these days if she hasn’t already. How’s she going to react to you then?’
She won’t care She’s my friend She understands U have 2 let me talk2 her If I do that I can make her give herself up She will if I talk 2 herI can do that Because I understand her I can fix this
‘No, you won’t, mate. What you’ll do is stay out of this. This is police business, not some game. You can talk to her if you want but we’ll be watching everything you say to her. And why? Because I have to do that. I have to authorise people I’d prefer to know nothing about my private life to come and crawl all over your computer and talk to you. I’ve got to prove that you weren’t an accessory after the fact and that I don’t have a conflict of interest. Why didn’t you tell me as soon as you knew about this?’
Why are u going 2 watch us What are u
going 2 do?
‘What am I going to do? I am going to trace her, Toby. And when I do, I’m going to put her away in gaol for the next thirty years or so for what she’s done.’
U can’t trace her She uses a mobile amp; she’s my friend amp; its not agame dad So why don’t u just go away
Harrigan stood up.
‘She’s not your friend. She’s a murderer. She’s used you, Toby, and you’ve let her.’
Toby turned off his computer; the room became silent as the sound of the machine died. There was a shudder through Toby’s body, he uttered a strange sound. Toby was crying. Harrigan’s son never cried.
‘Don’t do that to yourself, Toby. You don’t need to do that.’
‘My friend.’ Toby spoke the words aloud.
He began to strike his desk with his hand. Harrigan hit the emergency call button and then tried to take Toby’s hand but his son pushed him back. He moved Toby out of his wheelchair and set him on the bed, and then tried to cradle him there. Toby rolled away from him, gasping for breath. His body went into spasm as Tim Masson opened the door and came into the room. The nurse injected Toby with a muscle relaxant and they sat him upright so he could breathe.
Harrigan held his son until his body had stopped shuddering. Masson handed him a towel soaked in warm water and he cleaned Toby’s face.
Toby shook his head to stop him.
‘You need some sleep,’ Harrigan said.
Toby signalled ‘no’. They waited.
‘Didn’t use me. My friend,’ he said at length.
Harrigan could not remember when he had last heard his son speak so many words at once.
‘Yes, she is your friend. Whatever else she is, she is that. And she didn’t use you. I was wrong to say that. I’m sorry. Just take that from me. I am sorry.’
Eventually Toby flickered ‘yes’ with his hand. Harrigan touched his son’s hair, bright dark hair, just like his own, letting his hand stay there for some few short moments.
I always leave you in the end, I walk away and I leave you. Just you and what’s in your head.
‘You sleep now. I’ll come and see you tomorrow. I’m sorry, okay?’