Meatspace

by Nikesh Shukla

  ‘I don’t need to explain myself to you, Rach. We’re not together anymore. I need to go to bed.’

  ‘No,’ my dad says. ‘You’re going to sit down.’

  ‘What? Dad, not now. I’ve got company.’

  ‘I am your father. I don’t say this enough, Kitab beta. But I am your father. So sit down.’

  I shake my head: no. As in, I need some space, and I head to the toilet. I close the door and I sit on the loo.

  ‘What’s shaking, bro?’ I look up. Aziz is leaning on the edge of the bath.

  ‘When did you get back?’ I say, trying not to show my happiness that he’s back.

  ‘That doesn’t matter. Thanks for retweeting my blog. I got quite a few hits.’

  ‘No worries,’ I say. ‘How was your trip?’

  ‘Listen,’ Aziz says. ‘That’s why I’m interrupting your toilet time. I need to tell you something.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m moving out. I’m moving to America. Teddy Baker and I are going into business together.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I’m going.’

  ‘Okay,’ I say. I look away from him. He moves closer to me. I look up and he’s simulating thrusting his hips into my face. I smile. I don’t mean it. I want to ask why but that seems redundant at this point.

  ‘You’re not going to make this a thing and cry, are you? I swear, I’ve known you since you were born and yet I’ve never seen you cry more than you have in the last 3 months. You didn’t even cry when Mum died.’ Aziz leans down to my eyeline. ‘Who are you and what have you done with Kitab?’

  I hear Dad call my name in the next room, telling me to hurry up.

  ‘Sounds like you’re in trouble,’ Aziz says. I smirk. ‘I don’t miss that.’

  ‘You can’t go. I need you.’

  ‘You don’t need me. Just remember me. Just remember how fucking awesome I am.’ He scratches at his scar, furiously. Now the bow tie’s not there, I’m reminded of how dark it is. It looks inflamed. Always has done. Like it never stopped healing.

  ‘What happened to the bow tie?’

  ‘It couldn’t hide everything for ever, Kitab.’

  ‘You don’t need to hide. Come on, come say hello.’

  ‘I can’t do that, Kit.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You know why not. Just … remember. In that brain. Remember me. It’s important you remember me. Don’t be me. Remember me. Memory is important, Kit.’

  ‘Okay,’ I say. I gulp. I stand up and turn to the sink. I run cold water out of the tap and splash it on my face. I turn the tap off and look in the mirror.

  I’m alone again. Aziz has left the building.

  I open the bathroom door and step out into the lounge. Hayley looks uncomfortable. She’s sitting on the sofa next to Rach. There’s an empty canvas bag next to Rach’s feet, waiting to be filled with the remaining remnants of her life here, I’m guessing. Hayley’s sipping tea from Aziz’s favourite mug, the white one with red polka dots.

  ‘Hi,’ I announce to the room, limply.

  ‘What’s this about?’ my dad says. ‘What is this aZiZWILLKILLYOU?’

  Rach stares at me and shakes her head like she’s here against her will, trying to save me from a pit of chaos, against her will. She speaks first. ‘I don’t know what happened to you when that stupid book came out, Kit. But you changed. Really badly. You changed.’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘You did,’ she says, shaking her head. ‘You gave up on real life.’

  ‘I was just trying to make a name for myself.’

  ‘Yeah, but at the expense of everyone around you. In real life …’

  ‘Meatspace,’ I say to myself.

  ‘Kit, please … it was you and that book and those updates. But you’ve gone too far this time. What are you doing to your dad?’

  ‘Rach, just … look, I don’t know why you care. We’re not together anymore.’

  ‘Doesn’t mean I don’t care. I mean, you’ve changed so much. You don’t go out. You don’t do anything. And yet you are living this life that’s not real. It’s not real. None of it is real.’

  ‘It is real.’

  ‘Kitab,’ my dad says. ‘What is this about Aziz? Why are you doing this to me? He’s dead. I have accepted this. Why not you?’

  Hayley looks at me. ‘What?’ she says, lightly.

  ‘I’m sorry, Dad.’

  ‘What is going on, Kit?’ Hayley says, standing up.

  Rach turns to her. ‘Aziz is Kitab’s brother. Was. He died.’ She shakes her head like Hayley should be on page 265 like everyone else.

  ‘Shut up, Rach. Listen, Hayley, I can explain. This isn’t … it’s all very confusing.’

  ‘Why,’ my dad says. ‘I don’t understand, beta.’

  ‘Remember the day you bought Aziz and me that modem? On 14.4 dial-up?’

  Dad smiles. ‘The phone was always engaged. All those pictures of that girl … What was her name?’

  ‘Pamela Anderson …’

  ‘You dirty boys.’

  Rach looks at me and my dad. ‘No, Kit, it’s not okay what you’re doing. You can’t just laugh about it with your dad like it’s some big joke.’

  ‘I have to remember these things,’ I say.

  ‘You did. In that book,’ she says. In that book, like the book was the thing that broke us up.

  My coming-of-age book was about me and Aziz. It was about our teenage years, a fictionalised memoir of me and Aziz growing up without a mother, taking care of our dad and getting jobs to help pay bills, the capers we used to get up to, how we relied on getting into scrapes together to get by, how we rinsed each other all the time, how Aziz looked after me, saved me from beatings from older kids, how we were against the world. How we had this hustle at the pool tables. How he knew how to cook. How Dad lost his job. How we had nothing. And how we survived. No money, living in a one-bedroom flat with a manic depressive father. Finding all the joy and fun we could in the world. Making money through scams, odd jobs, doing silly things for dangerous people we grew up near. All the mixtapes of indie B-sides we’d sell for a pound. The stupid stuff. Our attempts to mother our dad, our dad’s cack-handed attempts to father us. The crap advice he gave us. The Vedic lessons from his brother that made no sense. It was about men and how having a strong female around shapes you, but for us, we didn’t have that, we only had each other, and with stoic men in one room, it was a mess of taking the piss to stop yourself saying something meaningful.

  I made stuff up. I filled in blanks. I fictionalised it. I made everything a hyperreal version of what happened. Because that’s what Aziz and I would do. We used to make up stories, adventures, us as superheroes vs gangsters. He’d dictate and I’d type them up on Dad’s computer. We had a story about Aziz going on holiday to New York, his ultimate dream to walk the streets shown in those gangster films, and Aziz would be on the subway when shit would go down and he’d have to rescue a baby from the jaws of death. Then he’d meet the girl. Then he’d be a national hero. Aziz and me. And I wrote about it. New York was his dream. He had posters of Mean Streets, the builders on the Empire State Building, New York Yankees over his bedroom wall. It was a totem for him, of freedom. Of having made it.

  He never got to go.

  With the novel, much as it mostly happened, it also mostly did not. The difference between memory and memoir, fiction and non. That’s where I walked a thin line, mis-remembering things about Aziz and me on purpose, to help the narrative. But it was mostly everything – us making up stories, us in our indie band, us dealing with my mum’s death, us fighting local bullies, us dealing with our ridiculous family. Us bringing each other up. He was the eldest. And thus my hero. Everything seemed possible when he was around. The book was about him. And me.

  ‘So, how did Aziz Will Kill You come about?’ Hayley asks. I don’t know what she makes of me now. She probably thinks I’m crazy.

  I wrote a blog, as him
, to promote the book coming out, on the insistence of my publisher, imagining who he would now be. What he would look like. What our relationship would be.

  I still have these exercise books of all the stories we wrote. Under my bed. I re-read them to channel us. Us together. This was us in unison, communicating with the world. I read the case of the missing baby, where super-heroic Aziz chases after a baby in the New York subway. I found that the voice of Aziz was too wrapped up in how I remembered him and not necessarily who he was.

  Aziz and me.

  Writing about him back then, about our teens, before the accident, it had brought it all back for me. I never knew my mum. I was too young. Losing Aziz was something I didn’t ever really get over. It seemed like he should just be there. Like he had realised his dream and gone to New York for 15 years and was just there. It didn’t feel real that he didn’t exist.

  When I sat down to write that blog, the him now, who Aziz was now, it was like he was standing over my shoulder, pacing the room, throwing his hands about, dictating it to me.

  And I wrote it down because who knew Aziz now better than Aziz?

  All I knew was, I thought he would probably have a bow tie tattoo.

  It was something he had joked about with me and Dad when we were growing up. Him, desperate for a tattoo, me and Dad telling him it was pointless, they were permanent. I would never get one, I told him. Dad said they were ugly, they weren’t smart. ‘Then I’ll get a tattoo of a bow tie,’ Aziz bellowed, laughing hysterically. ‘I’ll be the smartest guy in the room.’

  Before writing the blog, I’d Googled bow tie tattoos. And I’d found a guy who looked how I imagined Aziz would. He had his build, his arrogance, his shit-eating grin, his teeth, his nose, his complexion – he was the doppelganger Aziz had never had because we didn’t get to see who he would become. Except now I knew. He was there, in the flat, and he looked like some random dude off the internet, called Teddy Baker.

  Before, I couldn’t channel his voice. I’d spent months writing a novel about him, but now I had to write about him now, I couldn’t get it right. But, with this guy – who I researched, and found his Facebook, his Twitter, his Linkedin – as my inspiration, the blog flowed. And didn’t stop. I wrote more. Like he was stood over me, dictating the stories. Like when we were younger. The first blog was meant for the publisher’s website. I finished it quite quickly once I had the totem of who he could have been staring at me from Google image search.

  At the same time my publisher was insistent I help out on as much publicity as I could. This was the life now. The connected author. Gone were the days of hammering your fists down on a typewriter in isolation with a bottle of some Glen or some Jim for company. Now, it meant blogs, tweets, Instagram, videos, Spotify playlists, book trailers, email interviews – my entire life as content to promote thinly-veiled fiction. While they got me reviews in broadsheets, I tackled the community aspect of the connected writer, and nothing was sacred then. If I could write about it on the internet and get those delicious, addictive interactions, I did.

  There was one guy I knew could get me an interview on the radio. He presented a show on a community radio station and my publisher thought it would be good exposure for me. I went to school with this presenter. Aziz used to tease him mercilessly for carrying a briefcase. I looked through all my contact books, through Facebook, through Twitter and I couldn’t find a contact for him. I tried mutual friends and I couldn’t find a contact for him. I even called his parents’ house and they wouldn’t give me a contact for him. He was on community radio. That meant he was too famous to give old school friends his details. I started looking through old defunct email addresses, trying to find emails we had exchanged, hoping that I’d stumble across an email contact for him.

  And in my first email address, one I’d set up on a 14.4bps connection, with Aziz, on our first modem, a month before the accident, the very first email I’d been sent … it was from Aziz. I’d set up KitabWillDestroyYou@hotmail.com and Aziz had set up AZIZWILLKILLYOU@hotmail.com. And when we’d set them up on our 14.4 dial-up connection, he’d sent me an email.

  To: KitabWillDestroyYou@hotmail.com

  From: AZIZWILLKILLYOU@hotmail.com

  Received:

  Subject: test

  Yo Kit,

  Test email …

  If you are the Captain of a sinking ship, the best example you can set is to get off that ship as soon as you can. Really, you should be the first off.

  AZIZ.

  I’d forgotten about that. The only email he’d ever sent me. The only communication. The only representation of his voice I had. I only had memory and a few photos and his pay-as-you-go mobile phone, which he got to help him sell stuff. I never threw it away. I kept it all these years. I find it comforting to call. Now we live in communications, missives, tweets, statuses, emails, likes, aggregated search filters, recommended videos, round robins, listicles, sparrowface, duck lips, selfies, event invites, texts and I had none of these from my brother. None to remember what kind of person he was, only the barest fringes of my memory. You can construct entire people out of everything they’ve ever done digitally. But not Aziz. I only had that email.

  Then, when Rach moved out, it was like he’d lived with me all along. He told me he was going to coach me through my break-up, ‘stick with me kid and you’ll be fine’, and the spare room, the office where Rach worked from home, it was his, and he was there. I didn’t question it because if I did, he could leave, he would leave and I’d lose my brother again. And, it’s only now, telling my dad and my ex-girlfriend and my new girlfriend this that I realise I’ve tricked myself into believing he was here.

  I don’t tell them that. I tell them about the blog and how it became easy, like he was there, to update this one story we had written, and make it him now, because him now, he should be able to exist electronically. He pre-dates social media, he never lived to make his mark and fuck it, he deserved it, he deserved to make his mark. He deserved his presence.

  He deserved to live for ever, tweeting and blogging and Instagramming. Not me. Him. Because if he was doing all that, it meant he was back in meatspace. What I don’t say is that room next to mine, it would hum with the sounds of him bringing girls home, watching television till 3 in the morning, working out, whistling to himself. The flat was filled with Aziz. And that made it so much easier to accept that Rach wasn’t there anymore.

  Aziz was in the building.

  But Aziz doesn’t live here anymore.

  ‘Kitab, beta … that sounds … crazy,’ my dad says.

  ‘Memories eventually lie,’ I tell him.

  ‘This,’ he sighs. ‘This is a bigger lie.’

  ‘He’s my brother. Don’t you dare take this away from me.’

  ‘Life goes on, kiddo,’ my father says. He shakes his head. I can feel Rach and Hayley both looking at me with pity in their eyes.

  ‘Aziz is dead,’ I say, almost as a question and almost as a reminder.

  ‘How did he die?’ Hayley asks.

  ‘He was always riding that bloody bike too fast,’ Dad says. ‘Always too fast.’

  ‘He was cycling down the high street where Kit grew up,’ Rach says, the pragmatic objectivist. ‘Fast. He swung onto a zebra crossing to get across the road and a car hit him.’

  ‘Were you there?’ Hayley asks.

  I shake my head. I wasn’t there so I still don’t feel like it happened. If I didn’t live-tweet it, it didn’t happen. I don’t have a timeline of events. I look around the flat. It feels half lived in. It doesn’t feel like our place anymore. I look at Rach. She definitely doesn’t live here anymore.

  Where’s Aziz? I need him.

  The sad truth of it is, that guy from the radio, he contacted my publisher directly and told them he was desperate to have me on the show. I said no.

  ‘You don’t need me. Just remember me. Just remember how fucking awesome I am. Just remember. In that brain. Remember.’

  ‘Y
ou need to shut that blog down,’ Dad says. I nod my head. I think about Kitab 2. The weirdo did me some good. He got me out of this flat. Out into the world. Away from the chutney.

  ‘I’ve got nothing left to say, Dad. That blog’s done. It was Aziz’s story. I just wrote it down.’

  ‘Hayley,’ I say. ‘I’m not crazy.’

  ‘Okay, chico,’ she replies. ‘It’s okay. We can talk later, okay?’

  I walk over to the fridge, I grab a tote bag that’s hanging off a drawer. I open the fridge and I pull out the 5 remaining jars of chutney. I place them in the bag and thrust my hand out to Rach. ‘Here you go,’ I say. ‘You’re finally all moved out.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Rach stays. ‘Look, I …’

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ I say. ‘I’ll just go running or something, get out more, that sort of thing.’

  ‘I was gonna say, I’m going to delete you from Facebook, I think. It’s too easy to stalk people. Is that okay?’

  ‘Whatever,’ I say.

  ‘I’m going then,’ Rach says. I nod. She turns around to leave. She shakes Hayley’s hand, firmly, like they’ve struck a business deal and she kisses Dad on the cheek.

  ‘Rach,’ Dad asks. ‘Isn’t your mum single?’

  ‘Not for you, Rasesh,’ she laughs, opening the door. ‘Not for you. You’re trouble.’ He giggles to himself as she closes the door. Rach has left the building. I am no longer in a relationship.

  I look at Hayley. It’s complicated.

  ‘Dad,’ I say. ‘I didn’t mean to hurt anyone.’

  ‘You did,’ he says. ‘I was hurt. I was really hurt. I still am. But I realise I am not innocent in this. This is my fault as much as yours. I should be more of a father, and less of a friend. Eh, kiddo?’

  ‘No, Dad,’ I say. ‘I should be more of an adult.’

  There’s an awkward silence. Dad shuffles his feet. ‘Look,’ he says. ‘We will talk about this properly, but I do have a date. A third date, with a girl called Madhur. I really like her.’

  ‘Third date?’ I say, surprised. ‘You should go.’

  Dad’s already half out the door before I get to finish my sentence.