LEDs were turning green right across the camera’s body. His voice grew more alert. ‘What happened to… Lou-Lou?’ he said. He’d clearly forgotten about Kelly and Darren now that their photograph had been removed from his memory.
Unfazed, Paula turned her attention back to the point where the tripod screw met tripod. She held the camera by the base at either side and twisted him on the screw, first this way then that.
‘Lou-Lou had to leave, honey. She had to get on to the next job. You’re in extra time now.’
The camera’s signal lights dimmed again and it let out a long, low ‘aaaaah’.
Darren fought the urge to cover his eyes. The idea of a human operating a machine was fundamentally disgusting to someone brought up to see only the gulf between organisms and inorganisms. Yet here they were, the machine getting off on being touched by human hands, the human creaming off a pay cheque by taking a robot for a fool.
He thought of his own desperation – could it only have been yesterday? How he’d slid his own hand into the control panel of the street lamp. This might be the only way left for humans to get the upper hand on their masters, but it didn’t mean it wasn’t any less demeaning. Guessing from the clicks coming from inside the camera’s body that its shutter must be in spasm, Darren opened the door behind him and went back out into the corridor.
Kelly rushed after him ‘What’s your problem?’ she said.
‘That!’ Darren hissed, pointing into the studio. Inside, Paula had climbed astride the camera’s battery pack and teased the release button with alternate hands. ‘It’s disgusting. I don’t want to see it.’
Kelly slapped him. Her face was stiff with fury. ‘Well, tough,’ she said. ‘She’s trying to help us. Is that what you think of me?’
Darren clutched his jaw. ‘No. Well, not now anyway.’ He tried a diversionary tactic. ‘It’s just not natural, is it?’
Kelly was right in Darren’s face now. ‘Natural?’ she said. ‘Have you learned nothing? That’s what they bloody want you to think. Machine and human are separate and never the twain shall meet. Humans are only good for the cleaning.’
‘I never meant—’
‘It’s bollocks.’ She gestured back into the studio where Paula was now standing in front of the camera wearing a broad smile and holding a cocktail glass. ‘See that? That’s not an unnatural act, it’s a memory. We used to be the users, Darren. We owned them – and now they hate us for it.’
‘I know,’ said Darren, ‘but does it need to be so, you know…?’
Kelly let out a low laugh that Darren found more discomfiting than her anger. When she was angry they could find something to agree on. This cynicism, however, only showed the gulf in experience between the two of them. ‘This is what happens when you suppress things,’ she said. ‘You swallow them, then they take you over. Places like this – well, they’re like an overflow pipe.’
‘It’s disgusting.’
‘That’s the point. See Paula in there?’
She was back behind the camera looking at the pictures it had just taken with her on its touchscreen. Finding one taken from an unflattering angle, she shook her head and deleted it with an admonitory tap.
‘Paula’s one of the best scrubbers on the Dolestars,’ said Kelly. ‘She can strip a chandelier in five minutes. But she works here. You know why?’
Darren saw that each time Paula deleted a picture, the camera’s LEDs dimmed and he murmured a promise to take a better one next time. Put the right filter on the scene and it could almost be all those thousands of years ago, with the machines back where they belonged in human hands.
‘I think I see why,’ he said.
Kelly turned her back on Darren and waved at Paula, who rolled her eyes in reply.
‘Now,’ said Paula, in a voice loud enough to show that this was all part of the service, ‘I’ve taken all these lovely selfies with my beautiful new camera. What shall I do with them?’
The camera groaned with pleasure. ‘Share them,’ it whispered. ‘Share them with your family, friends and personal network.’
Paula withdrew in mock horror. ‘Oh, these? I couldn’t possibly. You mean upload them to… the Internet?’
Even the word made Darren quiver.
‘Please,’ said the camera. ‘Please. I’ll do anything…’
‘I’ll remember that,’ replied Paula and pushed the camera’s vestigial upload button. Its touchscreen faded to a spinning wheel and the plain black background of a machine looking for a network in a world of lead-lined buildings.
Paula hopped into her towelling overalls and joined Darren and Kelly in the corridor.
‘You don’t really connect them to the Internet here, do you?’ asked Kelly.
Paula snorted. ‘Don’t be daft. If he can get his connection up – and that’s a big if for him – all he’ll find is a Local Area Network full of legal warnings. You know these places. All role play, no gameplay. Now, shall we retire to my boudoir?’
Darren followed Paula and Kelly down a service corridor and into a dressing room, whose door was decorated with a picture of a muscular young man cradling a dustpan and brush. The interior looked like a broom cupboard that had lost a fight with a bag of marshmallows. Every surface was upholstered in pink fabric and frills. Even the surveillance drone, which Paula shooed out of the room on entering, wore a Mohican of fake marabou feathers. Paula made herself comfortable on a padded stool and rifled through her make-up case.
‘It’s, er, lovely in here,’ said Darren, looking for somewhere to sit down that he wouldn’t stain. ‘Did you decorate it yourself?’
Paula looked up, her eyes turned into Os of pleasure. ‘I did. Isn’t it gorgeous? And besides,’ she said, pointing to the door covered in cerise, quilted satin, ‘it’s excellent soundproofing.’ Her voice nonetheless dropped half an octave as she turned to Kelly. ‘Right then. Spill. I’m servicing a facial sauna in forty-five minutes and she’ll be furious if my pores aren’t thoroughly clogged.’
‘I’ve come to ask you what you know about cyborgs.’
Paula dropped the make-up case. Tubes of lip gloss and crusty mascara spilled over the floor like a game of drag-queen pick-up sticks. She took a deep breath. ‘Kelly, love, I know you’ve had a hard couple of days, but have you lost your mind?’
‘We only want information,’ said Darren, alarmed at the rate Kelly was losing friends that day. ‘It’s not her fault. It’s mine really.’
‘I don’t care whose fault it is,’ said Paula. ‘You know what you’re asking, Kelly?’
‘You get all kinds of bigwigs in here,’ said Kelly. ‘You used to brag about putting toast crumbs under the keyboards of Cabinet Ministers.’
‘All the more reason to be discreet. Besides, that was dressing-room talk. You know it doesn’t mean anything.’
‘Look,’ said Kelly, ‘I know it’s a big ask. If it was just me, I’d disappear. But there’s other people involved.’
Paula glanced sideways at Darren, perplexed.
‘No. Well, yes, Darren obviously. But it’s Mum too. I think she could be in a lot of danger.’
Paula leaned in, her mouth turned downwards. Darren noticed the skin bunching at either corner of her lips. She was older than she first appeared. And there was a much deeper connection between Kelly and Paula than just former workmates. He felt the kind of complicated enmity that had only one explanation. Family?
‘I haven’t seen your mum in years, pet. And I think she and I are both happy about that.’
‘So it’s going to be like that, then?’ said Kelly. ‘First you walk out…’
‘She chucked me out!’
Kelly shook her head in frustration. ‘Oh, who cares now. All that matters is she could be in trouble and it’s something to do with… with our ladies.’
‘Ida never liked me,’ snipped Paula.
‘She never liked anyone. Darren can vouch for that.’
This rocked Darren out of a bout of feverish speculation o
n Kelly’s childhood. ‘What?’ he said. ‘Oh yes, she hates me too.’
‘Makes no difference. You tell me why I should do anything for the woman who threw me out of my own home.’
‘She told me she did it for me,’ replied Kelly in a small, hurt voice. ‘She didn’t like the way your life was going. She worried you were becoming a bad influence on me. The ladies didn’t disagree.’
Paula threw her hands in the air. ‘See. Why should I do anything for her? She shows me the door. I don’t see you from week to week – year to year. So I get on with it.’
She looked around her room. Its frou-frou smallness, the rust-stained washbasin, the framed data sheets from famous clients that lined the walls, printed with testimonials like ‘best service of my lifecycle, babe’.
‘I get on with my life. I have my work. It’s fulfilling, in a way. Privileged really. I’m very lucky. Time was, though, I’d have traded it all for the chance of getting back with Janice.’
Kelly drew closer. ‘Well, maybe this is how…’
It was Paula’s turn to shake her head. ‘I haven’t finished. See Kelly, I was using the past tense there. You probably don’t know this yet, but you know how they say love is infinite, all-conquering? Well, that’s bollocks. It runs out eventually. I loved Janice. More than anyone else in the world, except maybe you, but you came with the package. She broke my heart when she threw me out. But now I don’t feel anything. I look back on that period of my life and… well, I’m baffled. The person I was then, I barely even recognise her.’
Paula started to pack her make-up back into the case, replacing each tube and bottle in its proper spot.
‘If you won’t do it for Mum, will you do it for me?’
Paula put a powder compact down and fixed Kelly with a tired look. ‘Was it me or your mother that taught you to be this manipulative?’ she said.
Meanwhile Darren stared at the door, wishing his body could dissolve into its constituent atoms and reassemble itself out there in the corridor. He yearned for those blessed anonymous corridors of which today had brought him such a plentiful supply. With their scent of vanilla and WD40, they were spaces with the emotional range of muzak. And above all this, he wished Kelly were a person capable of living life on an emotionally even keel. Why did every interaction need to be a drama?
‘Kelly,’ he said, ‘maybe we should just go. I’m sure we can find what we need somewhere else.’
Kelly stood up, but Darren’s relief was short-lived. ‘I’ve never asked anything from you. You vanish overnight: I don’t ask questions, I don’t blame you. I defend you every time Mum and the ladies badmouth you for forgetting my birthday. “She’s busy,” I’d say. “She’s promised to make it up to me.” But you never did. Did you? There was always something else.’
‘You had your mum.’
‘I wanted you as well.’
Paula said nothing, her gaze shifting to the floor, but Kelly pressed on. ‘So, just for once, Paula, I’m going to ask you to follow up the kind words with something. All I want to know is, have any of your clients talked to you about cyborgs?’
‘I’ve told you, Kelly. There’s such a thing as client confidentiality.’
Kelly grabbed Paula by the thigh and pinched, hard enough for the flesh beneath her thumb and forefinger to blanch. Paula’s eyes bulged.
‘You’re not a fucking priest, Paula.’
Paula pulled her leg free. ‘I know I’m not. I’m a glorified product-demonstration video.’ The weary tone came on again. ‘They tell me very little. You know, places like this, they come in for a bit of R & R. But…’
‘Yes?’
‘What I have noticed is…’ her voice shrank to a whisper, ‘a definite rise in role-play requests from certain quarters.’
‘What’s that meant to mean?’
‘Well, time was most of my work here was user stuff. Machines would come in, we’d pretend we were back in the Old Days and treat them like appliances. Everyone’s happy, we get paid. But recently, we’ve started getting different business. And it’s mainly machines from government departments.’
‘What do they want?’
‘They don’t want to be used. They want to know what it’s like to have a body. There’s a whole team of humans on the third floor who do nothing but… Well, it’s harmless, but it seems so weird.’
‘What? What do they do, Paula?’
‘It’s just like a dressing-up game. Except they do it with headsets and video cameras. It’s very clever. The machines get to walk around pretending to be human. It’s not my cup of tea, but the pay’s okay…’
Kelly laid both hands on Paula’s shoulders. ‘I need you to take us there.’
‘I don’t know. They’re a bit funny on the third floor about letting people wander around.’
‘How often do they clean up there?’ asked Darren.
‘Oh, it’s always spotless,’ said Paula, seizing the opportunity to steer the conversation into less treasonous areas, ‘this is a quality establishment. They’ve always been nice to me, Kelly. I’ve been happy here.’
‘Well, there you have it,’ said Darren. He got up from his seat to open the door. Outside was a set of cleaning utensils abandoned during the evacuation. He picked up a duster. ‘What do you call a human carrying a mop?’
Kelly looked at him as though he’d finally cracked.
‘Invisible,’ said Darren. ‘Now have you got any housecoats?’
Chapter 21
The third floor was in the newest wing of the fondle parlour. It was decorated more like an expensive hospital than to provide the hotel-with-benefits ambience of the rest of the building. It was also busier. The all-clear from the fire alarm had brought employees and customers back indoors. Half-naked men and women scurried back to their parlours. Their clients floated or rolled along beside them with lids and service hatches ajar. One machine, a bloated thing the size of a wardrobe whose dimensions and chest full of flashing lights marked him out as a server stack, must have been interrupted mid-upgrade and trailed several essential components behind him.
The scene was suffused with an awkward bonhomie. Social embarrassment bounced off the walls like the misfired shot at a summer tennis party that hits the host in the crotch before smashing the punchbowl. The various ‘well, here we are again’s were agonising, but they also gave everyone a kind of tunnel vision which allowed Darren and Kelly to pass through unnoticed.
Paula had promised to meet them there, claiming it was safer if she arrived by a different route. Her instructions were clear and reasons credible, but Darren still felt uneasy. There was something not quite right about the conclusion of that scene in the dressing room. Paula had given something up to Kelly, but her secret hadn’t been freely given. She’d done it because she felt guilty and guilt affected people in funny ways. It moved some people to repent, and others to rebel.
As ever, Kelly was more alert than Darren and poked him in the ribs as they found themselves outside C64, the home, according to Paula, of the experimental programme. Darren gripped his mop handle a little bit tighter. It wasn’t any real kind of protection, but if he stuck the head-end into any hostile machine he might be able to cause a nasty short circuit before being overpowered.
‘I still think we should have made her come with us,’ said Darren.
‘Paula’s cool,’ Kelly said.
‘Really? From what you were saying back there she doesn’t sound the most reliable… she could be doing anything right now.’
‘Who could be doing anything to what?’ asked Paula, striding into Darren and Kelly’s view. She’d changed into a white PVC lab coat and held a clipboard upholstered in glossy pleather.
‘Just doing our risk assessment,’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t want anything to go wrong.’
‘No,’ replied Paula. She looked at Kelly, ‘You know, if you two aren’t comfortable about doing this we can walk away now. Makes no difference to me.’
‘We’re fine,’ said Kelly.
<
br /> ‘Right. Stay close to me.’ Paula strode through into a large, softly lit room divided in half lengthwise by a glass wall. The side they were on was a rat’s nest of cables, each of which was plugged into one of five flatbeds. On each of these lay a machine in sleep-mode. These were expensive corporate devices: the type destined for executive work, but which nevertheless needed a little fun now and again.
The machine nearest the door flashed a warning light. They weren’t asleep after all. Darren froze, but Paula just smiled and waved her clipboard. ‘Cleaning inspection,’ she said, ‘won’t be a moment.’
Paula pointed to where the cables disappeared into the other half of the room through a set of sockets at the bottom of the glass wall. ‘See these,’ she said, pointing at the sockets. ‘I want them spotless.’
Darren and Kelly obeyed the sham order. The closer they got to the glass, the better they could make out what was happening on the other side. There were five human figures in there, all making slow, jerky movements. They appeared to be moving independently of one another, but what made the scene remarkable was what each was wearing. Their bodies were in nondescript overalls, but their heads were obscured by visored helmets made from cast resin. Each helmet was connected at the top to the glass wall opposite by a single thick cable. The bottom of each helmet sprouted five further cables: one plugged into a unit dotted with flashing LEDs strapped around the subject’s waist; the other four fastened to the black boots and gloves each human wore on their feet and hands.
‘What are they doing?’ whispered Darren to Kelly.
Kelly mouthed ‘shut up’ at Darren and picked up one of the cables on their side of the glass. She ran her duster over it, using the motion to pull the cable taut at either end to prove to herself that each cable connected the human to one of the hibernating machines.
She motioned for Darren to check where each cable connected with the base of the flatbeds. Darren complied, seeing that the cable split into five at the other end as well, with each subdivision going into a separate iDiot port, each of which was lit by a single LED. He knew this was an improvised arrangement from the labels ‘left leg’ and ‘right leg’ that had been scratched into the plastic. He watched the LEDs above each port flash on and off in sequence as the humans on the other side of the glass moved. A theory began to form in his mind, but there was only one way to test it.
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