The Creative Sponge

by Andy Marlow

  Part of her wanted to approach the sad, lonely girl and slap her round the face for being so ungrateful: she was with seven other people! She had friends! Even if she was on the outside of the group, she was at least in a group. She had no right to complain or to hang back behind everyone else, deliberately cutting herself off.

  Yet another part of Kathy wanted to rush up to her and hug her, for she understood how the girl was feeling. Two lonely souls in a harsh world and a twisted, confusing reality… perhaps the pair of them could be a comfort to each other for one brief moment.

  Kathy indulged her eavesdropping and her contemplation for a little too long; when she looked back at the street scene, the group she had been looking at was already far away down the street on their carefree way to a fun night out. The partiers would dance and drink; the socialists would sit down and discuss their issues to the taste of good beer; the lonely girl would, hopefully, find someone to enter her solitude. All in all, they would have a comparatively good night. They had no real issues to deal with. They were just playing, pretending, growing- getting ready for a life of real problems and real decisions…

  …such as the like that Kathy had to deal with. She checked her watch. It was now 9:13 p.m. It was time.

  In her distraction, she had forgotten to keep a watch of Oxford Street. As she gazed back down it, she saw that a man was now pacing up and down outside the very building she had been supposed to go to: 16 Oxford Street.

  Oxford Street was within the commercial district of London. The Headquarters for TGN were located on the corner. The street was predominantly made up of office blocks, and 16 Oxford Street was one such office block. It was bland in appearance in every way. There were no distinguishing features at all, save for the letters “T-G-N” hanging in huge, red print outside the entrance. Apart from that, however, it was the kind of building that one could pass without a second glance, except to comment on how utterly banal it looked.

  The building was not important, however. The man pacing in front of it was. He wore a battered suit and a trilby to disguise his face. Kathy reasoned that he was the reason that she had been summoned here. She pushed aside her nerves and stepped forward beyond the corner opposite TGN, where she had been waiting, onto Oxford Street itself.

  It was a dark street. Given the time, nobody except the late owls keen for overtime would still have been working; for that reason, the only light available was the dim illumination of the street lamps, some of which were not working, and the light emanating from a smattering of windows in the blocks towering above. Luckily her target happened to be pacing about beneath one such lamp- otherwise she would not have been able to see him.

  She stepped forth confidently down the road towards her target. The man did not notice her approach. He was too engrossed in his own thoughts, which seemed to be a great source of worry to him. He would stop periodically and ponder on something before continuing to pace as before.

  When she was within five metres of him, he suddenly noticed her. Yet she was not important to him- he barely glanced at her before returning to his thoughts. Although the man did not heed Kathy at all, she gasped when she saw his face.

  “Thomas?” she said, scarcely believing it was true.

  Yet the man merely looked at her quizzically and returned to his pondering. Clearly he did not recognise her- but he was the spitting image of Thomas. There was no doubt about that. This was the face she had enjoyed many a laugh with. No, he was not merely the spitting image of Thomas- he was Thomas.

  However, something was different in him. The most obvious point is that he did not recognise her, but there were other things too. He was walking differently- not that he was limping, or hopping, or anything as obvious as that. It was simply that his gait had changed, ever so slightly and ever so subtly, but enough to register. Every human being has a certain way of walking. When you know someone well enough, you can recognise the person simply by the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs: through familiarity, you are intimate with the strength of each footfall and the time gap between them. Perhaps this person puts more weight on his or her right or left foot. Of course, you don’t rationally think about these things, but it has become so instinctive that your brain instantly recognises it.

  Thomas was not using his regular gait. Nor was he using the same posture. Before his disappearance, he had been known for his laid-back attitude. Of course he wanted to progress in his career, but he had also tried to avoid letting things get to him. His had been an attitude combining a strange mix of seriousness and relaxedness: he would get on with the job in a focused manner, yet would be relaxed about the result. If anything went wrong, it would not faze him. The Thomas before her, though, had an entirely different posture: he was fidgety and nervous. He kept sliding his hands into his pockets and fumbling around in them, searching for nothing in particular. It was merely a nervous twitch, which he was doing unconsciously. Had she inquired about it to him, he would have been unaware he was doing it.

  His face, too, was different. It was like a mask being worn by someone else: everything was where it should be, in the same location and proportion, but something intangible was different: the emphasis of certain muscles, or the way he moved his mouth or his eyes. When a loved one dies, although the body is still there, something seems different about it: life seems to have left it. What Kathy saw now reminded her of this effect… except for her, it seemed as if a new life, with its own identity and personality- not Thomas- had entered into the body.

  She did not have time to consider all of this, however. While it may have registered on some level with her unconscious mind, she was too overjoyed to have found her missing friend, who took on new significance as some kind of clutch onto reality to which she could hold. It had been many, many days since he had disappeared; since then, she had been the victim of a sexual assault and of a gross distortion of reality. It felt, for her, as if the clock had been turned back to a time when everything made sense- and she was not willing to let go of her straw of hope.

  So she rushed forward and embraced Thomas. She wanted to hold him tight, as one would hold a life buoy when marooned at sea- but Thomas had other ideas. He pushed her away, a look of surprise etched across his face.

  He did not recognise her. That familiar face that she had so often looked at, which had so often looked back with an expression of warmth and friendliness, now stared back at her blankly. Worse, actually: the blankness was tempered with a small portion of hostility, as one would glare at a rude stranger who had disturbed you in the street or interrupted you from important work.

  This glare was only for an instant. It was enough for a reproach, a non-verbal message saying “piss off”. Immediately Thomas turned his back on her and returned to his thoughts.

  She felt like cracking up- everybody had forgotten her today. For some irrational reason, she had thought that Thomas would be different. Alas, he too had forgotten her- as if she never existed.

  Now, though, she began to listen to her subconscious. This was different to the other instances of the day. Before, the people had remained the same and had merely not recognised her. Thomas, however, was not acting like Thomas. Something more was afoot.

  So she opened her mouth and began to speak in quivering notes:

  “Do you know who I am?”

  Thomas turned back to her and gave her the benefit of his full attention. He had, seemingly, only just registered that she was there, that she wanted his attention and that she may be important. Yes, he had acknowledged her just a few seconds ago, but that was in the manner of a stranger. Now it seemed to be dawning on him that Kathy may be more than simply a rude pedestrian who had bumped into him, or a madwoman who went round hugging strangers. No, he was suddenly realising that Kathy may be important in some way. His forehead began to furrow as he tried to place her in his memory. Yet his apparent interest in Kathy was accompanied by his greater interest in whatever subject was occupying his mind and causing him to pace up and d
own; consequently, when confronted with Kathy, he had the manner of someone who was simply paying attention out of politeness, and who would really like to get back to what he had been doing before he was interrupted, thank you very much.

  He had a stooped look, now that he was standing directly before his inquirer. This was not the Thomas she remembered at all: he would have been standing tall, looking respectable. He was now standing so that he somehow resembled, ever so slightly, the hunchback of Notre Dame.

  His brow unfurrowed as his inquiries into his memory came with a conclusion and told him that this woman before him, although she seemed to think she knew him, was a perfect stranger. In reply to Kathy’s question, therefore, he said, “No.” He said it quite simply, without a hint of compassion: if anything, he merely sounded irritated.

  Like everything else about him, his voice was different too: it was definitely the voice of Thomas, emanating from the larynx of Thomas, which was speaking according to instructions from the brain of Thomas. Human beings, however, have a great variety of possible tones of voice to choose from. This is shown by singers, or actors: a skilled actor can sound and look completely different in one role compared to another, and a good singer can change her voice at a whim from high to low. Thus you can recognise someone’s mood and personality by their tone of voice. In extreme circumstances, for example, where somebody is suffering with multiple personality disorder, sometimes the oncoming of an alternative personality can be heralded by a subtle shift in the voice: the real, original person may use his voice in a soft way, while the alternative personality may use it gruffly and offensively.

  This was the effect before Kathy now. Sure, it was Thomas’ voice- but it seemed like it was being used by someone other than Thomas. At the very least, this was a side to him that she had never before seen.

  She was honestly unsure about how to proceed. Her one hope of finding something real and familiar had been shattered.

  Thomas was presently looking at the ground, evidently back in his thoughts.

  “Thomas, please…” she began weakly.

  “My name is not Thomas.” he grunted suddenly, absent-mindedly.

  Kathy was taken aback. “But… then… who are you? I mean, what is your name?”

  “My name’s Gregory,” he replied. All through this, he continued to stare at the ground; clearly the majority of his brainpower was not being engaged in dealing with Kathy.

  Kathy stepped backwards in fear and confusion, her mouth agape. Thomas turned away from her completely so that he had his back to her; he then began pacing up and down once more. At this point the pair of them were on the pavement outside 16 Oxford Street. To the casual observer, Kathy would be seen standing stationary while her companion- Thomas, or Gregory, or whoever he now was- could be seen pacing to and fro, about five steps in each direction before turning back the way he came. He would on occasion stop and close his eyes, pondering. Despite his importance to her, Kathy was a complete irrelevance to him.

  This continued for a minute or two before Thomas stopped mid-step and took a piece of paper out of his jacket pocket. He looked concerned and began scanning it intently.

  This paper, whatever it was, produced a change in him. By now, Kathy had taken a few more steps backwards. She was torn: one part of her wanted to remain close to him, despite his strange behaviour; another simply wanted to run away and cry. Yet now Thomas’ face all of a sudden shot up and looked Kathy straight in her eyes. She was no longer a distraction from his thinking.

  “Wait!” he called out. “Are you…”

  At this point he looked down at the piece of paper he was holding so tightly in his hands and began searching fervently for something. It was noticeable that the piece of paper was the cleanest thing on him: he looked, and, if she was honest, smelled as if he had not washed in days.

  “Are you… Kathy? Kathy Turner?”

  “Yes!” she almost screamed in excitement. “Yes! Yes, I am Kathy!”

  Thomas frowned and returned to his sheet of paper. This was not the reunion she had been hoping for. She was at a loss to explain what had happened to her friend: perhaps he had suffered concussion, or developed a mental disorder?

  “It tells me here that you’re a friend of Thomas,” he stated matter-of-factly.

  He said no more after this, and what followed was an awkward silence. It felt like the longest thirty seconds of Kathy’s life. She decided that her friend was not going to continue the conversation, so took it on herself to try to resolve these confusing circumstances.

  “But you’re not Thomas?” she asked.

  “No! My name is Gregory!” he almost bellowed, suddenly hot-headed and passionate. Kathy backed away.

  “But you look like Thomas,” she continued nervously. “Has something happened to you recently? Something bad?”

  Thomas frowned. He looked like he was on the verge of telling her something that he shouldn’t. In fact, he looked positively frightened of saying it, whatever it was- yet he also looked as if telling his evidently great secret would relieve him of an immense burden weighing upon his shoulders.

  “Yes,” he said simply. “I…”

  He faltered. His face betrayed a deep fear and he began glancing around nervously. Kathy followed his gaze to see what he was looking at, what frightened him so- but she could not see anything. The street was dark and the few lights in the surrounding office blocks which were still on were gradually going out as the late-workers left for home. The area seemed deserted.

  Thomas’ eyes fixed on something and he froze. His pupils grew to enormous size as his fear became tangible. Kathy glanced behind her at the source of his terror: a CCTV camera was pointing straight at them. Kathy was not bothered by this, for surveillance had become a regular, normal part of life in modern Britain: but this fact positively petrified Thomas. He began mumbling incoherently and pacing about once more.

  Kathy rushed over to him and grabbed his shoulders, stopping him in his tracks. Their faces were close now and their pupils met: eye staring into eye; one pair gazing in compassion and confusion, the other in hope and horror. Thomas now knew who she was, but only by name: it was clear that the spark of recognition, of past memories and shared experiences, had not yet lit in his mind. But it was enough for him. This woman knew him, even if he did not know her, and he had evidently been close to her. She cared about him. She would look after Thomas.

  “No, no, no, no, no!” shouted Thomas unexpectedly as he pulled himself away from Kathy and began circling around with his hands clenched against his ears like a madman. “I am Gregory! I am Gregory!”

  It was happening again- but how could he stop it? And how could she understand? It had taken three days of training at TGN to hold the effect. He had sensed the truth of their claims as soon as they had met him at his… no, Thomas’ mother’s door, even though he could not understand it. But it had taken three days to cement the knowledge into his head, to make sure he did not forget who he really was and what was really happening to him. They had emphasised to him, so strongly, that he could forget at any second; that constant vigilance was the price of freedom. And now this. Kathy Turner was here, a ghost from the past of this borrowed body, ready to help her friend come to his senses and solve his problems… but inadvertently she would kill him and kill his knowledge of who he was. She would confuse matters and… who was he? Gregory? Thomas? Identities and personalities became confused in his mind and so he wrenched himself from her grasp and turned his back on her, eyes clenched tight as he fought to hold on.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked compassionately.

  “My name is Gregory!” he roared. His words came out raw and cold, as if from the very heart of his soul, expressing the innermost truth of his being. They were terrifying to hear and Kathy was, once more, at a loss for what to do.

  Had she been convinced of the rational workings of reality, she might have thought her friend Thomas had succumbed to some sort of multiple personality disorder. But t
he past day had broken any faith she had in Cartesian principles, and so she stood there, dumbfounded, unable to know what to do. For all she knew, this man might be Gregory, and “Thomas” may be an invention of her imagination.

  Let me reassure you, dear reader, that this is not what was happening. I would not build up a story based on the disappearance of a character, only to tell you that the character never existed. Yet I write this to show you just how far Kathy had come, and how much the events of the past few days had affected her: she no longer trusted her own memory or her own perceptions of reality. She had many theories- another was the she had been drugged- but she could not conclude that any particular one would explain her strange experiences, and so she was barely holding herself together as she felt powerless to understand or control her life.

  Gregory- or Thomas- (we shall, from now on, refer to him simply as “The Man” until matters are resolved) was pacing once more. He was no longer holding onto his sheets of paper- he had scrunched them up and shoved them into his jacket pocket. Among other things, including a simplified explanation of a scientific theory called ‘quantum brain dynamics’, the papers contained a biography of Thomas Wilson: where he had grown up, where he had been educated, who his friends were and who his family was. There was also a biography of a man named Gregory, although this was sketchy: it was far vaguer than Thomas’ biography, for TGN had been unable to find a huge amount of information about the mysterious Gregory. What they did know, they had procured from someone on the inside of Cybertech Industries, and he was obviously limited in what he knew and what he could tell them. The word “Biography” may imply a huge book, or at least a huge collection of papers: in reality, the number of sheets of paper in the man’s jacket pocket was no more than three. You will therefore be able to imagine that the amount of writing was rather small, the explanation of the science of brain dynamics rather simplified and the biographies of Thomas Wilson and Gregory rather sparse on detail.

  Why did this man have this information in his pocket? After Thomas had been approached by TGN on the fateful day at the start of this book, these pieces of paper had been given to him and something very shocking had been explained to him. The pieces of paper simply reinforced the shocking news and reminded him of his true identity whenever he needed it. Right now, however, the bio of Thomas was merely confusing for him- this is why he hid the paper in a positively violent manner.

  Given the content of the previous chapter, I would not be surprised if you, dear reader, had by now worked out what was going on- to some extent, at least. If not, fear not- all will be explained explicitly later on.

  So the man was pacing, frightened and confused; Kathy was also frightened and confused, though for different- yet similar- reasons. Presently the man wheeled about on the arches of his feet and rushed towards Kathy. He grabbed her and began speaking with a passion that utterly took Kathy off guard.

  “You asked me if something bad had happened to me. Yes, something bad did happen. I am not Thomas. I am Gregory. Your friend… is gone. I am sorry for that, but it is not my fault. I am as much a victim as he was… as anyone could be… argh!”

  He suddenly screamed and clutched his skull, and a look of realisation appeared on his face. He grabbed Kathy once more and continued talking, even more fervently and passionately than before.

  “Listen to me, because I don’t have much time. They know I’m talking to you, and they’re frightened. They can’t let word of their work get out to the public, because if it did they would lose their power. They would be shut down.”

  “Who’s they?” asked Kathy in alarm. The man was talking like a mad conspiracy theorist.

  “I can’t say… I don’t know what they’ll do to me. I mean… we think it’s Cybertech Industries.”

  “Who’s we?”

  The man seemed to be ignoring her. His words were gradually coming out more slowly, as if he was struggling to remember things; he began to speak in gasps.

  “TGN… are not the enemy… they can help… they helped me…”

  His thoughts and words were steadily growing more and more incoherent. It was like watching someone with rapid-onset dementia: the kind of deterioration of memory and identity which would normally take years was occurring in seconds with this man.

  “I… am not Gregory… not Gregory… am Gregory! My name… Gregory…”

  His grip on Kathy was getting weaker; his whole being- body, mind, soul- was growing weaker by the second. His head was drooping and what had begun as him grasping onto her had become him leaning on her to prevent himself from falling.

  “But it’s all in the future… it’s too late…”

  He suddenly smirked, as if something funny had happened or been remembered. His hand reached into his pocket and he pulled out the three pieces of paper he had so desperately clung onto before, stapled together, and thrust them out at Kathy. This exertion cost him energy and he practically slumped onto her, only managing to stay upright by holding onto her with his spare hand.

  “Can’t explain… this can… take it! Take it!”

  He would have yelled it, had he had the energy. Kathy reached out for the papers, but before she could grasp them he collapsed onto the pavement, motionless.

  Kathy stepped backwards, aghast. The body of her friend lay before here and it looked utterly lifeless: like an empty shell, like a costume without the wearer or a mask without its face. His face was partially obscured by his hat, which had flopped onto the side of his head as he fell and now covered his eyes and left ear. Yet from what Kathy could see of his face, it looked limp: where once muscles would have held it in the form of a smile or a frown, now the skin simply sagged onto the pavement. She suddenly felt a wave of cold pass over her from the pit of her stomach: what her mind could not comprehend- or rather, could not allow itself to comprehend- her instincts had known in advance.

  She bent down and lifted the hat from his face. This man was not Thomas, but nor was he Gregory: the persons who had occupied his form had gone now, and what was left was an empty, lifeless shell. Lifeless- she could also have called it dead, although that word carried too much weight and pain for her to consider it.

  Her fingers moved falteringly towards his neck to feel for a pulse. There was none. He was dead.

  She screamed involuntarily. Her mind was numb and her body was cold. The events of the past few days vanished from her consciousness as she became consumed in the events of now: there she was, kneeling down on the pavement of a dark street next to her best friend’s corpse.

  It consumed her entire being, so that now- that infinitely tiny point in time, which is ever intangible and unable to be grasped- became an infinity to her. It was her whole reality. There was no past, there was no future: everything that was or could or did or would exist was encapsulated in that solitary minute, that very second. She could almost sense time slowing down to a stop and her mind almost expanding: in this now, there were six billion people busying themselves away on this tiny rock in space. Some were sleeping, some were fighting; others were dancing, while more were writing. Yet the only one person that mattered now, the infinite reality before her, was Thomas- or Gregory- dead in front of her.

  She was numb, but she was sharp. Her mind picked up on the sheet of paper and realised that it must have some great significance. After all, the man had seemed to know what was about to happen to him and had seemed at great pains to give Kathy the sheet of paper.

  So she picked it up. They were still in his hands, now slightly gritty from contact with the ground. She touched his hand- she had to; she did not want to- and they were still warm. Lifeless, but warm, as the individual cells making up the everyday workings of the flesh were calling out to their brain: where is my food? Where is my nourishment? Alas, the mind had left and the brain was dead, or dying: these cells would be getting no more food and no more nourishment, and slowly they too would die off and become cold as their functions and activities ceased.

  Kathy avo
ided thinking about it. Instead, she focused her attention on the three sheets of paper before her. They were printed ink and scrunched up, presumably from when the Man had grown angry at them. Alone, they were difficult to comprehend: half a page was devoted to a simple explanation of an obscure theory called Quantum Brain Dynamics; a further one and a half pages comprised a personal biography of Thomas Wilson; finally, the last page contained but one paragraph about the life and times of a man called Gregory. The detail was sparse- it didn’t even mention his surname.

  Around the printed word was a mass of almost illegible notes. However, Kathy could discern a few words and sentences: “TGN” appeared quite often, and the phrase “Cybertech Industries” was discernible clustered around the paragraph about Quantum Brain Dynamics. One handwritten paragraph gave a brief description of a Doctor Jones and a machine that he had created, although again the detail was vague: all Kathy could discover from reading it was that this Doctor existed and had made a machine which manipulated the “cortical field”, whatever that was. What this meant, she was unsure about: the phrase was mentioned a few times in the explanation of Quantum Brain Dynamics, but the paragraph was so short and the concepts so complex that Kathy remained in the dark about most of it.

  One thing Kathy could make out, though: TGN and Cybertech Industries were connected to this, and if she wanted answers about what had happened to Thomas/Gregory, they were to be her first port of call.