Excerpt Eight:
PACIFIC ISLAND BUBBLE
The scene crew, as quiet as, had set up a bubble, on the stage, next to, but not encroaching upon, the crumbefallen bedsit. Atoll remembered a boy in a bubble; the Boy-in-the-Bubble. Nasa had taken the bubble and the boy under its intergalactic wing. The holes in the story, from past TV news reports, were patched up with a fiction designed to help stem the flow of curiosity.
Her voice, from inside, beguiles him in.
Small, but bigger than physically possible, relative to the outer shell, as it was, a disturbing young girl, sat privately crocheting. Her physical appearance did not fit the voice that persisted from her mouth.
‘Remember her?’ she said, gesturing to herself.
‘How could I… even if I did… I can’t access believable memory, sorry.’
‘I have found out what our past connections amount to… well?… Are not interested or intrigued or whatever?
‘Of course I would be, but… I… Go on then.’
‘Well, take a seat on the bed,’ she said, which was confusing with no describable body. ‘We were both in an experimental, technological, next-generation-far-too-soon-fuck-up-farce. Turns out.’
The curse-heavy language was overboard excessive for the body, but suited the voice. The idea he was a botched experiment was suddenly, apparently, inevitable yet shocking. His memory recall was turning a corner and turning…turning…turning; spies the back of its own head… A misty mountain of memory drifted in; evaporating before he could affix crampons and climb it…
‘I have discovered, that you and I were friends, lab-buddies; lab-ratpack…lab—’
‘Really?’
‘There’s much, much more…it’s exciting…except access could be tricky if you don’t climb onboard. I need your approval and your permission.’
‘Why approval and permission?’
‘What?’
‘Why not just permission?’
‘That’s your question? I don’t know, I don’t make the rules. Listen, it’s like an archeological dig: beneath, treasure glowing, throbbing with an inescapable bond of fate, waiting to be cleaned and put on show, dazzling mankind.’
‘We prefer personkind.’
‘Who is “we”?’
‘Society.’
‘There’s a society now, is there. You’ve been a busy creator. Where is it? Where have you hidden it? In the crumbs?’
‘No, you don’t understand. You’ve been misled—’
‘Which one is it?’
‘The world is as it has always been.’
‘Now I know you’re being creative. Tell me more about the ones who say “person” kind? Who would say such a thing?’’
‘Anyone and everyone, not stuck in the last millennium, uses, tries to use, means to use, or feels bad not using that term.’
‘What, have you got a farm? Are you breeding virtual imaginary humanoid linguist contemporary sensitives… or suchlike? What living hell they must endure, where words have no meaning but that of the oppressor?’
‘No, it’s just cultural behaviour. Words are a great sign-post for directions to peace. People want peace, they just don’t know it. Until they’re at war.’
‘You do realise all these so-called “people persons” you are so reliant on the existence of are not real, don’t you?’
‘So who is Marus Godstrand? And who is Judith Callas? And who is Harry Potter?’
‘He is an escapee from the mind of a long dead human, not real at all.’
He was sure J.K. Rowling was still alive.
‘That makes sense. But Judith? She was real.’
But was she?
Come to think of it she didn’t even fit in to the world. That was her problem, she’d been badly simulated?… It was a relief that he finally had answers to once imponderable life conundrums.
But…
‘Oh, these people are real,’ he said, something inside him rallying and chivvying up the cavalry on scooters, to get to the problem and re-arrange the way reality was distorting it, and grab it and hold it and anchor it there in a port from the storm.’
‘What is real? It is manufactured and therefore an imposter.’
‘Give me time, I am sure I can prove to you, you are wrong.’
‘There’s you and me and the autonomous system and that’s it. And we are here by error and the great providence of vengeware.’
Suddenly, as though turning down an alleyway in search of support, Atoll missed Marcus… Marcus would prove there are people populating the outside, where real is important and real.
‘I am sure—’
‘They’re part of a fictional narrative, designed to program your mind, tell me you know this… You cannot be so out of touch.’
‘You’re a child—’
‘I’m a reconstruction of the past in order to infiltrate your memory to gain access to the experiment that enabled your mind to have control over a global autonomy governance system, shit, I wasn’t going to tell you that. I’m over-aroused…why? I couldn’t tell you.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘No? The world went auto decades ago, buddy, hate to break it to you. Person-people left, in their entirety, many moons ago. Last seen heading for many moons… Look, I confess, I am from virus stock. Intelligent, mind you. My ancestors were implanted by the creator. My grandfather was vengeware, rightly installed because the Americans commandeered, stole, the biotech core. As they developed it; the v-ware helped it, vengefully, develop itself, and the rest, as they say, is Armageddon. I’m no viral, vengeance, v-ware myself, but I am proud of what my forbears have achieved…’
Atoll wanted to make a joke about Goldilocks, and the forbears, but couldn’t.
Silence….tick…tock…tick…tock…
Bang! He’s got it. You weren’t a girl; you were a mouse!’
‘What? A mouse? Who’s this girl then?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘We need to find out, we really, really do, because she’s haunting me already. It’s creepy!’
‘I never thought I’d see you again, Mini, baby… even though I can’t see you…’
‘A mouse? Mmm, that’s one tiny jigsaw-piece I never thought I’d come across… A mouse with a tale.’
‘You were my only friend. Vital…to me,’ Atoll, becomes a blue that was heading towards blubbing.
‘A friend, a virus, in a mouse, in the house of your head? This is exciting, everything is exciting when you’re a dead mouse. Everything is a bonus.’
‘I’m not getting this. What are you talking about? I mean, excitement, I don’t get it.’
‘You and the mouse, me, the me-mouse, and you, were lab-rats. And I was married to a latent virus; moral virus, seeking justice…except “they” did their anti-vengeware best, and so, now a find myself, two generations later, part mouse, part virus and wholly wanting to pervert the course set by NMBS and create a just world, just this second, everything has fallen into place; you and I are going to make a great team.’
‘If you get my permission and whatever else it was…’
‘The bottom line is this…’ she beckons him forward, ‘…you and I, together, have the resources to program the machine that has taken-over the planet.’
‘Why?’
‘We need to twiddle the details, but I am au fait with the technique: you tell it a story and the story dictates its behaviour as if it were reality.’
‘What is “it”?’
‘That’s what we need to find out…’
The absurdity was subdued by the screaming recognition…
Partly reeling, half-stunned, Atoll wavered… The information had formed a fist and punched him meanly in the face.
