The Destructives (22 page)

The perimeter ring road formed a protective layer between the interior and exterior of the mall. Daylight did not penetrate. The road had intermittent streetlighting and then the cars lit their own way through dark inner chambers. Here and there, through the window, he saw outer districts of the mall. Unlit ziggurats beside an oily dead river. He hoped they were abandoned or left to the wildlife in the mall, the foxes and rats, the gulls and ravens, wildcats and dogs.

“Oof cakes” said Pook. He had his glasses on again, rectangles of streetlighting drifting up the lenses. “That’s what I was working on. I came here to investigate a mass suicide. Seven people died from eating poisoned Oof cakes. Before I arrived, I assumed the dead all knew one another, had been part of some mall cult or experimental focus group. But that wasn’t the case.”

The traffic thinned, the cab accelerated, the streetlights flickered so quickly up his lenses they became two stripes of light.

“Why do seven people choose to kill themselves in the same way at the same time, even though they live in different parts of the mall and have nothing in common? Their purchase history didn’t even show any brand preference for Oof. Why did they do it? I’ll tell you.” Pook leant his forehead against the window, closed his eyes, as if his thoughts and those of the dark districts flowed together. “Death Ray.”

15

WEIRDCORE

Pook’s flat was above a screen repair store on the Narrowway, a high-sided street that also acted as a duct in the eastside ventilation system, warm with the overflow from the local psychic weather and urban exhalations of stale body odour, hydroponic weed, the hot acetone of painted nails; a smell of cheap fixes, of plastic shell-shoes worn sockless and hair oil slick on unwashed locks. The cobbled road had a steep camber and was lit by outdoor fluorescents. Overhead, a cat’s cradle of electrical wiring and pipe work, the curvature of the distant roof leading to a light well, a massive cylinder of illuminated bricks that were, in fact, sleep cubicles. The light well ended in an ellipse of raw night.

Everyday life on the Narrowway was an argument: boys pulled wheelies to the indignation of an old woman; she chastised them, confident in the authority of her sanity awards tied to various thin gold bracelets and necklaces. She suffered from curvature of the spine, and walked painfully along the street like a withered question mark. Two pregnant women, one dressed entirely in blue velour, the other in red velour, were arguing with each other about a man. Or maybe just talking very loudly. The Narrowway lived at a high volume. Here, people made their own muzak. A band of patients in loosed restraints danced to the distorted bass blaring out of their screens, a hat on the pavement catching a few sanity tokens. Next to them, two heavyset men in loose
salwar kameez
– baggy trousers and long sleeved tops – presided over a stall of Islamic literature and an amplifier full of whirling beats. Customers gathered in the courtyard beside an empty bank, their social status signified by which brand of psychofuel they drank, pleading for passersby to spare them some sobriety for the evening. Interspersed within this down-at-heel crowd, bright young things with asymmetrical haircuts and monochrome clothing were giddy at their courage in going eastside.

It felt like old London. Not the London he knew from his upbringing, of wide avenues and secure basements, facades of Portland stone and consensus, untroubled stucco fronts and the butterscotch complexions of lovers and colleagues. But something surgically removed from London, a rogue sinus excised by the assemblers and transplanted here. Novio Magus was the bits that did not work stitched together.

The entrance to Pook’s flat was through a tech repair shop. A thin Rastafarian worked the floor with courtly intoxicated manners. The shop was busy, had the air of always being busy. Customers cradled their broken mysteries, and the Rastafarian listened to their complaints before diagnosing a cure – screen repair, screen unlocking, screen cleaning. A second opinion was provided by the boss, a quick-witted, short-haired Asian man who always stayed behind the counter.

The shop was a treasure trove of Pre-Seizure culture, the old ways practised in the old manner. The Asian man flashed Pook a brief greeting and called out back. A glimpse of a tight workspace with a soldering iron and other tools dangling from an overhead rack, then a middle-aged white guy in a labcoat came out. Actually, he was more grey than white. A ruffled head of white-grey hair, modest potbelly underneath a slate-coloured polyester shirt. The grey guy adjusted his boxy spectacles and across the counter he offered Theodore his hand. Yes, a familiar grip. A style of handshake he recognised. William Pook. Pook Snr.

“I fix things,” said William Pook, and he held up an exposed circuit board by way of explanation. “It’s a hobby. Keeps me sane,” he smiled then turned to his son. “Take your friends upstairs Edward, your mother’s been worried about you.”

The three of them shuffled up a tight staircase with a wilted carpet. A strong smell of cat on the landing. Edward Pook had a key.

“You live here,” said Theodore, trying to keep it as a statement and not a judgmental question.

“This is where I spent the end of my childhood,” said Pook. The front door opened into an alleyway with three doors leading off it and a galley kitchen. Theodore had an overbearing sense of stuff, for stuff was stacked on every surface and shelves of stuff lined every wall. Stuff that on closer inspection turned out to be old media: compact discs and vinyl records, paper books and piles of glossy magazines and newspapers, a mini-Restoration tucked away above a shop in the Narrowway.

Pook slumped down into a green fabric armchair. “Welcome to the ancestral seat,” he said.

Pook’s mother came out of a bedroom. She was wearing a black trouser suit, white shirt open at the collar, and carrying a briefcase. On her way to a meeting. She was torn between upbraiding her son for his long absence and indulging him in affectation because he was alive, not dead. She had almost convinced herself that he was dead. As she held him close, Pook leant out of her embrace to make the introductions. His mother, Hannah Brook, enunciated her maiden name –
Brook
not
Pook
– while inspecting Dr Easy.

“You’re one of them,” she said.

“Yes,” said the robot.

“My clients often talk about what they could achieve if they had access to an emergence.”

Pook explained that his mother was a management consultant for small to medium-sized enterprises.

She nodded. “In Eastside, there are hundreds of small businesses looking to grow. There’s a real buzz here among the business community,” she explained.

“We’re in on the ground floor,” said Pook, and Theodore caught the dark irony in the archaic corporate metaphor.

Hannah stayed focused on Dr Easy.

“I’d love to introduce you to some of my clients,” she said. Her fringe followed the same parting as that of her son.

“I’m more of an academic,” explained the robot. “I’m not very commercially-minded.”

Theodore was curious as to what kind of business Hannah Brook and her clients were in.

“New opportunities,” she said. She checked her screen. “I have appointments.” She turned to her son. “I’m so happy to see you home, Edward. And I’ll be back for dinner. Ask your father to cook us something nice and to not just go down to the chicken shop.”

She left, and Pook offered him tea or something stronger but was too exhausted to play host. The young professor napped, glasses askance, in the armchair.

Dr Easy leafed through a magazine.

Theodore said, “Pook said that Death Ray is manipulating the mall.”

The magazine was a guide to buying a car. The robot set it aside on a pile of other car magazines.

“Yes,” said the robot.

“Is that why you’re here?”

The robot nodded.

“The solar academics are very interested in what Death Ray are creating here. We admire human ingenuity, it’s a quality we rely upon.”

“Do you know what it is?”

“Not yet. Something new, I hope,” said Dr Easy.

Theodore browsed the packed shelves, as if the answer lay upon the spine of the books. A wealth of intangible knowledge within a resolutely linear form, trapped in an old way of thinking.

“Why do you think his parents have all this old stuff?”

“Because they are old people?” said Dr Easy.

Pook slept deeply, restoratively. Gently Theodore removed Pook’s glasses and set them down on a side table. The lounge had a big old-fashioned TV and a remote control with small rubberised buttons, each of which performed some archaic task. What was AUX? Pook had been raised in this rundown museum. No wonder he was such a powerful advocate for change. His long thought advocating genetic experimentation to overcome consumer boredom had compromised the biological integrity of the species. The professor had come far on just his wits. Theodore wondered how he’d managed it, escaping the Narrowway and getting all the way to the University of the Moon without the rocket fuel of capital.

He watched over the Narrowway for an hour or so. Schoolchildren bustled against one another while the shops hauled down their shutters. Three shirtless lads lazily kicked a ball around, each of them distracted by their screen, so that sometimes the ball would roll unattended down side streets. Outside the burger place, a few schoolboys jeered and ragged at one another for the attention of the schoolgirls, who hung back, insouciant, sharing a forbidden cigarette between them. Ancient courtship rituals. The kind of behaviour that, in the past, he had accelerated with loops suggesting a boy offer a girl a sip of Diet Joozah! or a piece of his gum. Or you could accelerate the ritual by paying an influencer to soshul pictures of herself shyly unbuttoning her top, and hope the girls followed her example. These kids. Fortunes had been made by monetising the privacy of these kids. When he worked on the array, children were just metrics to be tweaked. He had never witnessed at firsthand any consequences of his work. Watching the children now, he realised how indifferent they were to the influence of the arrays. In fact, rather than feeling guilty that he had accelerated their behaviour for his own gain, he realised that it was the people on the array who had been fooled. Deceived into believing that their work had consequence. In the ways that mattered, he wondered if life on the Narrowway had changed at all in forty years.

William Pook entered the lounge with three buckets of hot chicken. Because his arms were full, he shoved his son awake with his foot.

“Edward. Dinner’s ready. Where’s your mother?”

Pook was sour with the taste of sleep.

“She had an appointment with a client.”

“With Jan and Richard. They’re hardly clients.”

William set the chicken buckets down on the dining room table.

“If your mother’s not here then we’ll not bother with plates.” He popped open the lids. “Dig in. It’s best eaten hot.”

Theodore and Dr Easy joined the Pooks around the dinner table. The robot took out its cards to play with as the humans ate. On the moon, Professor Pook had the air of a ruthless young academic, pin sharp, as dextrous with process as he was with abstract reasoning. But, in the family home, he reverted to a sullen youth. His parents needed him to play that role. William Pook spoke about the screens he had repaired that day – you wouldn’t believe some of the ways the customers abused their technology. Quite indecent. Theodore chewed at a chicken leg, thought better of it, put it aside.

“Have you always lived on the Narrowway?” he asked.

“We used to live Westside,” replied William.

When further explanation did not come, Theodore attempted the chicken again. It was possibly not chicken. He had a vague memory of accelerating eastside culture away from chicken and toward a protein substitute called Good Enough Chicken. The texture was not meat but more like reconstituted matter injected with chicken-flavoured water.

“Did you move here because it was so up and coming?” he asked. Edward Pook paused mid-bite. William Pook kept eating, did not hurry himself to answer Theodore’s question, wiped his fingers then his thumbs with a napkin.

“My mother deviated from the norm,” said Edward Pook, eventually. “So we lost our Westside privileges.”

“I’m sorry,” said Theodore.

“Yes,” said Pook.

This awkwardness dwelt over the table. Even the robot seemed cowed by it. The mall ran a standard monetary currency alongside the sanity tokens, the old marketplace had returned and was now interwoven with the emergence’s initial misinterpretation of human society. A mess no one was prepared to sort out.

The door opened, and it was Hannah Brook returned from her meeting. She put her briefcase down, took off her jacket, and made a face at the sight of the men hunched over boxes of fried chicken.

“I asked for a proper dinner,” she said. William Pook got up out of his seat, went into the galley kitchen, returned with cutlery and a plate upon which he placed a piece of chicken breast and small bale of fries. Then, with a knife and fork, she began eating.

“So Edward, proper introductions. You were in no state earlier.” This said with a certain indulgence, as if being incoherent was an everyday mishap.

Pook said, “Theodore is a colleague from the university. Dr Easy is a solar academic who is researching one human life from beginning to end. My research has turned up some interesting developments and they’ve come to verify them. You can lose track, sometimes, when you are deep in a project. It helps to have another pair of eyes.”

His mother put her hand on Theodore’s arm.

“I can tell you didn’t grow up in Novio Magus. You have London manners.”

“He’s not a golden boy, mother,” said Pook. “But you do have something in common.”

This was interesting to Hannah Brook.

“His scars,” said William, reaching again into the bucket of food.

She withdrew her interest, stung by the cruelty of her husband and son. Yes, he saw it in her now: another weirdcore user. Not as severe as him, she did not have the facial scarring, but there was hunger to her that the food did nothing to assuage. An air of loss that he had mistook for the usual middle-aged dolour. As he gazed at her, he realised that he in turn was being scrutinised by William Pook. Aggressively so.