Breathe (3 page)

Ben looks from one face to the next. ‘This is a joke, right?’

‘Don’t look at me,’ warns Meera, ‘I can’t even be seen talking to you. I’m on my last point.’

‘You could try wearing a skirt,’ Ben tells her. ‘I bet you’ve never even been to India. Why look for trouble?’

‘Jesus, it’s not like I’m asking you to commit a crime, Ben.’ Miranda throws the spoon down.

Ben is totally irritated by her attitude. She acts like she owns the place. ‘You told Felix something “weird” was going on, and now you think he was, like, silenced or something, and you don’t even know what he found out!’

‘Oh, we know what he found out.’

‘Well, what? Tell me!’

She looks at the others in a moment of silence. ‘Why don’t I show you?’

Miranda leads Ben across the open-plan office. You can hear the wind whistling around the corners of the building up here. They’re level with other workers in other buildings. It’s like looking into the other train when you’re waiting in a station. ‘This is as good a place as any to start.’

A crowd has gathered around one of the water coolers. Inside the plastic water tank, liquid is spinning in a wild whirlpool. ‘It happens the same time every day. You can set your watch by it.’

‘Electro-magnetic interference,’ Meera informs him with a nudge. ‘There’s too much in here. The more equipment we turn on, the weirder it gets.’

‘Show him the pigeons,’ suggests June.

Meera takes Ben to the corner of the floor, and points out through the great windows. There are dozens of dead pigeons lining the window ledges, lying on their backs with their feet in the air. Some have been cannibalised. They’re missing legs and eyes.

Ben presses his face against the cool glass. ‘Mass suicide?’

‘They get within a certain radius and keel over.’

‘Oh come on, Meera. You’re talking about some form of radiation?’

‘If it can kill a bunch of birds, what’s it doing to our brains? Computers are shielded, they shouldn’t cross-resonate, but what if the specs are wrong?’

‘I thought they had experts to check this kind of stuff.’

‘Yeah, that’s me. But equipment’s more complicated now. You’re living in a world where a pen comes with pages of instructions in a dozen languages. Even your after-shave has a web site. It doesn’t mean that anyone knows what they’re doing.’ Meera looks around to make sure the CCTV cameras can’t see them, then removes a panel from the wall. Inside, thousands of tiny red insects scurry over the cables. ‘Know what these are?’

Ben has never seen anything like it. They swarm onto the floor, miniscule creatures buzzing over and around his shoes. He takes a step backwards.

‘Computer mites. Every building in the city has them. Just not this many. Pest controllers came in and sprayed, but they were back the next week, bigger and stronger.’

‘Maybe the stuff contained steroids.’

‘You’re not taking this seriously, are you.’ Meera puts the panel back, shaking bangles up her arm.

‘Maybe you’re taking it too seriously. Bugs and birds? Give me a fucking break.’

June and Ben look down into the building’s vast central stairwell, a world of steel and concrete. A strong updraft ruffles their hair. June opens a pack of cigarettes and removes the silver foil from inside it. ‘We’re not even supposed to carry packets of cigarettes into the building,’ she says, screwing the foil up into a ball and dropping it into the stairwell. It falls, then spins and hovers on the air current.

‘Touch it.’

Ben gingerly touches the floating foil ball and gets an electric shock.

‘The air flow is all messed up. It’s like being in a funfair.’

In the corridor where they’re standing, the wind moans eerily up the elevator shafts. Girls walk past, and their dresses lift in the updraft, like on a carnival walk.

‘This is all bullshit; it’s bad design, not bad vibes. You want to see a building with real problems? Visit the block of flats in Hackney where my old man lives. I’m going back –’

‘Wait. You said you couldn’t access the health records. Then at least you should talk to some of the staff. It’s your job, Ben.’

‘Damn. I thought I was going to get by on my looks.’

‘You could start with Apela,’ June tells him.

‘Apela. Is that corporate jargon?’

‘No, that’s her first name. She’s over there.’

‘Okay, but if I’m not convinced, promise you’ll drop the whole thing?’

‘That’s up to Miranda,’ says June. She doesn’t explain why.

Apela Tamarak is Fitch’s PA. She moves her mobile phone closer to her computer, until it suddenly emits a piercing shriek. ‘Watch,’ she instructs Ben. The noise from the mobile subsides into an old pop song. It sounds like an early Manfred Mann hit, then there’s a station ident from Radio Caroline.

‘It keeps picking up old pirate radio shows from the sixties. How is that possible?’

They listen to the long-forgotten voices of the Radio Caroline DJs for a minute. Apela is enjoying the show.
Maybe she’s nuts as well
, thinks Ben. He resolves to talk to some other staffers.

‘I get these red dots before my eyes whenever I stare too long at the company screensaver,’ says Alison, Clarke’s PA. ‘Then I pass out. Watch.’

Alison’s head drops forward. She’s out cold with her face on the desk. She opens one eye. ‘Sometimes I pass out right on the keyboard. It leaves marks, you know?’

When she sits up, all her hair is standing on end.

Jake in Invoicing is more embarrassed about talking, but Ben is good with people. Finally he opens up. They’re standing over a toilet in the men’s room, staring into it. Jake grabs the handle and flushes.

‘It flushes back to front,’ Jake explains. ‘The water goes down the hole anti-clockwise. It’s only supposed to do that in Australia, isn’t it?’

Harry, the mailboy, is happy to talk to anyone, particularly if they want to discuss shows on the Sci-Fi Channel. He points to some scratch-marks along the wall. ‘There’s, like, all this tiny grafitti everywhere. Check it out. Triple sixes, man. The mark of the beast. The ghost in the machine. Messages from another place. Warnings? Could be.’ He shakes his head sadly. His hair wants washing. ‘I get these weird headaches when I see them. Like something’s trying to take control of my brain.’

‘Do you smoke a lot of dope?’ asks Ben.

Jake is puzzled. ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

Ben looks at his chaotic notes. None of them makes any sense. He studies the building blueprint, and reads the brochures. Words jump out: STATE OF THE ART – UNIQUE STRUCTURE – TWENTY NINE FLOORS OF NEW TECHNOLOGY

–
TWENTY NINE FLOORS –

He cross-references the blueprint. Then he’s walking through the building’s lobby to a map of the floors. He has a readout of the building’s blueprint in his hand. He looks at the map and counts the levels, running his finger up the panel. Twenty-nine. The blueprint says there are thirty.

He returns to his workstation, feeling beaten. As Miranda passes, he stops her. He has the feeling that he’s getting involved, despite himself. He points out the notes he has taken.

‘Buildings don’t make people behave strangely,’ he reasons, ‘other people do. You really think there’s something wrong with the place, or is this some new kind of urban myth?’

Miranda pulls a pen from behind her ear, displays it to Ben and places it halfway up the wall, where it stays. ‘You tell me. Should it do that?’

They stand there looking at the pen as it starts to spin.

Ben decides to have a quiet word with Meera. ‘Don’t get me wrong,’ he begins, ‘I don’t buy into any of this –’

Meera raises a pencilled eyebrow. ‘But?’

‘Okay, I went outside the building and counted the windows. There are meant to be twenty nine floors, but I counted thirty. Where’s the extra floor, Meera?’

‘Ah, now that’s the big secret isn’t it.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning, first of all, that they didn’t build a thirteenth floor. What you have here is a shrine to rationality built by irrational people. There are two floor twelves. Also, when I first joined, I went through the cabling with a fine-tooth comb and came up against a blank. I mean a real blank: a room that cables come in and out of, but nobody seems to know what’s in there. Room 3014 … but it’s on the thirtieth floor. A floor that doesn’t officially exist. But I’ve been up there. The door’s always locked. Suppose it contains some kind of weird technology we’re not allowed to know about? It’s just sitting there, right above our heads.’

Suddenly they hear a rhythmic thumping noise and look up to see Clarke heading their way. Clarke stops by Meera’s desk. Sweating and annoyed, the supervisor studies Ben as if he is some kind of peculiar biological anomaly. ‘Mr Harper. Step into my office, would you?’

Clarke offers Ben a seat. The supervisor paces back and forth past his son’s sports trophies. Clarke’s elevated boot makes his clumping gait lop-sided. He is unpredictable when he’s like this.

‘I want you to know I was against your appointment here. But the law is on your side. You’re here to fill a European requirement. You’re a legal statistic.’

Ben shifts uncomfortably. ‘I know it’s only my first day, but it seems to me that people are experiencing low-level symptoms of illness, and they apparently think the building is at fault.’

‘If someone comes to you with a problem, you report it to me. Just stick to your job description and we’ll get along fine. Don’t give me bad news. I want solid factual evidence, not your vague opinions.’

Ben is already having a crisis of conscience. He wants to fit in, but he hates dishonesty. ‘You expect me to falsify my findings?’ That isn’t what he meant to ask, but it’s out now.

Clarke’s eyes bulge unpleasantly as he looms close. He’s been eating onions, and there’s an under-scent of lard. ‘Listen, you little prick, you stick to being a keyboard-monkey or I’ll leave you twisting in the fucking wind. How clear is that?’

‘Pretty clear. I’m just trying to do my job. I don’t want to get the boot.’
That didn’t go so well
, he thinks, not daring to look back as he leaves the office, mentally biting his fist.

A building like SymaxCorp is analogous to the backstage area of a theatre set. In the same way that Disneyland’s miles of service corridors are not seen by the public, SymaxCorp’s basement remains hidden from view. Beneath the lobby, spotlights reach off into the distance. Two servicewear-co-ordinated workmen study them.

‘What are we looking for?’ asks Tony Cox, not because he’s interested but because it’s nearly time to go home and he’s starving.

‘Damage from a power surge,’ Ray Sturgiss, his supervisor, tells him. ‘It came up on the board. I don’t see any.’

‘How do they keep everything so clean down here? You could eat off the fucking floor.’ Tony snaps his gum and blows a bubble.

‘Suction system removes all the dust. Howard’s the only janitor for the whole building. One day, all places will be like this.’

‘The hippy bloke? He never does any fucking work.’

As the workmen watch, the lights go out all the way along the corridor.

‘Shit. That’s a big one.’ Ray looks up nervously. They descend and try the switches, but nothing happens. They flick on torches, illuminating a path. ‘I don’t understand. The system is brand new. There’s nothing to go wrong.’

‘Then where are the lights?’ asks Tony.

‘It must have damaged the sub-station.’ They stop before a tall steel box, the door of which is raised. ‘This shouldn’t be open. It’s hyper-sensitive equipment. It must have unsealed when the electrics crashed.’

Tony peers in. ‘So what do we do?’

‘Trip the relay from the mains after I’ve checked this.’

‘Can you smell that? Something burning.’ Tony sniffs the air.

‘I’ve got no sense of smell, mate.’ Ray rolls up his sleeves and reaches in to the rerouters. ‘Was a time when they’d employ a bloke with a broom to keep a place clean. Now even a sweeper needs a fucking degree in electronics to figure out. Give me some light here. Tony? Coxie?’ He looks around. Tony seems to have vanished. Suddenly, the lights come back on all the way along the corridor.

Relays trip. Electricity arcs. Machinery moves. The hum of new air starts up. Ray still has his hand inside the sub-station as the lid is reactivated and starts to close. There’s no way he can get his hand out in time. He struggles, but the heavy steel lid is still coming down on his fingers.

‘Coxie! Coxie! Shut it back off!’ The metal sheet closes on his hand, crushing then snipping off his last two fingers at the first joint. Ray’s agonised cries echo along the corridor, but his hand is free and the shield is back in place. The system’s designed to do that, after all.

The built-up boot. You hear it coming from the other end of the corridor. You get to recognise the loping walk. Clarke clumps to the front of the seated workers and barks at them.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he looks from one expectant face to the next, ‘this Friday, SymaxCorp presents its office systems via the top floor satellite link to the New York Board Of Commerce. This will be the most important presentation in the company’s history. The later you stay, the harder you work, the more likely you’ll be to win promotion over your colleagues. Don’t trust them, because they won’t be trusting you. This isn’t a business. It’s a war that we intend to win. Get a good night’s sleep. You have a very tough week ahead of you.’

Ben and Miranda are seated near the back, like kids who talk in class. They eye each other with some suspicion. ‘He should have been in the military,’ says Ben.

‘He
was
,’ Miranda tells him. ‘Desk job. The boot. But you never lose the discipline.’

Clarke is watching them.

3. TUESDAY

The building glints blackly beneath gathering storm clouds. Sometimes movement can be glimpsed within; it looks as though a great creature is shifting. The darkest part of the sky is touching the SymaxCorp roof. On the twentieth floor, Ben dons a headset and runs the SymaxCorp DVD he has been given. He finds himself watching more streams and woodland scenes. ‘SymaxCorp creates integrated electronic office environments to suit any size of business …’ says a wholly insincere voice.