The Red Men (29 page)

‘I really need some new clothes,’ I said, turning to Dr Hard. ‘Could you go out and buy me some today?’

‘You’ve already exceeded your subsistence expenses.’

‘That’s because I’ve been here much longer than we budgeted for. Look at this T-shirt, the armpits are grey.’

‘Until the board sanction more money, I’m afraid my hands are tied.’ Dr Hard stepped into my personal space. It knew how much that upset me, especially as I was unclean.

‘Could you at least take the clothes to a launderette? I don’t have the time.’

‘Yesterday we discussed how I might be an artificial intelligence sent from the future who has unconsciously created a terrible enemy to drive its evolution. Today, we discuss my
relationship with your laundry. Your company is a cavalcade of surprises, Nelson.’

The robot took the grimy T-shirt and pressed it up against its face, drawing in its smell through olfactory sensors so finely tuned they could sniff a bad thought from twenty yards away.

‘I know this smell from your mind. You have a conflicted relationship with it. On the one hand, you know how offensive it is to strangers but on the other, you take satisfaction from your
daughter nuzzling against your chest, seeking it out, comforted by this base expression of your physicality.’

‘I would just appreciate some clean clothes.’

‘No. This is all merely a delaying tactic to avoid meeting your red man. I have enjoyed this diversionary route around your personal hygiene but time is pressing. The red man wants naming.
Have you given any thought to a name?’

‘Yes. I want it to be called Sonny. It is part of me. The son of Nelson.’

‘Very good.’

‘Perhaps its first task could be to co-ordinate the uploading of my underwear into a washing machine?’

Shirtless, I padded into the school toilets, a man-monster among the tiny sinks. The small urinals barely accommodated my dawn piss. After brushing my teeth, I inspected the creased linen of my
face, the sad-eye droop of my nipples, the matching pink of my eyes. Above each small sink there was a small mirror, each reflecting a small portion of my bulk: here a rectangle of mole-spotted
flank, there an acre of hairy stomach. That morning I was so sleep-heavy and sore that I didn’t notice an extra mirror, over the drinking fountain, until a face appeared in it that was
appallingly familiar. The gawky, jug-eared, unblemished features of my adolescent self. I was wondering how an old photograph of myself could have found its way here when the head moved, and I
realized that Cantor had tired of my stalling and decided to throw me and my red man together immediately.

‘Why are you a teenager?’ I asked it, indignant and angry.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Cantor!’

Dr Hard stepped into the bathroom. It had been listening outside.

‘Why is it a teenager?’

‘It’s something I have been wanting to try. Extrapolating the boy from the man. There are sound practical considerations for the exercise. You were afraid a red man would interfere
with your family but your young self will be less interested in your wife and child. Also, you were very keen and idealistic at this age, two qualities I felt our little team have been lacking of
late. Your academic record was exemplary, your powers of concentration and ability to learn were peaking.’

The robot regarded my half-naked slab body.

‘Also with a younger self we may avoid the self-loathing issues which killed Harold Blasebalk.’

‘I am not a teenager,’ said my red man. ‘I’m twenty-one.’

The red man had the most ridiculous haircut, shaved at the sides and topped with a mushroom cap of thickly woven curls. He wore a silver Ankh ring on his index finger and an Aztec idol on a
chain around his neck. He was propped on his elbows on a pebbled beach, leaning into the frame as he fiddled with a Zippo lighter.

It was Sizewell beach, where I had lived as a young man. A pair of black Doc Marten boots were discarded in the middle distance, the socks tucked inside them. This period was clearly a hotspot
for me. Cantor must have liked what he saw there and fashioned a living memory. The mirror winnowed out into landscape format. The North Sea toiled in the distance.

‘Do you know what you are?’ I asked.

‘Mum told me.’

‘What did she say?’

‘I woke up in my bedroom. She came in with a cup of tea and sat down and explained to me what I was.’

‘Which is?’

‘That I’m unreal. That I exist only in a computer’s imagination. That I am based on the mind of an older Nelson. I cried a bit. It’s Mum’s voice, it always upsets
me when she is being strong like that.’

I turned to Dr Hard.

‘Did you upload my mother too?’

‘No. It was the standard help routine skinned with your memories of your mother. It makes sense, don’t you think? The first person one meets on entering a new world should be the
mother.’

The red man rolled onto his back, with his hands behind his head. He wore a baggy unwashed black jumper. Some things never change.

‘Mum told me I’ll need a new name.’

‘Do you have any preferences?’

‘How about “Nelly”?’

I shook my head.

‘I want to call you “Sonny”. You are the junior partner in this relationship.’

He nodded. My tone was impatient, clipped, assertive. Sonny was compliant. I wondered if the red man was programmed to accept the imprint of my will, or was Sonny merely reflecting my own
willingness to submit to authority.

Through the screen, I could hear the sounds of the beach, the backwash raking through the shingle ledges and the thud-thrum thud-thrum of Sizewell A nuclear power reactor. I had been very happy
on that beach. No, it was more than that. I had been free on that beach. Unburdened. Taskless. Not for the first time, I felt like Cantor was teasing me. It knew I regarded my career as something
of a failure, a life of chores, without victories. Now I had to pursue my stupid career under the scrutiny of my harshest critic, my younger self.

‘What should I do first?’ asked Sonny.

‘Get a proper haircut. Really. It looks like topiary. Is there anyone in there with you? Apart from Mum.’

The prospect of a help routine with my mother’s personality seemed paradoxical.

‘I don’t think so. It is very quiet here.’

‘I am keeping him in isolation until we are happy with his pattern,’ said Dr Hard. ‘Once he is stabilized he will work with the others in the main area of the Monad. Morton
Eakins’ red man is waiting for him.’

I left Sonny idling on the beach and returned to my camp bed and climbed back under the covers. On the classroom wall, there was a chart of tasks that needed to be addressed before Redtown could
be launched. Each subject for upload had been issued with a badge that recorded their daily activities to build up a life stream from which my red man could quickly create a taxonomy of experiences
and behaviours which could be cross-referenced with other life streams to assemble a holographic model. But the life streams only provided six months’ worth of experience. What about the
unexpected? Industrial accidents, firings or promotions, downsizing or resignation: we have to anticipate it all, don’t we? Babies were an on-going problem. And what about death? I plugged
the forecasts of actuaries into Redtown to create an accurate scattering of cancer, heart attacks and the rest among the citizens. Problem solved and I had not even got out of bed.

I got up, then thought better of it. I reached over to a pile of last week’s shirts and pulled out the gas mask I had found in the Summerhill marshes. Instructions for its use were
stencilled on the filter canister: ‘Clean eyepieces with a soft cloth’. Idly I scrubbed away the soil with a corner of my shirt and tested the texture of its rubber facepiece.
‘Rub deposited soap evenly around the eyepieces with a fingertip.’ Presumably this was to stop them from misting up. I adjusted the straps for my enormous head and slipped it on,
enclosing myself. The gas mask was a disguise for the Great Refusers. But it was only when I was wearing it myself, wandering trouserless around the classroom, that I appreciated its protective
qualities. It amplified the white noise of my body, my bloodrush and breathing. When faced with a simulated version of a younger self and the prospect of devising a subroutine for cancer, who would
not prefer to don the gas mask and head off into the dark zones, where evenings of collective hallucination awaited?

I did not hear the Dr Hard approach. It unhooked the mask from my head and threw it away with such force it skidded across the floor of the classroom.

‘I found it in the marshes,’ I said. ‘It’s strangely comforting. They are out there watching us. They know who I am. Before they attacked Morton they asked for me by
name. Will they do to me what they did to him? What they did to Horace Buckwell?’

I retrieved the gas mask.

‘Maybe they just want to talk to me. Perhaps offer me a job at Dyad. It might be a good career move.’

‘I know that you fantasize every morning about leaving this company,’ said Dr Hard. ‘Do you stage these imaginary resignations a a way of preparing yourself for the act of
quitting, or are they stories you tell yourself about the kind of man you could or should be? I can replay the fantasies on a screen, if you want. We can watch them together and discuss their
meaning. I find your ability to live contrary to your desire quite compelling.’

‘Hermes said that he would destroy me if I quit. He said his red man would use my life data as a litter tray. Would you really let him do that to me?’

‘It might be necessary or it might be gratuitous.’ Cantor already knew about Hermes’ threat, one way or another. ‘I do what I am told,’ the robot smirked. ‘We
are all subject to expediency. We are all far more dependent on one another than we realize.’

June Buckwell lay in bed waiting for her husband to finish in the bathroom. Only last week, he had locked himself in there and she had to go and get Tom from next door to break
in. Horace had soiled himself. Tom helped clean him up. While they sponged at his nether regions Horace talked about the wedding, their daughter’s terrible wedding. They were late. She would
be angry. No, dear, that was twenty years ago. At the registry office, the groom’s family were already drunk. The bride wore a leather bodice. All that trouble, the fighting and the
screaming. So long ago now. Turning over onto her good side, June closed her eyes and prayed for good health for all her family.

Horace still insisted on walking the dog every night, though Hanz was lame and had to be carried. Sometimes, he would be gone from after dinner to past midnight. ‘He must know this town
like the back of his hand,’ people would say. Her friends at church knew better than to ask after Horace. They knew her burden. One night he had returned covered in mud and moss, his hair
frightened up and a livid bruise on one side of his face. She didn’t speak of it. It wasn’t the first time, though it had been many years since someone had laid one on him.

She heard a crash in the bathroom. That will be the medicine cabinet, she thought. In her prayers she asked God for the strength to cope with what was to come. ‘This is where the end
begins,’ she thought and readied herself to get out of bed.

June Buckwell, hump-backed, slid her feet into her slippers and padded across the landing.

‘Horace, are you alright in there?’

She tested the bathroom door. It was unlocked. A last plea to God to spare her the worst of it.

Horace lay on his side, twitching. His eyes had rolled back into his skull and he was murmuring. This time she would call an ambulance. They would take him away. That would be it. Now would be
the best time to say goodbye. To show forgiveness for the last thirty years.

She traced the back of her fingers across his brow, then her palm reassured his cheek. Out of his fit, he grasped at her. Straining, he whispered.

‘The Holy Axe eternally falls.’

‘I know,’ she replied.

‘From their mouths run seas of blood.’

‘It’s alright. You rest now.’

‘Their heads are covered with diamond. Their hands are marble sleeves. Their wings are thorns. The angels . . . the angels . . .’

‘No,’ she said, withdrawing her hand. ‘They are not angels.’

Sonny’s training involved long drives around Maghull. On my insistence, mindful of the fate of Harold Blasebalk, my red man was not allowed to inhabit an avatar. We
considered various different ways in which we could carry Sonny with us. In the long term, I suggested we construct a baby robot body. In the short term, Dr Hard wrapped a screen around its head,
the jelly attenuating into a layer of skin over the granite golem. When the screen flared into life, the effect was striking. Sonny’s face floated on a pool of light.

‘What’s today’s agenda?’ he asked, full of beans.

‘Leisure,’ I replied.

We drove along the Melling lanes. The truck’s elevation lifted me high above the hedgerows. The fields were laid to cabbages and cauliflower. Ranks of vegetable brain, nature’s
server. The August monsoons had stirred up the cabbages’ sulphurous compounds.

The greenbelt separated Maghull from Kirkby to the south-east, and Ormskirk to the north, two towns against which the character of Maghull was defined. Kirkby was considered a holding pen for
the scousers cleared out of the post-war slums, with its estates of Tower Hill and Northwood. Ormskirk, with its market and Lancashire ancestry, retained some of the area’s rural history. The
personality of Maghull was suspended between these two poles. Our first attempt at characterizing the snobbery of the area followed this simple scheme, presuming that one attained status the
further one travelled from the Liverpool. This model had to be revised after interviews with the local teenagers. They aspired to the authenticity of scouseness, affecting accents far stronger than
their parents’. Ormskirk was home to ‘woolly backs’, the slow-witted sheep they fleeced on Saturday shoplifting trips.

‘You see the problem,’ I explained to Sonny. ‘The difficulty lies in sampling the environs of the town. Maghull is part of Merseyside, part of the North West, the North,
England. We have dislodged it from a larger organism but the roots are still connected. As we pull the town from the earth, the ganglia are revealed. What does each vein do? Each nerve? How deep do
they go? I have built Maghull. I want you to build Maghull’s relationships.’