FOURTEEN

YOU NOW HAVE TWENTY-SEVEN CHOICES.

Why is it different from before? At least I’m in the same place, on the same deserted street, looking at the same signs. All but one of them are still in the language I can’t read. One is now illuminated and readable. Mouse 1 is what it says. I really must be going mad. But in here, in the Troposphere, going mad doesn’t seem like something that should worry me. Like the fear I had last time – the fear that didn’t feel like fear – the worry is there but it doesn’t feel like anything. There’s no quickened heartbeat; no sweat. I’m watching myself in a film again. I’m playing myself in a video game. So I’ve got twenty-seven choices. I still don’t know what that means. And to be honest, I’d be happy just staying out here on this nowhere road, feeling this blissed-out nothing. Could I be happy not knowing? No. I have to find out how this thing works. What is the Troposphere? The blurred console is like a translucent map over my vision, showing me which places are ‘live’: which places I can enter. At least, that’s what it seemed to mean last time. Last time the closest place I could enter was the apartment now marked with the Mouse 1 sign. Now one of the shops just a few doors down the street seems to be highlighted. It’s a little music shop with a piano in the window. In my mind I ask the console to close and it flickers out of my sight. Now I can look at the shop properly. There’s the piano: a small black upright thing with sheet music propped up on the holder. I look more closely and see that the title is in German. The sign on the door is also German: Offen. I open the door and a small bell tinkles. I expect to see the inside of the shop but, of course, I don’t.

You now have one choice.

You . . . I’m now someone else: someone human and male. I’m sitting in a café, waiting. I don’t need to translate this person’s thoughts: it’s a strange sensation, actually being someone else, but that’s how it now seems. It’s certainly easier than being a mouse, or a cat. I can . . . I can speak German. I’m even thinking in German. I know how to read music. I . . . OK, Ariel, just go with it.

So I’m sitting in a café looking at the dregs in a white cup smeared with old grey cappuccino froth, and I’m pissed off, but that’s nothing new. How could he do this to me again? Again. The word makes me want to weep. I can feel it on my skin, in my cheeks and running down my chest: little bugs of failure crawling on me, and they’re all repeating that word: again. He said it would be soon. Now it looks like never. It must be because of something I didn’t say. It must be because of something I didn’t do. The idea that this would have happened anyway is too repellent. It must be this shirt. He said he liked the blue one, so why am I wearing this red piece of crap?

At this point the waitress comes over and, just as Lumas suggested, a faint outline of another shop appears over her body, and I realise I could step into that doorway instead of remaining ‘here’ – whatever, in this context, is ‘here’. Shall I try that? What about when Mr Y did it and got bounced back onto the Troposphere? I try to call up the console, but it doesn’t come. I’m not trying anything without that to guide me.

I call it again.

It doesn’t come.

At least I spent fifteen more minutes with him. But what’s fifteen more minutes of memories against a lifetime of being together? The future I should have had. I should have said that to him. I know he wants this as much as I do, but he’s a coward after all. Maybe I should have said that. Robert, you’re a coward. Maybe I’m the coward. I couldn’t say something like that to him. Imagine his face if I said something like that. He’d storm out. He’d say I’d crossed the line. Stupid English expressions. Crossed the line. What line? Where? Oh, yes. The line that you drew between me and everything I want to say and be. The line between ‘normal’ life and the other one, the other choice. You could have crossed that line. You promised to cross that line. You promised me. You promised me. You promised me. And I’ve been so gentle with you over these last few weeks, talking when you needed to talk, kissing away your tears when I actually wanted to be sucking your dick. I’ve done everything you wanted.

I see him walking in an hour ago, already ten minutes late, as if I didn’t have anything else better to do (but I haven’t, Robert: the only thing I want to do is be in love with you).

‘I couldn’t get away,’ he said. ‘The kids were creating.’

Another stupid English word. Creating what? Shit? Works of art? Both?

His kids. They’re across some other line altogether. But I’ve pretended to be interested in them for long enough. All right. Well, I was sort of interested. I imagined weekends with them at some point in the future, when Whatshername had gotten over everything. Trips to the park. Big ice creams. It didn’t exactly compute, but I could have programmed myself to do it. I would have done that for you, Robert.

The table in front of me is a little piece of art in itself. What would you call it? After a Small Treachery. I like that. The Dregs of Betrayal. Two cups, two saucers, one man. You’d look at this and you’d know that two people were here a while ago, but one has gone. One has a meeting, an arrangement, a life. The other is me and I have nothing in the world apart from this coffee cup. Perhaps you even saw him leave, the one with the thinning hair and the black jeans. An hour ago he was walking in and there was nothing on this table apart from the red-and-white checked plastic tablecloth, a laminated menu and a pepper pot (but no salt). He made his excuse and sat down, and I could see him shaking.

‘Coffee?’ I said. And I wanted to slap him, this shaking mess. I wanted to tell him to be a man. If I wanted to fuck girls for the rest of my life I wouldn’t be doing this, would I?

A waitress came. They all speak French here, or at least they affect convincing French accents, so he said ‘Café au lait’ in a stupid English-French accent, and then added, ‘Merci.’

What an idiot. And now? Now I want to piss on his face. I want to drown him in my shit. I want to take pictures of him drowning in my shit and send them to his girlfriend. I want to write a concerto all about him drowning in my shit and play it at his funeral, and out of a permanent speaker system at his grave, so all his relatives will have to listen to it for ever.

But I was still hopeful when he looked at me across the table.

‘How have you been?’ he asked me, as if I had cancer.

(You’re the cancer, Robert, you miserable little tumour. You’ve given me cancer of the heart.)

‘How do you expect?’ I said.

I think what I meant to say was: ‘Fine. Great. My life is full of pink balloons.’

Well, that’s more attractive, isn’t it?

He lit a cigarette with shaking hands. I taught him to smoke, of course. I taught him to smoke, and I taught him how to drink, and I taught him how to fuck me. I showed him what I’d suspected: that two men are more powerful than the cancelled-out yin-yang of cock-and-cunt. We discovered it together: the beauty of the male body. Don’t you remember, Robert? I even bought you a reproduction of Donatello’s David when I could hardly afford food. In return you bought me a bust of Alexander the Great.

And you said you’d move in with me.

Sitting at the table just over an hour ago, he didn’t look like someone who was about to leave his wife and move in with me. On the other hand – I suppose he would be upset if he had just left his girlfriend (they’re not married, despite the two kids). Maybe that’s it, I thought. Maybe he’s upset because he’s told her and he’s going to have to come back to my flat tonight and I’ll give him vodka for the shock and suck his cock so hard that he’ll never leave me again. I just wanted the chance to convince him it should be me. I see Robert as a fish with the hook still in his mouth. If she tugs it, he goes back: I know that for sure now.

Robert’s sitting there with the cigarette, frozen in time. My mind won’t play this memory like a film: it pulls me around like an Alsatian, making me go here and there . . . And now I’m thinking I should write a guidebook for others in my situation. Or . . . Yes. A Web site. I could send her the link, just so she knows.

Howtotakeitupthearse.com Probably exists. And that’s not what I want, anyway.

Robertisabastard.com Not general enough.

Whenstraightmenpromisetogogayandthendonot.com He sipped his coffee. I was facing the door; I’d placed myself there like a little welcome mat (another fucking stupid English invention) waiting for him to wipe his feet on me. So he sat there sipping his coffee, looking beyond me to the wall, covered in postcards from Paris, and I just watched people leave like bacteria looking for a new host to infect. No one new comes in at this time of day; it’s as though the place has taken an antibiotic.

‘Are you OK?’ Robert asked me.

‘I’m confused.’

Last night he was due to come over to my flat to celebrate the beginning of our new life together. I’d finished my relationship with Catherine, and all that remained was for him to leave his girlfriend. He didn’t come. Instead he phoned me at midnight and in a stupid whisper said that everything was too complicated and that he’d meet me here tomorrow. I said I’d bought flowers. He said he had to go. I suggested coming to my place rather than here – after all, this place is virtually next door to my flat. He said it wasn’t a good idea.

So there we both were. And I knew he hadn’t done it.

‘You haven’t told her,’ I said.

He was still shaking. ‘I did tell her,’ he said. ‘I did it last night.’

‘Oh, my God,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know. Sorry. Shit. Are you all right?’

I leaned across the table to touch his arm. Obviously he was now forgiven. He had done it. He had told her. Well, that was what I’d wanted. Actually it was what we’d both wanted. But where did he go last night? Just as I started wondering about that, he moved his arm away from my hand.

‘Don’t.’

‘Robert?’

‘I told her. I told her I was leaving her.’

‘But that’s good, isn’t it? Unless . . . Well, obviously you will be upset, but I can help you with that. It’s all going to be all right now.’

‘I’m so sorry, Wolfgang. I’ve changed my mind.’

Microwave my fucking soul, why don’t you?

‘I told her. I said, “I’m leaving you”, and she said, “No you’re not.” Just like that. She knew something had been going on. She’s not stupid. We’re . . . Oh, God, I don’t even know where I am, I’m so tired.’

‘We’re what?’ I said. ‘What were you going to say just then? “We’re . . .”’

‘We’re going to have another go.’

This idiot makes a relationship sound like a children’s spinning top. Oh, I’m just going to have another go! But I didn’t say anything, and so he just went on and on talking about how he thought he was gay, perhaps, or at least bisexual, but now he wasn’t sure. He said he thought he was probably bisexual, but that really meant that he could stay with his girlfriend and, after all, they did have two kids and she was right when she said that he should think of them rather than just following his cock.

Console!

Console?

Console?

Shit. I’ve got to get out of here. I had no idea that this is Wolf ’s mind, although I suppose I could have read the fucking clues. Oh, God. Oh, God. I can’t believe I’m intruding on his life like this. I shouldn’t know any of this. I had no idea. Oh, Wolf . . . I’m so sorry. Where’s the waitress gone now? I can’t look around, unfortunately: all I can see is what Wolf sees, and he’s just looking at the table. No doors. No milky images.

Console?

But it doesn’t come. I’m stuck.

Now he’s getting up to leave the café. But he’s still not looking at anyone.

And I recognise the way he feels. It would be what, seventeen years ago now . . . Christ, that makes me feel old. I was in love, totally, innocently, in love, for the first and only time, with a guy who was doing a degree in town when I was doing my GCSEs.

He had dark shoulder-length hair and drove a little blue Mini. Just seeing it parked in the university car park would give me a little buzzing thrill, like touching the heart of the fake guy (or the guy-shaped hole) in that Operation game. Then he dumped me because I was too young, and I spent a year or so semi-stalking him (including once leaving an amusingly shaped cactus on his front doorstep) before I decided to just give up on love altogether.

Wolf ’s not doing any stalking, though. Wolf ’s going to get drunk. We’re going to get drunk . . .

I’m going to get drunk.

It has started to snow. The bacteria-people on the pavement crush the flakes into instant slurry; it’s exactly the consistency of the lemon-ice drinks Heike’s mother used to make for us when we came back in the afternoons in our Pioneer uniforms. But the stuff on the pavement is dirty and brown. And that’s it: life expressed in one moment. You start with pure crushed-ice lemon drink and you end up with a shitty mess. This is what you become. And I know where I’m going now, so I walk through the brown sludge on autopilot, not crying. I’m not crying yet.

But it will be OK. If you drink enough bourbon, your humanity starts to melt away. By three o’clock this morning, I won’t care. Perhaps in an hour I’ll be anaesthetised enough to stop thinking about when I am going to cry. There’s an icy wind along with the weak snow, but I can’t be bothered to do up the buttons on my coat. I think I left my scarf behind at the café. Good. Maybe I’ll freeze to death. Picture me frozen to death in the park, brokenhearted on a bench. Robert will read about it in the local paper and . . . Here’s a sadder picture. I die as before on a park bench, etc., and the fucker doesn’t even read about me. I could die and no one would notice. My neighbour Ariel might notice after a few days. Catherine won’t care now, though. She didn’t say anything after I ended our relationship. She didn’t even cry. She didn’t tell me I’d made a mistake. She didn’t implore me to stop thinking about men. This almost makes me go straight to the park and undo all the buttons on my hateful red shirt, but, despite what I tell everyone, I’m no suicide.

There’s some business guy walking towards me, holding a newspaper over his head to stop the snowflakes touching his bald patch. Hey, idiot! Have you ever sucked someone’s cock? I have.

Then again, it’s more common than people think. He’s probably done it, too.

(A door hovers over the man, but I hesitate; then Wolf looks away and it’s gone.)

I want something to hurt. I want physical pain, not this mental shit. This would be an excellent time to go to the dentist. Hello, Herr Doktor. Do whatever you want . . .

I could headbutt a lamppost. I could try to find some queer-bashing football hooligan to kick me in the head while I lie on the ground in the recovery and/or foetal position. I’m walking towards the Westgate Tower, the tight arsehole at the centre of this city. I used that description once, and whoever I was talking to was shocked. ‘But have you never watched a bus try to squeeze through it?’ I said. ‘They all look like they need lubricant.’ Ha. If I want to get in a fight, I’m on the wrong side of town. I could go back towards home and then hang around near the kebab shop and wait for a gang of ‘youths’. What would I do? All I’d have to do is stare at one of them. I wouldn’t even need to call him a poof. You know who I really want to get beaten up by? I want to get fucked-up by faggots who’ll fist you afterwards. I want something to hurt more than this hurts.

Console?

Console?

Still nothing. And all Wolf ’s looking at is the pavement.

We walk onwards, towards St Dunstan’s. Eventually we come to a door I’ve never noticed before. Well, I’ve simultaneously never noticed it and at the same time I realise I come here quite often. It leads downstairs to an underground wine bar. And I sit there until closing time, drinking Jack Daniel’s, eyeing up every guy who walks past me. I think that one of them will react. One of them will want to fight me or fuck me, but I might as well be invisible. Maybe I am. Maybe I’m invisible. At last orders I go up to the bar for three more drinks.

‘Am I visible?’ I say to the bartender. ‘Can you see me?’

The wankers throw me out. And I’m not drunk enough yet. I go to the hotel.

The manager tonight is this ex-bouncer called Wesley.

‘Hey – you’re not on tonight,’ he says to me.

‘Drink,’ I say. ‘I only want a drink.’

My insides are volcano-hot. I need to do something about it. I think about explaining this to Wesley, but he simply says, ‘OK. Just a couple, though, mate.’

Melissa’s playing the piano tonight. I sit in the booth right next to it and eyeball her enough to make her play three wrong notes in a bar. Well, I think they were wrong. The whole world seems the wrong way up now. Why am I here? Oh, yes. That bastard Robert. Perhaps when I get home he’ll be waiting there for me with a little suitcase, dabbing at his eyes with a balled-up handkerchief.

In my dreams. Or, as Ariel says, in another universe – maybe the one in which I am also rich. That’s the other thing: after tonight I will be so broke. I wonder if she’ll lend me money? No. Didn’t she say that she spent it all on that book? Could I steal the book? She said it was one of the rarest books in the world . . . What would I do? Go in there for a drink before bed and leave the door on the catch as I leave. Then I could go back in and . . .

You bastard, Wolfgang. You’re her friend.

The piano’s so shiny it looks as if it might just walk out of here on its four legs. Am I going to throw up? Steady, steady. I’ll go for a piss. That’ll help.

I’m on my own in the fluorescent toilets, pissing into the ceramic urinal, when this guy walks in. He’d probably look more attractive in a photo-fit than in real life. Maybe he is a photo-fit. His huge eyebrows don’t seem to go with his tiny slug-pellet eyes. Or maybe it’s the nose that seems slapped on, or as if someone just punched him. He comes and stands next to me and takes his cock out, but he doesn’t start to piss. He glances at me; down at my cock, and then up to my eyes. I look at his cock. He looks at my cock again. Is this some sort of secret code? Before I know what’s happening, we’re in one of the cubicles. I’m down on my knees on the slimy, tiled floor as he fucks the inside of my mouth. All I can taste is cold piss.

When it’s over he calls me a bitch, and then leaves. I think of

Donatello’s David again, and that’s when I cry, after I’ve thrown up in the toilet behind me: Jack Daniel’s laced with sperm and only the memory of coffee. Women are easier than this. I’ll find a woman who will help me. I’ll . . . Oh, God. I don’t ever feel like having sex again in my life. But you can’t get anything without sex, or the promise of sex (unless I’ve got that wrong and I actually mean violence, but I’m a little drunk). Maybe I’ll try hanging myself, at least for some sympathy. Is it easy to get it wrong?

The next few minutes are confusing. Wesley – I’m sure it is him – comes in just as I’m unbolting the cubicle. He drags me down the corridor into the kitchen, where I manage to put my elbow in an ice-cream tub full of prawn cocktail before he presses my face down onto the stainless steel counter.

‘Don’t you ever do that in my fucking hotel again, you fucking faggot,’ Wesley says. I genuinely have no idea what he’s talking about. I don’t think he’s firing me. I think this is the equivalent of the first formal warning. Something hurts: my arm behind my back. ‘Fight back, pussy,’ he says, jerking me backwards by the collar.

I laugh, forgetting pussy in this context does not mean ‘cute cat’.

‘Are you laughing at me?’

I spin, see a fist, and then everything goes black.

Console?

Nothing.

On the way home I try to get run over. I even walk through the Westgate Tower, on the road, muttering ‘Arsehole, arsehole’, but the traffic just slows behind me, as though this is a funeral procession rather than just a drunk who needs a kicking. In the park I try abusing a couple of kids on a bench, but they just look upset and run away. I think I might have forgotten where I live, but then I’m there, and there’s my bicycle.

I spit on the ground twice before walking in. Two guys in a black car give me dirty looks before driving off and parking around the corner. Maybe they’re going to get out and come and beat me up. Do I still want that? But nothing happens: it just looks as if they’ve gone to sleep.

Sleep. That’s quite a good idea. Maybe I’ll just go to sleep and not wake up. I wonder if Ariel has sleeping pills? Unlikely. Shall I go and see her now? Am I in a state? Objectively, would I seem ‘a state’ if I were to knock on someone’s door now? Actually, I don’t think I’ve got the energy to even get up the stairs. It looks quite comfortable on the concrete. I think I’ll just . . .

‘Oh. Um . . . I’m sorry.’

Who said that? Oh . . . Some guy is walking down the stairs. Wow! Check out the cheekbones. But – ouch. He’s all bruised. Has Ariel been to bed with him? I’d go to bed with him, if I were her. He looks like she would, if she were a tall man with dark hair. It’s a man-Ariel, a he-Ariel. Why is he here? Is he actually Ariel in disguise? Why would she be in disguise and putting on a different accent? He’s sorry. He’s sorry because I’m just settling down to sleep where he wants to put his feet. I don’t understand what’s going on. This is too complicated. I think I’ll just go home to bed.

‘Excusez-moi,’ I say, in French, to fool him. I start to get up.

‘Do you need a hand?’ he says.

‘Nein, danke.’

Yeah. I’m multilingual. Now, that’s funny.

(My mind isn’t in a much better state than Wolf ’s and it’s as if the drink has affected me, too. But I’m still thinking Adam. What’s Adam doing here?)

‘Are you Ariel’s neighbour?’

‘Si,’ I say, laughing. ‘Ja.’

He runs a hand through his messy hair and sighs.

‘I have to find her.’

‘She lives up . . . In the clouds.’ I meant to say ‘upstairs’. This is so funny.

‘I know where she lives. She’s not answering the door.’

‘She’s out . . . With the bastards . . . With the wank, work . . .’

‘With the what?’

‘Dinner. With people from the office. Or was that yesterday? I’m sorry . . . I’m a little drunk. You see, something queer and most tragic occurred this evening and . . .’

‘Look, I’m sorry, mate. If you can’t help me, then don’t. But don’t waste my fucking time, OK? This is pretty serious. Her life is in danger, if that means anything to you.’

‘Danger? From a cock?’

‘What? For fuck’s sake, pull yourself together.’

‘Danger. Danger! Ariel’s in danger? We must help her. Where are the grenades?’

‘Oh, never mind.’

‘I’m sorry I’m like this. Please, let me help. She’s my friend, you know.’

The other man sighs. ‘There are two men, all right? One is wearing a black suit and one is wearing a grey suit. They both have fair hair, like yours, or a bit lighter. One of them has a little goatee beard.’ This guy’s gesticulating at me as if he could conjure up these men by drawing them in the air. ‘I think they’re driving a black saloon. Have you seen them?’

‘Who? Are they here? No. I don’t know. There’s a black car . . .’

‘Where?’

‘What?’

‘You said something about a black car.’

‘Did I? I’m sorry. I can’t remember.’

‘Look, I think these men have guns. They’re very dangerous. They’ve been to a bookshop and got information about Ariel. She bought a book that they want – that’s as much as I’ve been able to work out.’

‘Oh, that. Well, Ariel won’t sell the book. Never.’

‘What book is it?’

Don’t tell him, Wolf. Don’t tell him.

‘It’s a . . . Oh. There’s a voice in my head saying I can’t tell you.’

‘What is the book?’

I shake my head. ‘No. Sorry. Herr Doktor’s orders.’

I can’t understand all the voices in my head. One’s telling me not to explain but another one’s telling me that I should go and get the book now. And – ouch – not even sell it myself, but give it to the nice man when he asks for it . . .

A doorway, kind of churchy, flickers around Adam’s body. ‘Switch!’ I command. ‘Switch!’ I have to find out what’s been going on. I start to blur, just as I have done before, but instead of blurring into Adam’s head I seem to be falling, but not downwards. Before I can work out what’s happening, or how it’s possible to fall in a direction other than down, I land just outside the music shop. I’m back in the Troposphere, lying on the tarmac, looking up at the flickering neon signs and a black, starless sky. It’s as if someone’s switched everything off: the throbbing of Wolf ’s head, the smell of damp in the concrete passageway, the cold, the traffic sounds from the street outside the flats. As before, it’s almost completely silent in the Troposphere. There are no noises at all: no birds, no traffic, no people. The only sound I’ve ever heard in the Troposphere is the sound of my own footsteps. Did the lifts make a sound? I can’t even remember.

I have to get out of here now and find Adam.

Why would men with guns be looking for the book? I don’t know Adam very well, but it was clear that he believed what he was saying and that he was trying to help me. Has he led the men to me – the men in the car? Or am I somehow dreaming all this? I’m bothered by what Adam said about the girl in the bookshop. He obviously didn’t know what had happened, or why, but I can work it out. It’s logical: if you want The End of Mr Y, you keep searching for it; I know that. These guys must have Googled it and found an intriguing new link – a girl saying she sold it in a secondhand bookshop. So they find the shop, go there, and ask her about whom she sold it to. She remembers nothing, I’m guessing, except that I’m a young woman doing a PhD at the university. So what happens next? The men go on the university Web site and search for ‘Lumas’. And they find it there under my research interests on the ‘Staff ’ pages. And they realise I’m the one who bought the book. So they come looking for me . . . And I’m not hard to find. No one based in a university is hard to find. You could come at it from all sorts of different angles, and there I’d be: Ariel Manto – my alias, my pen name, the name I gave myself when I was only eighteen and I didn’t want to be me any more. Ariel Manto. Research interests: Derrida, Science and Literature, Thomas E. Lumas.

The Ariel part is real at least. And yes, it was the poetry, not the play.

The syrupy stillness of the Troposphere won’t let me panic, so I calmly get up off the pavement and turn towards the exit, part of me just wanting to just stay here, where they can’t get me. A city all to myself seems better than men with guns. But then I think of myself as I must be in the real world, so zonked out on my sofa that I can’t even hear the door. Come on, Ariel. Get out and run. Talk to Adam and do whatever you have to do, but if there are men with guns involved, you’d better run. Get out and run. Get out and run. Get out and . . .

There’s a tinkling behind me.

And a creaking: a long, high-pitched arc of a sound. I turn around. This is all wrong. I should be on my own in here. I should be . . .

It’s a door. It’s a door opening. The door to the music shop. Oh, fuck. And one – no, two – two men are coming out, walking into the Troposphere like aliens walking off a spaceship. They’re just as Adam described: one man in a grey suit and one in black. They both have blond hair. But there’s something slightly cartoonish about them. As if they’ve been chroma-keyed onto the background. They’ve got – huh? – children with them as well. Two young boys, both with the same blond hair as the men, perhaps lighter.

‘There she is,’ says one of the men, the grey suit, his mouth not quite moving at the same time that his words come out. ‘She’s already figured out how to get in.’

American accent. Shit. Can I run, and lose them in the alleyways? Something tells me this isn’t a good course of action.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ says the other one. ‘We can deal with this one fairly easily.’ Then he says to me: ‘Get out of the way. Come on. This isn’t anything to worry about. We’re just going to let the kids fuck you up a bit; find out where you put the book. It won’t hurt while they’re doing it.’

The kids dance forwards like two marionettes. Their skin is the refrigerator-pink of raw meat. One is dressed in a cowboy suit; the other is wearing a blue cape.

‘Let us in,’ sing-songs one of them, like he’s an extra in a Dickens adaptation.

‘We want to play,’ says the other one.

They both have sarcastic eyes, so pale they’re almost white.

‘Get out of the way,’ says the black suit again. ‘Let the kids have their fun.’

Get out of the way? I don’t think so. But I don’t want these freaks – the men or the kids – near me, either. I’m walking backwards as all four of them walk towards me. I stumble over something: I think it’s one of the stand-up signs from outside one of the shops, but it actually turns out to be a rack of newspapers and postcards. I find my balance again quickly and kick the rack into their path. The children see it and jump over it. But the men don’t seem to see what I’ve done.

‘Whatever you think you’re doing,’ the grey one says, ‘it’s over. Come on. Move now. We just need to get past. Ouch! Shit, what the hell’s that? Come on. You’re just going to make it all worse. It doesn’t have to be difficult, you know.’

They want to get into my mind . . . ? How? Think, Ariel. Where are they now? OK. They’re in the Troposphere, just like I am. Come on. Work it out. To go back into myself, I walk down that road behind me until I get to the tunnel. So I have to stop them going there. It might not be correct, but it’s the best I can do.

Help me, I think. But nothing happens. Or maybe something does. There’s now a steel bar lying on the tarmac. I bend down and pick it up.

‘Who are you?’ I ask them.

They keep walking towards me, taking up most of the thin street between them.

‘We’re just here to get the book,’ the grey one says.

‘You just need to co-operate a little,’ says the other one.

‘Although if you don’t . . . Well, we don’t really care what we have to do to get the book. You know how you’ve been lurking in your friend’s mind, just watching? That’s Level One. Once the kids are in your mind, they’re going to turn it into spaghetti.’

‘On top of Old Smoky . . .’ sings the first kid.

‘Get away from me,’ I say. ‘Fucking hell. Get away from me . . .’

I swing the steel bar at the grey-suited man, the one closest to me. He doesn’t react until it thwangs him hard across the side of his head: it’s as if he can’t see the steel bar at all. Just like the newspaper rack.

‘You little cunt,’ he says to me, swaying and clutching his head. Then: ‘Martin – she’s got a weapon.’

‘You know what to do,’ says the other guy. ‘We may as well finish her here, and then we’ll go to her apartment and get the book. I’ll bet you anything it’s just there sitting on a bookshelf or something.’

One of the little boys is picking his nose and, presumably, watching to see what the adults do next. The other boy, maybe slightly older, looks at me.

‘When I do get into your mind, I’m going to wee on your memories,’ he says. ‘And then I’m going to poop all your other thoughts out of your eye sockets. You can’t stop me.’

I see myself in some asylum, dribbling. What happened to her, then? Oh, she went mad. First she thought she could practise telepathy, and then, for no reason, her brains just packed up. Turned to spaghetti, just like that. It’s sad. She was working on a PhD before it happened. And I’ll never, ever, be able to tell anyone what happened to me. I’ll have no memory. I’ll . . . OK. Now I am afraid.

Console?

The thing appears. Now the two men and the boys are highlighted red. Danger. Yeah – I think I got that by myself. The small crowded street behind them appears in a kind of greyed-out black and white. That’s new.

You have no choices, says the woman’s voice.

How can I have no choice?

Nowhere is open now.

OK. Tell me what I can do. Are there any options?

You can quit by exiting.

I don’t want to quit. These psychos will enter my mind, if I do.

You have no choices.

So is that it then? Basically quit, and then die?

You can choose to play the Apollo Smintheus card.

What?

Danger approaching . . .

The console is right. The black-suited man is approaching me with . . . Ouch. Oh, shit. I thought you couldn’t feel pain in here. Oh, fuck. It’s like period pain in my head. It’s toothache of the brain . . . I fall to my knees. OK, I tell the console. Play the Apollo Smintheus card. Do it now. Do it now. Oh, God.