“IT’S VERY STRANGE. I don’t know what to make of it.” Joe stood back from the bed, his genial face creased with concern. “See here?”
Lucy went over to the bed. He pushed Tom’s hair gently; it was growing back thick and curly. She’d never seen him like this. He always wore his hair cut short. It made him look different, as if he could be in Game of Thrones, or something. It was strange to think of his hair growing, his nails. Joe had once said something about Tom going somewhere. Travelling, he’d called it. It was as though his body was waiting for him to come back again.
“I don’t know what it is,” Joe said. “Or how it could have happened.” He held the dark curls back from the left temple. The skin had a bluish tinge to it, yellowing faintly at the edges. “It’s very faint but it looks like bruising.”
She frowned. “How could that happen?”
He shrugged. “Search me.”
She gazed down at Tom, inert and unmoving. “He couldn’t exactly do it himself. Could he have been assaulted?”
“That’s what it looks like, certainly, but I don’t see how. He’s monitored night and day.” He brushed the hair back.
“Have you told anyone?”
He shook his head. “They’d just dismiss it as a slight discoloration, so faint as to be negligible. I noticed it this morning and it’s already fading. I can’t explain it. It’s a strange thing.”
She agreed. It was a very strange thing. The bluishness was disappearing. Even if Joe couldn’t explain it, she knew someone who just might be able to shed some light.
“You still here?” he said from the door. “Like I said, don’t know why you bother. How’s the sleeping prince? Still sleeping, I see.”
She put down her book. “What do you want, Milo?”
“To see my mate—what else? Check on how he’s doing.”
“That’s exactly what I want to know.” She got up from her chair. “How about we give him a bit of peace?”
Milo stared at Tom’s sleeping form. “He gets enough of that, I’d have thought.”
“Does he? See here.”
“What? I don’t see anything.”
“Bruising. On his temple.”
“So?” Milo shoved his hands in his pockets and hunched his narrow shoulders. “What are you saying? That I came in here and did that to him? You’re crazy, you know that?” He shifted from foot to foot. “Everybody says so.”
“Do they really? Like who? Your stupid girlfriend and her crew? What do I care what they think? Nice try, Milo, but back to the point.”
“Which is?”
“No, I don’t think you’ve been sneaking in here to assault Tom but I do think that you know something.”
“Like what?”
“Like what is happening to him. Ever since you came in that time, he’s been different.”
“Oh, what?” Milo stared at Tom. “You can tell?”
“Well, yes, actually. And it’s not just me. Joe thinks so, too.”
“Who’s Joe?”
“His nurse.”
“The Latino?”
“Yes, if you want to put it like that. He’s Guatemalan, actually. Time we had a chat. Let’s go to the canteen, shall we?”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because, number one: if you don’t, everyone in the whole world is going to know about you and Natalie—that she’s cheating on hashtag heroinacoma with his ‘best mate’. Number two: because I think you’re worried.”
“I remember,” Lucy said. “Two sugars.”
“And no sprinkles.”
Lucy went to the counter to get their coffees. The hospital had made an effort but no one would mistake the Four Seasons for a regular restaurant and coffee shop. Too many people in blue scrubs, staff on their breaks wearing lanyards, doctors with stethoscopes draped round their necks like scarves, not to mention patients in pyjamas and dressing gowns, men towing bags on stands, and the wheelchairs and Zimmer frames parked around.
She took their coffees to where Milo was sitting at a table near the window. It was a nice day. People were in the little garden outside enjoying the sunshine.
“I hate hospitals,” he said. “They’re full of sick people.” He took the coffee without saying “thank you”, shook the sachets and emptied them, stirring as the grains fell through the foam on his cappuccino. “So what do you want?”
“I want to know what’ve you done. What you’ve got him into and how you’re going to get him out again.”
“How do you know I’ve got him into anything?”
“Call it female intuition.” Lucy stirred the chocolate sprinkles down into her coffee. “Stop messing, Milo. I know you’re up to something. Why are you here?”
He took a small plastic box out of his pocket. The kind that contained SD camera cards. He held it between two fingers. “This came this morning. FedEx, no return address.”
“It’s called a fish. Echeneis fish, in fact. It’s a gaming gizmo. Very advanced.”
“What does it do?”
“Sends the subject to a virtual world.”
“Which one? Where?”
“Can’t say exactly.”
“And what are you supposed to do with it?”
“Put it in Tom’s ear. This is the second I’ve had.”
“So something comes through the post. You don’t know who it’s from, or what it does exactly, but you stuff it in the ear of your best mate who’s lying in a coma?”
“I do know who it’s from, actually,” Milo countered.
“But not what it does?”
“Well.” Milo shifted. “It’s experimental.”
“Oh, let me get this straight. You don’t know what it does exactly but that’s all right because it’s experimental? How is that OK, Milo?”
Milo shrugged. “I thought it might help him. Stimulate him, you know?”
“That’s the thing with you, Milo: you are all heart. Why did you really do it?”
Milo sighed and stirred another sachet of sugar into his coffee. “He isn’t going anywhere, is he? Anyway, he wouldn’t be like he is now, would he? In a virtual world, he’d be like he was before it happened. You know, like in Avatar. Imagine lying there like that, day after day. I see it as doing him a big favour.”
He leant forward; thin hands clasped together, eyes magnified behind his glasses, full of virtual generosity. His default setting was lying. Even to himself.
“So, you stick this gaming gizmo in the ear of a boy in a coma. How’s that even work? He can’t tell you what’s happening to him.”
“He doesn’t need to. We can track him. Except—”
“You don’t know where he is.”
“Not at the moment.”
“I see. It wouldn’t be the fact that he’s in a coma, so if something happens to him, nobody’d know and it wouldn’t matter?”
“Of course not. What do you take me for?”
“You don’t want to know. So, just trying to get this straight—it’s like some kind of game…”
“It’s more than that. Way more. It’s the next stage, the next level.”
“Like virtual reality?”
“Beyond that, even.” Milo was getting excited now. “It’s a disruptor, you know—like Amazon and selling, or Uber and taxis. A game changer, in the true sense. You will be able to live in it. Experience it with all the senses. It’ll be like you’re really there…” He stopped talking for a moment, lost in contemplation of its wonder.
She stared at him. For someone with a brain the size of Yorkshire, he really was very stupid. She could see it immediately. Why couldn’t he?
“OK, so when this thing launches,” she spoke slowly, as if speaking to a small child, “when it goes viral, every kid in the world is going to want one?”
“That’s the idea.”
“And they will enter some virtual world…”
“Of their own choosing,” Milo supplied.
“Granted. Of their own choosing.” She could see the faint pit in Tom’s shoulder, the bruising to his head. “And live in it?”
“That’s about the sum of it. Neat, eh?”
“So, if they can live there, can they die there?”
“Hell, no.” He hesitated. “I don’t think so…”
“But you don’t know so…”
“Well, no. But that wouldn’t make sense—”
“Wouldn’t it? The world’s children, young people, lost in cyberspace, living there and presumably dying there. What are you calling it? Mindcraft Apocalypse? Think of the power.” She shook her head at the dawning enormity. “It would make cyberattacks look like nothing. Whoever’s behind it would have the whole world by the balls.”
“Put like that…” Milo looked uncertain, eyes darting, long, thin fingers playing with the sugar sachets, realization beginning to dawn.
“For someone who is supposed to be really, really brainy, you can be really, really dumb, Milo, you know that?”
“We thought we’d be able to track him, monitor how he was getting on. Except…”
“Except?”
“He disappeared entirely. We don’t know where he’s gone.”
“So it’s already going wrong.”
“Not entirely. It’s experimental, like I said.” He held up the small plastic container. “This is the fix.”
“How do you know?”
“It says on the box.”
“A fix so he can carry on his virtual life, or come back to this one?”
“Well, can’t say exactly…”
“Seems to be an awful lot you don’t know. Stop lying to me, Milo. Why did you really do it? What’s this really about?”
“It’s like a syndicate.” Milo studied his fingernails. “To be in it, you have to make a contribution. You have to give something to get something back. Not money. He’s got plenty of that. Something to show your commitment.”
“He? Who’s he?”
Milo shook his head. “I can’t tell you. It’d be more than my life’s worth and I mean that in the literal sense.”
“OK.” She’d let that ride for now. “So you had to give him something and you chose Tom. Big of you, Milo. Why didn’t you stick the thing in Natalie’s ear?”
“Are you kidding?” He seemed genuinely shocked at the idea. “She’d be no good! She’d be blown away in a second. Tom would stand much more of a chance.”
“Like I said,” Lucy sighed. “All heart. You have to put a stop to this, Milo.”
“I would if I could, babe.” He shrugged, palms out. “I would if I could. But I can’t.”
“Get out of it, then. Get Tom out of it.”
“Can’t do that, either.”
“Why not?”
“It’s complicated.”
Milo took off his glasses. Without them he looked different, vulnerable. Younger. He rubbed his eyes and when he looked back at her, she saw genuine fear.
“Once you’re in it, you can’t get out.” He seemed to collect himself. “All I can do is put in the fix.” He picked up the small plastic square, turning it around and around in his fingers. “See what it does. It’s all I can do,” he repeated.
He got up abruptly. Joe was coming towards their table. He stepped back, nearly spilling his tea as Milo dashed past.
“You going?” Joe asked.
Lucy shook her head and sat back down again. She’d been debating whether to stop Milo. Or tell Joe. Or get Joe to stop him, but she decided no. Let Milo do it. What else did they have?
“He’s in a hurry.” Joe took a sip of his tea. “Where’s he off to so fast?” He put down his cup. His hand went to his pager. “Oh, what’s happening now?”
“It wasn’t a lie.”
Milo was back, looking down at him. Agitated. More jittery than normal.
“Not completely. I really did think I’d be doing you a favour. I gotta do this. You wouldn’t believe the pressure I’m under…” His voice faded, as if he was pacing away from the bed. “I have to do this,” he repeated, but quietly, as if to himself this time. “I have to do this. I got no choice.” He was close now. “You could see it as a kind of a fix.”
Tom could hear the fear behind Milo’s false brightness.
“I’d love to be there, bruv—you have to believe me—but it has to be you. You’re the only one with access. You’re all that stands between us and… what did she call it? Mindcraft Apocalypse. Good name for what could happen. It’s up to you, bro.”
He came near to the bed. Nearer. Tom felt something go into his ear.
“’S all right.” Joe smiled. “Panic over. It was hairy for a little while but he’s stable now.”
Is he? She looked down the corridor, at Milo’s black silhouette disappearing round the corner. Had he been hanging about, checking out his handiwork?
She set off after him. He was walking fast. She was running now.
Lucy caught him just as he was crossing the car park.
“That was you back there, wasn’t it? That fix set all the machines off.”
“He did that all by himself. He’s very sick—don’t you know that?”
“This thing you’re doing—it’s got to stop, Milo.”
“Out of my hands, babe.” He spread his own, to show how helpless he was. “I can’t stop now. I told you. Maybe the fix will fix it.”
“And what if it doesn’t?”
He shrugged. “Like I told you, there’s nothing else I can do.”
“I don’t believe that. You always know a way.”
“Not this time.” He put his hands in his pockets and kept on walking.
“Well, you better find one.” She put a hand on his arm but he shrugged it off.
“Or what?”
“Or nothing.” She put her hand out again. “Look at me, Milo. Look at me!”
This time he turned round.
“I can’t threaten you, Milo. Just advise you. I’d advise you to do what you can because you know it’s the right thing to do.”
She watched Milo carry on across the car park and then stop. He stood for a moment, staring off, as though thinking of something. He half turned, as if to come back to her, then went on, head down, hands in pockets. Maybe he’d had that idea after all.