Day 6 - Social Disease

The dinner was fabulous; a dressed lobster with a sirloin steak and a collection of roasted vegetables arranged aesthetically in a series of small china dishes, a glass of champagne, and the company of one of the most beautiful up and coming actresses in the world. And he was, of course, livestreaming the whole night to his millions of followers so that they could enjoy an escape from their own far less exciting existences and understand how wonderful it was to be Jack Diamante.

His companion device whispered into his ear that his ratings were soaring; tonight was earning him more kudos points on the world ratings than he’d earned in the last week, and he was glad he’d let his previous companion device talk him into getting an upgraded model. Replete with near human-level AI and an array of sensors, it was already making better decisions for him than any of his previous companions. Leila, the actress, was talking away about something she thought was insightful but he didn’t bother listening, he had his companion for that.

Lean forward, flashed a message on his retinal implant and he did so, just in time to appear captivated by the actresses’ conversation. Now, say “let’s hope the legislation arrives soon, God knows we need it.”

“Let’s hope the legislation arrives soon,” said Jack, his voice smooth and deep, “God knows we need it.”

The actress smiled broadly, likely on command of her own companion device, and then turned her face away coyly for effect.

His ratings spiked that little higher, and the phrase ‘Erudite Jack’ was apparently now trending thanks to his companion device having initiated it through a series of proxy accounts a few minutes earlier.

The remainder of the evening went just as smoothly; more conversation and a little idle flirtation that was served up equally efficiently by his companion device. His model was clearly several iterations ahead of the actress’ device and so it was mere child’s play to stay one step ahead of her; by the end of the evening her device was likely convinced that he was totally besotted by her. Her attraction indicators were, his companion assured, at their highest point of the night.

The waiters cleared the dishes away and the manager came over to thank Jack for having made the decision to grace their restaurant with his presence, not mentioning the huge sum the restaurant chain had moved into his account three days ago to ensure exactly that. It was, after all, well known that having Jack Diamante frequent your establishment was a guarantee of a wave of new customers. His companion device tracked the correlations and adjusted his appearance fees accordingly.

They exited the restaurant together and into a sea of holo-drones and even the occasional reporter, hoping to stream a reaction shot or two. He let them get the first wave of shots before his companion device gave the command to activate a swarm of mirrored drones that ensured there would be no more photos. Images of Jack Diamante were a valuable commodity due to their scarcity and it was important to keep it that way.

He was three or four steps from the onyx limousine that waited for them at the kerb when he caught sight of a man in ragged clothes pushing his way through the crowd of drones. His companion device was already scanning him, running facial recognition against the FB database, but it came up completely blank. They weren’t in the system; which didn’t make any sense.

His companion device was already flagging emergency protocols and his two steroid enhanced bodyguards were already unfolding themselves from the back of the limousine, when the man reached him and clutched him tightly around the arm.

“You’re a symptom of this sickness,” slurred the man, his face contorted and his eyes bulging, “consider this a present from Captain Ludd.”

And then his bodyguards were on the man, grabbing him by both arms and flinging him away like a ragdoll. He didn’t bother to look and see what happened next; it wasn’t the kind of entertainment his followers were interested in seeing. The followers of the bodyguards, on the other hand, were just about to get the kind of livestream experience they lived for. He dusted his suit with one hand while the companion device released a mild sedative into his bloodstream to ensure he remained calm. Jack Diamante had to remain cool at all times.

He slipped into the limousine, closely followed by the actress whose name he neither knew nor cared. They’d take a ride, make out some, and then head back to his place for a livestream available only to his premium followers…

***

Jack awoke with a headache, which was very strange because his companion device usually managed his blood chemistry to ensure he didn’t get a hangover. He frowned, and winced, and then realised that he’d not been woken by the companion device; he woken up by himself.

He sat up quickly, he never woke up by himself. Something was very wrong.

“Analysis,” he said out loud to trigger the companion device’s self-diagnostic protocols.

Nothing.

“Analysis,” he repeated, louder this time. But there was no reply and he felt his heart racing away in his chest; his companion device wasn’t working. The device normally managed his anxiety and he wasn’t used to his body responding like this unchecked; he felt clammy and was finding it hard to breathe.

His retina implant stayed completely dead and he realised that there was no red circle in the upper right corner; he wasn’t even livestreaming. He’d never paused the stream in the last four years; oh God he was going to be losing so many followers, so many ranking points.

“Think, think,” he said to himself, trying to remember what he was meant to do in the event of a companion device failure. With their advanced regeneration and healing systems, the failure rate was less than one in two billion hours but there still were ways to cope if the unthinkable should happen. He remembered something about a button in the kitchen, a red button.

The intercom button in the kitchen! Yes, that was it – he could connect with the depot and they would drone-ship him a new one in minutes. Now he just had to work out how to get from his bedroom to the kitchen. Companion devices dealt with all the unnecessary thinking such as moving around and, without its prompts, he realised that he didn’t actually know the layout of his own apartment.

He stepped out of the bedroom door and tried to remember if it was left or right, deciding to go with left and then feeling a brief burst of joy as he emerged into the living room. He remembered sometimes being in the living room and then shortly afterwards being in the kitchen; he was definitely getting nearer. And then there it was; the kitchen; and on the far wall the intercom button. He smiled, his awful day was about to get much better. He pressed the button.

“Hello, this is the home service, how can we help?”

“Hi,” said Jack, “my companion device isn’t working, you need to send me another one.”

“Voice print analysis underway. File not found. Request denied.”

The intercom went dead. He immediately pressed it again.

“Hello, this is the home service, how can we help?”

“This is Jack Diamante,” said Jack, “check my ratings and you’ll see I am one of the top 10k – do you know what my followers are going to do when they hear about this? Do you know what is going to happen to your stock price?”

“Voice print analysis provides no matches. Smart Web search reveals no references for Jack Diamante. Request denied.”

Jack stared speechless at the intercom system. What the hell was going on? He needed to find someone to help him, but if the intercom wasn’t working then that meant he had to. He hesitated at the thought but it was no good. He had to go outside.

He made his way carefully back to the bedroom, briefly taking a wrong turn before arriving back at his bed. Without his companion device to help him he wasn’t sure what to wear. Then he realised that without his companion device, he didn’t even know where the wardrobe was, so he simply picked up the clothes he had worn the night before from off the floor.

Twenty minutes later, he was still looking for his shoes when the door to his bedroom burst open and three uniformed security guards armed with neuro-blasters piled into the room.

“Get down on your knees and put your hands on your head,” shouted the biggest of the three.

“Wait,” said Jack, “It’s me! Jack Diamante! I’ve been living here for three years…”

The big guard turned to look at his companions, “You remember any of the people who live here?”

“Course not,” said the one on the left. “Got a device for that.”

“I’m not getting any matches on him at all,” said the third, “so he can’t live here.”

“This is all wrong,” said Jack, “My companion device…”

He never got to finish his sentence because the big security guard fired his neuro-blaster and scrambled his nervous system. If he’d been conscious at this moment, Jack might have noticed himself flopping around the apartment like a fish. Although, without his companion device he probably wouldn’t have remembered the word. He’d also have seen the second guard shoot him a second time while he was flopping, just to be on the safe side.

***

Jack came to on the sidewalk with his face pressed up against the paving stones. He groaned loudly; everything hurt. This was a new sensation, normally his companion device made sure he was never in discomfort. As it was, it felt like someone had put his insides in a blender. He tried to get up, pushing against the floor, and achieved about the same success as trying to push over a mountain; nothing moved and all he managed to do was make himself throw up.

“Feelin’ like crap?” said a rough voice from somewhere nearby and Jack rolled over to look up into the sky, where a silhouette loomed over him.

“Who are you?” said Jack through gritted teeth.

“I am the man who knows what you’re going through.”

“How can you possibly know what I’m going through?” grunted Jack. “I’m a 10K and I’ve just lost my companion device, I’ve just lost my rating. Can you even imagine what that’s like?”

The man laughed.

“You think that’s funny?” asked Jack, managing to prop himself up onto one elbow and take a better look at the man. He was old with long grey hair that hung down almost to his shoulders.

“Yeah, I think that’s funny,” said the man dryly, “You see there was a time when I was 1K, three whole months when I was in the top 10 and two hours, one Tuesday afternoon in October, where I held the Platinum position, where I was at the very top of the tree.”

Jack looked at him, with his mouth opening and closing like one of those things whose name he couldn’t remember.

“But,” spluttered Jack, “But, that’s not possible. I’d recognise you.”

“Really?” said the man, “Well, how about you tell me anyone who’s in the top 10 right now?”

“Well, that’s easy,” said Jack and then realised that he was looking to the upper right of his retinal implant for the answer. The implant stayed resolutely dead. He tried to remember who was in the top 10; he watched their streams all the time, but couldn’t remember any of them. It was just a vague blur in the back of his head.

“You see what I mean,” said the man, “Using the companion devices all these years has given us brains like porridge and a memory a goldfish would be embarrassed by.”

Jack pretended to know what porridge and goldfish were, and just nodded.

“So, like I said, I’m the man who knows what you’re going through.”

“How did this happen?

“We chose you,” said the man, “our analysis told us that, beneath that veneer of idiocy, there’s actually some decent material under all there.”

“Wait, are you telling me you did this?”

“Damn right,” said the man, “One of our operatives hit you with the Captain Ludd virus last night; it obliterates the defences of the companion device and then slaves it to start a data deletion cascade throughout all systems. Eight hours after it hits, you’re no longer in the system.”

Jack blinked. He understood very little of what the man had just said.

“Wait, are you telling me you did this?”

“It’s going to take a little time, but you’ll understand eventually,” said the man, “we’re just trying to free humanity from slavery. We’ve become zombies that follow the blood trail of capitalism and celebrity. So, yes Jack, we did this to you.”

Jack wasn’t sure what to feel. Normally, in situations like this, the companion device would have given him detailed instructions on the type of emotional response that was appropriate but, without guidance, he just felt a tightness in his chest and a pounding of blood in his temples.

“You’re getting a little angry,” smiled the man, “That’s good. That’s natural. It’s the first baby step.”

“But why do this?” said Jack, involuntarily clenching his fists. “Why ruin my life?”

“Because humanity deserves better than this. We’ve let ourselves become neutered and tamed; we spend our lives gorging on the banality of other people’s lives and neglect our own development. If we don’t stop this now, we’ll be extinct in three generations time. We’re going to take back our humanity a little at a time.”

“I don’t understand,” shouted Jack.

“Don’t worry,” said the man, “You’ll understand everything soon enough. Now, let’s get going. We don’t have much time.”

Jack clambered gingerly to his feet and stared hard at the man.

“And what if I say that I’m not going anywhere with you?”

The man laughed, lazily reaching into his pocket and removing a neuro-blaster and, before Jack had a chance to say anything, the man had fired it at him. Jack flopped around on the paving stones and the man reached down and grabbed hold of his jacket, dragging him backwards along the ground to where a van was waiting.

“I never said you had a choice…”

***

It took three months for Jack to adjust; three months to re-programme his brain so that he was capable of more than the mundane and trivial. He still sometimes forgot words, and his sense of direction was never going to match that of a companion device, but he did everything himself and he’d discovered he had a considerable talent for mathematical equations. He’d lived off the grid with The Group, and he’d learned about the Captain Ludd virus and how humanity had become like sheep. And tonight was his chance to take things a step further because they’d managed to refine Captain Ludd.

The version of Captain Ludd that he’d been hit by had worked effectively, cutting his ties to all records and removing him from the system, but it was a time consuming process to take people one at a time and every time ran the risk of the operation being compromised. It had been Jack’s hidden mathematical skills that had been the deciding factor in improving Captain Ludd; he’d worked out how to replicate. Tonight was going to be the start of something big.

He waded through the cloud of holo-drones and grabbed hold of the arm of Erin Unique. She looked at him confused, her companion device trying and failing to recognise him, and he smiled back at her.

“I have a present for you from Captain Ludd,” said Jack with a grin, holding onto her tight while the nanobots did their job, “A social disease…”

Day 5 - Perfect Strangers

Alan Finch always looked at a woman’s photo for a good few seconds before choosing whether to swipe left or to swipe right because he liked to be sure. He’d heard someone once say that attraction was something that the human brain processed in the fraction of a second but it didn’t seem to work for him like that; he needed time. Neither was he interested in adopting the scattergun approach so loved by many men and swiping right on everything in the hope of achieving success purely through the laws of probability. When he swiped right, he did it with purpose.

So far, he’d only swiped right eight times that evening; a success rate of approximately one in twenty. But the night was still young and London was a big city, lots of fish in this particular sea and he was fairly confident that he’d meet the right person soon. And, if not, well he was going to be leaving London tomorrow and flying back to San Francisco and his real life.

A notification tone interrupted him from his thoughts and he realised that he’d matched with someone; Helen, a dark haired woman with green eyes. He smiled; if there had been one of the eight that he had most hoped would match with him tonight, it had been Helen.

He lay back on the hotel bed and stared at her photo for a few seconds, imagining that she was somewhere nearby looking at his photo, and then wrote her a short message.

***

Helen Brannigan smirked as the message came through. It was straight to the point; no vacuous flattery but not smutty either, just a simple request to meet for a drink and see if the attraction was mutual in real life. She liked the fact that Alan seemed to be both confident and direct; she also liked the fact that he had been honest enough to state on his profile that he was in town for one night only and that he was looking for something casual.

Casual was good; she preferred casual. And she definitely preferred the guys who were from out of town; meeting someone local just complicated things and reduced the chances of it being one night of fun. There was always a chance of a follow up with a local guy; but someone from out of town, well they just flew out of her life the next day.

She waited a suitably polite few minutes before replying to his message, agreeing that they could meet at a wine bar down the road from her in an hour’s time and then waited for him to reply.

***

Alan lay back and exhaled; it was always so good when his instincts proved correct and he picked someone who responded in the way he hoped. He messaged her back to agree to the location and time and then slid off the bed and walked to the wardrobe.

He picked out a black t-shirt and a grey jacket; nothing too fancy, nothing too showy. Smart but casual. He buckled a brown leather belt onto his faded jeans, ran a little gel through his air, and then patted aftershave either side of his neck. He was ready. He a good feeling about tonight; Helen seemed like she was going to be a lot of fun.

***

Helen arrived a few minutes early and took a seat with her back to the bar she should could look out for him and Alan walked in exactly on time. He was a little heavier set than in his photos, she guessed they must have been taken a few years earlier, but he was still attractive and when he saw her he smiled broadly and walked over.

“Well hello there,” he said, and she loved his accent, “I have to say, your photos really didn’t do you justice.”

She smiled, “Flattery will get you nowhere.”

“Really?” he asked

“Well,” she said, with a cheeky grin, “maybe somewhere...”

***

They had a few drinks, swapped pleasantries and made small talk and, to Alan’s surprise, he was finding this incredibly easy. Normally he had to work hard to make girls like him; he’d memorised a whole range of routines from books by pick-up artists and usually he had to employ a whole range of these in order to get girls interested. But not tonight; Helen genuinely seemed into him.

An advert for the Bond movie on the back of a magazine turned the conversation to 007 and it turned out that they were both huge fans of Bond. They agreed on their top two favourite Bonds (Craig and Connery), disagreed on Roger Moore (funny versus annoying) and spent half an hour trying to prove they knew more lines from the movies than the other. When Alan told her that he’d not been to a bar that served a decent vodka martini here in London, Helen was quick to tell him she made an excellent one and that he should come back to her place to check it out.

For a second he hesitated; normally there was no connection with the women he met, it was just soulless and mechanical and all about getting what he wanted. This was different; he realised he genuinely liked Helen and he wasn’t sure if he wanted this to go the way it always went, with him catching a plane tomorrow and not thinking of her again.

But then he looked at her, at her dark hair and green eyes, and he knew there was no way he could resist her.

***

They walked back up the road together, beneath a cloudless sky looking up at the stars and both trying to remember the name of the actor who played Jaws without googling him. Helen looked at him as they walked; he was handsome in an understated way and there was something about him; an instant connection of some kind.

She swore inwardly; what was she doing? She couldn’t afford to get attached, that was the whole point of this. She needed to stop romanticising what was only ever going to be a one night thing.

Reaching her apartment, she opened the door and beckoned him inside. She led him upstairs and pushed him down onto the sofa.

“Wait there,” she said, “I’ll go make those vodka martinis”

***

He watched her leave the room and closed his eyes, breathing deeply. He had never felt this conflicted before. Normally this was so easy for him, but tonight he was unsure he could go through with it. He toyed with the idea of just getting up and leaving, but it seemed wrong after having made all this effort.

***

Helen paused as she made the drinks, wondering whether she was doing the right thing before regaining her composure. Guys like this didn’t come along often and she should take advantage of it while she could.

She walked in and handed him the glass, sitting down beside him and resting one hand on his knee.

“So, you tell me that’s not the best vodka martini you’ve had in London.”

He drank it, and then half winced, half smiled. “That is awful.”

She laughed, “Most guys would have said they liked it even if they didn’t.”

“I’m not most guys,” he replied, turning to stare into her eyes.

“No,” she said, holding his gaze, “you’re really not.”

He leaned in and kissed her, and she didn’t resist.

***

They made love frantically, like animals; tearing each other’s clothes off and not even making it to the bedroom the first time. After the second time, they lay together in bed with her head on his chest and Alan looked at the ceiling.

This didn’t feel like all the other times. Usually by this point he had left; usually by this point he’d felt disappointed in himself, disappointed in them. But this time was different.

He didn’t want this to end. But he knew it had to.

***

Helen nestled her head against his chest and felt regretful; she realised that she couldn’t go through with this, she needed to tell him but she didn’t know how. After all, how do you tell a guy that you think he’s great, that he’s not like any of the other guys you’ve met, that you wish you hadn’t just poisoned him?

She sat up, looking out the window.

It was normally so easy; she met the sleazy guys from out of town – most of them cheating on their wives or girlfriends – and she lured them back to her place and she slipped them some medication that she stole from the pharmacy she worked at. In twelve to sixteen hours from when she gave it to them, it would cause them to go into a massive cardiac arrest. Of course, by then they’d be on a plane home and no one would ever suspect they’d been murdered. It was perfect; casual and perfect.

But tonight was different; she wished she’d never put it in his drink. There was a real connection between them, they had something. And it wasn’t too late, she could still tell him and get him to a hospital.

She turned to him.

***

He looked at the curve of her back as she looked out of the window and took a deep breath and when she finally turned to him he grabbed hold of her before she had a chance to say a word and pushed her down hard on the bed. She didn’t even have time to look confused before he pulled the pillow over her face and held it tight to her.

She writhed beneath him, arms kicking and legs flailing, but he held on tight as he always did and eventually she stopped and went completely still.

He stood up and realised he didn’t feel like he normally felt. He didn’t feel strong, he didn’t feel full of life and exhilaration. He felt like he’d done something wrong, he felt angry with himself.

He left her there and walked a mile or two before hailing a cab back to his hotel. Travelling for work like this gave him opportunities all round the world, and no one was ever going to put the pieces together because by the time anybody realised something was wrong he’d be a plane.

It had been a real shame about Helen, he thought. They'd really seemed to have a lot in common…

Day 4 - Call on Me

Once upon a time, in a great city, there lived a little girl called Mary.

Mary was a happy child, with parents who adored her, and she had a beautiful laugh that caused all who heard it to fall in love with her. And she would smile and laugh often for she lived in a great city and her parents would take her to the parks of the city to play. She loved to watch the squirrels as they ran up and down the tree trunks, she loved to throw pieces of bread to the ducks, and most of all she loved to pick the flowers that grew all around the park.

One morning, when Mary was in the park picking flowers, she picked up the biggest dandelion she had ever seen. But as she lifted it up towards her face, she saw something very strange. There, nestled in among the seeds of the dandelion, was a little man with wings dressed in a purple suit. Mary looked around for her mother to tell her about the little man but her mother was busy talking to another lady and wasn’t interested in seeing the flower.

“Help me!” said the little man in an even littler voice “My wing is trapped here and I must get away.”

Mary didn’t know how to help the little man and her mother was still talking to the other lady.

“Please,” said the little man, “blow the dandelion so I might escape.”

And so Mary blew on the dandelion and its seeds scattered in all directions and the little man in the purple suit flew free.

“I am the Prince of the Faeries,” said the little man, “and you have saved my life. If I had remained stuck there when the sun reached its highest point in the sky, I would have been lost. I am in your debt forever.”

Mary didn’t understand all the words that the flying man, who said he was a Prince, was saying but she laughed her beautiful laugh and his tiny face smiled.

“If you ever need me, you only have to call me,” he said and he flew right up to her ear and he whispered into it his secret name, the name which had the power to command him. “Say my name when you need my help and I will be there.”

And then, in the blink of an eye, the little man was gone. Mary tried to tell her mother but her mother was listening in that way that parents sometimes do, when they give the pretence of listening but are actually not listening at all, and so did not hear about the little man stuck in the dandelion and so Mary carried the secret alone.

A few years went by and Mary was still happy and sometimes she would think about the Faerie Prince that she had met in the park. She could still remember his name if she tried really hard but she never said it out loud. And then, when she was six, everything changed.

One morning her mother and father came in to see her and told her that they needed to pack a suitcase for her and that she would need to leave the great city, would need to leave them behind, and go on a journey to live in a different place in the countryside. They told her it was because there was going to be a war and it wouldn’t be safe for her to live in the great city any longer. Mary cried and told them that she didn’t want to go but they told her that they had no choice. She begged them to come with her but they told her they could not, for her father needed to go and fight in the war and her mother needed to help. But they told her not to worry and promised her that it would not be for long and that when it was safe she would come back to them.

And so, on a cold autumn morning, Mary was walked to the train station where her mother hugged her and kissed her and passed her over to a woman with grey hair who led her by the hand to the train platform where there were many boys and girls with suitcases all waiting to catch the train to the countryside.

The train journey was long and when Mary arrived in the countryside she was led away with three other children to go and live on a farm. Mary had learned about farms from her books but this farm was not like the farm in her books. For the farmer and his wife were not kind and they made Mary and the three other children work very hard and fed them very little. When people came around to check on them, the farmer and his wife warned them not to tell how hard they worked or they would be beaten. And sometimes the farmer and his wife beat them anyway and laughed when they did it.

Mary cried every night and sometimes she would think of the Faerie Prince and wonder whether she should call him, but she was too scared to in case he came and the farmer and his wife beat him as well. Even when she got sick and was left in cellar with just a bowl of water and some stale bread, she did not call him. Mary spent her seventh birthday in a cellar, wrapped in a dirty blanket and shivering against the cold and her fever, and dreamed of her mother and her father and praying that they would come and fetch her.

And then, one day, it seemed that her prayers had been answered for another woman with grey hair came and told them that they would be going home to the great city. Mary’s heart leapt with joy and she collected her belongings and said goodbye to the other children and got on a train back to the great city. But when she got there, it was not her mother and father waiting for her on the train platform but a stern looking man with white hair.

He told Mary that he was very sorry but her mother and father had been killed and that they were now in heaven. He told her that because she had no family, she would need to come and live in a home with other children who had no families.

Mary cried and cried and cried until she could cry no more tears and she told the man she did not want to go with him but he was very strict and took her by the hand and pulled her with him. She was walked along the street and then on the underground train and then to a grey building with bars on the windows that the man told her was going to be her new home.

That night, in a room with row upon row of beds of children, Mary cried again but the other children told her to be quiet. They told her that she was a baby and they were nasty to her. One girl pulled her hair and another girl slapped her. And this set the pattern for the next four years of Mary’s life where she was tormented and teased and bullied by the other children. It wasn’t long before she forgot about the Faerie Prince and, eventually, she even began to forget her mother and father. Certainly, she never laughed a single laugh in those four years.

She hated it there and she hated the other children, but at least they weren’t as bad as Billy the handyman who came to the house to fix things and who liked to take little girls with him into the big cupboard where they kept the mops and the brooms when no one else was around.

He didn’t try and take Mary for four years, he always took other girls who were older than her with him and they would always come back with faces that were damp with tears. And then one day, when he had nailed a windowsill in place and the women who ran the home had gone downstairs, Billy had come over and he taken Mary’s hand and had begun to lead her away with him to the cupboard. Mary didn’t like him one bit and she didn’t want to go into the cupboard with him and so, as he opened the door, she pulled on it and it opened quickly and smashed him hard in the face.

Billy was furious. His nose was bleeding and he shouted like a wounded bull and charged at Mary. But Mary was quick, for she had got used to dodging the attacks of the other girls, and she ran as fast as she could from him, ran down the stairs, out the front door, and off down the street. She never went back to the home. Instead, she lived for almost a year on the street; sleeping in doorways and parks and begging for scraps from the baker and the market traders.

And then she met Fred who was a few years older and who promised he would help her find somewhere warm to sleep, and he did but then he expected her to do things with him that she had never done before and which she didn’t like. But she did them anyway because he had given her somewhere warm and dry to sleep and he gave her food.

Mary lived liked that for some time before Fred decided that doing those things for him wasn’t enough and that she would need to do those things for other men who came to the little rundown house they lived in. And she did that for a while too until she realised she had to get away, and so one night she waited until Fred had gone to the pub and she packed up her case with what little belongings she had and what little money she had managed to hide and she ran away from the great city she had once loved. She took a train to a place far away, by the sea.

Mary took a job in a factory. It was hard work and it was poor pay but it enabled her to live in a room and pay for food. And she met a man called Les who also worked at the factory who liked to talk to her and who seemed kind and, one day, Les asked her to marry him. She was 17 and didn’t think she could give any other answer than ‘yes’ and so they were married in the church and she went to live with him in a little house in which his mother also lived.

Les wasn’t as kind as Mary had first thought. He liked to drink and when he had been drinking he could be cruel and rough and he would hit her if she happened to say the wrong thing, or if she looked the wrong way at him. His mother expected her to do all of the housework and look after her as well and Mary found that she was always tired.

And Mary grew older and grew sad and the beautiful laugh that she had once had was never heard, even when she had her own daughter. She loved her and tried her best to look after her, but times were hard and the war had left the country poor and sick and her daughter died young. For the first time in years, Mary cried again. She had not thought she had any more crying left to give, but she wept bitterly when they lowered the tiny coffin of her daughter into the ground.

Les blamed her for the death of their daughter and became even crueller and rougher. He drank more and more and began to gamble. Mary wasn’t even sad when a policeman came round one day to tell her that Les had been found dead outside a pub. She left behind the house and her elderly mother-in-law, who cursed her for going, and caught another train to another city where she could start again.

She met another man called Robert who worked at the steel factory and who was kinder than Les but who was very poor and Mary had to work double shifts at the factory to help them make ends meet and was always tired, and rarely far from being ill. They tried to have children together but it seemed that it was not possible and so they eventually resigned themselves to just having each other.

Mary and Robert got a council house but then Robert was injured at the steel factory and he couldn’t work anymore and so Mary had to work even harder. She grew older and she grew more tired. And when Robert died, she was left alone and seventy years old.

The world seemed a different place now to Mary now; it felt fast paced and frightening. She knew no one and she was too scared to go out of the house because there were gangs of teenagers who would shout and throw things at her. One day she went to the shops and got home to find that someone had kicked in her front door and had stolen her television and her video recorder, had smashed the sugar, coffee, and tea pots in the hope of finding money and had spray painted her walls with red paint. Mary called the police and they came and they shrugged their shoulders and then went away. And Mary felt alone.

She tried to keep going but it was hard. Her hip hurt from a fall a few years earlier and she couldn’t afford to keep the heating on in the apartment, which was still scarred with red paint, and so she sat there and shivered. And she got ill and started coughing and it was a cough that wouldn’t stop so finally Mary had to go and see the doctor.

The doctor told Mary that was very ill, that she had got a disease that they could not give her medicine for. And so they took Mary from her home and they moved her into the hospital and she lived there with other old and ill people.

And then one day, Mary was lying in bed and a nurse was tending to her when she saw a figure in the corner of the room. A tall woman dressed in a long black dress. She asked the nurse who the woman was but the nurse looked at her confused and annoyed and told her that there was no one there. And the woman in the black dress smiled at her sympathetically and put one finger to her bright red lips to tell her to hush. And Mary realised who the woman was and what she wanted.

Mary felt a tear gather in the corner of her eye, the first in a long time. Even like this she didn’t feel ready for death. Even with her body worn out, her lungs ragged and gasping for breath, Mary didn’t want to die. Even with all that had happened to her, with all the bad that had come of her life, she still clung to it.

She looked around the room, at the blinds that shuttered out the sunlight, at the drip that was connected to her arm, at the pictures on the wall. The woman took one step closer, gliding across the floor. A picture of a dandelion in a field. Another step, and the woman was almost close enough to touch. And Mary remembered everything and, as the woman reached out for her with one white hand, Mary used her last breath to breathe a name.

“Melchinor…”

And there was a sound like a beating of wings and there was a light in the room and a voice that she recognised from another lifetime told the woman in black that she was not welcome here, that Mary was under his protection. And the woman in black hissed, but she left all the same.

And then the man in the purple suit, no longer tiny, stood beside Mary’s bed and took her hand and he smiled that same smile he had given her all those years ago.

“Come,” he said, and Mary found that she could stand up without any problems, even though the room seemed strange and much bigger. But then she looked down at herself and Mary realised she was no longer an old woman, she was the same child who had once blown a dandelion.

“Come with me,” said the Faerie Prince, “and I will make sure you are never sad again.”

Mary left with the Faerie Prince, holding his hand tight as they disappeared in the blink of an eye.

The nurse who ran into the room found only an empty bed waiting for her. An empty bed, the sound of faint and beautiful laughter, and the seeds of a dandelion drifting in the still hospital air…

Day 3 - The Carpet Crawlers

Run, run, just as fast as you can,

But you can’t run faster,

Than the carpet crawlers can.

The school looked completely different to how I remembered it. If you looked hard you could still see the parts of it that had been there when it was my school, but it had grown in all directions in the twenty five years since I had left it behind and now seemed to me to be more a random urban sprawl than a school.

I walked across a carpark that, if I remember rightly, used to be part of the playing field and threaded my way past a stack of modern red-brick two storey classrooms that hadn’t existed in my day. Once you were past that it looked the same though; the same main entrance, the same steps leading up to it. I felt a twisting in the pit of my stomach as I walked up them; this was the first time I’d attended one of the school reunions and it felt strange to know that I was going to be walking into a hall with a bunch of people who used to be my friends. Well, some of them.

To be honest, reunions seem a little bit of a waste of time these days. Sure, back in the olden days, this was your chance to catch up with everyone and to find out what they had been doing and who they’d been doing it with. But this was the era of social media; I already knew that Sean Simmons had put on weight and lost his hair, I’d already seen from Amy Burnham’s Facebook posts that she’d been through a really messy, and bitter, divorce. It wasn’t about catching up anymore; we were so caught up with everyone these days we didn’t even care.

I’d missed the ten year reunion because I’d been backpacking through Thailand at the time and hadn’t even seen the invitation until I got home and checked my email. I’d missed the twentieth anniversary because I was in LA and sitting by a pool and trying to persuade people to fund my script. And, let’s be honest, because I just couldn’t be bothered to fly all the way back to the UK to hang out with a bunch of people I hardly remembered anymore. And probably I’d have missed the twenty fifth anniversary just as easily if it wasn’t for the dreams starting again.

I paused at the door, one hand on the brass handle. I could still walk away from this, I could still turn around and get back on a train, and back on a plane, and back to my LA condo and forget all of this. Fuck the dreams. But I knew it wasn’t that simple; sometimes you have to go back and face the past. I opened the door and stepped inside.

The entrance hall was pretty much the same. Different paintings on the wall, and the old checked floor tiles had been replaced with some swankier hardwood flooring, but it was the same. It even smelled the same to me. I signed it at the table, said hello to a girl I supposedly hadn’t seen in twenty five years and who I still don’t remember, picked up a name badge and walked into the hall.

The hall brought back memories; memories of standing for what seemed like hours in assemblies, of having lunch here every day, of sitting at a desk and writing lines when I ‘forgot’ my gym kit in order to avoid a cross country run in the pouring rain. Heads turned as I walked into the room; a nod from a guy whose name I forget but who was on my Facebook friends list, a smile from a girl who I remember spending a whole summer infatuated with, and over in the corner, the three people I had come to this reunion to see.

“Chris fucking Mackenzie,” said Jon Evans, his hair still the mess of black curls I remembered. “I do not fucking believe it. I thought you’d moved to the States, Macky?”

“Long time no see Jon,” I replied, “yeah, I’m still living in LA but I figured I’d come over and see how you lot were doing.”

“Come to see how the other half live, eh?” said Mike Ellington, who was so big these days that it looked like he’d maybe eaten the old Mike Ellington I knew.

“Did not think we’d see you here, mate,” said Des Cummins, “and you still look exactly the same, you jammy bastard. We’ve all got old and bald and fat and you look the fucking same.”

“Nah,” I said, “I’ve put on some weight. And my hair’s going grey…”

“Well, at least you’ve got hair,” replied Des, running one hand over his now smooth head. “I finally admitted defeat five years ago and started shaving it.”

“Yeah,” I said, “I remember you posted the photos online.”

I looked around, it all seemed so familiar.

“Remember that first assembly we ever had here,” said Mike, “when Jackie Dawkins fainted and they had to carry her out?”

“Man, I still remember the sound she made when she hit the floor,” said Jon, looking around, “I wonder if she’s here tonight?”

“We had some good times here,” laughed Des, “some fucking good times. Remember when Mr. Pincher caught you with your hand up Kirsty Fletcher’s jumper and he went absolutely batshit and dragged you to the headmaster’s office by your sideburns?”

We all laughed, I had forgotten that. But now that I thought about it, I could remember how they’d ached for days afterwards. We swapped anecdotes that like for a couple of hours, pretty much ignoring everyone else who came over and said hello and then left the reunion to head to the pub down the road, where we continued the anecdotes alongside beers.

It was on the fourth beer that I asked the question that had brought me over five thousand miles to be here tonight.

“Do you remember James Benton?”

A silence descended on our corner of the pub. Des looked into his pint glass with a frown, Jon sipped from his beer without saying a word, and Mike stared out the window as though he’d suddenly seen something interesting out there.

“Do you remember James Benton?” I repeated.

“We said we’d never talk about him again,” said Jon quietly. “We swore.”

“I know what we said,” I replied, “but I’ve been having the dreams again.”

“Fuck,” said Des, angrily. “Why did you have to mention the dreams? I’d forgotten about the fucking dreams until you said that.”

Mike had continued to stare out the window, the colour seemingly drained from him so that he appeared to be almost made out of alabaster. He had one hand tightly gripping his pint glass, the other he was flexing open and shut.

“Mike?” I asked.

He turned back to us, his eyes hollow. “I’ve been having the dreams again as well. They started a few months ago.”

“It’s a coincidence,” said Jon, quickly, “it has to be.”

“We are not going to talk about James Fucking Benton,” said Des. “Benton died when we were still thirteen. He got lost in the woods and he was killed by that homeless guy and it is not our fault.”

“Is that how you remember it?” I asked, “Is that really how you remember it? Have you lied to everyone for so long about what happened in the woods that you’ve even started believing it yourself?”

“I remember the shack,” said Mike, putting his glass down on the table. “That’s what I see in my dreams. And I hear his screams.”

“Will you two shut the fuck up,” hissed Des, “this is not what I came here to talk about…”

“You know in your heart what happened that day,” I said firmly, staring him down until he looked away. “We were responsible for what happened and we need to go back. If the dreams are going to end, we need to go back.”

Silence descended again, thicker this time, as everyone mulled over what I had just said.

James Benton had been one of us, one of the five musketeers as we’d liked to call ourselves. We’d played football together on the car park of the factories down my road, we’d ridden our bikes in a pack along the roads of the estate, and we’d gone into the woods together that day all those years ago.

I still blame myself. Maybe that’s why I had the dreams more than anyone else. I was a storyteller, always have been, and so when we found the old wooden shack in the middle of the woods I immediately came up with a history for it. Its windows were thick with dust and dirt but one small pane was broken and we had stared in at a small room with a wooden table and a rocking chair and an old red carpet, and I had immediately made up a story about how it was haunted and how no one dared stay inside it. That was the day I made up the story of the carpet crawlers.

I’d heard mention of them in an old rhyme, something about running fast as you can, and I just built up a story around the words. The carpet crawlers lived in the patterns of carpets, I told them. They were little fragments of shadow, of darkness, that disguised themselves in the patterns and only formed into their true form when it was dark and they could move freely. They lived in that red carpet and they waited, I’d said, for someone to come to them after all these years alone. Waited for someone to taste.

And James, James who was the smallest of us and the youngest of us, he was scared of the carpet crawlers. Oh, he pretended to laugh like everyone else, but I could see that the thought of the carpet crawlers, slithering silently in the dark and waiting for him, scared the hell out of him. I saw that and yet I didn’t stop. Or maybe it’s only in retrospect that I see it; maybe the man that I am today sees it in my memories but the boy I was did not. Some days I can almost believe that to be true.

A week later, when we were playing in the woods again, we became separated from James and we lost him in the woods. We ran home and told my mum and she called the police and there was a big search organised; it was on TV and everything. The police talked to us and we all told them the same thing, that we’d been by the shack and something had scared us and we’d ran away but James hadn’t kept up and by the time we realised it was too late.

I think, to begin with, the police were sceptical of our story and thought we’d done something to James. But then two days later they found Alan Matthews, a homeless guy, sleeping rough a couple of miles away and he had James’ bag on him and they arrested him. He was an alcoholic and they didn’t get much sense out of him, certainly nothing on what he’d done to James, and then a couple of weeks later he was murdered in prison and the case died there. James was never found, presumed murdered by Matthews.

But the truth was different.

The truth was that day we went out to the shack again and, maybe it was Jon’s idea or maybe it was Mike’s idea, but whoever’s idea it was we decided we were going to shove James into the shack and shut him in. It was going to be a laugh we’d all agreed, we’d shut him in there and only let him out when he’d peed himself. I opened the door to the shack and Des and Mike shoved him in. I still remember the panic on his face as Des shoved the door shut. I’ve tried to forget but I still remember the way his eyes opened so very wide and his mouth fell open as the door swung shut on him.

He screamed and banged on the door, pounding against the wood so hard that it took all of us holding ourselves against the door to keep him in there. And then he cried and started shouting about the carpet crawlers, and we laughed our heads off. And then he whimpered, and then he went completely silent. I remember Des laughing that he must be peeing himself but I felt something cold inside me, that instinct that something is terribly wrong.

And, of course, when we opened the door to the shack, James was gone. We went in, but there was no sign of him. It was as if he had disappeared into thin air. And so we ran home and told my mum the story about getting scared and separated in the woods – after all, who would have believed that a boy vanished into thin air?

When they arrested Alan Matthews, I was happy that they’d found an explanation for what happened even though I knew in my heart that James Benton hadn’t been snatched up by some tramp. The shack had taken him, the carpet crawlers had taken him. And even though I tried to pretend that I believed the official version, when I started to have the dreams I knew my instincts had been right.

I dreamed of standing outside shack and of James Benton waiting inside, except he had no eyes. And he screamed silently at me as the floor beneath his feet, the red carpet, swirled in dark patterns. Inside my head, I heard a voice begging me to come inside.

And eventually we all were dreaming the same dream; all four of us, that same dream. Now, maybe there’s a rational explanation; maybe the trauma of that day caused it, maybe whoever dreamed it first mentioned it to the others and they started having the same dream. But I don’t believe you can explain it rationally. It go so that we would have the dream every single night. And every night we found ourselves closer to the door, closer to stepping into the darkness.

Mike had the idea of burning the shack down and we all agreed. We stole petrol from Jon’s brother’s moped and we came back to the shack in the daytime and we sprinkled it around the outside of it and we lit a match. And as it burned, we ran. It caused a forest fire that the fire brigade had to come out to and damp down but it was worth it because the dreams ended and we swore that we would never talk about James or the dreams or the shack ever again.

But here we were, twenty five years later than and the dreams had started all over again.

“We need to go back,” echoed Mike and Des and Jon sighed and reluctantly nodded.

***


We met early the next morning, heads still a little heavy from the beer the night before, and we headed into the woods together. The atmosphere sombre and tense; I think we’d all had the dream that night and we all knew we couldn’t ignore this, we needed to go back and end this finally.

The woods were silent, not a bird or an insect to be heard, as we trudged through them and after twenty minutes of walking we emerged into a small clearing where we found a wooden shack. Its windows were dirty and dusty, and one pane was broken.

“This isn’t possible,” said Jon, “We burnt this down.”

“Someone must have rebuilt it,” said Des.

“Do you know how stupid that sounds?” asked Mike, “Who would rebuild a shack in the middle of the woods and make it as broken down as before?”

“Maybe we didn’t burn it then,” suggested Des.

“We burned it,” I said. “I remember watching the flames climbing up the walls before we ran. We burnt this but now it’s back.”

The door of the shack was ajar and I knew that we needed to open it, that we needed to step inside. Even as a small voice somewhere inside me was telling me to run, to run away as fast as I could, a far more powerful voice was beckoning to me to step inside.

All four of us walked into the shack. It was exactly as I remember it; a wooden table and a rocking chair. The old red carpet, thick with dust and grime. Except in the corner, there was something else. Something in the shadows.

Somewhere in the distance a door shut but I was looking at the something else, at the something in the shadows, as it turned and as James Benton shambled forwards. His mouth open in a scream that never came, his empty eye sockets spilling maggots onto the floor.

And as the fragments of darkness began to coalesce across the floor, as the carpet crawlers begin to rise from the darkness, I realised that I’d always known it would have to end here. We left James once and now we had to come back for him. And as they touched me, midnight blackness scurrying ice cold across my skin, I knew it could never be a happy ending…

Day 2 - What Is and What Should Never Be

It had existed in this limited form for countless aeons, ever since the Great War had been raged and its kind had been forced to seek out refuge in the deepest, darkest places of the lesser dimensions. This planet had been young then, a teeming cauldron of primitive life that provided it with little interest and even less potential, and so it had slept for long ages.

It remembered awakening for the slow rise of the dinosaurs. Buried deep as it was in the very roots of the planet, it still felt them as they evolved to dominate the land and the sea.  They were a disappointment; full of animalistic desire, their reptilian brains slick with reflex yet devoid of the necessary spark. And so, when the asteroid finally came, scouring them from the planet beneath swift decades of blackness, it was pleased that the event offered opportunity for more complex life to flourish.

It waited patiently as the small mammals scurried relentlessly to claim a reborn world, as the surviving descendants of the dinosaurs took wing and began to fill the skies. Their tiny minds buzzed with a flurry of simple thoughts that it listened to on occasion, for it detected the first seeds of development among them, but it soon grew tired of their babble. And so it slept again, content in the knowledge that its long wait to reclaim its place within the Multiverse would soon be over.

Finally, it started to rouse as the last of the Ice Ages began to subside and as a particular type of mammal began to rise to prominence. Their thoughts were still basic, still so very primitive to one such as it that had traversed the higher dimensions and that had seen galaxies born and die, but they offered a kind of crude promise. And so, after more than a billion years, the Eldritch God finally began to stir itself from its dreamless sleep far beneath the cold depths of the ocean.

It was still so very weak; escaping the Great War and the purification that had followed had proven difficult and it had been forced to fold itself in upon itself, bury its abilities so deeply inside that they could not be found even by itself, let alone by those who might search for it. It had conserved what little energy it had left over the aeons but where once had roared a furnace that devoured stars, there were only pale embers. But all that would soon change.

It waited a little longer, a mere two hundred thousand years; waited for the race to blossom and be fully ready for it. All that was needed was for it to be touched by one of them, to link with them and access the power of their imagination and fear, and turn them into a conduit that would unlock the theurgical might that it had closeted away for so many long Ages.

It used much of its remaining energies to push through the oceanic crust; ejected gratefully from the rock, like a splinter from flesh, to emerge into the midnight blackness of the abyssal plain. And then it drifted, stealing strength from the flittering dreams of fish as it slowly worked its way towards land and towards life. Its thoughts anticipating a return to majesty, and devising the horrors that it would then wreak upon this world that had been its prison.

The net of a fishing trawler briefly snared it but the thrashing of a dolphin, caught to in the mile long drift net, served to eject it before it could be hauled up to the surface. And so it drifted further, carried by ocean currents as it conserved the last of its energy for the moment when it could fashion the conduit.

Finally, as the sun rose over the sea, the currents and the waves carried it up onto a sandy beach and left it exposed to the light. It focused its energies so that its form was now that of a coruscating rock, something that it was certain would attract the first person to see it. All it needed was one moment of touch, the barest fraction of a second, and it would expose them to a vision of its true self and drive them beyond the depths of insanity to where they were malleable enough to be of use. For so many aeons, it had waited for life of sufficient sophistication and now all it had to do was wait a few moments longer…

***

Derek Dawson strolled along the sands of Redcar with a Tesco carrier bag swinging from his arm that contained one egg and cress sandwich (wrapped in clingfilm), a packet of smoky bacon crisps (Walkers) and a kitkat (two sticks). It was the same lunch that he had every day on his break from the office as he was very exacting in his demands. There had been, he remembered with a shudder, one occasion when he had accidentally purchased beef and onion crisps (due to the shop being dimly lit) and it had almost ruined his entire week.

It was 12.34pm. He knew this without looking at the Casio watch on his wrist because it was always 12.34pm when he got to this point of the beach. Another three and half minutes and he would reach the concrete steps that led up to the small bench upon which he would sit to eat his lunch. Unless someone was sitting there, which happened on rare occasions, in which case he would sit on the sea wall instead. It wasn’t ideal but it was an acceptable compromise in an emergency.

He was lost a thought a little, thinking of a set of tangible constructed assets that would need to be assessed and depreciated upon his return to the office, when his right foot struck a rock. He looked down.

The rock was oddly shaped; or, at least, its angles seemed somehow wrong and it glittered brightly beneath the rays of the pale sun that was currently poking its way through the clouds. I’ve never seen that before, thought Derek and – despite himself – was seized with an overwhelming desire to bend down and pick it up. So he did.

***

It felt hands enclose it, pick it up, and it summoned its energies; ready to connect and to project itself into a mind inadequately prepared for its infinite madness and evil. In mere seconds it would have seized upon the spark within this one and used it to ignite an inferno that would lay waste to this world, this Solar System, this whole galaxy.

***

Derek looked at the rock in his hands, turning it over as he did. It was definitely quite shiny, he thought, nodding to himself absent-mindedly.


***

It poured forth its rage and its malice in a torrent, but something was very wrong. It was if it was pouring into a cup that could not be filled. It strained harder, wrenching forth energies from within its depths that had remained untapped since life had walked across this pitiful globe.


***

Yes, thought, Derek. Quite shiny indeed. Worth picking up, even if his hands were a little sandy now.


***

It raged impotently. It was a God. It was Death incarnate. It was a being of a magnitude and dimension utterly beyond the one who held it. But, despite all of that, nothing was working. Its energies were slipping desperately away. It had gambled everything on this moment, on this moment of rebirth, but everything was now slipping away from it. The pale embers inside slowly being extinguished one by one. And in one final moment of clarity it realised that it had somehow connected to a being with no spark, with no imagination, a being with such little capacity for wonder that all of its attempts were destined to fail. And, with this last thought, the Eldritch God faded from the Universe with a whimper not a bang.


***

Although, thought Derek, it wasn’t quite as shiny now that the sun had gone in. And his hands were rather sandy. Which was a bit silly because now he’d need to hold his sandwich in the clingfilm and wait until he got back to the office to eat his crisps.

He took one last look at the oddly shaped rock, which curiously enough seemed far less odd than it had first seemed, and then tossed it back into the sea. He looked at his watch. It was 12.36pm. Derek Dawson sighed to himself; he’d just wasted two minutes on a rock. I really should have left that alone, he thought, as he walked away wiping his sandy hands on his trousers…