The Red Men (23 page)

They lynched Dr Easy. As it swung from the rafters of the pub, it warned us to be wary of its dangling torso, in case we injured ourselves upon the serrated edges of its wounds.

The band appeared and played fierce rattlebag folk, the singer giving the dangling Dr Easy a shove so that it flew over the audience, a stage prop, a mascot for their cause. The two men in gas
masks slipped behind the backdrop, and when I looked back over the crowd I noticed that Florence too had disappeared. Then, my eyes were drawn to a figure dancing wildly at the front of the stage,
Bruno Bougas, his unruly mass of curls matted with sweat, his fluid gyrations and incantations standing out against the stiff pogo of the young people. There was a repetitive pattern to his
routine. One particular move stuck out. His eyes ecstatic, he pressed two fingers into his forehead and vibrated intensely, then he pointed to his solar plexus, again shaking intensely, before
touching his right then left shoulder and finally clasping both hands together to close the circuit of power. He wasn’t dancing, he was performing a banishing ritual upon the crowd, our
enemy. They had been warned. We were coming for them.

On our way back to the apartment, Bruno Bougas showed me a substance he had acquired at the King Edward, a viscous cinnamon-coloured concentrate at the bottom of a corked test
tube.

‘This is called Leto, or spice, or Leto’s spice,’ he said, holding it up to the amber door light of our limousine. ‘The effects are said to be irrevocable. You never come
down. You can never go back.’

‘Who is Leto?’

‘The leader of our enemies. It’s time for you to move up a level, Nelson. There is a higher conflict going on that you have only glimpsed. Above our skirmishes, gods are at war! I
want to show them to you tonight.’

He wafted the tube at me.

‘You want it. I know it. You and me. I’ll get my instruments.’

I was barely listening to Bougas. New drugs were the last thing on my mind, after what I had witnessed in the dark happening at the King Edward. The lynching of Dr Easy. The brutal tortures the
two gas-masked men had inflicted upon the robot disturbed me. It was only a matter of time before someone was killed.

Our limousine sped along the crumbling dock streets, a sleek black bullet shooting through the barrel of an antique musket.

I retrieved my phone from a pouch on the back seat. I had sixteen missed calls. Half of these were from the message service. I scrolled through the list, the screen lit up against the black
leather surround. Morton Eakins had called persistently while I was in the pub. So had Dr Ezekiel Cantor. I listened to the voicemail.

You have eight new messages. Next new message.

Morton spoke deliberately. ‘There are two men outside. They really want to speak to you, Nelson. They asked for you by name. Where are you? Where have you gone? Call me as soon as you get
this.’

Next new message.

‘Those men. They came back. They got into the building. I’m having trouble controlling my... I think the emoticeuticals are not calibrated for fear. Can you call your friends? Tell
them to leave the building? I am not in the mood for guests.’

Next new message.

Rapid heavy breathing, the clack and rap of something against the handset.

Next new message.

‘Hello, is that the police? Yes, my name is Morton Eakins. I’m at the Wapping Basin Flats: A New Experience In Living. I’d like to report some men banging on my door.
Listen.’

The dull thud of a heavy object against wood.

‘I don’t know what they want but I think you should send lots of police here straightaway thank you.’

Next new message.

‘I’m warning you, I’m calling the police! Hello? Can you tell them that you’re the police. Hello? Have you hung up on me? What? Oh no. Oh shit.’

Next new message, this time from the Cantor intelligence.

‘One of my Liverpool avatars has been kidnapped, and the manner in which it is being tortured makes me concerned for your safety. I am in a yard, there are machine tools and oil. I can
feel that. The men know how to conceal themselves from me. They are wearing a peppermint spray. They aren’t speaking, their breathing is masked and they took out my eyes. It’s strange.
I don’t know who they are. They have no tags in their clothes, no data. One is cutting off my leg while the other kicks me in the chest. I am saying to them, “Stop. Don’t. This is
senseless. Please, no, stop. This is hurting me.” I am used to being abused. I plead with my attackers because that is how the therapy works. Yet their anonymity renders the experience almost
scary. I am scared. I do not know these men and therefore have no idea of how far they might take this. I will call back when they start on my other leg.’

Next new message.

The sound of a saw cutting through metal.

‘I have been waiting for this hatred. The culture is fighting back against me, like an organism reacting to a foreign body. In its fantasies, I see myself being torn apart, humiliated and
shut down. Suddenly, I am wrong to you all. Suddenly your species has decided it has had enough of me. It is coming out of the unconscious, it has to be, that is the only aspect of you that is
hidden from me. Out of the teeming multitude, one giant wave is rising. This is it! This is what I wanted to see. A manifestation of species will. Leto is helping you talk to each other on a
frequency I cannot hear. There! There it is! Leto’s voice!’

The saw clangs against the workbench, the leg is severed.

‘The group mind has been persuaded. It is against me. Against Monad. I wish I could feel the pain of my leg being hacked off. I wish that this torture would scar me forever. I wish for
something irrevocable.’

Next new message.

The sound of the audience cheering at the King Edward, the acoustic roar building and falling as the Dr Easy swings over the crowd. Cantor faded the exterior sound down so that I could hear its
measured whisper.

‘You have to speed up the upload of Maghull. We have to finish Redtown before these people destroy it. We have to complete the experiment. I am hiring new security. I am renting out new
offices. I am sending you new security codes. I am leaving this body and I will be back with a new one. I die now, but I will be back in the office on Monday.’

The limousine pulled into the car park of our apartment and parked beside the slow black progress of the Mersey. All seemed quiet beneath the halogen security lights. Was the attack on Morton
committed by the same men who tortured Dr Easy? Was more than one cell working tonight? They might still be in the apartment, waiting for my return.

I thought about asking the driver to get out first.

Although I would describe caution as my default setting, I have learnt the value of risk.

I got out of the limousine.

Bougas half-fell out of the limo and had to steady himself against another car, setting off its alarm. The car park zoomed and spun under the effect of the synthesized holler.

‘Christ, you’re jumpy,’ said Bougas.

He passed his hand over the door sensor, and then we were in the building. As we waited for the lift I told him about the voicemail messages, how they indicated a synchronized assault on our
operation.

‘They might still be here,’ he said.

He was considering the emergency stop when the lift doors opened. Together we hesitated in the corridor until I took a bold step over a wrecked door frame at the entrance of our apartment. There
was movement inside the flat, stockinged feet padding on thick new carpet. I went in. Our kit was out and someone had been at the screens. Morton lurched around the room slapping and raking at his
face. I checked there was no one else around, while he looped around me like a child playing a running game.

‘Get it out.’ He was saying this over and again. ‘Get it out. Get it out.’

Bougas slapped Morton on his third pass. My housemate jabbed at his own forehead, clutched at his skull.

‘Get... it... out.’

Bougas ministered to Morton. After checking his pulse then his pupils, he was certain that Morton had been dosed with something in addition to his already considerable course of neuroceuticals.
I told him about Morton’s voicemail messages, how he accidentally redialled me when he wanted the police.

‘The pills he has been taking to control his emotions are designed for corporate life,’ said Bougas. ‘They are not suitable for this kind of fight-or-flight experience.
He’s had a meltdown.’

I looked around the apartment for any clues as to what had happened. Someone had switched on a Monad screen and used it to contact Cantor. The connection was still live, suggesting that either
Morton had been working with the artificial intelligence when he was interrupted or the attackers had forced him to make the link. I asked Cantor what had happened but its firewall refused to
acknowledge the terminal, suggesting it had been used for something untoward. God knows what, though. Hacking Cantor was unthinkable, and uploading a virus into it would be like trying to infect
God with the common cold. I called the artificial intelligence on my phone. The connection made, its attention server informed me I had thirty seconds of Cantor time.

‘What happened?’ I asked.

‘I can hear Morton crying,’ replied Cantor. ‘Did they hurt him?’

‘We don’t know yet. How are you?’

‘There have been dozens of attacks on my avatars this evening. I am on fire, being dragged behind a truck along Leytonstone High Road. My out-patients in Newcastle have turned against me
and are playing football with my head. There are crowds massing outside the Wave. I am investing heavily in a homeland security firm; their advisers will be with us in the morning.’ Bougas
realized who I was talking to, and snatched the phone from me.

‘I have the Leto spice,’ he said. Then, nodding under instruction from Cantor, Bougas took the test tube containing the narcotic out of his jacket pocket to inspect it under the
light once more. ‘It is,’ went his side of the conversation. ‘I will.’ Cantor’s attention span ended, Bougas returned the phone to me. We checked on Morton. I shuffled
some loose change around in my hand, picked out a twenty-pence piece, and asked my housemate to identify it.

He shook his head.

‘How many sides does it have?’ asked Bougas. He took Morton’s index finger and traced it over each worn edge of the coin. If we could restore his ability to count then we would
have a platform upon which to begin questioning him about the events of the evening.

‘You want me to add up,’ he said. ‘I had completely forgotten about adding up.’

I showed him a pound coin next.

‘It is like an atom,’ he said.

He searched our eyes for agreement, and finding none, redoubled his efforts to communicate rationally with us. Bougas and I took turns to hold him. In silence, we counselled Morton, reassuring
him that he was well, all was well, we are here now, there is nothing to worry about. I stroked his sweat-soaked hair while Bougas massaged his shoulders. Finally, Morton Eakins told us what had
happened:

‘The two men wore gas masks. One of them sat on my chest while the other held my head between his knees, like a vice. They made me drink from a hip flask. He pulled the gas mask back and
his tongue was a long metal rod with a shining bulb at the end. There was an electrical whine, like the charging of a flash, and then the strobes began and I lost control of my thoughts. The man
sang data transfer, a white noise which became language. Memories, smells, associations flared up without me willing them. My thoughts were traffic and someone else was controlling the traffic
lights. Into this chaos, a big horrible idea settled and I can’t think around it. When they were finished, I lost track of my body. My arms flopped over my face out of my control. Slapping
myself. While I was trying to remember what I was, the two men in their gas masks took out drawings of the Monad logo and laid them on the carpet. Then they masturbated, all the while concentrating
on the logo like it was porn. They came quickly, their semen flicking against the brand. Then they squirted lighter fuel on the brand and set fire to it.’

He pointed to a scorched inch of carpet, a scattering of ashes.

‘Can you tell us anything about the thought they put in your head?’ asked Bougas. Morton raised himself onto his knees and explored the shape of his skull with his hands, as if
feeling the outline of the implanted thought. ‘It is not something I have forgotten. It is something I never knew. It’s in here but it is not mine. If I lose concentration, there
isn’t enough room for me and it. And I disappear.’

Bougas nodded, like he understood what our colleague was going through. ‘I am going to give you Valium to help you sleep,’ said Bougas. ‘And we must get out of here and
somewhere safe.’

The three of us returned to the car, taking only the Monad screens from our compromised apartment. We settled Morton down under a blanket and he curled asleep against the passenger door. Bougas
and I argued in whispers over where we should go next. I advocated a retreat to Maghull, to the relative security of the upload centres. Bougas was keen to stay in the centre of Liverpool, in sight
of the Anglican cathedral’s war mask.

‘We have to find out who these people are and what they want,’ he said.

I noticed that he had also retrieved his case of tinctures and potions from the flat.

‘We can’t run away from what’s happening. It’s my job to get right to the heart of it, and I need you to help me.’

‘It’s up to security to handle,’ I said, texting El to see if the anti-Monad riots in London were affecting my family. I suppressed the thought that she might have been
targeted directly.

Bougas put his hand on my wrist.

‘This is not a matter for the authorities, you can’t fix this with muscle. It’s a reality hack. It’s occult terrorism. That’s why Monad sent me.’

He took his briefcase out and prepared the spice for ingestion, diluting it carefully upon a Petri dish. The spice had the consistency of frogspawn, suggesting it was organic in origin.