Chapter 25: Everything Seems So Normal, Except When it Doesn’t

Item. Pounding drums.

Item. The harsh scent of iron; the cloying scent of decay.

Item. Two men and a woman in insect masks and ballet costumes of bright colour, the latter with plastic yellow cones over her breasts to exaggerate their motion. Note: ecstatic dancing.

Item. One ballet-costumed and insect-masked female corpse.

Item. A vast pool of blood; also used to form handprints and lewd smears on the walls.

Item. Another female, this one breathing, lashed tight with gaffer tape to a high-backed, black office chair, slumped, with a DreamAds hood over her head.

Item. A rectangular block of computer equipment, taller than me. Many blinking green lights.

Other items indicative of a place which had once contained six workstations and reclinable seats with nearby hoods.

What is to prevent me from inserting order into this disorder of the senses, to attack murderously the hidden aspect of this scene? Silence, so that I may pass where no outsider has ever passed. Silence!

Love, first

It could all turn out so well

DUBLIN IS JUST A BIG TOWN

The music stops.

A muscular stag-beetle-headed man stares dark-eyed through the holes of his mask. ‘Who the fuck are you?’

I say nothing. I am in the presence of an embodied titan: it will know a lie but attack me for the truth.

‘God bless us and forgive us,’ says the woman. ‘I didn’t want to kill her. Do you believe me?’

I say nothing. Dare I adjust the second buttonhole of my coat? Attempts at furtive actions will fail, I must be brazen. I cup my left breast in my left hand, this interests them as my finger suggestively stimulates the buttonhole and my right hand moves to the inside pocket beneath it.

‘Who is it?’ asks the woman imprisoned in the DreamAds hood. Now I know her. I knew her the entire time.

‘Celine,’ this time I must speak, for she needs to hope.

‘Cyn? Run now! Get out!’

I laugh. All three of them join in: Stag Beetle; Warrior Ant; and Dragonfly. This situation is appallingly dangerous. They want to kill me and will relish the deed. Nevertheless, I will not run. Escape may be too late, in any case. The man with the twisted finger, or HR, or the entrance guard, any one of them might have already sounded the alarm. Above all, though, there is Amanda. I cannot leave her here, in hell.

Warrior Ant cavorts towards me.

The room is a supersaturate and almost anything I do or say will act as a seed to crystalise violence that will result in my death or, worse, my capture and torture. I cannot defeat these three in a physical contest. They have been using the dreamhoods as often as Cyn and are as attuned to their senses as I. Except that they have evolved within the malignant body of DreamAds. They have awoken the most wicked and unrestrained aspects of their inner selves and have let loose a gruesome revelry.

Warrior Ant cavorts towards me.

The other two are watching, sniffing, listening, reaching out. Inclined to think me their enemy, they are not yet certain enough to act on their desire to constrain and rape me.

Warrior Ant cavorts towards me.

I slow my breathing as though drifting toward sleep.

Warrior Ant holds a stapler above his head like a castanet. His blood-stained shirt was once white, with a Miro-esque swathe of deep blue. He is shoeless, leaving red footprints as he leaps and twists. At the last moment, Warrior Ant swerves away from me and skips to Amanda, removing her hood. He tries to kiss her face, but the mandibles of his mask get in the way.

Stag Beetle says, ‘the desire to make off with the substance of others is the foremost – the most legitimate – passion nature has bred into us and, without doubt, the most agreeable one.’

With frantic eyes, Amanda is trying to signal to me. I ignore her. The others are listening, watching, inhaling, feeling, and are perfectly well aware of the strivings of their prisoner.

‘Speak to us,’ says the woman, ‘in poetry. Or lose your tongue.’ Her own tongue protrudes from her dragon-fly mask. Her mouth glistens.

‘Bob Dylan once faced a knife attacker in a café, knowing that his assailant was quite prepared to go to jail for decades. It would be worth it for immortal fame as the man who slew Bob Dylan.’

All three of them cease their uncanny movements at exactly the same time, their insect faces turn towards me. I have captured their interest.

‘Dylan was terrified and grabbed for a variety of weapons to defend himself: corkscrew; table knife; glass vase; discarding them in in turn as inadequate to the task. Finally settling on a steak knife that was pitifully small, he faced a large, Aryan man with a nazi patch on his jacket and a hunting knife in his right fist, a man who was laughing at the desperation evident in Dylan.

‘The thug even allowed Dylan to drag the serrations of the steak knife down his tattooed forearm, his mocking laugh not changing tone for a moment. And even as the attacker raised his own knife, Dylan was struck in the back by a blade long enough to reach his heart. The attacker had a twin, equally muscular, equally fascist, equally blonde, and equally murderous.’

Slowly and emulating the natural movements of a storyteller intent on involving her audience, I turn to look at Warrior Ant beside the imprisoned Amanda and then swivel my body to move my line of sight across the corpse and the blood to Dragonfly then on to Stag Beetle.

‘Everyone in that café thought that they were witnesses to the death of Dylan. Most were horrified. One or two were ambivalent and even rather pleased that something interesting had occurred, something that they intuited would make an entertaining anecdote for the rest of their lives. And one man was reckoning that the film from his handheld camera recording of the death of Bob Dylan would be worth millions.’

The insect dancers are enjoying the story, especially its cynical side. The spacetime this provides me to work with is only a sliver but it is enough. I glance down inside my coat, my right thumb selects Daniel and I hit ‘send’ and then I tap the icon to dial him.

‘What are you doing…?’ Stag Beetle looks up sharply.

‘Dylan, however, staggered forward into the brute in front of him before straightening. There was no blood.

‘Confused, the attackers looked around as more and more customers stood up in a threatening manner. Then the twins fled. As for Dylan, he had to wave away the solicitous attention of staff and diners, declaring himself to be fine.

‘This incident occurred in seventy-four, when Dylan had been receiving death threats that the police insisted he take seriously. Underneath his shirt was a bulletproof vest.’

‘You did something,’ says the woman.

‘I told you a parable.’

She takes a step towards me. ‘When you were talking. What’s inside your coat?’

‘If it’s a parable, then there’s a lesson. What’s the lesson?’ asks Warrior Ant.

‘Don’t attempt murder unless you are in possession of all the relevant facts.’ I take out my phone, showing it to the woman, then the men. ‘Can you hear this Daniel?’

‘Christ, Cyn, what’s going on there?’ The voice of my lover is a relief.

‘If Amanda and I are not with you in ten minutes, send that video to the guards and upload it to every social media site you can with the righteous urgency of someone whose loved one has probably just been murdered.’

The supersaturate collapses, the presence of the titan dissolves. The insect heads look crestfallen.

‘What do you want?’ asks the woman.

‘Take your masks off.’

A pause. Then they do so. No longer monsters. None of them were yet in their thirties; I had imagined them to be older. If you met these three in a pub, neat-haired and cheerful, you wouldn’t see the unfettered sadism that has grown up in their minds from the prolonged use of hoods while living within the bodies of Capitalism and DreamAds.

‘Let Amanda go.’

The former ant looks at the woman. In the moment that she takes her eyes from me to reply to him, I capture her picture. She is all puffy cheeks and scowling frown.

‘Not yet,’ she replies, then focuses on me, the rage that she is attempting to suppress causing her voice to quiver. ‘We have a mission that’s bigger than us. Bigger than her. Bigger than Neo even. We are bringing about the next evolution in Homo Sapiens and she won’t get in our way.’

‘That’s all very well,’ I reply, striving for calmness, ‘but if Daniel sends that video out, your mission is going to end very quickly.’ I look at the phone. ‘Eight minutes.’

‘If you leave here, you’ll send that video out anyway,’ says the other man.

‘What? And lose the millions that Neo will pay for it to be deleted?’

‘Let me speak to Neo.’ The woman looks around the room, until she sees a cloth bag with rainbow colours draped on a metal cabinet. From it she takes a phone and taps it twice. Her eyes change, as if the mind behind them is no longer present.

‘It is an emergency…

‘Kirsten is dead… Too many cuts. She bled out while…

‘No, that’s not the emergency. There’s someone here. An outsider. She has filmed the body and wants to blackmail you. Stop right there, she’s still here and listening… The question is, do I let her leave?’ The woman looks over at me, her eyes now narrow and incoherent. ‘He wants to speak to you.’

‘Throw it.’

My own phone is in my right hand, I catch hers with my left.

‘Hello Neo.’

‘I’ll find you. Your face is on all our cameras, inside and outside the building. There’s no one moving around any city in the world today who can’t be recognised as soon as they are on the streets. You’ll be mine. I’ll make you suffer. I know a way to insert a knife and with a half-twist remove the knee. And if you make Odysseus come to Troy, this kind of business will be a pleasure to me.’

‘You don’t have to find me. I’m right here in your headquarters and my name is Cyn Sweetwater.’

A pause. ‘I know you.’

‘You bought We Will Meet Again.’

‘That’s right! And I gave it to the nation.’

‘Thank you for that.’

‘So what are you up to?’ His voice is no longer otherworldly, but practical.

From the phone in my other hand comes Daniel’s voice, ‘Two minutes. Do I send it?’

‘Give them another ten, I’m talking to Neo,’ I reply with a turn of my head. Then I focus again on the owner of DreamAds, ‘Three of your staff have murdered a colleague.’

‘And?’

‘I’ll trade you for Amanda to keep that hushed up.’

‘Fuck you Cyn Sweetwater. Those three are useless now; what do I care if they go to jail? You’d be nothing without DreamAds, just another petty-criminal on the dole, calling herself an artist. And I’m certainly not going to let that rat out. You’re dead, you shit.’

I end the call but keep nodding a little longer and making agreeable noises. Then I put the phone down on a desk and say. ‘Neo says to let us go; he’ll give us a year and a day, then come after us. And he said some other stuff.’

‘What other stuff?’ asks the man near Amanda.

‘He’s on a flight back from the US. If this room isn’t pristine when he gets here you’re going to join Kirsten in whatever pit or body of water you put her in.’

Deflated and miserable, the three DreamAds staff are emerging from their frenzied indulgences to a realisation their lives are surrounded by wreckage. So little energy remains in their bodies that I have to repeatedly urge the former Warrior Ant to cut Amanda loose.

To my surprise and considerable anxiety, once the silver tape has been sliced and she can tear herself free, Amanda doesn’t hurry to my side and the exit. After overcoming a temporary wobble in her steps, she goes to the large bank of electronics and presses on what seems to be only a black, plastic wall until a rectangle of circuitry glides out. She pulls this clear of its housing and collects four more. I dare not scream at her. But come on, Amanda, come on.

Finally, she is satisfied and joins me. I open the door.

‘That’s her, that’s the one who broke my finger!’ In the corridor outside, Mr Bubblehead has two security guards with him.

‘It’s not broken, at worst it’s a bit dislocated. Plenty of ice and a few painkillers and you’ll be sorted,’ I reply.

‘I need you to come with me to a holding room,’ says the stockier of the guards.

‘I’m just off the phone with Neo. He says to let us leave. You can ask your friends in there. Oh… and you might want to help them with the body. Neo says they have less than a day to clean up that room.’

We step aside and I even give a little “after you” gesture with my hand.

With a shrug, the other security guard follows my invitation and leans through the door. A mutter emerges from him that although quiet is fervent, ‘Christ on a bike.’

Beyond him, the others in the room appear distinctly ashamed.

No one stops us walking to the stairs. Now is not the time to take the elevator.

It is hard not to break into a run as we approach the glass doors that are all that prevents us from breathing the air of freedom. Beside me, Amanda is accelerating towards them. I touch her arm and she understands. We are dependent on the security guard at the desk, to whom I give a nod.

His look in response is uneasy. All the same, the doors yield to our push.

Daniel runs up to us and puts his arms around me. ‘Thank God, Cyn.’

‘We are not in the clear yet,’ says Amanda. ‘Where’s your car?’

‘We came on the bus,’ I answer.

‘Unbelievable. Do you really intend to get away by public transport?’

Daniel looks at his phone. ‘There’s a bus to town in four minutes.’

Shaking her head, computer parts under her left arm, Amanda sets off through the industrial park with irritated strides and we follow, Daniel holding my hand.

Sitting on the green seats of the Dublin bus, with workers from other units on the estate all around us, Amanda turns around, addressing us both. ‘Isn’t this exactly the experience of living in an age of societal breakdown? Everything seems so normal, except when it doesn’t.’