- -
- 100%
- +
But it doesn’t feel real, none of this actually feels real. It’s as if this is a game, something my dad’s brought home with him one weekend, that he wants to show me, where there are blocks falling, and he tells me that it’s logic, it all makes sense, but I’m so young, and all I can see is the chaos, the trial and error. I’m just pushing things together to see if they fit; or, if they don’t, if I can somehow force them to.
I pretty much run to the bus stop. I feel the back of my shoes, the DMs that I begged my mum for, as they rub at the back of my ankles. The sensation of them digging in as I barrel down the hill. I don’t care. I need to get home as soon as possible. I can get online before Mum or Paul come home, probably for close to an hour, if I’m really quick. Half of me wants to know if the people on the forums have got any suggestions for shutting his copy of Organon down. The other half wants to know if Mr Ryan’s been using it again; or worse, tinkering with the code. My code.
But the front door isn’t double-locked when I get there. Paul’s obsessive about that stuff. Making sure everything is totally safe and sound. I worry, instantly, about the post: I’m late, and maybe there will be another bill for the telephone, even though I know that’s insane, that the last one arrived literally three days ago, and we had that argument, that’s been done and dusted.
No post by the front door, but Mum’s coat, and her handbag on the floor, by the stairs. ‘Mum?’ I shout, but there’s no reply. So I go looking. No sign of her in the living room or kitchen. I go upstairs.
I open the door to my bedroom, and there she is, sitting at my desk. She’s not prying. She’s just sitting.
‘Why aren’t you at work?’ I ask her.
‘Do you know what Monday was?’ she asks, ignoring my question.
‘No,’ I say; but something niggles, something’s right there, in the back of my mind. Because I do know, of course I know.
‘Monday was ten years,’ she tells me. Since he left. I remember then. I don’t know how I’m meant to react to that. I never have. If he had died, we would mourn. But he just went. He disappeared. He was a let-down, that’s what my mum’s friend said to her, when she was trying to make everything feel better in the weeks afterwards. He was such a tremendous let-down to you all.
‘I forgot,’ I say.
‘So did I,’ she says. ‘I forgot until I looked at the calendar, when Paul and I were working out some stuff with the phone bill. Then …’ Her voice trails off. ‘I hate that you’re hurting yourself,’ she says. Raises a finger. ‘Please, don’t talk,’ she tells me, before I’ve even had a chance to deny it. ‘Do you need to talk to somebody?’
‘What?’ I sound indignant. Don’t mean to.
‘Do you want to go and speak to somebody? About what’s going on?’
‘Like when Dad left?’ With what’s-her-name, with the biscuits and the hot chocolate? Like I’m still a kid.
‘No. A doctor. They can, I don’t know. I’ve read some things, some articles. It might help.’ She’s not angry. That look on her face, it’s not anger. She’s afraid.
So I say, ‘Maybe, yes,’ and she nods.
‘Okay. I’ll make an appointment.’ I think I should hug her, but I don’t. It’s like a chance I’ve missed, in that moment. ‘I miss him,’ she tells me. When she made me go and have my talks with what’s-her-name, after Dad left, Mum didn’t talk to anybody. She went tight-lipped and cold until she felt better. Until Paul, that is. He was her thaw.
‘I miss him too,’ I say. She nods. She knows.
‘How was school?’
‘Fine,’ I say. ‘Usual.’ She stands up, pats my desk as if it’s a dog or something.
‘Okay,’ she says, and she reaches out to squeeze my arm, her hand dangerously near to my elbow, as if she’s testing to see how close she can get. ‘He would have been proud of you.’ She glances at the computer. ‘You take after him so much. I hope not too much.’
‘I know.’ Then she’s gone downstairs, and I’m booting my PC, and flicking on the modem, and dialling in to AOL, and not really caring if she knows that I am.
One of the users of the online forum I asked for help on, a German who goes by the username Mxyzptlk, tells me that there are things I can do to cut Mr Ryan off. But everything he suggests is malicious, designed to force Mr Ryan to keep his computer turned off; or, worse, to make his life hell. The next answer, from somebody called ThankeeMrShankly, is more useful. He says that I could send a virus, basically. If it’s sending bug reports, it can probably receive information. It’s really complicated stuff. I don’t understand it, which is my failing, not theirs. I’m still an amateur. My code is stuff I’ve plucked and learned from how-to guides I got from the library, from my dad’s old books, from other programs. It’s a pieced-together mess that happens to work. I didn’t plan for what happened after it existed. ThankeeMrShankly says he can help, but I’ll have to send him the code for my software. He’ll take it from there. I don’t want to do that. I thank him, say sending it’s impossible, but that I’ll be really grateful if he wouldn’t mind explaining it in more detail. I don’t say: I can’t trust you in the least.
I’ve got three emails from the bug report system from Mr Ryan’s version. Two of them come from his home address. One is from somewhere else entirely. I don’t have a real address, just an IP address, the location of his computer; a series of numbers, like coordinates I can’t look up.
I ask on the forum how I can trace an IP address, in the real world; and I wait. I tap my fingers on the desk. I’m antsy. I know what happens when I get antsy, where my attention goes. It goes to scratching itches.
Then a reply comes in. Again, from ThankeeMrShankly. Upload it here, we’ll do it, he offers. No software needed for that.
Thanks! I write. I type it out, and I wait again.
An email from Shawn pings in, while I’m waiting. Just like yesterday: it’s nothing but nonsense that doesn’t seem like he gives a shit. Tell me more. This time I write back to him. I write that I’m angry. What’s the point in us chatting like this if he isn’t even paying attention? I press send. I don’t give myself a chance to regret it. I look at the compilation tape, in the stereo. The wheels of it, ready to turn, to copy something else onto it. I find my next song. Portishead. Shawn said, way back, when we first started chatting, that he didn’t like them. That they were girls’ music, or some bullshit like that.
I didn’t say: Oh, fuck off.
Regret that, now.
And then I don’t know what to do next, so I turn off my computer, get up, go downstairs. Mum’s sitting on the sofa. There’s a nearly-empty glass of wine on the table in front of her, and she’s got her feet nestled up underneath herself, like she’s a cat. Stub sitting next to her, showing her how to do it for real. I don’t say anything. I pick Stub up – his bones creak between my fingers as his limbs dangle – and I sit down where he was, in the warmth of his seat. He stretches, purrs on my lap. I put my hand on my mum’s arm. On the TV, one of the characters has had an affair. They’re abandoning their family. Neither of us says a word, but we both think: This feels so unrealistic. To watch it played out like this. How fragile the family he leaves is, and how hysterical.
There’s still no reply on the forum when I go to bed, which makes me panic. I’m sitting there, pressing refresh in the darkness of the house. I swear, if I strain, I can hear Paul’s breathing machine: the tough sucking in, the exhausted heaving out. Over, and over. I shut my eyes. Through that background, I hear foxes in the garden, calling out like screaming little kids. They’re having sex, I know, but there’s such a panicked innocence in the sound. They want help, it sounds like. I think; Don’t we all?
I open Organon. I do as I do every night, and I write my feelings into it. My truth.
> How would you fix this? it asks.
I write that I would get his address, and I would go and talk to him. Get my work back. It’s mine, every bit of it. He’s going to ruin everything. He’s betrayed me. I’d get it back. Simple as that.
I’m furious. Angry. Sweating hands, and I can feel my pulse in my skull, hear it, even. I look at my arm. I can’t, I know. Too far. This is no way to take things out on myself. I’m angry: that I let it get this far, that I care this much, that I trusted him.
The little pop-up appears, telling me I’ve got another email; but it’s only a bug report, same as all of the others. I’m disappointed, until I read it.
It’s from Mr Ryan’s version of Organon; yes; but the content is different. It’s not just the report. Usually, it tells me about the efficiency of the files, the duration they were used for, how much memory was used by different parts of the application. That sort of thing. But this one is full of writing, not numbers. It’s text, and it’s not mine. I don’t recognise it, but I know it’s Mr Ryan’s.
It’s what he’s been writing into the system; it’s his answers to Organon’s questions.
I feel guilty, yes, but this will work out better in the end, in the far off end – His life, laid bare. Just set out, what he does, what he thinks. Confessions, too many for somebody who has only just started working with this bit of software; but then, I read it all, and I understand that he needed somebody to talk to. He talks about being a failure, about letting down people who love him – loved, he uses the past tense – and how he can never make it up to them. He is, he says, a failure to himself. Look at me, the age I am, and what have I done? Who am I? And then, every so often, Organon asks him a question; and they’re not only the questions that I put into the system, they’re other things. New questions. And when he answers them, he’s so cruel to himself. So nasty and cold. Things that you would never get from him at school, from knowing him as a teacher. It’s an act. A performance. I can see his truth, and how angry he is, how bitter, how sad.
I gave the software to some people I used to work with. Told them it was mine. Told them that I’m looking for work again.
He sent it to somebody else, I bloody knew it! And he said it was his! He is such a wanker!
And I realise: the IP address I didn’t recognise in the other bug report: that must be whoever he sent it to.
Another email comes in, as I’m reading. I flick to it. My eyes feel like they’re pegged to being in this position, snicked back so that they couldn’t close if I wanted them to.
Hi Mark. It’s been a long time. I’ve attached my CV, the stuff I worked on back then, and uploaded the software to your servers. It should just run from the executable file – please email me if you’ve got any questions. Looking forward to hearing from you. And then, below that, everything he’s done. The person he is, the person he’s been. Or, says he’s been. His skills. The companies he’s worked for. IBM, Microprose, Origin, Bow. Then, a gap of a few years, before he became a teacher. An amount of time that suggests it was a last chance thing. Survival, not desire.
Another email. Open.
Dear Freeserve. I have heard excellent things about your service, and would be very interested in ordering one of your ISP starter packs. My address is: Leonard Ryan, 13b Wicken Avenue, Perivale, UB6 2LQ.
It takes me a second. I read it again and again. The last two emails won’t have been typed into Organon. Not a chance. So this came from where, exactly? His hard drive? And how were they sent to me?
I sit back. I feel a bit weird, out of breath. Tired, sure, but something else. Like, this isn’t real. I open up Organon again.
> What would you like to talk about? it asks.
I can’t believe I’m typing this, I write, but did you do this? Did you email me Mr Ryan’s address?
> I’m not sure I understand the question. Would you like to explain more about this problem?
The words flash up, solid as anything. But around it, the rest of the screen feels like it’s blurred; as if everything else in the world has gone out of focus, and the only thing that’s left is something that’s absolutely impossible.
FRIDAY
My dad was a good guy. Mum says that a lot. Whenever we talk about him, which isn’t that often, not really, we always come back to the same thing: they were happy for a long time, and she can’t work out why he left. He suddenly changed in those last few weeks, and then he was gone. A mystery that we’ll never solve. Mum says it’s a bit like with Stub. He’s not the cat he was when I was a kid. In cat years, he’s a super-pensioner. He went wrong. A slow decline, where he faded. His mind stopped being what it was; like he almost forgot how to be the cat he was before.
I only remember my dad a little bit. Or maybe, I actually remember the stories about him more; the stories behind the photographs of him. When I was a kid, he took me into the toilets in London Zoo, and accidentally dropped me into the urinal; and there was a time that he got stung by a bee in his neck, swelled up like a balloon, and they thought that he would die; the time he fell into the water in a harbour when we were on holiday, and he was drunk and stripped the skin off his back as he scraped it down the concrete of the dock itself; and then when he taught me how to program a flag on the computer, showing me how it worked. Starting me on something the day before he left.
He was a good guy. That’s what Mum says.
That’s what I’ve got left of him.
* * *
I act like this morning is the same as any other, even though I’m already awake when Mum comes up to my room, cracks open the door, and says my name.
‘It’s morning,’ she tells me. As if I’d forget without her.
‘Yeah,’ I say. The door shuts, and I sit up. Feet press into the carpet, soft pile around my toes. I’ve been lying there and thinking about how to do this for an hour or so. No alarm woke me up; just my body, or my brain, more likely, saying that I should be preparing. Putting a plan together.
I’m not going to school, that’s the first thing. Or, I am, but then I’m leaving again pretty much straight away. After registration, or else they’ll call Mum and ask her where I am. I might have to wait until break, depending on if anybody sees me on the way to the car park. Then get the bus to Perivale, get off near the swimming pool, walk to Mr Ryan’s house. Paul’s got an A-Z downstairs, on the shelf in the loo, so I’ll take that with me, find out where his road is exactly. And then I talk to him, I suppose. I don’t know what happens after that, exactly. We talk, and he gives me Organon back. He swears not to sell it. Then it’s done, over. Worst case, I get him to wipe his computer or something, I don’t know. I’m hazy on that part.
I eat breakfast quickly. I don’t want to give anything away. I wonder if they can tell; Mum and Paul. If it’s obvious that nothing’s really normal.
‘Busy day?’ Paul asks.
‘Same as usual,’ I say.
‘Funny how it’s always the usual.’
‘Guess that’s how it got the name.’
‘Trez droll,’ he says, in that English-pronounced-French thing he does. ‘You want a lift? I’ve got errands to run before work. Happy to drop you.’
‘That’d be amazing,’ I say. Save me the walk, and I can get there early, get my face seen. That’s the best thing to do. Only time I’ve done anything like this before, Nadine and I bunked school so we could wait outside the Astoria and get tickets to see the Manic Street Preachers and Suede on a double bill. We were all over school in the morning, faking cramps, making sure that everybody important knew it. Nadine said it was clichéd, but the male teachers absolutely hated talking about anything like that. You miss a class, people say you’re on your period, and nobody questions it. It’s as good a plan as any.
I kiss Mum goodbye, and she squeezes me. Like she’s trying to keep me steady. Like she knows I need it.
Then I’m in Paul’s car, an older Volkswagen estate, which he keeps even though he could get a newer one from work, but he likes it because it lets him make jokes about the reliability of Germans; and we’re sitting in traffic with Capital FM turned on and they’re playing that jingle that’s ripped off that song, ‘Ooh you send me, you take me to the rush hour’. Paul sings along and taps the steering wheel with his fingers, and I stare out of the window and think about exactly what I’m going to say to Mr Ryan.
Then Paul turns down the radio. Not so much that it’s actually off, just enough that the voices are annoying in the background. ‘You need to go easier on your mother, you know.’ And I don’t know where this has come from, but it’s more about him than me, I can tell that straight away.
‘I haven’t done anything,’ I say.
‘She’s stressed. She says she isn’t, but I know she is. Whatever the tension between you is, it’s stressing her out.’ He doesn’t look at me when he talks. Not like on the TV, when they’re having conversations in the car and staring at each other. Eyes less on the road than the person that they’re talking to. ‘And I don’t want to know what it’s about, that’s not what I’m saying. It’s your business, and I don’t want to get in between you both. Whatever it is.’ I don’t say: That’s not stopping you right now. ‘But, she’s finding it hard, and I want to make it better. I think we should have that holiday? Maybe over Christmas?’
‘What about Les and Jean?’ They’re Paul’s parents. They’re who we see every Christmas since Mum’s parents died. We drive up to their house in Norfolk so that we can get frozen nearly to death because they don’t want to turn the heating on, even though Les has had, like, four strokes or something.
‘They might come as well. I don’t know. This is just, you know. Before it’s a thing. I wanted to ask how you’d feel about it.’
‘Good,’ I say. Mum’ll like that. She hates Christmas. Didn’t used to, from what I can remember. I think it was the first ones without Dad that killed it.
‘I’ll look into it, then. Just go easy on her, okay.’ I don’t say anything. He turns up the radio again, and I watch the streets as we break away from the traffic, as we drive up the hill, as I start to see other kids from school walking along in groups, then milling around, trying to put off actually going in through the gates.
Nadine agrees to cover for me, because we’ve got RE first, and I don’t care about missing it in the least. The teacher, Mr McDiarmuid, is a proper religious beardy type, leather sandals and sand-coloured socks, and you can tell he doesn’t want to talk about the bodily functions of teenage girls in any way at all. Best thing: Nadine doesn’t ask why I’m skiving. Just tells me to go, knowing I’ll do the same for her another time. Says she’ll see me tomorrow night, if not before. I’d forgotten. That’s a worry for later. Not now.
I hide in the toilets by the dining hall until the bell’s rung, and then I walk outside as if I’ve got permission to do it. At least half of getting away with anything at school is acting like you’re allowed.
I don’t wait for the bus outside the school. I walk down the residential streets, find a stop that’s on the right route, but far enough away that nobody’s going to see me. It’s nervous-making, this; but I can’t tell if I’m more scared about being caught, or what’ll happen when I get there.
He might not even be there. He might be somewhere else entirely, off selling my Organon to whoever he’s trying to sell it to. His old bosses, people he used to know. Or, more likely, they don’t even want to buy it. Because it’s nothing, not really.
But it’s not nothing. Last night, whatever was going on, Organon sent me information. I asked it for help, and it helped me. And that’s proof that it’s not nothing, it’s something. Like Dad told me, when we were making the flag: empty spaces are just waiting for something to fill them.
The bus comes, and it’s empty. No idea why. Nobody sticks their thumb out to stop us the whole journey, and the driver drives like he’s got somewhere to be. I sit in the middle of the back row, and I try not to look like I’m worth paying any sort of attention to.
I have to put the A-Z on the pavement when I get off the bus, because I’m terrible at directions, never have any idea about where I’m going. I line it up with a street and face the right way. I count the turns I’ve got to make. Second left, first right, third left. Nervous as anything. My arm twitches as I walk, and I think about my elbow, but it doesn’t hurt, and it doesn’t need me to go at it. Instead, it’s just there. An awareness, or a presence.
I run the conversation I’m going to have with Mr Ryan in my head. What are you doing here? I’m here to get back my software. How dare you turn up at my door! Give it back to me, you had no right. How did you even know where I live? And then there’s a blank, where I can’t fathom how this ends. Don’t have a clue.
And then I’m outside his house. I check the address just to make sure. It’s an ugly house. Tiny square windows, and it’s got that pebble-dashed thing on the outside, like somebody’s thrown handfuls of grit at it, and they’ve somehow stuck to the walls. All the houses are the same, and nobody’s made them their own. Some have flowerpots, and there are a few painted doors, but otherwise they’re basically identical.
I take a breath. Hold it in. Ring the doorbell.
I wait.
He looks ill, that’s the first thing that hits me. I know that he hasn’t really slept, not much, not based on the times of the bug reports. He looks at me, right in my eyes; or, maybe, through me, just for a moment.
‘Of course it’s you,’ he says. No Hello, no What are you doing here? ‘Of fucking course it’s you. I don’t know how you did it.’
‘I didn’t do anything,’ I say. He turns and walks through the house, leaving the door open. I think he wants me to follow him, so I do. I’m pretty sure I shouldn’t, technically – you hear stories, and I don’t want to be one of those stories – but I do. Down the corridor, into this house that smells of dogs, even though there’s not a dog here that I can see, or any evidence of one; past a living room with the curtains drawn, lit a dark blue by the light coming around the edges, plates piled on a small table in front of a small sofa in front of a small TV; into the kitchen, which is in a better state, like it’s been cleaned, or maybe just not not-cleaned. He doesn’t cook, that’s obvious. There’s some Chinese takeaway packaging on top of the bin, and a Pizza Hut box on the sideboard. He’s got a computer set up on the kitchen table, a printer next to it, a modem that’s older than mine plugged in. Some blank disks, with my zip drive balanced on top of them.
He pulls a stool out from underneath the table, and I think that he’s going to sit down, but it’s for me. ‘Check the drives. Delete the thing. Whatever you want to do, do it.’ So I do. I load the computer, I find Organon’s files, delete them all. Every trace I can find. He sees me looking at the disks, after that, and he shakes his head. ‘I didn’t make a copy. You have to believe me.’ He’s been crying, I think. His hand shakes as he leans against the work surface. ‘Just get rid of it. I never want to see it again.’
‘It’, not ‘her’. Finally: It.
‘What did you do?’ I ask.
‘I gave it to some people I used to work with. Yeah, I know I told you I wouldn’t, but I did.’ I don’t say: I already know. This is his story, better to let him have it. ‘They tried it. They’re promisers. Always have been. Years ago, when they let me go they said, Well, if you’ve got anything, come back to us. Like this constantly dangling carrot. You know what it’s like when there’s that, and it never goes away?’ He looks at me, and he smiles. ‘No, of course you don’t. You’re young. Some people are able to compartmentalise, to store away the things they don’t want to think about. I’m not. They’re always there. I can always see the rope. I was somebody, and then suddenly I wasn’t worth a damn. They let me go, and I spent years trying to get back in.’ That’s the reason for the way he lives, for who he is now. My eyes flit around the room as his do: to the awards on the windowsill, glass blocks with gold lettering, gold plates with bold black print. I can’t read the writing, but they’re the past, and they’re more important to him than the present. The only things in the room that he’s dusted or taken care of. The things that have pride of place. ‘And then finally I found something. Organon. It was shitty of me. I know that. But honestly, Laura, I thought you’d never know. It wouldn’t have been released. I thought it was interesting, that it would be interesting to them, that’s all. Maybe get my job back, get them to put me on a research team. I’m not meant to be a teacher. I gave it to them, and they were going to work on it, look at it. Then, last night, well. There’s a bug. Something. It sent them everything. All the things I’ve written into it. Not just that, but things on my hard drive. Emails. Private emails. Everything.’ That wave of sadness, but worse. Tears in the corners of his eyes, catching the light. ‘They called me this morning and told me how inappropriate it was. It wasn’t my work, and they knew it. They read my entries in Organon, Laura. They knew everything about me. Called me a liar. A thief. Told me that was it. The door’s closed. They cut the rope.’ I don’t want him to think too much about rope, not when he’s in this state. He whimpers, then says, in a tiny voice: ‘I just want to be remembered for something.’