In the gaps (waiting for text to load, waiting to crack a password, whatever), he’s gone for twenty-three pisses, had five pizzas delivered, had Internet sex with a girl called Vicky, and thought a lot about the number 23. It’s no accident that he’s been for twenty-three pisses. No accident that he’s had five pizzas. Two plus three equals five. Two and three. Always the number 23. Rebecca was twenty-three.
Rebecca, in an indirect way, was the one who got Paul fired. Her and Daniel, of course. Paul’s never met Rebecca, but he tried to help her, once. It was one Friday in May when she rang up the support line and got Paul.
‘My e-mail’s fucked,’ she said.
He cleared his throat. ‘And?’
‘And can you fix it?’
Her voice was little-girl-on-speed.
‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘What’s wrong with it?’
‘None of my messages are coming through. Well, I mean, I’ve had no messages for about three days now but that’s just not right. My, uh, friend Dan always e-mails me like twenty times a day, so I thought there must be something wrong at your end.’
‘Did you?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Why?’
‘Hello? Techno boy? I haven’t got any e-mails. I was expecting e-mails. Something’s fucked.’
‘Good logic,’ says Paul.
‘And you are technical support, right?’
‘I am.’
‘Are you trying to stall me?’
Paul laughed then. ‘Yeah. Probably. What’s your login name?’
He wasn’t trying to chat her up; his motives were higher than sex. He was just trying to keep her on the line for as long as possible, because that cost the company money.
She paused. ‘Um . . .’
‘Take your time.’
‘It’s, um . . . this is really embarrassing.’
‘We have all the time in the—’
‘Wetpussy.’
‘Sorry?’
‘You heard.’
‘Wetpussy?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Can you spell that?’
‘Of course I can spell it.’
‘No, I mean can you spell it out?’
‘Why?’
‘Why?’
After half an hour or so, Paul had solved Rebecca’s problem. Stuck in the company’s cache were the missing e-mails, about twenty-three of them, all from this guy Daniel. What are you wearing right now? the first one said. Then: Where are you? Then: Maybe you’re out. I’m just going to keep sending these. Hope you’re not ignoring me. I’d really like to see you naked right now.
These were interesting enough for Paul to want to look at Rebecca’s entire e-mail history, which he did, forwarding all those to or from Daniel to his home e-mail address. And from then on, he decided to become their God. His target list (other people had ‘to do’ lists) had a new objective. Before, it had said: Waste time. Cost the company money. Give free stuff to customers. Now there was a new item on the list: Make Rebecca fall in love with Daniel. It was like a random act of kindness. And random acts were dada. This was definitely dada. And that was cool.
For the first few weeks Paul just observed. He set up his work system to forward all Rebecca’s e-mails to his home, so he could study her in comfort. She and Daniel were both actors. She had just graduated from Dartington, and Daniel was in the middle of his training at RADA. They had met at a mutual friend’s party and swapped e-mail addresses, but hadn’t met since. It was obvious to Paul that they were in love, but with Dan’s playful sexual aggression, and Rebecca’s playful teasing/frigidity, they were getting nowhere. Paul’s input was clearly going to be needed here.
Inspired by kiddie divorce films (the ones where the parents get back together after the cute kid and the blossoming next door neighbour trick them into it), Paul started adding and subtracting from the e-mails. At first he just added the odd word here and there. But before too long, he was composing whole messages all by himself.
So one night, Rebecca never got the e-mail that asked what she was wearing; instead she got a message of love. And Daniel finally got what he wanted: an incredibly pornographic description of what Rebecca was wearing – or rather, what Paul imagined she was wearing. His instinct had been right. In response to Rebecca’s titillating honesty, Dan sent her a genuine message of love; and in response to his message of love, Rebecca really did send him something dirty – a detailed description of when and how she would give him a blow job. They arranged to meet the following week.
Daniel eventually proposed to Rebecca in an e-mail. She said yes. Paul had stopped tampering by this point, but he was still observing, of course. Unfortunately, they’d worked out that someone had been tampering (which made them kind of grateful, but also pissed off about their lack of privacy), and had contacted the ISP. After an investigation, Paul was found out. It wasn’t just the cupid stuff either. Paul’s boss discovered that everyone with the same initials as Paul were not paying for their e-mail accounts; that all elderly users were actually being paid by the company each time they sent an e-mail; that the local cat home was entirely run from anonymous company donations, and that although Paul could have increased his salary by any amount he chose, all he’d taken for himself was software and unlimited e-mail accounts.
It was a shit job anyway, Paul reasons. And when he’s eighty, he’ll be more proud of what he did for Rebecca and Dan than of some stupid job. But all this has unsettled him. He was stimulated by what he did. The customers were his friends. In this new, empty world, he has no friends, not real ones.
He rubs his eyes and stares into the screen. His community is right here, in this box, talking on the Pavement chat room, or posting on alt.hackers.malicious. Paul hasn’t had real sex for six years. He has a girlfriend, but he’s never met her. She wants to meet, but Paul hasn’t got time. His project needs a lot more work.
His new project is his only passion. It’s a virus, of course, planned for release exactly twenty-three days after the Millennium. That’s the random element; it can’t be on 1 January 2000, because he doesn’t want to be upstaged by that stupid bug. He wants the world to settle down and get back to normal before MoneyBaby (the name of his virus) hits. Of course, there’s nothing evil about Paul’s virus, his hero being the infamous rtm: Robert Tappan Morris, the inventor of the first computer virus, or worm, as people called it then. Paul’s virus is good. Well, it’ll make some teenagers rich anyway. Paul’s virus will infect banks and give them such a fever they won’t even realise that they’re giving out money to seemingly random suburban teenagers. Paul didn’t want to make the teenagers totally random, preferring to choose those who seemed interesting or needy or clever. They have to be clever, because the sooner they tell someone what’s happened, the less damage the virus will be able to do.
Take Freddy in Arizona, still mourning the death of Kurt Cobain. He wouldn’t tell anyone if he received a million dollar windfall. He’d spend it on CDs, slushies and bomb-making equipment. Kim in China would spend it on travel, and Jane in Bath might spend it on that creative writing course she always wanted to take. Zak in Iceland might stop his plans to poison everyone at his school, and Cherry in Buffalo will be able to fund her heroin habit without starring in teen porn films. Paul’s totally into the idea of the great teen conspiracy, and how long the mass secret will exist.
For some reason though, Paul’s project is not exciting him today. He’s lost his context, his reason to rebel. He’s lost the job he hated, and that sucks. It’s like the idea of having a girlfriend. Being attached gives you something to fight against. What Paul really needs is another job to get fired from, and then another and then another. Because without it, he may as well slit his wrists.
He sends off for a few application forms. They arrive. And the one he likes best is the one with the section asking about his greatest fear.
Part Two
Chapter One
‘Where the hell are we?’
‘What the fuck
are we doing here?’
‘Who brought us here?’
‘Can you remember anything?’
‘Is this some kind of island?’
‘This is totally fucked up.’
‘Please tell me I’m dreaming.’
‘I still feel sleepy.’
Anne stays silent, the voices distorting in her ears. Sunlight falls on her face and hair, making her feel hot and dirty. This is some kind of island, that’s pretty obvious. There is salt in the air, a small breeze, and sea all around. She counts five other people. They look kind of familiar. No one knows how they all got here. They’re freaking out, although they seem as dazed as she feels.
Four of them are taking out their mobile phones and trying to dial out, with no luck. Anne’s brain hurts. When she tries to make it go backwards she gets that feeling like she’s coming down with flu. She vaguely remembers an argument with her mother, a train to Edinburgh, a cheap hotel and then waiting for a job interview that she didn’t even want to attend. That was what the argument had been about. She can’t remember beyond the waiting – some non-airconditioned room in some sticky building in the suburbs. The interviewer giving her coffee. She looks at the others. They were all there too. Weird.
The island is quiet and still. It has one house, one shed which is next to the house, an orchard, an empty washing line and a load of rough grass with pale flowers. It has the feel of a wintry place, although it is quite hot, just like it was in Edinburgh. Almost completely round, and about half a mile in diameter, it’s the most unlikely place Anne’s ever seen. It seems like the kind of thing you’d imagine or draw, not somewhere you’d actually be. Apart from the house and shed, the only structure on the island is something that looks like a child’s toy windmill stuck on the top of a big wooden pole. It’s taller than the house. There’s a mist out to sea, and it’s impossible to see any mainland. Anne turns and stares at the house. It looks like a holiday home. She’s not sure why. It seems empty, too, although she hasn’t been inside.
It was just outside the front door of the house that they all came to, about fifteen minutes ago. They were all lying next to each other, like a row of dead bodies, with their belongings (two bags, a couple of rucksacks and a folder) beside them. The sign on the door is still there. It says: PLEASE MAKE YOURSELVES AT HOME.
Anne sits down on the grass and picks a daisy, focusing on it so she doesn’t have to focus on this situation. Penetrating the stalk with her thumbnail, she makes a perfect hole, then picks another daisy and threads it through the first one’s stalk. Everything feels very slow. The coffee is the last thing she can remember before waking up here. It must have been drugged. She picks another daisy. She’s never taken drugs before.
When the daisy chain is complete, she binds it around her wrist. The dark-haired guy watches her do this and smiles. He’s been almost as quiet as Anne so far, just watching the others. There is a skinny bloke with dreadlocks, swearing a lot and talking nonsense to a tall, fair-haired guy who just looks dazed. The other two girls are talking. Well, the dark one is sniffling a lot and the blonde one is talking. Anne is intrigued by the blonde one. She’s like a girl from a pop group manufactured specifically to seem cool and unmanufactured. She’s wearing silver sunglasses which prevent Anne from looking at her eyes. She bets they’re brown and her hair is dyed. Her hair is up in two kids’-TV-presenter bunches, tied with seventies-style bobble bands. Anne has some of those herself, although she prefers the ones with little animals on.
The girl with short dark hair looks serious. She vomited as soon as she woke up, and now she’s crying, her blue-green eyes all red around the edges. She’s the most sensibly dressed of everyone wearing a long skirt, plain vest top, suit jacket and a small silver necklace. Anne didn’t bother dressing up for the interview. Well, you don’t nowadays, do you, especially if you don’t want the job. She’s wearing a short combat skirt, a Pokémon T-shirt, a snowboarding-style fleece jacket (yes, it’s summer, but it’s a cool jacket) and a child’s plastic necklace with matching bracelets, all in candy colours. Her straight brown hair is down, and she’s wearing no make-up except for pink cherry-flavour lip-gloss and black mascara.
She takes off her trainers and starts making a daisy chain for her ankle.
It’s too hot out here. The quiet is freaking Anne out. Where are the cars? Where are the people? Where is the bustle? All she can hear is the waves against the cliffs and a few sea birds. It smells and sounds like the villa in Tuscany, not that she’s been there since she was about twelve. This was so not what she expected when she got up this morning.
The fair-haired guy says he’s going to walk around the circumference of the island. This won’t take him more than ten minutes. A couple of the others call to him to be careful. The island is high above sea level, and Anne can’t see if there’s any way down or not. Falling would be a pretty good way to get down, she thinks. As he sets off towards the cliff edge, Anne pretends this is a videogame and she’s controlling this guy. He’s a bit like Duke Nukem, but without the porn or the guns or the muscles. She presses forward on her imaginary direction pad and circles him around the island. He returns and reports what she could have predicted. There’s no way down. As if someone would drug them, bring them here, and then just let them walk – or swim – away.
‘Shall we go inside, then?’ asks Pop Girl. ‘It’s too weird out here.’
The good-looking dark-haired guy is the first to get up.
Inside, the house is dark and cold. It smells a bit of something that could be mothballs. It’s dusty, too. The front hall is big and square, with a red tiled floor and a staircase leading to a balcony upstairs. There are no carpets, just huge rugs everywhere. A large painting of the earth is hung at the top of the stairs, all blues and greens and swirls of sea. Anne wonders if this island is on the picture somewhere, and if so, where.
‘What’s in here?’ the dark guy asks Vomit Girl. She came inside briefly for a glass of water, Anne remembers, just after she was sick.
‘A sitting room off there,’ she says, pointing to the left. ‘A library thing down at the end and a kitchen around the back.’ She smiles weakly. ‘I’m Thea, by the way.’
‘Paul,’ says the dark guy, smiling back.
Anne can’t remember if they spoke at all at the place in Edinburgh. She thinks not.
‘Shall we all have a look around?’ suggests Duke. ‘Get the lay of the land.’
Pop Girl giggles. ‘Yeah, let’s get the lay of the land,’ she repeats. He blushes and a couple of the others shift around. Then everyone drifts down the corridor. Nothing about this seems very real. Anne’s wondering who’s going to panic first, but no one seems to know how to react.
‘Is there anyone else on this island?’ asks Dreadlocks. ‘Or is it just us?’
‘If there is anyone else here, they’re being very quiet,’ says Paul.
‘There’s no one in here,’ says Thea.
‘There was no one outside,’ says Duke.
The house is pretty much as Thea described. The sitting room off to the left is big, and looks weird without a TV. There are no electronic devices of any kind in the room, just a couple of big brown sofas and a large Indian rug on the bare, unvarnished floorboards. There’s also an open fire, a mantelpiece with nothing on it, a bureau and a single table, pushed to the side of the room. It’s cold and dusty and Thea’s shoes make an echoey, clicking sound on the tiles. Anne’s legs feel heavy and she wishes she could go back to sleep.
Upstairs there are six bedrooms, three to the right and three to the left. Each door has one of their names on it. Whoever planned this intended the boys to be along the right, the girls along the left.
‘Hot Christ,’ says Paul as they walk, dazed, from room to room.
The bedrooms are identical. They are all white: white linen, white towels, white walls.
‘It’s just like a hospital,’ says Pop Girl, yawning.
‘What kind of hospitals do you go to?’ asks Thea. ??
?It’s more like a hotel.’
‘What kind of hotels do you go to?’ asks Pop Girl, raising her eyebrows.
They both laugh sleepily. They seem to have established that it’s not like a hospital or a hotel.
‘Whatever,’ says Paul. ‘It’s still fucked up. Hot Christ.’
‘Can you stop saying that?’ asks Thea.
‘Saying what?’ asks Paul.
Each of the rooms also contains a blank, white notebook, and some white clothes.
Anne’s stomach does a kind of flip, but she doesn’t say anything.
‘What is going on here?’ asks Thea quietly.
A small staircase leads to an attic room, but the door is locked.
‘Kitchen?’ suggests Pop Girl. ‘I’m really thirsty.’
‘We need to work out what’s going on here,’ says Duke.
As they walk down to the kitchen, it strikes Anne that this place was probably used as some sort of hotel or guest house once. Otherwise why would all the bedrooms have bathrooms?
‘Does anyone else feel sick?’ asks Pop Girl. She’s made it to the kitchen table and is sitting slumped over it, heaving about, being dramatic. Everyone else is sitting at the table as well, except for Paul, who is trying to put the kettle on, but has found that the electric stove doesn’t work. He finds a small camping stove in the end, with a full gas cylinder, and uses that. He doesn’t seem to have any trouble filling it, and water comes straight out of the tap. There’s running water here, at least, then, although Anne’s not sure where it comes from.
‘Yeah,’ says U-rated Duke Nukem. ‘I feel queasy.’
‘I’ve got bad gut rot,’ says Dreadlocks.
‘I’m OK,’ says Anne quietly.
‘You look pale,’ says Duke.
‘You do actually,’ says Paul.
‘Everyone says that,’ she replies. ‘It’s normal. Don’t worry.’
‘You should get a sun bed or something,’ says Pop Girl.