Bradbury Lodge was a 19th century mansion in the middle of nowhere, so it was a hard job to 'disappear' into the community. Questioning as many people as I dared, there seemed to be a depression about them; a hint of paranoia and an acceptance that what would be would be.
Strangers were not welcome, and several times I was threatened - 'Why don't you just go away?'
I didn't. I had a job to do. And on a night I'd position myself in a 'hide', camera at the ready. I caught plenty of black limousines with darkened windows on film, but never a hint of who was in them. Until the day one stopped behind me and they came out.
I awoke in what can only be described as a medieval dungeon. What the hell had I got myself into?
I was held for several days in total solitude, with no idea what was day or what was night. Disorientation was obviously their idea, increased by only being given subsistence food. But somehow I kept my head together.
Eventually I was dragged before a nondescript man behind a nondescript desk. On the desk were many of my personal belongings and it was obvious they had been to my flat.
'We want you to stop what you're doing and forget.'
'No chance,' I said.
Two nondescript men came into the room then and took me to another room and there, on a table, was my editor.
He looked dead. 'We can do that to you,' they said.
I said: 'Go stuff yourself.' But they only smiled.
The next week was a haze of flashing lights and white noise and occasional beatings and a hypnotic voice trying to mash my head. How I managed to keep my sanity I don't know. But in the end a plan formulated based on my feigning obedience.
'Remember what?' I said when the questions came. They looked at me suspiciously, not sure whether I was being truthful. But in their confusion I knew I could strike.
When I did, it was with speed - an elbow into the guard's gut, a quick hand inside his jacket to his holster, a wet thud as I pistol whipped him and another as I put the interrogator to sleep.
Opening the door to the room, I crept, silently, through a maze of tunnels, taking out two more guards on my sojourn. But eventually I found night time, the shadow of Bradbury Lodge behind me
I disappeared into society then; into the big city where anonymity would be my best weapon of survival. And that's how I live. Anonymous. Always on the look out for them. They're into everything and I'll destroy them. Unless they finally destroy me.
They destroyed me as a person a week after my escape. I was in the bushes to watch my own funeral. Father cried by the graveside, and I was intrigued by the resurrection of my editor. Maybe he'd been brainwashed; forgotten the job he'd sent me on.
After the funeral I took a brief look at Bradbury Lodge.
It was different, and I could find none of the locals I'd previously spoken to. And that, I knew, was real power.
I still don't know who they are. Maybe they're everybody.
I don't know what they want. Maybe they want it all.
But I call them the Opera, for they are many voices and they sing in harmony; a single song.
One day I'll learn the song, and then I'll know. But until then, I look over my shoulder.
Maybe you should do the same.
MASQUERADE
They're taking over and it’s hard to retain my sanity.
Sometimes I think I'm imagining it all. It’s all one big, horrible dream. But then I pinch myself and I know I'm living on the edge. I know if I make one wrong move they'll get me. They're omnipotent, you see - like God. Or the Devil.
But they make mistakes themselves. Oh boy, do they. They make some whoppers. They're not infallible. Most people wouldn't realise they make mistakes. Ha! - that's a laugh. Most people don't know they exist. But some must. One day I'll find them and show them how they make mistakes.
I found one mistake soon after realising they existed. I'm an investigative journalist, see. And we look under the covers of society for patterns, and in those patterns we find the basis of a story, and then we dig until the story comes clean.
Well the Opera are my story and I'll dig and dig and dig.
I can do that now, because I've found a pattern of their progression. It's quite simple, really. Their mission is to take over everything. And to do that, you need to place your people, or at least your influence, at the top. You need to control from the top down, so you need to infiltrate departments of government, and the military, the local authorities and big business. But when you do that, there's a change in emphasis. It may only be slight, but to those who know, it’s an alarm bell. And as I moved from cyber cafe to cyber cafe, never staying on one computer too long, I soon found out how to spot the changes - realised when they'd been got.
It was a simple pattern. Usually the head man didn't change. HE just changed, as if he'd been got at. Policies varied, then, only marginally. But what DID change was a number of new appointments, obviously as Opera took over every last tentacle of the concern. But of most interest to me were the changes in the head man's private life.
'It was as if he was a different man. I couldn't understand him any more. And he got violent. And, well, I left him.'
'It was when we made love. You can always tell. He was different. It wasn’t making love at all. Kind of animal. That's why I left him.'
'I've been married three times, and you can always tell when you're intimate. We all have a smell, see. And he wasn't the man I married.'
Omnipotent, yes - but infallible?
Anyway, I began checking their movements before their 'change.' And with the help of their ex-wives, I soon found the common denominator.
It was an expensive clinic. You know, one of those major plastic surgery places. I spent several days watching the comings and goings. Some were easily recognisable - the famous. But many others were total unknowns. And as I followed some of THEM home, they went off to non-descript bedsits.
Clearly, these people could not afford this clinic's prices.
My suspicions had, of course, been confirmed by this. It was a simple ploy. First, lure the man you want to the clinic for some minor plastic surgery.
Pandering to vanity often did the trick, our movers and shakers wanting to look as good as they think they operate. Then, once under, take all the samples you want - of fingerprints, of body blemishes; take their exact measurements. And then, under intense treatment, turn an unknown Opera man into the person you want them to be. And finally, when the treatment is complete, a swift murder and a swap.
So that was their plan - taking over by surgical stealth.
But had I taken too long over this investigation? That same car outside my hotel room every night? Similar face seeming to follow me around?
I knew I had to act fast.
I took out my shadow on the night I decided to act. It was the first time I'd slit a man's throat. But it was for a good purpose, I convinced myself, and fought down the bile. Then it was a simple matter to break into the clinic, find the two plastic surgeons responsible and shoot them dead.
Oh, I know it was only a minor irritation to the Opera.
They'd soon recover. Find other plastic surgeons, other clinics. Or maybe, seeing this method had been compromised, they'd move onto other ways of taking over. But if I could keep going, forever providing irritation, maybe I'd eventually tilt the tide against this Opera.
But as I read the paper, taking in the inexplicable murder of the two surgeons, another piece caught my attention and I cried.
It was all pervasive, this paranoia within me, the result of existing in a paranoid world. For there was no shadow. Hence, I would have to learn to live with the fact I'd created three orphans of an innocent man.
THE GOAT
Do I have any friends? Since I found out about the conspiracy - about Opera? Since I became a shadow in society? DID I have any friends?
I access my E-mails whenever I can, but never - ever - at the same terminal. Never, even, in the same town. I keep moving. That's how people s
tay alive, isn't it? Keep moving. Oh, and don't use no plastic. They get you straight away, then - that's what they say in Hollywood. And believe me, it's like that - it all seems a bloody big fiction, a non-reality. Except people keep dying around me.
The other day I accessed my E-mails and discovered I HAD a friend. At least, that's what he told me. But was it a he? I didn't know. It might have been them!
They E-mailed me all the time:
'We know who you are.'
'Enjoy life while you can.'
'Your clock is ticking.'
My 'friend' said: 'We've got a lot in common. We should meet.'
He then gave a number of references which I immediately recognised as coming from my previous articles in the papers.
Meticulously, I wrote down the references, and when I'd finished an address appeared on my piece of paper. But could I take the risk? God, how I needed a friend! But was he?
I turned up at the address, in another city, in a different land - a different planet; a different universe. So disconnected did I feel from this one.
It was a broken down place in an inner city; a flat in a high rise. Carefully, I walked up the stairs, not trusting the elevators. Knocking on the door to the flat, it just seemed to fall open.
The flat was empty. But on a wall was a note with more references. Quickly, I jotted them down. Got the new location.
I drove there. Through the night. To yet another place.
'My name's Toady,' he said as he opened the door. And I could see the resemblance. He was a short, broad individual with big eyes and a sickly complexion, almost scale-like.
‘I'm … '
'Young. Yes, I know.'
'What do you want?' I asked.
'To be your friend.'
We talked a lot over the next hour or two. We talked about Opera. About what they got up to. About what they wanted.
Toady had been on their case for nearly a year now, and he didn't know much more about them than me. Except he was more organised in fighting them. He had a network. He had intelligence. He had experience. And as I checked out the van he seemed to live in, he had weaponry.
'I'm an exterminator, really,' he said. 'I kill them. Whenever I get the chance, I kill them.'
I doubted he had the ability to do so. He was such an unlikely action man. More a computer nerd, I thought.
'And they're into everything. You can't trust nobody.'
'You seem to trust me.'
'Well, maybe. I need to test you first.'
And so did I, I thought. 'How?' I asked.
He told me. 'Look, Young,' he said, 'you think you're evading them. Well I'll tell you, you're not. They're only ever an hour or so behind you. They're malign; they're omnipotent. They're coming.'
I wondered what he meant. But at that point, he pushed me over and dived in his van, racing away at high speed.
Confused, I looked around me and from all directions black cars seemed to be bearing down on me.
I began to run.
How long I ran I've no idea. But eventually I found myself in a derelict part of town. I knew I hadn't lost them. I kept getting glimpses of dark suited people and dark cars and I knew they were upon me. And as they closed in, I guessed Toady wasn't my friend after all.
Except, of course, he was.
He burst on the scene at that point with a machine pistol in one hand and a pump action shotgun over his back. Taking out six of them with the pistol, he threw it aside and began blasting away at the rest, saving a cartridge or two for the cars.
'You coming?' he finally shouted as he turned and legged it to his van.
I did, of course, follow.
'Sorry about that,' he said, 'but by drawing your pursuers into the open you can take them out and you get more time to really hide.'
I didn't really understand. And I understood even less during the next ten minutes.
It was a police car that stopped us. 'Did you hear shooting?' said the constable. 'We've had reports of shooting.'
'Not us officer,' said Toady, all innocent-like.
The policeman checked the van. Found nothing. Had those weapons existed? But when they took us back to the site, I wondered what Toady would do then, with bodies and blood all over the place. Except - when we got there, there was nothing.
I think I'm going mad. I said that to Toady as we left the police. He laughed. You know, the sort of laugh that goes on and on in our nightmares.
IT’S BEEN GOING ON A WHILE
You get to thinking, how long has this been going on? You know? Opera. The conspiracy. They've taken over everything, control everything, so how long has it been going on?
And another question. How personal is it? You know? How much have they got into your past?
'Best not to think of those things,' said Toady.
'But I must.'
'It'll drive you mad.'
'I am mad.'
Which I was, wasn't I? Either it wasn't real, this Opera thing, and I'm living a delusion, or I'm fighting a lost cause which could only end in my destruction. Either way, that was madness.
'Aw, you're just saying that,' said Toady.
'But I still ask the question.'
Toady sighed. He wished I'd leave it alone. But I couldn't.
There were too many things happened in my past to do that. And I was beginning to think it had not been by accident.
'So you mean by design?'
'I suppose I do.’
'Hail to the Chosen One.'
I often thought I was a jinx. As a kid I'd always been in accidents. Lots of them; injuring me and others.
'Life's like that. You'll believe in conspiracies next.'
Dad said it was my fault - the big one. I don't see how it was my fault. After all, I wasn't driving. I wasn't old enough. I was only a kid. But the car came off the road and my mother was splattered all over the upholstery.
'Matricide, kid, its called matricide.'
But I didn't kill her. But Dad said I had. After that I only called him Father. It was like a swear word.
Father was never around much after that.
'He wouldn't be, would he, kiddo?'
I don't know what he got up to, but family life was alien to him. He just knuckled down to his work, I suppose, with no wife for him to love. Anyway, I got on with life. Got married. Father didn't even attend the wedding.
I loved married life.
'But it would end in disaster. It had to, kiddo. This is a story you're telling.'
She fell out of a train door. Didn't even know she was on a train that day, I didn't. Where she was going, I don't know. All I know is that she dived in front of an oncoming Express, and she was scrapped off the track.
'That's life, kiddo. Wives are so unreliable.'
Went into journalism then. Father suggested it would be a good idea. You know, investigative journalism.
He kept putting these stories my way. Supposed conspiracies all over the place. Maybe HE thought there was a conspiracy going on?
'Hey, kid, life's a conspiracy. Didn't no one tell you? You know, your mom, your wife. Whoops!'
I was embittered and sceptical by then, and I'd have no truck with this conspiracy mumbo jumbo. Used to tell people that in my articles. Conspiriologists where wacko. Nuts. I was on a mission.
'So what happened then?'
What happened then? My Father disappeared. That's what happened then. Went missing for weeks. He was in an important job, and I guess it was a kidnap attempt. That's what he said. No conspiracy, son. Just a kidnap, he said. The company paid.
'So where's your father now?'
He's important, my father. No time for me, but he's important.
'So maybe you ought to go and thank him for your life.'
Explain?
'Well that’s the thing about Fathers. They mould your life, don't they?'
I went to see Father the next day. Walked right into the London building where he worked. Walked right up the stairs and into his o
ffice.
'Thank you, Father,' I said.
Then I put a bullet in his head.
SIMULACRA
Toady said: 'The thing about conspiracies is that they may exist; they may not.'
I looked at him, puzzled. ‘But we know they exist.’
'But how far do they reach, kiddo? How far do we theorise on their interference? How far do we go in explaining who they are?'
I sighed, wondering what he was getting at.
'There's a phenomenon known as Simulacra,' he said. 'Things in the natural world make patterns. They're haphazard. But every now and then they make a picture that seems to hold meaning. There's no meaning there, but we think there is, and it becomes a miracle, like the face of Christ.'
'But we're more rational than that, surely?'
'Well investigate this,' said Toady. 'But remember what I said about Simulacra.'
He'd been tipped off by a fellow shadow. And as I read the pieces he gave me I thought he was going too far.
It's all about what it's all about. And what it's all about, according to our fellow shadow, is alien take over. But the nuttiest things can be true in this weird world, so I went to see the woman in the report.
She was about twenty two years of age. Once, she must have been pretty. But darkness existed in her face, emanating from a place just inside.
I said: 'So you think you've been abducted by aliens?'
'No,' she said as she sat there. 'I know I have. They came for me in my bed, shrouded in this weird light, and they floated me out of the window and the next thing I remember I was on this operating table, and these funny little grey things were prodding and poking, and then I was back in bed.'
'It could have been a dream?' I offered.
She leaned forward. 'Then why am I pregnant?'
It was weird, I had to admit. But aliens? It was ridiculous.
However, I persevered - went to interview other supposed abductees. And they all told a similar story. And they were all pregnant.
'Oh yes, they've definitely been abducted by aliens.'
He was a Ufologist - been researching the phenomenon for years. 'They've been being abducted for years. But I must admit there's a change in the pattern of late.'