I walk along the blank corridor, past notice boards with nothing pinned on them, past bright white office doors, until I reach a lobby with four lifts in a row. There's nothing on these walls except for one safety image: a green stick man and a green stick man in a wheelchair both moving towards a bright white exit. The stick man is winning. Not knowing what else to do, I press the button to call the lift. Instantly, all four sets of doors open. I smile at this. Is there really no one in this place apart from me? A whole city to myself—if I even am in the same city I started in. But I can't stay: I have to get back. I randomly take the third lift along from the left and press the G button. It drops down faster than I would have liked but I don't feel sick. I still don't feel anything. Once I'm on the ground floor I find a set of revolving doors that takes me back out onto the street. And then I see something odd: a small white business card lying there on the ground. It wouldn't look odd in a normal city, lying on a chewing-gummed pavement amid all the old crisp packets, fag butts, receipts, and torn pieces of newspaper. In a normal city you wouldn't notice it. But here it really stands out. I bend down and pick it up. The name APOLLO SMINTHEUS is written on it in brown ink. There's nothing else. I pick it up and put it in the pocket of my jeans.
I'm on a deserted main road lined with quiet office blocks. There are signs for subways but there's no traffic, so I walk across the road, climbing over the barrier separating the two carriageways. Now, I could go left or right or straight on, down a smaller road. Something about the smaller road seems familiar, so I walk onwards, afraid but not actually feeling fear, like I'm watching myself in a film, until I recognize the alleyway on my right with all the fire escapes. That alley was on my left before. Now I see. Somehow I ended up in the large building I was facing when I first arrived here. So presumably all I need to do to get back is to keep walking onwards, onwards down the road and then—yes—into the tunnel with the zeroes and ones and all the letters of every alphabet I've ever seen. Then I open my eyes.
Back on the sofa. I'm alive. I'm home. I'm human. I feel cold. I need to pee. The sense of disappointment I often get when I wake up from normal dreams has now mutated into something else: the disappointment of being me, here, now.
My overwhelming thought: I want to be back in the Troposphere.
And a weaker thought: But you wanted to get out.
Strange how I keep thinking about drugs, but that's the connection Mr. Y made as well. This time I'm remembering a bathroom, a long time ago. In fact, it must have been just before I went to Oxford. I was in a bathroom in Manchester with a big guy who gave me a tiny little pipe, coated in green enamel. I remember sucking on the pipe and feeling something I'd never felt before: complete contentment, something similar to how you feel just after an orgasm, but more—where the whole world is a big soft duvet and you're just about to go to sleep, and you feel as if nothing will ever hurt you again. I sucked this stuff into my lungs and it tasted like ammonia. And I asked the guy what it was.
"Freebase," he said. "Like crack cocaine. You'd probably best not do it again; it'll boggle your head."
In the same way that I immediately wanted to have another go on that pipe, I now want to get back to the Troposphere. So maybe that's the curse.
Muddled thoughts, muddled thoughts. It's quite obvious that I've just been asleep again. I can't have been in the Troposphere. It's a fictional place, a place from a book. But I still get up from the sofa and, before going to the loo or anything like that, check the mousetrap under the sink. And I feel sick. There she is, the being whose memory and thoughts I shared, trembling in the little box, her tail caught in the catch. I don't think I ever really looked at the mice in the traps before, or even thought about them very much apart from trying to remember to release them outside as quickly as possible. But now I'm looking. Whether it was "just a dream" or not, I know exactly how she feels in there. I undo the box, my hands fumbling on the catch, trying to free her tail as gently as possible.
"I'm sorry," I say to her. "I'm so sorry."
I gently place the box on the floor and she walks out backwards, slowly at first, with her nose twitching. I expect her immediately to become a gray streak across the floor as she runs for cover, but instead she sits there looking at me, scratching—I know how much she wanted to do that—and then just sitting there, her tiny black eyes locked on mine. I recognize this stare from somewhere, and I return it instinctively. We stay like that for a full minute and I'm sure she knows. I'm sure she knows, on some level, that I was in her mind and that I understand her. She's not afraid of me. Then she does go, scuttling away under one of the cupboards. I check the other traps and find them empty. Then I throw them all away.
There's something wrong with the light. It takes me a while to realize—I go to the bathroom and pee, and spend about four or five minutes looking at myself in the mirror, wondering what someone else would find out if they got inside my head—but as I come back into the kitchen and put on some coffee, I notice what it is. It's dark already. Then I look at the clock and see why. It's four o'clock. That's odd. I took the mixture at about eleven, I think. And I was in the Troposphere for about half an hour, or at least that's how it felt. Maybe I am losing my mind.
I check my jeans pocket. There's no business card there.
I look out of the window: There is no cat.
But I will look up Apollo Smintheus later, to see if it's a real thing.
The oven must have gone out while I was lying on the sofa, and now I'm shivering in the cold. I remember the way it was in the Troposphere: the no-feeling of the place, the lack of any temperature. I want that back. But if I can't have that, I want to be hot, hot, hot. I turn on more of the gas rings and stand as close as I can to the stove. Soon my coffee's ready, but I don't go anywhere with it. I just stand by the stove shivering and thinking. I should be warming up by now. Am I ill? Has that mixture affected me in some deep way? Is it fucking up my whole system?
And then I think that if I really have just travelled through some strange other dimension, into the minds of mice (and a cat) and out again, that would probably make me feel a bit weird. I mean, surely that would make anyone feel weird? This thought makes me smile, and then laugh. Only I could telepath into the mind of a sex-obsessed mouse and then a psycho cat. This would be a good story to tell, except that I don't tell stories, and no one would believe it, anyway. I stop laughing. Everyone else who has ever done this has died. If you added that to the story, then no one would laugh.
There's a buzzing from my bag. A text message.
It's Patrick. 4give my persistence, it says, but i need u again asap.
Oh Christ.
After checking through all my encyclopaedias for references to Apollo Smintheus, I eat dinner early—a bowl of rice with the last of my miso. There's something wrong with my flat this evening. It's not just that time has passed too quickly: It feels empty, cold, and dirtier than usual. Not bothering to worry about the electricity, I switch on the big kitchen light and the lamp, and I put on the radio while I'm eating. I don't usually listen to the radio at this time of day and I have no idea what kind of thing is on. I want something comforting: half an hour of eccentric people talking about travel books, for example, or gardening. Instead of that I find a religious discussion program. Looking at the clock I guess that it has been on for about ten minutes already. There are about four different voices, including the presenter.
– ...but Mantra II shows that the patients who were prayed for did not do significantly better than those who were not.
– I disagree...
– (Laughter) Come on. You can't disagree with scientific findings. It's there in black and white in the Lancet.
– For those who don't know, Mantra II—Mantra, I believe, standing for Monitoring and Actualization of Noetic Trainings—was a study concluded earlier this year. It set out to discover whether or not prayer significantly helped a group of heart patients. The group of patients didn't know whether or not they were being p
rayed for. The external prayer groups ranged from Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and Buddhist....
– Mantra II is not the only study in this area—I feel I have to point this out. What about Randolph Byrd's classic 1988 study? Or William Harris's Kansas City study of 1999. In Harris's study, conducted in St. Luke's hospital, the prayed-for group did eleven percent better than the group who were not prayed for. Scientists have been researching this question for decades. They keep researching it because it has absolutely not been made certain that intercessional prayer does not help people. In fact, it is quite clear that prayer has some effect, although we are still a long way from knowing what that effect might be.
– Certainly, what I have observed in my practice is that prayer does have effects in the world. Coming back to Mantra II...
– But this is all ridiculous! Where is the proof? In the Harris study you mention, Roger—and which I looked at closely in my book—even the researchers themselves admitted that there was only a probability factor of 1:25 in the study. In other words, there would be a one in twenty-five chance of the result they obtained appearing on its own, by accident, by chance. That's certainly not enough to convince me. The Lottery would not be profitable for very long if all it had were twenty-five numbers and you only had to pick one of them!
– As I said, coming back to the Mantra II study—and I suppose this is relevant to the Harris study as well—you have to ask who is looking at the data and how they are interpreting it....
– Oh—so it's a conspiracy now? The researchers have "hidden the truth"?
– No, of course not. But perhaps something like prayer can't be understood in studies with data and graphs and probability factors. How do you even begin to measure something like this? For example, what is "one unit" of prayer?
– There is an interesting ethical question here about God, I think. Regardless of how we interpret the data from studies like Mantra II, we have to ask: Supposing prayer did help people—what sort of a God would only help the people who asked, or who had other people to ask for them? Surely this implies an inequality of treatment of people by God, even though we are apparently all God's children, all equal in his eyes?
– Yes, that's an interesting question. Perhaps the whole concept of prayer is in itself a paradox. Perhaps you can't pray to a God who treats all equally. Perhaps then prayer becomes a redundant idea. If God loves all people equally, presumably one should not have to remind him to care? There should be no logical reason for intercession.
– I agree that this is a profound point. However, you can ask: What if it isn't God? What if the success of prayer actually reveals something about the power of thought? Can thought actually influence matter?
– Like spoon bending?
– Yes. (Laughter) I suppose you could look at it as being a little like spoon bending.
I finish my rice and light a cigarette as the discussion goes on in the background. At least the voices are there, reminding me that there is a tangible world beyond this room, beyond my mind. Where the hell did I go this afternoon? And, I can't help thinking now, how long before I can go back there? Maybe I should try again as soon as possible, and see if a) the place is as real as it felt this afternoon and b) whether, if it is real (whatever reality is in this context), I can navigate it with more success than I managed the first time.
A train rattles past and I wonder where it's going. I haven't been out today.
I smoke another cigarette and try to get warm, but it doesn't work. I should probably try to get back into the Troposphere for that reason alone: At least I won't be cold anymore. If only I didn't think the events of today point towards me being mentally ill (empathizing with mice—I think that's a tick in the box)—and if I wasn't so bloody cold—then this would be, unequivocally, the most amazing day of my life. So I'll do it again. I'll find out if it's real (although I will try to avoid cats). And then what? Freak out? Celebrate? Have a nervous breakdown? There is no obvious logical thing to do before, during, or after this situation other than stop everything I'm doing right now and allow there to be no more before, during, or after. But that's the one thing I will not do. I have to try to go back.
As I settle back onto the sofa with the paraphernalia of my new addiction—the card with the black circle and the vial of liquid—there's a knock at the door. Is it Wolf? Ignoring it, I sink back into the sofa, vaguely thinking about how I never did get onto a psychiatrist's couch, and I drink more of the mixture and hold up the card over my eyes.
The tunnel.
The road.
Console.
Chapter Fourteen
You now have twenty-seven choices.
Why is it different from before? At least I'm in the same place, on the same deserted street, looking at the same signs. All but one of them are still in the language I can't read. One is now illuminated and readable. MOUSE 1 is what it says. I really must be going mad. But in here, in the Troposphere, going mad doesn't seem like something that should worry me. Like the fear I had last time—the fear that didn't feel like fear—the worry is there but it doesn't feel like anything. There's no quickened heartbeat; no sweat. I'm watching myself in a film again. I'm playing myself in a video game. So I've got twenty-seven choices. I still don't know what that means. And to be honest I'd be happy just staying out here on this nowhere road, feeling this blissed-out nothing. Could I be happy not knowing? No. I have to find out how this thing works. What is the Troposphere? The blurred console is like a translucent map over my vision, showing me which places are "live": which places I can enter. At least, that's what it seemed to mean last time. Last time the closest place I could enter was the apartment now marked with the MOUSE 1 sign. Now one of the shops just a few doors down the street seems to be highlighted. It's a little music shop with a piano in the window. In my mind I ask the console to close and it flickers out of my sight. Now I can look at the shop properly. There's the piano: a small black upright thing with sheet music propped up on the holder. I look more closely and see that the title is in German. The sign on the door is also German: OFFEN. I open the door and a small bell tinkles. I expect to see the inside of the shop but, of course, I don't.
You now have one choice.
You ... I'm now someone else: someone human and male. I'm sitting in a café, waiting. I don't need to translate this person's thoughts: It's a strange sensation, actually being someone else, but that's how it now seems. It's certainly easier than being a mouse, or a cat. I can ... I can speak German. I'm even thinking in German. I know how to read music. I ... OK, Ariel, just go with it.
So I'm sitting in a café looking at the dregs in a white cup smeared with old gray cappuccino froth, and I'm pissed off, but that's nothing new. How could he do this to me again? Again. The word makes me want to weep. I can feel it on my skin, in my cheeks, and running down my chest: little bugs of failure crawling on me, and they're all repeating that word: Again. He said it would be soon. Now it looks like never. It must be because of something I didn't say. It must be because of something I didn't do. The idea that this would have happened anyway is too repellent. It must be this shirt. He said he liked the blue one, so why am I wearing this red piece of crap?
At this point the waitress comes over and, just as Lumas suggested, a faint outline of another shop appears over her body, and I realize I could step into that doorway instead of remaining "here"—whatever, in this context, is "here." Shall I try that? What about when Mr. Y did it and got bounced back onto the Troposphere? I try to call up the console, but it doesn't come. I'm not trying anything without that to guide me. And I'm not sure I want to leave this story now, anyway.
But I do want the console. I call it again.
It doesn't come.
At least I spent fifteen more minutes with him. But what's fifteen more minutes of memories against a lifetime of being together? The future I should have had. I should have said that to him. I know he wants this as much as I do, but he's a coward after all. Maybe I should have said t
hat. Robert, you're a coward. Maybe I'm the coward. I couldn't say something like that to him. Imagine his face if I said something like that. He'd storm out. He'd say I'd crossed the line. Stupid English expressions. Crossed the line. What line? Where? Oh, yes. The line that you drew between me and everything I want to say and be. The line between "normal" life and the other one, the other choice. You could have crossed that line. You promised to cross that line. You promised me. You promised me. You promised me. And I've been so gentle with you over these last few weeks, talking when you needed to talk, kissing away your tears when I actually wanted to be sucking your dick. I've done everything you wanted.
I see him walking in an hour ago, already ten minutes late, as if I didn't have anything else better to do (but I haven't, Robert: The only thing I want to do is be in love with you).
"I couldn't get away," he said. "The kids were creating."
Another stupid English word. Creating what? Shit? Works of art? Both?
His kids. They're across some other line altogether. But I've pretended to be interested in them for long enough. All right. Well, I was sort of interested. I imagined weekends with them at some point in the future, when Whatshername had gotten over everything. Trips to the park. Big ice creams. It didn't exactly compute, but I could have programmed myself to do it. I would have done that for you, Robert.
The table in front of me is a little piece of art in itself. What would you call it? After a Small Treachery. I like that. The Dregs of Betrayal. Two cups, two saucers, one man. You'd look at this and you'd know that two people were here a while ago, but one has gone. One has a meeting, an arrangement, a life. The other is me and I have nothing in the world apart from this coffee cup. Perhaps you even saw him leave, the one with the thinning hair and the black jeans. An hour ago he was walking in and there was nothing on this table apart from the red-and-white checked plastic tablecloth, a laminated menu, and a pepper pot (but no salt). He made his excuse and sat down, and I could see him shaking.