The This, page 12
θ for Them.
He walked briskly to the building that contained his flat, this four-storey Edwardian brick tower that had been converted some time in the 1980s. The front garden of the property was a small tiled area behind a low brick wall, almost entirely filled by sixteen tall council bins, eight sets of two, one for rubbish and one for recycling. There were two stretches of might-have-been flower beds that were covered by several years’ worth of unswept leaves and assorted rubbish and sunbleached plastic wrappers. Nobody had any responsibility for this area and so it had become a no-person’s-land of junk and brittle decay. Usually when Rich passed through he was going in, or coming out, of the building and his eyes were on his phone screen. Today, though, he saw it with a visceral sense of dislike. The online world so shiny and clean, the real world so squalid and littered.
He lurched at the house’s front door and as he did so the pile of leaves to his left stirred and shook. It was a sharply hot, windless day but the pile of leaves shook as though the spirit of the winter wind was possessing it. Then a demon lurched up from the leaves, assumed human shape and rushed at Rich.
It was Helen Susanna.
‘What are you doing?’ Rich yowled. ‘You scared the life out of me!’
‘Are you going into your flat?’ Helen Susanna asked. There were leaves sticking to her shirt and skirt. There were leaves in her hair.
‘The world has gone mad,’ said Rich. ‘Or I have – I’m getting out of here.’
‘You could go into your flat,’ said Helen Susanna.
‘I will. I’m going in and probably never coming out again.’
‘I wouldn’t go into your flat, though.’
Rich stopped.
‘You do realise,’ said the old woman, ‘that they have infiltrated all your kit, don’t you? Your computers, your monitors, your smart-tech? The problem with the internet of things is that once they hack one, they hack all. It’s not just the websites you visit and your communications they have access to. They’ll have all the images from your security apps. You’re not even free in the loo, since you’re sitting on a smart toilet.’
Rich said: ‘I think I might be losing my mind.’
‘Oho!’ said Helen Susanna, her one good eye opening very wide.
‘I think I might be suffering from paranoid schizophrenia.’
‘That you would say so,’ said Helen Susanna, ‘suggests you’re probably not. People suffering from paranoid schizophrenia tend precisely not to have the self-awareness to realise that the conspiracies they perceive are issues in their brain chemistry rather than artefacts in the world as such. It’s a sort of reverse catch-22.’
Rich didn’t recognise the allusion, and automatically brought out his phone to check it, but Helen Susanna put up a bony finger.
‘Maybe it would be best to unplug your phone from the network and turn it off. Do you have a delocation app?’
‘Seriously?’
‘Seriously.’
Rich took a deep breath, flipped through the infinite Rolodex of apps and screens until he found the one that pulled the plug. He sealed the phone away and turned it off.
‘Most people,’ Helen Susanna said, taking his hand in hers, ‘who think a shadowy conspiracy is out to get them are nuts. But most isn’t all. You’re not paranoid if they really are out to get you.’
‘What can I do?’
‘Come home with me, dearie.’
And that was that. Rich permitted her to lead him by the hand, like a child, out of the front garden, down the street and into the grid of residential roads of west Putney. They passed the Catholic church and headed towards the Upper Richmond Road. Everyone they passed held their phones in front of their faces. Passing cars hummed and hawed dopplerishly. The public waste bins were crammed with myriad small black tie-bags filled with dog shit. Clouds of flies buzzed around the bins like giant models of electrons and their nuclei.
He half expected Helen Susanna to reveal that she lived in a tent in the park, or a heap of cardboard up an alley, but she stopped in front of a smart detached house, black-walled with silver window frames and all the slats of all the blinds tucked down behind every pane of glass.
‘This is where you live?’
‘Nicer’n yours,’ cackled Helen Susanna. ‘Come in. Meet Fawn.’
‘Fawn?’
The old woman was fiddling with her keys – old-school, twentieth-century keys, like a prop from a TV historical drama.
‘He’s not really called Fawn. He calls himself that after a famous bodyguard from literature. His real name is Tim, but he doesn’t think that’s a particularly tough-sounding name. Tiny Tim, you know. Timmy the dog. So he calls himself Fawn. But he’s not really Fawn. He’s a faux-Fawn.’
The door was open. Without his phone to help him, Rich was entirely at sea so far as these references were concerned.
‘Foforn?’
‘Fawn!’ Helen Susanna called into the entrance hall. ‘I’ve renamed you – you’re faux-Fawn.’
‘Ma’am,’ said a very tall man, stepping forward.
‘You have a bodyguard?’ Rich boggled.
‘Dangerous times.’ Helen Susanna handed Foforn her shawl. ‘This is Alan. He may be staying with us for a few days.’
‘I may?’ said Rich.
‘Dangerous,’ Helen Susanna repeated, ‘times. Come and have a cup of tea, at any rate.’
She bustled away down the hall and Rich followed her, glancing up at Foforn as he went. He was a foot taller than Rich, and a foot wider across the shoulders. His head was shaved, blurry blueness marking where the hairline had been cropped. His features were simple, like a face drawn on an egg in felt-tip pen. You didn’t for a moment doubt his capacity for violence. The design of his T-shirt was three handsome young men, bleached-blond hair, all three in the same model of sunglasses, glowering at the world, underneath which image, in capital letters, was written THE POLICE. An appropriate enough self-identification for a bodyguard, really.
The end of the hall gave into a wide, well-lit kitchen–dining area that expanded into a glass conservatory. That was where Helen Susanna was sitting, two cups of tea on a pine table before her. Rich, passing through the space, clocked all the top-range fixtures and fittings. Money! Everywhere money.
‘It’s a really nice house,’ he said.
‘You mean – expensive. It is that. You mean – you’re surprised to find a bag-lady living in luxury. There’s no point in denying it. I’m rich. One thing The This are particularly skilled at is acquiring money. It’s not so hard when you know which tricks to apply. Which levers to pull.’
Rich sat down. He sipped his tea: two sugars, exactly the right amount of milk, just how he liked it. Then he noticed that there were framed banknotes on the walls.
‘Oh, wow,’ he said. ‘You collect banknotes!’ He got to his feet and went over to take a closer look. ‘Lord, this is a Dutch 200 guilders note from … what, 1900? That’s amazing.’ He peered at it. The lady on the note, seated on what looked like a circular shield, touched her chin and stared back out at him. ‘These are super rare, though. Must have cost a balloonful of cash. Have you been collecting a long time?’
‘Not long,’ said Helen Susanna. ‘I took it up to try and understand the appeal.’
This was a slightly strange thing to say. Rich came back to his seat.
‘There’s somebody I’d like you to speak to, Alan,’ the old woman said, as she picked up an iPad from the tabletop and folded back its stand. ‘She’s waiting to vulink us. Would you mind chatting to her for a bit?’
‘Who is she?’
‘Senior.’
‘Old? Like you?’
‘I mean, dearie, that she’s a senior person in the government. You’ll recognise her face when it comes on.’
‘You want me to talk to a senior government person?’
‘If you wouldn’t mind, my dear.’
‘What about? I don’t know anything. About The This? I don’t know anything about The This.’
‘Just a quick chat,’ said Helen Susanna. ‘Her time is quite squeezed.’
‘I honestly don’t know what’s going on,’ said Rich. ‘I’m honestly the last person she should be speaking to. Wait – the government are interested? Why are the government involved?’
‘The government are interested,’ said Helen Susanna, as if that answered Rich’s question.
Foforn had come into the conservatory and was standing unobtrusively, or as unobtrusively as a six-foot-four twenty-stone tower of muscles and threat ever can, by the fridge. THE POLICE – Rich remembered now that they were an antique pop band. And with that memory came the realisation that they had been the ones who had sung the lonely song that had been playing in the pub. The cogs and wheels of his memory slotted into place. Why hadn’t he recognised it straight away? Slow of him. Lonely.
In this theta that I call my …
‘Soul,’ Rich said. ‘I mean, sure. Why not?’
The iPad beeped, and a face appeared on it. Helen Susanna was correct: Rich recognised the individual immediately. A member of the cabinet, a prominent figure. She peered out of her digital window and nodded to Rich.
‘Mr Rigby?’
‘Hello,’ said Rich.
‘Thank you for agreeing to talk to me. You can understand, of course, that we in government have concerns about organisations like The This. Helen Susanna tells me they’ve been trying to recruit you.’
‘I really don’t know anything about it,’ said Rich. ‘I mean, yes they have.’
‘But you’re resisting?’
‘It’s a cult,’ said Rich. ‘I’m not the sort to join a … well, you know. That’s my position. At any rate, I just don’t. I just don’t think it’s me, you know?’
‘They don’t usually go out of their way to recruit specific individuals,’ said the minister. ‘Indeed, pressuring one individual to join, especially in the teeth of that individual’s disinclination … well, it’s very rare. It’s so rare that we are forced to conclude that you are special in some way, Mr Rigby.’
‘I’m honestly not,’ said Rich. ‘I have no idea why they’re so keen on me.’
‘Do you have any loved ones who are members of The This?’
‘I don’t have any loved ones at all.’
The face in the screen eased a slight smile. ‘You did some of the research for a First Adept magazine feature on the group. That’s when it all started?’
‘It was a standard DifferenceWork gig. I mean, it wasn’t anything, really. D-Work is an app that—’
‘I know what D-Work is.’
‘Well, that’s all it was. I went to their Putney offices, asked the questions I was briefed to ask, ten minutes, literally ten minutes, came home, sent in my pro forma. I mean, I wasn’t even credited in the article. It was grunt work. I mean, that’s fine, that’s what D-Work gigs are, and I got paid.’
It occurred to Rich to mention that his D-Work had dried up recently, but then again, he thought: Surely that can’t be relevant.
‘Hey,’ he said. ‘You’re the government. Can’t you just close them down? I mean, if you have concerns. If they’re doing anything illegal?’
‘Are they doing anything illegal, Mr Rigby?’
‘I mean, they’ve been spying on me, I think. Hacking my data. Isn’t that illegal?’
‘Thank you for your time,’ said the minister. ‘I’m sure we’ll talk again soon.’
The screen flicked off.
Rich looked at the yin-yang face of Helen Susanna.
‘What was that?’
‘Our government is worried,’ she said, in her croaky voice. ‘They’re not the only government worried. Worry is a general state, at the highest levels. There are half a dozen similar companies on watch lists as potential dangers to the safety and order of the general polity, and The This are the biggest.’
‘So are they going to … I don’t know,’ asked Rich, ‘make a move? Pass legislation? Send in the troops?’
‘Think about the practicalities, my dear, for just one doggy-gone minute. Even assuming that the government has the wherewithal to do what you’re suggesting … dawn raids, dearie? Locking up all The This senior staff? Locking up every single person with Thistech in her skull, is it? That would require a prison the size of the Isle of Wight – but even assuming a government thought they could orchestrate such a mass strike, how would it play? Everyone is on social media nowadays, and hundreds of thousands of those people treat their Thisware as just another upgrade. There’s no groundswell of opposition. Users report much higher levels of satisfaction – not just with their kit, but with their lives – than non-users. If we tried to criminalise them there’d be a huge public backlash, and our government wouldn’t stay in power for very long. They’re breaking no laws, they make their customers very happy, they create jobs, they pay their taxes.’
‘But they are dangerous?’
‘Oh, yes, yes,’ said Helen Susanna. ‘Very dangerous indeed.’
Rich stared through the glass sides of the conservatory. Helen Susanna’s garden was a long green monolith laid on its side, with flesh-pink and blood-red rose bushes flanking it, left and right respectively. At the end of the garden was a smart-looking plank fence on which was fixed a surveillance globe.
‘What do I do?’
‘We, dearie,’ said Helen Susanna. ‘What do we do. And to begin with I’m going to suggest you stay here for a few days. Faux-Fawn will look after us – his omelettes are particularly nice. I have no olfactory capacity whatsoever and only two thirds of a tongue, but even I can taste how delicious they are.’
‘Stay here?’
‘It’s safer than your gaff, which, I’m afraid, must be regarded as their territory now.’
‘You think I’ll be safe from … from them here?’
At this Helen Susanna began a long riff on what in more conventional human beings would have been ‘laughter’: a series of wheezes, a stuttering cough, a clucking trio of indrawn breaths, and a weird grimacing of that half of her face that was visible. The laughter upset her lungs so it was a while before she could settle herself.
‘Not at all, dear boy,’ she said. ‘Of course they know you’re here. Fawn is good, but he’s not going to deflect the malign intents of a group comprising 650,000 people in perfect mental synchronicity and with trillions of dollars at their disposal.’
This was not comforting news.
‘So what am I doing here, exactly?’
‘Your being here will irritate them,’ rasped Helen Susanna, sipping her tea. ‘In your flat they have you continually under observation. So long as you stay off social media they can’t do that here. They know where you are, but where you are is in their blind spot. And they won’t like that. Now, my gamble is that they won’t dislike it enough to break the law in too flagrant a manner, and that will buy us time.’
‘Flagrant what?’ Rich asked, nervously.
‘So far their legal shenanigans have been, mostly, virtual – many many violations of data privacy legislation, cyberespionage, insider dealing, that kind of thing. Now, you could say, if we – if the government – want to lock The This down, why don’t we prosecute them for those offences?’
‘Why don’t you?’
‘We try, dear boy. But they’re hard to convict. Complex and lengthy trials, mostly coming to no resolution at all, occasionally levying fines that make no dent whatsoever on The This’s vast coffers. And the trials never get reported, because it’s all so boring, so the real battle – which is to evict The This from the throne of vague goodwill they currently occupy in the unfocused public consciousness – won’t be won that way. Now, if they killed somebody … I mean, they have killed people. Quite a few. But if they killed somebody in an obvious, traceable way …’ She grinned, and the left half of her mouth slid up under her mask and out of sight.
‘Somebody like me?’
‘Did you ever hear of ConnAct? They’re a US implant company, making hardware and running software not entirely dissimilar to The This’s. There are dozens of similar companies, because it’s such a lucrative market, but for a time ConnAct were big.’
‘I did hear of them,’ said Rich. ‘I think. Didn’t they go bust?’
‘They made a mistake. They killed people. They killed people and were raided by the FBI, but – and this was their mistake – they did all this before they were large enough to be able to absorb the law enforcement hit.’
‘Killed people? Why, though?’
‘All these hive mind groups kill people,’ said Helen Susanna, matter-of-factly.
‘Christ, Jesus, why?’
‘They have to. Really they don’t have an option.’
Foforn cleared his throat, resonantly. Helen Susanna glanced up at him, scowled, and carried on.
‘Alan, I’ve been on the inside. It’s a little hard to explain, but it’s absolutely vital you understand this. When you join The This you don’t stop being an individual. You’re not subsumed wholly into the gestalt, and you’re not privy to every action and every collective rationalisation. The group develops specialisations, subsidiarities, just like the cells in a human body. It has to, considering its size. And the specialisation protects them – their core consciousness is elaborately firewalled behind shells and shells of different grades of Thisser. Most users are outside that, though, and remain individuals. Mostly. But at the same time, when you join the gestalt you kind-of are privy to every action, and part of every collective decision-making process and rationalisation. You’re part of something bigger, better, and every individual is a part in that bigger-ness, that better-ness. And for most people it works fine. But there are some people who join the group who don’t fit.’
‘Don’t fit?’
‘In many ways it’s puzzling to me that there’s not a higher proportion of such people, actually. Really it’s fractions of one per cent. Tiny numbers. I’m talking about people with a profound wrongness in them, deformations of the soul – a materialist would say psychopaths, people mentally and psychologically antithetical to collectivity. Poisons, as it were, in the group system. They have to be purged.’
