I look around. My mind has done something odd—and rather tacky—to this part of the Troposphere. Although it still feels like a futuristic city, this district is like the film set for a Hollywood film that needs to briefly depict 1890s London. Everything seems to have the volume turned up. Abandoned hansom cabs lie everywhere, just as in Burlem's version of the Troposphere, but these seem hastily drawn, as if I want them here but don't really know what they look like. There's a Dickensian fog everywhere, although I've never properly read Dickens, so it only seems to halfheartedly hang over everything, set in an uncertain state somewhere between actual fog and coal dust and the smoke from all the London chimneys. There's also a pennyfarthing leaning against some wrought-iron railings.
The street is cobbled and all the buildings are made out of red brick. There are lots of shops here, all with ornately designed frontispieces. On one side of the street they seem more familiar than on the other. There's something called the Musical Bank, and a vegetarian restaurant, among various other things. I recognize these buildings: They're from stories and novels I've read. The Musical Bank shouldn't be in London, though: It's from Erewhon. But the vegetarian restaurant is from Conan Doyle's The Red-Headed League. The other side of the street has shops with just as extravagantly designed signs, but these are places I don't recognize. There's an ironmonger, a jeweller, a bank, a tobacconist, and a bookshop. Farther down on the fictional side of the road is a pub that's glowing in the console in the same way that Apollo Smintheus's mouse holes glow, and all the various coffee shops. I've never seen a pub on the Troposphere before.
I point it out to Adam.
"Shall we take a break before doing Lumas?" I say.
He shrugs. "OK."
But I'm stalling for a reason, and I think he knows what that reason is. Once I convince Lumas not to write The End of Mr. Y, everything is going to change. And I'm not even sure I want to change Lumas's mind.
The pub doesn't look that different inside from the dives I used to drink in when I was a student in Oxford, or even from places I've gone on a Sunday afternoon in London. The place is done out in bottle green and brown, with a long curved wooden bar, and plush green seats. All the fixtures and fittings seem to be familiar, except that there are oil lamps instead of electric lights, and the tables seem more polished. There is no one behind the bar, and there are no customers, although there are half-finished drinks on one of the tables, along with a book of matches, a packet of playing cards, and what looks like a manuscript for a book. What's that all about?
Adam and I sit down at a table in the corner.
"If we think of alcohol, do you think some will appear?" Adam asks.
"Let's try it," I say.
A couple of minutes later we have a small glass bottle of vodka and two glasses.
"Were you thinking of vodka?" Adam asks.
"Yes," I say. "How about you?"
"Yes. It's my 'trauma' drink."
I laugh. "Mine, too. I thought yours would be Communion wine."
"No. I've discovered vodka since then. It's the only thing my father refused to drink, which gives it a special sort of appeal."
"Yeah." I nod and look down onto the table.
"I'll open it then," he says. He picks up the bottle. "Ow, it's cold."
"Good," I say.
He pours a glass for each of us. And when I put mine to my lips I find it smells of bison grass: my favorite sort of vodka. I knock it back in one gulp. I'm trying to drink away the mice, and I'm trying to drink away what's happened to Adam, and most of all I'm trying to drink away the responsibility of being here, and being able to change things. But I'm not sure that Troposphere alcohol actually gets you pissed. Mind you, I do feel a little more relaxed. I pour another glass and drink it slowly while Adam keeps sipping his first one.
"I can't stand this," I say.
"Ariel?" he says. He reaches for my hand across the table. "What is it?"
I sigh, as though all the air is leaving my body. "Can't you see it?"
"See what?"
"The mice ... What we've just done for those mice. We should do that for everything. We could go and prevent the Holocaust. We could stop the atom bomb from being invented. We could..."
"Ariel."
"What?"
"We can't edit the world. We can't just go and rewrite it, as if it was just a draft of a book we weren't happy with."
"Why not?"
"Well, aren't you here to stop the possibility of that? Lura and Burlem sent you back here to take the book away so that people wouldn't even have the option of doing that. It's important. It's important that people can't change history."
"I know. That's why I'm not sure about changing Lumas's mind," I say, drinking more of the vodka. Amazingly, it is working, and the syrupy feeling intensifies the more of it I drink. "I mean, who made me God? I shouldn't get to decide any of this. But since I have been put in this position, and I do get to decide, I want to go and erase Hitler."
"But you know you can't."
"Do I?"
"Yes. Think about it. If Hitler were in your position, he'd erase something else. If the pope were in your position, he'd edit the world differently again. You've got to close the loophole that lets people do this."
"What if I know I'm right?"
"Come on. I know your mind. You can never know you're right."
"Hitler thought he was right," I say. "But everyone agrees that he wasn't."
"Of course he wasn't right," Adam says. "I'm not just saying that every opinion is as valid as every other..."
"Moral relativism," I say. "It's a trap."
"Yes, but you must still realize that you can't decide. We can't decide. It's not up to us. History has to make itself. And it probably will anyway, whatever we do. In erasing Hitler, we could just open the door for someone worse. I'm not even sure that what we've already done will have actually changed anything. Abbie Lathrop could decide to just get some more mice. If she doesn't, someone else will. We've helped those mice, but not all mice."
I drink more vodka. "I'm glad you're here," I say. Then I realize what I've just said. "I mean with me. I'm not glad you're here in the way you are." I put my glass down. "Adam?"
"What?"
"What do you think will happen to the Troposphere once I've been into Lumas's mind and stopped him from writing the book?"
"I don't know."
"I don't want you to disappear."
"Even if I do, it's worth it."
"Is it?"
"Yes. Now, we should hurry up and do this. You'll need to get back."
I don't say anything.
"Ariel?"
"Yes, I know. I just want to..." I get up.
"Where are you going?"
"Just over here."
I walk over to the table and look at the manuscript on the other table. Just as I thought, the title on the front is handwritten, and it says The End of Mr. Y. I turn away and walk out through the doors, with Adam following me.
"Will you come in with me?" I ask him.
"Of course," he says.
That way, I think, there's less possibility of him disappearing once I've done what I have to do.
We walk to the bookshop down the street, and I look in the window. There are various Samuel Butler novels there, as well as Zoonomia. I know who is behind the door, I just have to actually open it. I can't think about it anymore. I'm here now, and I know I'm not going to decide not to do this, so I may as well just do it now. I kiss Adam before we walk to the door and I open it and go in.
You now have one choice
You ... I ... We are sitting at the old desk in the draughty sitting room, writing, as usual. This book ... I have to write it; I have to finish it. Is it possible that people who do not write can ever understand quite how this feels? I have set poor Mr. Y going like a top, and now I have to keep him spinning until he reaches his end. And then I have to stop him spinning and put him back in the toy chest, limp with death. Oh, what a cruel God I
would make! Can I have him live? No, don't be ridiculous, Tom. To have him live would break all the rules of tragedy, and more than that: It would not be the truth. So Mr. Y will die, and he will die by my hand. And then... And then.
My hand trembles when I think of that. And then, of course, I must die as well.
I have made the most solemn oath, with myself as a witness, that I will not visit the Troposphere again until this novel is completed. But when I go back, I am never coming out again. This cough will be the end of me otherwise; I understand what the doctor told me. As well as that—I want to be free of my right leg and these eyes. Of course, I am also cursed to suffer the most grievous impecuniosity, and I have known for many years that I shall never fuck again. Oh, when will this book end! Each time I dip my pen into this ink bottle (the sixth this month) I wonder if this will be the last bottle of ink I shall use and if this will be the last pen nib I wear out, and if so—in both cases—I wonder if I should frame the damn things or burn them. I am now obsessed with endings: the ending of this novel, and the ending of my own life. Can I be content now that I have a title? Perhaps. The End of Mr. Y has a pleasing double meaning, although I am convinced that most reviewers will be far too dull to notice anything like meaning and, if they review my book at all, will simply reference that awful business with Darwin.
Oh, I feel weary. This lamp oil smells toxic.
Perhaps I should just toss the whole book in the fire.
What am I thinking?
I can hear the coarse clip-clop of hooves outside, as men younger than I take to the clubs for an evening of entertainment and cunt-sucking. But mine is a more lofty purpose. Oh, it is so very cold in here, and I have only a little more coal.
When I began this long, arduous composition, I admit that I was seeking revenge. I desired that every man should hold the knowledge that I had been given. For I am Mr. Y—in spirit, if not in precise detail, and I, too, paid all the money I had in the world for another taste of this medicine that has since become my most demanding mistress. The man who sold it to me will have nothing of value once I have completed my book.
And then I shall end my life, just after I have ended the life of Mr. Y.
But ... What thoughts are these? Am I now to have a crisis of conscience? Am I now, when the whole novel is more than seven-eighths complete, to wonder what the results of its publication will be? Oh, curse these introspective nights. But now that I can see the narrative taking shape on the page I wonder: Will others try the recipe as I have? And how many will die that I may get my revenge? And... No! This is an absurd thought. But it insists on petitioning me, anyway. What would happen if those who read my book not only discover the Troposphere, but find some way to alter it?
I will burn the book.
No! No ... Not my book.
My hands are someone else's as they grasp my most precious manuscript and, with me as their unwilling assistant, toss the pages into the fire. The warmth is brief but intense as all two hundred pages crackle and pop. The fire cares not what is ink and what is white space. The book is gone.
What have I done?
What have I done?
I fall to my knees and begin to weep.
Quit.
Back in the Troposphere, it has started to rain.
"I wanted to spend so much more time with him," I say to Adam.
"No. Look at the weather. You need to get to the station."
The night sky looks smeared, as if it were a windscreen with all the night and all the rain happening behind it.
Adam calls up the console.
"There's a train station just around this corner," he says. "Hurry."
But I am not moving. I am not following him as he starts walking.
"Adam," I say to his back.
"Come on."
"Adam."
He turns to face me, water dripping down his face. "What?"
"I'm not going back."
"Ariel..."
"There's nothing you can say to change my mind. I don't want to go back."
"But you've got your life to live. You heard what Lura said—you've got the potential to become the kind of thinker who can change the world. You could be the next Derrida, or ... anything you want."
"But I know what I want."
"I'll always be here. I'll always be in your dreams," he says.
The rain is bouncing off the pavement like tears on a table.
"That's not enough," I say. "That's not enough in so many ways."
There's a crack of thunder in the sky. I think this may be the end for me.
"Ariel!"
Adam has to shout now because the rain is so loud. Lightning fissures the sky, ripping it open so that more rain and darkness can fall out. I can hardly see in front of me, but I can feel Adam's hands on my arms. I can feel him pressing me against the wall and kissing me hard.
"You have to go," he says.
"Don't stop," I say. "I want to be making love to you when it ends."
He pauses. Nothing is happening except for the rain falling down.
"Adam, please," I say. "I can't get what I want outside of here, I know that. And I also understand that this is the curse. But I want the knowledge I can find in here. I want us to go to the very end of this together. I want us to go back as far as we can go, to find the edge of the Troposphere. I want to know how it all started, and what consciousness is. I'm staying."
The thunder stamps all over the made-up sky as Adam and I sink to the ground, our clothes melting off by themselves. But I can feel the rain on my face and dripping in my hair. This time, I can feel the rain.
And this time when he enters me I black out.
But when I wake up, the sun is shining.
* * *
Epilogue
It's impossible to say how long it takes us to get to the edge. There is no time anymore. We've been camped here for days now, at the edge of consciousness, wondering what to do next. It's like being on the edge of a cliff, but the edge is thinner than any cliff I've ever seen.
It doesn't feel like the edge of something: It feels like the middle.
But somehow there is an edge. You can walk to it and it seems as if you can look down, but you can't. And there's something that looks like an electric fence: a wavy line crackling around the whole thing, like electricity.
We've made love here at the edge of consciousness; we've done it thousands of times. And we've told each other everything we know. And sometimes it feels as if we are in fact on a cliff top, and that there may even be sea down below, and the ground is sandy underneath us, and little wildflowers grow in clumps. But other times it feels as though we are stuck here on the head of a pin, and the void isn't just below us, but all around us, and it's impossible to turn back because there is no back. There's no forwards, backwards, up, or down.
Today, we've decided (although this place is one long day), we'll actually make the choice, because the problem when you go to the very edge is that the console seems to break down, and there's static and crackle when the voice says, You now have infinite choice. And when we hear that we retreat, because we can't make that choice.
It's as if we're looking at something that has never been looked at before.
You now have infinite choice.
We've already been everywhere in the Troposphere: We had to, to get here.
So we look at each other and, holding hands, we walk towards it.
And today, yesterday, whenever this moment is: We walk through it.
And now I thought we'd be falling (and I hoped for the void).
You now have infinite choice.
But we carry on walking, anyway. We don't have to say anything.
And all the choices are there in front of me. Every single one.
But what we walk into is a garden. The most perfect garden that I have ever seen, with more trees than I have ever seen, and a river shimmering like a mirror running down the edge of it. I think that this makes sense, for consciousness to have b
egun in a garden, because consciousness evolved from plants, after all. And I look at Adam, but I can't speak anymore. I'm not sure I can even think. And there's one tree, standing by the river, and we walk towards it.
And then I understand.
* * *
Acknowledgments
Thank you to Jenna Johnson, a wonderful editor without whom this book would not exist. Thanks also to others who believed in this project in the early stages: Tom Tomaszewski, who makes everything possible; Simon Trewin, my agent and friend; Sam Ashurst; Hari Ashurst-Venn; Emilie Clarke; and Sarah Moss. I'd also like to thank my fantastic American agent Dan Mandel for all his support, and my mother, Francesca Ashurst, for always being there.
Thanks also to Rod Edmond, Jennie Batchelor, David Herd, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Jan Montefiore, Caroline Rooney, David Stirrup, Peter Brown, Donna Landry, Sarah Wood, David Ayers, Dennis Borisov, Deborah Wright, Stuart Kelly, Sam Boyce, Tony Mann, Andrew Crumey, Mel McMahon, Jason Kennedy, Mick Owens, Suzi Feay, and all my other friends and colleagues for their moral support.
Several friends, relatives, and colleagues were kind enough to read the completed manuscript and provide feedback, and I am very grateful to Tom Tomaszewski, Sarah Moss, Jennie Batchelor, and Hari Ashurst-Venn. I'd particularly like to thank Couze Venn for his insightful and thought-provoking comments and suggestions. Ian Stewart also took the time to read and comment on the manuscript in detail, for which I am very grateful. All errors remaining in the text are, of course, my own.
I would like to acknowledge the influence of some ideas I first found in Parallel Worlds by Michio Kaku and Big Bang by Simon Singh. The idea of the primordial particle in chapter 11 was directly inspired by Kaku's work; and most of the material, including the Gamow quote, on page 120, comes from Simon Singh. The quote on page 106 is from Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. The quote on page 118 is from Lectures on Homoeopathic Materia Medica With New Remedies by J. T. Kent. Literary Portraits of the Polychrests, on page 118, is fictional, but was inspired by Portraits of Homoeopathic Medicines by Catherine R. Coulter.