One of Our Thursdays Is Missing

  “Walking would be a good start.”

  Agent Square was a good teacher, and within the space of twenty minutes I had mastered the concept of mass and the ticklish practical considerations of coping with momentum. Though easy to someone who’d been doing it for years, being able to lean back when negotiating a sharp stop to avoid falling over was an acquired skill.

  “Bipedal movement is the skill of controlled falling,” said Square. “If it weren’t so commonplace, it would seem miraculous—like much out here, to be truthful.”

  I found the “walking straight” part fairly easy to master, but learning to conserve momentum while doing a right-hander at speed was a lot harder, and I was flailing my arms for balance until Square patiently taught me how angular velocity, centripetal forces and shoe/ground friction coefficients all worked together.

  “Outlanders must be very good at math,” I said, struggling with the vast quantity of complex equations necessary to recover after a stumble.

  “So good they do it without thinking,” he said. “Wait until you see someone riding a unicycle—it’s math to die for.”

  The physical walking I soon got the hang of, but the rapidly moving pavement beneath me I found disconcerting—not to mention the highly constricting pull and drag of my clothes. Square told me to keep my eyes on the horizon and not look down, and after ten or so laps around the small park I was ready to venture farther.

  We walked out of the park and down the street, and I stared at the intricate detail with which the RealWorld was imbued. The stains, the corrosion, the reflections—none of it could be adequately explained or described, and I became fascinated by every facet.

  “What’s that?”

  “A spider.”

  “And that?”

  “A dog turd.”

  “So that’s what they look like. Who’s that person over there?”

  “Which one?” asked Square, tilting his body so his infinitely thin frame of reference sliced in the direction I was pointing. “I don’t see anything.”

  But there was something there—a wispy humanlike form, through which I could see the wall and hedge beyond. I had met Marley’s Ghost once when he was doing one of those tedious grammasite-awareness talks, and it was like him—transparent. I’d queued up for autographs afterwards, but when I’d asked him for a personalization, his agent told me to sod off. He wouldn’t sign memorabilia either.

  “What did you expect?” Marley’s Ghost had said when I protested. “Albert Schweitzer?”

  “Ghosts?” said Square when I explained what I could see. “Perhaps. There is much unexplained in the world. It behooves one to be wary at all times. Just when you think you’ve got the hang of it, along comes string theory, collateralized debt obligations or Björk’s new album, and bam! You’re as confused as you were when you first started.”

  We arrived at the Clary-LaMarr Travelport soon after. As in fiction, this was the main transportation hub in Swindon, where the Skyrail and mainline bullet services met. From here you could travel off to the west and Bristol and the steamer ports or east to London and the Gravitube. This was the business district, and the impressively high glassy towers disgorged a constant stream of people, all working together to make Swindon the powerhouse it was, deservedly known as “the Jewel of the M4.” My Swindon was pretty similar, even if it lagged behind by eight years, the time that had elapsed since my series was written.

  “What’s that?” I asked, pointing towards a steel latticework tower that was being built on a hill to the south of the city. It was only half built but looked large enough to dwarf the skyscrapers when complete.

  “It’s part of the Anti-Smite Strategic Defense Shield that will one day protect a sinful citizenry from God’s wrath—a series of force fields supported by steel pylons. Not even the most powerful smiting by the angriest or most vengeful God will make it through—or so it is claimed.”

  “That sounds pretty daft.”

  “That’s the whole point,” he said. “It’s meant to be daft. The Commonsense Party’s unswervingly sensible management of the country has left the nation with a woefully high stupidity surplus that needs to be safely discharged. It’s hoped that the extraordinarily pointless and ridiculously expensive defense shield will be enough to deplete the stupidity quickly enough to allow time to more sensibly deal with a bigger problem that’s coming up.”

  “What could be a bigger problem than God’s wrath upon his creations and a cleansing fire falling from the heavens?”

  “I’m not sure. Something to do with polar bears.”

  I sighed. “It’s been a while since I had any concept of current affairs,” I said. “All of this was barely thought of when I was penned.”

  “I keep abreast of things,” said Square. “It’s the closest thing to STORY they have out here. Makes me feel less homesick. You’ve been here an hour and you can walk pretty well, so you’re doing okay. The next thing you need to learn is interaction and how humans all manage to live together without descending into chaos. The best place for appreciating this is crowds.”

  “Crowds?”

  “Right. Humans are more or less identical except for a few peculiar habits generally delineated by geographic circumstances and historical precedent. But essentially they’re all the same and reading from the same rule book. To get along you have to appreciate the rules but also know that other people know the rules—and that they know that you know the rules. Get it?”

  “No.”

  “You will. Observe the crowds for a moment.”

  I watched as the thousand or so individuals milled around the Skyrail port, all of them heading in one of six directions and moving on their own yet as one. Astonishingly, without bumping into one another and falling over. It was a most remarkable sight. The wispy Marley-like ones had it even easier, since they could go through the pedestrians just as easily as around them.

  “I’m still seeing the transparent humans.”

  “How insubstantial are they?”

  “Pretty smoky. And they all look so sad.”

  This was true. They all wandered about looking very dejected, as if the world were pressing heavily on their shoulders. I had tried to catch the eye of one or two, but they’d steadfastly ignore me and, it seemed, everyone else. I knew about “ghosts” but always thought they were a fictional construct, like some of the odder facets of Japanese culture. However, Square was uninterested in my transparent people and wanted to carry on with my education.

  “If you can manage crowd work, you can handle almost anything,” said Square. “You know about flocks of starlings and schools of fish, how they all seem to move at the same time?”

  I told him that I had heard of this but not witnessed it.

  “Humans are exactly the same when they get into crowds. By using subtle sensory cues and working to a set of basic rules, you can enter a crowd full of people all heading in different directions and come out the other side without touching anyone or causing an accident.”

  “How?” I said, looking suspiciously at the swirling mass of humanity.

  “Think of it as a subtle dance, where you have to avoid touching anyone. You have to jog and dodge your way around but also have to know when people are going to dodge and jink round you. Give it a whirl.”

  I stepped into the crowd, and almost immediately a woman stopped dead in front of me.

  “Sorry,” I said, and walked on. I could sense I was disrupting the smooth liquidity of the crowd, and based on the noises people were making, it wasn’t appreciated. I got to the other side of the street without bumping into anyone, but only just.

  “Not so easy, is it?” said Square, and I had to admit he was right. I had thought being in the RealWorld would be simple, or at least a lot like home, but it wasn’t. Nothing here was assumed; everything had to be actually done, and witnessed. Weirder still, once something was done, it was gone, and the knowledge of it faded almost immediately into memory. Once or twice I found myself attem
pting to move backwards or forwards in time before realizing that that’s not how it worked. If I wanted to be five minutes in the future, I had to laboriously run the five minutes in real time, and if I wanted to go back, I couldn’t. It was how I imagined the narrator in À la Recherche du Temps Perdu spent most of his life—trapped in a noisy, brightly colored cage barely two or three seconds wide.

  After twenty minutes I could walk through the crowd without too much difficulty, but once or twice I found myself in the situation where the people I was trying to avoid met me head on, and I moved left, and they did, so I moved right, and they did, too, and so on, for up to five times, which elicited nothing more than a chuckle from my dancing partner.

  “The old ‘back and forth’ happens a lot when real and fictional people meet,” said Square when I’d returned to where he was waiting for me. “If the Outlanders had any idea we were amongst them, it would be the surest way to tell. That and a certain confusion when it comes to everyday tasks. If you see someone unable to boil a kettle, open a sash window or understand he has an appalling haircut, it probably means he’s fictional.”

  “Hmm,” I said, “why is that woman in the annoyingly flamboyant clothes staring at me?”

  “Probably because she recognizes you.”

  “Don’t I have to know who she is before she can recognize me?”

  “It doesn’t work that way.”

  “Thursday?” said the woman, bounding up to me with a huge grin and a clatter of beads. “Is that really you? Where have you been hiding these past few months?”

  I recognized her from the vague approximation that had made it through to my series. It was Cordelia Flakk, ex-SpecOps publicity guru and now . . . well, I had no idea what she did.

  “Hello, Cordelia.”

  “How are Landen and the kids?”

  “Apparently they’re very well.”

  “Did you hear about Hermione? Went to the slammer for trying to fiddle her taxes and then tried to escape. She was caught between the wire with two saber-toothed tigers. They didn’t know what had happened to her until a bangle and parts of her synthetic kidney turned up in one of the sabers’ . . . well, I don’t want the story to get too gruesome.”

  “Too late.”

  “You old wag, you! Will you be coming to Penelope’s for the Daphne Farquitt reading party Friday afternoon? She wants us all to come round to her place for the readathon, and she’s dying to show off her new man.” She leaned closer. “A neanderthal, you know. Frightfully polite, of course, but likes to sleep in the garden shed. She has a few stories about matters south, I should warrant—a few glasses and she’ll spill the beans, if you know what I mean.”

  The woman laughed.

  “Goodness, is that the time? How I prattle so!” She suddenly lowered her voice. “By the way, are you still dealing in cheese?”

  “Not really—”

  “A pound of Limburger would set us straight. Just a taster, then—anything, in fact. I mean, it’s not like we’re asking for any X-14. Oh. Sorry, is that still a sore point? Why not bring a taster of cheese to Penelope’s do on Friday? We can enhance them with some pineapple chunks. Cheese and Farquitt! Naughty us! Ta-ra!”

  And she tossed her head and moved off.

  “Did you understand any of that?” asked Square.

  “About one word in eight.”

  “That many?”

  I stood there, stunned by the fact that I had no idea what Thursday actually did in the RealWorld, nor what had happened and what hadn’t. The recent exchange told me that she had been involved in the illegal cheese market, and we had walked past the abandoned Special Operations Division headquarters earlier, so I knew that at least some of her SpecOps adventures had been real. But what else had happened in her life I had no idea. If anyone asked me anything specific, I was going to have to wing it, or simply grin stupidly. Best of all, stay well away from anyone who might know me.

  “Was that meeting at all relevant?” I asked Square. “In the grand scheme of things, I mean?”

  “Probably not,” replied Square. “Just a chance meeting that means nothing. If this were a book, Cordelia wouldn’t have survived the first draft.”

  I spent the next two hours walking around trying to figure out how the world worked. It was confusing and tiring, and it seemed that much energy was expended for very little outcome. I had my first real pee, which was pretty bizarre, then ate some chocolate, which was hugely enjoyable. Mostly I listened in on conversations and was dismayed to note that Professor Plum had been correct. A lot of what was said was superficially very banal. Less of a sense of communication and more to do with being comfortable and secure amongst members of one’s own species—the modern equivalent of being huddled together in the dark.

  “There seems to be a tremendous fear of being alone,” I said once we had stopped for a break in the graveyard of the Blessed Lady of the Lobster.

  “My theory is that it’s all misdirection.”

  “From what?”

  “The depressing certainty that one day all of us will die.”

  “Speak for yourself. What’s your story, Square?”

  “I used to work in Flatland but was fired after ‘artistic differences’ with Circle. After that I was recruited by Bradshaw for deep-cover operations in the Outland. I was here on assignment when the RealWorld travel ban came down, so I took Blue Fairy, became real and volunteered to stay.”

  He sighed deeply, in a thin, two-dimensional sort of way. “Blue Fairy” was the term used to describe the only way in which fictional people could become real, and unsurprisingly, the Blue Fairy from Pinocchio was the only person who could do it. She used to do it for free if you asked nicely and had a chit from the CofG, but now she is not permitted to conduct any realizations at all and is paid handsomely by the council for the honor of doing nothing. Nice work if you can get it.

  “When do you get to go home?” I asked.

  “I don’t get to return home. The only good thing about this place is that it’s fantastically roomy. Are you ready?”

  I said I was, and we walked the three blocks to Landen and Thursday’s house, situated in a quiet part of the Old Town. I asked Square to keep a low profile, took a deep breath, walked up the garden path and stared at the front door, heart beating furiously. This time for real.

  21.

  Landen Parke-Laine

  The manufacture of robots, automatons and assorted mechanical people is undertaken by the Duplex Corporation, situated on the border of Sci-Fi and Fantasy. Most automata are energy cell powered these days, but the factory still produces a “Classic” line of clockwork men to satisfy clients who require something more retro. Despite problems with emotion, adverse wear and the continual windings, the Duplex range of robots (currently in its fifth incarnation) remains popular. Tours of the factory by arrangement.

  Bradshaw’s BookWorld Companion (6th edition)

  I knocked twice. There was the sound of noises from within, and the door opened. It was Landen, and we stared at each other for a few seconds.

  “Hello,” I said.

  “Hello,” said Landen.

  “Hello,” I said again.

  “Are you her?” he asked.

  “No, not really.”

  “Then you’d better come in.”

  He moved aside, and I stepped into the hallway that was familiar to mine, but only in layout. Thursday’s real house was more real, more worn, more lived in. The banisters were chipped, the newel post was draped with discarded clothes, and a tide mark of children’s fingerprints ran along the wall and up the staircase. Pictures hung askew, and there was a small cobweb around the lampshade. Landen led me through to the kitchen, which was a big extension at the back of the house, partly consuming the garden and covered with a large glazed roof above the junk-strewn kitchen table. It was packed with the chaotic assortment of the minutiae of life being lived—not the sanitized shorthand we get in the BookWorld, even with the Reader Feedback Loop set t
o max. Life seemed to be a lot messier than people wanted fiction to be. Feedback reflected hopes, not realities. I looked around carefully and sat in the seat he had indicated.

  “Tea?” he asked.

  “Do I drink it?”

  “Gallons of it, usually.”

  “At a single sitting?”

  “No, generally one cup at a time.”

  “Then I’d love some, thank you.”

  He went to put the kettle on.

  “You look a lot like Thursday,” he said.

  “I’m often mistaken for her,” I replied, feeling less nervous around familiar questions. “In fact, I’m surprised you needed so little convincing I wasn’t the real Thursday.”

  “I don’t know that for certain,” he replied. “Not yet anyway. I’d like you to be her, naturally, but there have been others who looked a lot like her. Not quite as much as you do, but pretty similar. Goliath is keen to know what Thursday gets up to when she’s not at home, and they’ve sent one or two to try to trick me into giving information. The first was just a voice on the phone, then one who could be seen only from a distance. The last one almost took me in, but up close she didn’t pass muster. Her texture was all wrong, the smell was different, the smile lopsided and the ears too high. I don’t know why they keep sending them, to be honest—nor where they end up. After I booted the last one out the door, someone from Goliath’s Synthetic Human Division came round demanding to know what I’d done with it. Then, after I asked about the legality of such a device, he denied there had been any, or even that he was from the Synthetic Human Division. He then asked to read the meter.”

  “So how can they lose two synthetic Thursdays?”

  “They lost three. There was another that I hadn’t even seen. They said it was the best yet. They dropped it off two weeks ago near Clary-LaMarr and haven’t heard anything since. Are you that one?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” I replied, vaguely indignant. “I’m not a Goliath robot.”