iBoy (6 page)

After Gram had asked me at least a dozen times if I minded if she went into her room to carry on working on her new book, and after I’d assured her that I didn’t mind at all, and that I was fine, and that she didn’t have to keep worrying about me all the time . . . after all that, I finally went into my room, lay down on my bed, and tried to come to grips with the growing realization that I knew what was happening inside my head . . . and that although it
had
to be impossible, it wasn’t.

The evolution of the brain not only overshot the needs of prehistoric man, it is the only example of evolution providing a species with an organ which it does not know how to use.

Arthur Koestler

Imagine you’re trying to remember something . . . anything — the last time you cried, someone’s telephone number, the names of the seven dwarfs — it doesn’t matter what it is. Just search your memory, try to remember some- thing . . . and when you’ve done it, try to imagine
how
you did it. How did you find what you were looking for? What did you search with? Where exactly in your brain did you search? How did you know where to look, and how did you recognize what you were looking for?

If someone asked me those questions, I couldn’t answer them. All I could say was — well, I just did it. The things inside my head, inside my brain . . . they just did what they do. I told myself to remember something, and the stuff in my brain did the rest.

It’s my head, my brain, and it makes me what I am — but I don’t have a clue how it works.

And as I lay on my bed that day, listening to the distant babble of soundless sounds in my head, that was the only way I could think of it: It was
my
head,
my
brain, it made me what I was . . . but now there was something else in there, something that had somehow become part of me, and
it
was doing what
it
did — reaching out, finding things, an infinite number of things — and I didn’t have a clue how it worked . . .

But it did.

It was working right now.

It was showing me bits of websites, random pages from random sites — words, sounds, images, data. It was scanning a world of emails, a world of texts, a world full of phone calls . . . it was connecting, calculating, photographing, filming, downloading, searching, storing, locating . . . it was doing everything that an iPhone could do. And that’s what it had to be — the iPhone. The fragments of iPhone that were lodged in my brain . . . somehow they must have fused with bits of my brain, bits of my mind . . . bits of
me.
And somehow, in the process of that fusion, the powers and capabilities of the iPhone must have mutated, they must have evolved . . . because as well as doing everything that an iPhone could do, I could also do a whole lot more. I could hear phone calls, I could read emails and texts, I could hack into databases . . . I could access
everything
.

All from inside my head.

I was
connected
.

I knew it now. I knew it, I knew it, I
knew
it . . . but I still didn’t know anything about it. I didn’t know
how
it was happening. I had no control over it. It just happened . . . and, like I said, it
had
to be impossible.

But it wasn’t.

It was happening.

Other things were happening, too. As I lay there, trying to digest this impossible truth, I could feel a glow of heat in my head, a warm tingle around my scar. It felt really weird, kind of shimmery, and I didn’t like it.

I got up off the bed and went over to the mirror on my wall.

I didn’t believe what I saw at first. It had to be something else, a trick of the light, a distorted reflection . . . but when I leaned in closer and stared intently at my face in the mirror, I knew that it
was
real. The skin around the wound was shimmering, vibrating almost, as if it was alive. It was radiating, glowing with countless colors, shapes, words, symbols . . . all of them constantly changing, merging into each other, floating and drifting, sinking and rising, pulsating like minute shoals of multicolored fish.

I lifted my hand and moved a finger toward the shimmering wound . . . then stopped, remembering the last time I’d touched it. The electric shock. I took a deep breath, slowly let it out, and then somehow, unknowingly, I closed something down in my head. The shimmering faded.

“It’s OK,” I heard myself mutter. “It’s all right now. Trust yourself.”

I gently moved my finger toward the wound, hesitated for a moment, then touched it.

Nothing happened.

No shock.

Just a very faint tingle.

I softly ran my finger along the length of the wound, feeling the raised skin, the newly grown flesh . . . and underneath it all, or maybe within it, I could feel a sensation of power. It wasn’t a physical sensation, it was more like a feeling of
potential
. . . the kind of feeling you get when you touch the surface of a laptop or an iPod or something. Do you know what I mean? You can’t actually
feel
anything, but something tells you that there’s power under your fingertip, the power to do wonderful things.

That’s how my head felt.

I took my finger away.

I looked at myself.

I shook my head.

Impossible.

I closed my eyes for a moment, opened them again, and —
click
— took a picture of myself in the mirror. I viewed it, emailed it to myself, geocoded it, saved it, then deleted it.

Impossible.

Everything is theoretically impossible,

until it is done.

Robert A. Heinlein,
The Rolling Stones
(1952)

http://www.quotationspage.com/search .php3?homesearch=impossible

Good-bye, normality. It was nice knowing you.

I’ve been used/been abused/I’ve been bruised/I’ve been broken

Pennywise

“Broken”

It was around seven thirty in the evening when I knocked on Gram’s door and went in to see her. Her curtains were still open, and through her window I could see the orangey-red glow of a distant sunset fading over the horizon. Gram was sitting at her writing desk, surrounded by papers and books and ashtrays and empty coffee cups.

“How are you feeling?” she asked me.

“All right, thanks.”

“Did you get any sleep?”

“Yeah, a bit.”

“Are you hungry?”

“No . . . no, I’m fine, thanks.”

She smiled at me. “What’s on your mind?”

“Well . . .” I said, “I was thinking of going up to see Lucy, you know . . . just to say hello, see how she’s doing. What do you think? Do you think that’d be all right?”

“I don’t know,” Gram said hesitantly. “I suppose so . . . as long as Michelle thinks it’s all right . . . and Lucy feels up to it. She might not, you know. I mean, I don’t think she’s been out of the flat since it happened . . .” Gram looked at me. “She might not want to see anyone, especially a boy . . .”

“Yeah, I know. But I thought if I asked her mum first . . . just ask her if Lucy wants to see me . . . and then, if she says no, I’ll just leave. I won’t push it or anything.”

“What about phoning her first?” Gram suggested.

I shook my head. “Yeah, I thought of that, but somehow it just doesn’t feel right. I’d rather just go on up.”

“Well, all right . . . but be careful, Tommy.”

“Yeah.”

As she reached out to put her hand on my cheek, I concentrated hard on not giving her an electric shock. I’m not sure how I did it, but it seemed to work. She didn’t yelp or snatch her hand away or anything.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” she asked me.

“Yeah . . .”

“Positive?”

“I’m fine, Gram.”

“Well, like I said, be careful. All right?”

“Yeah,” I told her, putting on my jacket. “I’ll see you later. I won’t be long.”

“Have you got your phone with you?”

“Uh, yeah . . . yeah, I’ve got my phone.”

There were two boys in the elevator when I got in. One of them was a youngish black kid from Baldwin House whose name I didn’t know, the other one was a boy called Davey Carr. Davey lived on the twenty-seventh floor, and when we were in elementary school, he used to be my best friend. We were always hanging around together — at school, at the kids’ playground, around the railway tracks and the wastegrounds. Davey used to be OK. But a couple of years ago he’d started hanging around with some of the Crows, older kids mostly, and although he’d kept trying to persuade me to join them, I really couldn’t see the attraction of it, and after that we’d just kind of drifted apart.

“Hey, Tom,” he said to me as I got into the lift. “Y’all right?”

“Yeah . . . you?” I said, pressing the button for the thirtieth floor.

He nodded, smiling. But he looked a bit anxious.

I nodded at the other kid. He stared back at me, sniffed, then looked away.

The lift doors closed.

Davey grinned at me. “Where you going, Tom? Anywhere exciting?”

“I’m going to see Lucy.”

His grin faded. “Yeah?”

“Yeah . . . any idea who did it?”

“What?”

“She was raped, Davey. Ben was beaten up. I was just wondering if you knew anything about it.”

He shook his head. “Why would
I
know anything about it?”

I just stared at him.

“No,” he said, shaking his head again. “No, I don’t know anything . . . honest. I wasn’t even —”

“Hey,” the black kid said to him. “You don’t have to tell him anything. Tell him to fuck off.”

I looked at the black kid.

The lift stopped.

Floor 27.

The black kid grinned at me. “Yeah? What you looking at?”

The doors opened.

I homed in on the mobile in the kid’s back pocket, and in an instant — an absolutely timeless instant — I’d downloaded and scanned everything on it. Names, phone numbers, texts, photos, videos . . . everything.

“You’re Jayden Carroll, aren’t you?” I said to him as he walked out of the lift with Davey.

“So?” he said.

“Have you answered that text you got from Leona last night?” I said casually, pressing the button to close the doors. “You know, the one where she asks you if you love her?” I smiled at him. “Better not keep her waiting too long for an answer.”

“What the fuck —?” he started to say, but the lift doors closed on him, and I carried on up to the thirtieth floor.

I knew it was a stupid thing to do, egging him on like that. I knew it was pointless, and kind of pathetic. But I didn’t really care. It made me feel good, and that was all that mattered just then.

Lucy’s flat was right at the end of the corridor, and as I walked down toward it, I realized how nervous I was feeling. I always felt a little bit nervous when I was about to see Lucy, but this was different. This was an anxious kind of nervousness, a fear of the unknown. What would I say to her? What could I say? How would she be? Would she have any interest in seeing me at all? I mean, why should she? What was so special about me? What did I have to offer her?

I stopped at the door to her flat.

The word
SLAG
had been sprayed across the door in bright red paint. I stood there for a while, just staring at that ugly scrawl, and for a moment I felt angrier than I’d ever felt before. I wanted to hit someone, to really
hurt
someone . . . I wanted to find out who’d done it and throw them off the tower . . .

My head was aching.

My wound was throbbing.

I closed my eyes, breathed slowly, calmed myself . . .

“Shit,” I muttered to myself. “The bastards . . .”

I waited until my head had stopped throbbing, then I took another calming breath and reached up and rang the doorbell.

Lucy’s mum had a history of drink and drug problems. It was mostly all in the past now — apart from the odd little slip now and then — but when she opened the door and looked at me, I was pretty sure that she’d gone back to her bad old ways. She looked terrible. Her skin was dull and grayish, her eyes were bloodshot and slightly unfocused, and it looked as if she hadn’t washed or combed her hair for a week.

“Hello, Mrs. Walker,” I said to her. “It’s me . . . Tom.”

She squinted at me.

“Tom Harvey,” I explained. “Lucy’s friend . . . ?”

“Oh, right . . . yeah. Of course, Tom . . . sorry. I only just woke up. I was just . . . ahh . . .” She rubbed her eyes. “How are you, Tom?” She suddenly noticed the wound on my head. “Oh, God . . . of
course
. . . your head . . . you were in the hospital. I’m so sorry, I forgot . . .”

“It’s all right,” I said. “Don’t worry about it.”

“No? Well, I mean . . . I just . . .” She blinked heavily. “So when did you get home, Tom?”

“Today. This morning . . .”

“Right, right . . .”

“I was just wondering —”

“Did you want to see Lucy?”

“Well, only if —”

“Come in, come in . . . I’ll go and see if she’s awake. She was sleeping . . . she gets really tired.”