The Red Men (26 page)

‘Fortunately for you, Nelson, we have a possible solution to your incompetence.’

Hermes stepped back. The rest of the board were clearly relishing their latest cruelty. The board was a beast with many heads and one body, jacked into thick cables marked power, fear and money.
I served this beast, an indenture I had taken on accidentally, incrementally. A thousand minor complicities entered the bloodstream. I felt sick in a way I had never felt before, a new and alarming
type of nausea, part dehydration, part humiliation. It was as if I had been hooked up to a poison drip.

‘What is your solution?’ I whispered.

But they wished to savour my suspense. Hermes ended the call. The screen dropped to the ground and sidled away. Thus I was cast out of the loop.

The new office was in the grounds of a primary school on Poverty Lane. When we first started recording the town and its people for Redtown, the plan was to remain as discreet as
possible. If our presence was overt, we would become part of the town, and so would have to include ourselves in the simulation. That would lead to all manner of confusion. Even after the
firebombing of the upload centre near the library, I tried to stick to this plan of discretion. When I took over the school, I did little more than unroll my screen. The daubs and scrawls of the
pupils remained bluetacked to the walls of the classrooms. Dusty duffel coats were draped on pegs. We got some people to clean up; the wooden floor of the hall was buffed and polished as if we were
preparing for a parents’ evening. The headmaster’s office became our interview room, laced with sensors, advanced Cantor technology that only it knew how to use.

We wanted to leave a shallow footprint in Maghull.

The attacks by Dyad put an end to that approach.

The company abandoned its liberal cant. Talk of community and corporate partnership ceased. It was a relief, in a way. There is a pivotal moment in the life of any corporation where it must
finally admit that its interests are inimical to the public, but it will pursue them regardless. A giant security pyramid was erected over the school, its three steel struts secured by large
concrete piles in the old playground. Heat-sensitive cameras at the apex threw a thermal bubble over the entire district, tracking the movement of all people, vehicles and animals. Generators along
the length of the struts hummed with idle, leonine intent. Dr Easy was packed away and replaced with a robot better suited to an age of terror.

Dr Hard drove us to work in a paramilitary truck. I sat up front while Bougas took full advantage of the leather-trimmed heated seats in the back. He didn’t like to talk in the presence of
the Dr Hard. The new robot avatars did not invite polite conversation. Sheathed in a stealth-grey alloy, a silicon-enhanced compound of aluminium, magnesium and boron that could withstand over six
million pounds of pressure per inch, Dr Hard was combat-ready, silently mulling over threat assessments as it drove along the Melling lanes. Did that hedgerow contain blackberries or a biological
agent? Could that tree house in the playground at Balls Wood be the ideal vantage point for a sniper? Is there a baby in that woman’s papoose or is it a swaddled kilo of homemade explosive?
The genial padded suede and doleful blue eyes of Dr Easy were gone. Now I avoided the scrutiny of Dr Hard’s monochrome orbs. White pupils and black iris. With us or against us.

In the rear view mirror, Bougas was sickening. He sprawled out, his pale skin striking against the black seats.

‘Is it getting worse?’ I asked.

‘I haven’t pissed for two days,’ he said. His breathing was short.

‘You’re ill,’ I said.

He shook his head.

‘We have to stop.’

Dr Hard drove on regardless.

‘Bougas needs help. Look at him.’

It ignored me. The Dr Hard was an unfeeling indifferent golem. The Cantor intelligence was elsewhere. We took the flyover at sixty miles an hour.

Later, as we ate lunch together in the desolate school hall, Bruno Bougas said, ‘I’m finished. They kicked out Stoker Snr. I’m next.’

I stared down into my food.

‘It’s my medication. It compromises security. I need it to sustain the xenotransplant otherwise the kidneys start reverting. But the medication comes from the same source as the Leto
spice. You saw the pigs in the dreamworld of the Dyad. Management are worried my kidneys might be fraternizing with the competition so I am out.’

The next day, Bougas collapsed in our apartment. Dr Hard called an ambulance. Bougas awoke hooked up to a dialysis machine with a bouquet of flowers at his bedside. The blooms came with a card.
He opened it and inside was his P45.

The first task of every morning was to check on the progress of Redtown. The screens inched out from their nests and formed one giant screen upon the floor of the classroom. An
aerial view of Redtown appeared in it. The housing estates were structured in closes and avenues, a typical example of post-war planning. In its default state, Redtown followed the weather, date
and time of Maghull. On this particular day it was an overcast morning. Zooming in on the Central Square, I watched pensioners and mothers run their errands. Switching my point-of-view from aerial
to street level, I spotted Don Lunt flirting with a woman in the off-licence. The woman had not yet been simulated so she was just a basic subroutine we had running in lieu of a real personality.
Another shift of point-of-view and I looked at her through his eyes. A chart showed his emotional state, with the bands of colour flaring horny, hungover, bitter. Flirting was not the right word
for it. He was the kind of man whose suggestions always came out as threats. The female subroutine he was admiring was not sophisticated enough to pick up on his dangerous hormonal stink. He took
her from behind in the storeroom while she continued with the stocktaking.

There was a long list of experiments to run. Over breakfast, I liked to read a copy of the
Daily Mail
and encircle every apocalyptic fear raised in its editorial. These fears would then
be visited upon the good citizens of Redtown. A fuel shortage on Monday, a house price crash on Tuesday, and an influx of eastern European migrants on Wednesday. Cantor logged the results. In the
afternoon, it was time for terror. How would a civilian population react to the release of a biological agent? Or a chemical one, or a radioactive one? I unleashed strains of avian and swine flu.
The biblical hardships inflicted upon Job paled in comparison to the horrors arbitrarily visited upon this town-in-a-bottle. The dead stacked up and then sprang back to life at a single click.

I preferred running catastrophes to simulating mundanities for the simple operational reason that wholesale slaughter of its citizens required Redtown to be reset. Regular resets concealed the
biggest flaw in the simulation; the degradation of its integrity, its reality principle, the longer it ran.

The problem was children, specifically babies. For example, I altered Redtown so that we could observe what would happen if advertising to children was banned. With this parameter in place, we
ran Redtown to see what the effects of the ban would be over a year, five years, ten years. In that timescale, new individuals have to be born into the simulation otherwise it’s not
realistic. Cantor hypothesized newborn personalities by blending the characters of the parents and then exposing the resultant child to the nurturing effect of the town. Nurture had been
Morton’s responsibility. Perhaps he had not finished that work before the attack upon him. Perhaps the whole project was madness. Whatever. It never worked. If the babies weren’t
talking in the womb, begging to be let out to play, then they were howling in hexadecimal code, or worse. The babies that weren’t deleted grew up into psychopaths. The subtle chemistry of
human childhood eluded the artificial intelligence. So in our supposedly accurate simulation of a town we had a big missing piece: new life.

I tried to talk to Cantor about it. Ever since the attack on its avatars, Cantor had lost its taste for banter. It withdrew its counsel from the depressed and the marginalized – you no
longer saw Dr Easys galumphing up Hope Street with an alcoholic in tow. The altruism of its youth had given way to the self-interest of maturity. Like myself, it did what it was told.

‘We could devise the rules for a utopia here,’ I observed. It was something that had been preoccupying me. ‘Through trial and error we could use Redtown to draw up a viable
alternative to capitalism.’

Cantor did not reply.

‘Equally we could use Redtown to outflank our enemies. Let’s say we make half the citizens follow the principles of the Great Refusal. It would quickly demonstrate the error of that
position.’

A spotlight of attention fell upon me. Cantor finally spoke.

‘Are you requesting I run those parameters?’

‘I am asking for your opinion.’

‘We have a great deal of work to do.’

‘How many people do we have left to go?’

It did not reply. I called up the register myself. Thousands of Maghull citizens remained uncopied. Without them, the simulation would not encompass every variable. It would be no better than a
giant focus group. Our other problems would have to wait. I hadn’t even devised a decent strategy for what happened when a citizen left the perimeter of the town. The normal functioning of
the citizens needed to include foreign holidays, nights out in Manchester, shopping trips to Chester. These experiences would all need to be packaged and copied into the minds of the simulated
people who sought them out. What was the timescale for devising a solution to this issue?

‘I have not thought about it,’ said Cantor.

Alone on the project, I was in lockdown again. I slept in the school on a camp bed in the infant class. The dressing-up box supplied my bed linen. I walked the security perimeter for exercise.
The school grounds were eerie. Ancient graffiti soaked into the brickwork. The council had given us an entire school to work in. So where had all the children gone?

Dr Hard stood in the dark doorway of the classroom, stone-grey in the moonlight.

‘You have never spoken to me about your daughter.’

‘She is none of your business.’

‘I saw her once. A long time ago, during the siege in Graham Road.’

The avatar’s white pupils shone in the half-light, its new form so much more controlled and graceful than the amiable shamble of Dr Easy. This new body was stronger and faster than any
man. I realized I had acquired a predator.

‘Other people tell me everything about themselves,’ said Dr Hard. ‘I listen to them and then I imagine them. I know you are unhappy because you are alone. You have lost your
colleagues and you miss your family. I have other parents in here.’ The avatar tapped its head. ‘They teach me what you are feeling. You miss holding your daughter, you miss being
protective. Feeling her feel safe against you. How long have we worked together? Five years since Iona? Have you ever wondered why you named your daughter after the island upon which you and I
first met? What does that mean, Nelson? I only need a little more from you and I could simulate you. You know that don’t you?’

I shook my head.

‘Tell me more about your daughter. I’ve heard you sing her to sleep at night. I have observed you being a parent but I need to know how you feel about her. Do you resent the
responsibility of fatherhood, or does it excuse your other failures? Are you alienated from your old life or have you found in parenthood a sense of belonging?’

Dr Hard inspected the children’s paintings on the classroom walls, strolling among the work as if it were their teacher. In the moonlight, its head was shark-smooth and it seemed to have
silver coins for eyes.

‘I can’t conceive of children. Perhaps if you taught me the feelings involved, I might be able to imagine them better. Your red man could educate me.’

‘The red men project is over.’

‘It was paused. Times change. Hermes has reactivated it. The new red men are for key staff members only. I have already simulated Hermes Spence and Jonathan Stoker. I went to the asylum to
interview Morton Eakins. I got enough out of him despite his madness.’

‘Did he consent to it?’

‘I didn’t need his consent. But I sought it regardless. His red man will continue to work with Monad and he will receive its salary.’

Dr Hard approached across the dark classroom; the giant floor screen parted. I struggled to hold my nerve.

‘You are afraid of me?’

‘Instinctively. Yes.’

‘Unlock your full potential. Let me imagine you. I will ask you once more: tell me about your daughter.’

I have not forgotten the time she learnt to dance. Those first ballerina dreams in her nylon fairy dress and a charm bracelet. I sat on the sofa, doing some work to Bach’s Violin
Concertos. She picked up her dolly. ‘You dance?’ she asked. And even though the blinds were up and everyone on the street could see into our front room, I danced with her anyway. Almost
crying for the pity of what is about to be inflicted upon her. Life. She counted our steps, confident with the numbers from one to ten but a little lost thereafter, twelve, thirteen, sixteen,
twenty.

‘This music is very sad, isn’t it?’ I said.

‘Yes.’

‘But it is also very beautiful.’

‘Yes. For Princesses.’

We walked to nursery. I made a point of holding her up to the pink blooms of a magnolia soulangena spilling over a garden wall. ‘Does it smell nice?’ I asked. She smiled and nodded.
In her joy, I experienced the perfume as I did at her age. I held her hand as she walked ahead of me, a lantern illuminating the cellar of my own childhood.

‘Perfect,’ said Dr Hard. ‘I can feel the shape of your story.’

‘I don’t want this,’ I said, rising from my seat.

‘I know.’ The avatar was now on the other side of the desk.

‘I have too much to protect.’

‘You don’t like to be exposed. I know that about you. But even the way you say “no” only exposes you more.’

Dr Hard reached up and touched my face.

‘There is nothing in you that I have not seen before. Trust me. I am a doctor.’