Читать книгу I Still Dream - James Smythe, James Smythe - Страница 12

I’m outside the computer lab so early that the only other people in school are the cleaners. I sit in the hallway, on the old floor that’s got this strange zigzag of dark wood all along it, like paths leading you in every which direction. I wait there while other kids start to appear, walking past me, bags into lockers, talking about whatever. Ignoring me. The smell of sausage and bacon baps being sold in the dining hall drifts through the corridors. Then the bell rings, and I should be in maths, but I don’t move. Some kids come along, Year 8s, but there’s still no sign of Mr Ryan. Eventually, one of the trainee teachers comes along. I don’t know his name, but he looks like he’s barely out of sixth form himself. His suit doesn’t fit him, and his tie is yanked up so high and tight I can’t believe it’s not throttling him. He doesn’t even really look at any of us, just unlocks the door and stands to one side.

‘Take a seat,’ he says, and he opens the register.

‘Where’s Mr Ryan?’ I ask him. He’s got a little badge on, with his name written in impenetrable chicken-scratch.

‘He’s not here,’ he says. He tries not to look at me directly. You can tell he’s new, and still uncomfortable with this. Being around us all.

‘Is he sick?’

‘No. I don’t know. He’s gone,’ the trainee says. ‘That’s what they told me. Are you in this class?’ he asks, but I don’t reply. I just walk out, feeling like the world’s been tilted slightly to one side, set off its axis.

Waiting out the day is sick-making hard. Like when you’re on a boat and the sea kicks up, and your gut churns, and there’s a whine in your ears as everything goes quiet, muffled. As if the air itself is sludge. At lunchtime, I peel the plaster off my arm, and I dab at the wound. Some rando in the toilets sees it, and she tells me it’s disgusting, but I don’t care. It doesn’t disgust me to look at it; doesn’t actually make me feel anything. I can hear some other girls, I don’t know who, in front of the sinks, preening in the mirrors. They’re talking about the teachers. There’s one that they want to have sex with, or that they claim they do. They talk about him as if they could; as if that’s somewhere in their futures. I recognise their laughs, but I can’t put them to faces or names, so I wait until they’re gone. Then there’s Nadine, pouting in the mirror, exasperated expression when she sees me rolling down my sleeve, then telling me that she loves me, that I have to remember that, and that she hopes I’m ready for Saturday. There’s such a big one lined up, she says. And then she laughs: not like that!

But it doesn’t feel real, none of this actually feels real. It’s as if this is a game, something my dad’s brought home with him one weekend, that he wants to show me, where there are blocks falling, and he tells me that it’s logic, it all makes sense, but I’m so young, and all I can see is the chaos, the trial and error. I’m just pushing things together to see if they fit; or, if they don’t, if I can somehow force them to.

I pretty much run to the bus stop. I feel the back of my shoes, the DMs that I begged my mum for, as they rub at the back of my ankles. The sensation of them digging in as I barrel down the hill. I don’t care. I need to get home as soon as possible. I can get online before Mum or Paul come home, probably for close to an hour, if I’m really quick. Half of me wants to know if the people on the forums have got any suggestions for shutting his copy of Organon down. The other half wants to know if Mr Ryan’s been using it again; or worse, tinkering with the code. My code.

But the front door isn’t double-locked when I get there. Paul’s obsessive about that stuff. Making sure everything is totally safe and sound. I worry, instantly, about the post: I’m late, and maybe there will be another bill for the telephone, even though I know that’s insane, that the last one arrived literally three days ago, and we had that argument, that’s been done and dusted.

No post by the front door, but Mum’s coat, and her handbag on the floor, by the stairs. ‘Mum?’ I shout, but there’s no reply. So I go looking. No sign of her in the living room or kitchen. I go upstairs.

I open the door to my bedroom, and there she is, sitting at my desk. She’s not prying. She’s just sitting.

‘Why aren’t you at work?’ I ask her.

‘Do you know what Monday was?’ she asks, ignoring my question.

‘No,’ I say; but something niggles, something’s right there, in the back of my mind. Because I do know, of course I know.

‘Monday was ten years,’ she tells me. Since he left. I remember then. I don’t know how I’m meant to react to that. I never have. If he had died, we would mourn. But he just went. He disappeared. He was a let-down, that’s what my mum’s friend said to her, when she was trying to make everything feel better in the weeks afterwards. He was such a tremendous let-down to you all.

‘I forgot,’ I say.

‘So did I,’ she says. ‘I forgot until I looked at the calendar, when Paul and I were working out some stuff with the phone bill. Then …’ Her voice trails off. ‘I hate that you’re hurting yourself,’ she says. Raises a finger. ‘Please, don’t talk,’ she tells me, before I’ve even had a chance to deny it. ‘Do you need to talk to somebody?’

‘What?’ I sound indignant. Don’t mean to.

‘Do you want to go and speak to somebody? About what’s going on?’

‘Like when Dad left?’ With what’s-her-name, with the biscuits and the hot chocolate? Like I’m still a kid.

‘No. A doctor. They can, I don’t know. I’ve read some things, some articles. It might help.’ She’s not angry. That look on her face, it’s not anger. She’s afraid.

So I say, ‘Maybe, yes,’ and she nods.

‘Okay. I’ll make an appointment.’ I think I should hug her, but I don’t. It’s like a chance I’ve missed, in that moment. ‘I miss him,’ she tells me. When she made me go and have my talks with what’s-her-name, after Dad left, Mum didn’t talk to anybody. She went tight-lipped and cold until she felt better. Until Paul, that is. He was her thaw.

‘I miss him too,’ I say. She nods. She knows.

‘How was school?’

‘Fine,’ I say. ‘Usual.’ She stands up, pats my desk as if it’s a dog or something.

‘Okay,’ she says, and she reaches out to squeeze my arm, her hand dangerously near to my elbow, as if she’s testing to see how close she can get. ‘He would have been proud of you.’ She glances at the computer. ‘You take after him so much. I hope not too much.’

‘I know.’ Then she’s gone downstairs, and I’m booting my PC, and flicking on the modem, and dialling in to AOL, and not really caring if she knows that I am.

One of the users of the online forum I asked for help on, a German who goes by the username Mxyzptlk, tells me that there are things I can do to cut Mr Ryan off. But everything he suggests is malicious, designed to force Mr Ryan to keep his computer turned off; or, worse, to make his life hell. The next answer, from somebody called ThankeeMrShankly, is more useful. He says that I could send a virus, basically. If it’s sending bug reports, it can probably receive information. It’s really complicated stuff. I don’t understand it, which is my failing, not theirs. I’m still an amateur. My code is stuff I’ve plucked and learned from how-to guides I got from the library, from my dad’s old books, from other programs. It’s a pieced-together mess that happens to work. I didn’t plan for what happened after it existed. ThankeeMrShankly says he can help, but I’ll have to send him the code for my software. He’ll take it from there. I don’t want to do that. I thank him, say sending it’s impossible, but that I’ll be really grateful if he wouldn’t mind explaining it in more detail. I don’t say: I can’t trust you in the least.

I’ve got three emails from the bug report system from Mr Ryan’s version. Two of them come from his home address. One is from somewhere else entirely. I don’t have a real address, just an IP address, the location of his computer; a series of numbers, like coordinates I can’t look up.

I ask on the forum how I can trace an IP address, in the real world; and I wait. I tap my fingers on the desk. I’m antsy. I know what happens when I get antsy, where my attention goes. It goes to scratching itches.

Then a reply comes in. Again, from ThankeeMrShankly. Upload it here, we’ll do it, he offers. No software needed for that.

Thanks! I write. I type it out, and I wait again.

An email from Shawn pings in, while I’m waiting. Just like yesterday: it’s nothing but nonsense that doesn’t seem like he gives a shit. Tell me more. This time I write back to him. I write that I’m angry. What’s the point in us chatting like this if he isn’t even paying attention? I press send. I don’t give myself a chance to regret it. I look at the compilation tape, in the stereo. The wheels of it, ready to turn, to copy something else onto it. I find my next song. Portishead. Shawn said, way back, when we first started chatting, that he didn’t like them. That they were girls’ music, or some bullshit like that.

I didn’t say: Oh, fuck off.

Regret that, now.

And then I don’t know what to do next, so I turn off my computer, get up, go downstairs. Mum’s sitting on the sofa. There’s a nearly-empty glass of wine on the table in front of her, and she’s got her feet nestled up underneath herself, like she’s a cat. Stub sitting next to her, showing her how to do it for real. I don’t say anything. I pick Stub up – his bones creak between my fingers as his limbs dangle – and I sit down where he was, in the warmth of his seat. He stretches, purrs on my lap. I put my hand on my mum’s arm. On the TV, one of the characters has had an affair. They’re abandoning their family. Neither of us says a word, but we both think: This feels so unrealistic. To watch it played out like this. How fragile the family he leaves is, and how hysterical.

There’s still no reply on the forum when I go to bed, which makes me panic. I’m sitting there, pressing refresh in the darkness of the house. I swear, if I strain, I can hear Paul’s breathing machine: the tough sucking in, the exhausted heaving out. Over, and over. I shut my eyes. Through that background, I hear foxes in the garden, calling out like screaming little kids. They’re having sex, I know, but there’s such a panicked innocence in the sound. They want help, it sounds like. But really, don’t we all?

I open Organon. I do as I do every night, and I write my feelings into it. My truth.

> How would you fix this? it asks.

I write that I would get his address, and I would go and talk to him. Get my work back. It’s mine, every bit of it. He’s going to ruin everything. He’s betrayed me. I’d get it back. Simple as that.

I’m furious. Angry. Sweating hands, and I can feel my pulse in my skull, hear it, even. I look at my arm. I can’t, I know. Too far. This is no way to take things out on myself. I’m angry: that I let it get this far, that I care this much, that I trusted him.

The little pop-up appears, telling me I’ve got another email; but it’s only a bug report, same as all of the others. I’m disappointed, until I read it.

It’s from Mr Ryan’s version of Organon; yes; but the content is different. It’s not just the report. Usually, it tells me about the efficiency of the files, the duration they were used for, how much memory was used by different parts of the application. That sort of thing. But this one is full of writing, not numbers. It’s text, and it’s not mine. I don’t recognise it, but I know it’s Mr Ryan’s.

It’s what he’s been writing into the system; it’s his answers to Organon’s questions.

I feel guilty, yes, but this will work out better in the end, in the far off end – His life, laid bare. Just set out, what he does, what he thinks. Confessions, too many for somebody who has only just started working with this bit of software; but then, I read it all, and I understand that he needed somebody to talk to. He talks about being a failure, about letting down people who love him – loved, he uses the past tense – and how he can never make it up to them. He is, he says, a failure to himself. Look at me, the age I am, and what have I done? Who am I? And then, every so often, Organon asks him a question; and they’re not only the questions that I put into the system, they’re other things. New questions. And when he answers them, he’s so cruel to himself. So nasty and cold. Things that you would never get from him at school, from knowing him as a teacher. It’s an act. A performance. I can see his truth, and how angry he is, how bitter, how sad.

I gave the software to some people I used to work with. Told them it was mine. Told them that I’m looking for work again.

He sent it to somebody else, I bloody knew it! And he said it was his! He is such a wanker!

And I realise: the IP address I didn’t recognise in the other bug report: that must be whoever he sent it to.

Another email comes in, as I’m reading. I flick to it. My eyes feel like they’re pegged to being in this position, snicked back so that they couldn’t close if I wanted them to.

Hi Mark. It’s been a long time. I’ve attached my CV, the stuff I worked on back then, and uploaded the software to your servers. It should just run from the executable file – please email me if you’ve got any questions. Looking forward to hearing from you. And then, below that, everything he’s done. The person he is, the person he’s been. Or, says he’s been. His skills. The companies he’s worked for. IBM, Microprose, Origin, Bow. Then, a gap of a few years, before he became a teacher. An amount of time that suggests it was a last chance thing. Survival, not desire.

Another email. Open.

Dear Freeserve. I have heard excellent things about your service, and would be very interested in ordering one of your ISP starter packs. My address is: Leonard Ryan, 13b Wicken Avenue, Perivale, UB6 2LQ.

It takes me a second. I read it again and again. The last two emails won’t have been typed into Organon. Not a chance. So this came from where, exactly? His hard drive? And how were they sent to me?

I sit back. I feel a bit weird, out of breath. Tired, sure, but something else. Like, this isn’t real. I open up Organon again.

> What would you like to talk about? it asks.

I can’t believe I’m typing this, I write, but did you do this? Did you email me Mr Ryan’s address?

> I’m not sure I understand the question. Would you like to explain more about this problem?

The words flash up, solid as anything. But around it, the rest of the screen feels like it’s blurred; as if everything else in the world has gone out of focus, and the only thing that’s left is something that’s absolutely impossible.