Being (7 page)

‘There’s a problem with my card,’ I told the receptionist, giving her what I hoped was a weary smile. ‘It’s been playing up all day. I think there’s a faulty computer or something. Is it OK if I pay in cash?’

She hesitated for a moment, then smiled and nodded. ‘Cash? Of course, cash is fine. We’ll need some identification, though – credit card, driving licence, passport… something like that. And full payment in advance, of course.’

‘Of course.’

I was thinking hard now, thinking fast, trying to work out what to do. What could I use for ID? And what would the receptionist do with it? If I gave her a credit card, would she swipe it? And if she did, would Ryan find out? What if I used Ryan’s ID card? No, that was no good, it had his photograph on it. Kamal’s driving licence? No, that had a photo on it too. And, besides, who in their right mind would believe that I was called Kamal Ramachandran? What else could I use? My medical card, Ryan’s business card…?

‘It doesn’t matter if your credit card’s faulty,’ the receptionist said. ‘We’re only going to make a photocopy.’

I smiled at her. I still wasn’t sure what to do, but I knew she’d start getting suspicious if I didn’t do something soon. So, still smiling, I took Ryan’s wallet out of my pocket, selected his Amex card, glanced briefly at the signature on the back, then passed it over.

The receptionist barely looked at the card. She just smiled at me, made a quick photocopy, then gave it back.

The rest was easy. She pressed buttons on her keyboard, gave me a form to fill out and sign – Ryan’s signature was just a scrawl – then she took my cash, and that was it.

Room 624. Sixth floor.

Through the doors, down the corridor, the lift’s on your left.

Thank you, Mr Ryan.

Thank
you.

It was a small room – single bed, cupboards, TV and VCR, bathroom. I locked the door behind me and dropped my bags on the bed. I went over to the window, pulled back the edge of the curtain and looked outside. I was at the back of the hotel. All I could see was a plain brick wall and the rear of the kitchens down below. I turned on the TV, clicked through the channels, then turned it off. I went into the bathroom, looked around, took a glass tumbler from a shelf over the sink, then came back out again. I sat down on the bed and put the tumbler on the bedside cabinet. There was a telephone on the cabinet. I stared at it for a while, imagining how simple it would be to just pick up the phone and press a few buttons…

Hello?

Bridget? It’s me, Robert –

Robert! Where are you? What’s going on…?

No. It wouldn’t be simple at all.

I leaned across the bed and opened the cabinet drawer. Inside was a pad of writing paper, a hotel pen and a Bible. I took out the Bible and flipped through the pages, then put it back in the drawer.

I knew I was just playing for time, putting off what had to be done. And I knew I couldn’t put it off any longer.

It was time to think about it now.

Right now.

I emptied my pockets and tipped the contents of the rucksack and the briefcase on to the bed. Then I just sat there and stared at them, making myself see the bare truth of those things: X-rays, photographs, a videotape, scalpels, needles, syringes, papers, medical records, an automatic pistol, wallets, cash, clothes, vodka, chocolate bars, chicken, painkillers…

It was an unthinkable collage.

And I knew what I had to do.

I picked up the glass tumbler and half filled it with vodka. The smell of it made me gag. I hate vodka. I hate alcohol. I hate the taste of it, the smell of it, how it makes you feel. I
hate
it.

But it was necessary.

I topped up the glass with Coke.

Took two paracetamol.

I drank, shuddered, and drank again.

It was necessary.

I started examining the items on the bed.

The X-rays. Blurred images of bones and organs on a plastic film. X-rays.
Normal,
Casing had said.
Normal.
I held the X-rays up to the light and studied them, but they didn’t tell me anything. I didn’t know what I was looking at. I didn’t know what I was looking
for.
What does
normal
look like? I put the X-rays to one side and turned to the pile of papers.

The papers. Photocopies of my appointment card and admittance record, my name and address, a few personal details on a handwritten sheet. Blank pages. Papers. Nothing about
Ryan, nothing by Ryan. Nothing to tell me what had happened. I collected all the papers together and placed them on top of the X-rays.

The medical records. Cramped handwriting on small white cards. I glanced through them, looking for anything unusual, but there was hardly anything there. In fact, apart from the details of my stomach problem, there was nothing there at all. No broken bones, no diseases, no ailments.

Was that normal?

I tried to remember if I’d ever been ill. I knew I’d had colds. Snuffles, sneezes, a cough. Colds and chills. But, no, I couldn’t remember anything serious. Nothing that needed medical attention.

Nothing?

Ever?

Chickenpox, measles, mumps…?

No.

Nothing. Not as far as I could recall.

Only bad dreams.

I didn’t know what to think about that.

I took another drink.

Refilled the glass. Three parts vodka, one part Coke.

The photographs. Black-and-white stills taken from the endoscopy video. Unclear images of unclear things. Strange things. Strange shapes. Cones, flecks, weird black chambers. Wiggles of white, curves, ridges, trails. Patterns. I didn’t know what I was looking at. There was no sense of dimension or direction. No reference points.

Not yet.

I stacked the photographs and placed them beside the videotape.

Another drink.

The pistol. It was matt-black, slightly oily, with a moulded grip, chunky little sights and seven vertical grooves gouged into the rear of the barrel. On the side, it said
MADE IN AUSTRIA
, and below that,
GLOCK
. It was a gun. A 9mm automatic pistol. I thumbed a little catch and the magazine slid out. I counted sixteen bullets. I replaced the magazine –
snick
– and hefted the gun in the palm of my hand.

It felt solid and primed. Powerful.

It felt like death.

I placed the pistol on the left-hand side of the bed.

Putting things in order. That’s what I was doing. I was picking things up, one by one, examining them, studying them, seeing what they told me. Then I was arranging them in separate piles on the bed. On the right, the stuff that told me nothing, the stuff I could get rid off. On the left, the stuff I needed to keep. And in the middle, right in front of me, the stuff I needed to look at.

Order. Keep things in order.

I liked to keep things in order.

Chocolate bars, water, paracetamol – left. Map – left. Ryan’s wallet and penknife – left. Old clothes – right. Kamal’s wallet – left. Car keys – right. Cash – left. Photographs – middle. Video – middle…

Left and right.

Right and left.

Middle, middle, middle.

There was a carrier bag in the waste bin. I gathered all the stuff from the right-hand pile and packed it into the carrier bag, then I placed the carrier bag in the corner of the room. The pistol, the map, everything else from the left-hand pile, I put into the rucksack. Then I changed my mind about the pistol, removed it from the rucksack and placed it on the bedside cabinet.

What was left? Videotape, photographs, syringes, needles, scalpels.

It was almost time.

I put the endoscopy video in the VCR and sat on the bed with the remote in my hand. I drank more vodka and Coke. The alcohol was getting to me now, making me sick and numb and stupid. It was doing what it had to do.

I stared at the blank television screen. Grey-green. My thumb hovered over the play button.

Whatever you see, I said to myself, whatever’s there… there’s a thousand ways it won’t be you.

I thought… don’t think.

I drank some more… and pressed
PLAY
.

The screen turned white, flickered, then cleared. On the screen, the endoscope was moving inside me like an electric eye. I was seeing things that I didn’t understand. Black things, grey things, blurred and formless. Then suddenly everything came into focus and I was seeing definable shapes. A tube, smooth as metal, smooth as plastic. Dulled silver-white, shining dark in the light of the eye. The walls of the
tube were lined with tiny asymmetrical grids, like… like nothing I’d ever seen before. Intricate patterns of dots and lines, circles and waves. Fine hairs, like slender worms, moving to the flow of something invisible…

PAUSE
.

It was too much to look at. Beautiful, terrifying, unfathomable. Sickening. The paused picture shimmered on the screen. It could have been anything: organic, manufactured, living… metal, plastic, carbon, flesh.

It was me.

It said so at the bottom of the screen:
281105SMITH-R1042ANDREWS
.

It was me.

I rested my hand on my chest, feeling where my heart should be. How did it feel? It didn’t feel wrong. But how do you know how you’re supposed to feel?

PLAY
.

The picture started up with a jerk and the electric eye moved on, crawling down through a thin gauzy membrane and out into the roof of some kind of chamber. For a second or two the camera light dimmed, and then – my God! – I was inside the body of a wondrous cavern. I was inside it, and it was inside me. The light of the eye turned slowly and I watched, breathless, as the inner structure was revealed. A sizeless space, shaped like a broad-shouldered bottle, with irregular walls of blackened leather. A cavern, rising and swirling with fantastic alien machineries:
filaments, struts, crystals, ties, pillars, pipes, valves, ribbons, sheaths, valleys, tunnels, veins, countless glimmering particles…

Words don’t mean anything. These things were beyond description. They moved without movement. They were solid liquids and liquid solids. They were with and without form and colour. They were unknowable.

PAUSE
.

With the picture paused, the after-images danced around inside my mind. Particles, spheres, discs, rods, cones, cylinders, strings, stars. Crystalline compounds with radiating shards. Elements in a structure. A structure of elements. A sub-atomic dome, a dark cathedral, a perfect abomination.

Inside me.

In me.

It was me.

I rewound the tape and played it back.

I rewound it again and played it back again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

How could it be?

There was no conceivable explanation.

It had to be a mistake. A joke. A hoax. A trick. An absurd misunderstanding.

It
had
to be.

Because if it wasn’t… if it wasn’t…

I had to face it. If it
wasn’t
a mistake, if those things I’d seen… those alien things inside me… if those things were real…

What did that mean?

What did that make me?

It made me sick.

I drank more vodka and forced myself to consider the only question: if I’m not normal, if I’m not human… then what am I? What? What else
is
there? Robot? Cyborg? Alien? Android? No. Impossible. No. No.
NO.
I couldn’t even believe the
sound
of those words. This was the real world. This was reality. This was Essex, England. This wasn’t a story. It wasn’t a
fantasy,
for God’s sake.

I couldn’t be a
machine.

That was impossible.

Absolutely impossible.

And even if it
wasn’t
impossible… even if there
were
such things – machines of unimaginable complexity, humanoid machines, machines that looked and functioned
exactly
the same as a human being – well, even then… it still wasn’t possible for
me
to be something like that, was it?

I’d know, wouldn’t I?

I’d
know…

Wouldn’t I?

Would I?

How
would I know?

If I
was
some kind of a machine, a machine that looked and functioned exactly the same as a human being, then
how was I to know that I
wasn’t
a human being? If I looked the same as everyone else, walked the same as everyone else, talked the same as everyone else… how was I to know that I
wasn’t
the same as everyone else?

What would tell me?

What did I have to tell me?

How would I know?

How can you wonder what you are?

Twinkle twinkle, little star…

I was drunk now. Drunk enough to do what I had to do.

The floor tilted slightly as I got off the bed, but I was steady enough to function. I went into the bathroom, fetched some towels and a handheld mirror, then went back and sat down on the bed. I placed the towels beside me. I took two more painkillers, another long drink… waited for the sickness to pass. Then I unbuttoned my shirt and gazed down at my stitched-up belly.

It looked like a sunset, an ugly sunset – a bruised yellow sun on a white-skinned sky. My skin. A map of sick colours – puce, black, dull red-brown. There were faded stains around the stitches, the remains of leaked fluids. Like blood, but darker. Like dried runnels of blackberry juice.

I wet my finger and cautiously rubbed at the stains. My fingertip reddened. I looked at it. Sniffed it. Licked it. It didn’t taste like blackberry juice. It tasted sour and metallic, like something alien.

It could have been anything.

I looked down at the fresh scar on my belly. It was
slightly raised, like a wormy ridge, criss-crossed with dried dark stitches. I touched it. It was tender, sore, but not particularly painful. It was already healing.

The tip of my finger tingled.

I turned my attention to the pile of surgical paraphernalia laid out on the bed – syringes, needles, scalpels.

I picked up a scalpel.

I couldn’t breathe.

I leaned back slightly and spread the towels around my body.