And yet he feels they have missed an opportunity to more deeply marketise their economy, here they could lead the way. A surge of excitement again, that has him laying down his fork and spreading his fingers out on the table. He should be careful; he will cause hormonal imbalances, compromise his digestion. They tried and have been trying with only limited success to interest the Chinese in their geo-engineering initiative. It may yet bear fruit, luminous, magnificent, exotically mutant fruit, silver apples, but he fears that they are too conservative, too timid to push on, to see more experiments with the biosphere as the solution rather than the problem. Imagine the world transformed, the full and final death of anything natural, the dried up lakes, and melted ice caps, the levelled mountains and artificial islands, the algal blooms roiling leagues deep under the crimson sun, the animals transformed, spliced, hybridised into a bestiary of extraordinary new strains, the flora and fauna of a world in which all original forms have been altered, superseded. Yes these other worlds we dream of, these other life forms, are simply this world, ourselves, and what the relentless seeding and reaping of the market, it’s viral enormity, will make of us. Will it be good or bad? He scoffs at such a question. It will be beyond such considerations, who can judge from this vantage point with this system of ethics, these concerns, the life there on the other side of the event, past the singularity when the last scrap of uninflected matter has been harnessed and transformed, transubstantiated. This is the divine hope and terror; he feels it swelling through him, the full and final cutting of the cord, the lowering of a screen, nature no more.
But the Chinese will not do it, they are not radical enough. No matter how old the Chinese state itself might be, it remains a new country in the only sense that matters, new to Capitalism and conscious, just like Russia, of its late entry, its backwardness, its riding on the coat tails of systems of thought and practices invented and improved, innovated on here in the old world.
The girls by the entrance are showing a higher level of animation than he would normally expect, his waitress Amy glancing discreetly twice in his direction. She nods and approaches, smiling.
Just to say, sir. If you are planning to leave the building or if you have any guests arriving there is a disturbance on the ground floor. Protesters. She smiles. We will keep you updated if you wish.
He smiles and nods. Ah, that’s interesting; he sensed that somehow didn’t he? The vibrations, the impact of a distant event rippling through him, nudging his thoughts in a particular direction.
Not necessary, he says.
Thank you. Your main course will be with you in just a moment.
Beep. Message.
Can’t get into Shard. Police blocked road.
He dislikes looking at his phone during meals or in public places in general, this low-grade browsing is another habit he has assiduously broken, better to let the thoughts run free, to hear and observe oneself, to be alive to those vibrations, rather than this constant distraction, though he understands of course that his wealth has depended upon the web, the now almost universal engagement. He clicks on BBC News and sees that whatever is happening 35 floors below him justifies a video feed and a series of live updates, he calls up Twitter and follows #burstthebubble. He recognises many of the profiles, has a certain sympathy for protesters; he believes they are wrong but admires their Libertarian conviction, is certain one or two of them will come out of it all well.
He should, perhaps go down into the street, talk to them. Is he in danger of becoming a recluse?
He messages back.
Please stay nearby, will endeavour to arrange a meet/pick up.
Back in the apartment, he goes into his study and settles into the ergonomic smart chair that activates the prototype Nanotop DuHaine has passed on to him and which he is thinking through in his consultancy role for the recent start-up Biobot. The English Rose questioned him again yesterday about the company’s role and that of his other “mafia” friends in commercialising technologies innovated elsewhere in the public sphere, whilst raising the issue of tax avoidance and so on. He is in a position these days to wave such considerations away, but really he feels that they owe the Government little or nothing; yes they have provided innovations, but without their zeal and expertise in markets they would be piling up unused in some warehouse somewhere instead of expanding and enriching the lives of a global citizenry. Tax disincentivises; let the others pay tax, genius must be exempt from all constraints to flourish, especially mere financial constraints.
He smoothes out his jawline, closes his eyes, feels that he should perhaps deploy techniques of mindfulness but instead reflects on where the anger he felt then might have come from, where in his upbringing, his relations to others he might find its seed and source. Distractedly he removes the aquamarine blue button, about the size of a five pound coin, from the desk draw, presses it between thumb and forefinger until it activates, places it on the desk top, watches it assemble, screen, keyboard. They have been debating the assembly time and it is a remarkable thing to see, the twenty-second ambient piece commissioned from William Basinski suddenly fizzing and surging in seemingly from nowhere but in reality from the clusters of invisible, tiny speakers that have positioned themselves around his ears as it takes shape. Remarkably beautiful but also time consuming, hence the option he is insisting on, that the assembly mode has variable speeds. Microsecond assembly in which the laptop appears to simply instantly pop into the world from nowhere is a no less remarkable spectacle. Move too slowly and it will assemble around your hand and already some of the researchers are wearing and customising them. As usual, wearable technology comes about, but through other means, through the desire to adapt and customise, to re-appropriate.
He calls up his numerous feeds and streams, uses Spreed to power through them, making his mind as emptily receptive to the accelerating letters and images as possible. He has managed to reach levels of input in which it is only later he finds he has recorded or has access to the information. At the point of delivery he has no conscious recognition of the content at all.
Yes the moment is near, the horizon drawing ever closer, exponentially, so that suddenly in a flash what seemed remote and impossible is upon us. He knows this from his parascending, one of the activities they all used to indulge in back in the day. Groundrush is the term; how the earth, the fields and planes, roads and rivers, houses seem to stay suspended at the same distance as one floats idly down until suddenly with tremendous speed and violence it is all springing up to meet you. His understanding is that at the Singularity Labs they are already working on something called Breach, an interface that sends nanobots into the bloodstream of the user on activation. Clariq, working on a crude prototype and the guinea pig, compares the experience of his first nano-hit to Albert Hofman’s first pipette drop of
LSD
, only infinitely more pleasurable, infinitely more empowering, offering not mystical insight but metaphysical mastery. His news feed informs him that they have already linked up with major pharma companies.
And yet, there is some other way in which he is basically bored of technology. Johannes sends down a message to the concierge to let Graeme Ferris in but he seems to be impossible to contact. Very well, he will do it himself. He looks at his phone and its seems that the disturbance has been largely contained, various aerial shots from the police helicopters he has been watching circle around the building from his apartment window show the smallish group of protesters well kettled in one corner of the square, repeated slow motion shots of youths being Tasered and cuffed, dragged off into vans.
It will be difficult for Graeme Ferris to enter no doubt, to get past the police. And Nastya, later. Perhaps she will stay elsewhere tonight. Shame, recently they bought a pair of studded White-burn high heeled pumps he had been keen to see her in.
He messages Graeme Ferris.
Please come to the main entrance I will admit you.
Then as an afterthought as he heads for the bathroom. Text, Ferris.
Please send a photo for recognition.
The phone beeps in acknowledgement. He has had a Hitachi 675 toilet installed and as the lights in the bathroom flick on the lid rises ceremoniously.
Message.
Can’t get near the building, Police cordon. There is a photo attached.
Well, today has presented numerous unexpected twists and turns. He takes a deep breath, goes up on his heels, smooths his jawline. He has a sudden desire for a whiskey or a glass of wine; even though he does everything he can to avoid alcohol. The occasional glass with DuHaine, the odd mouthful on vineyard tours as they continue to lay down the cellar in the house in Patagonia.
He takes the lift all the way down, strides purposefully through the lobby waving away the concerned expressions and cautious entreaties of the staff not to go outside and then across the square. He spots a
USG
Met attachment officer, the distinctive high viz branded armband, and heads for her, shows her Graeme Ferris’ photo and instructs her to help him locate him. There’s a group of onlookers bunched up at the entrance to the square, the kettled protesters over in one corner, thirty or so people ringed by twice that number of police in full riot gear. He is not afraid to go down onto the street; here he is, among them, almost.
Graeme Ferris has pushed his way to the front and is weaving his head around to attract attention as they arrive. The
USG
Guard approaches one of the police officers, explains that Johannes is a resident in one of the flats, that he has business with this admittedly rather dishevelled looking youth on the other side of the cordon. It has started spitting slightly, the smell of petrol in the air, traffic stalled and backed up honking all along London Bridge, flashing blue lights, circling helicopters, more coming in over the river, hundreds of phones up in the air, recording the scene. The Police Officer is initially diffident, blankly explaining to them that no one is to be admitted to the building, that this is an on-going Level 5 operation, until he shows her the exemption permit he has gone to some pains and expense to acquire from the Met’s
VIP
programme, at which point she talks quickly into her radio and then points at Graeme Ferris, flicks her wrist back. You, in!
In the lift the smell of the gopher is moderately intense, unpleasant but not repellent. A smell Johannes tries to disentangle. There are many strands, but old clothes, stale beer, greasy food, cannabis, sweat are the most obvious elements that assail him. Fascinating, the poor really do smell, the odour filling up the lift as they wait between floors. He is experiencing an elevated heart rate, perhaps because of the confined space, the drop below, the activity outside the building, possibly just the proximity of another person, a person of the kind he would generally, assiduously avoid. No, that’s not quite true: he begins to go up on his toes then stops himself. It’s simply that his life doesn’t often bring him into contact with people of this ilk, this milieu, even though his life is increasingly spent pursuing their output, their art. He is getting slowly better at it, though Nastya seems to relish spending her time among them. She’s such a rock chick, he thinks, a grunger, a riot grrl at heart. He should think of this as an opportunity to practice and familiarise himself with such people, this type.
I hope you’ve managed to get what we were looking for, he says.
Yeah, Graeme Ferris says. He looks bemused by it all. A lot of running around, you know.
Standing there round-shouldered in his big army coat, sweating, with his grubby rucksack on his back and his Lidl carrier bags swinging from his wrists.
Yes well, you have been very efficient, Johannes says.
Right, Graeme says. Cheers. He shifts from foot to foot.
Johannes finds himself involuntarily gazing at Graeme Ferris, the sweat on his forehead, the patches of dry skin beneath, the beard, the bloodshot left eye, the general sense of defeat and discomfort. The gopher. Yes there is something rodent-like and scurrying about him, used to pushing its nose into piles of junk and rooting out little nuggets of value, darting furtively away with them clamped in its jaws.
He has a beard of course. Johannes remembers the night he was ridiculed on The Pete Sibbet Show for insisting that his employees were always clean-shaven. The leaked memo was read out on air and then a set of deliberately amateurish, photoshopped images of him were flashed up with a variety of increasingly ridiculous beards until finally his face was superimposed over the Gibbons brothers from ZZ Top.
He opens his mouth, tries to find a way to continue the conversation, then immediately closes it again. Really, what can one say to such a creature?
The lift arrives at the 123rd floor.
He’s what now, Graeme Ferris? A fugitive?
He came up in the boot of a Vauxhall Astra that smelt of dog and stale beer, eyes closed, controlling his breathing, telling himself not to freak out, panic, get claustrophobic, in the dark, the confined space, the diminishing air, trying not to imagine what might happen if, say, the car went off the road, down an embankment, into a lake.
And is this what his life will be now? Pursuit, subterfuge, fear? Fear of imprisonment? Fear of being given over to others, to be delivered completely into their power? He was a fool to run, he should have stayed, been taken down to the factory, worked, paid back his debts if he could. Shit as that is, they have guaranteed that there is always a worse option, a greater fear that will, should, unless you are an idiot, keep you in your place. He cursed himself, dickhead. Dickhead!
Out of the boot in a backstreet somewhere, bundled into some outhouse, half-familiar faces in the torchlight and the glow of phones, giving him water and a can of Red Stripe saying they will get him a new ID, try and get him up North.