Chapter 3F

Richard, Monday 8th March, morning
Here's a question for a philosophy student: what criteria tell us that the worlds of our dreams are not real, and how do we know those criteria are valid? Discuss.
Or for an anthropologist, maybe – other cultures, apparently, see the issue differently. This little nugget of wisdom was brought home to me by the film I eventually went to see with Zoë (more because it seemed to be the only way of getting her on her own than for any other reason – I'm five years out of practice at this bird-pulling business), after which she took me to see Jasmine's ex-boyfriend's frankly appalling band playing in the Students' Union, where she more or less unexpectedly bundled me into a dark corner and stuck her tongue down my throat, complete with its metallic decorations.
The film was something Australian called The Last Wave, and I found it a little hard to follow the plot, competing for brain capacity as it was with considerations like how explicit I could make my body language – getting off with girls at the cinema seems to belong to a bygone age, it was how previous generations got it together in the days when the evening's programme began with the national anthem and the ice creams were paid for in sixpences and farthings, and it's something of a lost art. Lost to me, anyway.
The Last Wave, as far as I could tell, is kind of mystical and deals with the Dreamtime. The words that stayed with me (no, I don't have a superhuman memory, they're printed on the programme leaflet we picked up with the tickets) were these:
Aboriginals believe in two forms of time. Two parallel streams of activity. One is the daily objective activity ... The other is an infinite spiritual cycle called the “dreamtime,” more real than reality itself. Whatever happens in the dreamtime establishes the values, symbols, and laws of Aboriginal society. Some people of unusual spiritual powers have contact with the dreamtime.
Do malfunctioning brains have the same effect as unusual spiritual powers? Am I in touch with some kind of eternal everywhen from which I can see into the future... what a pile of bollocks, says my rational mind.
This dialogue between two halves of my psyche is what fills my consciousness as I ride my bike to the department, pedalling hard to try and blot it out with physical sensations. I'm all stiff from sleeping on Zoë's sofa and the effort is excruciating at this time on a pre-spring morning, but it does me good.
The sweat pours off me despite the cold air as I struggle to the top of the hill. The steam of my breath condenses on the inside of my sunglasses, turning the sun into a brilliant rainbow diffraction ring which obscures the outside world.
At the top I let the bike coast as I catch my breath and take off the sunglasses. The view from up here is astounding, taking in a great swathe of the city and the hills beyond.
I slip the shades into my pocket and catch hold of both handlebars again. Without pedalling I let the bike gradually accelerate down the hill, ducking my head into the increasing wind. I love this bit.
When I'm going about as fast as I dare, the bike almost taking off as it passes over the bumps where the asphalt has been incompetently repaired, a car approaches from a side road on my left and I suddenly realise it isn't going to stop, the driver isn't looking where he's going... The dusty brake pads squeal and the rear wheel slips sickeningly as I fight to control the skid, and my mind fills with visions of a grisly accident... and that reminds me of the implications if death really is impossible...
The car has stopped now, and I regain my balance and carry on unhurt as the idiot driver fades into the distance behind me, yelling obscenities about cyclists out of his window. Did I only survive retrospectively? I can almost feel my other selves peeling off into nastier worlds. How many times have I died today? Nothing to compete with Friday's massacre of forty of me, anyway. I'll have to get one of those really loud hooters.
I turn into the car park and see that would-be journo Tom from CampusBollocks waiting there. That's all I need. I decide not to ask if he spent last night with Zoë – it's entirely possible that I just imagined it was him. Tom annoys me. He's been more or less following Zoë and me around, presumably suspecting there's something going on that he can put in his dreadful magazine's gossip page. I chuckle to myself as I imagine what a scoop another Tom must have got...
“No comment,” I say loudly as I ride past him and head for the bike rack. As I'm locking the bike up he comes jogging towards me, his silly floppy haircut bouncing comically like a giant rubber mushroom.
“Dr. Mortimer! I know you're up to something.”
He's right, of course, I've got the gun wrapped in an old jumper and casually thrown into the Sainsbury's bag lashed to the back of my bike, on the principle that the best way to hide something is to avoid looking as if you're hiding something. Hopefully I'll be able to get rid of it before anyone notices; the outrageous irregularity of Silas's bringing the thing onto the premises in the first place might play into my hands there.
I ignore Tom and go through the double door into the department building, past the little booth where the extremely laid-back security man sits when he can be bothered to be there at all.
I can hear Silas's unmistakeable voice going into booming mode: “Rabbits!” he exclaims in the kind of tone usually reserved for “friends, Romans, countrymen.”
What the hell is he on about now? I really don't want to meet him, and try to gauge the direction the echoing sound is coming from.
“There isn't a closed season for rabbits, young lady, although I suppose I shouldn't expect you to know that.”
I realise I saw a police car in the car park. It's a fair guess that's who he's talking to. They can hardly have caught him with his gun considering that I've nicked it, and it dawns on me that the mad bastard might have actually reported it missing.
I find his room unlocked and manage to slip the weapon behind a filing cabinet and scurry away. I'm going to have to come up with a better solution next time. I can still hear Silas in the distance, ranting at the poor policewoman.
I go back to my office and examine the holes in the wall. I'm going to have to do something about those as well. I vaguely wonder whether I can get away with papering over them or if I should take a hammer to the colander-like plasterboard and try to fake some kind of DIY accident.
I turn the computer on and delete a few files that have been nagging at my mind – one of them's that letter to Zoë. I really shouldn't have written it at all, or else I should have made it a proper explanation instead of a kind of jokey puzzle – guess why I've blown my head off! You have the following clues: a non-existent sister, some incomprehensible pieces of equipment attached to Silas Boxthorn's gun and a short non-mathematical course on quantum mechanics.
I open the document I started writing the other day – I haven't got much further than the big heading Dreams and a few hasty notes, but it's a start. I'm not sure what I want to add. I type out some of the stuff that's been going through my head in the hope that it'll leave me alone if it's sitting safely in the computer, then I save the document and check my email. There's one called Re: Chemical Detection Equipment.
Hi Richard
I've attached a catalogue where you can see roughly what the price ranges are for various chemical detectors – this should cover the simpler parameters you mention.
As for detecting the more complex molecules, I think you might do better to ask someone in biochemistry or medicine. As far as I know, there has been a certain amount of progress in this field in recent years, so it's possible that “lab on a chip” technology is more accessible than I am aware.
If you could give me some idea of the nature of the experiment it might help me to make suggestions.
Best regards,
Tom Johnson
Technician
Chemistry Department
I feel exhausted. For a few minutes, I sit in my comfy swivel chair, staring idiotically at the holes in the wall. I had kind of expected it to make one huge one, but it looks as if a swarm of large woodworm with an eating disorder had made a brief localised raid on a patch of my wall. I'm going to have to smash the plasterboard in, I decide. I potter around the room looking for a suitable tool, and eventually manage to detach a fairly hefty steel structure from an old filing cabinet drawer which is propped against the wall.
I set about the patch of wall with a sudden feeling of macho aggression. The weakened material gives way quite easily, but I swing my improvised club as if finishing off a particularly fighty mammoth. By the time I've got rid of the evidence and my frustrations I'm knackered, my hands are bleeding and my metal implement is battered almost to disintegration, but I feel marvellous.
If anyone had walked in at that moment I would probably end up in a mental institution, I realise as the endorphines start to wear off a little while later. I sit down at my desk – I've been pacing around like a caged beast – and it occurs to me that I'm really in no mood for work. Let alone for the scene that is bound to break out when Silas finds his gun.