I finally tracked Steven Leggrin down at the Arts Complex in Romford. There were three shows in the ‘Culture Coma’ season currently running: ‘The Exhibition of Broken Windows’, ‘The Gallery of Escaped Paintings’ and ‘The Art of Semen’. It was not the location where I had expected to find my old friend and adversary, who had always been disdainful of anything ‘arty’. I rather suspected, therefore, that it was Leggrin’s semen being used as a painting medium in the third show. An exhibitionist and a wanker: the combination certainly sounded typical.
Leggrin’s appearance had changed radically. He was wearing a pair of leather bondage trousers and a ripped T-shirt, exposing the needle marks on his arms. His blonde hair stood up in greasy spikes. As I drew closer, I noticed that his once strikingly blue eyes had faded to a murky, tap water grey. His usually tanned features glowed red with acne, only partially muted by a sparse fuzz of beard. He stank of urine and stale beer.
“Hi, Steve,” I said in a neutral tone, unsure of how to make my approach.
Leggrin gazed at me coolly and without curiosity. He grunted a reply, then returned his attention to a dark expanse of canvas marked with a few silvery white and yellowing blobs and streaks. According to a crude, handwritten plaque, the picture was entitled ‘Fuck Anarchy’.
“How are you?” I persisted.
“So, so,” he growled, his voice low and slurred.
It was then that I noticed the metallic implants in his neck and temple: Cyber-neural blockers, surrounding him with an invisible halo of electrostatic energy, which explained why his hair was standing on end, if nothing else.
I took an involuntary step back and was acutely aware that Leggrin had noticed me flinching. I felt rightly embarrassed by my ignorant and insulting action, since the CyNIC virus was not contagious through ordinary social contact.
“I’m looking for… er…” My voice trailed away into uncertainty. “I was wondering if you knew where… um…” Again, my words wandered off into a semantic wilderness.
Leggrin’s gaze remained icy. He finished my question in a tone as cold as his eyes: “If I knew where Martyn was?”
“Martyn?” I raised an eyebrow in surprise. “Why should I be looking for Martyn?”
“Oh.” Leggrin paused and appeared to be thinking deeply. “Well. He’s certainly looking for you.”
“So, let him look,” I said, waving my hand dismissively. “I’m not interested in him. It’s… er… Diane I… um… want.”
“Diane?”
“Yes.”
Leggrin spoke the name again: “Diane…” A flicker of emotion showed on his ravaged face. “You really expect me to tell you where to find her?” he demanded, with sudden vehemence.
I fingered the gun concealed in my jacket pocket. My hands were shaking too much to draw the weapon and point it convincingly. “I… I need…” I stammered.
“Fuck off, Jon. Just fuck off, will you!”
His features contorted by pain, Leggrin stalked away; brushing me aside and stoically ignoring the crackling discharge of static this caused. Unfortunately, I was not equally insensitive to the sudden burst of energy and found myself knocked off balance, with blue and white sparks sizzling round my head.
(A skeletal figure emerged from concealment in the shadowy void behind some free standing canvases. Its long, bony fingers were clenched around the hilt of a triple bladed axe. Its grinning skull of a face loomed close to my own; a distorting mirror of my no doubt equally grim visage. “Well,” it said. “You certainly screwed that up. Never mind. Leave Steven to me.” It brandished the axe in a menacing gesture. “If you really want to find Diane, then begin by looking in your own home. All the clues you need are there.” In a spectral swirl of chilly blackness, it turned away and seemed almost to fly in pursuit of Leggrin.)
“Hello, Jon. I didn’t hear you come in. You’re always creeping about the place.” A gentle voice eased me back towards normality. Or a semblance thereof. “When did you get back?”
I was in the living room of my house in Barnsbury. Autumn sunlight streamed in through the French windows, but failed to completely warm, illuminate or even cheer the scene. Linda stood in the doorway. Linda; my wife. My house. I could hear my children – my twin daughters – playing upstairs in their bedroom. Rumbling overhead like distant thunder.
“Jon?”
I looked at Linda. Her short, fair hair haloed by the sun, framing her delicate but ultimately plain features. The crease of a frown on her forehead. A wry smile twisted her lips. Still feeling a little dazed and blank, I emulated her smile.
“Oh. Just this minute,” I replied, insouciantly. The expression on my face became even more false as I realised that my hand was continuing to toy with the gun in my pocket. I had a strong urge to shoot something. Or someone. An urge I resisted with deliberate care. Withdrawing my hand slowly, I willed the cramped finger muscles to relax.
“Did you manage to find your friend?” asked Linda.
“Er…” I paused as I struggled to remember the alibi I had given for going out. Oh, yes. Research for my new book. Looking up an old school friend. Quite close to the truth, really. “Yes,” I confirmed. “But the poor bloke’s got the CyNIC virus.” Now, why did I mention that?
Linda approached me with a look of concern in her eyes. (This was not what I wanted. Some fucked up version of the Real world, where time hurtled by, carrying me like a leaf over a waterfall. Over the precipice of the past, down, down to be dashed upon the rocks of the future. That’s what it felt like, there, in that Alternative.) I recoiled from her touch. Retreated from her sudden hurt expression. Everything went out of focus as I side stepped into limbo…
… the room was the same, but devoid of colour…
… no sound, no sound at all…
… a grey shadow, where Linda had been standing…
… a mist, a memory…
… numbing cold, as cold as outer space…
… outer time…
According to Martyn’s latest theories, time was composed of particles in much the same way as matter. These particles - chronons? - were constantly swirling around in the temporal equivalent of Brownian motion. Occasionally, chronons would collide; annihilating each other, or ricocheting off at a tangent, or maybe even combining to form a more complex molecule of time.
The shapes of these molecules determined how time seemed to flow: In great long chains. In circles. In spiralling loops. In distorted chunks.
Truth and reality were meaningless concepts. Everything and anything could be true, for a while. Reality was continually being formed, shattered and re-formed. The physical laws governing the universe were completely arbitrary. Sometimes, God’s will was the only law. Sometimes, Science provided an elegant explanation. Mostly, it was just Chaos.
Human consciousness was the medium that held it all together. Blindly attempting to make sense of it all. Imposing order where there patently was none. Relegating everything that didn’t fit into the scheme of things into the realms of dreams and phantasies and sheer lunacy.
Nice theories. But they didn’t help me much: Freezing my arse off in limbo while the world went to hell.
(“It’s no good skulking here.” The skeletal figure from the Arts Complex had returned – seeming to form itself from the hazy substance of this non place – speaking in a voice like doom. “There’s only one place left to go,” it stated. Once again, it wielded an evil looking axe, with which it sliced through the quasi matter of limbo itself; cutting a hole in the fabric of space and time.)
“What’s the matter, Jon?”
“I should help him,” I said, only just beginning to realise my true feelings. “I should at least try. But I feel so useless.”
“There’s no cure for CyNIC. You know that.”
“Maybe so. But there was a time when my actions could have made a difference.”
“Every little helps.”
Again, Linda approached me. This time, I was able to tolerate her standing close to me, with her hand pressed, in a gesture of reassurance, flat against my chest.
“You’re very cold,” she murmured.
I placed my hand over hers. My skin was even more icy than my shirt front.
“I’m going out again,” I declared.
“But you don’t have another permit to cross the Islington border.”
I smiled. Something fundamental had changed in my attitude. I was experiencing a rare sensation that I felt, sometimes, when I was deeply involved in writing one of my stories.
“I don’t need one. I don’t need anything.”
I allowed the flow of time to take me, to sweep me away at ever increasing speed. Surfing on the waves of destiny, I left the house. Left behind my comfortable existence. Heading towards an ocean of oblivion…
… with a spectral figure circling my head, like a dark albatross…
