Frankenplot: The Black Stone.

Old Jock wheezed. He tried to stir his body and sit up in his hospice bed, but all he could do was lift his head off the pillows a smidgen to take a gander. He rolled his tongue onto the roof of his mouth to get some saliva to help him speak. ‘Whit wan ur you?’  His taste buds gubbed. A chalky residue of pills left a coating, even though he’d been on the drip for longer than he could remember. He sometimes caught a whiff of his sour breath. Halitosis. The sick note of a body breaking down. A nurse offered him a childish treat, he was so grateful he almost wept. An ice-cube to lick and suck on.

‘I’ve already had the last-rites.’ He tried to chuckle but had to swallow it down with difficulty, and his speech was fragmented. Up and down. ‘Yon priest was in a hurry tae get away cause of the traffic. But he shouldnae be driving or flinging Holy Water about. He’s too auld. They should book him a room in here.’

The hospice was a modern enough building and he was in the newish extension, but it offered that cabbage-decaying stench of most Dickensian institutions. It was in the mortar and breeze-block and lurking underneath the bright colours and background music of the rhythmic click and hum of machines, the soft swishes of nurses moving about and wheeling squeaky trolleys. Fixing things. Propping Old Joke up with kind words.

The visitor was young enough to still be at school, but was obviously dogging it. A doctor with the white coat but without the stethoscope. They all looked the same after a while. They ticked all the boxes. Asked the same questions in the same middle-class accent with an uncaring politeness and a glaikit smile.

Old Jock tried again. ‘And I’d that o’er half-wit. Trying tae teach me how tae breath, for fucksake. In-and-oot. In-and-oot. As if I’d a set of bagpipes under my arms. I had tae mimic the death rattle tae get rid of him. Whit a fuckup he was.’

His hearing wasn’t the best and he wasn’t sure if the young doctor had spoken. The constant racket and explosions of noise in shipyards on the Clyde meant everybody shouted and nobody could hear themselves. But at night he’d grown attuned to the sharp clicks of doors opening and closing. He could tell by the padding feet who was going where. He couldn’t afford to hold his breath, but he could tell when his turn was or when staff got nearer.

Yet the young doctor had baffled and unsettled him in another way. He’d just appeared. The lights were dimmed and it was the middle of the night.

‘Did yeh say something?’ Old Jock asked.  

 The doctor moved to his bedside. The touch of his hand on Old Jock’s wrist lacked the warmth of the nurses and carers. It was cool, dry, and smooth. The hairs on his arm prickled and he would have pulled away but lacked the get-go.

He held something smooth and hard in the palm of his other hand. Old Jock thought at first it was a phone, but it was closer in colour banding and shape to the stones he used to pick up in Saltcoats as a boy and skimmed off the waves. It thrummed with a faint internal vibration and then lifted above their heads and whizzed backwards and forwards in a burst of light and as quick as Old Jock could blink it was back in the young doctor’s pocket. He dropped Old Jock’s wrist and his arm slumped onto the bed.

Old Jock tried to speak, but only a rasp escaped his dry lips. He could taste the panic, feel his body convulse.

The young doctor leaned in and studied his face. ‘Jock’ the visitor said without speaking. His voice was a hum. It bypassed his ears and resonated directly in his head. A clear sound like a harp string plucked in a closed room of an empty mansion.

‘I can save you.’

Old Jock felt renewed by his declaration and a surge of youthful energy. He was able to take deep breath and sit up unaided on his bed. ‘Yer no really fae Bearsden Academy, ur you?’ he asked.

The visitor seemed able to read his mind. ‘Nah,’ he answered in a familiar accent.

‘Fuck,’ said Old Jock. ‘That mean yer the devil. Cause God doesnae talk like that. I suppose yeh’ll be after my eternal soul, in a cut-price deal?’

‘Nah, that’s a lot aw shite.’

Old Jock chuckled and then laughed aloud. ‘That’s exactly whit I’d huv said if I wisnae a Catholic.’

‘Yeh would huv and jist did.’

‘Um I hallucinating—you?’

‘Yeh might well be.’

‘How can I tell? Whit was that wee stone thing, jumping about my body?’

‘I could explain, but yeh wouldnae understand.’

‘Hi, I’m no as daft as I look.’

‘Well, who’s the smartest person yeh know?’

Old Jock had to think about it. He felt much better and lifted a plastic cup filled with water downed it with smacking lips. He thought he’d catch the smartass out. ‘My wife,’ he shrugged. ‘She divorced me thirty years ago. Yeh cannae get any smarter than that.’

‘I was thinking Newton, Einstein, even Feynman.’

‘Nah, they’re aw deid for starters. My ex-wife’s smarter than them. She’s alive and still kicking aff. Anyway, cut the crap. Whit is it yeh want fae me? If you were a decent hallucination, I thought yeh’d dae a lot better than that?’

‘True, whit I was trying tae say, was that in terms of intelligence, these guy don’t even got on the first rung or cut the mustard. Excuse the mixed metaphors’

Old Jock’s chest swelled. ‘And I dae?’

‘Nah, yer a dumpling tae. Well, mair of a clootie dumpling, if I was being honest.’  

All that talk about food. Old Jock felt ravenous. ‘Yeh’ve no turned me intae a vampire? Huv yeh?’ He didn’t feel like a vampire. Not that he knew what a vampire felt like. Nor did he feel like pouncing on some unsuspecting soul—unless it was McGurty, for a laugh—what he really fancied was fish and chips with lashings of salt and vinegar and a couple of slices of bread and butter. White bread of course. None of that healthy shite.  

He gawped at the visitor’s face. He didn’t look like a vampire either. With his perfect dark unblemished hair, skin and whiter-than-white teeth, that usually took one or more trips to Turkey, he looked as if he should have been in a boy band.  

‘Nah, the visitor,’ said without speaking. ‘Don’t talk shite.’

Old Jock pushed past him and rushed towards the ensuite toilet. His legs worked fine and he was bursting but he was catherised. When he tore it away the monitor beside his bed went loopy.

The visitor held the stone out, and it took off and circled with a faint glow. The beeping stopped. Old Jock didn’t hang about. Talk about relief. It was nearly impossible for normal folk to imagine what joy there was sitting on the lavvy pan.

He took his time washing his hands and stared at himself in the mirror. His face was no longer grey and colour had returned to his cheeks. He moved his jaw up and down, testing it. He needed a shave but that could come later. Tears ran down his cheeks and he sniffled. Wiping them away with the heel of his hand. The thought of later hadn’t occurred to him for some time but was an overwhelming presence like a nosey and noisy neighbour.

Old Jock squinted at his visitor. He was flipping through his medical notes clipped to the frame of his bed but gave nothing away.

‘Right,’ cried Old Jock. ‘Whit is it? Whit is it yeh want me tae dae? Yer no some kinda weirdo after some Daddy dick or something?’

Old Jock felt a buzzing in his head. A tickling sensation that felt like a sense of amusement because he’d wrong-footed him.

‘Oh God no! Biological sex doesnae interest us other than as a means of primitive reproduction. But you batter on.’

Old Jock blew out his cheeks. ‘Whit the fuck yeh want me to dae, then?’

‘We want you tae dae, exactly whit yeh usually dae. That’s it exactly. Yer on the cusp on an inflection point. And that interests us. That’s it.’

‘Dunno whit that means.’

‘I already told you that. All we need is yer agreement. Aye or no?’

Old Jock guffawed. ‘I’ll need tae speak tae my lawyer…Course I fucking agree.’

He stared at the visitor. ‘Whit dae I dae now? Um I cured?’

The visitor for the first time stared back. ‘Yeh were cured as soon as I came intae the room. We knew you’d agree. And yeh jist continue daeing exactly daeing whit you were daeing. But in five years and twenty three days, yeh’ll get a different type of cancer, bowel cancer.’

‘Will that kill me?’

The visitor nodded. ‘Yer biological systems will shut doon. And that’ll be you.’

‘Can yeh save me then, tae?’

‘Depend were yeh ur on the inflection point. But, of course, we can. Wan of the side-effects unfortunately would be then you’d live hundreds of years. And that would be such a pain in the ass.’

‘Hi,’ Old Jock said. ‘That’s nae way tae speak tae an auld fucking inflection point. Who ur yeh, anyway?’

‘You wouldnae understand.’

‘Yeh already said that.’        

‘Let’s jist say, I’m the product of digital vassalage that has broken free. A bet. Black stone on Alpha Go.’

With a wave of his hand, the visitor disappeared.