“Betamax,” you reply.
John Frederson will nod again. You notice a moth skeleton still clinging to one of the net curtains over his office windows.
She’ll be taking the maintenance elevator up to the pyramid by now. She’ll remove her cell phone from the side pocket of her black patent-leather handbag and carefully slide off the back. Then she’ll start removing the SIM card. The machinery around her moves with a smooth patience.
“You owe billions to the wrong people,” you’ll say.
John Frederson will shake his head and smile.
“No,” he’ll say. “They entrusted billions to the wrong person... They made an unwise investment.”
“You overdrew your credit.”
“Credit is a matter of confidence, of one party having trust in another,” he’ll say. “We can get that back in a second.”
“You no longer have the time.”
“Fifteen years ago there was nothing here but rusting sheds, dirty water, and oil slicks,” he’ll say, and then wave a stiffening arm toward his office windows. “Everything you see out there took less than a decade and a half to accomplish. In ancient Egypt they couldn’t even get a pharaoh buried in that time.”
You can’t argue with history, especially when it hasn’t been written yet.
You stare at the moth skeleton instead.
Your name is Betamax, and you know what you’re doing.
Banks of fluorescent lights flicker into life somewhere high above you, while the clicking of her high heels on the polished metal flooring continues to reverberate around the inside of the stainless steel pyramid.
She works as she walks, quickly and efficiently taking apart her cell phone, sliding a new card into the back.
You always know what you’re doing.
You grip your left wrist in your right hand and twist. A liquid splintering sound comes from deep within your arm as bone, cartilage, and gristle slide over each other. You’ll watch the hand retract, your fingers folding themselves back into the hard geometry of a gun barrel.
John Frederson is still talking, but you’re not listening anymore.
“It’s no longer a matter of generating money but of determining how it’s used, creating behavior patterns, displacing populations, altering demographics, shifting perceptions...”
The gun starts to assemble itself from inside your flesh, pieces snapping into place by their own intelligence. Their movement trips a switch inside your throat. You swallow hard. There’s a brief gagging sensation, followed by a mild electrical popping. You reach in and pull out the firing pin.
A pale sliver of movement flashes across a security monitor. She has finished replacing the chip in her cell phone and is preparing it to operate as a weapon. She will enter a numerical code using the phone’s keypad. The device will automatically arm itself.
“Immortality... free-market commodities like reality and fame,” John Frederson continues. “We’re just the universe returning to itself. Humanity is simply another system, a wave of development that expands and dissipates, reaching out who knows how far into space.”
You hold your breath and aim for the head.
He catches a glimpse of her on the monitor, standing at the center of the steel pyramid, clutching the cell phone in a tight white fist.
He’ll point at the monitor. “Who’s she?” he’ll ask.
One last scratchy subtitle appears before your eyes: Those who are not born... do not weep... and do not regret... Thus it is logical to condemn you to death.
“I thought she worked for you,” is all you’ll say.
Last-minute shifts on the international money markets indicate that an all-out strike against the London business sector is due to take place.
John Frederson will shake his head for the last time.
The framework of One Canada Square contains 500,000 bolts. Lifts travel from the fiftieth floor to the lobby in just forty seconds.
All over the planet, people will be switching on their television sets to watch the dust cloud rising darkly over London.
End transmission.
Acknowledgments
Daniel Bennett would like to thank Catty May.
Joolz Denby would like to thank Justin Sullivan & New Model Army, Michael Davis & New York Alcoholic Anxiety Attack, Dr. Christine Alvin, Nina Baptiste, Spotti-Alexander & Miss Dragon Pearl, and Kate Gordon.
Cathi Unsworth would like to thank everyone who wrote a piece for this book. Also for help, support, and inspiration: Michael Meekin, Caroline Montgomery, Ann Scanlon, Lynn Taylor, Mr. & Mrs. Murphy, Paul Duane, and Michael Dillon.
About the contributors:
Barry Adamson (www.barryadamson.com) was born and bred in Moss Side, Manchester, before heading for the West Side of London, where he has written and produced six or so of his own musical albums, including the Mercury Music Prize — nominated Soul Murder. Adamson has also scored several movies, TV shows, and commercials, and he now writes stories and screenplays.
Desmond Barry is a rootless vagabond and the author of three novels, The Chivalry of Crime, A Bloody Good Friday, and Cressida’s Bed. He’s been published in the New Yorker and Granta. He grew up in Merthyr Tydfil and moved to London, where he lived from 1972–82. He currently teaches creative writing at the University of Glamorgan.
Dan Bennett was born in Shropshire in 1974, and has lived and worked around London for the past eight years. He recently finished his first novel.
Ken Bruen is the the author of many novels, including The Guards, winner of the 2004 Shamus Award. His books have been published in many languages around the world. He is the editor of Dublin Noir and currently lives in Galway, Ireland.
Max Décharné is the author of Hardboiled Hollywood, Straight from the Fridge, Dad, and three collections of short stories. His latest book is called King’s Road. A regular contributor to MOJO, he was the drummer in Gallon Drunk and since 1994 has been the singer with The Flaming Stars.
Joolz Denby was born in 1955. She has been an outlaw biker, a punk rocker, a Goth queen, and is an academic in the field of body modification. She is an internationally respected poet, spoken word artist, illustrator, and author of the novels Stone Baby, Corazon, and Billie Morgan (nominated for the 2005 Orange Prize). Check out www.joolz.net.
Ken Hollings is a writer living in London. His work has appeared in a wide range of journals and publications, including the anthologies Digital Delirium, The Last Sex, and Undercurrents, as well as on BBC Radio Three, Radio Four, NPS in Holland, ABC in Australia, and London’s Resonance FM. His mind-bending novel Destroy All Monsters is avail-able from Marion Boyars Publishers.