When my time was up, would I awake back in the same little flat I’d lived in for three years, dreading the daily commute back to the same office I’d worked in for the last 13 years, drinking the same vending machine coffee and eating the same cardboard sandwiches, listening to my esteemed line manager Rod attempting to flirt with the HR girl Brenda, all the while wishing I could methodically push a sharpened pencil up his cavernous left nostril, the one that was so inexplicably and maddingly larger than his right?
Or would that just be it? Would the lights go out?
Or would I wake up somewhere else, with another 100% to live out, but in far less propitious circumstances? Instead of Playa Blanca in the quiet season, as a float driver on the Somerset carnival tour?
There had to be a way out. For my own sanity I needed to explore more of the island. I had been so caught up in the car idea that it never occurred to me there were other modes of transport that could get me out of Playa Blanca. And they were bloody everywhere. I just hadn’t registered them in the forefront of my brain. Maybe the bang on my head that I’d sustained being propelled through the glass doors had knocked it there.
I headed into town again and sure enough there was a long rack of bikes of all shapes and sizes tethered to individual iron railings by the beach front. Outside the Jungle Discoteca I selected what looked to be a fairly sturdy road bike, not too professional looking, and went about hacksawing the chain lock. It took about 20 minutes to get through and sunset was almost upon me by the time I got it loose.
Afterwards I felt liberated and headed into the Harp Bar right by the disco where I poured myself an ice cold draught beer and sat on the terrace to watch the sun go down. Out of instinct I kept my new acquisition next to me in case it got stolen. It needed a new saddle, the existing one had obviously seen a fair few miles, but I surmised I wouldn’t be going long distance on it and I could put up with a sore ass if it meant discovering something (anything) more about my predicament.
Did it matter though?
At some point I was going to have to consider the very real prospect of my own mortality. I had been here for at least 13 days. In my earlier calculations in the library I had deduced that if the numbers kept on reducing at their current rate, I had around 20 days left to figure something out. That gave me a small sense of relief, for 20 days was actually quite a long time. The numbers only appeared when I woke up, either after sleeping or being rendered unconscious. There seemed to me no differentiation between the two, the numbers were counting down pretty consistently, around 3% or 4% each time. So all I had to do was avoid sleep and being knocked out or blacking out. Easy.
I chastised myself again for thinking too much. I was always a thinker, a procrastinator, rather than a doer. As a child I was blessed with more than a modicum of intelligence but never seemed to actually put it to use. I remember my teachers telling me that I had ‘the brains’ and if I chose to use them I ‘would go far’. It seems I never did, as I didn’t go far. I ended up working as an actuary for an insurance firm. Just one more termite in the enormous mound of human life.
It hit me. I had never really achieved anything of note. I had fathered a child but rarely saw her. My only attempt at marriage had failed just one or two levels south of spectacularly. I was a tiny cog in a wheel that would roll on regardless of my removal. The world would be no better or worse a place for my disappearance from it. It would simply shrug, exhale and keep on rotating as if nothing had happened.
Why then had it put me here?
It had to be some external, supernatural force that had done so. I had abandoned the idea that this was an experiment now, some kind of freakish Truman Show investigation that would determine how a person would react if you pushed them to the very limit of what their psyche could deal with. The storm, the mountains moving… nobody could have controlled or created that except a higher power. I had never been religious, but there was too much hard evidence to ignore. Part of me, the realist part (which made up a large part) still shrugged off the theory that this was anything more than a big practical joke. I’d seen the movie. In a few days I’d be looking back at the footage and laughing with whoever had arranged the whole thing. After thumping them in the crotch probably.
The sun dipped below the horizon as I finished my beer and decided to pour another one. Inside the bar was a small stage with a couple of bass guitars hanging from the wall and half a drum kit set up. I stared at them for a moment, procrastinated, decided against it and went back outside.
My bike was still there.
60%
The next morning I set off.
It was a beautiful, clear day. I packed a few bread rolls in a rucksack along with some chilled cheese slices, a few apples, two litre-bottles of sparkling water and, as an afterthought (but not really) a bottle of brandy. I had no idea where I was going or where I would end up that night so I threw a big red blanket in as well, just in case I was destined to sleep rough.
My hands were shaking as I pulled up the zip, and I realised I was nervous. Whether it was the thought of leaving behind the ‘safety’ of Playa Blanca or the anticipation of what I might find on my journey I didn’t know. But it was an odd feeling. Like the seconds before you are called in to an important interview.
A hum of adrenaline coursed through me in the early morning sun. I had left early, not by design but simply because I hadn’t slept that well. The morning sun had barely risen and there was the slightest chill in the air as I pushed myself along, my thighs burning at the slightest incline. I realised how unfit I was when I had to stop at the top of Avenue Femés. This was the unofficial town line I realised from the map. After I crossed this roundabout I was heading into unchartered territory, boldly going where…
Shut up, I told myself. You are cycling a main road, not teleporting to Planet P-29.
This was the moment of truth. If I really was being held in Playa Blanca then something would surely happen now to prevent me from crossing this roundabout. Would it be anaesthetic bees, an hallucinogenic storm, a zombie alarm or an exploding hotel?
Only one way to find out…
I stepped on the pedals and with a sense of trepidation moved forward. I checked my right and left in case a car emerged out of the blue and slammed me back over the town line. I looked above me in case a huge devil bird came swooping down to grab me in its claws and deposit me back at the Sun Royal.
In the end nothing happened, and I simply crossed the boundary onto the main road leading in to the body of Lanzarote. For the first time I felt a vague sense of anti-climax.
I had chosen to take the lesser LZ-702 toward the village of Uga rather than the more main road, the LZ-2, for the reason that it stopped at more little villages along the way.
More chance of finding someone else alive, I told myself, without really believing it.
The going was very easy, the roads were in fantastic condition and totally flat. I covered the first few miles in about 15 minutes at a sedate pace. Then a two mile sharp incline brought me to the village of Femés. An establishment, the Restaurant Casa Emiliana, welcomed me at the top of the hill. It was boarded up and looked like it hadn’t served a meal for months, maybe even years. I didn’t even bother stopping to check inside.
The rest of Femés was just as disappointing. Lots of small whitewashed houses with a few cars parked outside them but not much else. I selected one roadside house at random and parked my bike.