CAPACITY

Interlude: The Atomic Judy 4.5

…pressing down upon her…

Judy awoke to find herself sitting up in bed, the hot silk sheets tangled around her. Her breathing slowed as she realized she had been dreaming. Brilliant stars in black space filled the large window behind her, illuminating the simple furnishings of her room. She was safe. Still, she couldn’t help looking up to the high ceiling, just to confirm that there was no hand reaching down from there, no hand on the end of an impossibly long arm extending down to smother her.

The idea was ridiculous, of course. Frances was in the room next door: she would have burst into the bedroom if there had been any sign of danger to Judy. The hand was just a dream, the same one she always had when she was stressed.

She lay back in bed and meditated, slowed her heart rate and tried to drift back to sleep. It was no wonder she was tense: she was pumped up with some strange variant of MTPH which was cruelly forcing her to focus on the fact that her world was collapsing around her.

The Watcher? She had never known quite whether she believed in the Watcher. To have its existence confirmed was a jolt to her, but to have that confirmation presented in such a skewed fashion…Surely, the Watcher was supposed to protect life! Could it possibly be true that it had deliberately sent Justinian Sibelius to his death?

Well, maybe it could. She thought back to her own induction into Social Care. Discussions on the origin of moral values. Theories about the existence of the Watcher. The parable of Jenny Cook and Eva Rye.

Eva Rye was a legend. Some believed in her actual existence, many more thought she was just an example of anthropomorphism. According to the story, back when the Watcher was first born, it had sought out humans to interact with. Eva Rye was the first human with whom the Watcher had properly interacted. It had therefore molded its human views upon her.

Just as Frances had chosen to do with Judy.

Judy’s eyes snapped open.

Supposing Eva wasn’t a legend. Supposing she had spoken with the Watcher. The decisions Eva had then made had subsequently shaped the world.

A cold chill settled on Judy. It was often asked: if Eva was real, then why didn’t the Watcher speak directly to people anymore? An answer had just occurred to her.

What if it did, but most people never heard it?

And what if she was one of those people?

Judy awoke to find herself sitting up in bed, the silk sheets tangled around her. Her breathing slowed as she realized it was just a dream. She had dreamed that she had awoken and looked around her room. She had a headache: bad MTPH. What had Chris done to her? She felt as if she had been asleep for days.

She shook her head. Was she really awake this time? She needed to think about something. She had almost had it then…Something about the Watcher and its true purpose. Had it really sent Justinian to his death?

Maybe yes.

What was that story she recalled, back from her induction into Social Care? The parable of Jenny Cook and Eva Rye.

Jenny Cook had been a young woman of twenty-two. She worked as a sales assistant in a clothes shop. She had no current partner; she still lived with her parents in a pleasant apartment in the Bridleworth area of the North West conurbation. On the 11th of February 2056 she left her house much later than usual, at 8:20 A.M. Social Care had been noting her increasingly erratic behavior for the previous few weeks and, when it was realized she wasn’t going to work as usual that day, that had been enough to tip her case over the threshold and trigger an intervention. An investigative team arrived at her apartment at 8:30 and, under the concerned eyes of her parents, began a thorough search of the house.

At 8:39 someone found the memory wafers in her bedside-table drawer, hidden among a pile of letters tied together with a blue ribbon. This was suspicious. Virtually nobody used wafers in 2056; everything was transferred directly by the net. Wafers that could be plugged directly into a mobile phone were used by people wanting to hide what they were doing: namely the security services, the military, big companies, and criminals. Criminals? Jenny’s parents had exchanged worried looks, but the IT specialist had provided a more comforting explanation. Sometimes they are used by lovers.

The letters themselves provided confirmation: Jenny had a secret lover. Her parents didn’t know whether to feel pleased or sad. Why hadn’t she told them? Social Care examined the letters while the IT specialist got to work on the wafers. The reason for Jenny’s secrecy quickly became apparent. The letters suggested that Jenny was having an affair with a married man. Hence the secrecy. Hence the memory wafers. Hence the aberrant behavior.

IT, with the aid of the SC uplink, had cracked the simple encryption routines, and a feeling of amusement and relief flooded over the SC team. No wonder Jenny’s lover had been sending her information this way, rather than directly by using the net. The wafers held pictures of Jenny and her partner. In some of them they were making love. The others showed some rather more…adventurous poses than even Social Care, no stranger to this sort of thing, had seen before.

By 8:51 the team was beginning to relax. The parents were being comforted. The mystery was solved.

Or was it?

The handwriting and linguistic analysis came back, and the first cracks began to appear in the story. The analysis suggested that there was a strong probability the letters hadn’t been written by an older man at all. In all likelihood they had been written by a woman in her early thirties.

The good-humored smiles evaporated immediately. The parents now realized there were worse things that could happen than an adventurous sex life.

The call went out to various field teams to intercept Jenny Cook immediately just as IT noticed something odd about the intimate pictures. In one of them Jenny appeared to be missing a toe. The pictures were reexamined and everyone’s worst fears were confirmed. The pictures were fake. Jenny Cook was not having an affair at all. She only thought she was….

The team was worried. They had heard about this sort of thing before. But it only happened in Japan, in America-not here, not in northwest England….

This could be bad. Very bad. The police were then alerted. The checking of the wafers assumed highest priority within the Social Care processing space. All available processing power was diverted to analyzing them in detail.

By that time Jenny Cook had visited the luggage storage lockers at the station and had boarded a Lite train. Social Care interfaced with the appropriate authorities and the police were granted immediate access to the track control system. The train was to be diverted to a siding where SC would be ready waiting, supported by an armed police team.

And then the memory wafer’s steganography was cracked. The message went out, highest priority. Countermand the previous orders. Do not stop that train.

Jenny Cook sat on the Lite train with a smile on her face that not even the dull clouds, drizzling grey rain over the winter city, could dampen.

She was going to see Liam. Liam with his lazy smile and his big powerful body and his clinging wife who didn’t understand. Understanding, sexy Liam, his romantic, gentle side wasted on a frigid wife. Liam with his children that he could never leave. Liam with his active imagination and his naughty ideas.

“My desk is bigger than your bed, Jenny,” he had said. “The window has a view over the whole city. I want to have you on that desk, Jenny.”

“Oh, Liam, I can’t…” She couldn’t bring herself to look at him.

“Then why are you smiling?” he asked. “Trust me; no one will disturb us. I’ll say you’re an important client. This is what you are going to do. It will be so naughty. Are you listening? I’ll leave a bag in the lockers at the Lite station. You can bring it right into the offices under everyone’s noses. Champagne, and something for you to wear…”

As the Lite train slowed, some of the other passengers looked up. It wasn’t usual for this train to stop here…but then the driver seemed to change its mind. It picked up the pace, dropping into the tunnel that ran into the heart of the business zone. Jenny was tempted to open the bag and take a peek at what was inside, but she stopped herself. Liam had warned her not to.

“What’s in there is a surprise. I want you to walk into my room without a word. I want you to stand in front of me and undress in silence. Do you think you can do that? Yes, you can. Take off your coat, and then your shoes. Unfasten your blouse and wriggle out of your skirt. I’ll just be sitting at my desk watching as you remove your bra and then slip off your panties. Just you, standing there naked. And then you unzip the bag, reach inside, and see what is in there for you to put on. I want you to walk up and down before the window, wearing it. There’ll be just you and me, and a whole office behind me and a whole city before you, not knowing what you are about to do…”

She didn’t notice the police waiting at the back of the platforms, waiting for their instructions. She didn’t notice the cameras in the carriage turning to scan her. It was rush hour and there were fifty-four people on the Lite train with her. There were many more passengers waiting on brightly lit platforms, strung out like pearls on the dark thread of the tunnel.

Social Care was in turmoil. IT had identified the stealth programs on the memory wafers as being similar to those used by Gaia’s Children: a terrorist group that had, until now, operated solely in Japan. Gaia’s Children targeted those companies that they believed were harming the planet in some way. Their most successful attack to date had been on the Tokyo offices of DIANA. Fourteen of the company’s middle managers had been subtly reprogrammed through a combination of drugs and hypnosis. They had all turned up at work, on the same day, carrying bombs in their briefcases.

Something similar appeared to have happened to Jenny Cook. For the past three months she had been conducting an affair, mainly in her own mind. Someone had been meeting her for drinks, but never the same person twice. Her memory had been carefully edited using psychological programs on the memory wafers, their effect augmented by spiked drinks.

“Where are they getting this technology from?” asked one Social Care operative in frustration.

“The military, rival companies. Government agencies like us can’t fight that sort of thing.”

A heartbeat, and then the world changed.

“I wouldn’t be so sure…” another said. His face was lit up with pleasure and disbelief. All this time waiting and believing, and now his faith was justified. The proof was here on the screen. This was where the individual started to fight back.

“Look,” he croaked, then he swallowed hard. “Just look at this. I’ve heard the rumors, but I didn’t believe them. Not until now.”

On the screen before him the indicator displaying available processing space was increasing rapidly. Something or someone out there was lending them a hand.

“What’s going on?” someone asked.

No one said anything. No one back then really believed in the Watcher. No one wanted to be the first to say the name.

On the train, meanwhile, Jenny Cook was approaching her destination. The Lite train was decelerating as it neared the station built into the basement of the Berliner Sibelius building.

On the pavement above, James Sheldon-Eva Rye’s partner-was walking to work.

Judy awoke with a start. She was drifting in and out of consciousness. She had dreamed that she was really there, in that room with Social Care. She had been Jenny Cook, riding on that very train. Too much MTPH spilling over into her dreams, putting flesh on the false memories she had picked up from books and lectures.

James Sheldon? He had been Eva Rye’s husband-killed by the bomb that Jenny Cook was carrying. Eva Rye had blamed the Watcher. Hadn’t she met the Watcher? Hadn’t she answered its questions, helped it to shape the world? It had led her to believe it was all-powerful.

So when her husband had died, she had naturally assumed the death was intentional. The Watcher killed my husband. No. Not my husband. I’m Judy, not Eva. I never married. I’m a virgin. Why is that?

Frances, she called. Her friend didn’t come. Why not? Because she was dreaming again. She had called out in the dream world, not the atomic world.

Judy was standing in an entertainment room. Everything looked so old-fashioned, centuries out of date. There was a viewing screen in front of her, but it was a physical device fixed to the wall, incapable of being resized or moved. The carpet beneath her bare feet seemed thicker, somehow more substantial.

She was pregnant. Her belly swelled so much that she had placed her hand in the small of her back for support. I’m not Eva, thought Judy. I’m dreaming this. What am I trying to do…justify Justinian’s murder?

There was a man on the screen before her. He was speaking to her.

“I told you that, Eva: the computer built into the bomb was tracking Jenny’s progress. If the train had deviated from its course, if it had stopped unexpectedly, then the bomb would have detonated. There were over fifty people on that train.”

Judy looked at the man on the screen.

“Who are you?”

“Who am I?” the man scoffed. “Stop playing games, Eva.”

It was the Watcher. Judy knew it. What was going on here? Before she knew what she was doing, Judy began to speak. But the voice and words weren’t hers, they were Eva’s. “There were over three hundred killed in the lobby of the DIANA building. One of them was James.”

The Watcher was exasperated.

“I’m sorry. What could I do? I didn’t know how it would end. I thought I was making the right decision at the time. With hindsight-”

“With hindsight I should never have had anything to do with you.”

The words came unbidden to Eva’s lips. Judy felt a strong wave of approval at what she was saying.

The Watcher was indignant. “You don’t mean that. Everything that I’ve done is only because of what you told me to do. I thought you’d be happy-”

“Happy!” Eva shouted. “Happy! How dare you tell me how to be happy?” She was screaming now.

The Watcher braced himself against the glass of the screen, his face flushed. “You think that you have got the right to be angry?” he shouted. “How dare you!”

“How dare I?” Eva asked, choking with indignation. “How dare I?”

The Watcher banged the inside of the screen with one hand and shook his head. He wore the appearance of a good-looking young man. But the Watcher would always choose how he presented himself.

“How dare I? How dare I?” mimicked the young man behind the screen. “It always comes back to you, doesn’t it, Eva Rye? Or Eva Storey-or whatever you’ve decided to call yourself this week. Seven billion people on this planet experience setbacks and losses every day of their lives, and they just grit their teeth and start again. And then there’s you, sobbing your little heart out here in luxury. At least James left you well cared for. That’s better than most people in this world can expect. What makes you think you’ve got the right to a perfect life? That’s why you’re always so bloody miserable. Listen, doll. Shit happens. Get used to it.”

Judy/Eva was momentarily taken aback. Then her anger cut in.

“Shit happens, does it? Shit happens? That would be a lot more convincing coming from someone who didn’t claim that he was here to sort things out for us, that he was going to make the world a better place.”

“These things take time,” the Watcher sneered.

“How much time? You sound like a politician. You claim you’re going to make things better, and then when they don’t you just stand there saying shit happens. You’re pathetic, hiding behind your screen. You step out into the real world and see what it’s like out here, and then you tell me that shit happens.”

The Watcher’s anger vanished, replaced by a nasty smile. He was standing in a blue-lit empty room, cuboidal except for two dents in the floor at the back. The picture on the screen gave the impression that he was leaning against a sheet of glass, as if he was trying to press through into Eva’s world.

“Me step out there? You couldn’t handle it if I did, love.”

Eva laughed. “Don’t make empty threats, love,” she countered. Judy silently applauded through her fear.

The Watcher laughed coldly in return.

“Empty threats?” he said. “Ah…”

He reached out a hand to the glass and touched it with one finger. Judy/Eva could see his fingertip flatten; see the whorls of fingerprint clearly through the glass; see the whiteness of the skin around it where the blood had been displaced. And then the whiteness returned to pink, and the finger seemed to resume its shape. Judy/Eva gave a gasp as it appeared on her side of the screen. A finger sliding from the world of bits into the world of atoms.

“Look what I can do,” the Watcher crooned.

Now his hand was through the glass, and then his arm, clad in a dark grey sleeve. The Watcher stepped into the real world.

“No, you can’t,” Eva said, and she waved her arm right through his suit jacket. She saw her hand, pink and fluttering, within the grey ghost of his body. “You’re not really here, are you? This is just an illusion, like everything else about you.”

“It’s an illusion at the moment, Eva. Give me five more years and I’ll walk this Earth in a human body. Will you recognize me then?”

Judy/Eva felt a cold little fist of fear tighten in her stomach. The baby kicked hard.

“Yes, I will,” she said. In her dream Judy echoed the words.

“We both know that you’re bluffing.”

The baby kicked again; Eva put one hand to her stomach.

“Stop it,” she said. “You’re upsetting my baby.”

The Watcher folded his arms. Silently, Eva did the same.

“You know that you’re upsetting me,” she said. “And you’re doing it deliberately. I can’t stop myself getting angry; you’re just too good at it.”

The Watcher chuckled delightedly.

“Oh it’s true, Eva. It’s true.”

“I don’t know what you want with me this time.” She squared up to the Watcher. “What do you want?”

“I just want to help you, Judy.”

Judy? Did the Watcher just say Judy? It was Eva who answered.

“You’ve got a funny way of showing it.”

The Watcher leaned forward and tried to take Eva’s hand in his transparent grasp. She pointedly kept it still, so that his hand passed straight through hers. He gave a little shrug at her recalcitrance.

“I do this so I can see the real Eva. She’s so wrapped up in herself that it’s only when she’s angry her true character shines through.”

In her dream Judy froze. She had the feeling that the last words weren’t actually directed at Eva. They were spoken to her. Eva, too, seemed to sense that something was amiss.

“Stop it,” Eva said hesitantly. “Don’t speak about me as if I wasn’t here.”

The Watcher continued, ignoring her: “She doesn’t want to be comforted. She wants to feel sorry for herself. It’s the template of her life.”

“What is the matter with you? Why are you being so childish?” Eva asked.

The Watcher spun around and threw up his hands.

“You started it! James’s death was just unfortunate. Next time I’ll know to blow the train instead. Next time I’ll put the good of the many before the few. That’s right, isn’t it, Eva?”

“Yes!”

— That’s right, isn’t it, Judy?

“But that’s next time!” The Watcher continued. “James was unfortunate-that’s all there is to it. You know it, but you just haven’t faced up to it yet!”

“Yes, I have!” screamed Eva, then stopped in surprise as she heard what she had just said. The Watcher’s temper evaporated immediately. He stepped back into his screen, pulled a cord hanging from the ceiling, and the screen turned off.

The baby kicked again.

Judy awoke to find herself sitting up in bed, the silk sheets tangled around her. Her breathing slowed as she realized it was just a dream.

Frances was in the room, coming towards the bed.

“Judy, they’re all dying!”