Ghost of a Smile

EIGHT

“No more stops, no more investigations, no more distractions,” JC said firmly. “I think we’ve all had more than enough of taking it floor by floor, and I don’t see that there’s anything more we need to know or learn. So, to hell with whatever may or may not be lurking on the remaining floors. I say we go straight to the top of this benighted building and cut to the damned chase. We need some serious face-to-face time with the New People.”

“Assuming they have faces,” Happy said gloomily. “If they’re as far above us as the Beasts were below…”

“You always have to look on the glum side,” said Melody. “Look at it this way-the sooner we crash the party on the top floor and put our case to the New People, the sooner we can all go home, and I can get back to doing disgusting things to you in the bedroom. We’re not even half-way through that book I showed you.”

“I’m quite looking forward to meeting the New People,” said Kim. “I’ll bet they’re all sparkly and glamorous and… and all the colours of the rainbow!”

Melody sniffed. “Somebody read far too many flower fairy books when they were little…”

“Oh I loved those!”

“Later, Kim,” said JC. “I think we need to prepare ourselves for the possibility that these New People aren’t going to be anything we expect… or can accept.”

“What if they’re not superhuman?” Happy said doggedly. “What if they’re posthuman? What if they are gods?”

“Good question,” said JC. “In which case, presumably some kind of sacrifice will be required, and I will nominate you.”

“Are you really planning on using that Hand of Glory thing against the New People?” said Melody.

“Not if there’s any other option,” said JC. “The Hand is very definitely a last resort. If you see me draw it, start running.”

“Way ahead of you there,” said Happy.

“No-one said anything about taking on gods and monsters when I joined up with the Institute,” said Melody.

“Should have read the small print,” said JC. “Onwards and upwards, my children.”

They made their way slowly up the last remaining stairs, taking their time. They were all really tired, physically, mentally, and emotionally. They paused to glance at each set of swing doors they passed, straining their ears against the quiet, but they never saw or heard anything on any of the other floors. The only sounds were their feet scuffing on the steps and their own harsh and laboured breathing.

But the higher up the building they went, the heavier the atmosphere became. Every floor they passed brought them that much closer to the territory of the New People and added an extra weight to the body and the soul. JC struggled on, every step that little bit harder, calling for more strength, more nerve, more concentrated will. As though he was fighting a part of himself that didn’t want to go any further. That didn’t want to know who or what these New People might be. It is a terrible thing, to contemplate placing yourself in the hands of living gods. But JC lowered his head and bulled on because he was damned if he’d give in to any pressure, from outside or inside. He had a job to do, and he was going to do it. It was perhaps the only thing he really believed in.

“Can’t shake off a feeling we’re being watched,” said Melody. “Is anyone else feeling it?”

“We’re heading towards Something,” said Kim. “I can feel that.”

“They know we’re coming,” said JC. “The New People. They’re waiting for us. Smug bastards…”

“I am definitely not standing anywhere near you when we meet them,” said Happy. “What do you think they’ll look like?”

“Probably a lot like us,” said Melody. “I mean, come on-whatever changes or improvements ReSet has worked in these people, they’re mostly likely to be on the mental and psychic level. Even the Beasts, Gog and Magog, were still basically human in shape. Their mindsets had been affected the most, making them what they were. I think we’re building these New People up into far more than they can reasonably be.”

JC stopped abruptly, leaned heavily on the railing to get his breath, and looked back down the steps at the others. “If I’ve been counting off the floors correctly, and I have, the stairs around the corner above us will lead to the final set of doors, and the final floor of this building. Happy, are you picking up anything?”

“Something big and scary,” said Happy. He leaned heavily on Melody’s shoulder, his face wet with sweat, flushed a really unhealthy colour. “It’s taking all my shields to keep it outside my head. Don’t ask me what it is, JC. Or what’s causing it. I think… it’s the presence of the New People, weighing down on reality, overwhelming everything else. Just by being here, by existing… they’re the most important thing there is.”

JC frowned. “You haven’t started taking your little pills again?”

“I wish,” said Happy. “I would love to be able to float off on a soft pink cloud of medication. But I daren’t. I daren’t be that open, that vulnerable. Operating at anything less than one hundred per cent in this situation will get us all killed. You can put good money on it.”

“My little boy is growing up,” said JC. “I am so proud.”

“Up your arse with a bent banana,” said Happy.

Suddenly, a voice spoke to them from above. A very human, very familiar voice.

“Well done, thou good and faithful servants. I really wasn’t sure you’d get this far.”

They all stared intently at the corner above them, as slow and steady footsteps descended towards them. And then he came round the corner, and there he was, standing at the top of the stairs, smiling urbanely. Robert Patterson, sharp and immaculate as ever in his smart city suit, looking very pleased with himself. Tall, black, a shaven head and a noble brow, handsome features and a condescending smile-a high-up functionary in the Carnacki Institute who very definitely should not have been there. JC looked at him for a long moment.

“What the hell are you doing here, Patterson?”

“You’d forgotten all about me, hadn’t you?” said Patterson, extending one perfect white cuff and flicking an invisible piece of lint off his sleeve. “That’s all right. Everyone does. For all my high-ranking duties in the Institute, I’m really nothing more than a glorified messenger boy, sent here and there at the Boss’s whim, to carry out all the dreary day-to-day business that our dear Catherine Latimer can’t be bothered with. All the soul-destroying shitwork that makes the Institute run smoothly-Patterson will take care of that. But, unfortunately for all concerned, that hasn’t been true for some time. I don’t answer to the Carnacki Institute, or Catherine bloody Latimer, any more. I’m part of something bigger and far more important, now. An organisation, a cause, greater than anything you could hope to understand.”

Happy looked at JC triumphantly. “You see? You see! I told you there was something going on behind the scenes! I told you there were secret enemy forces, operating in the shadows, working to undermine us, while we were all kept distracted with everyday missions…”

“Try not to sound quite so pleased about it,” said Melody. “If I’m reading the situation right, Patterson’s presence here means we are in even deeper doo-doo than we thought…”

“Oh yes, you are all screwed,” said Patterson. “You are all quite monumentally screwed and shafted. You were out of your depth the moment you walked through the lobby doors.”

“How did you get up here ahead of us?” said JC. “I saw you leave, in that hideously overstretched limo.”

“I never really left,” said Patterson. “I had the driver stop the car once we were safely out of sight round the far corner, got out, came back here, and entered through the back door. Yes, I know you were told there wasn’t one. How remiss of me. And then… I used the elevator. That is what it’s for… I’ve been ahead of you all along.”

“Whom do you represent?” said JC.

“Like I’m going to tell you,” said Patterson. “You don’t need to know. You can all die like you’ve lived, in ignorance.”

“If you’re not going to hit him, make way for someone who will,” said Melody.

“Stay right where you are!” said JC, not looking back. His gaze was still fixed on Patterson, who didn’t seem that bothered by the golden glare behind JC’s sunglasses. JC chose his words carefully. “If you and your organisation, whatever it is, are responsible for funding the ReSet drug, then you’re responsible for everything that’s happened here.” His voice was cold and harsh enough to wipe the smile off Patterson’s dark face. JC moved up a step. “All the deaths and all the horror and all the things that might still happen. All down to you. Plus the deaths of the policemen and the security men called to investigate. Am I right?”

“Of course,” said Patterson, pulling his arrogance around him like a shield. “It wasn’t difficult. They all trusted an obvious authority figure like me, right up to the moment when it became clear that they really shouldn’t have. I killed them all because they were in the way, disposed of the bodies, and held their ghosts here, or what was left of them, to guard the lobby. I knew our revered Boss would be sending a team in soon. I should have known it would be you. You do have a reputation for crashing in where you’re not wanted.”

“Hold it,” said Happy. “The Boss wanted us here? I thought MSI insisted we be sent in?”

“Oh please,” said Patterson. “MSI haven’t a clue about what’s been going on in their building. Haven’t known for ages. ReSet was our very own cuckoo’s egg, set in place to force everything else out of the nest. I only told you MSI insisted on your presence to throw you off the scent.”

“Are you also the one who’s been feeding us information through the building’s computers?” said Melody.

“Smart girl,” he said. “I’ve been telling you what you needed to know, or what I wanted you to know, so you wouldn’t go looking in places I didn’t want you looking. I’ve been leading you round by the nose, all along.”

“All right,” said JC. “ReSet was your baby. Let’s jump to the big question. Why?”

“Human is as human does,” said Patterson. “And frankly, that’s not good enough. What we’ve done with the world so far has been very disappointing. So events were arranged here to lead to the creation of something more than human, better than human. Something that would surpass Humanity and achieve all the things our limited and self-centred species has so signally failed to achieve. Remember poor misunderstood Nietzsche-Man is something to be overcome.”

“How come secret organisations never want to do anything nice?” Kim said wistfully.

“The clue is in the description,” said Happy.

“We’ve been planning this for a very long time,” said Patterson. “And we’re not about to let you butt in and screw it up now. The greatest minds of this generation have been considering a single fundamental question-What if Man was a mistake? What if we were supposed to be so much more, but we fell short of our true potential? We were never meant to be something as small and limited as Man! We were supposed to fly like angels! We were all supposed to be living gods and walk this world in majesty and glory! And it’s not too late. We can all blaze like suns. We can all shine like the stars!”

“Is this like the sixties?” said Happy. “When people thought that taking lots and lots of LSD would turn them into superheroes? The mind’s true liberation, through frequent frying of your neurons? Trust me-that really didn’t work out too well.”

“You think so small,” Patterson said coldly. “Little man. Touched with the gift to see the world clearly, and all you’ve ever done is complain about it. Wake up and smell the gravitas! We weren’t supposed to be like this! We weren’t supposed to suffer, to get ill, to get old and die! ReSet will set us free from all that. We will go on and live lifetimes and become what we were always supposed to be!”

JC considered him thoughtfully. “What if these New People you’ve brought about aren’t human? What if they don’t look like us, think like us, feel like us?”

Patterson smiled. “Would that really be such a bad thing? Would the complete replacement of Humanity be such a great loss?”

“Okay, someone’s taken the train to freaky town,” murmured Happy.

“Why are you here now?” said JC, moving up another step towards Patterson. “Why show yourself to us? You’ve been conspicuous by your absence, until now.”

“You were never really meant to get this far,” said Patterson. “I let you in because… we had to let somebody in. We needed someone to clear up the mess. All the unpleasant side effects to our glorious creation. But now it falls to me to stop you here. To stop you interfering with things you’re incapable of understanding or appreciating. My organisation has plans for the New People. And we can’t have you upsetting them with your unwanted presence.”

“Given everything we’ve overcome and dealt with to get this far,” said JC, “how do you plan to stop us?”

Patterson actually smirked, he was so pleased with himself. “You think you’re the only one to quietly remove useful and highly dangerous items from the Carnacki Institute Armoury? Look what I’ve got here…”

He extended one hand, so they could all see what was nestling on his palm. A small black box, gleaming and glistening, covered with rows of curling brass sigils. Everyone looked at the box, then looked at Patterson.

“I have to say,” said Melody, “I have eaten things that looked more interesting than that.”

“Hell,” said Happy. “I’ve crapped more interesting things than that.”

“Typical,” said Patterson. “I show you a wonder of the world, and all you can manage is vulgarity. This… is a Boojum. Because it makes things softly and silently vanish away. I say the Word, and whatever I point the box at… isn’t, any more. You’re all going to disappear, right here, and no-one will ever know what happened to you. You’ll be a small part of the great Chimera House Mystery-all the people who worked here, or walked in one night and were never seen again.”

“Cut the crap, Patterson,” said Melody. “I hate it when people give cute names to machines. Boojum, my arse. Lewis Carroll has a lot to answer for. That box is nothing more than a simple dimensional frequency adjustor. Took me a moment to recognise it, it’s so primitive. I built one of those when I was sixteen! Out of bits and pieces I ordered from the back pages of the Fortean Times!” She looked at JC and the others because they were all looking at her. “We all have our own basic frequencies, that tell us which dimension of reality we belong to. Or possibly vice versa. That box changes people’s frequencies, so that they drop out of this reality and into another one.”

“And you built one when you were sixteen?” said Happy.

“Well,” said Melody, “I didn’t say it actually worked… But the theory was sound.”

“So,” said JC, “that box is still basically a Boojum, for all practical intents and purposes, in that it can make us all disappear. Do you have any defence against it, Melody?”

“If I had my equipment with me…”

“I’m going to take that as a no,” said JC. “So hush now, children, while daddy negotiates.” He smiled engagingly at Patterson. “Let’s start with a basic Why? shall we…? Why did you, or your unseen lords and masters, set out to create the ReSet drug in the first place? Did you know it would create New People?”

“Let’s just say we had hopes,” said Patterson.

“But Gog and Magog, in their own Beastly way, were quite convinced the New People are going to destroy the world,” said JC. “Tear down human civilisation because they don’t need it. Remake the entire world, and perhaps even reality itself, in their not-at-all-human image. How will your organisation profit from that?”

“Oh, I don’t think things will get that far,” said Patterson. “There are checks and balances in place… things going on behind the scenes, behind the scenery of reality, to ensure nothing too bad happens. Pieces have been moved into place to take advantage of the situation. But I think I’ve said quite enough. You don’t need to know any more. It’s time for you to go.”

He held up the Boojum, and JC produced his Hand of Glory. The two men said their activating Words, pretty much in unison… And the small black box and the small withered paw both vanished, gone in a moment, blinking out of existence simultaneously as two great powers cancelled each other out. Both men looked at their empty hands, and it was all very still and very quiet in the stairwell.

JC launched himself up the intervening steps and threw himself at Patterson. They slammed together and wrestled fiercely in the confined space. Happy and Melody charged up the stairs, while Kim shouted fierce encouragement to JC. Patterson forced JC off him, with a great effort, and swung wildly at his attacker, who ducked aside at the last moment. Patterson’s strength and momentum carried him right past JC and over the stairwell’s railing, and out into the void. He grabbed the railing with a last desperate effort, and hung on to it with one hand, dangling over the long, long drop. He looked down, then up at JC. Happy and Melody crowded in on either side of JC, and the three of them looked at Patterson. Kim hovered above them all.

None of them moved to help Patterson. Great beads of sweat appeared on his dark face as he hung helplessly, unable to pull himself back up. He glared up at them but said nothing. He wouldn’t beg. JC regarded him dispassionately, and when he finally spoke, his voice was so cold it actually shocked the others.

“For all the people who died here, because of you. For all the lives you ruined, through the ReSet drug. For killing the policemen and the security men. For creating the New People and endangering the whole world… For being a traitor to the Carnacki Institute, and the whole of Humanity… It falls to me to pass judgement on you.”

“JC?” said Kim. “What are you doing, JC? You can’t just kill him. ..”

“Yes, I can,” said JC. “For all he’s done and all he’s made possible-yes, I can kill him.”

“Hold it, hold it, take it easy,” Happy said quickly. “JC, I can see where you’re going with this, but don’t. We can’t kill the man. He knows things, JC. We need to know who he’s working for, if there are other traitors inside the Institute, and everything these people are planning!”

“I’ll never tell,” said Patterson. He swung slowly from his single handhold, making no attempt to pull himself up. “I’d rather die than have them angry at me. There really are fates worth than death.”

“You aren’t actually going to kill him, are you, JC?” said Kim.

“For God’s sake, JC,” said Melody.

“‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,’” said JC. “But he isn’t here right now, and I am.”

He slammed his fist down on Patterson’s hand. The dark fingers sprang open under the impact, and Patterson lost his grip. He fell like a stone, screaming all the way down. JC watched him fall and wouldn’t let himself look away until he lost sight of the man in the gloom of the stairwell. The scream cut off abruptly, and JC finally turned away.

“Damn, JC,” said Happy. “That was… hardcore. I’m not saying you were wrong, necessarily, but…”

“You killed him,” said Kim, looking at JC as though she’d never seen him before.

“It’s part of the job, sometimes,” said Melody. “We’re trained to kill the bad guys, if necessary. If there’s no other way.”

“Yeah,” said Happy. “But there’s a difference between taking out a threat in the heat of the moment and a cold-blooded execution. I mean, I never liked Patterson, but he was one of us. Still a part of the Carnacki Institute.”

“Yes,” said JC. “One of us. That’s why I did it.”

He led the way up the last remaining set of steps, and one by one the others followed him up, all of them watching him thoughtfully, in their own ways.

All too soon they ran out of stairs and stood together looking at the last set of closed swing doors. None of them made any move, for quite a while. JC finally reached out a hand to the doors, then snatched it away again as a great Voice was heard, filling the stairwell, filling their heads. Not a human Voice, not even human words, but still it seemed to JC and the others that Something called to them, summoned them, to come to the final floor and account for themselves.

“What the hell was that?” Melody said hoarsely. “It was inside my head…”

“It went right through all my shields and barriers as though they weren’t even there,” said Happy. “And no, JC, I’m still not picking up anything else. That wasn’t telepathy. It didn’t feel anything like telepathy.”

“The power,” said Kim. “The sheer power…”

“If they’re that powerful, we’d better not keep them waiting,” said JC. “In we go, children. Best foot forward and try not to show me up.”

He pushed the doors open and strode straight in, and the others followed right after him.

JC kept walking, even though he wasn’t sure where he was any more. He could feel the pressure, the sheer presence of the New People, even before he could see them. An overwhelming impact, as though their simple existence had stamped itself onto reality so completely, it was hard to feel anything else. He finally stumbled to a halt, stopped in his tracks by the sheer alien strangeness of the situation. A fierce, unnatural light with no obvious source suffused everything, a light painful even to his altered eyes, and a great Sound filled the air, without beginning or end. JC felt it in his bones and in his soul as much as heard it. He knew that he was in the presence of something unknown, and perhaps even unknowable.

The others had stopped with him. Happy and Melody and Kim huddled close together for the simple comfort of human contact. They all had their eyes screwed up against the light, and the sound and the heavy presence of a place not meant for human kind. Kim seemed as much affected as any of the living.

“We shouldn’t be here,” Happy whispered, like a child in a cathedral. “We don’t belong in a place like this.”

“Chin up, my children,” said JC, as clearly and calmly as he could manage. “Yes, I would have to say that we are in the presence of things unknown… But that’s the job, when you work for the Carnacki Institute.”

“I resign,” said Happy.

“Shut up, Happy,” said JC.

He took off his sunglasses and looked around. In this new place his eyes hardly glowed at all. It was as though the golden light was nothing compared to the harsher light of what had been the top floor of Chimera House. JC nodded slowly, and put his shades back on.

“We have a job to do,” he said flatly, “And we’re going to do it together. Because it’s our duty, and our responsibility, to the Institute and perhaps all Humanity. And because we’re the best damn team in the Institute, and we don’t back down from anything. Right?”

“Right,” said Happy.

“Damned right,” said Melody.

“If I weren’t already dead, I think I’d be very worried,” said Kim. “But yes, of course you’re right. Let’s do it.”

They all moved slowly forward, pushing against the presence of the New People, like swimmers breasting a heavy tide.

The light seemed to fall away some as they moved on, revealing the substance and details of the place in which they found themselves. Huge abstract shapes loomed up everywhere, weird mutated structures that watched and observed. Great pyramids with massive unblinking eyes; jagged energies crackling up and down the air like slow lightning; blurred uncertain shapes that had the feel of living things. Wherever JC looked there were colours he couldn’t name, objects with too many details for the human eye to encompass, and nightmare forms on the edge of his vision that shrieked of bad intent

… And always, everywhere, the feeling of potential doors, or even trap-doors, that led Somewhere Else. Doors to let things In as well as Out…

The New People were waiting for them. Four of them. Standing inhumanly still in the middle of everything, untouched and untroubled by the world around them. The world they’d made, or perhaps a world that appeared to accommodate who and what they were now. Often it seemed that there were more than four of them, dozens or even hundreds, in infinite ranks, superpeople in a superposition, everywhere at once. Their number and location was constantly changing, and yet at the same time there were only four, standing before JC and his group, waiting. JC squeezed his eyes hard shut, and then opened them again, but it didn’t help. He wasn’t sure what he was seeing was actually happening, or whether it was his mind trying to make sense of an impossible situation.

He couldn’t look at the New People directly; none of his group could. They shone too brightly, they were too real, too overpoweringly there. Stamped on this world like an identifying imprint. Each of the New People existed in more than three dimensions at once. They had length and width and breadth, and other things, too. Other dimensions, physical and spiritual dimensions.

Happy couldn’t cope with what he was seeing, or experiencing, even with his shields in place. He dropped to his knees and vomited noisily. Melody crouched beside him, partly to comfort and protect him, partly so she didn’t have to look at the New People any more. She didn’t vomit, but she looked like she wanted to. JC understood. It hurt him to look at them, even with his blessed eyes. The New People existed in spiritual dimensions as well as spatial. The human brain wasn’t equipped to deal with so much information at once.

And all the time, JC was thinking… Is this what we were meant to be? What we all should have become? Or is this what we were spared?

Kim moved in close beside JC, gazing uncertainly at the New People. “I can’t see them,” she whispered. “It’s all just light to me. Why can’t I see them?”

JC shook his head vaguely, then turned his whole body away from the New People. It didn’t help. He didn’t need to see them to know they were there. Their presence overlaid everything.

The longer JC and his people remained in the new place, the more they saw. Contact with the New People opened their inner eyes, opened up their minds, to the noumenon-all the adjacent levels of reality, the worlds within worlds, or surrounding worlds, the interpenetrating and overlapping worlds that most of us are mercifully unaware of. All the places and all the things that exist right next to us, blessedly hidden from normal view. Because if most of Humanity knew who and what we shared this world with, they’d go stark, staring mad. JC had seen some of it before, through his golden eyes, but never as much as this.

He shut his golden eyes and still caught glimpses of other places, other worlds, other dimensions, where life had taken on shapes and aspects far beyond the possibilities of this limited Earth. He saw two suns shining fiercely in a sick green sky, over a landscape that was always moving, never still. He saw dinosaurs with huge, distended heads stalk purposefully through stone galleries and massive tunnels, carved into the side of a mountain. He saw a dull red sun drop sullen bruised light from a mustard yellow sky, over man-sized insects that crawled all over a stone mound the size of a skyscraper, darting in and out of deep dark holes in its sides, intent on unknown missions.

JC cried out, and put his hands to his head. He thought he said, Too much, too much, but he couldn’t be sure. His thoughts came painfully fast, idea upon idea, rushing through his mind, darting this way and that beyond his control, as he fought to understand and assimilate a dozen improbable things at once. Sudden sharp insights slammed into his head, insights into the nature of reality itself. Blindingly obvious… but he was never able to remember them afterwards. Or at least, not in any way that made sense. Except sometimes in dreams… from which he woke cold and sweating, crying out, gripped with a nameless horror.

He sat down suddenly, and Kim hovered over him uneasily. JC gritted his teeth together, and concentrated on being the master of his own mind, the captain of his soul. And slowly, piece by piece, he put his thoughts back together again. And when he opened his golden eyes, he was at last able to cope with what he saw.

And one of the first things he saw was Happy, pushing away Melody as she tried to stop him dry-swallowing a handful of pills from various containers. JC forced himself back up onto his feet and went over to Happy, who abruptly stopped what he was doing and let more pills fall from an open hand. He looked at JC and his eyes were wild, almost feral.

“Guess what, JC? You were right all along! The drugs don’t work!”

JC still stumbled doggedly towards him, Kim floating timidly at his side. Even with his renewed mental discipline, he was still seeing things. Great inhuman faces, with incomprehensible expressions, watching, watching. They seemed to come from all directions at once, and some things that weren’t even directions. Strange things moved through the air, filling up the spaces between spaces, like the micro-organisms that roil and riot in a drop of water. They shot this way and that, passing through things and people and even each other. And then there were large forms, so big JC couldn’t even guess at what they were, moving through the building and its contents as though they were the ghosts.

JC forced them all out of his gaze and his thoughts, and went on, step by step, refusing to be stopped or turned aside until finally he reached Happy and Melody, after what seemed like miles, or hours, or worse. Melody was trying to talk to Happy, but her words couldn’t reach him. She didn’t seem as bothered by the surroundings, perhaps because most of her attention was fixed on Happy. JC lurched forward and thrust his face right in front of Happy’s. He whipped off his sunglasses, so that his golden eyes stared right into those of the telepath, filling his view. Happy met the golden gaze and slowly relaxed, as though someone had thrown him a lifeline. The golden glare kept everything else out. Happy breathed deeply, and sense returned to his eyes. He nodded jerkily, first to JC, then to Melody.

“All right. I’m back. I’m not sure where, and I don’t think I like it, but I am quite definitely here. Can we go now?”

“Go where?” said JC, stepping back. “You see any way out of here? We’re in the world of the New People now, and we have to start with them.”

He turned to face them, and everything else disappeared. Driven away, pushed aside, by the sheer presence of the New People. Only them, and the light they stood in. Or generated. And when they finally spoke, they all spoke at once, like a thunderous cloud or choir of voices. Just four motionless figures, in all their many dimensions, but when they spoke, there might have been four hundred or four thousand, as many aspects as there were dimensions.

We’ve been waiting for you. The intrepid Ghost Finders of the Carnacki Institute. We knew you were coming. Clearing up the mess left by our creation. Birth is always messy.

“Do you know who’s behind your creation?” said JC, forcing the words out. “Do you know about Patterson?”

Of course. He had plans for us. So did the people he represented. But they were so limited in their thinking. So human. Patterson couldn’t understand us. Nor could his organisation. We are so much more than they expected. They planned our creation but couldn’t deal with what they got. You are all of you incapable of understanding what we are, what we have become. The human mind lacks the capacity to contain what we are. And what we will do.

“What do you want?” said JC.

To make everyone like us, of course. To wake up the world, and everything in it, and set it to useful work. To do all the things that matter, instead of filling in time till death. There is so much that needs doing, matters of great scale and worth-putting the universe to rights.

“What if we don’t want that?” said Happy, moving forward to stand with JC. “What if we’d rather choose our own way?”

You will want it. After you’ve been changed. Upgraded. Made wondrous New People, like us. When you are like us, you’ll understand everything. The universe and its purpose will be clear to you. All the answers to all the questions you ever had, will be yours.

“But will we still care about those questions, and those answers, when we’re not human any more?” said Melody, stepping forward to be with JC. “Will we still care about any of the things we care about now, as poor, limited, human beings?”

“Will we still love?” said Kim, stepping in beside JC. “Will he still care for me, and I for him, as man for woman? Will we still have that?”

Don’t be afraid. We are more than you, not less. We have gained much and lost nothing. We are different from you now, but we still contain you.

“That isn’t answering the question,” said JC. “Would Kim and I, Happy and Melody, still share our simple human love for each other? Would the fundamental things still apply-care and compassion, honesty and honour, good and evil, life and death? Would they still matter to us? And if not, how could we still be us?”

Why would you want to settle for something so small?

“You see?” said JC. “You’re the ones who don’t understand. You’d have to destroy what makes us… us, to make us you. You’ve gone too far, progressed too far beyond us. The world isn’t ready for you. Not yet. People aren’t ready yet. You can’t jump to the front of the queue, to the top of the evolutionary ladder. We have to get there on our own, achieve it on our own, or it won’t mean anything. We have to earn it by our own efforts, one step at a time. Remember what you were. Who you were. What it felt like to be human. Small joys and small achievements are no less real for being small. Remember what you wanted out of life before chemical godhood gave it to you on a platter.”

We remember… but only as a dream. A long nightmare from which we have at last awakened. But yes-we do remember.

“You think all our junk DNA being blocked off just… happened?” said JC. “No. It’s there waiting, for the right time. For us to be ready for it. It’ll awaken itself when conditions are right. And then, and only then… we’ll all become like you. When the world needs us to be like you. Because by then, hopefully, we’ll have earned it.”

The New People paused. They seemed to be talking among themselves, but it was not speech that JC or Happy or Melody or Kim could comprehend. Finally, they spoke again.

Yes. This is not our Time. We are ghosts from the Future. That’s where we belong. So that is where we will go. Now.

And they were gone. All of them, gone. The overpowering presence of the New People disappeared, snapped off, as they moved on into Future Time. Except… JC was always sure afterwards, that for a moment one of the New People, the terrible transformed living gods, dropped her godly mask to look back at him as the young woman she’d originally been… to give him just the ghost of a smile, before she left.

The four Ghost Finders, the three living people and the dead woman, looked slowly around them. They were standing in an empty floor at the top of an office building in London, and everything else they had seen there was already a fading memory. The world was back the way it should be, and full of only those things that belonged there. And the warm amber street light falling through the glass windows was like a benediction.

“That’s it,” said Happy. “It’s all over?”

“No,” said JC. “This is over, but we still don’t know who or what Patterson represented. Why they wanted us, and what they hoped to achieve. Remember what those Crowley Project agents said, down under Oxford Circus Tube Station? That there are people operating behind the scenes, weakening the walls of the world, for purposes of their own. .. Nothing to do with the Project or the Carnacki Institute. We need to find out who these people are. Before they do something even worse than this.”

“Could we at least take a day off, first?” said Happy. “I am so tired I feel like I could go into reverse.”

“Of course!” said JC, smiling broadly on his people. “All work and no play makes Jack a pain in the arse. But still, you know, I have to wonder… what kind of world the New People might have made. Whether it might actually have been… something very like Heaven.”