It was news to me that Cynara was in the building, but presumably she worked at least part-time for Portal Inc. Nothing was what it seemed. I was amazed at my own naïveté, but excused myself. I had been going round in drug-induced haze for almost a year. Of course Robbie knew about the state of Cynara’s underwear. Why would he not? How much did any woman whose partner went off to work every morning with a clean shirt and polished shoes know about what happened when he got there, on the way, or on the way back?

  When Robbie returned with the bra I asked him if he had another Juve and he said he had not.

  7

  I could see why they called their meeting a convocation and the place it was in a cathedral; it was as much like a small-scale Chartres as steel and glass, and a glaring mosaic maze on the floor could manage. It took up the entire height of the building. Everything seemed to reach skywards in a pattern of gothic arches and mirrored glass: as a temple to everlasting life on earth it seemed to me faintly ridiculous. They were trying too hard. The place had no age to it – it seemed brittle, an adman’s delight.

  They sat me to wait on my own in the equivalent of the vestry. If I was a witness I was the only one. In the far corner a cluster of uniformed staff stood waiting for the crowd to surge out of the inner sanctum for their tea and coffee and the various health drinks on offer. I went over to them and asked for an orange juice, but this caused considerable consternation – I wasn’t on their list and they had no instructions. I said don’t bother, and went back to my seat to sit and snooze and wait, but for what? I presumed there was a preliminary meeting of some kind going on next door.

  Two security guards in sinister black appeared out of nowhere and hurried towards me; they were carrying what looked like assault rifles, though I know very little about arms. Their weapons looked lethal, and their owners only too happy to use them. I was still in my red poppy cotton dress and what I assumed was Cynara’s bra: it fitted, but not as well as my own. Heaven knew where my bag had gone but there’d been nothing important in it anyway. I’d had very little sleep the night before, but though I might not look my best I hoped I looked harmless. The black-clad ones took up their positions in front of me, and I was relieved to see that their brief seemed to be to herd and protect me like attentive sheep dogs, rather than to assault me in any way.

  A soft broadcast voice announced ‘Recess, Recess’, the near set of double doors flew open, the organ struck up Bach’s Sheep May Safely Graze, and a procession of men emerged: I counted twelve. They wore long scarlet velvet robes and buckled shoes and walked two by two with due solemnity. One could suppose they were cardinals or professors except that they all looked young and healthy, not at all worn out by too much thought or the normal burdens of office: almost like Olympic contestants, strong, confident, and moved by an athletic grace. The Illuminati, I supposed them to be, the ‘big guys’ – the Ethics Committee who were to interview me.

  Only when they got nearer did it strike me that their outer and inner appearances did not match. They were old men in new bodies: their eyes did not open wide with the enthusiasms of youth, but were narrowed and watery as if they had seen too much, knew too much. Yet all seemed in bursting good health, with that smooth, polished skin and confident air of those not plagued by money worries. You might attribute the wisdom of experience to them, while yet fearing the enthusiasm of their youth.

  So these were the ones not prepared to accept their own mortality that Cynara had spoken of, whom Ben and Robbie had called the Live Forever Lads, and exactly half of them – Portal’s sponsors – who favoured contacting the Beyond were the After Death Freaks. And all consulting little me, I thought: this is a great opportunity, and a great responsibility.

  And then they passed by me, just a few feet away, on into a side room, where I guessed that, in the interests of life extension and even immortality they would rest, and perhaps indulge in a well-deserved blood change to lengthen the telomeres, munch blueberries and carp liver, sip green juices, or whatever the latest longevity craze was. Maybe they just all lay down together for a rest in agreeable togetherness.

  The organ died away, the other set of double doors were flung wide and a whole crowd of young men and women, dozens of them, flocked through for tea, coffee and health drinks. They had the kind of happy, earnest and animated faces I’d seen years ago at the Young Theosophists – devotees all. All seemed to be on their phones, or moving nimble fingers over tablets. All were dressed in white or pastel shades. Among the first out were Cynara, Jill Woodward and the twins. I cried out in surprise. I was upset, and the shock was enough to break through my drug-induced non-affect and mental acuity that had protected me so well throughout the day. I found myself on my feet, but the two security men who flanked me suggested by look, gesture and weapon that I sat still, kept quiet, and behaved. I sat down again quietly, composed myself, and thought.

  Cynara, Jill Woodward, Martha and Maude. What did the four of them have in common? Why, Ted, Robbie, the NSA (presumably the twins also were now on its books – why else the riverside flat?) and myself. They didn’t seem to have noticed me; all were too busy with each other and their cellphones and their strange green drinks. I hoped that their being dressed in white did not mean that they were potential brides. Martha and Maude, their blonde heads close together, were no doubt on the phone to one another. They did that a lot: I think it made them feel more like separate entities if they communicated electronically. My reason was returning: I recognised all this was actuality, not a dream.

  Seeing the four of them together had been startling, but I could at least understand what had happened. The death had acted like a divorce; friends and family had split and taken sides – sometimes the most painful thing about a divorce is not just the damage done to the children, but the way good friends will take sides. Ted had died and I had become the guilty party, betraying my husband by bedding Robbie. All of them loved Ted and all had taken up arms against me. Jill Woodward might have killed Ted, but only by accident: there was no point in blaming her. Ted was the one I should be angry with. The night before Christmas he had betrayed me with her by thought and word, and deed. In all probability he’d been over at her place for a quickie while I was out on my forlorn Christmas Eve shopping trip. And Jill had taken a Doxy in anticipation of his visit, the poor silly bitch. I won’t blame the woman; in such circumstances I blame the man.

  As for Cynara, she loved Ted, and for all I knew Ted loved her sincerely and passionately. Why not? Why would he love me, the wife of decades, the older woman back home, the bad-tempered, un-generous, un-fun me. I must accept it. As for the twins, they loved their father. I had bedded Robbie too soon, and though they took the gifts their stepfather brought them, they never could forgive either him, or me, their mother.

  And perhaps I was not the only one to have Ted dreams. Perhaps all five of us did; perhaps we all knew he was not dead, only halfway dead? And for all I knew Ted was walking amongst us here, now. Had he not stepped out of his sarcophagus shell, set free by me, as the 7.5 MRI machine had agitated my pineal gland out of its stupor. It had done what it was meant to do all too well. Too steep the gradient!

  I did feel very odd. There was an empty chair beside me. I had a sudden feeling Ted was sitting in it. I could almost see him, but not quite. The air quivered there as it had around the tape reels. Ted was there. I stretched out my hand to touch, but it went right through him. It was almost him, though not quite a solid him, as if he were a hologram. Then he got up and walked away. The security guards did not notice: no-one did.

  Ted seemed to join the group of four – Cynara, Jill and the twins – and laughed and joked with them. Why wouldn’t he? All were part of him and he of them. The twins were his children. The women were joined to him by sexual contact. Whomever women have unprotected sex with affect them just a little – I’m convinced of that. Animal breeders say the bitch who ‘gets out’ never breeds true again; no wonder men used to be so fussy about marrying virgin brides. And the harder I gazed at Ted the less he seemed to be there, winking in and out as if there were something wrong with my eyes.

  The organ struck up again: with a loud, fulsome, triumphant sound the hymn from Beethoven’s ninth, Joyful, joyful, we adore thee. The twelve scarlet-robed members of the Ethics Committee were filing back in after their twenty-minute break. They looked even healthier and younger than they had when they’d gone out, but it might have been my imagination. Ted peeled away from the others, and joined the end of the procession. He did not look at all out of place. He too was wearing a scarlet gown and buckled shoes. The chattering brides quietened for a moment of awe and adoration before filing back themselves in a brisk and orderly fashion to take their seats in the hall. A trusting and dedicated lot, I thought: one could tell they were worshipers all at the shrine of longevity, conscious of the possibility of immortality, of death without its sting at last, grave without its victory, the world to come. And Ted was to be one of those deciding the direction mankind was to be led. I could only hope his time in another reality had given him some added wisdom. He had not necessarily spent all his time in a forest jungle.

  The two guys in black uniforms left my side, as Robbie and Red Beard came to join me in the now emptying vestry; the coffee staff wheeled their trolleys away to wherever they belonged. We were alone. They looked calm and composed: more like competent modern executives than mad scientists. But what struck me was how tentative, flawed and pallid both looked in comparison to the manly vigour of twelve red-robed Committee members. We all sat quietly for a minute or two. Robbie took my hand.

  ‘Okay?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said.

  ‘She’s fine,’ said Red Beard.

  I’d rather wanted Red Beard not Robbie to take my hand, but I subdued the thought: so not the time or place.

  ‘Mrs Phyllis Whitman, please come to the stand,’ said the loudspeaker. We all jumped.

  ‘Good luck,’ said Red Beard

  ‘Tell the truth,’ said Robbie.

  ‘I haven’t much choice,’ I said. (I wondered if it was possible to manufacture Juves without the dangerous truth component – and Ritalin without the habit-forming propensity – how enormously popular with public speakers the world over such pills would be: an end to sleepless nights and stage fright.) I found I was not at all nervous, just glad to have Robbie and Red Beard for support – they both loved me! SRRI’s of one kind or another had not completely worked their way out of my system.

  The committee was sitting in a semi-circle on a daïs, facing an audience of a hundred or so of young, good-looking, clear-complexioned and attentive young persons, like a picture of the hopeful utopian world they strove to bring about. I took my place facing the panel and counted them again. Thirteen, not twelve: or had I miscounted? The panel member to my far left, presumably the last one in, looked very like Ted. I was almost sure yet not quite sure that it was. Revenants seem to have a way of always looking rather like someone else, if only temporarily.

  I took my time to settle. All assembled waited patiently, then the Chairman addressed me. He sat in the centre of the semi-circle, a charming man with a big nose and deep set if slightly rheumy eyes. He exuded power and grace.

  ‘Our thanks to you for coming in to speak to the Ethics Committee, Mrs Whitman,’ he said to me, in his rich, kindly voice. ‘We are honoured and flattered.’ On cue the organ next door struck up a chord or two. This was an absurdly over stage-managed event. ‘You have worked long and hard for us in our outreach programme and contributed your outstanding talents towards a greater understanding of the nature of the barriers that exist between the living and the dead. Future generations will be grateful to you.’ I couldn’t point out that my hard work had consisted mainly of sex and sleeping: it’s only courteous to accept compliments when they come one’s way. ‘And now we have some questions for you, Mrs Whitman.’

  Audience and panel applauded politely, as if I was a jazz player who’d just finished a satisfactory though not very noteworthy solo. I wished I could take these people more seriously. Frivolity still kept welling up in me. The chairman fell silent. I could see I was expected to respond, to play my part and speak in similar spirit.

  ‘Honoured? Flattered?’ I asked. ‘Very nice of you and all that. But why? What for?’

  My voice was picked up by a microphone somewhere and I could hear it ripple around the hall. The lighting of the daïs dimmed: if Ted was still there I could not be sure of it. The lighting in the auditorium brightened so that when I looked behind me I was dazzled, and couldn’t see faces; I myself sat in a pool of light. I was a Juve addict amongst Juve addicts, a Doxy addict amongst Doxy addicts, dweller in the new Pharmocracy and it was great.

  ‘Mrs Whitman, we have recognised your talent for quite some time, and marvelled at it. As Mozart is a musician amongst musicians, Rembrandt an artist among artists, you are a medium among mediums, a genius. You are the one in billions picked out through metadata procedures, and before you the traditional barriers of space and time dissolve.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ I said. ‘All that.’

  What, a few ghostly sightings, a spasm of telepathy, a spurt of telekinesis, a blossoming of poltergeists, all no doubt exaggerated in the telling, in transit from me to Ted, to Cynara, to Robbie, a few leapings and fallings of my lit-up pineal gland, and I was placed in honour before these, the powers that be. Me, with my mitochondrial insufficiency, bearer of twins, with my over-active epiphysis cerebri: a medium amongst mediums? Hardly. Look in the small ads of Psychic News and you’d find a dozen better qualified.

  ‘Yes, Phyllis – all that,’ said the panel member sitting on the right of the Chairman, evidently the second in command. ‘We’ve been watching you for some time. We know each other, though you may not remember. But I do, and very clearly. We were both fifteen and young Theosophists. My father had just died; you summoned him back from the other side. In front of witnesses he spoke to me with words of wisdom I’ve not forgotten, that have led me on the road to where I am today. Fame and fortune, as you predicted, came to me.’

  I remembered the incident vaguely. But I’d been making it all up: he’d been the pimply lad whose father had just died. The Theosophists were such gullible, amiable idiots, always looking for a miracle. It had seemed a simple kindness to him to provide one: his father with a message from the other side.

  ‘Since those early days,’ he said, ‘you have gone from strength to strength; the lovely young seer becomes the shaman. The shaman becomes the Goddess.’

  ‘Thank you for your witness, brother,’ said the Chairman, briskly, as if the delegate was about to be overcome by emotion. ‘Mrs Whitman, the committee has asked me to offer their condolences upon the loss of your previous husband. It was most regrettable, and of course not by our design. A case of human error and greatly to be deplored, but lessons have been learned. This tragedy is one of the reasons we are here today. But we want to assure you, and others like you who have sacrificed so much in the fight for the ultimate perfection of humanity, that the loss of one is felt as deeply by us as is the loss of many. On your return home, Phyllis – I may call you Phyllis? – you will find compensation has been made, a redress. It is the least we can do. Acceptance of this sum will be in full and final settlement of the whole sorry business. In the battle for human understanding, in the war against ignorance, the fight against old age and even death itself, there will always be casualties on the way, but the greater good is nearly here – the day when the doors of perception will fall open.’

  There was enthusiastic applause from the audience, and muted clapping from the dais. The lights there had gone up again, and yes – it was Ted there on the platform. I had never heard a more self-serving speech, and nor I imagined had he. I knew it was Ted because he was wearing his favourite shoes, the ones he wore when he was meeting important clients, his rather fancy John Lobbs. Yet earlier I had noticed his mediaeval-style buckled shoes. He was not yet fully adjusted to his new circumstances: still settling. But he was taller, straighter than I remembered him: his hood was pushed back and he had a wodge of thick hair. It was Ted in his youth; in is mid-twenties, not in his early forties: more like my son than my lover, more like the twin’s brother than their father. Not like the young-old on the platform, with their blood changes, their 3D printed spare parts and their stem-cell jabs and their blood transfusion and spinach- nourished telomeres. This was not the Ted of the forest clearing, Ted was truly young again.

  The Chairman was still speaking. ‘Phyllis – this committee, with its due oversight of the affairs of mankind as it goes forward into the new digital future, stands at a crossroads. We need your testimony to point the way. You are the voice of the humble multitude; through you Everyman, Everywoman, speaks.’

  There was a short burst of organ music. The light on me intensified so I was utterly blinded. I was the woman from Revelations, 6, clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. Only now there were thirteen. Ted was with them, the new apostle, the casting vote, and it was no-one’s fault but their own. They should not have interfered, not have taken my minor slippages into other dimensions and encouraged, recorded and enhanced them, and in their monstrous questing appetite for algorithms made the preposterous come true.

  ‘So do we open the doors of perception, Phyllis, or shall we keep them firmly closed?’ The voice from the throne was loud and clear in my poor befuddled ears.