He glanced up at the tiny black holes in the ceiling. He smiled.

  ‘Because it was all just a machine. Just a process. And I was just one person. One silly person who’d made a terrible mistake. Yes. But I needed to go through that machine. Right through. I needed to let it run its course and I would come out the other end and there would be my parents, my friends, my teachers, my extended family members. They’d all be there waiting for me. And not just that, I’d have a job at the institute too. Yes. Because, you know, they could surely use a mind like mine. They really could. And it’s a much better mind now. Yes. Because I’ve made my mistake. I’ve seen what not to do. So, hmm, really the lesson’s been learned.’

  ‘And has anything changed your mind since?’

  The boy did not answer.

  ¶

  He had been open and engaging when they came to question him. He explained in great detail how his code had worked. He spoke directly to programmers, a small team, crammed awkwardly into his cell. They listened attentively. They noted everything down. They understood him. They were impressed. But they wanted to take it further.

  This ability to separate matter into its constituent parts, it intrigued them. It was something they’d been looking into for a long time, but they couldn’t quite fathom it. They felt it could have a very useful function when it came to industrial waste-disposal. A wholly new network of cables and large chambers would be set up to cater to this effect. The application itself might be rather crude, but it would solve a lot of world problems involving harmful chemicals and non-recyclables. And they would of course be very careful to keep this new system separate from the main transporter network.

  But the boy could not help in this regard. What they were asking for was, he told them, impossible. Still they came often to question him. He talked and they listened. They made many notes.

  And then, eventually, they stopped coming.

  ¶

  ‘Did you ever wonder why they gave up?’

  The man had shifted to stand behind the boy, swaying above him. The boy did not make any effort to look round as the two of them spoke. He heard the voice clearly enough. He knew the man to be there.

  ‘Oh, no. Not really. I didn’t need to wonder.’

  That deep slow creaking again, as of huge trees rocked by heavy winds, sounding both close and distant all at once. The boy ignored it.

  ‘I knew that what I was saying had finally got through to them. You see, a separation of specific identifiable materials is one thing. Yes. That’s doable. But they wanted to stop the reassembly process. Like that. So I told them, no, it can’t be done. It defies all logic. The information within a closed system is always retained. It has to be somewhere. Like everything else. It all has to balance out. Yes. No. You can’t have a positive without a negative. You cannot have up without down. Debit and credit. Profit and loss. It’s how things are. It’s how they have to be.’

  ‘You still believe this?’

  ‘Oh, hmm, yes. I know what you’re getting at. I’ve heard the rumours. That they managed it. That they built their new machine. Their perfect disposal system. But I don’t believe that. No. Not how they meant it. Things have to go somewhere. Yes. You can’t simply disappear a thing from all existence.’

  ‘There are many who would agree with you.’

  ¶

  There was no special ceremony. When he was taken from his cell and walked down to the chamber there was no one else about. It was no different from switching rooms. A slow transportation. He’d done it plenty of times. This chamber, however, was new.

  The general nature of the device was familiar to him, but here it had been refined. An updated model. Instead of being lined with the usual misty grey bulbs everything was now a pure bright white. The boy looked hard at the walls of his new enclosure. He could see that the bulbs were all still there, but they were of a much finer grade, and they were integrated, like skin cells. He could imagine such a system being fitted up in any room without much effort, as easy as applying wallpaper.

  And yet this chamber was no quick job. It had been specially designed. It had a permanence to it. And the boy stood in the very middle, with the clean white walls all around him, and he was content. He was calm. He was curious to see just what might happen next.

  The sound when it began was familiar, albeit diminished, as though far away, or muffled by thick cloth. At moments it sounded like distant maintenance, like thumping and hammering from somewhere else in the building. At other moments it sounded like a deep soft gurgling and groaning, as from old creaking pipes.

  There was only one thing that was niggling at the back of the boy’s mind, some small detail that wasn’t quite right. Something was missing. Some crucial component. He could feel its lack but couldn’t quite work out what it was or what such an absence would imply. It was difficult, after all, to look for something that wasn’t there.

  So he tried very hard to think more. To out-think his own ability. To think beyond himself. Not to let his mind be lazy. The answer had to be attainable. The answer must exist.

  But it was no good.

  ¶

  In the cell the boy’s white bowl and foil trays all sat empty. The plastic fork and spoon were spotless. Every crumb of the meal had gone. The juices mopped up, the sauce licked clean from the dish.

  After a while someone came into the cell, and stacked the remaining items, and took them away.

  8. Home Help

  THE MOUTH of the new tunnel loomed far quicker than she had anticipated. There were red lights, there were green lights, and Anna had barely a moment to position herself correctly before she was engulfed. The icy brightness of the day was gone. A lifeless yellow pulsing took its place.

  Anna calmed herself with the thought that it didn’t really matter what lane she was in or how fast she was going; there was no one but her on the road. She wound her window down and listened to the lonely reverberations her engine made on the curved grey walls.

  The tunnel was only new from her perspective. It would always remain so. When she was young there was a lot of talk about the benefits of having one, and the unnecessariness of having one, and the costliness of having one, and then came the many years of quiet planning during which there still wasn’t one. She had moved away from the area long before any actual building work began.

  Anna came out the other end of the tunnel and the day sprang back into existence. She slowed suddenly. The turning should be soon but this part of the trip always confused her. The new slip roads and signs and roundabouts didn’t match with the spaces she’d known in childhood. Side roads had been neatly dead-ended. Embankments had been levelled and pavements cropped. There were fewer pylons now and their cables were slack. Around here was where the new world had been crudely bolted onto the old.

  Anna dropped into low gear. The gearbox graunched; the synchromesh was shot. She winced, hissing through her teeth: that was going to be expensive. She was still going too fast as she took the unfamiliar roundabout, the long steel pipes in the back of her truck clanging loudly in protest. She tensed, slowing to a crawl. No one, after all, was pressing her to get there any quicker than she needed.

  And then, all at once, Anna knew just where she was. All the lines and dimensions, the trees, the whole space of her environment, in an instant it all made sense to her again.

  It never ceased to amaze her that there were still some corners of the country that weren’t networked into the transmat system. Stubborn little communities still content to live off-grid. Yet she also felt a tinge of pride that one of them was the very village she’d grown up in. She hoped they might stay stubborn for a good while longer. And that strange rush of familiarity as she now drove her pick-up down the old roads that marked the area’s outskirts, it wasn’t mere nostalgia, it was delight in the capacity of her own mind to feel so at ease in a place from which she had long ago divorced herself.

  Her truck bumped and rumbled over the cracked road. Untrimmed top-heavy hedgerows protruded over narrow pavement. She passed a car parked close into the kerb. And now a car passed her. Where could they be going? Anna checked her rearview but the car was gone, disappeared, just as she’d once disappeared.

  And yet: here she was again, as easy as that, driving straight into the past, shrinking herself back into her childhood. Or no, perhaps not quite that. It was more like invading her childhood, but with the air of a knowing adult who sees things the child never noticed, never appreciated. Because now it was she who was the sophisticated out-of-towner. She’d grown up and moved on, as the world had moved on. No one would recognise her returning. No one would care.

  Anna glanced at the little petrol station as she turned onto the high street. A pokey place, but part of the community nonetheless. She noted the price of fuel. Another wince. She was on the verge of shaking her head in dismay, but she caught herself and stopped. No, she mustn’t think like that. The locals wouldn’t think like that. They’d go about their business quite happily, and they wouldn’t mind the high prices, just as they wouldn’t begrudge her arrival.

  Many more cars now lined the kerbs, bottlenecking the street. She had to slow to a stop to let other road-users pass by. There were people walking. She could actually see people strolling between the shops, as though it was nothing, as though it was normal. She had a momentary surge of fear that someone might wander carelessly into the road and she’d knock them down. But no, of course not, not here; she was still thinking like an out-of-towner.

  A few more turnings and there was her father’s house, her childhood home. One stout telegraph pole on the street corner, an octopodal splay of wires leading off in all directions, but seemingly no new additions. This she only noticed because she was looking out for it. A comforting sight. And when she parked in front of the house it felt as though her pick-up filled the whole driveway. She felt bigger in herself as she stepped out. She had a strength, a sense of her own maturity, of her superiority. She felt somehow responsible. She had her own front-door key.

  She hoisted the bag of groceries she’d brought and headed inside. This was her gift from the big city. All non-perishables. Never an easy task. Most things were fresh these days, simply because they could be. Anything was available because everything was available. But the old-fashioned tastes of the elderly were still catered for, to some extent, for the time being.

  Closing the door behind her with her foot Anna stood for a moment in the dimness of the front hall, smiling at the familiar fusty airs. The same worn green carpet. The same ugly pictures. The same dark-striped wallpaper.

  ‘Have you got it? Did you find any?’

  Her father hobbled towards her out of the gloom, two short sticks extending spiderlike from his hands.

  Startled to see her father advancing in such a manner Anna held open the carrier bag before her, revealing the dull glint of its contents. Her father halted to examine the offering, then gave one of his sticks to his daughter and took the bag from her, clutching it to his chest as he lurched away towards the kitchen.

  ‘And are you going to tell me what’s happened?’ Anna followed him. ‘—what you’ve done to yourself this time?’

  ‘What? Nothing.’ He gave a little grunt as he lifted the carrier bag high and let it thump down on the sideboard. ‘A fall. That’s all. Why does everybody insist on fussing so?’ He began extracting the tins one at a time. Some were anchovy fillets; some were lychees in thin syrup; most were corned beef. He arranged the tins in front of him, working one-handed, muttering as he did so. ‘Ridiculous why you can’t get them in the village. Oh, no, sorry, we don’t stock them, they say. Nobody likes them, they say. Utter nonsense. I know half a dozen hereabouts who’d buy them. Regularly, too. No, it’s not that, they say, they’re just too expensive for us to bring in. Well, I hope you won the battle there. Got them at a good price and all.’ He stopped and turned to his daughter. ‘Well?’

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘How much do I owe you?’

  ‘What? Oh—nothing. It doesn’t matter. I know of a place.’

  She didn’t like to say that the only way to get them was from abroad, via the network. Only a handful of small countries still produced them; a hangover from previous generations when such things were considered delicacies. Ordering them in wasn’t difficult, but they weren’t exactly cheap. More than this, however, Anna felt her father would only complain they tasted wrong if he knew just how they’d been acquired.

  ‘Good girl. Beating the system. That’s what I like to hear. Maybe get some more next time though. These won’t last very long if I have guests. Tea?’

  ‘Dad, what fall? Why don’t I know about this?’

  Her father, with great effort, filled the kettle and switched it on. ‘I suppose you’ll want biscuits or something. They’re in the larder. Big round tin. Top shelf. You know where.’

  Anna fetched the biscuits as directed. And yes, she knew where. She still had to stretch to get them, but that was an improvement over having to balance on tiptoes on a wobbly stool.

  When she re-emerged her father was already seated by the window, well away from the now hissing kettle. Anna began setting a tray.

  ‘The fall, Dad. You’re supposed to notify me.’

  ‘Except I was in hospital.’

  ‘Which is exactly why I need to know.’

  ‘Which is exactly why I couldn’t tell you.’

  ‘Because I’d worry?’

  ‘No, because I was in hospital. Think, girl. I couldn’t get to a phone.’

  Anna took a deep breath and held it. She clenched her jaw. She focused on making the tea.

  She’d found herself considering his vulnerability more and more in recent years, but now there would be a new worry: if something serious did happen, she wouldn’t even know. No one would tell her. She’d arrive one day with a whole pallet of corned beef, but he’d be gone.

  And it was pointless arguing. He’d somehow turn her worry into a sign she was being selfish, that her own supposed feelings mattered more than his actual well-being, or of his being at all.

  Anna sat down at the table’s opposite end. The tray was placed between them.

  ‘And how long have you been back?’

  ‘From the ward? Oh, a few weeks or so.’ He waved a biscuit dismissively.

  Anna raised her eyebrows. Her father didn’t notice.

  ‘It’s all worked out rather well, actually. The council have it all in hand, you see. They’ve visited several times already. They’re going to rig up some sort of, uh, system for me. One of those—you know, transport whatchamacallits. Yes. Make me more mobile. More independent. Safer too. Any problems and—shoom—just like that, straight into hospital. No phone calls. No fuss.’

  ‘What?’ Anna stared wide-eyed at her father, a biscuit poised at her open mouth. ‘But they can’t.’ She lowered the biscuit back to her plate. ‘And you hate that system. Like, really hate it. You said you’d never use it. Never. And they—they just can’t.’

  ‘But they can, and I don’t, and I did, and—they will.’

  ‘But it’d be far too expensive. They’d have to dig up the garden. They’d dig up the roads for sure. There would be new pylons everywhere. Huge ugly things. No one here would agree to it. And you—you certainly can’t afford any of that.’

  Anna’s father smiled and shook his head. ‘I don’t have to. Government scheme, you see? Our council, or rather our area, as they called it, has been selected. It’ll be free. Totally free. And not just me, the whole village. Just a few houses at first, yes, probably. That’s only sensible. But it’ll soon spread.’

  ‘Even for a few houses that’s still a lot of infrastructure they’d need. For the cabling alone. It’ll take months to install all that. And you’d hate it. The noise. The mess. Dad, please, if you’re genuinely worried about your mobility I could—rig something up for you myself. I could design it. Build it. No trouble. Something to get you upstairs. If need be I could even come and stay here. I don’t mind. It wouldn’t—’

  Her father shook his head again and took from his pocket a well-creased pamphlet. He smoothed it and slid it forward over the table.

  Anna glanced at it briefly.

  ‘No.’ She looked back at her father. ‘No, Dad. Not this.’

  ‘No cables, you see. Not any more. This here—’ He poked at the pamphlet. ‘This is the future. Things are moving on!’

  ‘Dad, this is—not a good idea. It really isn’t.’ Anna gingerly unfolded the pamphlet. ‘You know what this is, don’t you?’

  ‘Oh yes. I know exactly. They’ve explained it to me. To everyone. It’s really very straightforward.’

  ‘No, Dad. It’s not straightforward at all. It’s very unstraightforward. And unsafe. And untested.’

  ‘Oh, but it will be. That’s us, you see? We’re to be those test subjects. That’s why it’s all for free.’

  ‘Exactly! Can’t you see that’s why you should say no? You can’t let them use you like that. Because when it all goes wrong—’

  ‘Don’t be so melodramatic. Of course it won’t go wrong. They wouldn’t be spending all this money on it if it didn’t already work.’

  ‘But this is just a dream. A fantasy.’ Anna raised the pamphlet. She flapped it accusingly. ‘It’s not actually real. And even if it is theoretically possible it’s still decades away from being practicable. You don’t even know how the system works right now. You never did. You never accepted that such a thing could ever work, despite the evidence. And now you’re suddenly ready to accept this? This?’

  Her father’s face remained passive. When he spoke his voice was calm and assured. The same manner and tone he’d employed when Anna was young.

  ‘The practicability, dear girl, is quite simple. It’s merely a matter of finding a route. A tunnel. It’s no different from using a cable. The cabled system provides a fixed route, a clear route. The new system needs only to find a route through air. A sure path. Just as lightning finds its sure path to the earth—’

  At this Anna flipped open the pamphlet again. She’d noticed a picture of lightning on her first glance inside. And yes, there was the passage underneath, near word for word what her father was now spouting.