‘—And so, when lightning arcs from the clouds it needs to create its own route in the very moment of its making. It puts out feelers, it forks, it tests the air, looking for that sure path, that clear hole through the ether. And when at length one of those bright tendrils touches the earth, then, and only then—it strikes. It downloads its full charge. All that energy, zapped, in an instant, surely and precisely, down through nothing but air, right into the ground.’

  Anna’s father stopped. He sat looking at his daughter. He wore a contented smile.

  Anna sniffed and shook her head. ‘Feelers? Ether? Bright tendrils?’ She tossed the pamphlet back onto the table. ‘You know what they’re doing, don’t you? Filling you with all that nonsense? Just because they say it works, doesn’t mean it’s true.’

  ‘Of course it works. It is a natural physical phenomenon. It just happens so fast we don’t observe it. Indeed it happens at the very speed of—’

  ‘Yes, yes, the speed of light. I know. I’ve read what it says. But it doesn’t mean that’s how this—this cableless system really would work.’

  ‘But how else could—’

  ‘It’s just an image! Nothing more. A model. Something to put in your head. Something to convince you. Which is exactly what it has done. Clearly.’

  Anna’s father shrugged. ‘Then how do you think it does work?’

  ‘What? I—how should I know?’

  ‘But you cannot deny that it must, or else they wouldn’t be installing it. They wouldn’t be going to all this bother. All this, as you so rightly say, expense.’

  ‘No.’ Anna’s voice dropped. She clicked her thumbnail against her teeth. ‘I don’t know.’ She leaned forward suddenly. ‘But that’s not the point! What matters is that you don’t even need it! You never did before and you don’t now. It’s not necessary. And where would you go anyway? To the hospital? Is it really worth it just for that? Or for the convenience of going to the shops and back? Really? And only then if they’re connected, anyhow, because if they’re not then what is the point?’

  ‘Oh, Anna.’ Her father looked at her sorrowfully. ‘I really thought you’d understand. You of all people. This system doesn’t need connectors. It’s connector-free. It just needs a transceiver dish. And then the dish is aligned to the nearest mast. Nothing more to it. So simple. That there is your clear path. Your sure route. It hops between masts. It’s not random. And, what’s more, it’s not just for long distance. You know what you were saying about getting up the stairs? Well, just you take a look at this.’

  Another partly-crumpled pamphlet was extracted from the folds of her father’s cardigan and pushed over the table.

  This one was not as glossy; printed simply, in green ink on plain white paper. Anna did not pick it up. She didn’t have to. Her father carried on talking regardless.

  ‘Fully-integrated internal transfer. Room to room. It comes with a hand-held controller. You press a button and—pop—you’re upstairs. In an instant. Or in the bathroom. Or out in the garden. Or—oh, no, wait—maybe not the garden. I’ll have to check that. I’m not sure that’s covered.’

  Frowning he slid the pamphlet back towards himself and leaned in to pore over it.

  Anna sighed. Open transfer. Cableless. Holes through the air. Roof-mounted dishes. It was all too much.

  ‘Dad, please. Just wait. That’s all I ask. Just—wait. Don’t let yourself be a test subject. Wait till it’s all been standardised. Wait till they’ve ironed out all the glitches. Because—because something will be up with it. There’ll be something they’ve not thought of. Something they’ll need to correct. And in the meantime I could put up—I don’t know, a set of rails. A wheeled trolley that can get you from room to room. You’d like that. And I’d like building it for you. Or perhaps we could simply—reorder the house. Make it so you don’t even need to get upstairs. So that you won’t ever—’

  ‘No.’ Anna’s father looked up sharply from the pamphlet. The corners of his mouth downturned. ‘Not out into the garden. Not yet at any rate. That’s a pity. I would’ve liked that. Much faster getting inside if it started to rain.’

  Anna’s throat had gone dry. She wanted to speak but all that came out was air. She coughed. Her father looked momentarily concerned. Then he smiled.

  ‘It’s alright, old girl. I’ll be alright. I won’t have to worry about a thing, and neither will you. Surely that’s better all round. And they’ll maintain it too. For free. All part of the service. All part of the trial. Plus you’ll be able to visit more easily. Or I could visit you, eventually. Probably.’ He frowned for a moment, then brightened. ‘Time for something new, eh? Time to—embrace change. And what with your mother gone it’ll be so much—’

  ‘She’d never have agreed to it.’

  ‘Oh, well, maybe so, but she’d soon—’ Anna’s father stopped. He looked away. He gazed out the window into the small but busy garden. ‘No. Quite right. She’d have protested. And in the very same way you’re protesting.’ He breathed in. ‘But she’s not here, dear thing, and I—well.’

  Anna didn’t press her father to continue. The discussion, for the time being, was over.

  That night she slept in her old room, in her old bed. She didn’t sleep easy. She rarely did when staying over. She found it hard to relax in a space once considered her own that had long ago been cleaned and simplified, redecorated with soft floral wallpaper and darkwood furnishings, converting it into a bland and tidy guest room.

  Anna did not feel much like a guest. There was a lot more to her these days beyond being bigger and better-travelled, but she was still her father’s child. She knew there was little she could do to stop him in his new venture. His mind was made up—or had been made up for him.

  But he had never been rash with his decisions. No doubt he would have taken a lot of convincing. Most of all he would have needed to convince himself, after which it would be impossible to turn him back.

  Anna tried to tell herself that it was all somehow for the best. She tried to imagine all the benefits: how her father would be more mobile, independent, and how eventually this new system would become standard in any case; it would become the norm. If he didn’t accept their offer of free installation now then the world would simply move on without him, again—so long as he was still around.

  Anna tensed her jaw, trying to push the thought away. A small radio stood on the bedside table. She put it on low and turned over.

  ¶

  On her next trip to see her father Anna found as she approached the village that the oncoming lanes of the tunnel had been closed off. There were no roadworkers to be seen, just signs and barricades. The tunnel itself looked as new as ever. All the lights were on, curving away into the concrete interior. Traffic had been rerouted along Anna’s side of the road, splitting the carriageway. It didn’t make any difference: Anna’s truck was the traffic. All of it. She’d not seen a single vehicle coming the other way all morning. At least in this direction she didn’t need to make a lane adjustment. She had only to keep on going.

  Anna found her father in the living room. He was sitting, very still, in a large armchair, his arms out to either side, head back, eyes closed, mouth open. He was wearing what looked like an all-in-one set of disposable overalls, such as might be worn for painting the walls. The overalls were pale blue. They had a faint pearlescent sheen.

  There was music playing. Opera of some sort. Anna didn’t recognise it. She didn’t much like opera. The hi-fi cabinet had its doors wide and on the floor were two dusty wooden boxes full of old records. The music was loud. It filled all the air of the small room. Anna knew better than to disturb her father while it played. He wouldn’t have heard her come in.

  She seated herself amid the mess that covered the sofa: a skewed stack of pictures in their frames, a variety of shelf ornaments. She sat leaning forward, her knees together. The carrier bag she’d brought with her she lowered carefully to rest between her feet, its heavy contents settling.

  The room was in disarray, as was the hallway she’d come through and the kitchen she’d peeked into. At a glance it looked as though the whole house was being redecorated, the walls all stripped, ready for new paper to be put up. But when Anna looked more carefully she could see that the old wallpaper was still there, except it had been patched over now with huge white sheets of woodchip. No, not woodchip. The pattern was too regular for woodchip. And the sheets had that same faint pearlescent quality to them. They looked more like bubblewrap than anything, but the bubbles were very fine, and packed together closely, without gaps.

  These sheets were crudely hung. They weren’t pasted, they’d been stapled in place. There were creases at their edges where each black staple pinned them to the walls. And not only the walls, they covered the ceiling too. The whole set-up looked rather ugly. It looked like shoddy workmanship.

  The music rose to its last cadence, and stopped. Anna’s father came to life. His eyes opened and he sat forward. He squinted briefly at his daughter and glanced up at the ceiling, before easing himself from his chair and stepping over to the boxes of records. His movements were assured, even sprightly. There was no sign of him hobbling any more.

  ‘Now, wasn’t that magnificent?’ He took the record from the player and sleeved it.

  Anna sat expressionless. ‘I don’t think any music could cover up for how horrible this room looks—or feels.’

  ‘You know—’ Her father’s fingers paused upon the stack of LPs. ‘I’ve not heard any of these for years. They were in the top room. Only found them yesterday. I was worried the mould might have got to them, but no, they still play alright.’

  ‘If you’re taking requests, how about a concerto.’

  Anna’s father grimaced. ‘Horrible virtuosic nonsense. All show. No real substance.’ He fingered idly through the stack.

  ‘And opera isn’t? With those wailing arias? After all, if you’re wanting to tell a good story, opera is hardly the best way to do it.’

  ‘Ah!’ Her father pulled out a disc with a hopeful expression. ‘Will a quintet suffice as a compromise?’

  Anna smiled. ‘Sure. Quintets are okay.’

  A brief moment of accord. The music was set going but with the volume lowered. Anna’s father stood with a satisfied look and put his hands on his hips to stretch his back, grunting as he did so.

  Anna could see now that whatever her father was wearing it was not a set of disposable overalls. The loose-fitting fabric was thicker. It had a coarse weave. It covered his feet like a baby’s romper suit. A hood flopped at his shoulders. Anna took a breath.

  ‘This is it. Isn’t it. This is that new system.’ Anna gestured vaguely at the walls. She wrinkled her nose. ‘Not exactly very pretty. I’d have expected it to be a lot slicker.’

  ‘It’s just a preliminary set-up. For calibration. To get a sense of the space.’ He continued his stretches.

  ‘I hope they’ll neaten it up eventually.’

  Narrow strips of wiring poked from the base of the stippled wall-sheets. They followed the skirting and carried on into the hallway.

  ‘All that stuff’s for the inner loop. The wires make it easier to zip from room to room.’

  ‘But why would you need to? And why every room? Why not, say, an upstairs and a downstairs?’

  ‘Well, why not? Makes it more convenient, don’t you think? And then by using this—’ He rummaged in the pocket of his romper suit and brought out something akin to a calculator, but longer, and with fewer buttons. ‘—I can choose where I want to go.’

  ‘Of course.’ Anna nodded, wincing at how easily he handled the object, worrying it might go off at any moment. ‘So long as you don’t lose it.’

  ‘Not that it’s working presently. No batteries. And things aren’t yet linked up in any case. I’m just getting used to the feel of it.’ Anna’s father slumped back in his armchair. ‘And then this thing.’ He took a thick pinch of the coarse blue fabric and held it forward before letting it sag back. ‘They call this a tracker suit.’

  ‘You mean a tracksuit.’

  ‘No. Tracker suit. It tracks you. Or, no—it doesn’t actually do the tracking. The walls do the tracking. But you need to wear the suit so the walls can locate you.’

  Anna made a face. ‘You mean you have to wear that at all times?’

  ‘It’s for convenience.’

  ‘Seems kind of crazy. And it looks uncomfortable.’

  ‘It’s much softer on the inside.’

  ‘And what, you go through the cables wearing it too? Do they expect you to go to the shops like that?’

  ‘Not cables, no. Cableless now, remember. But yes—if need be, I’d go to the shops like this.’ He read his daughter’s expression. ‘Oh, you don’t need to look like that. What are clothes but a convention, anyhow? And if it’s what everybody else is wearing, and it likely soon will be, then what’s the problem? No one will be embarrassed. We’ll all look the same.’

  ‘Sounds dull.’

  ‘Not at all, not at all. It’s exciting! And it’ll help strip away those ridiculous notions of fashion and glamour. It’ll be like a uniform. Utilitarian, no less. People will be happier not having to compete with one another for who looks best. It’ll make people calmer. It really is rather democratic.’

  Anna was too tired to argue. If he wanted to look like a fool that was up to him. But she wouldn’t herself be caught wearing such an outfit. She lifted the carrier bag onto the sofa beside her, dumping it awkwardly on a pile of magazines.

  Her father was already lying with his head back, listening to the music, his mouth moving as he followed the notes. He didn’t seem at all interested in what his daughter had brought him from the city.

  That night Anna slept more easily. Not because she was any more content with the situation, but because she was so very weary. She didn’t care that her old bedroom had also been fitted with the new system, all the walls crudely covered over with the strange white bubblewrap. It was only when she set off the next morning that she felt a sense of dread. As she drove slowly out of the village she saw company vans dotted all over the place, in driveways, outside shops, in the school grounds. And there were workmen too, all wearing overalls, just like her father. Except they also wore heavy boots and hard hats. And they carried rolls of the white bubblewrap from their vans. And they climbed up on roofs to fix transceiver dishes in place. And in the middle of the village Anna saw they were erecting a huge mast, like a giant metal matchstick, its pale pinkish head towering above the houses.

  ¶

  It was a further two months before Anna made her next visit. She had to brake hard as she rounded the corner that brought the tunnel entrance suddenly into view. Now all the lanes were closed. The whole mouth of the tunnel was loosely barricaded with cones and warning signs and flapping plastic tape.

  Anna pulled to a stop but kept the engine running. The lights inside the tunnel were off. Just a dark gaping hole boring into the hillside. She tried to think back. Had she missed the diversion? Had she been so complacent with the emptiness of the roads that she hadn’t paid proper attention?

  She considered going through the tunnel anyway. There was no one about. She could progress carefully. It would probably all be fine.

  But no, she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She would have no excuse if she was found out. She bumped her truck over the central reservation and headed back the way she’d come. She had to travel several miles before she found an alternative route. Despite still being so near to her home town she didn’t know this part of the countryside. She didn’t like the unfamiliarity.

  In the village there was hardly a parked car to be seen. The petrol station had closed down. High metal fences enclosed its barren forecourt. There was no one out on the main street of the village. It was like a ghost town. No, Anna could see lights on in some of the shops, and as she drove by at a crawl, ducking her head low, she could see signs of movement within.

  At least her father’s house looked the same from outside. But the sound of her cab door thocking shut seemed strange in the village’s unnatural quiet. It sounded sharp, without depth, without echo, as though the noise barely travelled in the still air.

  Anna convinced herself this was just her imagination. Here, after all, was the same front porch. Here was the same odd angle she had to use for her key to turn the lock smoothly. She stepped in and closed the door.

  ‘Dad?’

  Her voice, despite its loudness, died the instant it left her lips. She waited for a while. There was no answer.

  The hall carpet felt strange beneath her feet. There was a sort of stuffiness around her, like no one had opened a window in there for weeks.

  The radiators must have come on a moment before she arrived. She could hear them ticking and gurgling as the metals expanded and water washed through the pipes. It was only when she was in the kitchen and had laid her small carrier bag on the table that Anna noticed the pilot light on the boiler was out. And yet she could still clearly hear the system, its random knocks, its hissings and rumblings. She looked around to see if a secondary boiler had been installed. Only then did she notice once more the strange wallpaper and realised all the rooms were now done, that indeed the entire house had been fully converted.

  Things had been neatened up since her last visit, so the change was not so obvious. The wiring had been tucked away, the thick black staples painted out. But if she looked hard she could still see the joins between the sheets of bubblewrap. And, now that she thought about it, the noise she could hear, the constant soft knocking, the buzz, the fine whine, it wasn’t the radiators at all, and it wasn’t random. The noise seemed to be more evident every time she moved.

  Anna raised her arm and swung it slowly, tentatively, through the stuffy air. From behind the walls there came a rapid thrumming, a soft rattle, and then back to that high-pitched whine, all undercut by a fine mechanical itch.