Today’s Tuesday Short Story is by RPG Fiction Blog editor Sarah Newton. Sarah is a writer of science-fiction and fantasy roleplaying games and fiction, and co-owner of Mindjammer Press. She’s the author of the far future transhuman science-fiction novel Mindjammer and award-winning roleplaying game of the same name, both of which have met with critical acclaim.

Her other RPG works include: the ENnie Award-winning Achtung! Cthulhu: Zero Point campaign; the “old school fantasy, new school play” roleplaying game Monsters & Magic; the Legends of Anglerre fantasy RPG; the Burn Shift post-apocalyptic setting for the Fate Core RPG; and more. Her short fiction has appeared in anthologies such as Frostgrave (Osprey Books); The Book of the Dead (Jurassic London); The Lion and the Aardvark (Stone Skin Press); Have Blaster, Will Travel (Galileo Press); The Lost (Galileo Press); World War Cthulhu (Cubicle 7 Fiction); The British Fantasy Society Journal; and the World SF Blog. Her conceptualisation of the “Mindscape” was the subject of an article by neuroscientist and science writer Rita Carter in BBC Focus Magazine in April 2013.

Since 2005 Sarah has been living in rural France, writing, managing a rock band, and generally failing to practise self sufficiency. You can find her online at http://sarahnewtonwriter.com, on Facebook as ShairaSu, on Google+, and on Twitter as @SarahJNewton. She’s currently running a Kickstarter for the Mindjammer RPG and fiction setting which you can find here.

PART ONE

“Former NASA astronaut and moon-walker Dr _____ ________—a veteran of the Apollo 14 mission–has stunningly claimed aliens exist.
“And he says extra-terrestrials have visited Earth on several occasions—but the alien contact has been repeatedly covered up by governments for six decades.”

—Daily Telegraph, UK, July 24 2008

“Hey! This is Smash! Radio, welcome back! Oka-y, for those of you just joining us, we’re talking today with the astronaut—yes, that’s right, I said astronaut!—Bud Mitchum, direct by phone from his home in the US of A. Bud—are you still there?”

“Yes, yes, I still am, Philip.”

“Please, call me Phil. So, Bud, you were telling us before the break about your experiences walking on the moon—seeing the earth from space. Just what was that like?”

“Well, Phil, seeing the earth from space was probably the most profound experience of my life. All of a sudden I became aware of myself, not as an individual, separate from the universe, but as a living part of it. I realized—as a physical experience—that the atoms in my body were the same atoms that had floated in space for millions of years, that had been born in the centre of stars. I felt a great sense of peace, and a great sense of belonging.”

“Wow, that’s amazing, Bud! And tell me, does that make you a believer in life on other planets?”

“It certainly does, Phil. And it’s not just a belief—I have absolute knowledge that life exists out there in the vastness of space.”

“Whoa! Bud, that’s a heck of a thing to say. You’re saying you have—what, proof?—of life on other planets?”

“That’s right, I do, Phil, yes. Not only that, I have proof that extra-terrestrial intelligences have been visiting our planet for many, many years now.”

“Whoa! Bud! Now—hang on a minute, you’re pulling my leg, right?”

“I’m sorry, Phil?”

“Sorry, Bud… I’m just getting the feeling this is some kind of astronaut humour, right?”

“No, no, it’s not, Phil. I’m completely serious.”

“Whoa… wow. So, you’re saying that ET is—what?—here, right now, on earth?”

“Yes, he is, Phil. Our governments have been covering this up for many decades now, but they’re not always successful, and I’m sure you’ve heard all the stories about Roswell, Rendlesham, all those places where people have reported actual physical contact with extra-terrestrial beings. That stuff, well, it’s all true, Phil. I mean, there’s a lot of nonsense out there too, especially on the internet, but basically, yes, ET is here today.”

“Wow! Wow! Hang on, Bud, this is just blowing me away a bit here. I mean, you’re a world-famous astronaut, you’ve walked on the moon, you’re a respected scientist, you’re not some nutjob conspiracy theorist… Sorry, I didn’t mean to—“

“Not at all, Phil. No, I’m not a conspiracy theorist, no…”

“And—ahh—are these aliens, are they friendly?”

“Yes, they are, Phil, of course they are. They are benign. If they weren’t—well, uh, I guess none of us would be here right now.”

“What? You mean we’d be—“

“That’s right. Their technology is so far advanced of ours, Phil, that we have no defence against them. If they wanted us gone, well, then, we’d be gone.”

“Oh. My. God. Look, I just can’t believe this is happening on my show, Bud, I really can’t. This is major. Thank you for coming here and sharing this with us—I’m sure we’re going to be hearing lots more about this in the days to come!”

“You’re very welcome, Phil. I’m glad to have been here.”

* * *

“Phil, what the fuck was that?”

“Dave, man, I really don’t know. I was just totally lost. What did you make of the guy?”

“Whatya mean, what did I make of him? The guy’s a fucking astronaut, for Chrissakes—what am I supposed to make of him? I’ve had the director on the blower tearing me a new one for the past half-hour, letting fucking conspiracy nuts on the show!”

“He didn’t feel like a conspiracy nut, Dave.”

Dave waved his hands in front of him, screwed up his face. “Don’t talk to me about it! It’s a fucking mare, I knew we should’ve just cancelled today. Fucking space cadets! What the fuck’s that noise!?”

A massive ruckus had broken out in the street in front of the studios. There was already a crowd, only it was all a bit difficult to see because of something… something sprayed all over the front window in the lobby. Oh, shit…

“Fuck me, Dave. That’s blood… Somebody’s been hurt out there!”

More than hurt. As Phil leapt down the stairs four at a time closely followed by his still raging boss, the crowd outside parted to let a couple of paramedics through with a stretcher. By the look on their faces when they arrived, there clearly wasn’t much point, and the police turned and hurriedly set up a cordon to keep people back. The whole pavement in front of the studios looked like it was covered in smashed-up pizza.

Phil dashed up to the door and yanked it open. A copper thrust out a brawny hand and pushed him back in the chest. “Keep back, sir, please.”

“What is it, officer?”

“Just keep back a bit, sir, while we try and get things sorted.”

Phil turned back to the foyer. At reception Suzie and Lynne were crying in one another’s arms. A phone was ringing deafeningly. Phil picked up the receiver and slammed it down again. “Girls,” he said, breathless, “did you see what happened?”

Suzie was sobbing. “It was that bloke…” she cried, pointing. “He’d just been in here. Wanted to talk to you. He was all worked up about that interview you did with that astronaut.”

Dave was approaching ballistic. “What the fuck’s going on, Phil? I don’t fucking need this. We’ve got shooters, now?!”

“Shut up a minute, Dave. Look, Suzie, did he say anything else? Did he say what it was about?”

Still snivelling, the girl peeled off a post-it from the front of the desk. “Just this.”

Mind racing, Phil scanned the message. “Must talk. You’re being set up. Deadly serious—astronaut a plant—believe nothing.” There was a phone number—inner London.

“What does it say?” asked Dave, peering.

On impulse, Phil screwed up the message, stuffing it in his pocket. “Just mad shit,” he said, dismissively. “Some kind of junkie, I reckon… that’s what all that must have been about,” he said, nodding towards the carnage and flashing lights outside. “Fucking drugs gangs.”

The riff from Brown Sugar suddenly blared from his back pocket. Phil pulled out his mobile and answered it.

“Mr. Morten?” asked a disembodied American voice.

“Look, I’m sorry, ahhh—could you phone back in an hour or two? I’m really busy right now.”

“I understand, Mr. Morten. That looks a terrible mess out there. This won’t take a minute.”

Phil’s eyes flicked out the window—to the crowd out there with their mobiles, talking, taking pictures; to the endless rows of windows on the street opposite, reflecting impassively.

“Sorry, who is this?”

“Mr. Morten, I was very interested in your interview with Mr. Bud Mitchum today,” the American voice continued evenly. “I think many people feel the same. I wanted to make sure you’ll be covering the story again. Say, for example, tomorrow?”

He couldn’t see anyone out there who looked like they might be talking to him. His eyes shifted focus to the blood-spattered window. “Look, I’m not sure, yet… I really have to go.”

“We’d be very grateful if you did. We’d be very willing to show our gratitude—in concrete terms, provide you with material. We’d make sure you’d have no further problems with your superiors.”

“My superiors? How did you know about that?”

“Good. I think we understand one another. I look forwards to your next show, Mr. Morten.”

“Hang on a minute! Who are you? How did you get my mobile number?”

The phone went dead. Phil stood there in the foyer, watching the world out there watching in. The flashing lights strobed across his face; he suddenly felt very vulnerable.

Dave had pretty much blown himself out. “Trouble?” he asked. Phil shook his head. “I dunno. Don’t think so…” His eyes flicked over the crowd outside again. “I don’t know what the fuck’s going on,” he whispered, half to himself.

“Look, everyone,” said Dave, “let’s pack it in for a bit. I’ll bung some tapes in, stick the phones on night call for an hour or two. ‘S’all gonna be the same shit once word gets out, anyway. You girls get going, I’ll cover things till Jemma gets in at six. Use the back way out, yeah? Phil—how you feeling?”

Phil didn’t know how he felt. Adrenalized, wired to fuck, knackered, shocked, traumatized, buzzing his tits off. Weirded out. Take your pick. Right now, he could do with getting away from that window. Take a half-bottle of Jack Daniels and a vat of coke, and just drink it out of him. “I’ll be all right,” he said, once he’d made his mind up. “I could murder a drink.”

“There’s a bottle in my desk,” said Dave. “Let’s see if we can’t finish it.”

* * *

That night Phil sat by his mobile with the screwed up post-it in his hand, racking his brains. Rubbing his eyes one last time, he downed the remnants of his whisky and dialled the number.

The phone line was crap, full of crackles and whoops. He got an answerphone—kind of figured. “Hi, you’ve reached Matt Moseley. If you’re a mate, please leave a message. If you want to talk about work stuff, you can get me at Prime-dot-com, on…” And then another number.

The receptionist at Prime-dot-com was in tears too. “Look,” she said, over crackling static, “I’m really sorry but we don’t have anything to say right now. Maybe you could call back in a couple of days. This isn’t a very good line.”

“Sure, I’ll do that. Do you guys always work this late?”

“Yeah, sometimes,” she said, suddenly a bit more human. “We’ve got a big contract on at the moment…”

“Oh, right. What is it you do?”

“We’re a web development company. We build custom-built dynamic websites for business, finance, and the e-commerce world—”

“Hey, sweetheart, can I leave a number? My name’s Phil Morten, I’m a radio DJ. Matt was trying to get in touch with me today, I don’t know what about.”

“The Phil Morten?” asked the receptionist distractedly. “Wow. Yeah, sure… I’ll pass it on, if anyone… Just a minute—” she said suddenly, after a particularly spectacular burst of static. Phil could hear her hand cupped over the mouthpiece. “I’m sorry—I thought there was somebody else on the line. What was your number?”

After the call, Phil sat with the phone in his hands, thinking. On an impulse, he dialled Matt Moseley’s number again.

The call was answered almost immediately. “Mr. Morten…” said a familiar, American drawl. The line was crystal clear this time.

Phil’s heart thumped. His hands felt cold, clammy. “Look… whoever you are… Are you tapping my phone? Who the fuck are you?”

The American voice remained placid, controlled. “This really isn’t your affair, Mr. Morten. I recommend you don’t pursue this line of investigation any further. You’re on the wrong track—stick with the Mitchum story.”

“Look… you can’t just go bugging my phones. It’s against the law! I’ll go to the police!”

The voice sounded slightly amused. “I wouldn’t advise that. Stay with the astronaut, Mr. Morten. It’s much more interesting—and much safer.”

The line went dead.

* * *

“Terror suspects could be convicted on the evidence of ‘electronic eavesdropping’ of phone calls and emails under sweeping moves to combat the threat of an al-Qaeda atrocity.
“In a blunt admission that the risk of attack remains ‘real and serious’, Home Secretary David Blunkett will pledge a massive staffing boost for MI5. Priorities will include linguists, translators and surveillance to help infiltrate overseas-sponsored terror networks in Britain.”

—Observer, UK, February 22 2004

The next day Phil’s mobile and landline popped and whistled constantly whenever he tried to make a call. Even his internet connection seemed dog-slow, his PC too clogged-up doing something else to bother letting him check his emails and do his morning surf. Pale-faced, he unplugged his webcam.

The phone book said there were three Matt Moseley’s in central London—including his man. Address was something-or-other Mansions, up north-west; probably a flat share.

He wasn’t on till the evening, and took a walk down the High Street for a paper. He’d never seen it so busy, people and cars everywhere. He kept looking behind him; were they watching his home as well?

It was chaos at the traffic lights as usual. Buses, bikes, vans, lorries, cars, exhaust fumes everywhere, horns blaring, pedestrians hurling themselves into every available gap trying to get across before the lights changed.

On impulse—just as the traffic was pulling away–Phil threw himself into a black cab and shouted Matt Moseley’s address to the driver. He slumped down in the seat, and after a few minutes looked behind. What the hell would they look like, anyway?

The house was pretty much as expected—one of the long, grandiose, Edwardian apartment blocks which give the sidestreets off Finchley Road and Hampstead their touch of faded splendour. The street was empty as he got out, apart from a post-van doing pickup at a red pillar-box up the road.

The landlady answered the intercom and buzzed him up. “’Ere, hello, what a surprise seeing you round here, I do like your show, you know, I do like listening to all those interesting people you have on. Marvellous, it is, absolutely marvellous. You’re nothing like I imagined you.”

Phil smiled, awkwardly, and mentioned Matt. The landlady’s face folded in concern. “Ooh, that’s a terrible business that is, Mr. Morten, a terrible business. ‘E was such a nice lad, as well, always polite and tidy, not a peep of trouble. And to think in my poor house that young lad, now e’s…” She began to snivel loudly.

Phil took her arm and gave her his best empathic gaze, and she obediently wrapped herself around his neck and began to sob theatrically. Once that was done, she vanished into the heart of the apartment to get some tea, leaving Phil to “pay his final farewells” in Matt’s room. On the proviso, of course, that “he didn’t touch nothing”.

The room, as the landlady had said, was polite, and tidy. A pile of geeky magazines flanked the gas fire perched incongruously in the blocked-up fireplace, some faded arthouse posters covered spots of damp and peeling paint. Two large do-it-yourself desks ran the length of one wall, covered with computers, printers, cables. Phil began to gently rifle through the piles of empty hardware boxes, CD cases, manuals.

His hands lit on a simple exercise book, bright red with a coat of arms on the front, the type you could get in any corner shop. Inside it was filled with neat handwriting, on one side of the page only, with a neatly ruled margin. Phil read a few lines; it was a diary. Curious, that a computer programmer should confine his innermost thoughts to paper, and not some snazzy gadget.

There was a rattling sound from somewhere outside the room, as the landlady began her final approach doubtless laden with teapot, cups, and biscuits. On an impulse Phil stuffed the exercise book into an inside pocket, and flashed his eyes up and down the desk, quickly opening and closing the drawers.

One of the drawers was empty except for a plastic jar with a weird-looking object in it. Something like a piece of coral, or a crab claw, or maybe a dried and desiccated mushroom, it was clearly none of these.

“Ere, Mr. Morten, would you mind doing the honours with the door? I’m a bit heavy-laden…”

Phil turned, pocketing the weird jar and closing the drawers before opening the door to the landlady and the tea. She had done her hair and applied—swiftly, and none too accurately—a good layer of makeup, and smiled gorgeously. “It’s a very sad time, Mr. Morten,” she said, beaming. “Would you like a bit of cake?”

* * *

Later, Phil’s phone couldn’t get a signal at all. He hailed a cab on the Finchley Road, and on the way home flicked through the notebook, reading at random. The more he read, the stranger his picture of the dead programmer became. A chill of recognition ran down his spine: everywhere in his notes Matt Moseley seemed to be mortally afraid of being spied upon, a resounding paranoia which expected every phone conversation to be tapped, every email to be intercepted, until all that remained was to note everything down in longhand, far from prying eyes. Phil looked out of the window, absently. As far as he could make out, Matt had stumbled upon something he shouldn’t have in the course of his work—or at least believed he had. He appeared to have been seconded to a new and rather secretive company called “Pluto” or “Pluto-dot-net”, where he had discovered something which had disturbed him terribly. I’ve managed to get a sample, though god knows what good it’ll do me, he read. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before. God knows who’s building this stuff. It was the last pages of the notebook which troubled Phil the most, even causing the cab driver to ask if he felt all right, to which he nodded and gazed pensively out of the window again. The passage read:

I think I’ve found the evidence I’ve been looking for. There are protocols being written in every server we have—written automatically, and I’ve no idea what they’re for. They appear to mimic the standard protocols, but clearly they’re fulfilling some other function, too—some kind of surveillance, or perhaps feedback system, like an array of nerves. They’ve been piggy-backing on the global internet propagation service ever since we brought the new interfaces online last month. It sounds crazy to say it, but I think Jason may have been right: it’s like there’s something alive in the Internet. An artificial life form—and I think we’re the ones who let it out.

Phil stared out the window. It all sounded too bizarre. Something “alive”, in the Internet? What did they call it—artificial intelligence? Remembering, he fished in his pocket for the jar from the apartment. A sample, Matt had called it. But of what? It looked like nothing Phil had ever seen—maybe some sea creature, or some lump of crazily formed coral. But picked up at some techie web company as a “sample”? None of it made any sense—but there was a dead guy on a pavement back there that said otherwise.

The cab driver slid open the dividing window, peering at Phil in the rear-view mirror. “’Ere, mate,” he said. “Do you know you’re being followed?”

“What?” Phil’s voice suddenly cracked with panic. He spun round to look out the back window. “Don’t do that!” cried the driver, but it was too late. Phil’s heart thumped in his chest. Oh my god—they were after him! He imagined the blood sprayed on the foyer window at work, the crowd gathered to stare at the road pizza. How could he have been so stupid? He should have listened to the American guy’s warning. Of course they’d have followed him to Matt’s—they’d be watching and waiting there, too. Shit! Shit! He cursed himself.

The tail was a black four-by-four with tinted windows, a Chelsea Tractor with a dark and menacing air. He imagined men in black suits, sunglasses, impassive faces, pistols with silencers, the whole thing…

“How long have they been following?” He turned to the cabbie, his voice shaking.

The cabbie shrugged. “Dunno, mate. Maybe since pickup, I only cottoned on a few minutes back.”

“Shit… Shit… Can’t you lose them or something?”

“On my wages? This ain’t James Bond, you know.”

Phil looked behind again. Shit. What was this? He flung himself back in his seat, mind racing. Think, think, think…!

“Look, is there a big pub round here? A busy one? One that’s going to be crowded right now?”

“There’s the Rat & Parrot at Great Portland Street. Be heaving about now.”

“That’ll do. Drop me there please, man. As close to the door as you can.”

The cabbie did just that, ramping right up on the kerb and driving over the pavement so that the cab door scraped the pub walls when Phil jumped out and ran headlong into the lunchtime crowd. He hoped to hell he could lose himself inside; after that—he didn’t know. He needed time to think.

From the side of the bar Phil sipped his drink tensely and watched people come through the door in a mirror on the wall. The third person in stopped just inside, and stood there, his eyes sweeping across the sea of heads, gazing intently at each, searching. Short spikey cut, floor-length Drizabone, Bluetooth earpiece. Dead-ringer: that had to be one of them. Phil felt his breathing start to shake, stared at his drink, willing himself invisible.

A voice spoke very low just behind him. “Phil—I need to talk to you. It’s about Matt.”

Phil tensed. “Don’t know what you’re talking about, mate.”

“It’s okay. I work with him. Worked, I mean… Listen—Jenny at reception told me you’d called.”

Quickly, Phil looked round. Drizabone guy. His blue eyes looked serious, scared; a thin film of sweat covered his forehead. His smooth, wrinkle-free forehead. Just another kid.

Phil’s shoulders sank with relief. “Buy you a drink?” he said, shakily, trying to smile.

* * *

“According to the latest studies, Britain has a staggering 4.2 million CCTV cameras—one for every 14 people in the country—and 20 per cent of cameras globally. It has been calculated that each person is caught on camera an average of 300 times daily.”

—Evening Standard, London, March 31 2007

“We’ve been working on a big contract recently. Really big. We’ve hardly been able to take on any other work. It’s for a company called Pluto-dot-net. You heard of them?”

Phil bit his lip, thinking back to the note in Matt’s diary. Play it close to your chest, he told himself. Let him tell you. “Not really, Gareth, no,” he said, flicking his eyes round the bar.

“Well, they’re new. As far as we could find out. But they’re loaded. They wanted the whole thing from us-–websites, hardware, connectivity, the whole thing. Took pretty much everyone up. But—“ he said, his expression hardening, “—then it began to get weird.”

Phil stared at him, concentrating. “How weird?”

“Breakthrough-type stuff weird. Stuff no one else out there is doing, weird. They were hooking up some entirely new kind of server from their head office. Something no one else was allowed to see—we just got the spec for the interface, nothing else. I went there once, to check out the hardware setup. Only got in for an hour or so—barely enough. Big, big security though. There were blokes in dark suits and guards all over the place. More than an airforce base. I was glad as hell to get out of there. Scared the willies out of me.”

“Matt ever go there?”

Gareth shook his head. “Not that I know of. Why?”

Phil reached in his pocket, drew out the jar, looking around the pub as he did. Set it on the table in front of the guy. “I found that in his apartment this morning.”

Gareth went pale. His eyes darted around the pub, he thrust the jar back at Phil, half in panic. “For fuck’s sake, put that away! For fuck’s sake, the mad bastard!”

Coolly, Phil put the jar back in his pocket. “What is it?”

Gareth was sweating. He seemed to be talking half to himself. “Oh, fuck, I can’t believe it. They killed him for that? They fucking killed him for that?”

Phil leaned over and grabbed his hand. “Calm down, mate. People are starting to look. Here—have a mouthful. Better? Now start again. What is that thing?”

Gareth winced from the drink, clutched the glass with both hands in front of him as if to steady himself. His voice shook slightly, was barely audible. “It’s an interface,” he said. “It’s the interface. Or part of it. That’s what they were wanting us to plug our hardware into on their side. What they wanted us to code to…” he spat, grimly.

“It’s technological?” asked Phil in surprise.

“No, it’s not. That’s just it. It’s organic. Now do you get it?”

Phil let out a low whistle. “Wow… I don’t know shit, but, wow… that’s got to be major, like, CIA crap.”

Gareth nodded. “It’s like nothing none of us have ever seen before. Scared most of us shitless even working on it. It was just… wild. We had mapping tables converting code output into electrical signals… like fucking nerve impulses, yeah? And back again. We were all working compartmentalized, weren’t even supposed to discuss it with one another. But, shit, it was obvious that this was something that was going to blow everything else out of the water.”

An idea suddenly struck Phil. “How many of you were working on this… interface thing?”

“Four, in the end.”

“In the end?”

“Five of us started. Jason Dixon… well, he sort of had a breakdown during the project, had to leave. It happens, sometimes,” he shrugged.

Phil registered the name. “People go mad coding websites?”

Gareth coughed out a laugh, bitterly, nodding. “More than you’d think. It’s a high-stress job. Jason’s not the first mate to burn out like that. He just did it on a high-profile project, that’s all.”

“Friend of Matt’s?”

Gareth nodded. “Yeah, they were as thick as thieves, those two.” He eyed him questioningly. “You think there’s a connection?”

Phil shrugged. “Where’s this Jason now?”

“I’ve got an address for him… Listen, I shouldn’t be doing this, I don’t know you from shit, and…” He stopped, helpless.

Phil clasped Gareth’s hand. “Hey, mate, it’s okay. This is starting to scare the crap out of me, too. But there’s something big going on here… I want to make sure we don’t end up like Matt, that’s all. Okay?” he smiled.

Uncertain, Gareth looked up Jason’s address on his phone, held it out for Phil to jot down.

“Your battery’s low,” said Phil, nodding at the screen. “Needs a recharge.”

“Shouldn’t do,” said Gareth, puzzled. “I recharged it this morning.” He looked at the screen, tapped a few icons, and his face fell. “Shit…”

“What’s up?” asked Phil, with a sudden, sinking feeling.

Gareth looked ashen-faced. “This thing’s been transmitting. Looks like someone phoned up, and I answered. Only… I didn’t answer.”

Their eyes met. Phil shivered, his eyes flicking round the pub. Who the fuck had been listening… And how had they…? He got up. “We’d better go.”

Gareth nodded. “Listen,” he said, quickly, as they shook hands. “If you do find him, tell him sorry from me. About everything. Tell him I’m sorry, okay?”

* * *

That night the show finished before the 9 o’clock news, and Phil left by the back way. There was a patch of shadow beneath a large rhododendron on the path from the door, and, as he passed, he caught a sudden whiff of cigarette smoke.

“Don’t turn around, Mr. Morten. I thought you might come this way…”

Phil’s heart pounded, and he felt himself prickle with cold sweat. Out of the corner of his eye, he could just make out a dark shape, see the ruby glow of a cigarette-end as the smoke blew his way again.

“Oh, God…” he said, thickly. “Are you going to kill me…?”

The American voice sounded vaguely amused. “I don’t think there’s any need for that right now, do you, Mr. Morten?”

Relief flooded over him. “No,” he said, softly. “No, there isn’t.”

“I’m glad we’re seeing eye to eye,” continued the voice. “You have a nice life. A nice house, a nice job. Don’t make the wrong decision without having all the facts.”

Phil blinked, staring ahead, desperate to turn around. “What facts?”

Another cloud of cigarette smoke. “Do you know what the State is for, Mr. Morten?”

“The what?”

“The State. The government.”

“Sure… it’s who runs the country. The people we elect…” He trailed off, feeling suddenly foolish.

“You don’t even believe that yourself, do you, Mr. Morten?” said the voice. “The State is an apparatus set up to enable the elite—the aristocracy, the landowners, the Church. Big business, nowadays, too—to control and exploit its resources more effectively. That means me and you, Mr. Morten. It’s like a big farm, and the owners farm us for the work we do, the taxes we pay…”

“So? What are you telling me for?”

“Does it really matter to you who the farmer is, Mr. Morten? Really? I mean, do you know who the farmer is now?”

“I don’t know. Big business? The banks?”

The voice smiled. “See—it doesn’t matter, does it? It doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference. Go home, Mr. Morten. Forget about all this conspiracy stuff, it’s not worth risking your life for. Nothing changes. This is how it is, how it’s always been. It’s the world, and getting yourself killed for some damn fool idea won’t change any of it.”

PART TWO

“Italian developers have created Ubisafe, software which, when used in conjunction with GPS enabled phones, will allow parents to check out their children’s exact location. Bunking off school could now become even more of a challenge for unruly youngsters.”

—BBC News, March 7 2008

That night Phil hardly slept, and when he did it was filled with nightmares of guns and knives and betrayal by his closest friends. He would wake in sweat-soaked sheets, panting and staring wide-eyed into darkness, listening for the slightest unusual sound. His tongue felt huge, his eyes burned, he felt feverish. The next morning, when the endless night was over, he got up groggily and made himself some coffee and sat in the corner away from the door, glaring sombrely at the window. The thought of turning on the TV or radio repelled him.

He noticed his hands were trembling slightly. Suddenly, he stifled a sob. God—they could have killed him last night, as easily as that, and no one would ever have known why. What a fool he’d— He held his hand over his mouth, staring into space.

Why hadn’t they? They’d killed Matt Moseley; he presumed they’d bugged his conversation with Gareth; so why had they satisfied themselves with just threatening him last night? There was a bigger picture here, he could feel it…

Cursing, he washed and dressed and caught the bus to Marble Arch. He took the back streets around Bond Street, went as far down as Oxford Circus, where he milled with the crowds before heading out on a long and circuitous walk to Baker Street. His feet ached with the pounding pavements, he bumped shoulders with as many people as he missed, he kept his head down, fingering the jar with the weird, crab-like thing in his pocket. Finally, it started to rain, and he took refuge in an old-fashioned coffee house, feeling suddenly ravenous, eating pastries and drinking warm milky coffee as the street lights started to come on.

Nobody out there knows, he thought—and they’ll think I’m mad if I say anything. He felt utterly alone. Compartmentalized, Gareth had called it.

Suddenly, something went click. That was how they did it. Out there, London rushed by in all its millions. And not just London: New York, Paris, Tokyo. And all of them filled with millions of rushing people, all of them compartmentalized; working in isolation, cut-off from one another, non-communicating. That was how they did it; that was how they controlled people. Keep them separate, isolated: convince them they’re alone, that it’s hopeless even to try…

He jumped out of the cab before the Maida Vale address Gareth had given him. He wanted a good clear look ahead before he decided what to do. It had stopped raining, and a ragged bunch of clouds were scudding swiftly across a deep, star-filled sky, fading to light-pollution orange round the horizon. He turned his collar up, stuffed his hands in his pockets, and strode off down the pavement, avoiding puddles.

A hundred yards on he stopped, and looked behind him. The street was empty, just a procession of vacant pools of light around street lamps. He started off again, then just as quickly stopped, and turned round fully this time, and froze. One by one, as he watched, the streetlamps began to go out. What the hell—?

Something struck him hard, on the head, and he fell to the ground. Fuck… They must have been—

A blast of wind hit him from the side, and a terrible smell, like rotting meat, open sewer, mixed with all the chemicals from hell. He gagged, groaned, tried to pull himself up. All around, the lights were going out. On the streets, in the houses, everywhere… blackout. Damn…

Another blast, and another blow, sending him sprawling again. This time, something buzzed past his head—something enormous, like some great cloaked moth bigger than a man. Fuck! What the hell was that!

Panic overcame him. Panic, and a primal fear, of the dark, of the unknown, of monsters and bogey men and ghosts and aliens. Shit, shit, shit, he hissed to himself, shit, shit, shit.

He had to run. He scrabbled to his feet. Somewhere above him he heard the sound of whooshing wind, a swooping of some enormous black shape in the air out the corner of his eye, a sinister buzzing sound. He cried out, and tried to run—and the thing came rushing up behind him.

Suddenly there was a flash of light ahead, a crackling, sizzling sound, followed by a terrible, unnatural shriek, like nothing he had ever heard before. A burned, ammonia stench filled his nostrils, acrid, making him gag, and another burst of light and sound from ahead seared into whatever chased him from behind. There was another, inhuman shriek, and suddenly he felt the presence peel away behind him.

“Quick!” came a voice from ahead, “Over here—the manhole!”

Blindly, insanely, Phil forced himself to move, to hurl himself towards the voice. In the black of night, in starlight, he saw a face and a hand beckoning from a manhole in the pavement—his brain would make sense of this later—and dumbly he threw himself after, almost falling down the metal rungs of a ladder and into a tunnel to one side. Scrabbling, scraping, grazing his hands, there was a tear in his jeans, he tasted blood on his lips. Behind him the manhole clanged shut, and a man crawled up beside him. “Keep going,” he hissed. “There’s a room up ahead.”

There was. Phil threw himself into it, panting uncontrollably, ankles kicking at the floor till he felt a wall behind him. A light bulb swayed gently from the ceiling—still lit—and Phil, wide-eyed, watched as the man crawled into the room behind him. Slowly, he sat down, never taking his eyes off Phil. With one hand he brushed some mud off his knees, with the other he cradled a strange-looking metallic device. Phil stared, breathless. He raised his hand to his lips, winced, looked at the blood.

“It’s not serious,” the other man said. “You’re lucky to be alive. The Mi-Go normally just grab you and you’re gone.”

Phil stared, dumbly. “The what…?”

“Mi-Go,” the man said. “It’s Tibetan. I think. Means ‘Abominable Snowman’.” He smiled, ironically.

Phil shook his head. Suddenly he became aware of the room around him. He jumped, half to his feet, looking around him in panic.

The man held out a hand. “Calm down. You’re okay here. You’re safe, for now. They can’t get down here, and even if they could… well, they won’t find us. Not for some time, yet.” He narrowed his eyes. “Who are you?”

Stammering, shaking, words tumbling out in any old order, Phil told him. Told him everything he knew, sometimes laughing hysterically with the bizarreness of it all, sometimes on the verge of tears, sometimes cold, dumb, traumatized. The man sat and listened, saying nothing.

“So they got Matt at last, did they?” he said, finally, frowning sadly. “He was a good chap. I liked him, out of all of them.”

“I met a guy called Gareth. He told me to tell you sorry, if I saw you. Sorry for everything, he said.”

The man’s face hardened, and he smiled, grimly. “Did he? So you know who I am then…” Phil nodded.

“None of us knew what we were getting into, at first,” Jason began, shifting his position on the floor. “How big or how bad it was. I was the first to figure it out—the rest of them just ran for cover when I tried to tell people. Gareth, Matt—all of them. The Pluto guys were coding stuff weirder than I’d ever seen—multiple states, temporal dimensions. They didn’t even use binary. It was completely beyond me from the start.

“I think I got closer to the underlying stuff than any of our guys. Multidimensional, highly parallel, it even looked like there were hypertextual properties in the code itself. It was streets ahead of anything we were capable of; it was like DNA, like it had written itself.

“Anyway—the organic interface you got from Matt’s, yeah? That’s where the shit really started to hit the fan. They called it the ‘core server’; it took us a while to work out they’d got things tied up so that none of us actually got to see the thing. I did, though. I’d got clearance for a week’s work at their HQ, and I’d been working late on some of the port access protocols for the primary interface—the organic thing. I needed to ask one of the Pluto-dot-net technologists about the spec; they had their own space, all shut up behind pass-keys and stuff. That night, the door wasn’t closed. Maybe they thought I’d gone home or something.

“I could hear voices as I got nearer. One of them I recognized as Joss Stuart, their chief technologist, but the other one I didn’t recognize at all. It was plain weird. It was this flat voice—a bit like Stephen Hawking’s synthesizer, but with all the emotion and intonation taken out of it. I wondered what the hell it was—I couldn’t make out the words.

“I got somewhere where I could see through the window in the door. You know what I saw? There was only one person in that room—the technologist guy. He was talking to… well, I guess it must have been the core server.

“It wasn’t like any other server I’d ever seen. It was cylindrical, made out of something like stainless steel. I thought at first it was some kind of stylish new Mac box or a Unix station, but there was something—well, weird—about the aesthetic. All the proportions were wrong—I couldn’t imagine why anyone would design such an ugly-looking box. It was just all wrong.

“I couldn’t see the back of it, but there were four ports on the front. Three of them had some weird kind of USB adapters plugged in—hooked up to a webcam, pair of speakers, and a mike. Really bog-standard gear—it all looked really incongruous.

“Then below it—I guess that must have been the interface we’d all been working on. Shit, that was a weird-looking bit of kit. Matt’s piece, yeah? Except—the bit Matt took looks kind of dried out, now, yeah? Kind of dead? Well, the main interface on the core server looked alive. It was pink, red, glistening, like it was moist. Something really disgusting about it.

“I must have made some noise—not surprising, it freaked the hell out of me—but the voices suddenly stopped. I ducked back away again, dashed as quickly as I could to my PC.

“I don’t know whether they saw me, but I got laid off shortly after when I started talking. Said I’d had a breakdown due to overwork…”

“But you know what? This is the mad thing. All that webcam gear—well, it could have been broadcasting over the internet, Joss Stuart could have been talking to someone by webcam, that’s all possible. But I still don’t think so. That weird flat voice coming out of the speakers, that disgusting pink interface, the strange shit we’d been programming to hook up to it—I reckon Joss had been talking to the core server itself, right in front of him. I reckon there was some kind of actual brain in there, maybe even an organic one. Maybe even a human one.”

Phil stared at Jason, dumbly. “Matt’s diary said he thought there was something living in the internet…”

Jason looked away. “You know, it’s weird to think the whole planet has no idea what’s coming to them. It’s right around the corner—the next few weeks or months. They don’t know the whole world’s about to change, forever.”

“What’s going to happen?”

“It’s already happening. You’ve seen the way things have been going the past few years, haven’t you? Things getting scarier, a bit harder for everyone, yeah? There used to be a lot of money around, people could buy houses, say what they wanted, go where they wanted, read what they liked. Now suddenly everything’s about fear, and staying put and doing as you’re told. Everyone’s in hock to the big banks, the government’s been slowly repealing our civil rights, till they can pretty much arrest you and lock you away for any damn thing. And not just here, you know. It’s everywhere, all around the world. All being conditioned, prepared, set up. All because of those guys, Phil—those flying bastards who just tried to tear your head off.”

Phil sat there, staring. He fingered the strange jar from Matt’s apartment, shuddering as he remembered the primal terror, the feeling of being hunted, the terrible foetor which had swept over him. “What were those things?” he said, finally.

Jason frowned, deeply. “Your astronaut guy was right about one thing, at least. They’re E.T., Phil. They’re space aliens. They’re all that stuff.” He waved his hand towards the ceiling. “They come from out there, somewhere. They have a base in our solar system on Pluto.”

“Pluto-dot-net…”

“Yeah. Hilarious, isn’t it. Alien space humour.”

“But what are they doing?”

Jason suddenly looked exhausted. He placed the weird metal device he’d been holding on the ground before him, and rubbed his face with his hands. He fixed his eyes on Phil.

“They’re taking over, Phil. They’ve been here for years, centuries, secretly mining our planet. There’s some stuff they need here they can’t get anywhere else, don’t ask me what. But they’ve been taking it from us under our noses and we’ve never noticed. Now, with all our clever technology, it’s becoming harder and harder for them. People have been seeing them here and there for years, governments have been covering it up. Now the aliens—the Mi-Go—have lost patience, and they’re coming in force, openly, once and for all.”

Phil looked away. “There’s been some weird CIA-type guy following me since Matt got killed,” he said, softly. “Threatening me, warning me off digging any further. He kept pushing me to continue reporting the astronaut’s story.”

Jason nodded, grimacing. “Our governments have been in contact with them for years. The Mi-Go. Certainly since the last war, if not before. They’ve been getting dribbles of technology from them in return for… concessions. And the aliens—they’ve been infiltrating our societies, our systems. They’ve been preparing us for years—microbes on Mars, oceans on Titan, exoplanets. Preparing us for the great news that We Are Not Alone. It’s called Disclosure. They’re going to tell us how wonderful everything is—but even then it’ll all be still a lie. That’s who your astronaut is working for; that’s why they wanted you to broadcast. That’s who your man-in-black guy is.

“They’ve got agents everywhere. In our governments, controlling the internet: they can get at you anywhere and anytime—DNA databases, medical records, emails, telephone calls, CCTV cameras, passports, bank accounts, everything. You know, their technology lets them separate their consciousnesses from their physical bodies. They could even do it with us, if they wanted. That’s what the core server project was: we plugged one of them directly into the internet. Matt was right—it’s living there, now; it more or less is the internet. Governments have always had it in for the internet—it was the one thing that always escaped their control. Not any more.” He smiled, bitterly.

“But… but… can’t we do some kind of deal with them? Cooperate? I mean, they must be advanced… beings (is that the word?), they’ve got to be able to see sense…”

Jason eyed him with a kind of pity. “Look, Phil, try and get your head round this. The Mi-Go are aliens. Really, totally alien, and totally hostile. They’re so far ahead of us we’re not even physically capable of understanding it. They look at us like we look at sheep and cattle—just something to be milked, exploited, and then carved up and eaten when the time comes. They’d no more negotiate with us than we’d consider negotiating with a bunch of livestock. None of what we do or what we are matters to them, Phil. Can you imagine that? None of it—Jesus, the Bomb, the pyramids, all our history, art, technology, all our achievements—it’s just bugs scratching around in the dirt to them. We don’t matter—none of us. The best thing we could do is keep out of their way. But we can’t, not any more.”

“What can we do?”

“I don’t know. It makes me sick to think about it—they’re so powerful, we don’t have a cat in hell’s chance of fighting back. I sometimes think all our modern society—the whole damn modern world—has been manipulated, formed by the Mi-Go specifically to better control us. Our governments, the media, they’re all on their side, carrying out their nightmare agenda, telling us what they want us to know. It’s like everything we’ve ever known was wrong. I just don’t think we should lie down and die, though. We’ve got to try and do something—otherwise… well, otherwise it’s just the cattle farm. Otherwise we lose, forever. There’ll be no going back.”

Phil shook his head. It was all too much. But there it was before him—the weird jar from Matt’s, the “ray gun”, this room, the CIA guy, the creature out there… He closed his eyes, lowered his head. He wished none of this had happened.

Maybe the CIA guy was right. Did it really matter who ran the farm? Wouldn’t it just be better not to know? To be one of those cattle, to go about your daily life, happy in your blind ignorance, unaware of the great arm reaching out for you, unaware of the slaughterhouse ahead… Wouldn’t it?

He looked up at Jason. “We’ve got to tell people about this. We need to tell people what’s really going on. So they can’t pretend it isn’t happening.”

“How?”

“I don’t know yet. Maybe we’ll use the show. Go viral. We can’t use the internet—not any more. We need to just get the truth out there, so that when that thing happens—what do you call it?”

“Disclosure.”

“When Disclosure happens, people will know it’s bollocks, and they just might try and do something to stop it.”

“We can’t win, you know.”

“We don’t have to, for God’s sake. Just refusing to line up for slaughter is enough. If we’re on the brink of extinction, let’s go down fighting, for fuck’s sake. Are you up for it?”

Jason sighed. His hands were shaking slightly.

“Oh, why the fuck not. We’re already dead anyway.”

“You don’t know that. If we fight… well, you never know. We might force a draw or something. You never know. Give me a one-in-a-million chance of survival to certain death any day.”

Jason smiled, wryly. “Death or glory?”

“Death or glory.”

PART THREE

“The process of Disclosure is the fundamental objective of UFO research and investigation. Based on this overwhelming mass of evidential material both within the UFO research community as well as within the sequestered data residing in government archives, Disclosure is the ultimate terrestrial imperative for the human race as we discover ourselves, the universe and those who share it with us. The question remains: are we ready for it?”

—Victor Viggiani, International Metaphysical and Scientific Symposium, Brisbane, Australia, August 2003

Two days later Phil got a hastily scribbled note from Jason. “I’ve found out what they’re going to do. It’s amazing, the whole thing. It’s full disclosure. They’re going to announce it to everyone, everywhere. It’s the end of the world, Phil. We’ve got five days.”

Two days after that, Phil put an entry in the schedule for the next day. “1900: JD interview”, it said. “Can you come?” he asked cryptically from a call box that evening. “Yes,” came the reply. “I’ll bring some toys.” He hung up.

The next day minutes before seven was still a no-show. Phil paced up and down the smoking room, an undrunk coffee still steaming on the podium table. Selina popped her head round the door. “Still no sign of your seven o’clock, Phil,” she said, concerned. “What d’you want to do?”

Phil took a drag on his cigarette, tried to clear his head. His fingers trembled, Ashes To Ashes kept running around in his head. My momma said, to get things done, you’d better not mess with Major Tom. My momma said…

He turned to Selina, whirling round so fast she jumped. “Listen, Selina. I’m going ahead with the interview spot, I’m gonna do it all myself. Whatever happens, keep me on air, okay? Promise me, sweetheart, whatever happens, you’ll try?”

Selina’s face broke in a look of alarm. “But… Phil… it’s your job… And mine…”

He grabbed hold of her hands, and for the first time the girl looked scared as she saw the terrible seriousness on his face. “Look, I’ve never asked anything like this from you before, and I won’t again. It’s the most important thing I’ve ever asked. If we all get through this, I’ll make it up to you, sweetheart, I promise I will. Will you do it?”

Tears welled up in her eyes, and now she looked really scared. She couldn’t speak, but just nodded her head. She tried to say something, but the sob which was welling up in her throat stopped her. She broke free of his hold and fled into the control room.

In the DJ booth Phil settled his earphones on his head and nodded to Selina through the glass. She looked pale, but controlled. It was going to work.

* * *

“You’re an absolute diamond!” Phil laughed, as he ran out of the booth and crushed Selina in an almighty bear-hug. “God bless you, darlin’. We did it!”

Phil was beside himself. It had gone better than he could ever have imagined. Everything he had wanted to say, everything he knew, all the accumulated evidence from Matt, Gareth, Jason, everyone who knew anything about the terrible secret unfolding on earth—he had said. It didn’t matter what they did to him now—the information was out there, it was public. People would be talking about it, swapping recordings. Never mind if they thought him crazy: when Disclosure did happen—just days from now, if Jason was right—people would realize; there would be an alternative explanation out there; and some people would believe it. Not everyone, not by a long shot, but enough. Maybe enough to make a difference.

He didn’t know what he was going to do now. He suspected he wouldn’t have to be the one to make the next move. If Jason was right, everything was about to go to hell in a handcart anyway…

Outside, everything was normal, just as it always had been. People went about their business, cars inched through the traffic, pubs and bars blared out tinny, manufactured pop music into the street. So… normal. It felt unreal.

On the way home he stopped the cab at his favourite deli. “You like my show today, Ali?” he called over the counter, beaming. Ali smiled back, handing over his tapas and falafels, “yes, I did, Phil. It was great. I’d been kicking myself I’d missed it before, so I recorded it this time. You’re a funny guy!”

Phil’s face faltered. “Funny? How d’you mean?”

“The stuff about the fake hairdresser, it was really good. Reminded me of that chap on the telly. Was it really you doing all those voices?”

A gaping abyss opened up in the pit of Phil’s stomach, and he reached out to the counter to steady himself.

“Hey, Phil, you okay, boss? You look like you seen a ghost…”

They hadn’t even broadcast it. They’d let him go through with the entire show, and it had never even gone out. Slowly, all around him, he felt the walls of his world crumbling away, leaving him alone, vulnerable…

He turned, and ran out of the shop, heedless of the protests and shouts behind him.

In the cab his mobile rang. Phil knew who it was even before he answered it.

“Sorry, Mr. Morten. You understand of course we couldn’t let you broadcast. But it’s good to know you’ve taken a side in what’s coming. I admire that in a man.

“I would say sorry about your comrade Mr. Dixon, but as a fellow soldier I’m sure you’ll understand we had to wait for you before we could make a move. Good luck, Mr. Morten. Death or glory, wasn’t it?”

* * *

It was dark at Jason’s place. Even before he got there, he could see the flashing lights. Crime scene. The manhole was taped off, the scene of the crime covered by a tent. A bored looking policeman stood by a wall wearing a dayglo vest and listening to the chatter on his radio. A small crowd of onlookers milled about in the street.

“What happened here?” Phil’s voice was hoarse.

One of the onlookers looked concerned. “Bloody hell, you all right mate?” he said, steadying Phil at the elbow and guiding him to the wall. “You don’t look well at all. Here, come and sit down.”

Phil pushed him away gently, stood up, swaying. “I’m all right. What happened?”

“Right bloody mess. Some kind of psycho, I reckon. They say he took the top of a chap’s head clean off. Left him half out of a manhole, didn’t take nothing, except cleaned out his brain completely. Totally gone. They say the chap was actually living in the drains, too.”

Phil’s eyes burned. He felt numb. He turned, his stomach rising, and staggered off into the night.

* * *

In a living room filled with catalogue furniture Phil lies sprawled on a sofa in front of a TV. Other than the pictures moving on the screen, the scene is utterly static. One of Phil’s arms, flung out at right angles over the edge of the sofa, drips out blood into a large pool on the parquet floor. Phil’s eyes are open—half-open—and flicker, slightly, as his dying heart beats out its final feeble timpani into the otherwise empty room.

On the television, a crowd is gathered on the White House lawn. The President is there, and the world’s media. Everyone is waiting. Then, like a scene from Disneyland or a Steven Spielberg movie—in the background somewhere, a band strikes up—beings come drifting down out of the sky, enormous, semi-humanoid intelligences drifting down on great, gossamer wings. They make one think of crustaceans in some strange way. They land on shining, pinkish claws, and one of them shambles across the lawn to the waiting President, who walks forwards boldly and extends his hand in greeting. The visitor from the stars holds out a bony, crablike claw in return, which the President takes and shakes, warmly. And so, a new age dawns for humankind.

Elsewhere, as night falls, there are explosions, and gunfire, and the buzzing sound of helicopters fills the sky.

THE END