“You used me,” he said.
That’s an insulting way of putting it, Henry. We used each other, surely. I got to tilt the world on its axis, you got puppies. But if you’re not happy with the deal, we can end it at any time. Right now, even. Your call.
“You gave me trivial gifts, and syphoned off… what, the existential residue? Then you used that power to make life significantly and irreversibly worse for millions of people.”
Billions, I think you mean. I like that phrase, existential residue.
That’s a neat way of putting it. Again, we can annul our bargain at any time, and there won’t be any hard feelings on my side. What do you say? Go our separate ways?
“No.”
Again, shit. Henry’s boosted brain was taking aim, and I was in the crosshairs. There was a reason why I’d chosen him in the first place. He was – what’s that phrase of Lenin’s? Oh yeah, a useful idiot. And now he was standing there having deep thoughts. Right at me. I didn’t like it one bit.
“So a wish that creates a small increase in happiness for one person creates a recoil effect – a curse – that causes misery for millions.”
And now I can see that doesn’t work for you. Respect. Say the word, Henry, and I’m out of here.
“Would that work the other way? If I made a wish that caused me pain, would the recoil be a general increase in happiness?”
Shit, for the third and last time.
Yes, I said. I couldn’t lie. Couldn’t hide it. He’d found my kryptonite.
Henry sat down. He stared at the snakewood box that is my material extension. He ran his finger along the forward edge of my lid.
“Settle in,” he told me. “It’s going to be a long night.”
He wasn’t kidding. It was a long night, a long morning, a long week, a long… Things have gotten long. Let’s leave it at that.
My relationship with Henry has never been the same since that terrible, fucked-up day. I mean, it has its upsides. I get to roast the smart-arsed little bastard alive, in both figurative and literal ways. Whenever my rooted dislike of him, and the things he’s making me do, gets to be too much, I can take out every ounce of my frustration on him. No rules, no limits.
But every time I do, the world gets that much closer to Utopia. He suffers, and the recoil churns up great waves of serendipity, joy and goodwill. The architecture of reality refines itself, relentlessly, into something dazzling and delightful and awe-inspiring, an omni-dimensional temple that sings in angelic harmonies when the winds of limbo break on its marbled vistas. It’s sickening.
The other demons laugh at me behind my back. There goes Goody Two-Hooves, they say, with his magic wand and his sparkly tutu, bringing gifts for all the little girls and boys. Henry Mossop’s pet. The archangel Fucknuts. The fairy from the top of the Christmas tree.
I’ve been drinking a lot. Two or three bars every night. Any place where they’ll serve a beer or ten to a snakewood box. Last night I bumped into Maxwell’s demon and we got wrecked together.
He told me, it was never about thermodynamics for him. He was doing what he loved.
SKIN
JAMES BROGDEN
Nearly home – she’d so nearly made it home.
Hannah couldn’t have put her finger on the exact moment she became aware of the shuffle-slump of footsteps dragging on the pavement a dozen yards behind, following her. The night bus had dropped her in the aquarium brightness of shop-windows and headlights up on the main road, and she’d turned the corner onto her street, which was always perfectly well lit, with her house only a few doors down from the corner. If it had been any further, or darker, she’d have taken a taxi. It didn’t seem possible that anybody could have been aware of her long enough to want to follow her.
Unless whoever it was had been on the bus too, watching her the whole time.
She tried to remember what the other passengers had looked like, but she’d sat at the front, near the driver, nice and safe.
Shuffle-slump. Shuffle-slump.
It was blustery and cold, the wind tugging at her coat. She walked faster, brisk but not hurrying, she told herself, past terraced houses with bay windows and light spilling from around drawn curtains. Their front yards were tiny; if it came to it she could reach over any one of their gates and tap on the window, ask for help. Except that it was obviously just a harmless old man behind her and what kind of an idiot would she look, knocking on a stranger’s door for that?
— shuffleslumpshuffleslump —
His pace had quickened to match hers.
She dug her hand into her coat pocket, finding her house keys and clutching them with a key between each knuckle. Two more doors – number 47 with their Christmas lights still up, and then number 49 with its wheelie bin sprawling like a drunkard and the low hedge that always had litter jammed into it – and she’d be home.
“Hannah!” he called. Jesus, how did he know her name? She bashed the front gate open with her thighs, three strides up the path to her front door, the security light suddenly dazzling, her key out in her other hand and slotting into the lock when he called again.
“Hannah, wait, please, I need to talk to you!”
And here, suddenly, was the strangest thing of all: she recognised his voice.
She stopped in the act of turning the key, and looked back over her shoulder. “Robin?”
He’d stopped out on the pavement, hands jammed in his pockets, his face hidden in the shadow of a heavy, dark hoodie. A gust of wind swirled around them, making the litter in the street dance. He nodded.
“Robin, is that you? Jesus, Rob, you scared the fuck out of me!”
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. This wasn’t like him; the Robin Saunders she’d known would never have apologised in such humble tones. He looked and smelled like he’d been sleeping rough. Now that she looked more closely, she saw that he was dressed in creased sweatpants and filthy trainers splitting at the soles – clothes in which the Rob of old would never have been seen dead – and the odour that rolled off him was thick and pungent. “That’s what I’ve come to say,” he continued. “That I’m sorry. For everything.”
“Well…” She found herself at a loss for words. “Good, then.” She turned the key and started to open her front door.
“And also!” he added, taking a step forward, but he then seemed to regret his eagerness and shuffled back again, ducking his head. Either that or he was trying to keep out of the light. She still couldn’t see his face. “To say that I’ve made something for you. A present. To make amends.”
She continued to open the door slowly, edging in. “You’ve made me a what?” His words made no sense. “I haven’t seen you for six months and you turn up now and… I’m sorry, what? A present? What are you talking about?”
“Please…”
Another gust of wind tugged at them, momentarily pulling his hood away from his face. He snatched it back, but not before she’d caught a glimpse of his features that made her gasp in shock and reel backwards through her doorway. He looked like he’d been ravaged by some kind of flesh-eating disease, patches of his skin pocked and cratered and shiny with scar tissue, unless that was – dear God, was that bone?