Page 125 of The Examiner

Alyson’s fine, as far as I know.

Doodle message group [Private] Gela and Cameron, 4 May 2024:

Gela Nathaniel

Please submit something – anything – for Assignment Six and I’ll make sure it gets a grade.

Cameron Wesley

Bit tricky. Might be going deeper into this job than I thought. Submit something for me.

Gela Nathaniel

You can come up with a basic webpage and image. Do something on your phone and send it to me. I’ll jazz it up in FlowHand. Where are you, and why haven’t you returned kiss-kiss to Mae yet?

Cameron Wesley

You’ve spoken to Mae?

Gela Nathaniel

She’s pissed off, and rightly so. If you tell me where it is, I can get it and give it back. Not much to ask, is it?

Cameron Wesley

Did she tell you what kiss-kiss is?

Gela Nathaniel

It’s new tech they don’t want in the wrong hands.

Cameron Wesley

Not new. It’s old, old, old tech.

Gela Nathaniel

Whatever, it belongs to RD8 and they want it back. Why would you risk your reputation for an old radio?

Patrick Bright’s Doodle Diary, 4 May 2024:

Went round to Jonathan’s. We sat staring at each other for God knows how long. Probably five minutes, but time means nothing when you walk through that door. We both saw it in each other’s eyes: total mental and physical exhaustion. He must be broken, surely? Or did losing his mother and sister make him steely-strong?

I feel like we could work out how we got here by going back, plotting a route, but I don’t want to notice other paths we should’ve taken and didn’t. Too late to go back. Didn’t see Alyson. Could’ve popped my head round the door, but … couldn’t bring myself to, even though she’s still in there.

Jonathan finally says, ‘It’s nearly time for the voice. Come on.’ Couldn’t say no, even if it was an option. We went upstairs. The unit has its own room now, which was a bedroom until, well, recently. We don’t say a word, he switches it on and then we wait. Harsh white noise bounces off the walls. The sky is crystal-clear outside, yet the atmospherics are pure raging up there. We hear them over the airwaves. And then, like a thing you dread but know is inevitable, the white noise stops. First the silence. Then the voice.

‘It’s dark. I’m trapped. Can’t move. Please help me. It’s killing me. Have you killed me?’

At least I think it asks that at the end, but the white noise kicks back in. Jonathan has scribbled everything down in a notebook. He does this every day, each broadcast copied down and dated. Only when the voice says, ‘Have you killed me?’, he stops dead.

‘This is the first time it’s asked that,’ he says, although he flicks through the book to make sure. ‘Interesting. It’s coming to a realisation, I think.’ When did we switch to using the impersonal pronoun?

‘That it’s dead?’ I ask.

‘Yes. It’s possible this unit tunes into a place of transition where the consciousness transmutes after death. The voice says they can’t see, hear or move. That’s been the basis of the broadcasts from the start. Well, they are all physical sensations of being. Of being in a corporeal body. If you are suddenly taken out of your body, those are the feelings you’d miss. They are coming to terms with a different state of being.’

It’s a rational evaluation on the one hand, and on the other it’s totally bonkers. But I can’t argue. Jonathan needs to believe this.