The Puppet Shop

When Marina was a little girl, she used to stare up at the clouds that skimmed across the summer sky. She was 27 years old now, and couldn’t remember the last time she’d looked up beyond her own head height. The implant locations itched.

A wise old teacher at her primary school had warned her of this – that growing up literally takes you further and further from nature every year. Your body gets taller, your sense organs inch away from the grass and the leaves and the bugs. Your hands have to travel a greater distance to pick up a caterpillar. The teacher advised her against it – growing up, that is – but non-plussed, she had gone back to crafting dolls out of Play-Doh.

If you combine all the colours of Play-Doh together, you get an off-putting purple-brown lump. This is how Marina felt at this moment.

Her brother had convinced her, at age 15, that dogs couldn’t look up. They can, of course. But now, at age 27, Marina could not.

The Institute promised to help her, they had technology to separate the Play-Doh colours, they said – to give her back her yellows and reds and blues. To unhinge her neck and enable her once again to look at the clouds in the aching blue sky.

So that was why she signed up, why she had to carry this bag everywhere, and be careful not to tangle the wires in her bra straps. After three months had passed, she just felt self-conscious and purple-brown.

But then she met Dennis, when he opened the boot of the Pontiac, and everything changed.

Another message from Asteron, the boards were abuzz. Across the globe, adherents to the new life cycle speculated and drooled. This one was more cryptic than the last, comprising as it did of a single GIF of Elmo from Sesame Street DJing a party. It was run through spectral analysis, multiple AI algorithms, young priests and old priests but to date nobody had decoded it.

Darren wondered if perhaps the message was the GIF itself. Maybe Asteron just wanted everyone to party and be happy, like Elmo. But how would that end the Institute’s schemes and reverse the Time Damage? He wasn’t smart enough to figure it out. He pinged the ring pull on his can of lager. It resonated at precisely 432hz.

All of a sudden, a shockwave of nausea and angry bees engulfed his one-bedroom apartment. He was immediately surrounded by Muppets of all shapes and colours, and they were all dancing. Strobe lights pummelled his skull. In the hazy distance of his kitchenette, Elmo was spinning the wheels of steel.

Darren pinged the ring pull again, another 432hz note and the apartment returned to its regulation damp gloom. He glanced at his computer monitor, a smiling spider with the words “CONGRATULATIONS” beneath it flashed in bleary monochrome.

The Mosaic Cat is a rare breed. Not so much a breed, actually, as a genetic mutation. This particular type of cat has patches of different coloured fur all over its body – seemingly at random. The Mosaic Cat does not know what it is.

It goes to the tuxedo cats, they hiss and claw at the creature – it retreats. It approaches a gaggle of tabbies preening in the sun, they scatter in fear and mistrust. It tries to befriend a Golden Retriever as a last resort, but the animal pines and backs away.

The Mosaic Cat is an original, almost unique. You could go your entire life without seeing one. That would be just fine, for the Mosaic Cat.

Over the course of its life, the Mosaic Cat becomes bitter. It skulks in shadows and feeds at night on plump mice. In the darkness it’s the same as any other feline – a pair of crystal eyes gleaming at the back of a barn, or a fleeting shape in the peripheral vision as it skitters beneath a VW Beetle.

Asteron issued a directive for the selective breeding of Mosaic Cats as a distraction tactic. This was decades ago. Nobody was successful and the task remained in ‘Incomplete’ status. The best anyone could do was mildly telepathic rats.

The mildly telepathic rats knew what they were.

When he was 27, Alan had gained the power of clairvoyance by eating infected meat. At 28, his fiancee left him after he (accurately) predicted her brother’s death in a car accident. Her brother’s VW Beetle was crushed flat by an 18-wheeler, driven by a half-blind, fully-drunk man named Chester Knowles.

Life got harder from that point. Alan had no control over his soothsaying ability – sometimes it would come to him in a dream, other times he would be humming a tune that turned into words, and those words brought news of death. It was never good news, Alan noted.

He tried to use his powers for good, calling into late-night radio talk shows high on weed and mushrooms, but as the host and the 3am audience were also high on weed an mushrooms, nobody took him seriously or had the long-term memory to check up on his grim predictions.

One day, while walking his neighbours dog – a wiry-haired terrier named Spatchcock – around his neighbourhood, he saw a flyer posted on a telegraph pole. It glowed like a radium watch face from across the street, and he was drawn to it.

“SPECIAL INDIVIDUALS REQUIRED FOR NEW BREAKTHROUGH PROCEDURE” read the headline. It was one of those posters with tear-off phone number strips at the bottom. None had been taken. Alan plucked a soggy strand and put it in his pocket. One week later, he was stood in front of the Institute’s intimidating concrete facade, wondering what the spray-painted messages on the front steps meant.

It was 1976.

A cockroach scuttled over the pile of papers on Dr Terence’s desk. It had been weeks now since any kind of positive report from the field. The General Magic-powered devices were out in the wild, on 53 willing participants, but the desired effect had yet to materialise. Questions were starting to be asked: Why were people disappearing? Why couldn’t we keep the rescue dogs alive beyond thirty days? Why were apports inconsistent in their size and location?

Dr Terence stroked his pointed beard. Pressing a button on the intercom he summoned Janice, his assistant. She dutifully appeared, pen poised above pad like a spear fisherman.

“Yes, Dr Terence?”

“Janice, how long have you worked here?”

“3 years, no – wait – 4 years?” She seemed uncertain, her eyes fogged.

“Do you work here?” asked Terence, raising an eyebrow.

“I-I don’t know. I don’t think so?” Janice’s knees gave way and she slumped to the floor, holding her head, woozy.

“Imbeciles,” muttered Terence under his breath. He punched a button on his desk console and Janice disappeared.

In a fit of pique, Terence snapped the pencil he had been spinning in his fingers. It was time to up the dose, jump on the other side of the risk/reward see-saw. Opening his desk drawer, he pulled out a black box, sprouting wires that terminated in rubberised electrodes. He attached them firmly to his temples and scalp, and activated the device. Sometimes, he thought, when you want something doing properly – you have to do it yourself.

Asteron reset us all back to January 1st, 1976. The Camaro was now a VW Beetle. The Institute was a patch of waste ground. This wasn’t the first time this had happened, and we all knew why. It was time to re-run the process.

Rokus was the first one to wake up, blowing bubbles as his lungs restarted. He looked annoyed. Harry Planter was next, coughing and spluttering on the grass. Terence was already up and walking around, examining the scrubland, kicking at the sod with bare feet.

“Who was it this time?” demanded Terence.

“Hunter, I think,” drawled Harry Planter, fishing an anachronistic cigarette from the pocket of his scrubs. “That wily bastard must have found the new lever.”

“We’ve got a fucking mole,” Rokus growled. He spat phlegm into the wiry dust. “This is really pissing me off.”

“Can’t have been Hunter,” Terence mused, “guy was clueless, a vegetable in 2025.”

I sighed, pulled the now damp and flaccid electrodes from my scalp. “They got the passphrase, obviously,” I intoned, bored and desperate. “We need to get back to the hospital, and start again.”

Terence nodded, his head bearing a corona of midday sun. He bent down and picked something out of the dirt. Another Shar Pei skull. He pocketed it.

Rokus stared up at the Institute, a knot of nerves cradled in his stomach. He was excited to join such a progressive organisation, and had dismissed his former colleagues’ warnings and ill omens as pure jealousy. Terence, Kirline et al were leaders in their field, masters of their craft, and had taken a chance on him – an orphan from the poorest part of town with barely the qualifications to sweep the car park.

Eric stared at the scrap yard, a silver trail of mucus on his sleeve. He was hungover and reticent for his first day on the job. He had dismissed his parent’s positive outlook and wide smiles as pure desperation – any excuse to get him out of the house. Dennis – the owner and his father’s friend from the darts team – had been persuaded to take the teen under his wing and show him the way of the breaker’s yard.

Taking a deep breath, Rokus pushed open the shiny doors. The foyer was filled with boxes and equipment yet to be unpacked. A few staff members were checking things off clipboards and pushing their glasses up their shiny noses. “Excuse me,” he addressed the nearest tabula rasa. “I’m here for my first day, under Dr Terence?”. The lab coated automaton gestured impatiently to the elevator, and barked a number. Rokus entered the elevator, punched the required floor and waited.

Spitting onto the bare earth, Eric trudged towards the office – a temporary structure which appeared to have been in place for decades. A fine drizzle anointed the dead cars piled to either side of the shack. He knocked on the cold metal door. “Come in,” said a wheezy voice from inside.

He emerged into a room, around 20 feet square. The walls were bare and white. It took him by surprise – whatever he was expecting, this wasn’t it. It was so bright, and so spare, that his eyes and brain took a few moments to acclimatise. It suddenly occurred to him that someone was sitting in an armchair in the middle of the otherwise empty room. “Hello?” he said, “I’m new here. Am I in the right place?”

“Yes,” said the man in the armchair, “you both are.”

Harry Planter sucked on a cigarette and focussed his binoculars. The Camaro’s leather seats were hot to the touch, its dashboard cracked and faded. Nobody had come out of the Institute for the past four hours. A pile of cigarette butts sat beneath the open window like hungry mice. He dropped the binoculars into his lap and made a small cursive note in his pad. There had to be an easier way of earning a living.

When Harry was a young man, he served in the war. Agent Orange coated his lungs and gave him super powers – the power to hallucinate and hack up clots of blood at will. He worked security, bail bonds, mall cop, now private investigator. It wasn’t as glamorous as it sounded. A lot of the time it just meant sticking to leather seats, killing the chemicals in your lungs with other chemicals.

This stakeout had lasted a week so far, without a lot to show for it. He wasn’t even sure who his client was; envelopes in his drop box with a spider logo stamped in the corner, brief instructions and a wad of used bills. He wasn’t proud, but he was hungry, so he took the job.

A glint of sunlight tracked across the Camaro. The door of the Institute had swung open and a middle aged woman had emerged, carrying a dog. The dog seemed to be asleep, or maybe fake. Harry scrambled to get the binoculars to his eyes. “Well, hello Sheila,” he rasped. The woman pulled sunglasses down over her eyes, and put the dog-shaped thing into a large shoulder bag. In a few moments, a black car pulled up and swallowed her before whispering away.

Harry put the car in drive, and pulled out after her, keeping a respectful distance. His mobile phone rang. He spat the cigarette out of the open window and scrambled in the centre console to retrieve it.

“ABORT,” said a computer voice at the end of the line. “BECOME IT WHEN FAST REGARD 76” it barked.

“What the fuck, who is this?” snarled Harry, but the voice just kept repeating the same digital command. He hung up, threw the phone in the passenger footwell and peeled off into a side street.

Every night for the past four weeks, Alan Hunter had dreamt of the Kraken. He could taste the sea air, feel the pitch and yaw of the boat as it tumbled under the beast’s attack. It was so real, the sweat he woke in could have been seawater. Some of the electrodes would come loose, and he would feel a spike of anxiety at the lost data.

It was his ex-wife Martha who had convinced him he needed help. Alan’s rebuttal was – he was already getting help. That’s why he went to the Institute four months ago and signed up for the trial. They said they could stop the shakes, the fibres in his skin, make automatic doors open for him again. Martha insisted he see the protocol through to the end. A week after signing the contract he discovered Martha had joined the Institute as a researcher.

From the corner of his bleary eye, Alan Hunter saw a tentacle slither out of his bedroom. He felt the compunction to follow the Kraken – now seemingly escaped from his unconscious mind – so he picked up the GM unit and crept quietly onto the landing. The unit warbled quietly as his bare feet padded over the sodden carpet, and down the stairs.

As he neared the bottom, he could hear the TV playing. Odd, he had definitely turned it off. Creeping closer to the darkened room, he saw the outline of a lumpen figure slumped in his armchair. The television was playing a re-run of an old Moonlighting episode. He approached the armchair, wielding the General Magic like a weapon, ready to bring it crashing down on the intruder’s head.

He looked up from the armchair, the Kraken rearing over him, it’s tentacles writhing. He threw up his arms to protect himself, and dislodged three of the four electrodes. The monster disappeared.

Alan continued watching the television, hoping for a resolution to the Anselmo case.