The Puppet Shop

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.

Dennis slumped, work-weary, into his worn armchair. He flicked the cap off a bottle of supermarket-brand beer and sighed deeply. Another damp, lonely day at the scrap yard. The sky colours were bright today, at least, although the static shocks from the car bodywork always took him by surprise. He fished the TV remote out from between the seat cushions and turned on the set.

Cowboys shot at each other on horseback. A Wilhelm Scream. An Indian toppled from a clifftop. He pressed a button on the remote.

A spinning crystal skull; eyes shining from an unspecific light source. Hard drives for exobytes of data, encoded by lasers. He pressed a button.

A news reader, looking glum, a still from a burning house propped on her padded shoulder. Dennis sighed again, flicked a fleck of rust from his knee. He pressed a button.

A documentary on a hole the Russians once dug, so deep that they reached hell itself. There was a recording of the screams of the damned. Dennis was unmoved. He heard worse every day, just riding the elevator to ground level. Hell exists on the earthly plane, no need to go any deeper. He pressed a button.

A music video. A young woman wearing fishnets and a leather hat was dancing with a dead crow in formaldehyde. Dennis yawned. He pressed a button.

Behind the glass, Dr Terence turned to Rokus. “He’s not improving,”

“Not in the way we want,” countered Rokus, keeping his eyes on Dennis.

“Another week,” said Terence, “then we run the closedown.”

Rokus nodded in agreement. Terrence pressed a button.

Darren kicked the General Magic under his desk. It was on the blink again, making gurgling noises and becoming uncomfortably hot. Now would be a bad time for it to crap out on him, when he had so much to do. The commands from Asteron were coming thick and fast, an army preparing for battle. He tapped on the computer keyboard, scrolling through the messages they had sent him. Ever since the first broadcast intrusion, where they had interrupted his viewing of Doctor Who to let him know of his recruitment, the messages had been consistently brief, pragmatic and obtuse.

But this was how Asteron worked, and he knew better than to question them. He was fortunate, blessed even, to have been conscripted into the resistance. He didn’t know how many of them there were, but given the activity on the private message boards he was far from alone.

The latest instruction, in broken grammar as always, stated ‘BECOME IT WHEN FAST REGARD 76′. He drummed his fingers on his chipped teeth. The number 76 came up often, and was significant to Asteron, and the movement. He would occasionally see people with ’76’ on their hats or clothing, or the number on a higher than expected proportion of car license plates. This is how he knew he was protected.

The General Magic sighed and its LEDs flickered wanly. He kicked it and the computer monitor dimmed and was rejuvenated. BECOME IT WHEN FAST REGARD 76. The spider icon next to the message blinked, spun and disappeared. Darren took the needles out of his hands and switched off the machine.

Sheila’s bag was large, of thick tan leather, with floral embroidery. It went everywhere with her, including Dr Kirline’s office. The bag was large and sturdy enough to provide protection from the unknown, a role it was currently performing, sat on her lap as the doctor spoke.

Dr Kirline was – and Sheila wasn’t sure of exactly the right words here – a brown man. He was explaining in soft tones how the protocols worked, and the risks inherent in them. Sheila wondered if his god was her God. Or if his god had an elephant’s head, or lots of arms. Her thought process uncomfortably changed course, like a rat hitting a maze cul-de-sac.

There was a backpack apparently, that she had to wear. It was black and ugly. Couldn’t she put the contraption in her tan leather bag with floral embroidery, she asked? Dr Kirline smiled and said she could, as long as the wires reached the electrodes. Her dishwashing hands whiteknuckled the thick tan leather. She was going to be late for brunch with David.

Dr Kirline was talking about the stories in the news. The ones about the institute and that poor girl, the bald one who jumped. Sheila made empathetic cooing noises until Dr Kirline looked serious and told her that there were other forces at work, that wanted to besmirch the Institute’s reputation, and he wouldn’t let that happen.

But Sheila wasn’t worried. Like the tan leather bag with floral embroidery, she was resilient.

Like the tan leather bag with floral embroidery, she was practical.

Like the tan leather bag with floral embroidery, she was empty.