Swan Songs, page 15
“Err, OK,” I shrugged, and stepped behind the front desk. He held the trapdoor open and I went down first. Stepping into the unknown while the only way out is in the hands of a man you barely know is not something one should make a habit of, but there we were. Mike checked the coast was clear and followed me in, carefully closing the trapdoor above him. Each of the wooden steps creaked louder than the last as I descended closer to the uneven concrete floor below.
Eventually I reached the bottom. The basement was as dimly lit as the shower rooms, but from what I could make out, in my experience, seemed to be fairly typical for a premises of its kind. A few boxes here and there, general bits of old junk, etc., nothing out of the ordinary.
Against the exposed brick wall across the room stood an antique bookcase which, despite being devoid of books and enveloped in thick mats of dust and cobwebs, still looked valuable. I imagined, if restored to its original glory, it would have been a great addition to the room with the grand window.
Mike stepped down onto the cold ground, walked around me and over to the bookcase. “Give us a hand will you Len,” he said and slowly heaved the bookcase away from the wall.
I joined in half-heartedly, using no strength whatsoever, allowing Mike to do all the work. Finally, he seemed satisfied with the amount of space between the bookcase and wall. I stepped back to take a look. Hidden behind the bookcase was a big steel door and lying on the floor in front of the door, a big bunch of keys. Mike picked them up and began unlocking the array of padlocks of varying shapes and sizes one by one. Often having to try several keys per lock before picking the right one.
He lay the last padlock down on the floor. “That should do it,” he said, then pushed the heavy door open with a clang and a boom. The room behind it lit up, photographs of blurry-faced creatures and not so blurry-faced human ones filled the fading hospital-blue walls. A pile of laptops, bits of paper and more photographs were scattered across a steel desk.
“Who are you, man? What is this place?” I asked, for the first time concerned, one foot in and one foot out with a hand against the open door.
“Pull the bookcase over the door will you Len mate?” he said, not registering my question.
I looked around the room again and hesitated but curiosity won.
“Argh, alright then fuck it,” I complied.
I tried to pull the bookcase but didn’t get very far.
“It’s too heavy, man,” I moaned, prompting Mike to do it instead. Once the bookcase was in place, he closed the metal door; the scraping of metal on concrete went through me, making me shudder. Scanning the mosaic of photographs on the walls, I stopped at a picture of myself standing on stage frowning into a microphone. Snatching the photograph from the wall, leaving half the Blu Tack behind in its place, I turned to Mike.
“This is a good picture like, but why is it here?”
“Well mate, that’s why I got you down here isn’t it?” Mike responded. “You’ve got a passenger… in here mate,” he said, tapping his head with his index finger, “being used as what they call a vessel you are.”
I shook my head with my hands up, exasperated.
“They got you when you worked in that GENPHARM factory up north mate,” he informed me, then looked at me, smiling with his mouth closed, awaiting a response I was too dumbfounded to give.
“Well mate,” he continued with a shrug, straightening his posture and turning on his heel like a soldier to face the wall from which I snatched the photograph, “a quick history lesson is in order.” He cracked his neck with his hand and cleared his throat, “I guess it started with those blurry-faced green bastards” he said, pointing at a picture of one of them on the wall, “Although I wouldn’t pin all the blame on them! We don’t know exactly when they first arrived, and we haven’t got the foggiest where the fuck from either, so don’t ask!” he joked. “We don’t even know how or when the first few of them got here but we suspect it was definitely a long, long time ago and by means we would never be able to comprehend anyway.”
I tilted my head like a dumb dog trying to understand.
“You still with me?” he asked. I definitely wasn’t but nodded anyway. It was obvious I was lost but he was raring to power on with or without me, I shrugged and motioned for him to continue. “Go ‘ed then” I tutted.
“At first there were only a few of ’em, almost exclusively mingling with the elite, wooing ’em with their cloaking technology and other advancements. Trading knowledge and weird beeping machines for positions of power and wealth. By the Eighties, more and more of ’em arrived, now there are tons of ’em! But like any sentient being with half their wits about ’em, they inevitably gave in to the allure of alcohol and other such delights, just like the rest of us!” Mike laughed. “Ay,” he said, prompting me to fake a laugh.
“And yeah, there’s still a couple of ’em at the top of the pyramid of course but for the most part they’re down here at the bottom with you and me,” he said, pointing at me then turning his finger to himself. “You know, scrubbing up the shit and that!” he added.
“Factory workers, train crews, toilet attendants and whatever… the fucking fellas selling bloody hot nuts by the river!” He stopped again; the silence made me feel as though I had to add something this time.
“Err, hot nuts? Never been a fan,” is the best I could come up with.
Ignoring my input, Mike went on. “Yes, they hide themselves from us but don’t we hide ourselves from each other anyway?” he asked, now with a tone of empathy in his voice. “I mean, I once knew a man. A human man, Nathan, nicest fella,” he paused, in quiet reflection, “mates for years we were. One day yeah, we were having a lovely little lock in, just a few of us, my old local, a little bit of karaoke and that. All of a sudden, just as Nathan was belting out the second chorus of “Hotel California,” the old bill came bursting through the door, splinters of wood flying everywhere. At first we thought, bit excessive for a lock in? But they ignored all of us mate, headed straight over to Nathan they did, tackled him to the ground, whacked him in handcuffs! Turns out he had drowned his wife and kids years before, somehow got away with it, well, until then that is.” His voice turned sombre as he looked down at his boots and shook his head. “None of us could believe it mate, not Nathan? We would say, surely not?” He lifted his head, “Well in the end he admitted the whole thing mate, told them exactly what happened, every intimate gory detail, stuff only the killer would know.” He shook his head once again, replacing the sombre tone for an angrier one. “Oh, and also, turns out his name wasn’t even fucking Nathan!” he threw his hands up either side of his shoulders, expressing his disbelief. “Anthony it was, fucking Anthony?!”
Unsure of what I was supposed to do with this story, I awkwardly shrugged, said “No way…” and “That’s proper mad… man.” The room got quiet again.
“The point is,” Mike said, “those blurry cunts, for the most part, aren’t even the real threat here. Who cares if they hide their true appearance? They look like shit anyway! They’ll tell you that themselves if you find an honest one. And of course, they may have given birth to the foundations of the technology that PEEPHOLE CORP would go on to alter and use to turn poor unsuspecting sods, no offence, into fucking vessels, but that’s not what those blurry fucks intended it to be used for. That was all the work of us greedy fucking sick bastard humans! We’ll figure out a way to monetize anything,” explained Mike, becoming more and more animated as he ventured deeper down the rabbit hole.
“Your passenger’s contract expired a while back mate, but he’s still tapping into your brain, which could only mean one thing, he has bought you outright, the annexation process has commenced. We suspect the software is glitching and that’s why you’ve been having those hallucinatory experiences. Luckily it’s a lengthy process even when it’s not glitching, so there’s still time,” he said, now edging closer to put his hand on my shoulder. “And with time is hope my friend.”
I dropped my shoulder and stepped back; Mike’s hand fell to his side. “Hold on a minute… bought me? Who owned me to sell me?” I asked, puzzled.
“You’ve actually been sold three times now mate!” said Mike. “When you signed the contract at that Job Agency, you, like everybody else, neglected the fine print, or any of the print for that matter I assume. By signing your name on that dotted line, you were actually granting the government permission to sell you to the Agency. The Agency then leased you to GENPHARM. Once you were picked by a potential passenger you were chipped and sold to PEEPHOLE CORP who rented you out as a vessel for peepholing, as they call it.” Mike stopped. “You following?” I nodded. “Unfortunately for you mate, your passenger opted to buy and initiate the annexation package,” said Mike.
He explained how not many actually go through with the annexation process of course, as the vessels are almost exclusively working-class, everyday people, some barely with a pot to piss in, while the passengers are exclusively stinking-rich members of the elite. For the most part they just got off on hopping in and out of a poor person’s brain as they pleased, seeing what it was like, experiencing hardship with the ability to opt out when it got too much.
“Where is this chip?” I asked Mike, “can’t we just cut it out?”
“Unfortunately not, Len, it’s lodged deep into the brain somewhere.”
“How did they chip me, surely I’d remember?” I asked.
“That’s the thing mate, you’d have just thought a fly flew up your nose, or a bit of dust or somethin’, probably brushed it off as nothing, maybe had a few headaches the following days, they’re sneaky fuckers,” explained Mike.
Looking back, I probably should have darted straight out of the door right then, bought a rifle and hunted down the Bestard family like foxes, but I just kept staring at the wall of photographs. Dotted about, I caught the odd picture of some evil mega-wealthy green creature, but for the most part it was just evil wealthy humans. Below them, photographs of their lowly vessels, all of them current or ex-GENPHARM factory employees.
I asked Mike one hundred and one questions while he sat at the metal desk clicking away at one of the laptops. Leaning the ins and outs of “peepholing,” the name they gave to this sickeningly invasive pastime for perverted wealthy interlopers. The “passenger” has zero control over the host vessel while peepholing, but some have reported being able to tap into their host’s sense of touch and, on rare occasions, feeling their host’s extreme pain or pleasure. For the most part, however, the passenger is limited only to peering through the eyes of their unwitting host, seeing what they’re unwittingly allowing them to see. At the end of the contract, if the passenger wants to continue peepholing, they may, but they must choose a different vessel. Or, they can opt to go through with the perverse “annexation” process, an irreversible procedure once complete, in which the passenger parts with their own body and an unfathomable sum of money in order to take over their host vessel entirely, assuming all control.
Studying the photographs as I walked around the room, I expected I would possibly recognise some of the passengers’ faces, for the rich tended to be popular in this world, even if they were merely born that way, but I didn’t expect to recognise any of the people being used as vessels.
Then, tucked away in the top corner of the wall, an old man with a full thick head of brilliant Dulux-white hair caught my eye. “Robert!” I said aloud. Above his smiling face was the photograph of his hijacker, a man of similar age and build, with similar white hair. Only rather than wearing a white lab coat and standing in front of a wall bearing the GENPHARM logo, celebrating his twentieth year as a line-picker, his hijacker was standing in front of a collection of classic cars in an expensive suit, celebrating his latest vehicular purchase, smiling widely.
His name was Solomon McKinney, the disgraced founder of a global retail giant. I wondered why he didn’t opt for a younger vessel. Maybe he didn’t have time to find one, maybe Robert was all PEEPHOLE CORP had at that time and McKinney was just desperate to escape the humiliation of his perverted crimes.
“Did you know Robert, then? I know you worked in the same factory but wasn’t sure if you crossed paths like that,” said Mike.
“Yeah, knew him well… used to work with him,” I said sadly, looking up at his photograph.
“Well, there’s a kind of poetic conclusion to the lives of Mr. McKinney and Robert. You see, that fucking evil pervert McKinney rushed into the annexation process after just six months, mustn’t have done any research or nothing cos what he didn’t know was Robert had cancer! He’d been hiding it from his own family even. Probably didn’t want anyone causing a fuss and worrying. The cancer eventually found its way into his brain, his wife found out he was sick and put his odd behaviour down to that, passed away a few weeks after McKinney took over his body,” Mike said. “And it gets better, the stupid fuck must have deposited millions into a bank account in Robert’s name before the process was complete. Of course, he didn’t change Robert’s will, so his family inherited the lot.” Mike laughed sombrely.
“Ha, damn, RIP. Robert was alright, man,” I said, botching my attempt at making the sign of the cross. “Well, who’s this passenger of mine then?” I asked.
“Rich Bestard VIII,” said Mike.
“Rich Bestard VIII?”
“Rich Bestard VIII,” Mike echoed. “And seeing as his old man runs the GENPHARM empire, he got you for mates’ rates, somewhere in the region of thirty-three and a half mill, pocket change for that Rich Bestard.”
Forehead tightly creased, slowly nodding, I felt oddly pleased with the £33.5 million price tag, especially seeing as that was considered mates’ rates. “Not bad,” I mused, “how much would I have been worth had it not been mates’ rates?” I wondered aloud.
“Young lad like yourself living a, well, let’s just say intriguing life in the mind of the right client, probably around a hundred mill plus mate.”
Decent, I thought, with a smug grin. “But why did Rich Bestard VII’s son choose me? Surely they could choose anyone they wanted?”
“Well, the little Rich Bestard is a big Leonard Swanson fan, Leonard Swanson,” Mike responded, laughing slightly and stopping, uncertain as to whether I would take offence, “and a big wannabe rapper himself, not very good as you’d expect.” I was glad to hear this and laughed in my head. On the outside of my head, I looked at the photograph of myself and stuck it back to the wall. Mike followed the photo to its place, below the photograph of Rich Bestard VIII standing next to his father, Rich Bestard VII.
“He wished he could be you and now he can unless you can stop him mate,” said Mike.
Above the photograph of the Bestards, I noticed a picture of a familiar-looking building, a grand, old mansion with a clock tower. “Wait, I know this place,” I said, pointing at the picture, “I’ve been there! At least, sort of, in my hallucination thingies.”
Mike turned to the metal desk, tossing bits of paper to the side, digging through endless photographs. “Aha! There you are,” he said, producing a smaller photograph of the same building. He handed it to me, “Turn it over” he said. On the other side was an address. I’m no Einstein, but I assumed it was the address of the building in the photograph.
“Mike, how do we know this little prick isn’t in my head right now?” I asked, tapping my palm with the photograph.
“We can’t know for sure Len, but I think your hallucinations happen either when he logs in or logs out mate.”
Over Mike’s shoulder, I noticed a photograph of the French woman from room 16 on the desk in front of him, possibly ten years younger. I reached over his shoulder and picked it up for a closer look. “Ay, this is that French woman innit?” I asked Mike.
“Uh huh,” he replied, missing as he tried to snatch it back.
On the desk was torn-out page of a magazine. On it, surrounded by text, was the picture of an old man who I also recognised.
“Alain Anglade… no way,” I proclaimed. Alain Anglade, the controversial, quintessential, eccentric, possibly pure evil billionaire. A few years back I was deep into Anglade conspiracies, none of them as wacky as what he was really up to. “Wait, Mike… Alain Anglade? Did he? Is he?”
“The French woman?” Mike finished my question for me. “Yes,” he answered himself, looking away in embarrassment
Alain Anglade, a man once blamed for secretly running the world, a man that became so rich and powerful that governments around the globe tiptoed in his presence, bending to his every will. His family, and people that claimed to know him, were constantly trying to convince the general public that he was in fact not only a lovely, caring man, but a colossal philanthropist that gave away billions by the end of his life. They claimed he died a meagre millionaire! He just didn’t make a big fuss about it. “Yeah right!” conspiracy theorists would say.
Critics claimed his penchant for brightly coloured baseball caps, often worn with suits and trainers, was merely an act to appear “relatable.” Though I had my doubts about that particular claim as I can’t imagine exactly who would be relating, except maybe the odd kooky trainspotter. In his latter years, his body began to deteriorate rapidly, though his mind remained intact.
The French woman from room 16, at least the body of the French woman from room 16, before Alain Anglade assumed control over it, was in fact a Danish woman called Heidi Sondergaard, a former employee at a GENPHARM factory somewhere in the northern region of Denmark. She had no known family and those who knew her best didn’t know her at all. Her neighbours, however, did report noticing some strange behaviour the last time they saw her. Heidi, a quiet, shy, plain person, suddenly dressed in pantsuits with colourful caps and trainers and began speaking broken Danish with a French accent.
Her neighbours couldn’t recall ever seeing her leave for the last time, but some months later the police entered her home with her landlord. Heidi, or Alain in Heidi’s body, was of course long gone by then. A police officer found a note atop the dining room table, handwritten in French. The note proclaimed Heidi was in love with a wealthy French man with whom she ran away with to “sail the seven seas and dine on shrimp and lobster,” before going on to emphasise with underlined bold writing that, whoever reads the note should “not come looking for her” as she “doesn’t want to be found.”
