8 North City II

I awoke the next morning still brooding on the events of the day before, my mind cluttered with the debris of a tangled series of dreams. I stretched, feeling my toes brush against the curtain at the foot of the mattress, groped in the darkness for the light cord, found it and tugged.

The short neon tube clicked on, flickered for nearly a second, then flashed into life, flooding the tiny chamber with harsh, white light. The visitor's accommodation consisted of a three tiered bank of sleeping chambers, which from the connecting corridor, formed a white honeycomb. Each cell was about a metre square, and just over two metres long. At the corridor end was an opening, measuring about seventy centimetres high, with a pair of tiny curtains to shut out the outside world.

From the corridor came the sound of other curtains being drawn vigorously back as some of the other visitors rose. I pulled the remote-control from its custom niche, and switched on the small vid-unit mounted above my feet. A white-toothed female presenter filled the screen, telling her viewers the latest in fashion gossip. I bounced around until I found a music channel playing some particularly sombre Celtic music and left the vid on that, the mournful melody filling the sleeping-chamber while I lay back, stared at the low ceiling and thought.

There were five people still in North City who had known the Rook and Jenny when they were at WaveX. Steve Richards was, by all accounts, only travelling through life as a passenger, and therefore unlikely to be particularly helpful. I'd talked to Vicki, and to Paul Evans, and neither had been able to give me any new information. That left only two people - Jack Parker of DreamStar, and Allison Holt of Harmonic Light. I was still throwing the variables around my brain when the curtains slid open.

"God! What have you been doing to your feet?"

It was Vicki, peering intently at the soles of my feet, which had after all been taking a fair battering over the last couple of weeks.

"HE Suits," I answered truthfully, "been doing a bit of cross-country."

She looked up, beaming. She was obviously one of those annoying people who could just wake up in the morning. "Well?"

The communication portion of my brain caught the question and threw it at the memory banks, hoping vainly that they might find an answer. In the meantime I sleepily parried the question. "What..?"

She bobbed up and down, giggling at my half-awake state. "You were going to buy me breakfast."

Breakfast. Yeah that was it. The memory of the previous night crashed in. I levered myself up on my elbow, sparking an interested glare from Vicki as the covers slipped away. "Give me ten minutes and I'll meet you downstairs."

"Ten minutes!" she warned, gliding to the side and out of view.

DreamStar were based in a small - but plush - suite of offices on the edge of Uptown, surrounded by a cluster of other high-tech agencies. The whole front of the office was glassed, revealing a line of blue partition boards lined with a handful of potted plants. To the side of the entrance was a single desk, an efficient looking receptionist sitting behind it, hunched over her comp-pad.

"Nice place," I muttered to Vicki, pushing through the plasti-glass entrance doors and ducking sideways to avoid the orange foam ball that arced over the line of partitions, bounced in front of us and tumbled past into the exterior corridor.

"Hi Vick!" called the receptionist. "Here to see Jack?"

Vicki sat on the corner of her desk, and played idly with a pot-plant. "If it's safe to go in?"

"Probably - elastic bands were last week. At the moment it's foam balls."

I leant back against a concrete pillar, and surveyed the lobby, catching a sheepish looking worker in a tattered, casual tunic, tiptoeing back from the doors with the foam ball in his hand. He looked at me and shrugged.

"Relaxation!"

"Boys will be boys..." said Vicki and the receptionist in unison. The girl tapped Vicki on the knee, then glanced up at me.

"So who's your friend?"

"Sorry, I should've made some introductions. Jon this is Sharna. Sharna this is Jon. He's researching the history of WaveX. That's why we want to talk to Jack."

The girl took a deeper look at me, the tips of the mouth curling up in mock annoyance. "History? And there was me thinking how interesting he looked!"

"So can we go through?"

"Oh yeah, sure. Just watch out for the foamballs."

We mouthed thanks, and stepped gingerly through the gap in the partition wall. Beyond was a large open area, occupied by an apparently random network of personal comp-units, some standing on desks, others on the grey carpet. A low hum permeated throughout the room. The thin screen units were all activated, some filled with text, but most with dense, and intricate, flow charts. Ugly black cables snaked their way along the partitions, grouping together at the various pillars, then climbing the concrete to the false ceiling above.

At first it seemed as though the area was deserted, but by the time I had taken a couple of paces into the room I'd noticed that two of the desks were occupied, after a fashion - if you assumed that the figures sleeping under them were their intended occupants. I followed Vicki across the carpet, turning through a gap in the far partition wall. In the next area two programmers were engaged in an intense game of rock, scissors, paper.

"Hi Daz!" whispered Vicki to one of them, a lanky teenager who'd just lost the last game. He looked up, his hand still in the shape of a pair of scissors.

"You looking for Jack?" queried the youth.

"If he's around?"

"Yeah, they just got back. He's in his office."

Vicki led me over to the far wall, to one of a pair of doors. She knocked on the left-hand door, a minxish smile on her face.

"We're busy!" shouted one of the occupants, a statement completely ignored by Vicki, who nodded to me, and then shoved the door wide open. I followed her in, carefully shutting the plasti-wood door behind us. The office was sparsely furnished, containing just a large bookcase, a desk - on which stood a personal comp-unit - and a couple of bean-bags, each of which was occupied by a casually dressed man in his twenties. They ignored us and carried on their argument.

"They want the software!" shouted the dark-haired one.

"It isn't ready," insisted the other, a tall, blond-haired man who currently had his head tipped off the far edge of the bean-bag.

"We agreed a schedule with them."

"Yeah, and that's all it was. A schedule for us to follow. We hit a few problems and we fell behind. The programs aren't ready."

"Well what's ready?" protested the first man. "So it's got a few bugs in it! We're talking house control software for God's sake, not satellite launching stuff. What they want to know is this - will it work?"

"Mostly. You might come home to find that the house has loaded the dirty plates into the washing machine, and microwaved the cat - but it will mostly work."

The first man stood up awkwardly, the bean bag slipping beneath him. "It isn't ready?"

"It isn't ready."

"Okay I'll stall them - but try and get it finished, okay?"

He left, nodding familiarly at Vicki.

"Jack," called Vicki at the blond-haired man, who still had his head tipped off the bean bag in a weird upside-down position, his hair resting on the carpet. He flicked his head up, and noticed us for the first time.

"Oh! Hi Vick."

"Trouble?"

He grinned broadly. "Na! It's just our reselling agents complaining. I mean we've never made a schedule yet. When we agree them, it's like a game. We pretend we're going to make them, and they pretend they believe us. Anyway, who's your friend?"

"Jon Bannion. He's interested in the history of WaveX." She smiled back at me. "Jon, this is Jack Parker, founder, chairman, and chief lunatic of DreamSoft. But Jack, tell me something... If you're right up against a deadline, how come some of the programmers are playing games, some of them are asleep, and the rest aren't even here?"

"No point working at the moment," he answered calmly. "The processing we do requires rather heavy use of neural nets, way above anything we could get here. So we timeshare on the city's main system. Problem is, at this point in the afternoon everyone else is trying to use it, so the system slows down to a crawl."

"So you like give... up?"

"Yeah," he replied smiling. "We work in the morning. Then we knock off for the afternoon. Some of the guy's sleep, some of them play games. Or perhaps we'll all go out to watch a film and have something to eat. Then we come back and work through the evening."

"Until when?"

He thought for a moment. "Usually about two or three in the morning."

Vicki crossed the room to him and laid a hand on his shoulder. "Jack, as a friend, can I give you some advice?"

"Sure."

"Get a life!"

"Thanks Sarah," muttered Parker, as his secretary handed steaming mugs of coffee to each of us.

"Anything else?" she drawled with the confidence of being at least ten years older than everyone else in the office.

"Na," he said shaking his head, "No wait - if the correspondent from the Daily Recorder phones, I'm not in!"

"I'll say you're in a meeting."

"Whatever." Obviously he wasn't that bothered. He settled back onto his bean-bag and looked over at the two of us, perched awkwardly on either end of the other bag. "So you want to know about WaveX?"

"Yeah, I'm interested in the concept of alternative agencies," I ventured, casting a conspiratorial glance at Vicki, "How they get formed, how they're run. That sort of thing."

"And you want to talk to me?"

"Well, you're interesting in two ways. Firstly, you were one of the founder members of WaveX - who turned out to be the inspiration and focus for a whole alternative movement in this city. Then you went on to found DreamSoft, who are one of the fastest growing software agencies in the country."

"That's hardly original."

"In what way?"

"We've had a couple of journalists come down to see us. And the thing they always ask, is how I went from being a member of an alternative agency to successful businessman."

"And how did you?" I asked.

"Dunno. I've always liked computers and software - so I started an agency to write it. Now everyone seems to want the stuff we do. Anyway, what do want to know about WaveX?"

This was the tricky bit. "I'm interested in the break-up, when some of the founders left to form Northern Action."

"And you want to know whether the breakup turned me against the concept of alternative agencies, and convinced me that I should simply worry about becoming successful myself."

Actually, no, I thought. He was obviously one of those people who found actual conversation boring, and preferred to jump to the conclusion, whether it was the correct one or not. I mentally gritted my teeth and ploughed on. "In a way. But for the moment, I just want to explore the reasons for the breakup itself."

"Steve and Dan didn't agree on what the overall aims and objectives of the agency should be. But I suppose you're more interested on why they didn't agree, rather than how they didn't agree."

"Exactly. It seems to me that since they were the driving force behind the agency's formation, it is their personalities and backgrounds that are crucial."

He nodded, plucked a thin comp-pad from the thick carpet, and began tapping through stage after stage of data. "So what you really need to know about," he suggested, still concentrating on the pad, "is the people behind alternative agencies, rather than the agencies themselves."

I nodded.

"Well in that case, I can't really help you."

"Why not?"

"I never really knew them. They needed someone to write and install the control software for their first premises. So they went looking for a software genius who was at a loose end - and found me. If seemed like a laugh, so I joined. When it all started getting a bit heavy, I left. End of story."

"Do you know anything about them? Where they came from? Where they were born? Any previous friends?"

He looked briefly up from the comp-pad and thought for a moment. "No." Several more pages of data flickered across the screen before he looked up again. "Oh Vick, nice seeing you again. Come around some time..."

The stage at Harmonic Light stirred up a lot of painful thoughts, memories of when the family had gone to watch Jenny and her light-dancing class put on their latest display. She had been good, the star of her group, the light sparkling off her naked body as she danced and spun across the many-layered dance floor.

I sat now enraptured, as I had then, so lost in my memories that the rest of the audience seemed not to exist, watching the dancers run onto stage and freeze into their starting positions. They were beautiful, all of them, long slender legs ending in bare, outstretched feet, fingers pointed at the ceiling, their faces looking upward. I did know how long they paused, for time seemed to have halted, but at some point the music started and the dance began. Lasers spun above us, sketching patterns in the air that swirled around the dancers as they climbed effortlessly upward, emotion flowing from their every muscle.

The music crashed to a halt, and the dancers froze; some hanging from the invisible, plasti-glass ladders, others crouching cross-legged on the stage, or the invisible upper platforms, their long, sleek hair cloaking their down-turned faces, their fingers held as though clawing the air. Again time stood still, and I drank in the scene. A laser-image exploded into life, dancing for a second around the still-frozen girls, until they sprang upward, leaping out of their crouched positions in an eruption of movement, light and music.

I marvelled then, like I always had, at their incredible ability to dance on narrow catwalks many metres above the stage; catwalks that were made of totally transparent plasti-glass; catwalks that they could feel but not see. One of them - the lead dancer - turned to face the audience, her face framed by her hands and illuminated by a dazzling pink spotlight. She stood for a moment, flanked by her dancing companions, then dived forward from the catwalk into the apparently empty void, her arms outstretched. The music fell, then rose when she caught hold of the transparent suspended bar, and threw her outstretched legs forward to rotate around it, holding on until her body reached the horizontal, then releasing, catapulting herself into the air. She pulled her knees up against her naked breasts, and bought her head down to complete the tuck, then rotated, turning a somersault while she hung in the air at the top of her arc. Then she snapped into a straight position and fell head-first back to the bar, reaching out to catch it as she shot past, then rotating backwards around it, releasing, stretching her ivory legs into a split position and arcing majestically over the bar, and back onto the catwalk. An appreciative peel of applause rebounded around the tiny theatre as the dance continued.

"Hi!" Vicki called out happily as she hugged her friend, whose slender, agile frame was now concealed by a thin, pink robe. Her face was covered with sweat, and her hair tangled, but she was still as beautiful as when she'd stood preparing for the jump to the bar, her naked body bathed in the glow of the pink-tinged beam.

They glanced at me and pulled apart, exchanging meaningful looks and giggling, like girls do. "So who is he then?" she asked, as if the conversation had already begun. Vicki looked stern for a moment, then lightened.

"His name's Jon, he's from New London, and that's all I'm telling you!"

The girl smiled, then turned away to her dressing table, the robe swishing around her thighs. She sat down, picked up a wipe and looked at us via the large mirror. "I was only asking for his name, not his life history!"

"Sorry!" chanted Vicki, taking me by the arm and propelling me into a simple plastic chair that stood in the corner. I took the hint, and stayed out of the conversation.

"Well?" asked the girl absently, concentrating on the task of removing her stage makeup.

"Well what?" Vicki asked in reply. I took a deep breath, and began to study the ceiling.

"So why did you come here?" laughed the girl, pausing from her task to lean forward into the mirror and frown at Vicki. "You came here, introduced this bloke, then told me not to ask you about him!"

"Sorry! Actually, it's him who came to see you." She looked at me, and remembered that she had not formerly introduced me. "As you've probably guessed, this is Allison Holt. Ally, like I said - this is Jon. He's interested in the history of WaveX."

"WaveX?" she queried, looking at me via the mirror, her back still turned away.

"Yeah," I confirmed.

"Why WaveX?"

"It was the first of the new wave of alternative agencies. If you understand it, then you understand all of them. Well that's the theory."

"Seems pretty pointless to me," she ventured, dropping the plasti-paper wipe into the bin and standing up. "Do you mind if I shower?" she asked me.

"No, go right ahead," I replied. Polite girl, I thought to myself, considering how we'd just barged in after a performance. "It's very good of you to talk to me," I added.

"It's no problem," she assured me, undoing the sash around her waist, and shrugging the robe off her slim shoulders. The light garment dropped to the floor, forming a ring around her ankles. She looked up at me as she stepped away.

"Carry on with your questions." She turned, spinning on a shapely ankle and gliding across to the shower-unit in the corner, her naked hips rocking pleasingly. She stepped elegantly into the shower and pulled the frosted door shut.

"I'm especially interested in the first few months," I told her, speaking louder when she turned on the water and its harsh hiss emerged. A wisp of vapour floated above the open top of the shower-cubicle.

"Why?" came her wary voice from behind the steam.

I considered my reply carefully, noticing Vicki's uneasy expression. "I've been looking at a number of alternative agencies, and many of them seem to experience serious, sometimes terminal, problems in the early stages. It seems to me that the problems arise because unlike commercial agencies, they often start with no clear conception or consensus of what it is they want to achieve."

"So you want to find out about all the problems we had?"

"You had problems then?"

"Well you know we did. If we hadn't you wouldn't be here asking me questions!"

"Not necessarily. I might want to find out why you didn't experience any problems."

"True," she conceded. Her hand stretched over the top of the cubicle. "Hey Vick, can you hand my soap over - it's on the dressing table." Vicki grabbed the soap, tipping it out of it's ornate dish, and guided it into Allison's hand. "Thanks," said Allison in a warm, honey voice. For a few seconds there was the sound of vigorous soaping, then she spoke again.

"Have you talked to anyone else?"

"Vicki, Paul Evans and Jack Parker."

"How are Paul and Jack?" she called.

Vicki answered. "Paul's bad and Jack's mad!"

"Same as always then!"

"Anyway!" I broke in. "I know some of the basic facts of what happened - about the break-away to form Northern Action. What I need is more detail."

Behind the frosted door, her heavily blurred pink figure shrugged, then continued writhing under the water's heavy jet. "Okay, shoot."

"What do you know about the reasons behind the break-away?"

"Dan just didn't like the way things were going."

Dan - Dan Ellis, the Rook. I tried another tack. "How well did you know him?"

I looked at Vicki when Allison didn't answer. She mouthed at me to wait. The shower door slid open, revealing Allison perching in the puddles of the shower-tray, tiny rivulets running down her flat stomach and onto her thighs. She leaned forward, reaching around the edge of the cubical to grab the pink, fluffy towel that hung from the attached rail.

"I knew him pretty well," she finally answered, her petite breasts rocking gently as she vigorously towelled her back. I glanced across at Vicki, who shot me a concerned look back, asking me to tread carefully. There was obviously some ancient history here.

"You said he didn't like the way things were going. In what way?"

She flicked the towel around her and moved on to her front, running the cloth down her arms and across her chest. "Steve thought that society was basically good, but that individual people might need help."

"And he wanted WaveX to help those people?"

"Yeah. But Dan thought that there was a deeper problem."

"With society?"

She stopped towelling for a moment, the towel resting across her thighs, and gave me a quizzical look, before replying hesitantly: "Yeah..."

"I've talked to some of the others, remember?" I pointed out.

She nodded and resumed towelling, perching effortlessly on one foot while she towelled the other. "Like I said, Dan wasn't such a fan of society. He believed our society was built on cruelty and unhappiness, but that we tried to hide that. He said that if we simply tried to help individual people, then we were just trying to salve our consciences, to preserve the illusion - and that we'd simply be papering over the cracks."

"What was the illusion?" I pressed, "What was the cruelty?"

She finished drying herself and stepped out of the shower-tray, striding gracefully across the room and lifting the robe from the floor. She pulled it on, tied the belt tightly - which only emphasised her slim waist - and sat cross-legged on the floor before me. "The coders," she eventually answered.

"Yeah that was it," muttered Vicki, stirring, "I remember now."

"What about the coders?" I asked.

"He thought it was wrong."

"In what way?"

"He thought they should be treated as people."

"He did go on a bit," interrupted Vicki, "he used to say that he couldn't see what was the point of discussing the slight anxiety of some citizen, when the coders were suffering out of all comparison."

"Did anyone else agree with him?" I quizzed Allison. "Did you?"

"Not really."

"You didn't believe that the coders were suffering?"

She shrugged. "To be honest it's not something I've ever thought about."

"But you were against him?"

"Yeah. I mean I guess he was right about some of the coders - that they were suffering. And I don't keep a coder myself - I think that if you avoid doing your own work, it will make you spiritually lazy."

"But..?"

"I've always said live and let live. I might not want to own a coder, but what right have I to stop someone else who does want to? I believe you should worry about your own morality and not about other people's." Across the room, Vicki shrugged in resigned agreement.

I was tempted to ask them who they thought it was that cleaned the streets, coming out in the early morning, when all the citizens were safely asleep. But the last thing I wanted to do was antagonise them by exposing the flaws in their own moral position. I tried to nudge the conversation back onto track. "Who did agree with him?"

"Shannon and Penny. They lapped it all up - especially Shannon."

"So they left?"

"Yeah," she answered, then spat out the remainder of the sentence. "To form Northern Action."

"You sound pretty dismissive."

She lifted a knee, the hem of her robe slipping down, wrapped an arm around the bare limb, and thought for a moment. "I just don't like people who preach, you know?"

"And he did?"

"Oh yeah. And Shannon was almost as bad. Except that she tended to parrot what he said."

"Do you know what happened to them after they left?"

She chuckled and shook her head loosely. "No idea - I couldn't have cared less." Then she rocked forward, resting her chin on her arms. "You've got to understand that it was all pretty bitter. Steve and Dan thought up the idea, bought us all in, and then within months Dan was attacking Steve at every opportunity."

I hesitated, sensing that there was some nugget of information hidden within her reply. They thought up the idea together. That was it! I leaned forward and looked into her deep blue eyes. "You said they thought up the idea. Are you saying they knew each other before the agency was created, that it wasn't simply WaveX that bought them together?"

"Oh yeah, they knew each other. Like I said, they first came up with the idea for the agency, and then decided to recruit people. It was always their show. By the time we came on board all the discussing had been done."

"Do you have any idea of how long they'd known each other?"

"Not really. I don't think it was more than a few months."

"When did you first meet them?"

"I was a member of a small cafe agency where the two of them used to have breakfast - this was when they were planning the agency. We got pretty friendly, and I liked some of the ideas they had, so they asked me to join."

"How well did you get to know them?"

"Pretty well."

"And what about Dan?"

"Like I said," she replied, a hint of steel entering her voice, "pretty well!"

"How much did you know about him."

"Quite a bit," she answered perplexed, spreading her palms as if to say: what is it that you want to know?

"Do you know how he and Steve met?"

"Not completely. I think he moved to North City, and then met Steve."

"Do you know where he lived before?"

"I've got no idea."

"Didn't he ever talk about his childhood? I mean if you and he..?"

She unfolded her legs and leaned very close, her nostrils flaring angrily. "What is this? Who is it you want to know about, WaveX or Dan?"

It was pretty obvious that I had pushed too hard, too clumsily. "Look I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be personal. And you're right, it is Dan I'm interested in. Just don't ask why."

She drew her legs back underneath her and muttered a silent relaxation chant, letting the anger seep away. "Okay, I won't ask," she finally agreed, glancing across at Vicki. "I guess if it wasn't important then Vick wouldn't have bought you. But I don't think I can help you. If you want to know where Dan went to - I don't know. And if you want to know where it was he came from - I don't know. All I know is what happened."

"And what was that?"

A potent cocktail of pain and regret, love and hate, flowed across her pretty, elfin face. "He came into my life when I needed someone. I didn't particularly want him to know about my past, so I didn't ask about his. We had a lot of fun together, but he wanted more. He needed to see some kind of meaning in life, needed me to see it too. He was a good man, but there was something inside him that drove him, controlled him. It coloured his view of the entire universe. He was searching for truth, I was looking for fun. Then Shannon came along, and we were history. He went, I stayed. End of story."

"Thanks," I told her, knowing she could tell me no more. We got up to leave, Vicki giving her a goodbye hug, but paused at the door when she called out to us.

"Hey citizen! If you see Dan, give him my love."

I awoke early with her hair spread across my chest, and her breath light on my skin, and looked around her tiny room, taking in the neat layout and the scattered personal items that gave the otherwise impersonal room a gentle warmth. She stirred, and I settled back, then looked to the side, seeking out her desk clock. It glowed at me from across the room - five-thirteen.

I hated waking up, always had done. And I especially hated waking up early, since I could never get back to sleep. Slowly, painfully my head cleared, and memories of last night crowded in. For a moment a fierce wave of joy washed through me, until reality intervened and yanked me back. This was an entanglement that I hadn't planned for, didn't need and wasn't sure what to do with. The temptation to stay, to step off the crazy roller-coaster I was riding, to immerse myself in the intoxicating utopian fantasy that this city weaved - it was terrifyingly powerful. I swallowed and realised how dry my throat felt. Breathing out gently, I carefully lifted Vicki's head from my chest, pulled a discarded pillow across, and gently laid her head onto its soft, giving surface. She moaned once, shifted awkwardly, then settled back into a contented sleep.

The corridor outside was on its night-time cycle, and therefore only dimly lit by the neon tubes embedded in the ceiling. I walked quietly down its carpeted length, not sure whether guests were allowed in the member's living area. At the far end, a soft pool of light spilled out from the open kitchen door, spreading across the thick carpet of the member's common room. I hesitated for a moment, then continued. After all, what could they do - shoot me?

Only the doorway light had been switched on, leaving the rest of the kitchen in twilight, except for a splash of light from the wall beside me. It came from the large fridge, the harsh interior light shining out past the opened door, the contents starkly illuminated. A figure crouched before it, staring in dumb incomprehension at the multi-coloured packets and containers scattered randomly across the stacked shelves.

I paused for a few seconds, waiting for him to make a movement, but he stayed in his blank crouch, so I coughed lightly. He looked up slowly, and tried and failed to focus on me. I reached up and found the light switches, flicking them all down and flooding the room with light. When the neons had settled, I took a good look at him, noting his dull eyes and dilated pupils, before he turned his attention back to the contents of the fridge.

"I just came to get something to drink," I told him, trying to strike up a conversation. "Couldn't sleep, you know?"

He said nothing. Evidently he didn't. Instead he selected an already opened carton of milk, and lifted it, with extreme caution, to the large central table. Then he stood up, laboriously pushed the fridge door shut, and shuffled over to the side unit in search of a glass. The magnetic catch on the plastic cupboard door clicked loudly as he gently levered it open. Inside, a couple of dozen plasti-glass glasses were stacked upside-down in neat piles. He lifted two from the most accessible stack and pulled them to him, pushing the door shut, and holding the top glass out for me.

"You said you wanted a drink," he said to the air in front of him, speaking in a matter-of-fact monotone. I took the glass and thanked him, following him to the table and taking a seat opposite him. He lifted the carton and moved it to his glass, gradually tilting it further and further until a tiny trickle of milk fell off the tip of the roughly torn spout. It must have taken nearly ten seconds for the glass to fill with milk, but finally he was satisfied, carefully returning the carton to a vertical orientation and pushing it across the table to me. I filled the glass, a casual tilt of the wrist pouring the remaining milk from the carton, and threw the now useless piece of bio-plastic into the bin.

"What do you believe in Citizen?" he asked me abruptly.

"I believe in God, and the eternal circle," I replied hesitantly. "What do you believe in?"

"I don't know anymore. I used to think I did. At least I think I did."

"So what went wrong?"

Blankness settled upon his face once more, and for a moment I thought he had forgotten the question. "I questioned happiness."

"You questioned it?"

"I... I questioned it. In this world everyone can be happy. There's only one thing you have to do."

"And what's that?" I probed gently, sensing his concentration wavering.

"You have to accept its terms. All you have to do to be happy, is to accept that happiness."

"But what's the problem with that?" I asked, confused.

"Do you believe in the soul?"

"Of course, everyone does."

"I dream of souls. When I close my eyes I can see them! Glittering, all of them. Like a thousand points of light illuminating the void. Without souls, we are nothing. And without us, without our souls, the universe is nothing. Nothing!"

"I don't see..?"

He took hold of my arm. "When I see those souls, they're different, every one of them. Do you understand? Every one glows with its own unique brightness. Every one with its own unique colour. Every one pulsing with life. And I can see them. I can see them all. A hundred million sparks of flame, every one different - and I can see them all!"

Space cadet.

"But what does this have to do with happiness?"

"It's the variety, the infinity. Don't you see?"

"No."

He slumped forward onto the table, as though the brief conversation had exhausted his inner resources.

"Please go on," I asked him, not wanting to let the link I'd established with him be severed.

"Every soul is different, and each one can take a different route to happiness. Now do you see?"

"I think so."

"There is no one way to happiness. But in this society, only one way is allowed. Those are its terms."

"If you want happiness, it's their happiness that you have to accept."

"Exactly! The government and the Knights, they tell you how to be happy. They define happiness. They even define love."

"Is that so terrible?"

"I used to not think so. After all, if you're being offered happiness, why not take it - even if it's someone else's happiness. I took it. I took it all. I took the Knights love. I took everyone's love. But now it isn't the same."

"It isn't?"

"Nothing's real anymore. This city, this happiness. It's all a mirage. We have wealth, but it isn't real wealth, only trinkets. We have love, but it isn't real love, only sex."

"Right!" I agreed, dubiously. "And when did you begin to think like this?"

"A long time ago. So long ago I can't remember. Are you a member of this agency?"

"No. Does it matter?"

"I suppose not. There was someone I once knew, someone I quarrelled with, because he wouldn't, couldn't accept the happiness."

This sounded promising. "This someone? Was his name Dan? Dan Ellis?"

He jerked back, as if jolted by an electric shock. "It's so long. So long since I heard that name."

"Was it him? Was he the one you quarrelled with?"

"Quarrelled..?"

Damn. I'd rushed him. "Did you quarrel with Dan?"

"WaveX was our dream, our child. When we fought..."

"Why did you fight?"

"He fought for my soul, and lost. He knew it was wrong you see..."

"Knew what was wrong?"

"Life, everything. The way we live... The way we are."

"How did he know it was wrong?"

"He just knew. He always knew. From the moment I met him, he knew."

"Knew what?"

"Everything. Everything that was wrong."

I swore silently. I had to keep him on track. "What did he think about coders?"

"The soul-less..?"

"Yes the soul-less. What did he think of them?"

"...He pitied them; and hated our dependence on them. He wanted that to end. And that's why we quarrelled."

"You didn't feel as he did?"

"I didn't feel. I was addicted to the happiness. I loved it, needed it. He could reject it... I couldn't; and I still can't. Then he left."

"And that hurt?"

"Yes. Perhaps my words have made him seem cold - but that's not the case. He loved life. He burned with an inner purity like I've never seen before. It was passion that drove him, and passion that made him leave."

"But do you know what made him like that? Do you know where he came from, or where he was born?"

"We never talked of that. The past... was the past."

"You never talked about the past?" I asked incredulously.

"Once. Once we talked. It was the night we founded the agency, and everything seemed possible. Infinity lay before us. We cracked open a bottle and talked all night. He talked of a view he'd enjoyed as a child. He said that he would sit there for hours, with his past behind him, and his future laid out before him..."

"Did he mention anything about this view? Anything at all."

A smile spread slowly across his face as the memory returned. "Soldiers and a horse, and they were all wearing HE suits."

HE suits? All of them? What I was listening to - was it just the warped ramblings of a drugged madman? Sapphire.

Sapphire: 05:27:52> Activated.

Are there any places in the Bretenek Republic where you might find soldiers and a horse, all of whom are wearing HE suits?

Sapphire: 05:28:03> Searching...

I sat silently, waiting for the results of the search, while Richards laboriously removed a pill from a small black pill-box, and popped it into his open mouth. His face was still for a few seconds, then relaxed as the drug took hold. I realised I'd get nothing more from him tonight.

Sapphire: 05:28:25> Search completed. No match found.

Of course, Sapphire was taking the request literally. What could it have been? An image? But that would have been indoors, not as part of a view. Then the answer came, like a thunderbolt.

A statue.

Search for the above, but as parts of a statue.

Sapphire: 05:28:53> Searching... Found. There is a single example in the Bretenek Republic. It is situated in Birmingham, at the western edge of the dome.

Finally! The Rook's future, after North City, was still a mystery - but I had found a route to his past.

I left Richards to his pain, and walked through to the common room, placing my half-empty glass on the coffee table and collapsing onto the low sofa. A hard, rectangular shape was digging into my back. I reached behind and pulled it out from beneath the cushion. It was the remote-controller. I pointed it at the wall-mounted vid set and touched the on-button, causing the screen to blink into life. A news-reader's measured tones blared out from the speaker.

"And these are the headlines at five-thirty this morning: The political fall-out from the Centre terrorist attack continues, with the resignation of the Secretary of State for Biohuman Resources, after his department's security measures were condemned. The Prime Minister has announced that an independent inquiry will be held covering all aspects of the Centre's operations and management."

I flicked to a mood-scene channel, but it was already too late, reality had already crowded in. I knew then that for me, the mirage had died. I had come here to find some information about my sister, and instead had discovered more about myself. I had found utopia, and had been offered happiness. But it was not on my terms, and I could not accept it. For I had seen too much, and knew that it was fake, and knew that it was built on pain.

It was time to move on.

"Who do you want to be citizen?" they asked me, "What do you want to be?"

Tear-drops formed in my eyes as I gave them my answer. "I'm in love with someone, and I can't be."

"And she, or he, doesn't love you?" probed the nurse gently, "is that it?"

"No, she does, I know she does. But I can't love her. It can't happen. If it does, it could destroy us, could ruin everything."

She knelt down in front of me, and spoke, her words carefully weighed. "We can take the love away, and leave nothing behind. But once it's gone, it's gone forever. We could put it back, recreate those feelings, make you love her again. But it wouldn't be the same love, it wouldn't be the love you feel now. It wouldn't be the same. It never is. Do you understand?"

I nodded.

"Do you want us to take the love away."

"Yes," I told her, pressing my thumb to the consent agreement they held in front of me. She left for a moment, then returned, a small syringe in her hand. Then she lifted my bare arm and moved the tip of the needle to my skin.

"Relax citizen. When you next see me - it will all be gone. I promise."

"Hey citizen!" called the nurse as I walked towards the clinic's exit. "Good luck." I thanked her, and threw my cloak around my shoulders, feeling a small object thump against my chest. My hand moved to it, instinctively. It was the broach. I unclipped it, and lifted it to the light, remembering when she had given it to me, and how I had felt. A memory kicked, and her perfect face appeared within my mind. But it was just a memory, a recollection - nothing more. The love was gone.

A small pang of regret flared within my heart as I gazed at the dull and lifeless stone.

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