Nymphomation

  ‘Let me see that list,’ said Daisy.

  Hackle handed the paper over to her. She looked down the names for a few seconds: Jagger, Adam; Six-Five. Kelly, Caroline; Four-One. Latchkey, William; Three-Two…

  ‘You’re looking for your father, I presume?’

  ‘Here he is. Love, James; Five-Four. He’s still got that bloody domino.’

  Hackle smiled. He pulled open a drawer, placed an old, battle-scarred bone rectangle on the table. It was the two-zero domino.

  ‘A year we shall never forget,’ he whispered.

  ‘No wonder I can never beat him,’ said Daisy.

  ‘He was a quiet kid, sat at the back, staring out of the window. Miss Sayer really turned him around. Your father became the best mathematician in the year. I’m sorry to find him so destitute these days. A fine talent. To have to pretend he’s dead, in order to get you a scholarship. Really, it is a great waste.’

  Daisy looked over the list of pupils for a few seconds more.

  She was trying to connect with the past. Her father’s childhood with her own. The connections between them. What he had become. What she was becoming. The mathematics…

  ‘OK. What’s the plan?’

  ‘Excellent news! Report at my house this Friday, six o’clock. Last Friday we did some preliminary research, but this will be the first proper meeting. Meanwhile…’ Hackle reached into his drawer once again, this time pulling out a green cardboard folder. It had Daisy’s name on the cover.

  ‘You knew I’d say yes, then?’

  ‘I was hoping you would, that’s all. Inside are some of my papers for your perusal. They will explain the connections.’

  ‘Do I get to know who I’m working with? Joe Crocus, I presume?’

  ‘Of course. Joe will be the leader of the group. I won’t be directly involved, but Joe will report to me. Under him will be student Dopejack, on computers and the Burgernet, and Benny Fenton on analysis. Yourself, of course, as the probability expert.’

  ‘That’s it? Just the four of us, against the dominoes?’

  ‘Well, I’d like to find a natural, of course. We’re looking at that. And then there’s Jazir, on the—’

  ‘Jaz! You’ve got Jazir? Where is he?’

  ‘Right outside.’

  ‘He is? I was worried…I mean, I haven’t seen him since—’

  ‘He’s the key, Daisy. The way in.’

  Jazir and Daisy, walking along the Oxford Road, away from the university. The time was approaching five o’clock, filled with rush-hour traffic. Daisy wasn’t in the mood for talking. Not yet. Still in shock from Max’s request and her acquiescence. Outside that office, outside the university’s cloisters, the whole mad scheme started to feel like paranoia, and she was already working out the chances broken by her acceptance.

  ‘You got the package off Max, right?’ asked Jazir.

  ‘What? Oh, yeah.’

  ‘That list of pupils. What do you reckon? You reckon that Paul Malthorpe’s the one we’re after? Do you?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Your dad’s on that list, isn’t he?’

  ‘So? So is Max Hackle.’

  ‘Come off it. No way is Max Hackle Mr Million.’

  ‘So no way is my father, OK?’

  ‘OK. Fine.’

  It was fair weather, which brought the blurbflies out in swarms of whispers.

  ‘Watch this, Daisy.’ Jazir held out his arms on both sides, hands palm upwards. Immediately a blurbfly landed on his left hand, another on his right.

  ‘Jaz? What are you doing?’

  ‘Just a little trick I learned. Watch. Keep watching.’

  More and more of the blurbs were attracted to Jazir. The flies started circling his body, filling his shape with song. A personal message about how he was the best ever player of the game and deserved to win untold riches.

  Play to win! Purchase a thousand bones! Play to win! Adverts in orbit. Daisy had never seen anything like it.

  ‘Jaz, people are looking at us.’

  ‘Jealous, more like.’ He turned on the onlookers. ‘I’m the fucking pied piper, me. Go on, get your own fucking blurbs!’

  ‘Jaz!’ A few stray blurbs had landed on Daisy’s head. ‘Urgh! Get them off me!’ She was scrabbling at her hair.

  Jazir laughed at her. ‘Oh dear. They must think you’re my partner, you know, my lover, my mate.’

  ‘This isn’t funny.’ Daisy was still struggling.

  ‘You’re right.’ A clap of his hands. ‘Blurbs be gone!’

  Immediately they flew off and dispersed, to plague the city, normal style, blurb style.

  ‘What’s wrong with you, Jaz?’

  ‘I don’t care. It’s bloody exciting, whatever is it. Come on, let’s walk.’

  Jazir had refused a bus ride, to make sure he got home after his father had left for the restaurant. His mother would be in, also his sister, but they wouldn’t mind him bringing Daisy home. It was only his father who had the purity streak. Still, he was nervous as they approached the doorway.

  Daisy, for her part, was even more nervous. She’d never been to Jazir’s house before, never been invited or even told the address. It was all Hackle’s doing. Jazir had been waiting outside the office for her, chatting up the secretaries. He was full of himself, the knowledge that Hackle had responded to his work, and that he had a secret to impart.

  The first thing was the smell. Daisy could catch the scent as Jazir led her upstairs to his bedroom; the high, thick stench of ultragarlic.

  ‘How does your family put up with it?’ she asked.

  The door was labelled with a SPICELAB sign: RESTRICTED ACCESS! ‘They know I’d leave home without it.’ Jazir unlocked the door.

  The second thing was the light. The curtains were drawn, the room was dark, except for a strip of ultraviolet that glowed over the garlic’s seedbed. Daisy went straight over to it as Jazir locked the door behind him.

  ‘Jaz, there must be a law against this. What if the cops find out?’

  ‘Who’s gonna tell ’em?’ He turned on the main lights. ‘You’re not gonna tell ’em, are you, Daisy?’

  ‘Bloody hell!’

  Daisy had turned round to see the rest of the room. The floor was covered with burgerwraps, computer disks, Game Cat arcade mags (‘This Month: Sure-fire Unintendo Cheatmodes!’), discarded dominoes (cream), empty packets of individual-portion cornflakes, half-eaten curries, books on winning the game, losing the game, ignoring the game, cheating the game, loving the game, underpants and the odd sock (quickly stuffed behind a pillow), Frank Scenario recordings (including a rare vinyl edition of ‘How Cool Can You Go?’), hefty programming manuals, a map of Manchester (overdrawn by felt-tip markings, alternative routes), tubes of toothpaste, a box of chocolates, a green folder with his name on, spewing papers and diagrams.

  ‘It’s a tip!’

  ‘Yeah, you like it?’

  ‘Don’t you ever clean up?’

  ‘Me? That’s my mum’s job.’

  ‘So why doesn’t she do it?’

  ‘She can’t get in, can she? I keep the Spicelab locked. In fact…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re the first…I mean, the first to come in here since…well, since years ago.’

  ‘Oh.’

  For furniture, there was only a single unmade bed and an office chair that nestled under Jazir’s computer station. Along one wall, another table served as a workbench. This was the only tidy area. A rack of tools was fixed to the wall under a large poster of ‘Our Frank of the Cool’.

  ‘Nice computer,’ said Daisy.

  ‘Yeah. My dad bought it me. You know, keen? Erm, would you like to sit down, erm, on the bed, like, or something?’

  ‘I’ll go for something.’

  ‘The chair then?’ He pulled the office chair from under the desk.

  ‘I’ll stand, OK.’

  ‘OK. I’ll sit on the bed, anyway.’

  Daisy couldn’t believe she was d
oing this. OK, Jazir’s mother had been happy enough for her to ‘help Jazir with his schoolwork’, but did she really have to be locked in this bedroom with him.

  ‘Maybe you should open the door,’ she said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s a bit stuffy.’

  ‘I can open the window.’ He did so. ‘That better?’

  ‘Look, Jazir…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Hackle said you were the key to the dominoes.’ Trying to break the mood.

  ‘Right.’

  Jazir jumped up and took her over to the workbench, and Daisy saw for the first time that he was as nervous as she was. His hands were shaking, so very uncool.

  ‘You remember your birthday, right? At the club?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘After you left, I showed some of this to Joe.’ Jazir had taken a test tube out of a rack. Inside it the purple gunge slopped around.

  ‘Urgh! What is it? A new curry sauce?’

  ‘Almost. It’s from the insides of a blurbfly.’

  ‘How did you manage that?’

  ‘Simple. I caught a fly. I cut it in two. The juice poured out.’

  ‘Nobody catches a blurb. Aren’t they dangerous when cornered?’

  ‘Nah, it was a pussy cat. I drugged it, didn’t I? I mean, does this look dangerous?’ Jazir lifted up a dirty tea towel from his bench. Underneath was the splayed body of a blurb, dissected down the middle, each side of flesh pinned back. Bits of wire poked here and there from inside the opened gut, where drops of gunge were coagulating.

  Daisy stepped back instinctively. ‘Cover it up!’

  Jazir laughed at her distress. There you go. Horror show over.’

  ‘You’re a head case, Jaz. You really are.’

  ‘It gets better. Here, hold out your hand.’ He had the test tube poised over her hand. ‘Palm up, stupid.’

  ‘Is it safe?’

  ‘It’s better than safe.’

  Jazir opened the tube and poured out a large globule.

  ‘It’s horrible.’

  ‘A slight burning sensation. It soon passes.’

  ‘No. I mean it’s greasy. And…oh…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It tickles!’

  ‘Good. It’s still alive.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s still alive. Where it came from is quite dead, but it lives on. Don’t you see what that means? Everyone thinks the AnnoDomino created some kind of robot. Sure, there’s wires in there, but mostly the blurbs are organic. I think most of the workings are in the gunge. It’s a biotech creature. That Mr Million is one cool bastard.’

  ‘Can I get rid of this?’

  ‘Allow me.’ Jazir picked up a syringe, which he filled with the blurb juice off Daisy’s palm. ‘Now, watch…’ He dragged Daisy over to his bedroom door. ‘You wanted me to open the door, right? OK, try the door.’

  ‘It’s locked. You locked it.’

  ‘Try it anyway, just to make sure.’

  Daisy tried it. ‘It’s locked.’

  ‘Good.’ Jazir shoved the syringe into the keyhole. He pressed the plunger. ‘Give it ten seconds…’

  ‘And?’

  Try it. Go on.’

  Daisy looked at Jazir like he’d gone mad, a clear possibility. Then she turned the doorknob. It swung open, nice and easy.

  ‘This is a trick?’

  ‘Well, it’s magic. Come here…’

  He dragged her over to the bed, where he picked up a traveller’s alarm clock. ‘Take the batteries out.’ Daisy did so. ‘The clock has stopped?’

  ‘Of course it’s stopped.’

  Jazir squeezed a little blurb grease into the empty battery well. Immediately the clock started again. The room was quiet with Daisy’s frozen breath and the ticking of the clock, like a countdown broadcast.

  ‘Don’t worry.’ Jazir took Daisy’s hand. ‘I was the same when I found out. Can you imagine what I could do with this? I could make a killing. All I need is a name for it. The stuff that opens anything! The universal lubricant. The oil of the world! Can’t you see the sales pitch, the marketing campaign. Puts Vaseline and KY in their place, don’t you think? Jaz vaz! Yes. I can see it! Lovelies galore!’

  ‘It’s not your invention. Anyway…’

  ‘Ah, but we’re gonna take the AnnoDomino Co. out, aren’t we? Us two, together. Me and you, Daisy, and Joe Crocus at the wheel.’

  ‘It’s evil stuff. Can I have my hand back, please.’

  ‘One more demonstration, then we go to bed.’

  ‘Now look…’ Daisy was backing away.

  ‘You kissed me last week.’

  ‘I was under the influence.’

  ‘You want some garlic now? You liked it, right?’

  ‘Let’s work, that’s all.’

  ‘The door’s open, Daze. It’s all vazzed up. You can leave any time.’

  ‘Just show me what I need to know. What Hackle wants me to know. Then I’m leaving.’

  ‘Fine. The computer.’ He hit the space bar to vanish his official dancing Frank Scenario screensaver. He picked up a new box of disks, still sealed. ‘I want this to be foolproof.’ He ripped off the wrapping, took out a disk and slotted it in. A ‘disk not formatted’ message came up. ‘It’s empty, right?’ Daisy nodded, Jaz hit the button. The computer went to work. ‘It’ll take a few seconds.’

  ‘I’m very confused by all this,’ Daisy admitted.

  ‘It just shows the magnificence of Mr Million, whoever the fuck he is.’

  ‘You sound like you’re in love with him.’

  ‘I admire him. The man has got vision. Come on, don’t underestimate the enemy, you know that ruling. OK, here we go.’

  The disk was ready. Jaz pressed on it to open an empty window. He didn’t ask this time, just looked at her. Daisy nodded. He took the disk out of the slot. All that was left in the syringe was then applied to the casing. He held open the sprung protector to allow the grease to seep inside, onto the floppy. Back in the slot it went. The disk icon was pressed again, opening the window. This time an icon floated in the space: a tiny domino, the double-six.

  ‘Hutch up.’ Excited, Daisy sat on one half of the chair. She took the mouse out of Jazir’s hand, steered the pointer to the domino, did the double-click thing. Nothing happened.

  ‘Needs a little help from the Chef’s Special,’ said Jazir, loading a new disk.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘My own recipe. Hacker mix. Watch this. It’s good, this bit.’ The curry sauce started to fill the screen, and the domicon went straight for it. More or less dived right in. ‘You see? You don’t have to drag it anywhere. The domino’s attracted to the sauce. This is how I caught the blurb in the first place. It kept flying into the screen and becoming drowsy.’

  ‘What’s in the chef’s program?’

  ‘Just the usual algorithms. Codebreakers, splicehounds, infobots. You know much about hacking?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘No matter. I mixed it all with the latest fractal paths. This is a curry with a thousand spices. Infinite knowledge, right?’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘I can only guess that Mr Million feeds these blurbs on some kind of fractal sugar base. It’s attracted, you see. Look, it’s opening.’

  The domicon split in two right along the divider, a six and a six, separate now, hinging apart…

  ‘How many people would like to do that?’ asked Jazir.

  …out of which poured a swarm of tiny blurb icons, a few pixels to each of them, with tiny wings. Too many to count, they started to feed off the curry. Pretty soon two of them were fighting over a juicy morsel, while another two were actually working together to fight off a third. Some more were staking out territory.

  ‘There’s one hundred and sixty-eight of these flies to start with,’ Jazir said. ‘You know that number?’

  ‘Sure,’ answered Daisy. ‘The total number of dots on a set of dominoes.’

  ‘And wh
at does the screen remind you of dominoes?’

  The Game of Life.’

  ‘Right. One of the first artificial life systems. Cellular automata. You set up a map, an environment inside a hard drive, design some creatures to live in it, give them some basic rules, randomize the pattern and start the program. Evolution inside a computer. When you read Hackle’s papers you’ll see he was involved in this work, only he called his system nymphomation: sexy knowledge. Look! Two of them are at it already.’

  Indeed, two of the minute blurbs were merging together on the screen.

  ‘That’s enough, you guys. Time for bed.’ Jazir clicked down the window. It dwindled to a domicon on his hard disk, aligned with another seven. Jazir clicked on the first of these. ‘Here’s one I made earlier.’

  The screen was pitch black with a throbbing mass of information.

  ‘What’s happened?’ asked Daisy.

  ‘They’ve reproduced. This is only five days old. Very fast permutations. I’ll scroll down to find an edge.’

  He did so. It was ragged, like shadows of itself, smoky tendrils. Occasionally a tiny shape would escape from the mass, to float away into space.

  ‘It’s a fractal!’

  ‘A new one. And it’s just given birth. Believe me, Daze. This is big. It’s like AnnoDomino have taken Max’s work and pushed it to the limits. I’ve found another three of these masses floating around. Sometimes they fight each other, like galleons. They steal supplies off each other. They eat each other. They fuck each other. They give birth. The cycle goes on. This is only a representation of the process. Imagine what it’s like in real life. There’s no end to it.’

  ‘How does it help with breaking the dominoes?’

  ‘Right. I gave a disk of this to Joe, and a tube of vaz to Benny.’

  ‘You’re really calling it vaz?’