Chapter Ten

Kage was a mess of fake nineteenth-century buildings, culminating in a humpback bridge spanning a chalk stream. Over time, the paved boulevard wound around a Swiss clock tower at the foot of a steep hill.

Mego had arrived close to midday, dressed in jeans and a hoodie, when the naked sun was at its most fierce.

On her way through the town centre, she nodded to the workers of her favourite clothing shops, avoided the skeezer kids in their scuffed trucks who hung by the benches and passed the noisy buskers, keeping cool in Board shorts and Bucket Hats.

Somewhere in this choke of commerce, a swampy bass of P. A speaker crackled out from a nearby shopping centre.

After a brief detour, she made her way to the Square Chip café set in the middle of a shaded passageway. Were it not for the sandwich board at the mouth of the alley, the entrance would have been almost undetectable.

Entering the Tea Room, Mego took in the scent of grilled cheese, mint, and whatever puffed from the customers’ electronic smokers.

The front of the counter featured a patchwork of old Motherboards, set behind an array of faded white teardrop stools. Moroccan-style chandeliers adorned the interior, complemented by large Trumeau mirrors on the walls.

After ordering a bamboo tray of seaweed crackers, she spotted Shin at the corner table. He was sipping an iced coffee with grated strawberry in a highball glass.

He gave Mego a brief nod before picking at a bowl of banana chips.

"Nice hat, "Shin said. “Try the chicken croissant; it's very more-ish. Don't bother about WiFi; there isn't any."

A sign above read: 'Life is short, but conversation isn't. Talk to each other. (<3) '

Mego picked up a seaweed cracker

"I finished the game." She said.

“In record time, too. Most gamers take at least a week."

"I guess I was either determined or really tired."

"I guess," Shin said. "What did you win?" Mego plucked out the ticket with two fingers. "Coordinates? Great. Good luck with that."

"We should see where it leads." She said.

"What if it turns out to be a big, scary demon?"

"Then I'll call Okaasan."

Shin let out a mirthless laugh.

"It wouldn't be a fair fight for the demon." He said. "Let me see that again."

He held it up to the light in the hopes of finding a secret message.

"Invisible ink?" Mego said. "Seriously?"

"Sometimes the oldest tricks are the best. What machine printed this?"

"Some shiny black thing with red bulbs. No instructions, just a random thing in the basement."

"I thought it was like a power unit. Hmph, random is right."

"At first, I was thinking it was a code you type on a website," Mego said, nibbling on a cracker. "I looked up ‘Mendacium’ online. It's a big deal, something about MMO?"

"Yeah, one of the biggest," Shin said. "Okay, so your dad has a secret basement with an arcade, and the winner gets this?" He held up the ticket with two fingers. "What did your mum think?"

"I haven't seen her today."

"She won't be happy with you pissing about after the last time."

"She'll understand."

Shin lowered his voice. "Last time we went to a mystery location, everything kicked off. Next time, it could be worse, like dead worse. Something is messing with you, and you'll walk right into a trap?"

"Dad's notebook was in a car locked in a garage for over a decade. Pretty sure any trap is in bits by now."

"Trap is still a trap," Shin said. He threw down a screwed up napkin onto the counter. "Ah, to hell with it, let's go. I was going to waste a day feeling sorry for myself, may as well get some exercise."

"See?" Mego said, brightening up. "That's the kind of enthusiasm I was looking for."

"I'll have to swing by the flat first," Shin said. "Oneesan will be there, I hope you don't mind."

"Why would I mind?" Mego said. "She only threatened me with a knife the last time.”

Shin rubbed his temple. "I have talked to her about that, any more surprises, and she's living with my aunt. Trust me, I would not wish that on anyone."

"I like how you keep giving her a pass, despite all the crappy things she does."

"What can I do? She's family. If I throw her out, she’ll get worse."

"I can imagine worse things happening if Mum found out."

"I hear that," Shin said. He stood up and stretched. "I need a whizz,"

“Don’t announce it, just go.”

While Shin was absent, Mego glanced at the customer to her left. He was a tall man in a mime's long-sleeve t-shirt, round spectacles and a flat cap. What drew her eye was the moustache pencilled under his mouth with two straight lines.

"What's with the moustache?" She said.

"I am being ironic." The man replied haughtily.

"What does that mean?"

"It's a joke."

"But you're the only one in on the joke?"

"Yes,"

"So, you're just an idiot?" Mego said.

Hit with a realisation, the stranger stood up.

"Excuse me."

Mego sipped her drink. "What a nice man."

A few minutes later, Shin arrived, rubbing his hands on his jeans.

"Let's bounce." He said. "Do people still say 'bounce?' "

"You tell me,” Mego said, gathering her bag. “You’re the hood-rat."

***

The Steppe Tenements stood as a former shopping centre in the slum-like district of Paganside, a concerted effort to make the area residential.

Every new flat was the same size, with shop windows removed, bricked up, and bolstered with sheet-crete for extra protection.

Shin stopped somewhere near the entrance, followed by Mego, who parked in one of the grassy bays. Slightly overwhelmed, she grabbed her bag and closed the door.

"Aren't you going to lock it?" Shin asked.

Mego tossed him a shrug.

"No point." She said, almost robotically.

They took a right at the main entrance, a boarded-up barricade adorned with graffiti and scorched tags from a Molotov cocktail. Through a turnstile, the canal entrance reeked with putrefaction.

It smelled like something had died inside another thing that was already dead.

Mego covered her mouth as they passed the circular plaza with its concentric brickwork and patchy long grass.

In the corner of the plaza wall, old bed frames were stacked in a twisted tangle of rusted springs, forming a weird amalgamation that resembled a pyramid.

It could have passed as art if anyone were so inclined.

Through the suffocating waft of a chemical spill, Shin broke the silence with a question.

"Who was that guy you were talking to?"

"Some old dude," Mego said. Shin flashed a sideways smile. "What? Come on, he must have been like thirty-eight."

"He looked like an interior decorator," Shin said. An interior decorator named Hamish. Now, Hamish wears a beanie hat indoors, owns a framed poster of a French New Wave film (never seen), and never shuts up about 'The contemporary feel'."

"Ooh."

"He's the sort of guy who brings a typewriter to a coffee bar and pretends it's the most natural thing in the world. He will sniff a Vinyl record and tell you it was from a record shop in Camden, but it's not there any more."

Mego smiled and blew her nose.

"Alright, check this out." She said. "His girlfriend's name is India. She makes cupcakes and posts them online with the best filter." Shin nodded. "She goes to Glastonbury, avoids the mud and is never part of the crowd, but always gets her face painted to show her ‘wild’ side."

"Oh, Indy, you so quirky."

"She will almost certainly have one of those fake jobs that rich people give themselves to sound useful: Party planner, Lifestyle guru or Hedge fund manager.”

"One more thing you forgot," Shin said, pausing in his stride.

"Oh! Oh!" Mego said. "Hot Cocoa!”

"Yes!"

"India's favourite thing to do online is to nurse an oversized mug, while looking out at the stars." Mego said, adopting a dreamy, moon-maiden voice: "We are all someone's future past life."

The pair of them laughed.

"We are evil," Shin said.

"So evil," Mego said. The merriment soon petered out, giving them time to look up at the ruinous Hell-scape that passed for an entrance. "Let's get this over with."

She took his hand, and they mounted the steps, crunching over a pool of broken glass. Passing through stalled automatic doors, she wondered how many people had tumbled onto these shards. The interior was an average-looking shopping mall comprising three levels of a vast open complex with walkways and bricked-up elevators.

Moss and lichen were widespread, with unkempt greenery hanging down like an Aztec ruin. The gloom was pierced with several columns of sunlight, while bulkhead lights lined the graffiti-laden walls and flickered in abundance.

Whenever she came here, Mego would peer up at the collection of large birdcages suspended from the ceiling.

There were ten cages for the nine planets of the Solar System. The latest discovery was Minerva, recently found by a group of Puerto Rican scientists while others were observing an anomaly resembling a giant eye.

Mego heard a dog bark, as the mournful lament of a distant Saxophone filled the far end.

Sheets of rainwater cascaded down one of the holes in the ceiling, and everything smelled of wet earth and damp.

Shin's place was an old watch shop converted into a shotgun apartment, its broken Neon sign winking out from the gloom.

"Crystal's still in." He said. "God knows if she is up yet."

"It's one in the afternoon," Mego said.

"Yeah, so fifty-fifty I'll say."

Shin unlocked the front door and fed the key into a thick Iron Gate, which always reminded Mego of a Wild West jail. He slid the gate back into the recess of the wall, and the two of them wandered in.

The front hallway always hit them with the odour of dead leather from fish tanks filled with old shoes.

Upon entering the living room, Mego felt her chest tighten, as she saw how small the place had become.

Empty plates and video machines towered on one side with five cartons of imported Lithuanian cigarettes, stacked next to a ratty corduroy couch.

Next to the couch sat Crystal Pie, a rake-thin woman in her twenties, wearing a Grindcore T-shirt and Men’s boxers. Her head was buzzed on one side, while the other half let a mane of pitch black hair flow down to her chin.

Heavily tattooed arms ended in drawings of linked capacitors tracing down the metacarpal bones.

Gaunt and pale, she sat in a swing suspended from a patient hoist, eating Rice Pudding from a salad bowl.

Shin took one look at the hoist and dumped his crash helmet on the kitchen counter.

"Cris, what the hell?"

"Ehh, you're back!" Crystal said. She smiled cheerfully, flashing a dull set of teeth like a string of pearls found in an abandoned house. "You like it? Found it in an old hospital, just sitting there."

"There's barely enough room for your crap, and you're bringing more?"

Her mood dimmed, and she gestured with a spoon.

“You said you were cool with it." She said.

Mego always found the woman's dialect hard to place. Sometimes a Welsh accent would break out, and then fold into something from the North.

"Did you even wash it?" Shin asked.

"It's a hospital, dumb ass. It's bound to be clean."

"Wait, are those my boxers?"

"Yeah. Sorry, all my undies are dirty."

Shin palmed his face. That kind of info was need-to-know.

"Why is your dirty stuff still here? There's an Auto-L right opposite."

"Well, I would have, but I was busy getting this thing in. I had to offer some local boys.....” Shin's glare now reached full beams. “Never mind. Now, if you can do me a solid..."

"I think you've had enough solids."

The woman laughed, but it turned into a dry cough.

"You're starting to sound like Mum, " she said, noticing Mego. The woman gave a friendly wave. "Hey, look who it is. Remember me?"

"The girl who threatened me with a knife?" Mego said. "Rings a bell."

"That was just me being cordial."

"That's nice. Let's never become friends."

The woman put aside the salad bowl and slinked over to Mego.

"You say that now, but I think we are going to get along just fine," Crystal said. She spoke calmly, with an underlying menace that reminded Mego of a cartoon Tiger.

"Leave her alone, Cris," Shin said. "Alright, two minutes. Try not to kill each other while I'm gone."

"Each other ?" Mego said, but he was already on his way out. Crystal snorted a laugh and returned to the cartoon.

Mego found herself distracted by a collection of DVDs in the corner: Date Movie, Epic Movie, Superhero Movie, Meet the Spartans and Disaster Movie, all the while feeling an ominous shiver crawl up her back, like an Ouija Board someone forgot to close.

“Cinematic Shovelware.” Crystal said, without looking, “Crap it out fast, move onto the next.”

Mego turned to look at the frantic Anime playing on the screen.

“What are you watching?" She asked

The tall woman eyed her coldly.

"Star Bleed, it's like a sci-fi with planes and robots."

"Any good?"

"Not as good as the original," Crystal said, sneering. "The series is trash because the writers are trash.” She smiled and pointed at Mego with the same fingers used to grip a cigarette. “It’s all a dream, y’know? An infinite cycle destined to repeat the same path of forget and reset.” She shook her head. “We’re just characters in a new-ending show. Recycled and recast. ”

“What dream?”

“The waking kind, where reality exists inside a trap, tricking everything, including time; and time devours all, including itself.”

“And you know this, how?”

“I can see it in your eyes,” Crystal said. “The Demiurge. You walk in yellow, guarding the cube, keeping us all imprisoned inside a dream.” She lowered her voice. “Saturn ascends.”

“If that were the case, I would know.”
“Unless you yourself have erased the memory. It can’t be a trap if the host is aware.”

“Sounds very convenient.”

“That’s the point of building this unconscious waking. It’s reliant on our obliviousness so that we won’t remember and repeat the cycle." She drew hard on her cigarette and nodded. “One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.”

“Except we ain’t Nietzsche. c’mon.”

Crystal vented smoke out of both nostrils and kicked away a footstool.

"Check it out.” She said. “You’ll love this." Reaching down underneath the couch, she pulled out a hard case for an instrument. "This here is a prototype. I got it clean from a vendor in the Presidio. Have you ever been there? Place is stacked, man. Stacked. Up." She paused before unsnapping the latches. "They got machines there that can tell your accent from a whistle. Blow your tiny mind. Oh hey, you want a beer?

"I'm good," Mego said

Opening the velour-lined case, Crystal held up a weapon. The stock resembled a caulking gun, and the barrel was unusually shaped, like a washing machine heating element.

"It's called 'Snowstorm, '" Crystal said. "I’m told it'll reduce anything to a fine powder, you dig?" She felt the weight with both hands. "Got a bunch of unsanctioned Alien tech from R&D, waiting for the word. Stuff goes missing; inventories have to be rewritten to keep the books legit. God's eye is always watching us. Now we dance with strangers. Human scientists teaming up with greys, what a time to be alive."

"Why do you have it here?"

"The people I know, they ain't no prom dates," Crystal said quietly. "They come in waves. Angry waves, gotta be careful." For the first time, Mego saw white points of anxiety in the woman's eyes. A dim fractal of a lost personality. It quickly dissipated with another hard sniff. "Like I said, just a prototype, but it could backfire and turn us all into cotton candy. Cotton on the wind." Her laugh had a rough edge to it; a smoker’s laugh. She snapped the lid down and returned the case to the underside of the couch. "Bro don't need to know, it'll keep him safe from the badness. The bad shine." She caressed Mego's chin with long red nails, sharp enough to decollate a tiny bird.

"Are you going to kill me?"

"Heh," Crystal said. "Hush now."

Shin rushed in carrying a beekeeper's hat.

"Crystal! I told you to get rid of those damn hives."

"And I told you they are an investment."

"You still keep bees in the flat?" Mego said.

"Protection, my girl. When they're around, no one messes with my Paint Chips"

Paint-Chips were the latest narcotic craze. Brazilian Nitrate was expensive to produce, so the chem-heads had found a cheaper synthetic. Local Junk-boys known as Hansell-First ran the 'chips out of Pagan-side.

"For the last time," Shin said. "No one is going to grab your crap; it's only two loaves."

"Worth a hundred each, which I am keeping for a friend."

"Yeah, well, I don't need you turning this place into a lighthouse for buzz-rats. And for the love of God, put some jeans on."

"Sheesh, Dad. Cool it, alright?" Crystal muttered, jumping up. Shin shot her a look. "Fine. I'll get rid of them."

"Today. And don't fog the place up, I still have to live here."

Crystal muttered more dark profanities and grabbed her sheepskin coat.

"Wait," Shin said, taking out three leaves of cash. "Before you go, here's thirty."

"What for?"

"Once you're done with the fog, go to the bus station. Catch a 'Polar Bear' to Mum and Dad's. Clear your head."

"You kicking me out?"

"No, just think you need time away."

Crystal regarded him suspiciously.

"How do you know I won't score?" She asked.

"It's up to you, Aneki," Shin said, with a touch of resignation. "I can't run your life."

He gave her some more money. "Here's twenty more. In case you get hungry." She cautiously tucked the cash into a balled fist.

"Thanks." She said, pushing a carton of cigarettes at Mego. "Laters, Gators."

Crystal took off without pausing. A bedroom door slammed, closely followed by death metal music dialled to the maximum.

Shin turned back to take the carton off Mego, but she hugged it like a stray kitten.

"Seriously?

Mego looked away. "I'm running low."

Shin smiled and nodded.

"I guess it's the least I can do." He said. "Seems all I do nowadays is apologise for her behaviour. Did Crystal offer you anything else?"

"Just a beer."

"Hmm, she must like you if that's all. Believe it or not, she had a lot of friends back in the day. Good people, too. They're all gone now, kept their distance."

"Yay, tragic back-story time."

"Alright, alright," Shin said, giving the helmet a couple of knocks. "Let's get going.”

***

Back outside, Rick peered through the open car window as Fee programmed arcade coordinates into her GPS. The image settled on a green patch by a B-road represented as a single red line.

"According to these numbers, it's in the middle of nowhere." She said.

"Are you sure about this?"

"If we barely make it out, feel free to remind me on a daily basis."

"Assuming we make it out," Rick said.

“Not helping." Fee said and turned on the ignition.

Rick stepped back and watched the car reverse out of the bay. Pushing on his helmet, he mounted the motorcycle and wondered what treasures lay in store.