I move through my life like a mechanical man. I inhabit a world of sterile apartment buildings, cold rooms, mould growing on the bathroom walls, and everywhere the touch of decay. I sense time as a nauseous vertigo; the very passage of time makes me sick. The feelings come back, too late, too fucking late. Only now, when it's too late, can I feel anything. Story of my fucking life.
The Attack took place on November the Fourth 2060. Our still unknown enemy released a cluster of psychoactive genetically modified organisms into the environment centered on the upmarket Clifton area of the city. Why they chose to attack our provincial city rather than a world capital such as London or New York, we will never know. Their identity is still a mystery, but the fact remains that they have effectively rendered a large area of our city uninhabitable.
Those of us who were the worst affected can never walk through our town again. The rest are dazed, confused, broken. Chronophobia, déjà vu and jamais vue are classic signs of what scientists call the Trauma. How did this happen? We ask ourselves. What year is it? You mean that was when? Where did the time go?
The first symptom we experience as we walk through an affected area is the intensification of this now universal feeling of déjà vu. This gives way to the gradually worsening sensation that one has left something important behind, missed an appointment, forgotten something.
These feelings of panic and confusion invariably escalate as the affected person gets closer to Ground Zero. They talk to nonexistent persons (the so-called “Witches' Sabbath”), and experience completely enveloping visual and auditory hallucinations, until finally they suffer a grand mal epileptic fit. Their brains are literally cooked inside their skulls by electrical activity.
I am one of those severely affected by the Trauma. I am walking towards Ground Zero in order to take my own life. I'm very old and have a lot of time behind me.
I look at the formerly bustling high street as I climb the hill towards the ex-University building; The Anthill, someone I once knew called it. Its derelict filigrees are rotting away; the whole building is falling apart.
Not long to go now.
I walk through the police checkpoint at the top of Park Street and head towards the very top of the hill, noting landmarks as I go. This was the SandwichLand joint, that is the museum we never visited but parked ourselves by to wait for a friend, and all of a sudden I am dizzy, retching, but unable to actually puke because I haven't eaten anything all day.
I lean against the faded corporate logo of the SandwichLand shop and take stock. I am doing it. I am walking towards Ground Zero.
Here goes:
There is a hotspot dead ahead of me, at the very peak of the hill the traffic intersection where I would mount my push bike and dive down towards the Triangle and turn right. It is marked by yellow warning decals but the police have better things to do that patrol the affected area. All the looting was finished years ago.
So I'm ready for the time sickness as I reach the crest of the hill; the ghosts of the thousands of cars that have passed directly over this spot and the blurs of phantom pedestrians crossing the street; I'm ready for the sudden headache and the feeling that I've left my keys in the house. Not that it matters.
But then I look ahead and see the tower of the student accommodations building rising in front of me, and I'm actually sick this time, as if the tears I can't yet cry are coming out of my mouth instead in the form of blood-spotted bile.
I curl up in my own vomit and begin to weep.
****
Some time later I get back up and stumble down the Queen's Road. The shops are mostly abandoned and vandalized but some small trade gets done here - obviously among the unaffected, all of whom are poor because the wealthy inhabitants of this quarter decamped twenty years ago.
I thread my way through the grey, colourless crowds, just another stinking tramp in a dusty overcoat, and then I arrive at the next hotspot. I'm not actually sick this time; but the sight of the buildings and roads, the general configuration of the urban space here brings on the first crying jag.
I tilt my head downwards and let the tears fall to the ground beneath my feet, hoping that maybe if I can't see the thing that is making me cry, I won't be so badly affected. My walk now takes me on a sharp left, up another hill and into the Zone proper.
Past a laundrette that used to be a pub and vice versa, all gutted. Abandoned buildings line this formerly prosperous street. The plate glass window of the letting agency is smashed out, wires dangling where formerly a VDU advertised the firm's houses. I glance dumbly at the devastation and shuffle on, my guts wrenched by pain. Across the street the Olde-Worlde looking barber's shop on the corner is an overgrown, exploded mess of mould, vegetation and rotten wood.
I walk on, through the hardest zone for me, this street... tenements line both sides and I only plod on head down, watching tears fall and feeling my stomach try to escape through my oesophagus.
Eventually this particular ordeal is over and I reach a crossroads. I can go ahead into a relatively "cool" but still heavily contaminated area, or take a sharp turn right down the street towards the former Student Union building and just sit back and enjoy the ride. After all, I'm going to die anyway.
So I turn right.
The sun comes out and slashes my vision; my head begins to pound. So on top of everything else I am going to have a headache. Story of my life. Then I remember something else, something to do with the sun, the way the radiation neutralizes the Effect for a short while, so I take a painkiller, sit down in the road and bask in its healing rays until I have recovered.
When I have my strength back I jump up and run down the street pell-mell, leaping over the rusting hulks of cars and spilled possessions of long-gone evacuees, panting and gasping with the effort but not wanting to be caught out before the sun... goes... away.
It scoots behind a cloud and I run out of motion on the corner, the SU building and its own payload of memories behind me, and concentrate on trying to get to the top of the street.
Here is the video shop. I look in past the broken DVD cases and feel the first sharp pang, the start of the irreversible terminal decline. Already the time sickness is overlaying my vision; partying students and well dressed debs jostle alongside the slum dwellers as my brain tries to accommodate a world it thought was left behind in time.
I am going to die, and I don't care.
Troglodyte slum children peep out from the cave like basements of tenements, and a part of me curses my stupidity; they could swarm over me and cut me up like a joint of meat before I can get to Ground Zero, which is ironically located in a graveyard. But then I realize that there is no danger here, after all, this is the safest part of town there is. The posh students and rich bitches aren't being taken down, are they? They haven’t even turned over the Lexus parked at the kerb...
The children cower back into their dens as they see the mad old man raving away, stepping aside for imaginary people to pass, giving a nonexistent passer-by the time, taking each step up this gentle slope as if he were climbing Olympus Mons.
I am back where I belong. It is the early twenty-first century again, and I can feel the earbuds of my MP3 player nestling in my ears, the bulk of my leather jacket swinging around me. I have to get something from the shop at the top of the hill, but I can't help the feeling that I've left my wallet behind. And what did I have to get? Don’t I have a shopping list? I root around in my pockets; feel a scrap of paper in my jeans. Ahhh, there it is. So what am I missing? Perhaps I should turn back. Or better still, phone- that's what I usually do. But where's my phone? I must have left it behind.
Eventually I get to what's left of the shop and browse for newspapers, milk, ginger beer, biscuits, a can of soup and some microwave gunk. I set the haul down on the counter and hand over my change to the shopkeeper.
"You bain't be going' far with 'ee!" exclaims a crude voice and I look around. It is sixty-four years later and I am standing in the wrecked remains of whatever the grocery shop has been converted into. Worse still, I am over ninety years old myself.
This can't be right. I fight off the nausea. I've just forgotten something. I look around, and suddenly she is there, bathed in a halo of electric light. She smiles uncertainly and asks if I'm getting anything for myself.
"No, that's alright."
"Sure? I don't want you eating all my snacks when we're there."
"Well, maybe a pastie or something." I get a pie from the fridge and pay for it and we walk out of the shop together. "Allow me to take your bag", I say, and we cross the road and head for Ground Zero.
There's a flash of pain and suddenly I realise: this girl's probably been dead for years and I haven't heard of her for the best part of a century and this is it this is it this is IT! In a few minutes I am going to DIE!
I'm actually doing it! I am walking towards Ground Zero!
For some reason the Effect started in a small city park which was itself built over a small cemetery; I and my new friend walk towards the low wall of the place and step over it.
Just a few steps now...
My companion squeals with pleasure; I look up and see that a small cat is walking towards us. The Cemetery Cat, we have named it ourselves.
She greets it in delight and runs towards the happily meowing creature.
Cat and young woman dash towards the centre of the park. I catch up with them and together we move to the far end, where the cemetery proper is. Where the Effect is at its peak.
But there is no Effect, and no pain, because we're in the park, sixty-odd years ago, a man and a woman and their cat, enjoying a picnic before the rain comes. In an infinite universe, the past is still happening somewhere, and somehow I have found it! I am the luckiest man in the world. I have got back my youth, my world, even my friends have returned to me. This is magic in action!
I follow them and soon we are there. She sits on an ancient headstone and pats the stone next to her. I stumble into the Eye of the Effect, as happy now as I've ever been in my life, my head buzzing with a thousand questions for this seemingly resurrected woman from my past.
A thousand songs of happiness and joy fill my heart as I fall into my own grave.
