oozes from the darkness. A colossus; tattoos on its long, limbless body glisten like rubies, emeralds, sapphires and countless other multicoloured jewels as it emerges. It moves by undulating lazily, pushing before it a head in the shape of a blunted lozenge. It hesitates, then goes forward again, zigzagging from shadow into ever brighter light, revealing shimmering fractals glittering on its surface. It is magnificent! A fallen angel. A Lucifer.
Its monster head, an expressionless mask, moves from side to side, seeking prey. Its metal eyes hunt.
Suddenly the head splits wide open, transforming into a gaping pink mouth, exposing fangs like curved needles. Richard woke up. He was bathed in sweat.
It was that dream again. Why did he keep having nightmares about a damned snake?
5. By Email
(London – 2013)
Andy Mitchell was dead. The email said so.
“How can they be telling me this by email? It must be a hoax – a spoof email perhaps?”
Having just awoken from the nightmare about the snake, everything still felt unreal to Richard, so he found it hard to take in. A fake email from HR would mean there was a breach in the firewall. But a serious breach in security for an email like this wasn’t at all likely. The message was real. Andy Mitchell was dead. Richard reread it a dozen times wondering what could’ve happened to his boss. A heart attack? Car accident? The email didn’t say.
He remembered the last time he saw him. It was while he had been staying in the Grand Sokos Hotel for a project. Mitchell had suddenly turned up in Helsinki and rang his room at quarter to midnight. It was summer, so it was still broad daylight. He had got dressed again, gone down to the lounge bar to meet Mitchell and they had drunk until three a.m. By then they must’ve been as pissed as newts. His recollection of what had happened was very hazy. To start with, the conversation had been normal enough. Mitchell had talked enthusiastically about music and playing bass for some band in his youth. But then he turned a bit odd. He became more and more morose. Suddenly it all came out as anger. He ranted for a while about what a bitch his wife was. He mentioned he was in serious debt.
He talked about being psychic, quite seriously. Then, bizarrely, he produced a pack of cards. He wanted to absolutely prove that he was psychic for some reason. Were they Tarot cards? Richard seemed to remember they were cards with letters on them… and didn’t Mitchell start talking about politics or something at the same time? It was as though he was trying to prove Richard wrong every time he asked a question. Questions that had something to do with…? Richard couldn’t remember. They were probably drinking that goddamned Salmiakki Koskenkorva – liquorice vodka. That would account for it. It had got quite weird and rather irritating, and the whole political thing had got really annoying in the end. Mitchell kept telling him to remember the facts, and repeatedly saying, “You need to wake up,” just repeatedly saying “You need to wake up now,” to whatever point he made. Well, they were both completely drunk. The standard of debate couldn’t have been very high. It was probably a slur of barely intelligible babble.
Suddenly Richard had an uneasy feeling. A feeling Mitchell had said something important to him he’d completely forgotten.
And then he remembered the email Mitchell had sent him two days ago. He had dismissed it as a jokey way of saying they had to go for a drink sometime. He read the words again with a feeling of déjà vu, or a feeling of having read them in a different life:
“Remember Helsinki? Have you made a decision yet? It’s getting urgent. Let’s arrange to meet soon.”
It was only at that moment, now that Mitchell was dead, in fact because Mitchell was dead, that the strangest idea began to insinuate itself. Back in Helsinki, Mitchell had said something to him that was not only very important but very secret. But no matter how he struggled, he couldn’t remember anything definite. Why can’t I remember the thing that I’m trying to remember?
Richard shook his head, trying to shake away the presence of the dream serpent, the shadows of grotesque unreality that still swarmed around him; trying to imagine what Mitchell could possibly have said to him that was so important. Something to do with Oldhams Bank, perhaps – or another project?
There was a more ominous possibility. The possibility that it was something to do with Zima. But that would be preposterous. Anything to do with Zima would have lit up in his consciousness like a neon sign. Where there should have been a memory there were just shadows.
So whatever this shadowy memory was, it couldn’t be Zima. He tried to think what else it could have been. There was one more possibility. The possibility that Mitchell had never said anything important to him in Helsinki. That, like the snake, it was imaginary. So, finally, unable to bring to mind any substantial notion of what Mitchell had said, he dismissed it as the memory of a dream. Richard switched off the laptop. He was annoyed though, that he’d read his emails just because a stupid snake dream had woken him. It was still only two a.m but now he wouldn’t get back to sleep.
6. Virtubank Software
The Bank of England, an ugly Georgian building consisting of an unfortunate hybrid of several incongruous elements, conceals the administrative machinery that once controlled an empire and continues to exert huge power over the global economy.
Walking near the building, along Threadneedle Street, you are aware of it only as a windowless Portland stone wall on top of which a disproportionately small Greek temple perches. From a greater distance, you would be able to see that the Greek temple has somehow been grafted to the front of something that looks like a French Hotel de Ville.
So, the Bank of England is ugly, but imposing. Fortunately though, the eye is somehow drawn away from it by other distractions. A statue of Wellington, on horseback, stands before the pleasant façade of the Royal Exchange building and, further down Cornhill, James Henry Greathead, 1844 -1896, forces traffic to bifurcate by occupying a position in the middle of the road on top of his stone pedestal.
In addition to Cornhill, six more streets scatter out at random angles from the intersection where the Bank of England is situated. They are surprisingly narrow – certainly not grand, continental boulevards such as those, for example, that radiate, in organised symmetry, from the Arc de Triomphe. They were not created for parading military might before cheering crowds. The might here is financial, not military, and so great is it that it must be concealed rather than paraded. Therefore, the streets are not (as Dick Whittington and his cat believed) literally paved with gold. Furthermore, the design is ramshackle and haphazard because they still mark out the positions where they were arbitrarily formed in medieval times.
In the vicinity of the Bank, the streets are crammed with more white stone buildings. Behind these, a little further away, glass skyscrapers rise up. All this would surely inspire feelings of awe in any who came here, or perhaps envy.
Richard emerged from Bank tube station and was confronted by the sight of all this history and glory. He felt a sense of disgust at the sight, both with the buildings and with himself for continuing to work here.
Yet capitalism was a necessary step on the way to socialism. Marx himself had promised this much. And, looking up, if not to Richard but to the impartial observer, at that moment the City seemed celestial. Fluffy white clouds were moving across a porcelain-blue sky. It was almost expected that horn-blowing cherubs would appear, unrolling scrolls of parchment so that some triumphant announcement could be made. You could believe that perhaps they would proclaim that here, right here, they were constructing the New Jerusalem which Ezekiel had prophesied.
It was obvious that heaven and the celestial sphere was an
