White and Other Tales of Ruin

The place was just as he had left it. It no longer felt like home, because he had slaughtered safety and comfort in the couple of hours he’d been away. But its familiarity was comforting. Tom realised that he was absolutely exhausted. He could do with a charge right now. He looked longingly at the connection port and he even accessed the net briefly, before shaking his head and breaking the link. What right had he to sit and recharge while Honey lay crumpled and twisted in the rucksack like that? Besides which, Hot Chocolate Bob and his cronies may be here at any minute.

No, he had to leave now. If it weren’t for his foolish lack of planning he wouldn’t have been forced to return here at all, but he needed credit, clothes and something to help him get out of the city. An official pass would have been good, but failing that, there was always money.

He placed the rucksack gently on his bed — how he’d love to be holding Honey there right now, explaining his love and feeling her explanations in return — but it would be crazy to try to revive her here. Memory would have to sustain him for now. In the meantime, he needed a safe place and the time to bring her back.

A safe place …

Perhaps he’d known all along where he would go. He hadn’t been there since the old man had died almost fifteen years before, but he sincerely hoped that the Baker’s labs were still functional and equipped. Waiting for the right person to come and use them again.

Safety. If anywhere in this hope-forsaken city was safe, it would be the place where the Baker had lived, thought, composed, created and died.

The place where, for Tom, love had been born.

It was crazy what time could do to memory, even that of an artificial. It was as if the years could twist streets, the passing of seconds alter perceptions, smells and memories, take the truth and turn it into distorted ideas of what was and had been.

Either that, or he’d consciously tried to forget.

He’d found the estate easily enough. Twenty acres of industrial and business units, half of them flooded by the swollen river and stinking effluent, was not difficult to locate, even in the city. But once there, distance and direction became skewed echoes of what he remembered. He took the third turning right, the second left and found the unit … but it made net casters, and there were several chopped Draggers hanging around outside, eyes red with menace and blood.

Tom backtracked and started again, trying to make out where he had gone wrong. Wading through a foot of shitty water was not the highlight of his day, but knowing that the Baker’s hidden lab was beyond made it almost possible to ignore the stink and the things bumping against his legs. The sun sank in the west. It bled through the polluted atmosphere and cast pink reflections and violet shadows across the buildings, making them almost beautiful. Tom laughed out loud when he found the unit, then frowned when he realised that it was the wrong one again.

Every passing minute his fear grew. The sense that he was being watched — created by his own internal terrors, surely, not by any external presence — grew and grew, twisting him around every few seconds to search for the watcher. He saw a tramp and a few gang members, individual buzzed artificials wandering around awaiting death, a pack of dogs looking for the dead.

Eventually, desperate and exhausted and fearful that the dark would steal his last hope of finding the place that night, Tom sank down against a wall and felt tears brewing. The rucksack weighed heavily on his shoulders and in his heart.

And then the Baker found him.

Something inside his head clicked on. He’d never felt it before, had never even been aware of this part of his consciousness, but its sudden appearance opened up whole new vistas of knowledge for him. There was a brief surge of power that made his vision dim and his balance waver, but then he knew so much more than before that he almost cried out in fear, shock and relief. He stood, shucked the rucksack higher on his shoulders and walked around two corners to the Baker’s old unit.

It was deserted. The windows were smashed, the door graffiti-strewn and smeared a shiny silver where someone had tried to crowbar it open, the walls crumbled and lined black with flood tide-marks. And Tom smiled, because he knew that no one would have ever been able to find the Baker’s place.

No one but him.

Here was safety and refuge. Here, in the twist of a handle and the muttering of a special word, was a place where his love had been born and where, ironically, he could save it. Tom unslung the rucksack and slipped two fingers under the flap, feeling the silk of Honey’s hair and the oily coolness of her deflated skin.

“I’ll save you now,” he said.

Tom reached out, twisted the door handle and muttered, “Pudding Lane.”

The ground parted and carried him six feet under.