Nostalgia is my second novel, a magical-realism sci-fi drama about memories, family, addiction and the dangers of living in the past.
Outside the lab, I press the buzzer on the security keypad, glancing up at the security camera. The door buzzes, and I give a vigilant glance over my shoulder before entering.
I deliver the news of Brydie’s plan to hire a Private Investigator to Roger and Kirk.
‘Brilliant. Look, I’m not getting dragged into some family feud,’ says Roger. ‘Nobody can know about this.’
‘I’m only telling you in case…’
‘In case what?’ Roger’s angst ups a notch. ‘Were you followed?’
‘How should I know?’ I say. ‘Look… I don’t know if it’s a good idea if we continue doing this.’
Kirk looks to Roger, both with blank faces. ‘Oh, okay. Is that it? I thought you wanted to be a part of this?’ asks Roger.
The Locus opens its sleek cocoon, extending its chrome tentacles like a lure. An open invite. My gaze lingers on the machine; its call sends a track of sweat down the side of my head, making me itch.
‘I think… Maybe you should stop and think about the consequences of that thing.’
‘Do you know how many years I’ve been working on this? Fifty years. I first had the idea when I was fourteen. It has cost me friends. My family. My fiancé backed out of our wedding at the eleventh hour because her friends told her I was going to ruin my life along with hers. People endlessly telling you you’re wasting your time. That you’re deluded. You have no idea how many people I’ve had to prove wrong. How many rejections I’ve had. The sacrifices. Do you have any idea what it’s like to pour your soul into something you believe in when nobody else does? This is all I’ve got and it has got to work.’
Roger guides me to a chair like I’m a lost child. ‘I know I can be grouchy, terse at times, but we both know a lot is riding on this. We’re making tremendous progress. I am so close to securing a patent.’
I can sense Kirk watching on tenterhooks, wanting to interject. I unzip my bag, producing the canister. Roger’s relief is detectable as his posture slumps. ‘It’s all there.’
Roger takes the canister from me, holding it like it might explode. ‘Thank you, Paul.’ Roger nods for Kirk to take it from him, continuing. ‘We don’t have to continue. But we will find another to take your place. We’re not going to stop because you’re having family issues. Once you’re out, you’re out. No coming back.’
‘Oh, is that it, is it? Y’know, I do have some say in this. What, you think I won’t talk to anyone about what you’ve been up to?’ I jeer with certainty.
Roger smirks to himself, muttering a retort. ‘Who would believe you, Paul?’
‘And if you truly believed that you would never have let me near that thing,’ I say, pointing at The Locus.
‘I’m a reasonable man, but there’s only so much I’m willing to put up with. So go, don’t go, but know that any decision you make has zip-all impact on me or this experiment. Alright?’
‘Roger.’ says Kirk, in attempt to simmer his temper.
You know where the door is, Kirk is all Roger needs to say to shut Kirk up. ‘Take a moment to think it over. This needs to be refrigerated. Excuse me.’
Roger heads to the control room, nodding for Kirk to follow. I watch their faint outlines through the reflective plexiglass. Feeling hungover, even though I’ve not touched a drop in a few weeks, I take a seat, rubbing the bridge of my nose to ease my crushing sinus pain.
Kirk eventually reappears, more business-like than usual. ‘I’ve asked Roger if you could go again. One last time.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you don’t want it. I’m curious to see what happens when you’re resistant to The Locus. If it even works.’
‘No. I’m done with it. I’m too tired.’
Kirk’s usual open face is strangely emotionless. She says nothing, just looks at me.
‘Please.’
The Locus opens wide; its jointed tentacles reaching out for me. Kirk holds up a vial, concealed from Roger’s view by the curve of her hand. I don’t know what’s happening, but I can detect an urgency in Kirk’s eyes. I agree to her plan. As the shell of The Locus shimmers under the strip lights, my eyes remain fixed on Kirk’s face. Her expression cracks a soft smile, and I squint as I can’t be sure if that’s a tear rolling down her cheek.
Black.
Static and hissing noises, like a detuned analogue television. The picture struggles to settle and focus, but when it does it’s pixelated and fuzzy.
I can see Wayne in a pub teaming with England supporters, all glued to the match playing on a boxy wall-mounted television. Euro ‘96, England vs. Netherlands. Wayne looks like he’s in his mid to late twenties.
There’s a whiff of soap opera about the image: It’s staged, slightly off and unreal.
Wayne lights a cigarette as a group of similar-aged men on the table behind him laugh loudly, rough and rasping. One of them calls to Wayne with repeated ‘Oi’s’.
‘‘That could have been you, couldn’t it? If you were on the team, maybe we wouldn’t be three goals down!’
This is highly amusing to the louts, who begin to throw peanuts at Wayne’s back, repeatedly calling to him. ‘Oi. Maradonna. Why did you hang up yer boots? Weren’t you any good?’
Wayne stands, turning to face the men, who take their cue and stand in unison. It’s all about to kick off. Wayne grabs his chair, ready to do some damage. He takes out the first drunken lout, then another. The barmaid grabs the phone and dials 999 as Wayne takes on the rest. He takes a beating but puts up a brave fight as the pub descends into a chaotic brawl.
The Police arrive and it’s all over, as Wayne is cuffed and firmly escorted away from the over-turned tables and unconscious bodies.
The scene pauses; black and white lines throb on the screen, before the images fast forward, slowing down to play. The picture flickers to life, distorted but then settling.
I can see the same pub: Gone is the tatty carpet and fog of smoke, now refurbished with pine flooring and bi-fold windows.
A small group of identical middle-aged bald men chat over a quiet pint and a bowl of nachos.
Their peace is disrupted as a peanut hits one of the men in the back of his head. He turns, searching for the culprit. There’s only one other person in the pub: My Dad.
The bald man stares daggers at my Dad. ‘What are you doing?’
My Dad arches his back in his chair, exhaling deeply. ‘What am I doing? What am I doing… I am doing something I should have done years ago.’ With that, Dad throws another peanut at the man, hitting him in the eye, making him yelp.
‘Oi!’ yells the bald man, clutching his eye. His pals sit up, uncertain as to what’s happening.
‘You made my son’s life a misery,’ says Dad, standing. He slowly walks towards the bald men.
‘You know who I am?’ asks Dad.
‘Should I?’ says the one with the injured eye.
Dad slings a mean right hook, lamping the one-eyed bald man, almost knocking him out of his chair. His pals lurch to their feet, wobbly and out of shape.
‘That’s for Wayne,’ says my Dad, walking away as the injured man cries out ‘Wayne who?’
The scene pauses like an old VHS tape. The perspective pulls away from a monitor, revealing the viewer: Roger. He beams to the point of tears forming in his eyes. He claps his hands together loudly, bouncing in his swivel chair. ‘It works!’
Through the control room screen, I see The Locus open up, ejecting my Dad. Kirk assists him, checking if he’s okay. It’s only now that I fully realise that I’m in Roger’s memories. Kirk did it.
Roger leaps out his chair, hugging the nearest person: Dr. Betterman. He plants a kiss on her lips, and she promptly shoves him off.
‘What are you doing?’ spits Betterman, recoiling from Roger’s arms.
Roger’s memory swoops back in time to his university days, when he used to watch Naomi Betterman from afar, never feeling tall enough, handsome enough, good enough…
The memories leap forward to those late nights Roger spent trawling through Betterman’s Facebook profile, jealously regarding the men who were with her in the candid photos. Roger stops at an old photo from their university days together. Twenty-something Roger stood awkwardly next to the woman of his dreams.
The memory morphs into a more recent time. Dr. Betterman’s website on screen, Roger dials the contact number, aiming for a casual catch-up but instead he stutters like a fool.
‘H-hi… Naomi? I-it’s… me. Uh, Roger? Roger Brommage? R-Roger? From university? Yeah, hi, how are you? I-I was just looking at your website, I see you’re still practising psychology. That’s… that’s great. Listen, I’ve got a bit of a proposition for you. Nothing weird, I promise haha!’
The memory blurs back to the control room where Betterman pushes Roger away with disgust.
‘What? This is a good thing! We’re gonna be rich!’
Betterman is lost for words, not following Roger’s train of thought.
‘Memories from Ivor’s DNA interpreted into viewable recordings. It works!’
Betterman speaks calmly, yet stern. ‘You told me you wouldn’t be able to see anything.’
‘I didn’t know if it was possible. This is huge, don’t you get it? Smile! Show emotion!’
‘Do you realise what you’ve done? You can see inside people’s heads.’
‘No different to what you do. I’ve just made your job a lot easier.’
‘Don’t, please, just don’t. This is the worst idea of all time.’
‘This is what the people want!’
‘What people?’
‘Potential investors. I’ve spoken to many potential buyers in my time and it always comes down to this. They want something they can market and sell. This is it.’
‘Your morals have gone out the window,’ says Betterman, before being interrupted by Kirk; her voice audible from a single speaker on the control panel.
‘Roger. Can you come through? One of the clamps isn’t releasing.’
I see Roger tinker with The Locus’ clasp around Ivor’s wrist.
‘I think it likes me,’ joshes Dad. He looks gaunt and unkempt like I’ve never seen before.
Roger resorts to using the back of a screwdriver on the clasp, and with one firm hit it releases its grip. Ivor rubs his wrist, wobbling on his feet. Kirk checks on him, but he boils his frailty down to needing the toilet. Once Ivor has left the room, Kirk speaks in a hushed tone to Roger. ‘I don’t think he is fine.’
‘His read-outs were all normal. He’s fine,’ says Roger.
‘Look at him. He’s not the same person. He’s not taking care of himself.’
‘If you want to nurse him, that’s your call. The read-outs are all within expected levels,’ insists Roger, with a feeling he’s being watched. He glances over his shoulder to Dr. Betterman, who is still inside the control room. Roger’s thoughts turn to the speaker in the control room, picking up every word he said. Dr. Betterman stares back with a harshness which informs him he’s messed up. And he knows it.
The memory sifts like sand, reforming to a later point. Roger is hunched over, frantically searching through the tall refrigerator, muttering ‘Where is it?’
Kirk watches Roger, gawky and stilted. ‘So… I had a letter from my landlord about missed rent… They’re gonna kick me out unless I pay what I owe, so… You said you’d pay me last week, Roger. I’ve not had any money for two months now. I’m barely surviving.’
‘I buy you lunch, don’t I?’ grumbles Roger.
‘Yeah, but… there are three meals in a day,’ mumbles Kirk.
Roger spells it out to her. ‘Look, unless we find that canister none of us are getting paid. I’m supposed to be doing a demonstration in a month. The video simulator will only work with the specific DNA in that canister. Without it all the research is void. Investors don’t want to see something that doesn’t work. Don’t just stand there, look!’
‘I always put it back in the fridge. You know I always do. Maybe someone else moved it?’ replies Kirk, a little wounded by Roger’s ire.
‘Only we have access to this room—-’ Roger abruptly stops talking as suspicion shadows his face. He stands up straight, hand clasping his forehead. ‘She took it. Naomi took it.’
Eyelids blink, reviving the imagery with pixelated drags lines. I’m moving along a pavement strewn with weeds and cracks. Lifeless factories are all around me. I’m carrying a flight case in one hand as I pass boarded-up windows, trotting down broken concrete steps to the entrance of the lab. Without any thought, a hand taps the access code on a keypad. The lab doors crackles, but I glance back over my shoulder to see my Dad standing too close to me. I then glance to the keypad, then back to my Dad. Kirk limps down the steps behind him carrying two heavy flight cases, and I push the buzzing door open.
The view degrades into an image of The Locus, as if playing on a grainy CCTV monitor. I see my Dad standing before The Locus. He’s holding an axe in his hands. He slowly raises it, struggling with the weight of it. His hands tremble, poised to strike. But he can’t do it. The axe slips from his grip, clanging to the floor. Dad claws at his head in agony, collapsing to his knees.
I see Roger lean back from the monitor, having seen it all. Kirk stands over his shoulder, fingertips over her mouth.
‘I knew it. I knew he saw the code! He was looking over my shoulder! Son of a…’
‘Why was he… why’d he do that?’ asks Kirk.
‘He is not to step foot in here ever again. ‘I’ve got all I need. We don’t need him anymore. If he comes back do not let him in.’
The image crushes, sputtering into nothing.
The Locus delivers me out into the real world, into the sad-yet-expectant face of Kirk. The clamps release around my limbs and head, and I am free. She reads my face, longing to know what I saw. Unable to look her in the eye, I glance with disgust at Roger in the control room, and I leave the lab without a word.
Out on the street, I pace down the centre of the deserted road, ignoring Kirk’s calls for me to come back to the lab.
I just want to forget it all. Roger. Kirk. Betterman. The money men whose recognition (and money) Roger craved. But The Locus doesn’t want to forget me.
In those in-between moments and false stretching of time, my forearms can feel its caress. Gentle at first, becoming firmer. I dream about its secure embrace, and my succumbing, floating into its open mouth. It’s all I can think about.
I distract myself from the pain and longing, replacing it with the pain and longing I have for Meredith. I used to memorialise a perfect day we spent together. A ghost anonymously re-enacting what was, in reality, an unremarkable day. I would go to the pier diner and order the same thing as always: Hot chocolate and a Danish pastry. Later I would head for the multiplex, watch a film, eat a tonne of popcorn and wash it down with a milkshake from the mall. Inevitably I reach the end of my day, wondering why I bothered. I don’t feel any better for it, just somehow even emptier.
But I can’t keep this up forever. My savings are in such a desperate state that I consider telling Mick I was robbed at gunpoint outside the bank, and hope that he’ll lend me cash out of sympathy.
I hole up in my bedroom, staying up late watching VHS tapes on my portable TV/video combo. The analogue technology is barely clinging onto life these days, but it’s good enough to watch The Monkees’ movie ‘Head’ play in grainy, low-fi splendour. Davy Jones dances with Toni Basil, and I marvel as ever at the editing as the images strobe between a black and white-suited Jones. There’s comfort in a movie I’ve seen thousands of times before. I know what’s going to happen.
But all the distraction in the world does nothing to ease the wrenching sickness in my soul. This monstrous craving to be back in The Locus.
I’m drowning.
A desperate desire to survive kicks in and I emerge from water, gasping for life. Oxygen fills my lungs, I rise upright; the weight of soaked clothes dragging my weak limbs down. Why I’m in the bath fully clothed, I’ve no idea. Removing my clothes, I wring the excess water from them, wrapping a towel around my cold skin.
I rifle through a kitchen cupboard for paracetamol, before realising there are other people in the room. I turn, anxious as to what I’m going to find.
Three young people of a similar age, eighteen or so. The two boys hold up phones, filming a girl who is displaying various boxes of I don’t know what. I watch her confidently run through the products, the third box being the best in her opinion. I’ve still no idea what’s in the boxes, or who these people are.
‘Who are you?’
The three people groan at me, gesturing to their phones. Whatever they were doing, I’ve ruined it. To escape their noise, I back out of the kitchen, narrowly avoiding another young person talking to themselves on their phone’s camera. As I pass the dining room, I see another young person, animated and caught up in their performance, talking far too fast about the brilliance of the latest Japanese fad.
I find Mick in the darkened living room with his editor, watching their creation on a monitor. An endless barrage of shots featuring Mick, living his best life, jetting from one location to another, a blood-sucking leach to a pair of testicles. I’ve seen enough.
‘Mick, who are all those—’
Mick raises a silencing hand. Incensed, I repeatedly flick the light on and off, enough to make my own eyes ache. Mick leaps out of his leather swivel chair and barrels towards me, topless and hairier than ever.
‘Whaddya playing at? We’re having a screening——’
‘Who the hell are all those people in my house?’
‘Our house.’
‘My house. I own it. You pay rent,’ I state. ‘Who are they? Don’t tell me they’re squatting.’
‘They’re friends from Uni. Influencers. Those people are the future. They tell the world what’s happening. What to buy, what to think. They needed a place to create an artistic base. I said we’re practically a multi-media HQ, so why not?’
‘Are they paying us for the pleasure of their company?’
‘You can’t put a price on art—’
‘I want them out. Now.’
‘What’s your problem, man?’ growls Mick. ‘You remind me of a fella I met a few years ago. We were on the beach at night, letting off fireworks, and this grey-looking, never-had-a-day-of-fun-in-his-whole-life arsehole comes marching up to us going “Do you know what time it is? It’s two in the morning! The kids are trying the sleep!” Killjoys.’
A barrage of insults bottlenecks at my pursed lips. ‘This is my house and I want it back.’
‘Alright, I’ll tell them to go. They might leave a bad review online, though.’
‘I want you out.’
Mick takes a rare pause for reflection before coming back at me. ‘Without me, you wouldn’t even have this place. I thought we were friends?’
‘I just want my life back. How it was.’
‘Crying out loud… this is about her, isn’t it Mate, move on. Talk to someone, see a shrink, I don’t care but do something.’
For once, Mick has a point. Nothing will change unless I do. Every waking moment I obsess about The Locus, just as my Dad did. I tell myself this isn’t some like-father/like-son generational curse. My Dad knew what The Locus was doing to him, and while he couldn’t save himself he knew he could save us. Me. His final gesture.
The experiment has to stop.
The smell of weed hangs heavy in the Sunday air, burning my throat as I trudge through the crumbling industrial estate. There seem to be more and more hollow-looking eyes skulking from the alleyways these days. The homeless, the desperate, or the hurting. Indiscreetly exchanging valuables for whatever gets them through the day.
I step down a small run of concrete steps to the door of the laboratory. Fingers poised over the security keypad, I glance at the security camera, diagonal to my head. Is it there for show, or is Roger watching me live on some mobile security app? I don’t know how much time I will have if alarm bells will ring. All I know is it’s something I have to do. The compulsion leaches onto my brain.
I double-take at the camera with a curious uncertainty. That’s when I notice loose wires hanging underneath the camera. Perturbed, I tug on the door and to my surprise, it opens.
Through the door, the corridor leading to the lab trails into darkness. I flick the light switches, but nothing happens. I swipe my phone, switching on the torch. The post-apocalyptic corridor unnerves me almost as much as my growing confusion. Something isn’t right.
I gently push the door to the lab, and it swings ajar with a creak, ready to do what I must if only I can resist. My mind flashes forward, informing me that try as I might, any intention of repelling The Locus will be futile. I can see my hand gliding lightly over its perfect shell. Feelings surge, of wanting to be safe once again inside the machine. An overwhelming sense of wanting to go home rises like an unexpected tide, and an erratic urge overtakes me. It’s already been decided that I cannot give up The Locus, let alone destroy it. I have to switch it on.
Holding the torch aloft, I shine the light to where The Locus should be. It’s gone.
I direct the torch around the test room, and then the control room. It’s utterly bare. It’s all gone.
Copyright © Andrew Wright 2023