The Need for Better Regulation of Outer Space Read online

  An hour later and the gin is all gone. Neville’s done his best to describe how he would curl his hair, peel an apple, and paint his finger nails. He mimes walking in high heels around the small living room, and asks Alan for a light in a squeaky voice. Alan cups his hand around Neville’s as Neville sucks in smoke from the lit cigarette and arches his neck. Such a pale, tender neck, thinks Alan. Not reddened by the sun, like his own. Such smooth skin. Neville has no need of face powder, even though he carries a little compact and can be seen quite often dabbing his nose from it as he sits in the Eagle.

  ‘Be true to me, Oscar,’ Neville says now, fluttering his eyelashes.

  ‘Always, Bosie,’ Alan smiles. But he has seen Neville walking along the street, arm in arm with another undergraduate. No matter, he is old enough to be realistic about Neville. These things always end. The question is not if, but when.

  ‘But I can think of some better questions than yours, Alan. Such as; how far would you go? Hand up your blouse, in your brassiere, or down your knickers?’

  Much later, and Alan and Neville are lying on the bed, both drunk. Neville’s close enough for Alan to smell his breath, synthetically sweet from the lime juice he swigged with the gin.

  ‘Put Snow White on,’ Neville whispers, so Alan pads over to the turntable and gently drops the needle down onto the record.

  ‘Have I told you her story? The story of how I fell in love with her?’ he says as he settles back on the bed.

  ‘No,’ Neville runs his hand through Alan’s hair. He’s being affectionate tonight so Alan starts his story.

  ‘I saw the film in the last days of the war, when I had a weekend of leave and nobody to spend it with. So I went to London and I decided to go to the cinema.

  ‘Everyone went to the cinema a lot, then. It was the easiest way of escaping the city. Outside the cinema there were just piles of bricks and rubble, and people shuffling around trying to find places to live, enough to eat. Just trying to get by. The old ways of living had all been destroyed, but we hadn’t yet worked out the new rules. But inside it was blissfully dark, just like being outside on a cloudy night when the bombers wouldn’t bother to strike.’

  Neville is restless, ‘What’s the story, Alan?’

  But Alan is in the past now, his eyes shut, remembering the dusty velvet seats of the cinema creaking beneath him. Walking into the cinema, he had passed a child’s shoe abandoned on the pavement, a worn, scratched thing. A single shoe in a city at war is never a good sight. He tries not to think what might have happened to the owner of the shoe.

  ‘I watched the girl with hair as black as coal, eyes as blue as a summer’s night and lips as red as cherries. I knew what was going to happen, but I was still entranced. It’s like clockwork, she has to die because she’s so beautiful and young, and the queen is old and jealous. That’s the law in fairytale-land. And it has to be death by poison, or wolves or axes. She’s –’ he pauses here, trying to find the right word, and Neville touches his hand ‘– perfection when she’s in that glass box, because nothing more can harm her. She’s as safe as she can be. So really, she should have been grateful to the queen.’

  ‘But she doesn’t die,’ says Neville.

  Alan smiles, ‘No, she doesn’t die. Although she’s not alive either, not for a long time. She has to wait until the prince comes, before she can wake up again. In fact it’s an undecidable problem, because you can’t tell in advance how long she’ll have to stay in that state. There’s no way of knowing when the prince will arrive and wake her up.’

  ‘She’s neither dead nor alive,’ says Neville.

  ‘Both dead and alive,’ Alan corrects him, ‘at the same time.’

  They lie on the bed, at peace, their arms around each other.

  ‘When I came out of the cinema,’ Alan needs to finish his story even though he knows Neville isn’t interested any more, ‘the child’s shoe was still lying there so I picked it up. It was red, like the apple in the film.’

  He doesn’t tell Neville that the true end of the story came earlier, as he cried in the cinema watching Snow White in her glass box. He cried because he was remembering the death of Christopher Morcom at school. Touching his coffin at the funeral was the nearest he ever got to touching Christopher himself. Tears dripped off his face as he remained motionless in the cinema, after the film had finished and the other people had to squeeze past him. And he was left wondering all over again at the absolute and awful illogicality of death and the sudden vanishing of a person’s mind, leaving just their physical body. The child’s shoe was just an afterthought. Maybe a symbol of Christopher’s death, maybe a symbol of a red apple.

  ‘Do you still have it?’ Neville mutters, he’s half asleep now.

  ‘Somewhere.’ But he can’t think what he did with it when he returned to Bletchley.

  Manchester, 1952

  Alan picks his way along the icy pavement trying to avoid the worst of the frozen puddles. The King died the previous week and all the buildings in this part of the city have black mourning fabric swathed around the windows. He supposes it’s blackout left over from the war.

  By the time he reaches the police station his feet are too cold to feel anything and his hands can barely grip the door handle.

  ‘I’ve come to report a break-in,’ he announces to the sergeant on duty, ‘at my home.’

  The policeman looks at him impassively, ‘A break-in. And has anything been stolen?’

  ‘Yes. Some money. And a few personal effects.’

  The sergeant is wearing a black arm band. They’re all in mourning for someone they’ve never met. He feels the old prickle of pain behind his eyes, he wears an invisible arm band every day of his life for Christopher.

  ‘Personal effects, sir?’ The sergeant’s modus operandi seems to be to repeat part of what he has just been told. Perhaps it’s a test of some kind.

  ‘Yes. I don’t know what, exactly. It’s difficult to tell because it’s all rather a mess. Stuff has been chucked around the house.’

  The sergeant makes a tiny note on his blotter, surely not large enough to contain the information he’s just been given, ‘And when did you discover this – break-in?’

  ‘Just now. This evening when I arrived home from work.’ He’s feeling oddly breathless after hurrying here from his house even though he’s used to running long distances, so a short walk shouldn’t present any problems. But the sergeant’s deliberate and slow manner of speaking is making him feel as if he’s speeding up, like a record that is being played too quickly.

  ‘The thing is –’ he takes a deep breath, ‘the thing is, I know who did it.’

  The sergeant stands up straighter and looks at him properly for the first time, ‘Can I have your full name, sir? And your address?’

  An hour later and he’s talking to two policemen in a little room. He’s grateful for the privacy but he can’t understand why it needs both of them. He has all the information they need, all they have to do is go to the address and arrest the man for breaking and entering.

  He even feels a kind of pity for Don, for being so shortsighted. Surely Don would know that he could guess who’s done this. Only a couple of weeks after they last saw each other and Don spent the night in Alan’s house, propped up in his bed watching him get undressed. Watched him take off his watch and cuff-links and put them away carefully in the little ebony box on the bedside table, where there was also a bundle of cash. Before he turned to Don and took him in his arms.

  The next morning Don was silent, even as Alan cooked him bacon and poured him tea. And he hasn’t seen him since.

  Well, he supposes he will see him now, in court. He’ll have to give evidence of course, be a witness. In spite of everything he hopes Don won’t get a prison sentence. But he would like his cuff-links back.

  ‘And how do you know this character, sir?’ The second policeman is smaller, and sharper looking than the first one. They have already asked him this, he can’t see why they’re ask
ing him again. He tries not to sigh as he explains how he met Don a few months ago in a pub, (‘Which pub, sir?’ and they write this down too) and invited him back home.

  ‘Why did you invite him back to your house, sir? For what purpose?’

  ‘I wanted to get to know him better. We chatted in the pub and seemed to have a lot in common, so I suppose I wanted to continue our conversation.’

  ‘Forgive me, sir, but you told us that you are an academic?’

  Alan nods.

  ‘So may I ask what you had in common with this man? You say he is a labourer?’

  He silently curses the British class system, ‘Just because one man has been to university and another man has not, doesn’t mean they have nothing to say to each other.’

  ‘How long did he stay in your house, sir? That first evening?’

  He blinks, remembering Don’s unexpectedly pale skin, his unexpectedly tender mouth. ‘All night.’

  ‘All night?’ the policemen look at each other, ‘all night, sir?’

  ‘Yes. And then he came back the next night.’ And the night after as well. It was only after that that things started to go wrong, that Don seemed to resent something about Alan, about his work maybe, or his house. Then he became sullen and sour, and his mouth became hard.

  ‘And would he have had an opportunity to see your bedroom, sir? To see where you kept your valuables? The cuff-links and so on, that you claim he has taken?’

  ‘Why yes, of course he saw my bedroom. That’s where he spent the night.’

  The policemen are silent for a moment, ‘Thank you, sir. That will be all we need for now.’

  ‘But when are you coming round to my house? To see the evidence? The mess he’s made?’

  They look at each other, ‘That may not be necessary, sir. We think we have everything we need to make an arrest.’

  Manchester, 1954

  Home from a silent evening in the pub at the end of the road, where Alan was afraid to talk to anyone, in case they start asking him about himself. The consequence of not talking all night is that he’s now drunk too much.

  I am a liar.

  Alan faces his reflection in the mirror and touches the image in the glass to steady himself. He has been alone for so long now that he is not quite sure if his thoughts are silent or spoken.

  I am a liar.

  To take his mind off the image he forces himself to work through the logic of this statement. Why is it problematic? Because if it’s true, then the person making the statement is a liar, which means it’s false. If it’s false and the person making it is not a liar, then it’s true. So it’s neither true nor false. Neither fish nor fowl. But perhaps it’s too late for lessons on logic, and he’s too drunk.

  He’s not a liar. He has never lied about himself, which is why things have turned out like this. Another statement:

  I am a man.

  This should be a more straightforward statement than the last one, there is nothing obviously wrong with its logic. The problem with it is in the mirror. He unbuttons his shirt, trying not to avert his eyes.

  There. Breasts. He has breasts, small but decidedly feminine in shape. This is what they’ve done to him. There was a man in ancient times called Tiresias, Alan learnt about him at school. He was also a paradox, he was a man with breasts, and he was a blind man who could see.

  Alan can’t remember what happened to Tiresias in the end but he knows it wasn’t good. Seers never do end well, they are always punished for telling the truth. He doesn’t know what will happen to himself. He has been told that the effect of the hormones will only last for as long as his criminal sentence, and then it will reverse itself. Until then, what? Will he have to live as this neutered creature; neither one thing nor the other?

  He goes to the bedroom where the apple is waiting. There’s a heavy, almost intoxicating scent of almonds in here. But it’s too soon. The apple isn’t perfect, it’s got a small blemish like a birthmark. It’s not a cartoon apple. He knows he’s not in a cartoon but he’s not sure if he’s in reality.

  He never thought he’d get trapped in his own test, imitating a woman. He wishes he hadn’t predicted this, hadn’t written down these theoretical ideas which have become real, like fairy stories coming to life.

  The first version of his idea was this: a man and a machine both pretend to be a woman and a judge has to decide who is better at the pretence; the machine or the man. The second version was simpler in a way; the machine has to pretend to be human, and the man doesn’t have to do any pretending. The judge decides who is better at being human, the man or the machine.

  He thinks he prefers the first version, perhaps because the ability to lie and pretend you’re something other than yourself is the secret of human intelligence. The second test is more a test of human behaviour; no actual intelligence is required.

  He walks away from the mirror towards the record player. It’s not too late to put on a record and have a short dance. Perhaps he could get a job as one of those fairground freaks, half man and half woman. The male half with a little beard and semi-suit, stitched onto a scrap of a ball gown, worn by the female half. He has the cleavage now for a ball gown. He wraps his arms around himself and moves around the room to the music. Snow White’s glass cover is a bit scratched now, but the inner workings are still visible.

  Even after he started taking the hormones he tried to go out, to pubs. He even went abroad once, as he used to do regularly. In spite of the drugs he can still offer himself to men, in the way that a woman does. But it’s no use, as predicted by the judge, other men are repulsed by him. There seems to be no space in the real world for the illogical statement that he now embodies.

  He goes back to the bedroom, takes a bite from the apple and lies down on the bed. He shuts his eyes and waits for the prince to come.

  The voice-activated lift

  When my department moved into a new open-plan office, the managers asked me to work out the seating arrangements. I was given a large sheet of graph paper and I drew little boxes on it in a grid formation and wrote a name in each box. Each box was a desk and each name was a person. I thought it worked quite well, I’d even managed to allocate space for the pot plants as well as for ‘breakout’ areas with coffee machines to encourage the staff to relax. We were allowed to purchase sofas for these areas and by all accounts they’ve been highly successful. The plants are thriving.

  My own desk happened to be next to the only window in the office. Unfortunately, although this was merely a coincidence, my colleagues noticed and they stopped speaking to me.

  They never spoke to me very often anyway, so it hasn’t made a lot of difference to my life. But I don’t feel I can sit on the sofas, and people visit me only when they have to pass on some work.

  My desk is quite near the lift, which is the first voice-activated one I have ever encountered. There are no buttons to press, just a small metal grill and when someone gets into the lift a voice comes out of the grill and says, ‘Speak the number of the floor into this grill slowly and clearly. Zero is the number of the ground floor.’

  Sometimes the lift’s voice is the only one that speaks to me all day. The voice is female, nice and gentle-sounding, and I enjoy listening to her.

  On the first day in the new office I tried out the lift. ‘One,’ I said and it worked. The journey was smooth, the lift’s motion almost imperceptible.

  I became curious about the lift’s abilities so I decided to test it, ‘Two. No, perhaps I mean three. I’m not sure.’ But it managed to ignore my attempt to mislead it, it just picked out the essential information and delivered me to the correct floor.

  The managers were pleased with my seating plan. But the next piece of work that they gave me is somewhat more demanding, I must write a report with a definition of outer space. I’ve been working on this for weeks, trying to understand the views of all the different experts. When I get stuck I’m able to stare out of my window at the city, at all its roofs and metal buildings
with the sky above always busy with planes and clouds.

  The managers and the Minister need to know where outer space is so they can regulate it. All I can say for certain is that outer space is a long way above this Government department. When I’m working on the report I can picture myself floating around freely up there, a long way away from all this ordinary stuff.

  Monday morning and on the way to work I treat myself to a café latte with hazelnut syrup. When I get into the lift I feel like I don’t really want to go to my desk yet, so I tell it, ‘A half’. It starts to move and then slows to a halt in that secret noman’s land that always exists between floors. It stops there for precisely the same length of time that my colleagues used to spend politely laughing at one of my jokes, and then without either of us saying anything it delivers me to my own floor.

  All day as I sit trying to work on the report I can see the lift out of the corner of my eye. Its doors open periodically to reveal its inner metallic space, and I can hear my colleagues telling it numbers in slow, solemn voices like children in primary school learning to count.

  I still haven’t finished the report although my managers are waiting for it, the Minister is waiting for it, everyone out there is waiting for it. But I don’t know what it will say. None of the numbers make sense to me. I spend my day gazing at Excel spreadsheets, and when I’m not doing that I stare out of the window and try not to imagine things crashing out of the sky onto the people below.

  Last month a Russian satellite fell to earth in the Outer Hebrides and every news site around the world had pictures of the remains of the dog walker (and his dog) being scraped up off the machair. After that there were calls for something to be done. Laws to be passed.

  In order to regulate something, the Government has to know what it is or at least where it is. And nobody can agree on precisely where normal, everyday space stops and outer space starts. My report is supposed to make the definitive pronouncement, but each expert that’s been consulted has a different opinion. So the report is still imaginary. I have a title for it, and headings for the different parts of it. I’ve even typed my name at the end of it. The rest of it is just blank white space.