chapter thirty‑eight

He awoke to the sound of his own snoring. When he stopped there was a devastating silence.

Andrew had spent his whole life immersed in noise; his parents were busy conceiving him as the 5:15 Commuter Express thundered past their house. His first, somewhat reluctant, breath was announced by his own raucous scream. Mother's milk was delivered to the strains of an atonal lullaby. Pop‑music provided him with the motivation to blunder his way through puberty. Jack‑hammers, digging and re‑digging the same hole in the street were blamed for his lack of concentration at school. When he started work it was in an environment of ringing telephones and clattering typewriters; and throughout all of these periods he was never without the reassuring, background rumble of traffic.

Now, for the first time ever, there was no sound at all - the world had gone mute. He felt like a fish out of batter.

The only thing which denied the simple explanation that he had merely gone totally deaf was his breathing, it sounded like that of an asthmatic skin‑diver being pursued by a hungry shark at a depth of two hundred metres.

Fearfully Andrew opened his eyes, the absence of sound had led him to imagine that he was in the middle of some kind of immense void, an emptiness so profound that it would surely drive him completely insane. In fact, he was standing in a telephone box.

Andrew's mind was making a determined effort to bridge the gap between the bizarre situation it had imagined, and the mundane surroundings it had actually encountered. Needless to say it failed, but since it was now well accustomed to the idea of cause without effect, and effect without cause, it merely shrugged philosophically and waited for a diversion.

Telephones have a reputation as spiteful and untimely beasts. The one mounted on the wall next to Andrew's shoulder was no exception; it remained resolutely silent.

After about half an hour Andrew arrived at the conclusion that whatever was going to happen was certainly taking its time about it. There was a distinct possibility that the whole event, whatever it was, had been cancelled and the organisers had forgotten to inform him. Undoubtedly the situation called for action. For want of a better plan Andrew pushed open the door and stepped outside.

The silence outside the box was even more intense and oppressive than it had been on the inside. The open space was absorbing his only comfort - the sound of his breath wheezing in and out of his throat.

His feeling of foreboding was not helped by the surrounding architecture, he was standing on a wide, skyscraper‑lined, street. Gigantic, gleaming buildings loomed menacingly over him, their mirrored exteriors reflecting images of a thousand other mirrored surfaces. The street was deserted. Numerous cars littered the road, some parked, some looking as if they had been abandoned in the middle of a journey.

"My God!" said Andrew, "where is everybody?" He felt a lot better voicing his thoughts out‑loud, after all, there was no one around to lead him off to the padded cell.

"Alice ... Alex ... Anybody ... Hello," he shouted through cupped hands, but there was no answer, not even an echo.

"Oh, I've got it, I'm in the Land of the Endless Dream‑Time, this must be one of the dreams."

"But what happened to Alex?" he said, his subconscious having decided that a dialogue would help to settle his nerves.

"I don't know; he was right with me in the jungle, we should have arrived here together," Andrew gazed down the street hoping for some signs of life. "God, it's quiet."

"You're not scared, are you?"

"Well, it's spooky, isn't it?"

"But what danger could there be?"

"I don't know - that's what makes it spooky."

"You know what this is, don't you? It's one of our day‑dreams, a world where everything is ours for the taking; we can do whatever we want."

"We? Don't tell me I'm turning schizophrenic."

"Well, I don't know, I'm in two minds about whether we are, or I'm not."

"Oh great! Now I'm telling myself jokes, and guess what - I've heard it before."

"Well of course you have - that was the joke."

"Huh?"

"Oh never‑mind."

"Hey, if this really is my day‑dream, then there should be a woman in it."

"Alice."

"Yes, I hope so."

"Alex too."

"No he doesn't fit in to the dream, well I suppose he could, as long as he wasn't human, maybe a frog, no - too romantic."

"Oh, I see, you're afraid he'll steal Alice."

"Look, it's my day‑dream, I think it's only fair that I should get the girl."

"It may not be yours, I'm sure you're not the only person who dreams about this kind of thing. But don't let me stand in your way, you go right ahead and stab your best friend in the back."

"Oh, shut up! I'm going to enjoy this dream and if Alex wants to show‑up he can."

The new ruler of the world, and apparently its only citizen, surveyed the abandoned cars. His eyes came to rest on one that stood in the middle of the street, not only did it look expensive, it looked safe. It gave the impression that the driver could walk, unharmed, from a head‑on collision with a freight train. The appearance of safety was not derived from the fact that the car was very robust, which it was, but from its size. The time it would take for the shock‑wave to travel the vast distance from the scene of the accident to the driver's seat would be more than enough to allow him to leave the car, retire to a safe distance, and phone for a tow‑truck.

Having confirmed that the keys were in the ignition, Andrew jumped in and shut the door.

"Please fasten your seat belt," said a gentle, female, voice from the dashboard.

"Alex?" said Andrew, startled by the unexpected noise.

"Please fasten your seat belt," repeated the car.

"Shut up," growled Andrew and turned the ignition key.

"It is an offence to drive without a seat‑belt, the car will not start until all the occupants have fastened their seat‑belts," said the voice sweetly.

"So, who's going to arrest me?" said Andrew belligerently.

"Please fasten your seat belt," repeated the car, unswayed by Andrew's line of argument.

Andrew grudgingly fastened his seat‑belt and then opened his window. The car had become unpleasantly hot and stifling. He turned the key in the ignition.

"Please close the window," said the car in a calm flat voice.

Andrew ignored it and turned the key again.

"It is uneconomic to travel with the window open, the air‑conditioning will maintain the internal temperature at a comfortable level. The car will not start until you have closed the window."

"God damn you!" shouted Andrew slamming his fist, painfully, into the steering wheel.

"Please close the window," repeated the friendly voice.

"This is your last chance!" warned Andrew as he wound up the window. He turned the key.

"This car has run out of fuel," advised the voice. "The car will not start without fuel."

Andrew leapt out of the car and kicked the front‑wing with all his might. The attack made no impression on the car, however, the same could not be said for Andrew's foot. He limped into a hardware store and returned moments later. The windscreen had been designed to withstand impacts of up to thirty miles per hour, the flying sledge‑hammer was doing at least eighty, the glass shattered into a million tiny fragments with a satisfying crash.

A small reassuring voice from the inside of the car said; "This car has been involved in an accident, please notify the authorities. This car will not start until ..."

Andrew strode angrily away.

Two blocks down the street Andrew spotted a small red sports‑car, it was so enticing that even his last experience couldn't deter him from trying it. Fortunately it was too old to be equipped with an electronic back‑seat‑driver. He turned the key and the engine roared into life. He sat for a moment enjoying the powerful purr of the idling motor, then he slipped it into gear, slowly released the clutch and stamped on the accelerator. The back wheels spun, screaming, on the tarmac, then gripped, the car shot down the road, its back‑end snaking violently until Andrew released the accelerator and changed into second.

"Yahoo!" shouted Andrew, over‑dosing on exhilaration. He sped around the city for over an hour, his driving becoming more and more reckless as his confidence grew. Finally he took one corner fractionally too fast, the back of the car slid out, the car spun and smashed, backwards, into a parked bus. Andrew climbed out of the car, shaken but not hurt.

"Sorry about that," he said patting the car affectionately on the bonnet. Still drunk on excitement and dizzy from the crash, he staggered across the street and into a supermarket.

"And now ... for a snack," he said rubbing his hands together and looking eagerly about the store.

He strolled up and down the shelves of food, humming to himself to fend off the numbing silence. He tasted anything which took his fancy, leaving in his wake a trail of torn wrappers and half eaten food. He knocked over the pyramids of cans and filled his pockets with money from the cash‑registers.

He left the supermarket, and stood in the middle of the road throwing money into the air. He watched it blow down the street.

He spent two hours in a department‑store trying on different clothes and shoes.

He found another car and filled it with anything which caught his eye.

He moved into a suite on the first floor of the most luxurious hotel he could find. He took a shower, cold, then lay back on the enormous bed with a large malt whisky.

He was depressed, he'd tried his best to enjoy himself, but this dream just wasn't living up to his expectations. His version of the fantasy had a much more exciting life‑style; shopping by helicopter, zipping off to the coast by fighter‑plane, going for a spin in a formula‑one racing‑car, doing a bit of off‑the‑road driving in a Chieftain tank, cruising the world on an aircraft‑carrier and nipping up in a space‑shuttle to check‑out the approaching weather.

In this dream none of these toys was available; there wasn't even any electricity.

"I'm bored," he announced, "I've got to find Alice and Alex."

"Okay, how?"

"I could search the city."

"It's immense, it would take years. We need some way to reach the whole city - what we need is a radio‑station."

"But there's no power."

"They'll probably have an emergency generator."

"That's true - good thinking. Hey, maybe Alex has already thought of it."

"There's a radio in the car."

In the car, Andrew scanned the two wave‑bands for a signal that he was not alone, but there was nothing - not even static. He drove towards the centre of town in search of a radio‑station.

He found one easily, it had a large glass front with a gaudy sign proclaiming its name, Radio Newtown, and its broadcast frequency, 95.8 FM. The huge glass doors were locked, he decided to cheer himself up with some more senseless destruction by reversing the car through them. He was disappointed when they didn't break. He was horrified when the hinges gave way and the thick glass doors fell flat onto the roof of the car. The car‑roof buckled under the weight, smashing all the windows of the car and forcing Andrew's head, painfully, onto the steering‑wheel.

He tried to open the door, but he couldn't seem to get a good grip on the handle. He tried again when he had stopped shaking but the doors were jammed shut. He couldn't crawl through the windows because they were lined with jagged shards of glass.

"Oh this is just great, I'm trapped in a car and there's no one left in the world to get me out."

"Relax, I've got the solution. You have to find something low and solid to drive under, it has to be at the right height to rip off the roof, but not to smash up us and the rest of the car."

"That's not a solution, that's suicide."

"It always works in the movies, they use a big container‑truck, all you have to do is drive underneath it - sideways that is, not head‑on."

"Okay, but I'd like to talk it over with the guy in charge of special effects before we go any further."

"Come on, what choice do we have?"

Andrew drove, with some difficulty - since his chin was resting on the steering‑wheel -, out from under the doors, on to the road, and off down the street. Had he been able to look out of his rear‑view mirror, he would have seen Alex waving vigorously from the second‑floor window of the radio‑station.

"Look at that, it's perfect."

Ahead, in the road, stretched across an intersection, was a large articulated truck.

"Perfect, would be a team of friendly firemen with a large tin‑opener."

Andrew drove closer and scrutinized the distance between the bottom of the truck and the road.

"Well, it might be okay."

"It's the only one we've seen, we'll just have to take the chance."

Andrew backed the car away from the truck, about a hundred yards down the street.

He lined the car up with the gap between the front and rear sets of the truck‑wheels, selected first gear and accelerated.

"How fast do you think I should be going?"

"Christ knows!"

At the last moment he lost his nerve and slammed his foot on the brake‑peddle. Nothing happened - or at least nothing happened brake‑wise. In fact a lot of things happened, and most of them were noisy.

There was a scream of panic as Andrew threw himself flat across the front seats of the car. There was a shriek of tearing metal as the roof was ripped off. There was a loud hiss of expanding gas as a large plastic balloon inflated from a hidden recess in the dashboard. There was a crunching smash as the car ploughed into a telephone‑box on the far side of the truck. There was a whimper of dismay as Andrew realized that he was now held down firmly by the crash‑balloon which had erupted in front of his seat.

Getting a grip on himself and the edge of the passenger seat, he pulled himself out of the passenger door, which had at some point been thrown open.

He staggered to a safe distance, since in the movies cars always explode after such an accident, and sat on the kerb, breathing heavily.

"There, that wasn't so bad, was it?"

"I fail to see how it could have been any worse."

"You could be dead."

"I thought I was."

"Now come on, cheer up, just think how impressed Alice will be when you tell her."

"She won't be at all impressed, she'll call me a macho idiot for driving into the radio‑station in the first place."

Andrew stood up and looked around. His search for a suitable truck had taken him to the outskirts of the city, on one side of the road was a huge furniture warehouse, on the other was a fun fair. A fun fair! Just what he needed to shake off his dismal mood.

But the fair was a big let-down, without the screams of excited children and sirens, without the bustle and jostle of the crowd, without the cacophony of two‑month old hit records being played, in opposition, from each ride, without the whining requests of a six‑year‑old for another go on the big‑dipper, without the swagger of the gangs of hair‑dyed teenagers and the even bigger swagger of the ride operators as they tried to seduce the giggling adolescent girls. Without any of these things, the fair was nothing.

Mechanically and atmospherically the fair was dead.

Despondently Andrew picked up an air rifle and began shooting at anything fragile enough to shatter after a direct hit. Light bulbs were the best targets; they, at least, gave a satisfying pop as they broke.

It occurred to him that all he had done since his arrival in this empty world was to destroy things. Freed from the risk of punishment, his natural instinct was to smash everything around him. But Andrew was not the sort of person to try to analyze his behaviour or motives. There were usually plenty of people around who were more than willing to do that for him.

He wandered into the Hall of Mirrors. Here his weapon was useless, the small lead pellets bounced, alarmingly, back at him from the thick glass plates.

His body was stretched and squashed, twisted and contorted, split and multiplied.

He stood at the end of the hall staring at the thousand clones who presented various profiles for his inspection, his new clothes, stolen only hours before, were dirty, crumpled and, in places, torn. There was dried blood on his forehead and his hair was dishevelled.

Abruptly he became aware that someone was standing behind him, although the mirrors showed only his own image. He swung around apprehensively, but with the firm hope that it would be Alex. Instead he saw himself, but not a reflection, this was a three‑dimensional living, breathing, copy.

Andrew's thoughts battled in confusion, his reasoning told him that this was a trick of the mirrors, his senses told him that he was facing a long‑lost brother, a brother who had not only shared the same womb but had grown from the same ovum. His reasoning was forced to back down when the man spoke.

"Is there anything wrong?" asked Andrew‑but‑not‑Andrew.

"What?" said Andrew automatically, without pausing to interpret the meaning of the other man's words.

"It's just that you were looking at me rather oddly, I wondered if there was anything wrong," explained Andrew‑but‑not‑Andrew.

"Well, don't you think there's anything wrong?"

Andrew‑but‑not‑Andrew looked around in bewilderment. "Um, no, I can't see anything amiss."

"Look at me," said Andrew impatiently.

"Oh, sorry, you've hurt your head, is it bad?"

"No, no, no, can't you see? We both look exactly the same," growled Andrew.

"Oh dear, you really have hurt your head, haven't you," said Andrew‑but‑not‑Andrew with concern. "Come on, let's go outside and get some fresh air."

Andrew followed his duplicate back down the mirror-lined corridor.

"You mean that you don't actually look like me?" asked Andrew, he was beginning to believe that the bump on his head was much worse than he had thought.

Andrew‑but‑not‑Andrew ignored him and waited by the entrance of the hall.

Andrew stepped out into the fresh air and clutched dizzily at the door‑frame for support. The previously empty fairground was now overflowing with people, it was overflowing with people who looked exactly like Andrew. Andrew was riding the big‑wheel; Andrew was queuing for the roller‑coaster; Andrew was eating candy‑floss; Andrew was trying to grab a cheap plastic watch with a remote‑controlled mechanical‑hand; Andrew was winning a large pink teddybear; Andrew was ... everywhere, doing everything.

One Andrew was leaning against a wall looking sick and very perplexed.

"My God! Everybody looks like me."

"Don't you think that's a very egocentric point of view?" asked an Andrew that stood nearby.

"What do you mean?"

"A more reasonable exclamation would have been; My God! I look like everyone else. Though I can't understand why it should be such a shock to you."

"But I've always looked like this," protested Andrew.

"So have we."

"But, but what's going on? What's the point of it?"

"That's fairly obvious, isn't it? Who's the one person in the world you know you can trust? Who would you most like to run the country? Who could you safely buy a used car from? Who would you want your best friend to be like?"

"It may have escaped your attention, Mister bloody Xerox, but there are no women."

"Homosexuality is a small price to pay for the ultimate in sexual compatibility."

"But how do you tell who is who?"

"Why would you want to?" said Andrew‑but‑not‑Andrew and sauntered off into the sea of other Andrew‑but‑not‑Andrews.

"This is what I get for talking to myself," said Andrew, talking to himself. He leant against the wall, unable to concentrate on anything in particular, just gazing at the passing faces, or rather, the passing face. He became aware of the fact that the others did not have a cut on their heads, but instead each had a black eye.

He was pondering the significance of this when an Andrew walked by clutching his, evidently painful, eye. On seeing Andrew the man did a double take and then strode angrily towards him.

"There you are! You bastard!" said the man, he drew back his fist, revealing a badly swollen eye, and then punched Andrew, squarely, in the eye.

A box of fireworks exploded in Andrew's head, his consciousness didn't hang around to watch the display; it left him before the pain had a chance to really make its presence felt.

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