Frazer Lee - Panic Button

Viewed from above, the earth is a schematic, a complex network populated with avatars and their constructs. Human beings and animals going about their daily business, their very lives hotwired to a web of their own invention. Every movement, and every choice, a series of variables driven by fateful algorithms — seemingly infinite possibilities narrowed to a fixed set of outcomes.

Let’s open a window on that world.

Let us zoom in and find a city, a termite mound of industry and activity. They look like insects, the people, from this high vantage point. Their buildings are like nests.

Let’s zoom in some more, find one such nest.

Here’s one, a modern redbrick housing block. A black vehicle waits outside, its engine throbbing like a worker drone’s wings. Three insect figures are gathered around, saying their goodbyes.

Full zoom now, and we can see these insects for what they really are.

Jo Scott sat back in the limo’s luxurious leather seat as the driver closed the door. She located the electric window button, pressed it, and looked out at the two faces she knew and loved better than anything in the world. Her daughter was the epitome of a miserable eight year-old, frowning and clutching her little pink touch screen phone. Jo’s heart ached. Sophie looked a world away from her already. Leaning out through the limo window, Jo gently held Sophie’s tiny wrists.

“Listen Soph, I’ll bring you back something nice, okay? You’ll have fun with Nanny.”

Jo looked up at her mother, Dawn, with hopeful eyes. Dawn smiled gently and placed a placatory hand on Sophie’s shoulder.

“We’ll be fine, won’t we love?”

Sophie nodded, reluctantly. “When you coming back Mum?”

The driver finished loading Jo’s luggage into the boot, clicked it shut. The sound was too final for Jo, who pulled Sophie closer.

“I’m only away for the weekend darling, I’ll be back before you know it. Really.” She closed Sophie’s hands around the little pink phone. Our lifeline. “Keep it on you all the time, promise?”

Sophie nodded.

Jo hoped Sophie couldn’t see the tear forming in the corner of her eye, or detect the waver of emotion in her voice. “We can keep tabs on each other. It’ll be fun.”

“But I don’t want you to go.”

The driver climbed back into the limo. “Ready, Miss?”

Embracing her through the window, Jo kissed Sophie long and hard on the forehead.

“I love you pumpkin, you know that?”

Sophie stared down at her feet.

“I said did you know that?”

The little girl’s face began to crack.

“I think I know that you know that…” Jo teased.

Sophie was beaming now. “Yeah, I know Mum…”

“Good girl. Well then…”

The limo started to pull away from the kerbside. Jo let go of Sophie, who stepped back into her grandmother’s arms.

“Be a good girl for Nanny, okay? She’ll tell me everything that goes on. Don’t think she won’t!”

Jo winked at Dawn, putting a brave face on things. Her mother smiled back at her, eyes filled with love for her daughter and granddaughter. Jo watched them waving goodbye to her as her limo drove off down the street and turned the corner.

Dawn watched the limo disappear around the corner and looked down at her granddaughter. She had stopped waving and was already playing with the little pink mobile phone. Sophie was such a whiz with technology; it was beyond Dawn how her thumbs could press all those tiny buttons so fast. Only eight, but so sophisticated already. She would become a young woman in the blink of an eye, just as Jo had. It gave Dawn a swell of pride to know how far her daughter had come in such a short space of time. Theirs had been a rocky road, but now Jo was back from the brink. The change in her had had a knock on effect on Sophie too, for the better. The little girl who walked alongside Dawn now was a far cry from the sullen Sophie she’d known when Jo was in the midst of all her problems. For a while, Nanny had to function as mother to Sophie as well as to her own daughter. After much effort and strain, Jo was behaving like the best mum she could be to Sophie — meaning Dawn could enjoy being Nanny again. All their troubles were behind them now and they were a happy family again, Dawn felt sure of that.

They stepped through the front door and up the stairs, heading for the kitchen.

“Okay then missy, what about you and I do a bit of baking?”

Sophie grinned. “Fairy cakes?”

“If that’s what you want, love.”

“With extra butter cream?”

“Of course,” Dawn chuckled, smiling down at her granddaughter.

Beep-beep.

Sophie was playing with the phone, her little fingers conjuring electronic noises from the pink plastic casing.

“Nanny will save some so you can lick the mixing bowl though…”

Beep.

As they passed the wall mirror, Dawn’s voice trailed off. She froze. A man was standing just a few feet behind her, his features hidden by a black balaclava. A grotesque grin was stitched across the woollen mouth. The man’s real lips, just visible through the jagged slit, tightened as he raised his gloved hand and pointed the heavy barrel of a silenced pistol straight at her.

Dawn felt her stomach lurch at the sight of the intruder in their home. A sick feeling crept over and into her body, as she stood there gripped by uncertainty about what to do next. Should she surrender to this man, ask him what he wanted? Or scream and lash out, knock the weapon from his hands?

Beep. Crack. Clatter.

She heard the phone’s casing crack open on the hard floor tiles as Sophie dropped it.

Sophie. Dawn’s lips formed a warning, but no sound would come.

Phut, phut!

Two shots to the chest. Warm rosy stain blooming on her blouse.

The man raised the gun to Dawn’s head. She blinked, incredulous.

Phut!

As she was thrown backwards, a crimson spray of bloody matter spattered across the kitchen wall.

Sophie screamed — her shrill little cry cut off by the leather-gloved hand.

Jo looked up as a jet plane screeched overhead. It had been so long since she’d gone to an airport she’d forgotten how noisy they were. The last time was her friend Jules’ hen party, and what a wild time that had been. We were all slaughtered before we even got on the plane , Jo remembered, feeling suddenly much older than her twenty-nine years. It had been a just over three years since she’d flown anywhere. She felt like a different person now.

The driver took Jo’s luggage from the boot and placed it at her feet. “Here y’are Miss.”

“Thanks.”

The limo driver climbed back inside and drove away. She looked down at her suitcase. It had taken forever to convince Sophie that Mummy didn’t need to take any of her dollies with her to New York. Not even Cowgirl Barbie who, according to her daughter, “Came from America and would like to go visit.”

The deep guilt she had felt for taking time off from parenting, and from her job at the call centre, had taken a while to wear off. Dawn had encouraged her to go, saying the change of scene would do her good — and how often did opportunities like a free VIP flight come up anyway? “You owe it to yourself, especially after all your hard work, after all you’ve been through,” Dawn had said, “It’ll be fun, just what you need right now.” Jo prayed she was right.