Alex Palmer: Blood Redemption

She pushed her short wet reddish-brown hair back from her high forehead and turned away. She had things to do, things she had to do.

She sat on her crumpled sleeping bag on a pallet on the floor and changed her clothes, stripping away the outward signs of the shooting, leaving blood-stained shoes, torn jeans, her jacket in a crumpled heap on the floor, emerging in clean clothes to display a small body that possessed an elastic thinness. Work. She focused on this single word and looked at the table, where a stolen slimline notebook computer, with means to connect to the Internet through a mobile telephone, waited to be used. This was what she had come here to do: not to hide but to work. Things which were unfinished had to be cleaned up, closed off.

She sat down in front of the computer, hesitated and then hit the space bar. At the touch of a few keys, bright expensive software danced across the screen and Lucy began to re-energise her virtual world. She was travelling inwards, to a place of her own making, whose existence and shape, even the trajectory by which she reached it, had been fabricated by her alone. Light from the screen’s radiance played on her face as she opened up onto the screen her kaleidoscope of moving shapes and colours. This world absorbed her, its geography was her visionary endgame. She had created it, building up its structures, moving the pieces about in patterned strategies whose outcomes she had known from the beginning.

At its heart was the foundation image, the centre onto which she had grafted all her other images of expanding complexity. Lucy had half believed that by some strange transference of events, Dr Liu might have been erased from the website as she, Lucy, had erased her from life that morning. Instead, the doctor remained where Lucy had placed her from the beginning, lying in a replica of the street she had lain in that morning in Chippendale, shot dead. In this familiar screen image, the buildings around the prone woman were burning and the street was littered with debris from a shattered landscape, everything shining with the green-ant glow of nuclear poison.

There were images missing from this crossover world, unforeseen events which Lucy had encountered in the actual world less than an hour ago. Events which she needed to build into her website to allow her electronic vision to replicate actuality, to ease the memory by binding them into a pictogram. The man with the ruined face also lying dead beside the woman on the roadway, and a boy, staring at her from a distance close enough for her to touch him. As she drew on this memory it took control of her, flooding her thoughts. Her hands on the keyboard became weighted, frozen in action.

She had intended to kill the woman. She had not thought she would ever have to use the gun on anyone else, she did not remember how she had. No one else was supposed to be there. The sound of the first shot had deafened her and she was caught in an airlock, breathless and vacant with the shock, staring at the red stain soaking into the woman’s blue jacket. Then the man was there in front of her without warning, so close that he was almost in her face. As she stared at him, his face was suddenly and almost immediately unmade. She did not remember feeling the recoil of the gun.

She dropped a curtain in her mind over the memory. With a jerky, clumsy movement, she hit the close button and watched her other world fold back into its icon on the screen, collapsing inwards like a magician’s stream of silk scarves. Its absence left behind a clear blue light which shone out of the computer like a benediction.

Lucy dived into the light, out onto the web, desperate.

Turtle, it’s the Firewall. Are you out there? If you are, please talk to me, I need to talk turtle with you if you’re there. Please say you are.

I’m here like I’m always here Firewall Wotzup??? Early 4u For some few moments, Lucy did not type anything.

Firewall????

I did it.

U did wot???!!! Firewall u are joking U must beNo, I’m not.

U have 2 tell me u did not U are lying 2 me!

No, I did.

I don’t believe u. It’s not possible U couldn’t do that I did. Surf in and find out if you don’t believe me because it’s probably on the web by now. But I did it. In Chippendale, just like I said I would. And if you don’t believe me, I can tell you things about it they probably won’t want to tell you. But I did do it.

I don’t get u. Why?????

I’ve already told you why. You don’t have to ask me that.

I don’t mean all that wild stuff u talk all the time I mean why? 4 real Someone had to do it. That was me. It isn’t any more complicated than that.

Bullshit!!! I know u I know wots in your head ok??? U didn’t have2 do this No way did u have 2 do this

Lucy sat staring at her keyboard, rubbing her forehead hard with her hands before typing again.

You say that but it’s not true. It was something I had to do. All last night, I was here in my sleeping bag and I saw it so clearly in my mind. You know better than anyone what it’s like to see things so clearly in your head like that. It was like that woman was standing in front of me in this blue light and I saw her for what she was. She was evil. I knew what I had to do. Your head takes you everywhere. But I can move, I can walk, and that means I have to do things. I have to go out into the world and I have to do things. I had to do what I did.

It’s that simple.

I had 2 do it I had 2 do it That’s just a wall u put up. Nothing realU just say that because u can’t tell me why u did do it No, it did have to be done. It was horrible, okay? And it was. It was horrible. But it had to happen. But that isn’t it, that’s not what I wanted to tell you. Because I did something that really was wrong.

Something I should never have done ever. And I don’t know what to do about it now.

Wot could be worse???

Shooting someone else as well. He was right there in front of me.

He was so close. Almost as close as my computer is now. I guess he wanted my gun, I didn’t think about that before. I just fired. I didn’t even know I had. But his face — Turtle, he looked — I didn’t think it would look like that. I’m asking, what have I done?

Wot did u think it would look like????? Wot are u saying this 4??

There was a kid there. He saw everything. I don’t know, Turtle.

What do I do?

Go 2 police Now

I’m not doing that. What’s the point of that? Everything I’ve done would be wasted.

It’s wasted anyway Nothing but waste U can’t say it’s anything elseIt doesn’t matter wot u do now Firewall This is never going away 4 u Well, maybe I don’t care. Maybe what I did to that man and that boy is not so bad because maybe they deserved it. They knew what she did.

Bullshit U stop U stop right there U think I deserved being likethis??? U want me 2 say that u deserved everything that’s happened2 u?? Do u want people 2 say that about u??? What do u thinkthey’re going 2 say u deserve right now?

I didn’t say that. I’d never say you deserved what happened to you, Turtle. You can’t think that. It isn’t fair.

I said I know u Firewall U amp; me are both fucking cripples, right??

So fucking wot??? Doesn’t mean we have 2 do things like this Do uwant me 2 hate u for this? And say u deserve that? I could do thatbut I won’t

It fucking is not the same. Anyway they’re both dead now so what’s the point of saying that?

Firewall u cant do this amp; walk away U cant I can’t keep talking now, I’ve got to go. I’ve got to get out into the air. I’m going but I’ll be back. Love you, Turtle, love you always.