Christopher Fowler - Personal Demons

'Maybe somebody else realised something was wrong and shut him up.' They exchanged alarmed looks.

Swan suddenly appeared beside them, looking pleased with himself. 'Want to see something really strange?' he asked. Before they could reply, he unclipped the steel biro he kept in his jacket pocket and slapped it against the wall above Ben's desk. When he removed his hand, the pen stayed there by itself. 'Some days the whole blessed place is magnetised.'

'We need your help,' said Ben. 'Who designed this building?'

'That kind of information isn't available any more,' Swan complained. 'I'd be breaking company rules. Punishable by instant dismissal.'

'Who's going to know?'

'In an environment with total information control? Are you nuts? Look, it's not a good idea to get too involved with the work. You could lose your job, your credit rating, who knows what else. Those cameras up there probably lipread.'

'You're being paranoid.'

'You're right,' agreed Swan. 'That's good. It's healthy to be paranoid.'

The sun set beyond the vast windows as Paula, the typist, put down her coffee and slopped some of it on to her desk. Tutting with annoyance, she dug out a paper towel and started mopping up the mess. At her feet, one of the recessed floor plugs emitted sparks. Just beyond her field of vision, a wall circuit was scorching a live path to her computer, tiny white flashes jumping across the keyboard. The spilt coffee reached her mouse just as she mopped it. The resulting electric shock threw her across the room.

Several people saw the burning lines shortcircuiting in the walls, passing from one computer to the next, rendering each one live. 'Where's the mains switch?' someone shouted. 'Keep away from the machines!' Others just looked confused. Nobody moved.

But everyone stared at Ben as he stormed into Diana Carter's office. Carter was on the phone, and not pleased by the interruption. 'A girl just got electrocuted and everyone's carrying on as if nothing happened!' he shouted, pointing through the glass. 'Look at them!' The workforce was busily going about its business. 'This is gross negligence. There's something wrong with the electrics. We had to unplug the terminals.'

She eyed his dirty knees. 'Everyone is working very hard here, Harper. It's bad enough that half of my girls are off sick without you causing trouble. You're not allowed to tamper with the machines. It's against company policy.'

'We'll see about that,' said Ben, slamming out.

'One of my staff members, Mr Swan, brought the matter to my attention,' said Clark. 'He overheard Harper telling someone he'd lied his way into the job.'

'Christ, don't you think I have enough to worry about without this?' demanded Temple. 'We're taking orders from all over the world and yet our figures are down. How is that possible? The efficiency of our workforce is plunging. Inside the world's most efficient building . What the hell is going wrong? And now you tell me we have some kind o€ a spy in our midst. Well, you'll have to deal with it. Nothing can screw up this presentation.'

The small chipboard door opened in the basement wall and a troll-like man of around sixty looked out. Snowy bristles sprouted from his eyebrows, nose and ears. 'I haven't seen you before,' said Hegarty, the caretaker, in a high, strangled voice. 'What are you?'

'Who am I?' asked Ben.

'No,' said Hegarty laboriously, ' what are you? Are you a drone or an executive?'

'Oh. Well, I've only just started.'

'Unsullied, eh? You'd better come in, then. Name?'

'Ben Harper.'

'Oh, the troublemaker. I've read the e-mail on you. How did you find me?'

'Oddly enough,' said Ben, 'I thought of the Wizard of Oz. The man behind the curtain operating the levers. Why would this building need a caretaker?'

'Well of course it doesn't, but they couldn't think of another job title for me.' Hegarty's hut was as cluttered as an allotment shed. The caretaker boiled tea. 'All buildings will be like this soon,' he said. 'Self-regulating. Auto-balanced. Remote-logic. If you break wind it'll spray Atar of Roses over you. Sugar?'

'One please. You sound as if you don't approve.'

'You hear anybody say what a great place this is to work? I thought not. Know why? It's no good.'

Ben accepted a cracked, murky brown mug, eyeing it dubiously. 'There are bound to be teething problems.'

'Listen to me: It's no good . The wind changes, the building shifts, the compensation mechanism causes all kinds of leaks. For every action, a reaction. The bigger the action, the bigger the reaction. They haven't allowed for that. Old buildings are lived in, cherished. This one changes people. Causes breakdowns.'

'I'm not sure I understand.'

The caretaker sighed impatiently. 'A building is not just a box made out of bricks. It's organic. Shaped by the needs of the people within. This building responds. People cause disorder, no matter how well controlled they are. The Symax system is responding to human chaos with counterbalancing chaos. Action, reaction. People break down – what happens to buildings?'

'You think it's already started happening?'

'You tell me. People are jumping out of windows. Did you know there are live spots all over the building? Come over here.' He pointed to a narrow air-shaft, cocking his head to one side. Voices carried from somewhere far above. 'You can hear them quite clearly, yet there must be thirty floors between us. Odd, isn't it? There's a gap in the centre courtyard where tiny magnetic tornadoes form. Why? Buildings are like women. Each one has a special mystique.'

'Why did the architect kill himself?'

'Ah, you know about that. Well, fair enough. Carrington Rogers was my partner. This building wasn't really his, of course. Computers designed it for Symax. Optimised his sketches. Wasn't much left of the original plans. He knew it would go wrong, even warned them, but there was nothing he could do to stop it. By that time he'd taken the money, you see. There was no other way out for him. His suicide, my breakdown, the end of all our dreams. I came to work here so I could keep an eye on the place, keep the bosses' secrets safe for them.'

'Do you still have the plans?'

'Yes, but they're all classified. In case of industrial sabotage.' He reached into a battered grey steel filing cabinet and withdrew an amorphous mass of documentation. Maps that consisted of curving dotted lines. Scrawled notes. Clipped articles on the architect and his plans for Symax. He splayed the huge drafting papers across the table. 'I shouldn't be showing them to you, but – ' he smiled, his beady eyes glittering ' – into every ordered system prances the imp of chaos. What do you know about electromagnetic fields?'

Grinning, the old man set a metal company biro on the concrete floor and watched as it started to spin, faster and faster. Finally it shot across the room and embedded itself into the skirting board. At the same time Ben could feel his hair lifting and prickling. He remembered the insects lined in rows at his feet.

'No wonder my watch stopped.'

'It's a vortex, a turbulent area where opposing electromagnetic fields overlap. A modern office building is filled with electrical fields. Every machine you use provides its own forcefield. The only reason why they don't cause havoc is because they're shielded. They have to be. Electromagnetic forces affect brain patterns. In moments of stress they can cause someone's least stable traits to surface violently. Nobody knows the full effects of unshielded mag-force. Symptoms are everything from stress-related stuff like headaches, to terminal disease. Cancer patients have been suing cellular phone companies lately. It's now thought that overhead cables may cause leukaemia.'

'But if these machines are all shielded, how can they cause any harm?'