Mike Lancaster - 0.4

Lilly nodded, and it seemed that she was urging me on to think about it more.

‘Try,’ she said.

So I did.

‘It was the alien language. Which we could see changing and shifting in front of us. How it was lined up on Kate’s computer screen. I said it was like sentences. But maybe because I was seeing them on a computer screen it’s got me thinking about computers, and about how computers work. Lines and lines of instructions, a particular form of sentence, computer code. What if we’re seeing a programming language?’

‘Programming what?’ Lilly asked.

‘That’s where I keep coming up blank,’ I said.

I realised that Mr Peterson was paying close attention to my words, and I saw him nodding.

‘You got something?’ I asked.

Mr Peterson shrugged.

‘I’m a postman,’ he said, and I thought he had just descended back into madness, but then he went on to explain: ‘And over the last few years there have been a lot of changes in the kind of things we deliver. There are the obvious changes – a lot more parcels from eBay and Amazon; a great deal less of those envelopes containing holiday snaps now that most photography has gone digital.

‘The one that seems sad, though, is that there are a lot fewer handwritten letters. People don’t send as many small, personal letters as they used to because they tend to stay in touch electronically. They have email, Facebook and Twitter. You don’t post a letter now, you click a mouse button and it’s delivered instantly.’

‘Is there a point to this story?’ Kate asked impatiently.

‘The point is that if you want to get in touch with a single person then you might send them a letter. An actual, physical, tangible piece of mail. But if you wanted to get in touch with everyone, instantly…’

‘You’d do it digitally,’ Lilly finished.

Mr Peterson nodded.

‘Electronically,’ he said. ‘With computers.’

‘A digital invasion? ’ I mused. ‘What would that even be?’

Mr Peterson shrugged.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘But mightn’t it look a little like today?’

‘Hang on a moment,’ Kate said with horror. ‘Are we seriously still talking aliens here? I mean, come on, there has to be another, rational explanation.’

‘I’d love to hear it,’ Mr Peterson said.

‘I just can’t believe that we’re suddenly in a world where “aliens” is the first place we’re looking for answers,’ she said incredulously. ‘Not “we’re still hypnotised and all of this is just imaginary”. Not “mass hysteria” or “sunspot activity”. Not “a virus” or “something in the water”. You know – the kind of answers that sound like they didn’t originate on Fringe or Doctor Who .’

The only one of Kate O’Donnell’s explanations that held any water for me – that we were still in a trance and the whole thing was just a fantasy – was the very one that was impossible to prove or disprove. It was like the old question that the film The Matrix was based upon: how can you tell whether you’re just a brain in a jar, experiencing a sophisticated virtual-reality program that is flawless in its execution?

The answer is: you can’t. So it actually doesn’t make much sense entertaining it. If we woke up and found out the day had just been a weird dream, then that would be great, but we couldn’t bank on it.

And we certainly couldn’t close our minds to other answers in the hope that it was right, because we could…

NOTE

The thought here is never returned to. Kyle must have finished the thought on the blank part of tape. Ernest Merrivale sees the fact as proof that the tapes are all recorded one after the other, without breaks. He suggests that if there had been any break between each tape, Kyle would have rewound the tape to see what he had last said, and thus would have realised that the blank tape was cutting off his words. The error would never have been repeated.

… going round and round in my head. My brain was making so much noise, but it was about time I started to put all of those thoughts to some good use.

I tried to think about everything I had seen since waking from the trance on the stage, to find something that would point the way for us to move forwards.

It was then that I remembered Mrs Birnie.

Proudly recording Danny’s act.

The video camera.

She had been filming it all.

So what had the video camera caught?

Aware of the odd glances I was getting from the others, I rushed down on to the village green, hoping that Mrs Birnie had done what most everyone else had – left behind the thing that she was carrying.

It took a couple of minutes of looking around the area to find it, nestled in a discarded jumper. At first I thought that wishing too hard for the thing had made me imagine the flash of reflected sunlight, then I saw it again and headed straight to it.

It was one of the new type of Canon camcorders, a thin slice of metal that concealed some pretty cool tech specs. It was the kind that no longer even needed a tape, working from memory cards and an internal hard drive.

I held it in the air like I’d just won the FA Cup.

Lilly, Kate and Mr Peterson were all staring at me as if I had just lost my mind.

‘Mrs Birnie was filming it,’ I shouted at them. ‘She was filming the whole thing!’

They just kept staring, and I realised that they weren’t looking at me at all.

They were looking behind me.

I felt like a pantomime character who had suddenly been warned ‘BEHIND YOU!’ as I turned my head and stared back over my shoulder.

Then I just felt sick.

The whole village, it seemed, was moving in an unnaturally neat formation: utterly silent, perfectly organised, and heading down the high street.

Heading towards the village green.

Heading towards us.

It was like some kind of waking nightmare.

The entire village was marching towards us, silently.

I moved nearer to the stage and to the people there who were, I was certain, the only people I could trust; the only people I could rely on now.

We put up our hands and volunteered to be a part of Danny’s act, and from that moment on we were set along a different path from the rest of the people of Millgrove.

Call it ‘chance’, ‘fate’, ‘karma’ or ‘luck’, the end result was the same.

We were screwed.

Royally screwed.

I counted the front row of people approaching and there was a straight line of twenty. With twenty behind them. And twenty behind them.

Keep repeating until you reach a thousand.

They came across the green towards us, perfectly synchronised.

I recognised every face. People I loved. People I just said ‘hi’ to. People I didn’t like but still managed to smile at when I saw them. People I’d done odd jobs for to raise extra pocket money. People I had bought things from. People who had taught me. People I had played with.

I had an impulse to run, to turn and flee, just like Lilly and I had done earlier, but there was another part of me that was tired and scared and just wanted to know what was going on.

Then I wanted it to end.

If that meant aliens were going to take over my mind too, then actually, so be it.

I just couldn’t take it any more. Whatever the crowd wanted of me, I think I was probably prepared to give it to them.