David Langford: Different Kinds of Darkness

The Principal gave him a sharp look. Jonathan felt suddenly dizzy, with thoughts clicking through his head like one of those workings in algebra where everything goes just right and you can almost see the answer waiting in the white space at the bottom of the page. What don't Deep Green terrorists like? Why are we a target?

Control systems. You wouldn't want to be controlled.

He blurted: 'Biochips. We've got biochip control systems in our heads. All us kids. They make the darkness somehow. The special dark where grown-ups can still see.'

There was a moment's frozen silence.

'Go to the top of the class,' murmured old Whitcutt.

The Principal sighed and seemed to sag in her chair a little. 'There had to be a first time,' she said quietly. 'This is what my little lecture to school-leavers is all about. How you're specially privileged children, how you've been protected all your lives by biochips in your optic nerves that edit what you can see. So it always seems dark in the streets and outside the windows, wherever there might be a BLIT image waiting to kill you. But that kind of darkness isn't real—except to you. Remember, your parents had a choice, and they agreed to this protection.'

Mine didn't both agree , thought Jonathan, remembering an overheard quarrel.

'It's not fair,' said Gary uncertainly. 'It's doing experiments on people.'

Khalid said, 'And it's not just protection. There are corridors here indoors that are blacked out, just to keep us out of places. To control us.'

Ms Fortmayne chose not to hear them. Maybe she had a biochip of her own that stopped rebellious remarks from getting through. 'When you leave school you are given full control over your biochips. You can choose whether to take risks … once you're old enough.'

Jonathan could almost bet that all five Club members were thinking the same thing: What the hell , we took our risks with the Trembler and we got away with it.

Apparently they had indeed got away with it, since when the Principal said 'You can go now,' she'd still mentioned nothing about punishment. As slowly as they dared, the Club headed back to the classroom. Whenever they passed side-turnings which were filled with solid darkness, Jonathan cringed to think that a chip behind his eyes was stealing the light and with different programming could make him blind to everything, everywhere.

The seriously nasty thing happened at going-home time, when the caretaker unlocked the school's side door as usual while a crowd of pupils jostled behind him. Jonathan and the Club had pushed their way almost to the front of the mob. The heavy wooden door swung inward. As usual it opened on the second kind of darkness, but something bad from the dark came in with it, a large sheet of paper fixed with a drawing-pin to the door's outer surface and hanging slightly askew. The caretaker glanced at it, and toppled like a man struck by lightning.

Jonathan didn't stop to think. He shoved past some smaller kid and grabbed the paper, crumpling it up frantically. It was already too late. He'd seen the image there, completely unlike the Trembler yet very clearly from the same terrible family, a slanted dark shape like the profile of a perched bird, but with complications, twirly bits, patterns like fractals, and it hung there blazing in his mind's eye and wouldn't go away—

–something hard and horrible smashing like a runaway express into his brain—

–burning falling burning falling—

–BLIT.

After long and evil dreams of bird-shapes that stalked him in darkness, Jonathan found himself lying on a couch, no, a bed in the school sickroom. It was a surprise to be anywhere at all, after feeling his whole life crashing into that enormous full stop. He was still limp all over, too tired to do more than stare at the white ceiling.

Mr Whitcutt's face came slowly into his field of vision. 'Hello? Hello? Anyone in there?' He sounded worried.

'Yes … I'm fine,' said Jonathan, not quite truthfully.

'Thank heaven for that. Nurse Baker was amazed you were alive. Alive and sane seemed like too much to hope for. Well, I'm here to warn you that you're a hero. Plucky Boy Saves Fellow-Pupils. You'll be surprised how quickly you can get sick of being called plucky.'

'What was it, on the door?'

'One of the very bad ones. Called the Parrot, for some reason. Poor old George the caretaker was dead before he hit the ground. The anti-terrorist squad that came to dispose of that BLIT paper couldn't believe you'd survived. Neither could I.'

Jonathan smiled. 'I've had practice.'

'Yes. It didn't take that long to realize Lucy—that is, Ms Fortmayne—failed to ask you young hooligans enough questions. So I had another word with your friend Khalid Patel. God in heaven, that boy can outstare the Trembler for twenty seconds! Adult crowds fall over in convulsions once they've properly, what d'you call it, registered the sight, let it lock in….'

'My record's ten and a half. Nearly eleven really.'

The old man shook his head wonderingly. 'I wish I could say I didn't believe you. They'll be re-assessing the whole biochip protection programme. No one ever thought of training young, flexible minds to resist BLIT attack by a sort of vaccination process. If they'd thought of it, they still wouldn't have dared try it…. Anyway, Lucy and I had a talk, and we have a little present for you. They can reprogram those biochips by radio in no time at all, and so—'

He pointed. Jonathan made an effort and turned his head. Through the window, where he'd expected to see only artificial darkness, there was a complication of rosy light and glory that at first his eyes couldn't take in. A little at a time, assembling itself like some kind of healing opposite to those deadly patterns, the abstract brilliance of heaven became a town roofscape glowing in a rose-red sunset. Even the chimney-pots and satellite dishes looked beautiful. He'd seen sunsets on video, of course, but it wasn't the same, it was the aching difference between live flame and an electric fire's dull glare: like so much of the adult world, the TV screen lied by what it didn't tell you.

'The other present is from your pals. They said they're sorry there wasn't time to get anything better.'

It was a small, somewhat bent bar of chocolate (Gary always had a few tucked away), with a card written in Julie's careful left-sloping script and signed by all the Shudder Club. The inscription was, of course: That which does not kill us, makes us stronger.