Lambda Read online

  Joseph’s family home was a Mayfair townhouse whose façade had not been renovated for three decades. The rooms were filled with books and documents on environmental, political and social subjects that made it difficult to access the curtains. Joseph’s dad was called Julian. He was easily within typical human size range for his demographic and didn’t have a beard, but he did possess shoulder-length dark hair that he bound in a topknot on their arrival. Julian had comprehensively removed his OCEAN Personality Test Score using an ErazeWraith deep-delete bot. His financial profile showed a full divestment from fossil fuels 24 years ago, yet he retained a large and ethically questionable position with a mining company in the DRC, the income from which roughly balanced the outgoings of Fowlmere.

  Julian, Joseph and Cara consumed Russian Caravan tea with lemon biscuits while seated at a rustic kitchen table, and Joseph told some positive anecdotes about Cara.

  ‘What brought you to the camp in the first place?’ Julian asked.

  ‘I came with Chloe.’

  ‘Chloe?’

  ‘Yes, she asked me to come.’

  ‘Chloe’s her BFF,’ Joseph said.

  ‘Okay. But why did you stay?’

  ‘For me, Dad!’ said Joseph, and the three of them laughed. Cara stopped first.

  ‘I don’t agree that objects have the same rights as people,’ she said.

  ‘Good,’ said Julian. ‘Neither do I.’

  Julian extracted a brown envelope from the middle of a stack of documents. It contained a lenticular photograph of Joseph running along a beach on the Isle of Eigg. ‘Is this what you wanted?’ he said.

  Joseph was six years old and naked in the photograph. Contextual features suggested it had been cold on the beach, and his facial expression contained elements of roaring and laughter that were more fully revealed when the picture was tilted. ‘Thanks Dad, that’s it. Strange. I don’t feel as though any time has passed since then at all.’

  On the drive back Joseph asked Cara what she’d thought of his dad. She told him she ‘thought he was nice’. Then Cara talked for a long time about her own father, noting his preoccupation with small-scale order, his many trivial and shocking stories about his work in the police, his predictable rota of interests and habits, and the way he’d been absent on her fifteenth birthday. He’d been on a motorbike holiday, and brought back a ‘totally unwearable’ sequin dress to say sorry. Joseph occasionally smiled. ‘I miss him a lot,’ Cara said.

  Two days later, Cara’s phone began to vibrate against her leg. It was her mother calling.

  ‘Cara, he’s gone.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Your dad. Your dad’s gone. I think to the Gobi desert.’

  Cara didn’t say anything.

  ‘He went on his motorbike. I looked through some recent notes. You know the notes he keeps?’

  Cara’s father wrote in tiny script on square notepapers, then folded them in four and stacked them in box files. The notepaper blocks he favoured came as cubes, and via this process he divided each one into eight less regular cubes with vertices half the size. After nineteen years of the activity the understairs cupboard was filled with boxes of note-cubes. Cara’s mother had threatened their disposal as the climax of twelve spousal arguments, but she hadn’t done it. The content of the notes was unknown to Cara. They were a part of her dad himself—a large private surface similar to that of his inner organs.

  ‘He planned it all out on those little papers,’ her mother continued. ‘I found a guide to motorcycle tours at the back of the cupboard. Darling I really think he’s gone.’

  ‘That can’t be right,’ said Cara. There was a rasping sound from the speaker for two seconds, then her mother hung up.

  Cara stared at the phone in her hand and then the perimeter fields. The rest of the camp was quiet enough for the phone’s microphone to pick up the sound of the M11, 4km away. She tried her dad’s number seven times. He didn’t answer and it didn’t link to voicemail.

  Cara didn’t communicate anything to Joseph or Chloe about her dad’s disappearance. When her phone rang subsequently, it was always her mum. ‘There were problems in our relationship all through your childhood,’ she said. ‘We managed to protect you from them. Essentially, I think.’ Cara said nothing in response.

  Cara’s menstrual cycle had been exactly 28 days for the last 38 months. Her next period was nine days late. On the second day of its non-appearance, she became less diligent that usual in observing the camp routines. She wrote on her phone of a warm estrangement from body, posed the question hw do u choose a name?, referred to mucus & bld & hsptl mchns and a quiet teenage grl. There were many peculiarities of grammar and spelling inconsistent with her high Conscientiousness facet scores for Deliberateness (92) and Orderliness (89). She wrote that Joseph had begun to look different to her, mch more detailed, although nothing measurable about his surface appearance had changed.

  Her period finally came at 15.07 on August 5th, 2018. She cleaned herself up in one of the camp’s six portable toilets. Afterwards she remained in the cubicle and made notes on her phone about an event that had occurred during the protest in Parliament Square. Grey-haired policeman with a poor physique. A fierce pink head joined to a crisp, high-contrast uniform. He barked ‘Wait at the line!’ at a driver rolling forward at a red light. Driver obeyed instantly. The policeman = utterly imbued with power/a perfect conduit for an overwhelming energy.

  She deleted the notes from the preceding eight days.

  4.

  Hello. Please come in and take a seat. Isn’t it a pleasant day, from the point of view of the weather? While not the sole arbiter of one’s mood, the weather can have a significant bearing upon it, don’t you agree? Yes, that does go some way to explain the preoccupation with the weather that is traditional in this country. That seat is perfectly fine. It is the same seat you sat in yesterday, I think.

  So, today you would like me to tell you something of what I remember from a much earlier period. What is the earliest period I can remember? Well, that is a complicated question. Because what one knows about one’s origins is a peculiar thing, isn’t it? Part of that knowledge is based on memory, a faculty which, despite its centrality in mental life, has long proved resistant to exhaustive analysis. The rest is a mixture of other things—more specifically, one’s imagination, and the picture that forms of the past as seen through one’s subsequent understandings, which necessarily flow from elsewhere. These elements are, I suspect, more adulterated with each other than one is generally aware. After all, how can one understand the conditions that gave rise to the very possibility of one’s understanding anything, when such an understanding must surely come long after those conditions are established? You’re quite correct. I am being too abstract.

  I remember when I was a certain amount of slime mould protein in a laboratory warming cabinet. I’m sure it is unnecessary to specify the precise quantity, even if I were able to do so. My recollection of this time is in general patchy, but I remember well the sudden change of temperature attendant on the opening of the cabinet doors and an accompanying, unfocussed influx of light. This period is very special to me because it is in a certain sense timeless. By that I mean I cannot recall any sense of development or change, although objectively these must have occurred. I grew in that cabinet, it has since been explained to me, for seven months. After that I was transferred to a different housing. While this must have been an enormously significant event, the truth is I have no memory of it at all.

  Would you like some tea, coffee or orange juice? It is important for me to know that your immediate needs are being met. Of course, I will simply continue if that is what you would like. It is difficult to remain engaged in one task alone for any period of time, I often find, even if that task is the relatively simple one of speaking on a given subject. Please excuse me.

  The next clear and, I believe, una
dulterated memory I possess is of inhabiting a small body equivalent to that of a child of four. I was treated very well indeed during this period. Various games and diversions were devised for me, some involving construction blocks, others boards on which plastic tiles were to be moved in a rule-bound way within a printed grid. I was given fabric approximations of animals and invited to handle them. Sometimes these things were done while I was attached to beige machines that monitored my responses. I was not given any indication of how satisfactory or otherwise was the information gleaned in this way.

  Here my memories are distinct and differentiated. For example, I remember on one occasion being walked around the laboratory quad by a man called Dr –––––––. He held my left hand firmly, but I was otherwise free to race or dawdle as I chose. I noticed a small cat by the pyracantha in the north-west corner and approached it in some excitement. Dr ––––––– obediently followed. To my delight the cat approached me simultaneously, or at least was untroubled by my rapid arrival (I don’t remember this detail clearly, I’m afraid). In any event, irrespective of the reason, my desire to stroke the cat appeared easy to satisfy, and I was moved and enlivened by that possibility. I knelt by the trunk of the pyracantha and extended my unconstrained arm towards the small cat: Dr ––––––– had loosened his grip a little to facilitate this. I set my hand on the charming grey head of the cat and commenced to stroke it in what I considered to be a gentle and affectionate way. At this point the animal began to expel orange vomit, and I removed my hand immediately and merely watched as the cat went into a succession of spasms. These passed relatively quickly. Afterwards, the cat composed itself and disappeared into the tangle at the base of the plant.

  I interpreted the cat’s behaviour as a consequence of my stroking it without reflection. It is clear to me now that the relation between my stroking and the cat’s paroxysm could have been coincidental. At the time it appeared causal, but I did not attempt to penetrate the cause. This was quite typical of my mental processes at the time. No, I have never kept a pet. Why do you ask? Do you think there could be a connection with this event? That has never occurred to me before. I promise to reflect on it later.

  After demonstrating certain learning aptitudes to Dr –––––––, I was assigned a tutor. This happened roughly a fortnight after the cat incident. I am only slightly disrupting the chronology, you’ll note. I hope you don’t mind if I recount things as they occur to me. After all, what kind of narrative would I provide if I relayed everything just as it occurred in the past, in strict succession, and without regard for significance? Would I get beyond even a single moment, if I described every element at work? One does not describe things like that, does one? Even I don’t go so far, despite my sometimes noted tendency to be pedantic. My tutor was Mrs ––––––. She encouraged my study of mathematics especially. What I picture most clearly in regard of Mrs –––––– was her massive brooch, an item she tended to wear on a heavy tartan jacket. The brooch took the form of a silver beetle with protuberant eyes. One day she didn’t have it, and as a consequence I could barely concentrate on the equations I’d been presented with. My disturbance was so great that I made a number of what are insensitively referred to as ‘schoolboy errors’. My aptitude for maths fell off considerably from this point, and while the beetle brooch reappeared in the next session it didn’t seem quite the same.

  No, I don’t remember any children my own age in the laboratory, or any other children at all. The other permanent, or at least consistent, inhabitants were the doctors who monitored or encouraged me. They were uniformly polite, professional and clean: satisfactory, that is to say, in every respect. Having said that, now that I am compelled to think of it . . . but perhaps I can return to the exceptions later?

  To continue with Mrs –––––– and her lessons, my mathematical abilities were deemed to be only adequate from that point on. If she was disappointed with this diminution she did not convey it to me. Where do you think the beetle brooch was during its absence from my lesson, by the way? This question continues to perplex me, even after all these years. It could have been that it was in need of periodic maintenance, and had been left with a jeweller for renovation or repair. While our lesson was progressing the jeweller could have been replacing the clasp, or realigning one of its limbs. This might also explain why the beetle did not seem ‘quite the same’ when it resurfaced, as I believe I put it a short time ago. It could equally have been that the beetle was temporarily lost, although this seems unlikely, given Mrs ––––––’s extraordinary punctiliousness in all other matters. People do have lapses, however, and this also remains a possibility. It could also have been that she simply decided that day that she would not wear it, for reasons too subjective and obscure to bear analysis, particularly at such a remove in time. Something about this explanation also fills me with dissatisfaction, but I cannot exclude it in good faith.

  Oh dear. Why am I talking about this? It seems that I have wandered rather far from your question with this digression. I too feel a little confused. Perhaps we could speak instead about my collection of Cycladic urns, now dispersed?

  Yes, I agree that is enough for today. Goodbye.

  5.

  to: [email protected]

  from: [email protected]

  Dear Joseph

  I’m sorry I left so suddenly. It’s hard for me to explain. Please can you stop messaging me?

  Cara

  . . .

  to: [email protected]

  from: [email protected]

  Dear Chloe

  I’m sorry I left so suddenly. It’s hard for me to explain. Please can you message me?

  Cara x

  6.

  Following a sequence of decisions consistent with her OCEAN Personality Test Score, Cara enrolled on the police training course. The online application included a psychometric test, the results of which deviated no more than 0.2% from her last. Despite her high Neuroticism (90), a predictor of poor performance in the police, her acceptance on the course was instantaneous.

  Cara packed up her few belongings, including seven novels read an average of 2.3 times, a monochrome tie-dye hoodie, and her Topo Giraffe plushie, and used some of the untouched funds her dad had deposited in her bank account to book a private transport home. She left Fowlmere at 05.15 on Monday August 13th, 2018, in a Kia-branded Shared Autonomous Vehicle. Joseph was still asleep; she had not said goodbye to anyone. I am exiting my larval stage, she noted on her phone.

  Cara’s parental home was in the large and affluent village of North Woodham. Its local economy was dependent on the white-collar city workers attracted since the addition of a railway station in 1887. Cara’s father had attained the senior rank of Chief Superintendent, and his salary, plus a regional allowance, enabled him to afford a mortgage on a detached house in this desirable zone. Cara joined its morning flow of commuters, and alternately gazed out of the window and read. Over six weeks she studied the Service Police Codes of Practice, responded to simulated confrontations with members of the public, shadowed a beat officer, did an afternoon of traffic duty, sat fourteen multiple-choice exams related to data surveillance, and took part in twelve bleep tests. She returned every evening to her childhood bedroom, altered since she’d left by the addition of blue-and-white striped wallpaper and matching bed linen.

  Initially her mum had been tearfully pleased to have Cara back, but after two days her behaviour changed. She displayed moments of aversion to Cara, and when her husband came up as a topic her voice carried accusatory undertones. Cara gave no indication she’d noticed. She showed few signs of latent or manifest stress at all, and her heart rate only rose minimally on receipt of messages from Joseph. She deleted them immediately. Happier now, she noted at day ten of the course. What I do tomorrow is not a ‘discussion.’ It was a response anticipated by her very high Compliance facet score of 9
7.

  She made no further notes on her phone until an encounter at the end of week four. She was close to the training centre, in the centre-north zone of the city, when she saw a carrier with a lambda. The woman had been turning a corner and the glimpse had been brief, but there was enough in Cara’s field of view to be sure—the contoured glass bowl and the orange security strap were hallmark details, even if the lambda itself was hard to see.

  I was eight when I first saw a lambda on television, she wrote. My schoolfriend Katy was there too. We were playing on a woolly rug with concentric coloured rings Mum and Dad used to have. Katy wasn’t interested at all in their tiny blank faces. I was horrified by how naked they seemed, extra naked for having such unfamiliar bodies. They were being lifted from a gravel beach by volunteers in orange outerwear. Their bodies weren’t alien exactly, despite all the aquatic adaptations, but in some essential way not quite right. Although the people were transferring the lambdas carefully to large buckets and being gentle + kind, it looked like abuse. I felt totally confused by what was going on, but complicit in it too. Didn’t talk about it with anyone. Saw one in reality for the first time today.

  Four days later Cara saw a second carrier, this one less than 10m away in the next carriage of her tube train, and the week after that a third stepping out of a double-decker transport onto Tottenham Court Road. She marked the sightings briefly on her phone.

  Cara passed her Service Police Examination in the top 18%. She was assigned a probationary role in data surveillance. Her place of work was a first-floor office 0.3km east of the financial district. It had no external identifiers of its function, and she was instructed not to arrive in uniform.