‘You don’t think Wordini deswerves to miss the point, the way the rest of us with patchwork language do – when he’s the one pushing us off terse?’
‘It’s not that. It’s… you’re as trapped in this copyist story as he is. Why can’t we be the story?’ he asks.
‘What, you mean you and me?’
‘I mean whichever people talk to each other.’
‘And you think their narrowtives matter more?’
‘To them they do. More than a brand narrative or a law scrivener story.’
‘My mother proves you’re wrong,’ I snap.
His voice is soft as a smotherer’s cushion. ‘But you know that isn’t what she always wanted. She adapted to sur–’
‘Yes, she originally wanted to use me as a LipServant. So her story mattered more than mine.’
‘But it doesn’t have to be like that,’ he says.
There’s a long silence, a great divide between words. Stillwell speaks again first, trying to keep his tone as delicate as gauze, but my wounds went sceptic long ago.
‘I know you have over-cathected the book and…’
He’s slipped into EmPath and he knows it. I can’t tell what he sees but my facial muscles feel like a series of tripwires pulled taut. Any release in tension will be explosive.
‘Frith, please, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said it like that. Let me explain. You see, Wordini’s not the only one.’
I know what he’s trying to do, wrapping me in his pashmina pleas. But I’m not shawling for it. I just look away and say nothing.
‘More and more copywriters are being brought in to the hospital. Usually by corporate clients or associates. All of them with your book patches. They come quite willingly. They want, they’re desperate for conversations where someone else is in control, someone else steers the talk.’
I’m listening now, toeing the storyline, impatiently anticipacing the plot’s beats. He continues more confident. ‘I didn’t understand why. Our studies show…’
I can hear him consciously taking the scenic route around the easy EmPath.
‘I mean, we find that people who don’t identify with their transdermal’s brand tend to say less, not more. So when I saw one sitting in a hallway, waiting to consult with a specialist, I sat down with him. I was in a white coat and had my tablet with me. Maybe he thought I was assigned to his case; maybe he didn’t care. He was happy to talk. I think I know what’s happening now.’
Stillwell pauses for a dramatic reflect and I want to laugh – not at him but at the lab tech who has learned to tell stories and not just crunch data.
‘When you apply a trademarked patch for the first time, you and everyone you communicate with is already familiar with the brand personality and narrative. It’s why we can… uh… parse LipService drift. Because we know the product and selling points.’
‘But no one knows the stories from my book.’
‘Yes. Exactly. So the copywriters want an interlocutor to push them to unexpected answers, hoping to piece together the brand narrative from the LipService drift. They can’t imagine that the language isn’t based on a brand identity. Why else would someone try to hiyack their words? To have their product encoded into the transdermals of every other brand LipService is written for. It creates an absolute monopoly.’
I can tell he’s very chuffpuffed with himself – and not just for having worked it all out. Probably been waiting to drop that aplomb all this time. Hiyack. It’s not a bad flick of the gist, though.
‘Do you think they’ll realise there’s no brand behind the stories?’ I ask.
‘Doubt it. But the programmers who are working on reverse engineering and tracing the coding might. An investigation has been launched. Sooner or later, they’ll find you.’
‘I suppose it was inescapable. What will happen to you?’
‘That depends on you. It will be obvious that you had help from someone in the medical professions. But who exactly will be harder to prove. I’ll be a suspect, of course. They’ll want you to give me up, save them the trouble.’ His voice and the quiet deliberateness of the telling have the same relationship to its implications as a doodle does to the telephone conversation that accompanies it. He doesn’t ask me not to be a backblabber. And although the masque raiding and the deceptions and above all the meticulous caution behind our thievery were all his, he doesn’t seem surprised at our imminent apprehension. Instead he looks at me patiently pedagogical, waiting for me to follow his trail of medcrumbs.
I decide I can’t give him my unprogrammed word never to let the rat out of the bag. Bromide has pulled things, like tastures, from my head that I couldn’t have told. It’s only in futilfiling any hope of not squealing that I realise what will certainly be lost – our intimatey confidences, our accomplicities. Our speakeasies. His words are like my tastures – improbably and illogically announcing sensations that branded language denies. The sounds he makes are sops of the sweet, tender fleshiness of fellow feeling. I had that with Dad but his messages always had to cut corners off the pages of books.
‘Is this the last time we’ll be able to do this?’ I ask.
‘Maybe.’
‘You knew this would be our bitter unfriending. So why did you agree to break into language?’
‘You were determined. You would’ve tried, even without my help. And the result would’ve been the same. This way, we have a little longer and I get to show you what I believe words should do. You hold onto them as beautiful things that anyone should be able to own. I wanted you to see for yourself what happens when you give them away. We’ve parleyed an attachment, an… an affection for each other. And not just based on the alignment of interests that comes from a common brand loyalty.’
Sadness makes my bones feel brittle. I don’t think they can hold up against the gravity of planetary forces. ‘Come,’ says Stillwell and lifts my head onto his chest so that we lie in a T-shape on the uncultured carpet cheese. Our feet point in two very different directions. But my head is on a pillow of warm breath, and fingers of milk run through my hair.
Sitting at my desk, I’m dowsing for the sensation of resting on Stillwell’s chest. Instead I hear a thick rubber sole drag squeal-heeling over the polished floor. The sound is almost as screaming as the chilli tasture of the material. I look up to see Wordini accompanied by two large orderlies at the entrance to my cubicle. One of the orderlies steps forward and leans on the back of my chair so that the hairs on his knuckles create a pucker down my spine of mouth-dryingly bitter grape seed.
‘You have the right to remain silent,’ says the orderly in bored tones, already tearing at the patch on my arm. ‘You are under suspicion of medical tampering. You will be confined to an isolation ward until you can be taken to theatre and opened up for examination.’
The same orderly is already wrenching me out of the chair with his slippery okra palm when Wordini speaks. ‘I tremble to think that my contact with the prisoner has already and seriously affected me in a mental way. And what further and deeper aberration might it not yet produce?’
He appears to be addressing the orderly, grateful for the removal of the authorn in his side. But why is he still reciting Bartleby? The orderlies must’ve explained things to him already. He could’ve dispatched my literary programming.
He continues: ‘Conceive a woman by nature and misfortune prone to a pallid hopelessness.’ Wordini nods at me. ‘Can any business seem more fitted to heighten it than that of continually handling these dead letters…?’
He’s talking to me, using my beautiful tales to try to travestate all I believe in.
‘On errands of life, these letters speed to death.’