0111011101101000011000010111010001110100011010
00011001010110011001110101011000110110101101101
001011100110110011101101111011010010110111001100
11101101111011011100111011101101000011000010111
0100011101000110100001100101011001100111010101
100011011010110110100101110011011001110110111101
101001011011100110011101101111011011100111011101
1010000110000101110100011101000110100001100101
01100110011101010110001101101011011010010111001
101100111011011110110100101101110011001110110111
10110111001110111011010000110000101110100011101
0001101000011001010110011001110101011000110110
101101101001011100110110011101101111011010010110
111001100111011011110110111001110111011010000110
0001011101000111010001101000011001010110011001
110101011000110110101101101001011100110110011101
101111011010010110111001100111011011110110111001
1101110110100001100001011101000111010001101000
01100101011001100111010101100011011010110110100
101110011011001110110111101101001011011100110011
10110111101101110011101110110100001100001011101
0001110100011010000110010101100110011101010110
001101101011011010010111001101100111011011110110
100101101110011001110110111101101110
And then everything goes white and I'm out of the tunnel.
Chapter Thirteen
I'm standing in an impossibly dense, thin street, with tarmac under my feet. Ahead of me there's a grubby tower block that may have been shiny once. On either side of me tattered shop fronts display postcards, newspapers, shoes, cameras, hats, sweets, sex toys, and rolls of fabric, but none of them looks open. I think it's nighttime here: The sky is hard to pick out but the light is artificial and I can see something black above me, although there are no stars, and there is no moon. All around me, broken neon signs crackle like acne scars. Two or three of them flicker in sexual colors: rouge, flush pink, powder white, but the rest of them just look like they may have last worked a long time ago. The space above the shop fronts is tangled with dim sodium lights, street signs, corrugated iron shutters, and windows of what seem like hundreds of apartments and stockrooms. There are signs everywhere, sticking out at right angles from the buildings like Post-it Notes in an old book. But I can't read them.
Can I move forwards in this space? Yes. I can take a step, and then another. I can see an alleyway off to my left: another impossibly thin space. At the end of the alley I can vaguely pick out what looks like a steel fence with barbed wire curled on the top of it. There are fire escapes everywhere: zigzags and spirals leading up and down tired brick walls. A blue light dances in an upstairs window: a television? So there is life here beyond me, although I don't feel particularly alive. I don't feel hot or cold, alive or dead, drunk or sober....I don't feel anything. It's actually pleasant, not feeling anything, although of course it doesn't directly feel "pleasant." It doesn't feel like anything. Have you ever not felt like anything? It's amazing. Perhaps I feel so calm because there are no people here. I've been in spaces like this before—Soho, Tokyo, New York—but there were always too many people shopping, camera-clicking, talking, running, walking, hoping, wanting. I get claustrophobic in big cities, overwhelmed by all that desire in one small place, all those people trying to suck things into themselves: sandwiches, cola, sushi, brand labels, goods, goods, goods. But there's no one here. There's a bus stop, but no buses; road signs but no traffic. I walk on, and I can actually hear the dull thud of my footsteps on the hard street. A turning on the right leads to a small square with a gurgling fountain in the middle of it. Here I see shadowy coffee shops with their tables and chairs crowding the dark pavements, and a couple of small city trees growing out of concrete blocks. I don't want to get lost, so I soon come back to the main street, unsure about what to do next. I turn around, everything jumbling in my vision.
Where do I go? I think.
And then a woman's metallic voice informs me: You now have fourteen choices.
My image of the street in front of me is overlaid, suddenly, with a console image: something like a city plan on a computer screen in my mind. A few areas flash briefly in a kind of pale computer-blue color, like war zones on a map of the world. These are the choices, I understand. But...? I don't actually understand anything about what's going on. The nearest "choice," if that's what this means, is the third floor of a block right next to where I started. I walk a few paces and start climbing the zigzag fire escape, the rubber from the soles of my trainers hitting the metal with a hollow, clanging sound. Soon I come to a green door with peeling paint. I push the door and it opens inwards. What do I do now?
You now have one choice, says the disembodied voice.
I'm inside.
You now have one choice.
You ... I'm standing still on four bent legs and—oh shit—I'm trapped. All around me are thick, blurry plastic walls and I can't move. I can go forwards a bit, and backwards a bit; I know that, but I am still at the moment. Fuck. I can hardly breathe. I keep blinking because my vision doesn't feel right: Everything outside of my prison looks brown and warped, and there are reflections everywhere. And I'm hungry; a hunger of a sort I've never experienced before, from a place in my stomach that I don't recognize. Whatever I am, this is a kind of helclass="underline" This is a feeling you could have in a nightmare for only one or two seconds before you woke up screaming. I can't move. I can't turn around. My arms/legs/wings are pushed into the sides of my body. I think I have a tail but I can't move it. It's pinned down by something. And I think I'm probably going to die here, on my own, unable to move even my head. Come on, Ariel. You are still Ariel. Yes, Ariel plus ... What? Who am I? Into whose mind have I telepathed? I—or at least "we"; I'm having the same problem Mr. Y had—want to scratch. I want to eat: I know that's why I came into this box. There was something sweet and crumbly which I did eat, but not recently. But almost as much as that, I want to scratch. I love it when my sharp foot rubs against my ears, taking away the itch, and I'd give anything to be able to do that now (not that I understand the economy of hope). I've tried—in fact, I keep trying. Why can't I move? I, Ariel, can see the Perspex walls, but the other "I" doesn't know what's going on. This being—the other I—panicked, hours ago. She couldn't do what she always does in these situations, which is to try to run fast and look for somewhere dark and soft to hide. But it's hard to think of this being, this thing I am now part of, as "she." My fur ("My fur"? Well, that's how it seems) smells of fear now: a damp, sweet, biscuity smell. And I know this smell from the others, from the ones who return with teeth marks in their bodies.