The Sudden Appearance of Hope

Chapter 70

Snatches of other people’s lives, in a motel off Route 101.

A family of three in one room next door. He’s a salesman, she serves fries at the drive-through. He says, Babe, babe, I promise, next week, next week I promise…

She says, You said that last week, and the week before that, and the week before that.

Honey, honey, I know, but I can do it, I can get the money together…

You always say that, she sobs, you always say the same thing.

They row into the small hours of the night, and I lie awake, listening through the cardboard wall.

A man in a cowboy hat on the TV, skinny as a stick, strong as a stone, moustache quivering on his top lip, sideburns to the jaw.

“Let’s talk reason; let’s make a little sense. Crime is committed by the blacks, that’s math, that’s statistics. So if the police want to use racial profiling I say, yeah, yeah that’s right, because they’re just using a truth we all know to help keep us safe.”

“The FBI say that nearly 70 per cent of crime in the USA is committed by whites.”

“No, I think you’ll find—”

“… but there is a higher percentage of blacks imprisoned for the same crimes…”

“I’m not racist, this is me, having a debate, I’m not racist, you call me racist and I’ll take you to court…”

Types of code: Caesar shift, monoalphabetic, polyalphabetic, single-key encryption, one-time pad, book code, prime number encryption, SSL, etc.

Of all the ciphers it seemed likely that Byron was using, the most obvious was polyalphabetic with a code word. Slow to write, slow to read, but speed could be acquired with practice and, if the code word were known, a computer could break it in a matter of seconds.

Without the code word, frequency analysis would take time, but Byron had written a great deal of material and, usefully, hadn’t bothered to break her words down into five- or six-letter groups, but left all the grammar and spacing in, as thus: bwuwm xi sw ehtjaur pjcfv xdlmcknbn sfvcey adbam.

There is no problem human ingenuity cannot solve.

I looked for repetition of word patterns: “xi” “sw” — It? Is? On? If? “imd” “wix” — The? She? Her? I looked for repetitions of four-letter words, seeking the word “Hope”, and in the end instead found a repetition of the same three-letter word, uxl, and decided it was Why. Crossing “Why” with “uxl” on an alphabetic square gave the letters “edo”. Another three-letter combination, glq, I tried crossing with “the” and found the letters “fre”. On the ancient PC in the foyer of the motel, I typed in a sample sentence from Byron’s diary with the keyword “freedom”, and watched the plaintext appear in an instant.

What I do is unethical, it said, and in the service of humanity.

“It’s two bucks an hour for the PC,” said the manager, mop over his shoulder, bucket in hand.

I left ten dollars under the keyboard, and kept on typing.

America doesn’t have enough public libraries. I end up using the printer at the local fixit store, which also doubles as a seller of beer, milk, toiletries, stuffed animals and guns. It’s a dollar a page, but who cares, the decrypted reams of Byron’s diary fall from the machine into my hands.

Alone in the motel, surrounded by paper, the news on low, the couple next door fighting, fighting, always fighting.

I can’t do this anymore, he screams, I can’t do it! I was meant to be a banker!

“There are cities in England now, whole cities, which are Islamic, where they have Sharia law,” explained an expert on the news, and the anchor looked shocked, aghast, how could this happen, how could Islam have spread so far?

“There are good Muslims, of course, but the faith itself, the religion…”

Change the channel.

My actions are monstrous, and I will not seek a moral justification. History is my guide, Byron wrote. Oliver Cromwell killed a king; the French revolution was led by terror. The serfs were freed and democracy was born; Lenin waged civil war and the Allies fire-bombed Dresden. History is full of vile acts and strange consequence.

I am afraid of Why. Hope — her name is Hope, but I remember her as Why. And why is that? I recall conversations carried out with a figure called Why, her gift, it seems, does not extend to computers, I have data which remembers her, where I cannot. Nor is it fair to say I am afraid of HER — I cannot remember her to be afraid. I am afraid of the concept of her. Of the woman I cannot remember. But that is foolish. My imagination runs wild with the question of the past and the possibilities of the future, but only now, only when I perceive her, is the question real. She is made real by perception, this world is made real by perception of now, of this instant, and that is all that I can permit to matter.

She is free, and does not know it. She is a god, looking at the world from outside the world. Her gift is beautiful. What I am doing to her is vile, but it is both of her own asking, and necessary. The basic structure has been superficially successful. If we can implant the trigger in Why, then we can implant it anywhere.

She is sublime; she is enlightenment.

I slept heavily one night, but my diary had not been disturbed, and you said you lost the phone I gave you.

In my nightmare, you are everyone, and I am alone in the world as you laugh at me.

Hope?

The word written, plaintext, embedded so far into the notebooks that I almost missed it.

Hope? If you read this — perhaps you have already — know that you wanted treatments. You agreed to all of it. I have stripped Filipa’s programming from the system. You will not desire to be beautiful, you will not be made ambitious, a drone, a doll, a perfect woman, I will not kill your soul. But every day you sit in that chair, we come closer to understanding Filipa’s work, and your mind.

And then, encoded, immediately after,

No More A-Roving.

Terror, alone in the night. I locked myself into my motel room, sat down with a new mobile phone, counted backwards from one hundred, cross-legged on the end of the bed, and looked up the words of the poem, “We’ll Go No More A-Roving”, by Lord Gordon Byron, 1788–1824.

I read the words, and finished the words, and nothing happened, though my heart was racing fast, so fast, not even breath, not even counting my breath could slow it. I put my phone down, went into the bathroom, washed my face, my hands, cold water, stared at my own reflection in the mirror, found it ragged and grey, stood up straighter, defiant, proud, glared my face into submission, looked down at my phone and saw that washing had taken nearly two and a half hours.

Shaking on the bathroom floor.

fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckGETUPfuckfuckfuckGETUPNOWfuckfuckfucketyfuckfucketyfuckfuck

The desert.

The train.

And what is worthy, and what is justice, and what are words, at the end of the day?

Fucking get to your fucking feet, Hope Arden. Fucking get this done!

I crawled back to the end of the bed, drank a sip of water, I am warrior, I am runner, I am professional, I am discipline, I am freedom, fuck you all, searched for the poem on YouTube.

Various people had done readings; I chose one by a woman who’d recorded it for her son as part of a family festival on Skye.

“We’ll go no more a-roving,” she said, and her voice was untrained but her meaning was clear. “For the sword outwears its sheath, and the soul wears out the breast,”

and I was sitting on the floor by the TV, and had been crying, though I didn’t know why.

Hours, lost in a second.

I listened to the poem again, and this time I held a rubber band around my wrist, and snapped it hard, burning against my skin, and the reader said, “The soul wears out the breast…”

I was on the balcony outside my motel room, watching Route 101 rush by beyond the pines, and my wrist was red and raw, and only thirty minutes had passed.

Again.

Again.

I pinched my skin hard enough to cry out with the pain, and she said, “The soul wears out…”

and I was on the floor, gasping for breath, and I’d clearly turned the TV on, but that was okay, because only fifteen minutes had gone by and on the screen a man said, “So two hundred bucks and we’ve turned that into six hundred and that’s skill, my man, that’s expertise, that’s us rising to the occasion when the pressure’s on…”

Again.

Again again again until it’d done, again, getting this thing out of my head again again again!!

I listen to the recording and now

on the bed, silent, eyes open, lying flat on my back, I’m at forty-three counts of my breath and appear to be counting downwards from one hundred, who knows where the last fifty-seven breaths have gone?

Again, the soul wears out the breast and

reading the Bible, calmly now, calmer, though the impression of my nails in the palm of my left hand has raised a hard red lump, and there is bruising around the tops of both my arms where, perhaps, I clung too tightly to myself but

again

the heart must pause to breathe

and the sun is rising, beautiful California day, not grey, not like home, not a sunrise of mists and shredding clouds, but goddess-golden, a thing to worship, Amaterasu, Bast, Bridgit, driving out the dark.

Again

I sing along to the words, tuneless, dancing round the room, “The soul wears out the breast oh yeahhhh!”

and stumble, but do not fall, dizzy, head aching, head killing me but fuck that, fuck this, screw you all, I am Hope, I am Why, I am a thief, I am forgotten, I am me, I am fucking me and this is now, this now I dance and I sing again again again

Again!

“The sword outwears its sheath…”

Barely a stumble this time, barely a gasp, I press myself to the wall for a moment, wait for the moment to pass, then turn and turn again, dancing on the spot, wild, limbs flailing, breath shaking, knees bending, the sword outwears its sheath and I am dancing, dancing, dancing, my body is stone, I am dancing stone again!

“… the soul wears out the breast, and the heart must pause to breathe and love itself have a rest HEY MACARENA! The soul wears out the breast hey Macarena!” Words replacing words, fuck this dancing fuck this the soul the breast replace repeat repeat until it’s done Macarena! “The heart must pause to breathe and love itself fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck fuck fuck Macarena!”

A hammering on the door, dawn light through the sheer polyester curtain. “What the fuck is going on?” screams the manager of the motel and then, when I answer the door, gleaming with sweat, laughing, shaking, wheezing, “Who the fuck are you?!”

“I’m Hope!” I exclaimed, holding back a shriek of laughter. “I am Hope!!”