Who knows our passwords? Computing Services definitely do, but does Yvonne? I think for a minute. Yvonne can’t have our passwords, but what if she needed to get one for some reason? Presumably she’d just get in touch with Computing Services. It can’t be that big a deal: everything here officially belongs to the university anyway, including all the files on our computers. And Burlem has disappeared, so … Could I just ring up Computing Services and pretend to be Yvonne? Probably not. She probably rings them all the time. They’ll know her voice. Um. I think for a minute; then I run my fingers through my tangled hair a couple of times, set my expression to ‘very worried’ and go back upstairs.
‘Ah,’ I say, as soon as I walk in. ‘Yvonne?’
She’s drinking tea. ‘Yes, Ariel? What can I do for you?’
‘Um, I’m having a bit of a problem. A huge problem, actually, and I don’t quite know what to do about it.’
‘Oh. Anything I can help with?’
‘I don’t know.’ I frown, and look down at the brown carpet. ‘I think it might be hopeless, actually. But …’ I sigh, and run my fingers through my hair again. ‘Well, you know how Saul’s computer is going into storage later on today?’
‘Yes?’
‘Well, it’s got a document on it that I need, and I don’t know how to get it. I don’t think I can. Saul’s not here, and I don’t have the password any more. I used to have it, of course, but I’ve forgotten it and … Oh. How can I explain this? Basically there’s this anthology that someone at Warwick’s putting together, and I was supposed to finish the, er, bibliography for Saul and e-mail the document over to them. It doesn’t have to be there for another month, which is why I wasn’t too worried about it. But I was just starting to pack the things away for storage, like you asked, and then it just came to me.’ I shrug. ‘I suppose I really need some sort of miracle or something. I don’t suppose you’d know how to get a document from a computer with no password, would you? I mean, you’re not by any chance an experienced hacker in your spare time?’ I laugh. As if any of us would ever hack into a computer.
Yvonne sips her tea. ‘Well, you have got a problem, haven’t you?’
‘I know. I think I was just putting the whole thing off until I could just get in touch with Saul. I thought maybe he’d get in contact nearer the deadline, but of course he won’t know that his computer’s going to go into storage and … God. Sorry to bother you with this, but I thought if anyone would know what to do, it would be you.’
I’m being careful not to mention the word ‘password’ too much. I have a feeling that if I make this the problem it will sound a lot more dodgy than simply ‘I need a document and I don’t know how to get it.’ And I think joking about hacking helps, but it is a risk.
‘Have you tried Computing Services?’ she asks.
‘Not yet. I just thought they’d basically tell me to go away. I mean, to them I could be anybody. And it is a bit of a weird thing to ask for. I mean, obviously you understand, but I’m not sure they would.’
‘Do you want me to give them a call?’
‘Oh, would you? Thanks so much, Yvonne.’
‘I’ll authorise the new password request and get one of them over to sort it all out for you. When Professor Burlem comes back he’ll need to set a new password, but his old one will have expired, anyway. I don’t know when they’ll be able to get over to you, but do you want to let me know when they’ve been and we’ll come and do the desks then?’
By twelve o’clock the technician still hasn’t come and I’m beginning to feel hungry. If I could get hold of a bread roll, I could make a chocolate sandwich (which wouldn’t be the worst lunch I’ve ever had), but who knows if the canteen is even open. I try to open the university website so I can log on to the intranet and see which of the various restaurants and cafeterias are open, but all I get is an Error 404 message instead of the front page. No wonder no one’s here. Anyone who’d logged on to the university site to see whether it was open again would surely have feared the worst from this. I sigh. Even chocolate on its own wouldn’t be the worst lunch I’ve ever had – in fact, it’s practically gourmet – but some bread to go with it would be great, and the rolls in the canteen are only ten pence. I write a note for my door and pin it up. Back in five minutes. I just hope he doesn’t come and go away again.
The Russell Building is, like the Stevenson Building on the west of the campus, built in the shape of a four-petalled cyber-flower with a small set of cloisters in the middle. I haven’t spent much time in the Stevenson Building, because the students all say that it is exactly the same as the Russell Building but ‘the other way around’, which sounds impossibly confusing, especially considering that the Russell Building is confusing enough on its own. I only seem to get lost in the Russell Building at the beginning of the academic year, when all the new students are around and everybody seems confused, and it’s as if the confusion leaks out of everyone’s minds and infects everyone else.
Now I go out of the English Building through the side door and under the walkway that leads to one of the Russell side doors. I go up some concrete steps, and then down some more, until I come to the mouth of a long, white corridor with a worn tiled floor and whitewashed walls. When the students are around, this space seems almost normal, but now it feels like the medical wing of an abandoned 1960s space station, or someone’s idea of one. They keep broken university furniture in one of the rooms along here. I can hear my footsteps as I walk, and for the first time ever I get the sensation that there could be no one in the whole building apart from me.
The tables in the dining hall are laid out in a geometric pattern that seems accidental until you go up to the Senior Common Room and look down. From up there you realise that the long tables all point towards the cathedral, which is itself framed in the large windows at the back of the hall. It all makes sense, from up there, the whole thing, and you feel as if you are part of one picture, and nothing on the perfect line joining you with the cathedral really exists.
You’re in the dark and the cathedral is framed in a rectangle of light. One time I had to go into this dingy room off Reception to search the slide projectors for a transparency I’d left behind after a seminar, because this librarian was basically going to kneecap me if I didn’t get it back. As well as my slide (The Runner by Vittorio Corona), I found another one in the box: it showed the cover of Baudrillard’s The Illusion of the End. On the way down to the canteen I held it up in the only light available, the window at the back of the hall, and that’s when I saw what it was. The slide was all melted on the back, but not the image: the image was perfect. But when I tried to pick out some of the detail I realised I was looking at the cathedral through the slide, and the two images became one. After that I fell in love with the slide and took it back to my office and tried to find a way of projecting it onto my wall. But I couldn’t work it out and I don’t know where the slide is now. I read more Baudrillard after that.
Today the tables are there in their usual formation, but there are no jugs of water and no people and the whole thing is, as I had feared, closed. I could go to one of the other buildings, but it seems pointless for a bread roll, so I walk back to my room and eat two bars of chocolate on their