The Raw Shark Texts. Steven Hall

to the familiar world of solids and space. But even the vague body-memory of hard ground had gone, my legs kicking in insubstantial watery black. The world, my mind, the way these connected, whatever the root of the perception shift, I didn’t have control of it, and I couldn’t undo what had happened. But I had to get away. The deep deep liquid black below my feet, the creature in the TV and the violence that threw me here, I had to get out, now, regardless of how everything re-viewed and re-focused itself. I looked up at the North Star, used it to guess-navigate where the living room door should be and began swimming hard in that direction.

      I didn’t get far.

      Something huge rushed fast in the water under my body, pulling me in a mini whirlpool twist of unravelling thought drag in its wake. The thing from the static. Jesus. I kicked faster, scrabbling against liquid, trying to pull up a solid thought of dry land in my mind. But I could only beat out splashes and scatter sprays of mind fragments. Then another undertow and I’m pulled and buffeted, the thing passing under again and I’m knocked and rolled and ducked under by a fierce ripping after-wake.

      Coming up for air and coughing out: shark. The word coming in a tangle-breathed shudder and then me screaming: help. Shark. Help me. Me screaming: oh God oh God oh God and kicking and thrashing and thrashing and screaming. And then, somehow, tumbling from the back of my desperate spark-spraying thought train, a memory of something – Eric Sanderson’s emergency envelope and the Ryan Mitchell Mantra pinned to the notice board in the kitchen. I fought to remember the text on those sheets of paper. Exam results? The colour history of rooms?

      “Blue and black and grey and yellow,” I shouted the words out, grasping, shock-stripped of any thinking or logic. I shouted and kicked against the water, grabbing in the dark. “Blue and black and grey and yellow. Blue and –” Something rushed upwards from below and smashed hard against my hip and side, throwing me up and backwards out of the water in a lift of spray, my mouth opening like a scream but my airways crushed and winded and only a sucking nothing coming through my throat. I came down hard in a splash of disassociating fragments.

      And then –

      And then it was raining, a heavy downpour of letters, words, images, snatches of events, faces, places – a forest, a late-night city – the sea around me mixing in and confusing with so much falling everything else. And me lost in there somewhere and everywhere in it all, sinking away, diffusing, losing all mind and thoughts and consciousness.

      •

      I opened my eyes. Wet, new light dribbled under the curtains – morning arriving, bringing the solid world back into focus with it. I found myself inside the lower part of the living room bookcase, the upper part having broken apart and collapsed, leaving me avalanched in books and splintered wood. I coughed and winced out a hiss. Cracked rib. A minor bookslide happened as I slowly and painfully manoeuvred myself up into a twisted sitting position. The TV face-down on the carpet at the end of its stretched-out flex, the sofa upended. Things were broken and thrown and chipped and smashed but they were there. Solid, physical things. Things in a room made of bricks on a planet made of rocks and water. Silent truthful matter.

      When I pulled together the strength, I hauled myself out of the debris and up onto my feet, swayed, steadied. The words came back without my looking for them: Dr Randle can neither help nor protect you.

      I limped into the kitchen and started taking the First Eric Sanderson’s letters out of the cupboard.

       7

       The Crypto-Zoology of Purely Conceptual Sharks, Dictaphone Defence Systems and Light Bulb Code Cracking in Selected Letters from the First Eric Sanderson

      (Received: 22nd September)

      Letter #2

      Dear Eric,

      I used to know so many things. The things I learned, the ways I learned to see and the things I believed possible, I think they might amaze you. Mostly now, all I have are splinters. Remains of things I was quick enough to write down and preserve; fragments which seem to be increasingly incomplete and confusing to me now.

      This is what I know, what at the middle of me I feel is true: all the lost research, the journeys, the dangerous choices, I did it all for a girl called Clio Aames. I loved her, Eric. So much. And she died. I only get the general senses of things and they pass so quickly, like childhood smells touching you and then being gone on the breeze. But. But but but. It feels strange to be writing this down – I think I believed I could change what happened, undo it, prevent it, save her life somehow after she was already gone. Of course I couldn’t. Dead is dead is dead is dead. If you are reading this then I’m dead too and you’ll shortly be fighting for your own life.

      Eric, I am so sorry.

      There’s so much I’ve lost, so much that’s been eaten all away from the insides of my head, but I’ve worked hard to squirrel away enough to help you. I don’t have any answers, I’m almost as empty as you must be now, but I do have a few tools and a little knowledge. Some weapons and some fragments. The rest is up to you. You always have a choice.

      I’m so forgetful. The creature will find something I’ve missed because it never stops looking and its senses are very sharp. It will find a way to get me and in time it will come looking for you. The waters are almost up to the bedroom window now. I can’t keep all the balls in the air. I can’t stay in this shark cage forever.

      The animal hunting you is a Ludovician. It is an example of one of the many species of purely conceptual fish which swim in the flows of human interaction and the tides of cause and effect. This may sound like madness, but it isn’t. Life is tenacious and determined. The streams, currents and rivers of human knowledge, experience and communication which have grown throughout our short history are now a vast, rich and bountiful environment. Why should we expect these flows to be sterile?

      Life will always find a way. Just look at you and me and see the truth in it.

      I don’t know exactly how the thought fish came to be in the world, but in the wide, warm pools of society and culture, millions of words and ideas and concepts are constantly evolving. It doesn’t seem too implausible that one of them elevated itself above its single cellular cousins in much the same way we did. The Selfish Meme?

      The Ludovician is a predator, a shark. It feeds on human memories and the intrinsic sense of self. Ludovicians are solitary, fiercely territorial and methodical hunters. A Ludovician might select an individual human being as its prey animal and pursue and feed on that individual over the course of years, until that victim’s memory and identity have been completely consumed. Sometimes, the target’s body survives this ordeal and may go on to live a second twilight life after the original self and memories have been taken. In time, such a person may establish a ‘bolt-on’ identity of their own, but the Ludovician will eventually catch the scent of this and return to complete its kill.

      I’m sorry if I’m putting this too bluntly.

      I know what you must be thinking and you don’t have to believe any of this if you don’t want to, but the Ludovician is out there and in time it will find you. Learn the Ryan Mitchell text I sent you. If nothing else, do it to humour me; an old and crazy coat hanging in your wardrobe. I’m afraid that in time you will see for yourself that what I am telling you is the truth.

      With regret and also hope,

      The First Eric Sanderson

      

      (Received: 24th September)

      Letter #3

      Dear Eric,

      The Ryan Mitchell text is a very limited form of conceptual camouflage. The longer you exist in the world, the less effective it will be. It’s important then that you learn to protect yourself on a more permanent basis. There are several short-term and several long-term ways to achieve