Maxwell's Demon. Steven Hall
the shelf as to half vanish into the shadows, is a second copy of my novel, The Qwerty Machinegun. This one’s damaged, its spine horribly buckled from a collision with something hard.
If you were to take this copy down from the shelf and open it, you’d discover that its pages were crammed almost to obliteration with changes, crossings-out, and hundreds and hundreds of neat, handwritten notes and corrections made with a fine black pen. Flipping to the front, to the title page, you’d find a small, equally neat inscription:
Thomas,
You asked me what I thought of your novel.
Andrew Black
____________
3
Why Knocks An Angel?
The books on the bookshelf stand in silent, dusty rows.
They stand, and stand, and stand.
Nothing happens. Nothing changes.
Within certain parameters, this could be any day at all.
The books are the books. The dust is just – dust.
Do you know what dust is? Have you ever really thought about it?
Dust is everything and nothing happening all at once.
It’s the smoke and exhaust from the breathing city; it’s the Great Fire and the Blitz, the Elizabeth Line and the braziers in the Temple of Mithras. It’s the life and times of Thomas and Imogen Quinn, the fibres from their tissues, tights and Christmas jumpers; it’s skin particles sent swirling from scratched heads, rubbed eyes and rough hugs, from high fives, DIY, stupid dancing and handjobs, from yanked-down knickers and pulled-up socks, from arm waving, shouting, crying and itches that are up a bit, up a bit, up a bit more. It’s an intermingling of all those things, events, and all the different people we have been as we’ve lived together in this space, it’s a mixing together of almost everything to create – almost nothing.
Just dust.
‘Do you ever think about the stories it could tell?’ my aunt said to me once, as she batted great plumes of the stuff from the rug straining the knots of her washing line. Well, I’ve thought about it a lot and the answer is – no stories at all. You see, the dust doesn’t know and or how or when or but. It has no understanding of so, or then or because. Even if it could speak, its stories would have no unfolding of events, no beginnings or endings, just one senseless, single-syllable cacophony of middle.
With dust, the medium is the only message.
Sometimes, the way it gathers around the books on the bookshelf, it makes me think of those first mammals, the tiny prehistoric proto-mice, watching the dinosaurs, waiting for their time to come.
‘Fuck.’
And just like that, it couldn’t be any day at all.
Just like that – it’s now.
That fuck came from me out in the hallway, the moment I discovered that my iPad, and also, wait for it – ‘Oh, fucking hell’ – my iPhone were both busy installing updates, leaving me with nothing to entertain myself with, even though I was absolutely desperate for the toilet.
I shoved the spare bedroom door open and shuffled quickly across the room. I grabbed my big, battered copy of Cupid’s Engine from the middle of the shelf and headed towards the door.
Two minutes later, and I was sitting in our tiny little bathroom, pants down, flicking my way past the book’s publisher notes and the yellowing title page for the first time in years.
That was when the landline started to ring.
I glanced helplessly across the hallway to the living-room door. I was still very much occupied on the toilet and in no position to answer it.
What if it’s Imogen? I thought. Well, if it is, the answerphone will pick it up. You can call her back in a few minutes. It’s not the end of the world.
Turning back to my book, I barely noticed when the ringing stopped and the answerphone gave out its loud beep.
Then, gradually, I became aware of the voice coming from the speaker.
I recognised it subconsciously at first, I think, the familiarity of it, and it drew me partway out of my thoughts. The words were muffled, however, and a low-priority message filtered through to the edge of my consciousness – they were playing one of his old recordings on the radio again: an interview, or an old battlefield report. I didn’t exactly try to hear what was being said, and as a result, barely caught anything but the last few words.
‘. . . Why knocks an angel in Bethlehem?’
There was a brief pause, and then his voice said:
‘Are you there, Tom?’
My head snapped up.
What?
I dropped Cupid’s Engine, loose pages spilling out all over the bathroom floor.
What?
Cu-clunk. Buuuuuuuuuuuuurrr.
Pants still around my ankles, I raced across the hallway towards the living room.
The other person has cleared.
The other person has cleared.
The other person has cleared.
I pushed the door open and stood in the doorway, heart thumping, staring at the phone.
The other person has cleared.
My father had been dead for almost seven years.
4
Analogue
You have no new messages.
You have no new messages.
You have no new m—
You have no—
You have. One. Saved message. From. 11 May . . .
‘Hey, it’s me . . . Me, Imogen . . . your wife. Are you there? . . . Are you there? . . . No? All