“So, there I am, feeling distinctly uncomfortable, looking around nervously and probably sweating a bit too. I hate sweating, but lately I keep finding myself perspiring, and this is a cold clammy sweat that plasters my shirt to my back and I hate it. The more I become aware I am sweating the more my sweat glands seem to produce the stuff. I was sure other people must have noticed. I was becoming paranoid, looking over my shoulder at what I imagined were people following me, listening for the almost silent swivel of the surv-cams, but paranoid or not I was sure I was about to be found out. I had also made what at the time I thought might be a really crazy mistake; I had the laptop with me. I had it in the side pocket of my handbag, wrapped in a jumper and well zipped up. I thought it safer to have it with me at all times rather than leave it at home to be discovered in my absence. But what if I had been searched at work? Though I had never heard of such a thing, what possible explanation could I give if it were discovered? There was no explanation. I would be ‘banged to rights, guilty as charged m’lud’, as the oldie films say. And as I sat there looking guilty as fuck I am sure, I suddenly felt someone was staring at me. I looked up from the book I was reading (Jane Eyre, never understood a word, another world completely) on my personal screen and that was when I saw him.
The most direct and penetrating gaze I had ever seen was staring at me. Right at me. Two bright half squinting eyes were boring straight into my own. This was a man who must have been eighty or older – his hair was unbelievably un-cool, long and greying, swept back in two ridiculous bangs from his receding forehead. His clothes were more than a bit too old-fashioned too. No-one really chooses to wear trainers and sweat-pants out of the gym these days, except oldies still clinging to the fashion of their youth – as if somehow it could stop them from growing old. It just made them look ridiculous I thought, but ridiculous or not he was real and there, right in my face. This man, this ludicrous character, was really staring at me – a penetrating hard stare. I felt he was looking right through me, inside me even, and it made me so uncomfortable, because the last thing you do in public is to stare, or even look at, people you don’t know. It is a silent world; as the trains silently glide into the stops you hardly notice anything. All is quiet, isolated and insulated. Everyone is enveloped in their own little screen world, head-phoned and apart. Your screen reminds you of your interchange, so you hardly ever look up anyway. No-one talks to, or looks at their fellow passengers; we all seem to prefer it that way.
But here was this guy staring at me, and no matter which way I looked my eyes were drawn back to his and that complicit self-satisfied smile lurking on his old face. I tried to concentrate on my book, but I was already tired of petulant Jane and her fantasies about the mad woman in the attic. I kept getting drawn back to his face, and it was there, looking at me, looking through me. He stood up and casual as if he had known me for years leaning in close over me he whispered into my ear “If you are what I suspect you to be then follow me, if not forget I ever spoke to you. I apologise if this has been a case of mistaken identity.” Almost imperceptibly I must have given the faintest of nods. And then he turned abruptly and made for the sliding doors as they glided upwards at red-interchange Holborn stop.
I had no time to think, no time for reflection, no time to consider, no looking back, this was it. ‘Now or never, Janek’, I thought and I instinctively got up and followed three or four people behind him. I was changing here anyway, so even if the surv-cams clocked me I still hadn’t left my usual path. I was still safe. He never looked back once; just plodded on in those ridiculous grey jogging pants, head down as he rode the escalator ahead of me. I thought for a moment it was some scam and I might be robbed, that he would have an accomplice who would suddenly whack me on the back of the head and steal my com-unit, or my micro-glasses or the laptop even. Nothing else was worth anything, my cred was non-transferrable and even my glasses and com-unit would stop working if they couldn’t read my face. Instinctively I held my handbag with my secret laptop a bit tighter. I would be devastated if some scag stole my laptop. In a way it was the only thing that was in any way important to me.
I kept him just in sight, a few people ahead, and then while turning a corner he slowed just enough for me to catch up with him and as he came alongside me, but looking straight ahead and pretending to cough he said quietly. “Here, just a few paces ahead we cannot be seen by any cam, watch closely and follow me.” He spoke so casually, as if we had known each other for years. I nodded compliance, then he suddenly turned at right angles and with an old-fashioned metal key in his hand he opened a steel door set in the wall marked ‘Private – Staff Only’. And before I knew it I was pulled through and the door slammed shut behind us and we were in total darkness.
Scared? You bet, but something stronger than fear was pulsing through my veins. It was an excitement, a thrill, a buzz that no drugs had ever given me. The realisation that I was on the cusp of existence, this was one of those roll of the dice moments when a choice had to be made, and whether I would regret it forever, some part of me knew I would regret it even more if I didn’t take this chance.
