The Red Men by Matthew De Abaitua

Author:Matthew De Abaitua [Abaitua, Matthew De]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3
ISBN: 9781473200715
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2013-06-13T04:30:00+00:00

Morton Eakins called, demanding I help him set up an observation post in Maghull. He was responsible for the Redtown habitat, the mapping and cataloguing of every house and street in Maghull, its parks, pubs and shops. While I sat in on the uploading of the citizenry, he measured the town with his team of surveyors. He took care of nurture, I oversaw nature.

Unfortunately his use of neuroceuticals had given him perfect recall, making it hard for him to generalize. His fussing over detail was agonizing. I found him worrying in the gardens of St Andrew’s Church. A team of builders were packing up their tools, while their foreman dodged past the pleading, stooped figure of Dr Easy. A half-completed scaffold had been erected alongside the square tower of the Victorian church, not quite to Eakins’ satisfaction. He showed me the problem.

‘Shoddy,’ he said. With both hands, he gripped a supporting scaffold pole and shook it. ‘Even at this height, it’s not properly secure. When it’s finished, it will be taller than the church. If it’s not fixed now, how unstable will it be at its full height?’

‘Why do we need an observational tower?’ I asked. We used balloons with mounted cameras to get aerial details of the town, supplemented with satellite imagery.

‘Two reasons,’ said Eakins. ‘First, so we can monitor the decay of the church itself, the effects of pollution upon its brickwork, the rusting of the weather vane. Secondly, St Andrew’s is one of the cardinal hotspots in the town’s mind, demanding the most intensive observation. The chapel has been here since the twelfth century; psychogeographically speaking, it is the centre of town’s religiosity.’

‘Maghull is not religious.’

‘The observance of Christianity is in a lull, admittedly. But I think it will pick up in the future.’

‘Surely we have other priorities.’

Morton hated being questioned, and immediately affected an aggressive impatience.

‘I know what your priority is. Spending the weekend in bed with your wife. We’ve lost two days because of her!’

The environmental routines for Redtown for gravity, light and time, the wind, the rain and sun came off the shelf from Monad. Morton wanted to examine Maghull’s peculiar mindset and how that was influenced by the topography. Certain hotspots in the town emanated influence. That was why he was so obsessed with St Andrew’s Church. The crenelations of its tower were visible from much of the town, a comforting symbol of the town’s parish past. Accurately capturing the circuit flowing between landscape and mind was crucial to the simulation. Cantor never grasped the human unconscious; the red men were utterly secular, that is, temporal, their selves partaking of none of the archetypal, eternal patterns encoded deep within the human brain. In crafting Redtown, Morton and I decided that landmarks would take the role of these unconscious impulses. The marshland around Maghull railway station, the secluded set of swings in Glenn Park, the disused tracts of the Cheshire Lines would emanate their own dark music.

Dr Easy failed to persuade the builders to return.

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