The Half That You See by Rebecca Rowland (the two towers ebook .TXT) 📗

a seventy-five percent chance of full recovery, so I can play netball. Twenty percent chance of failure. Five percent chance of dying during the op.”

He nodded, and watched the game, unwilling to trust his voice for the moment, so there was a pause before she said, “So, I’m scared. But I have to do it.”

At that moment, the crowd roared and Beth raised her banner. “Yay! Go Pulse!”

Colin put his laptop on the table beside the fake white button, showing the scene of him in the classroom, Potts and Buzu bouncing around in the foreground.

Dr. Tambini frowned. “It’s like a deep trance state. Can you recall this?”

“I can recall something, but not this exactly.”

“What can you recall?”

Colin took a deep breath and brought up the blurry screenshot, himself alone in the room. “This. I was imagining everybody disappearing.”

“But they didn’t.”

“So, how do you explain this image?”

Tambini seldom looked surprised but she looked surprised now. “Why do you think it even requires explanation?”

“This is from the film Potts made. Everybody but me winked out.”

“Colin, think. That makes no sense. If Potts wasn’t there to record the image, it wouldn’t exist.”

“I guess.”

“Just because an occurrence isn’t easily explained, that doesn’t mean something mystical has taken place. It just means we can’t see how it happened. I’m more concerned that your comfortable fantasy of solitude is turning into something much more significant. Maybe I shouldn’t have encouraged it.”

Colin stayed quiet, staring at himself alone in the classroom.

“Here is a question for you, and I want you to really think about it. Imagine, for a moment, that you could do something, so you could change things so fundamentally, you were living in an empty world? Would you do it?”

“What sort of thing?”

She thought for a moment, then her face cleared and she pointed to her ridiculous, oversized button.

“What if you could press that, and everybody…” she clicked her fingers, “… was gone?”

“Everybody?”

“Everybody in the world. They would just wink out.”

Colin stared at the button and shook his head, but Tambini wasn’t letting it go yet.

“One press of the button and you’re deliciously alone, in complete silence, your fantasy. Aren’t you tempted? All you have to do is reach out, and it’s done.”

“I love Beth more than anything else in the whole world. I’ve told you that.”

Tambini threw her hands up. “Exactly! Exactly. So, why is this a fantasy that you find so soothing? The one you use to lull yourself to sleep.”

“I’ve wondered about that. Is it bad, d’you think? Evil?”

Tambini had been leaning forward, but now she sat back.

“It’s just a fantasy, Colin, nothing more. The important thing about a proper fantasy is that it can’t come true. It’s safe, and you don’t need to feel guilty.”

She pointed to the screen, Colin standing in the classroom. “But this instantaneous trance state is a worrying development. Have you ever been tested for epilepsy?”

The M25 on a bank holiday Monday. Colin had argued against going anywhere, saying the roads would be so crammed with cars it would be hell on earth. Now they had been stopped for twenty solid minutes, not moving at all. A refrigerated lorry to the side of them was pumping out particularly hot and noxious exhaust fumes, looming high over them. Up ahead, somebody was laying on the horn, really going for it, which seemed beyond pointless as nobody was going anywhere.

Four solid lanes of stopped traffic, baking in the sun. The car directly in front of Colin managed to move forward about ten feet and a shiny black BMW to his right made a sudden surge into the space, stopping at a radical angle.

Denise threw her hands up. “What the hell did he do that for?”

An arm snaked out from the driver side of the BMW, raising an angry finger. Even though the windows were all closed, Colin could hear the guy shouting, a woman in there too. It sounded like the word fuck repeated over and over.

He turned to the side, where the refrigerated lorry seemed somehow closer than before. Higher. Feeling hemmed in and pressurized, he forced his shoulders to sink, using the relaxation techniques Tambini had taught him, making his secret little circle with the thumb and forefinger.

Colin closed his eyes for a moment, no more than a few seconds, and then opened them again, picturing same scene, but with him alone in the cab and no other cars or lorries in sight. The M25, all four lanes, gloriously empty. Nothing in the mirror and a straight long road ahead. He put the car into gear and moved forward, picking up the pace on the wide tarmac, all the way to seventy and kept going.

It was a joy, really. The Audi was no slouch and he let the needle come up over a hundred, plenty left in the engine yet. It maxed out at around 130, the road flying under the wheels now, but still it felt smooth, under control. Reaching top speed, all sound fell away, nothing from the engine and nothing from the road, so that he flew along in deep silence.

Behind him, the sudden intrusive blare of a horn, many horns, the deep-throated honk of a lorry in there. Denise was pulling at his arm, “Colin! Colin, what’s wrong?”

Beth was leaning between the seats, shouting something like, Dad, wake up. Sounding panicked. The road ahead was clear now, for a long way, cars streaming by on either side, many of them sliding into the empty lane in front of the Audi.

Colin shook himself and went to put the car in gear, but Denise grabbed his hand.

“No! Colin, you’re not well. Don’t try to drive.”

He glared at her and threw her hand off. “I’m fine. I’m just fine.”

He eased the car forward, and the sound of the horns died away.

It had been a horrible day of traffic jams and the beach, when they reached it, had barely enough room to lay a blanket. At the back of everybody’s mind