Page 199 of The Examiner

They’ve had it all this time and never told me? Well, they’ll burn it over my dead body!

Gela Nathaniel

JEM, STAY AWAY FROM THE HEAD.

Royal Hastings, University of London Multimedia Art MA *Final Project*

Candidate name: Patrick Bright

Candidate number: 0883480

Jonathan told me Alyson’s real name is Suzie and they’ve been married for years. If he mentioned why they pretended otherwise, then I didn’t take it in. Time froze before that. Something else I discovered was that Jonathan’s ma and sister died recently, not when he was a student. ‘If people think it happened ten years ago, they’ll assume I’ve moved on,’ he explained. ‘They won’t suspect it’s driving me now.’

Here’s how innocent I was: I thought they were doing it all for me. That they’d seen me only trying to protect Ludya and didn’t want me to go down for it. In return, I was that grateful I did whatever they told me. Over the weeks the truth came out. They belonged to an action group, agitators … They had a boss who gave them orders from afar, didn’t get his own hands dirty. They weren’t saving me, they were saving themselves.

Later I found out Cameron blew up at Ludya because she wouldn’t give him the radio from RD8. Suzie wasn’t meant to steal it at all, just take photographs as evidence – so they could expose some toxic technology. Only Suzie couldn’t help being Suzie and went that step too far.

At last I acted. I did something in time. That’s what I learned on this course. I didn’t do it on the ferry with Finn. I didn’t do it when the robbers tied up the girls and hit them. But I took action in that motel room. That’s what this course taught me.

Knowing that made the rest of it better over the following weeks. They encouraged me to keep Jem occupied, so she didn’t notice Cameron and Suzie had gone. Staying happy and cheerful for Gela and the technicians, letting them think all I cared about was getting that installation made. Telling the girls in the shop how much I was enjoying the course. Visiting Jonathan and Suzie at the house. Seeing the rot set in. I don’t mean the obvious. The rot it did to them.

Suzie sat there in the back room, and every few minutes she showed the phone what it needed to see. Jonathan stayed in the front room with the radio, tuning in to the voice every day at the same time, hearing it say it was trapped, it needed help. It was Cameron’s voice. We could all hear that. The unit somehow tuned in to his spirit, stuck in limbo. Is that what happens? You’re trapped in your body when you die? Or only when you’re killed unexpectedly? Jonathan believed that and he was our leader, so maybe because he was so convinced, so were we.

He stopped talking to the leader of their group. He focused on the unit, on trying to communicate with Cameron. I thought he was doing it so that I could apologise, explain. But there was no way to speak with that poor, sad voice.

Jonathan and I took it in turns to let Suzie get some sleep. Ludya refused, and I don’t blame her. We dreaded it. Sitting in that icecold room, the hum of the freezer in the dark. The light as you opened the door. The little brush to dust ice particles off Cameron’s eyes and a type of clear oil now and then to give them the appearance of life. That’s what the phone recognises, Ludya says: the eyes and structure of the facial bones. Cameron’s phone, tethered to its charger.

We couldn’t carry on like that, so it was only right that, when the time came, I took the next step for them.

Metropolitan Police digital evidence log/Case no. 4617655/24/files retrieved 5 September 2024

AetherGen WhatsApp group members Ludya Parak, Suzie Danners and Jonathan Danners, 17 January 2024:

Ludya

So that didn’t work. The phone is programmed to dial a number when the battery drops below 5%. We can’t let it run out of charge and die.

Jonathan

OK. So what’s the logical solution? Spell it out.

Ludya

Someone has to stay with the phone and the body. Make sure it can see his face, eyes open, every four to five minutes. The phone must be charged regularly, and emails, texts and messages responded to.

Jonathan

Covert tracking?

Ludya

We’ll only know when there’s a knock on the door. Even in the absence of CT, they can trace the phone’s whereabouts via triangulation.

Jonathan

So what we MUST do is stop Cameron’s family, friends, clients and colleagues suspecting he’s missing and calling the police.

Ludya