This One Time
Oh, yeah, this is going back a few years, to when the City was a bit different. I mean, you remember; it hasn’t changed completely… just… subtle, like.
Anyway, so, back then, Alys used to work down in one of those offices, down near the docks.
You know there are those chocolates, these little balls, and they’re all honeycomb on the inside. Perfect spheres, all gorgeous and loud to bite into, but then there’s just air and nothing inside? Nice and tasty, but basically full of air and nothing inside? And you know that there are those girls who are like that, all sharp sweet smells and slap, but not a lot going on anywhere else?
Alys is, like, the exact photo-negative opposite of those girls. I mean, she’s tasty, in her way, yeah. Pretty girl, nice, clean look to her, short hair, modest clothes. She’s not the girl you notice on a full dance floor, with all that flesh and flash going on. Not someone who’d pull a whole club to a halt just by dancing round her handbag, or play-snogging her mates.
But then, not someone who’d want to, either.
So anyway, she used to live down our way, which meant that her trip to work took her past the Mall. You know, that big concrete mess down the middle of town. Every day, she’d walk the length of the back-end of that place, walk past all the service entrances down there. She probably didn’t even really take it in, most of the time, but I’m sure somewhere in her guts, she was getting the sense of it, her eyes picking out odd details.
Back then, of course, you remember? We tended to stick to our side of the city. It wasn’t so much that… it wasn’t like that shit that happened in Berlin last century, fuck no. But, them of us who lived over here, in the flats and estates and down nearer the river, the nice roads with all those nice little houses, we just didn’t see a need to go up over where the parks and the big shops were. Except to work, of course. If you worked in one of those places, you made the trip, but, you know…
I mean, it wasn’t really them and us. Not like other places, where the haves and have-nots get stuck in their seperate ghettos. Not really – there were blokes down our way, like, you know, Johnny Spanners? Like him – who had just as much cash and pull as anyone over there. Remember that Jag of his? Fucking hell, eh?
It was more that, well, it was just such a fucking hassle getting over there. Some town planner was having a laugh back in the fifties somewhen – he must have been on the bloody laughing gas – because what with the shopping centres and multi-storey car parks showing their backsides to our part of town, and the giant fucking roundabouts that made driving over there such a slog and walking an “at your own risk” proposition, who could be arsed? I mean, really?
Not me, not you, and not Alys. We had our own Tescos and our own good, local shopkeepers. Most important, we had our own offies and pubs. If you had to go over there to work, you made the trip, but hardly anyone stayed longer then they had to – I mean, why bother? Your friends were all over here, all your entertainment…
So anyway, every day, Alys used to walk past this place, and maybe she noticed the doors and the signs, or maybe she didn’t, for god knew how long? We all went down past there sometimes, and I don’t remember everyone ever mentioning the doors before, so maybe we’d got used to the way things were back before any of us was born, if you know what I mean?
I mean, otherwise, we’d think it was a bit weird, that there were all those doors, but it never occurred to anyone to try one of them, right?
And so, this one time, Alys is walking past, and she’s got a spark of something in her, that girl, so she noticed the door – maybe for the first time, or maybe for the first time properly, at least – and for whatever reason, whatever spark of inspiration, she decides to wander down the small ramp and try it.
And of course, it doesn’t open. I mean, of course it doesn’t. Otherwise, we’d all have been taking that route into town all the time, and we’d be shopping over there with everyone else, wouldn’t we?
Because Alys had thought that it looked like a service entrance, because it’s all disused and dusty and shit, but it must have been meant as an entrance back when. Although, again, why someone would hide entrances to the mall back here, fuck knows. This place is under-cover and hidden away – practically rape/murder central.
It must have been meant as a way in, because, well, there’s all these signs, telling people how to be once they’re inside – do do this, don’t do that, no smoking, no fucking, no monkeys, no fairy-dust snorting, no flying without wings, no wanking, no crying. All these rules, on this side of the glass – she couldn’t see any sign of them on the other side.
As it was, she couldn’t see much sign of anything. There was a guy way off in the distance, looked like he was mopping up, so it might just have been that the stores in there were all closed for the evening, but the light in there was all flat and dead, and it looked to Alys like there hadn’t been anyone shopping in there for a while.
It’s the funny thing about those doors. I guess it’s like, you know when you used to play a game, and all the hype about it said you’d be able to go anywhere, and do anything in the game world, but then you get in there, and you can go into some buildings, but others, the doors are just, like, painted on? Like the guys who did the game thought they wanted you to be able to do what you wanted, but then they realised that if they did that, then you’d never get all the things that the game needed you to do done?
But they still wanted you to feel like you had all that freedom, so they stuck those fake doors on, so that you would?
Maybe that’s why no-one ever got curious about the doors before – because knowing they were there was enough.
Anyway, so Alys couldn’t open the door, and then that cleaning guy went away, and she thought about how it was getting dark, and she should be getting home.
But then, there was that thing, that I don’t know if you remember about her. That spark?
Like, she didn’t make a lot of noise, but she still always went her own way… she just did it quiet, without a lot of fuss?
Like, you wouldn’t notice her on a full dance floor, but she was always first on an empty one, and last to stop dancing?
Like, her signal was low, but strong?
So, Alys is looking through that window, about to go, and she notices something coming through the glass right over on the other side. You wouldn’t realise it now, but it was always kind of grey and washed out over here back then. We got the flat, bright morning light, but not much else past noon. So the thing that Alys really noticed, she noticed way over there, through the dusty glass, she sees the light and colour of a sunrise, all purple and shit, hazy and wild, and not like she’d ever noticed before.
And those cogs start turning. Because yeah, the thing I was trying to explain about Alys? She’s an animator…
No, I don’t mean with cartoons and shit. I mean, she makes things happen, where things weren’t happening before. Makes things move. Gets things started.
So being like she is, with it never occurring to her not to, she looked around, down there in rape/murder central, and she found herself something big and heavy, maybe a brick, maybe a trashcan, I don’t know, and like it’s really important!
Whatever it was, it worked – she hefted it at her reflection in that door, and the orders stuck behind it, and it smashed that fucker into a million pieces.
Safety glass, I don’t know if you know it – it kind of just disintegrates into these little, sugary cubes, and Alys poked her head through the hole she made, looked at all the little posters on the floor, now covered in the stuff. Looked around, sniffed the dry air, and turned her head to look at the colours over there.
But then she figured it was pretty late, and she was hungry, and cold, and she left for home.
Less than an hour later, some people that lived over nearer the door that she caved in spotted what she’d done, and came to explore. And what happened next led to where we are now.
Because that’s what Alys does, she gets things started. And then the rest of us, we carry it on.
