Paradime (24 page)

I remember now.

There’s only one photo, though – it’s of her, and Pete Kettner, and a small boy, standing between them. He’s about four years old.

Is it
that
long?

I print out the photo. I keep it on me and look at it often. The little boy is cute. And I’m happy for them. I really am.

But the truth is I wanted him to be mine. I wanted me and Kate to make a kid together, to make a future together, or at least to give something of ourselves
to
the future – to restore the level of justice.

A secret retribution . . .

I‘m closed off from that now, though – my identity erased, atomised, and my time limited. I’m aware that Nina Schlossmeier may have been lying to me in her apartment that night, but she may well have been telling the truth, and I may
actually
have a kid out there – but I don’t want to know, I don’t want to find out. Because it’d be the wrong kid, from the wrong me, and once again I’d be looking through the wrong side of the mirror . . .

I have this recurring dream. It’s set in what could be North Carolina but equally could be Iraq or Afghanistan. There’s this dark, windowless building, it’s gigantic, the size of a whole city block, like a toppled monolith, but in a sunbaked, suburban landscape, or a desert. It’s some kind of data farm, I guess. I’m in front of it, but also
inside
it, and I’m staring at these enormous servers, row after row of them stretching back as far as the eye can see . . . every machine clicking, whirring, terabytes spinning within petabytes. I turn at one point to see the flicker of graphics on a monitor, neural imaging,
faces
, one giving way to the next, slowly at first, then faster, then rapidly, hundreds of them, thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions, until the screen flashes, and an alert sounds.

And I wake up.

But at least I do
that
. I keep waking up. I keep going, too. I keep moving. I even keep looking in the mirror.

And a couple of months after my time in that homeless shelter, I find myself gazing into a particularly grimy mirror in the restroom of a bus station. I’m gaunt, I have a scraggly beard, my eyes look tired – and I may have a fake identity that I bought with someone else’s money – but it’s still
me
in there, that’s still
my
face. And
I’m
the one who decides what I do, and where I go.

And which bus I’m going to get.

With this little micro-dose of self-motivation sluicing through my limbic system, I head out to the main hall to have a look at the timetables. I glance up at the departures board and pick a destination, the decision quick and fairly random. But then something happens that makes me reconsider.

My eye gets distracted by a wall-mounted TV over in the corner. It’s showing a news report, and on the screen a tall glamorous woman is being interviewed – doorstepped, it looks like – outside a Manhattan apartment building. She’s smiling, and talking. The sound isn’t good, and I can’t hear what she’s saying, but there’s a caption.

Nina Schlossmeier, CEO, Treadsoftly.com

Holding her hand, tugging at it slightly as she talks, is a small boy. He’s maybe four years old, and he’s looking directly into the camera.

Without taking my eyes off the screen, I reach into my back pocket and retrieve the photo I printed out at the homeless shelter. It’s torn and a little faded, but I hold it up and look at it closely. After a moment, and with my head – and the world – now starting to spin, I look at the screen again.

The two small boys are identical.

Alan Glynn is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin. He has worked in magazine publishing in New York and as an EFL teacher in Italy. His debut novel,
The Dark Fields
, was released in 2011 as the hit movie
Limitless
, which went to no. 1 on both sides of the Atlantic, and which is now a hit CBS network show. His most recent novel,
Graveland
, concluded his highly acclaimed trilogy of thrillers which included
Bloodland
, the Irish Crime Fiction Book of the Year in 2011, which was also Edgar-nominated in the US.