Ghost in the Machine

 

The man’s reflection stares back at him from the grimy mirror, his vivid blue eyes searching. He is grey. Not his hair. He has no hair, he is bald. He himself is grey. Grey skin, grey vest, grey trousers. Except for those blue blue eyes, which well with tears.

A noise begins to rise from the pit of the man’s stomach, swelling to a low, guttural scream. He flings his bony fist into the glass and his reflection fractures into a thousand pieces. A moment stretches to eternity as the shards spill into the darkness; each one reflecting the man’s pale grey face as his eyes widen in terror.

 

A woman’s soft laughter fills the darkness. “Wake up, Daniel.”

The lights of the carriage flicker. The steady hum of the train’s motor just audible beneath the soft clattering of wheels on rails.

Clare?

A man in a sharp grey suit looks down the carriage to his right. He sees a young couple sitting together, smiles lighting their faces. The woman is laughing at something the man said. The man’s eyes beam with mischief and the woman playfully thumps him in the shoulder.

Grey suit looks away, his eyes settling on the lady sitting opposite. She wears a yellow summer dress. She is beautiful. The ghost of a smile plays on her lips as she tilts her head to the side, lost in another time, another place. She is holding the hand of a small boy with vivid blue eyes. The boy stares at the man in the suit, studying him. As the train slows to a halt, the lady pulls the boy to his feet and ushers him through the open doors. The boy stands on the platform and continues to stare as the train pulls away.

The man in the grey suit sighs and wipes sweat from his forehead before passing his fingers through his wavy brown hair. He is good looking, with a strong jawline and piercing blue eyes. From his inside pocket he retrieves a compact notebook. On it is scribbled 222 Hyde P P.

The train slows to a stop and the man looks up to see the station name: Hyde Park Corner. He gets off the train and emerges into the park, squinting against the glare as golden sunlight glitters through glowing leaves. The park is teeming with colour and life: a teenage boy whoops as he scores a goal; a family enjoy a picnic on the grass; couples lie cuddling, smiling, reading paperbacks. The sweet aroma of barbequed burgers and sausages is carried on a warm breeze. A little girl dressed as a ballerina giggles as she runs past him before being swept up into the blue sky, held aloft in loving arms.

Not his arms. Not the man in the grey suit. He walks through the park, detached, out of place. He exits the park and hurries across a busy road where black cabs and daring cyclists negotiate the traffic and the tourists. Red brick Victorian houses line the street, their severe angles testament to a sterner time. A decorative iron fence presents a street sign: Hyde Park Place.

The man checks his notebook. Looking up at the nearest door he sees it is number 198. He walks on and a minute later arrives at 220. The next building is a corner shop. He walks around the corner and spots number 224 so he backtracks to the shop and scrutinizes it. Hyde Park News and Wine stands emblazoned on a white sign above a red canopy. In the window a neon sign proclaims OPEN in glowing red letters. Bundles of newspapers are stacked at the entrance whilst the windows are littered with homemade adverts in all colours, shapes and sizes.

Checking his notebook again, the man in the grey suit walks inside.

The shop’s interior is refreshingly cold after the stifling heat outside. It smells of spices and something else, something like pork scratchings.

“Hello my friend!” bellows a warm voice.

Grey suit’s eyes adjust to the comparatively dark interior of the shop and he sees a stocky middle eastern man beaming down from the counter with benevolent brown eyes.

“Hello.”

“Would you like a paper today? The Telegraph yes?” says the shopkeeper holding out a newspaper.

“No. No thank you.”

“How have you been?”

A look of mild confusion appears on the face of the man in the grey suit. “Very well thank you,” he says. His hand goes into his inside pocket and retrieves a photograph. “Have you seen this man?”

The shopkeeper laughs. “Good one. Now what can I get you?”

“Please, just look at the photograph. Have you seen him?”

The shopkeeper’s smile fades. “Of course I’ve seen him, he lives upstairs.”

“Mind if I take a look?”

The shopkeeper laughs and shakes his head. “Whatever man.”

The man in the grey suit walks down through narrow aisles, past tinned peas and sweetcorn and cotton wool and shoelaces; past the warm glow of fluorescent lights to a dark alcove where the crackle-fizz of electrocuted flies accompanies the occasional flickering of violet light. It is cold and dank and smells of sour milk. Up ahead there is a white door. He pushes it and it opens onto a gloomy stairwell. The threadbare brown carpet feels sticky underfoot as the man makes his way upstairs. At the top is a shiny red door where a metal number 222 hangs.

The door stands ajar.

He pushes against it but feels resistance. Looking through the gap in the door he identifies the source: a small mountain of mail has gathered on the mud brown carpet. He pushes a little harder and the mail cascades in a small avalanche. The man steps over it and finds himself in a dinghy hallway. The air is thick and musty. He walks on and opens a door to a large living room.

The room is grey. Grey walls, grey curtains, grey carpet. There are rectangular impressions where furniture once belonged. Photographs are scattered on the floor; a teenage boy playing football; a family picnic; a man and a woman smiling for the camera. The man in the photos stands in the centre of the room. He is bald. He wears a vest and jeans. He is as grey as the carpet, as grey as the peeling paint on the walls. He is wearing a virtual reality headset. There is a mirror in front of him and a mirror behind him, reflecting the man to infinity.

Grey suit slowly approaches and taps the man on the shoulder. As he does so, he feels a tap on his own shoulder.

Both men turn in precise synchrony, their movements mirroring one another exactly.

 

The bald man takes off the headset and looks around the room.

There’s no one there.

“Hello?” he says.

Silence.

The man drops the headset to the floor, closes his eyes and wipes his hands down his face. When he brings his hands away they are slick with sweat.

He walks to the front door, sees it open and rushes into the kitchen where he pulls a large knife from a wooden block.

Holding the knife in front of him he musters a deep voice. “Don’t mess with me man,” he says, “I have a knife.”

Slowly, he searches the small flat, checking each room for the intruder.

He finds no-one.

On returning to the front door he pushes it closed before walking back into the bathroom. He drops the knife into the sink with a clatter and looks into the grimy mirror. His reflection stares back, vivid blue eyes welling with tears. A noise begins to rise from the pit of his stomach, swelling to a low, guttural scream. He flings his bony fist into the glass and his reflection fractures into a thousand pieces.

A moment stretches to eternity as the shards spill into the darkness; each one reflecting the man’s pale face as his eyes widen in terror.

Standing behind him is a man in a grey suit, looking back at him with vivid blue eyes.

 

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Explanation

• The man in the grey suit is a virtual representation of the bald man: his avatar. This is why they share the same blue eyes.

• The man in the grey suit is literally looking to find himself.

• In attempting to find himself in the virtual world, the man discovers a bridge between the virtual world and the real world (in the form of the corner shop). When the man in the grey suit taps the grey man on the shoulder he is tapping himself on the shoulder, which is why both men turn at the same time.

• The mirror shattering into a thousand pieces represents the man’s fractured self. On the one hand his identity is fractured over time and memory (reflected by the boy on the train, the people in the park, the photos) on the other his identity is literally split into two: his real world grey self and his virtual ideal self. This concept is reinforced by the two mirrors that reflect the man to infinity; to quote a classic: he’s a million different people from one day to the next.

• The woman’s voice towards the beginning of the story is the man’s estranged wife; the laughing couple on the train, a reflection of happier times. Since his wife left, the man has nothing but the cold isolation and addiction of his VR world.

• The lady in the yellow dress (on the train) is the man’s mother; the boy with the blue eyes a young version of him. This is a happy memory from his childhood that he has manifested into the virtual world through a longing for human connection.

• Hyde park is chosen as a hint to the man’s dual identity, as in Jekyll and Hyde.

• The shopkeeper reacts strangely when asked if he has seen the man in the photograph because the man in the photograph is the man standing in front of him.

• The people in the sunny park are the antithesis of the man in the grey room. They represent what he feels he once had but has somehow lost. They also represent his own memories of himself at different points in time: playing football as a teenager with his friends, having a picnic with his family, cuddling his wife on the grass. When he eventually finds himself he discovers he is no longer any of these things – he feels something is missing, just like the impressions in the carpet where furniture once belonged. He smashes the mirror in despair, and in so doing reveals that he is the arbiter of his own self destruction, creating a literal and metaphorical recursive loop.

• There is also an alternative interpretation of the story: the man in the grey suit is a parallel version of the grey man who has found a way to cross over to our reality. In this interpretation, the mirrors reflecting the man to infinity and the shards of glass can be reinterpreted as metaphors for infinite parallel worlds. In this quantum explanation, the people with the vivid blue eyes could be seen as different versions of the same person

• In 1940 the eminent physicist John Wheeler suggested that the entire universe could in fact be created and maintained by a single electron moving backwards and forwards in time, interacting infinitely with itself. This is known as the one electron universe postulate. Though it sounds crazy, this is the best explanation physicists have for particle/wave duality and the paradox witnessed in the double slit experiment. This introduces a third interpretation: all of the characters in the story are actually the same entity, a concept reflected by the vivid blue eyes. Again, this fits neatly with the infinite reflections and glass fragments.

• All of the above interpretations are not mutually exclusive – the story can represent all of these concepts and more.