One Word Kill (Impossible Times, #1)

by Mark Lawrence

She always sought refuge in technical detail when life lurched into uncomfortable territory. To be honest,

On Dr Parsons’s pinched features a mixture of boredom and guilt. Perhaps the odd hint of surprise at my mother’s depth of knowledge. A polymath. That’s how people described her. My father used to say that she knew everything about everything. He died when I was twelve. He also had cancer, but an oncoming train cured him.

It had only been a day, but I’d already discovered that cancer drops a bell jar over you, cutting you off from the world. You can still see it, but what it says is muffled and can’t touch you. I hadn’t called anyone. I hadn’t told anyone. What would I say?

of him, but the boy could be a brain surgeon one day. He reconstructed the scene with perfect accuracy, muttering reminders to himself. Simon never forgot a thing. He knew pi to more decimal places than any sane person would want to. I sometimes joked that it was an irrational feat of memory. A maths joke. Nobody ever got it.

It’s always a shock, when you’ve been hit by some calamity, to see the world go about its business with perfect indifference. When Elvis dies, when Charles marries Diana, you feel you’re part of things, that everyone is moved by the same current, even if they really don’t want to be. But turn that around and you discover that your father dying or your blood turning against you doesn’t make the slightest impact. Not only does the world keep turning and the birds keep singing, but the buses run, people scurry to work bound about with their own cares, and the man in the corner shop still snarls at you as if taking your money is a great imposition.

‘You have friends?’ I don’t think Rust knew my name even, but he knew me by sight, knew I went to the school and was therefore part of the herd he preyed on. People think you need to be big to be scary. They see boxers, big muscles, long arms, huge guys, and think that’s what matters on the streets. What really matters in real life, though, is how far you’re prepared to go and how quickly. Most disputes work to a strict choreography of display and threat. The escalation proceeds through a series of steps agreed by silent tradition. Everyone knows what they’re getting into and both the exit and the stakes are clear.

that’s what united the four weirdos who were about to settle around Simon’s gaming table and play out stories of magic and monsters. That’s the common thread running through all the diverse hordes of nerds and geeks who turned up to the conventions and gatherings, who queued outside Games Workshop for the latest rulebook. We were all of us consumed by our own imagination, victims of it, haunted by impossibles, set alight by our own visions, and by other people’s. We weren’t the flamboyant artsy creatives, the darlings who would walk the boards beneath the hot eye of the spotlight, or dance, or paint, or even write novels. We were a tribe who had always felt as if we were locked into a box that we couldn’t see. And when D&D came along, suddenly we saw both the box and the key.

‘Uh . . .’ I blinked up at her. She wasn’t in uniform. I’d assumed she went to Elton’s school, but had never asked. Instead, she was gothed-up to eleven: black, black, more black, and some zips; black-circled eyes in a white face, lips a very dark red. ‘Hi.’ Mother stayed where she was, her smile fixed in that way we Brits use to show we wholly disapprove of something.

on the stairs. ‘Quantum mechanics.’ I held up the book. ‘Cool.’ Mia sat on the bed. Closer than friends normally sit next to friends. She smelled of patchouli oil. I liked it. ‘What’s that about then?’ ‘Well . . . it’s about everything, really. It’s the most accurate and complete description of the universe we’ve ever had. It’s also completely bonkers.’ I hesitated. I was pretty sure this wasn’t what you were supposed to talk about when girls came to visit. ‘More bonkers than general relativity?’ Mia took the book from the death grip I had it in. ‘The twins paradox is hard to beat.’ With a sigh, I relaxed. She was one of us! The magical power of D&D to draw together people who knew things. Who cared about questions that didn’t seem to matter.

I knew a few of the kids on the ward now. Eva was the only one who really talked, though. They say it’s good to share, but in the end, whatever anyone says, we face the real shit alone. We die alone and on the way we shed our attachments. It started when I told the others I had leukaemia that day over D&D.

I didn’t make it to school again that week, but I made it to D&D at Simon’s house that weekend. I took a bowl with me to be sick in, in case I couldn’t reach the bathroom. Truth may often be the first casualty of war, but dignity is definitely the first casualty of disease.

‘John?’ ‘Yes?’ He sounded odd, but it was a bad line, full of crackles and fizz. ‘Emergency!’ ‘What?’ ‘None of us know how to dance.’ ‘You mean you and Simon don’t.’ ‘When have you ever danced?’ ‘At my cousin’s wedding last year. There was a disco at the reception. I’ll have you know that I’ve got moves.’ ‘We’re coming over.’ ‘When?’ ‘As soon as I’ve tricked Simon into coming.’ A long silence filled with crackles and the ghosts of someone else’s conversation, then, ‘OK. At least it’ll be funny.’

‘This sounds like bullshit.’ John pressed his lips into a thin line. ‘His gizmo won’t work without a 68030,’ I said. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ John said. ‘It’s a microchip.’ Simon shuffled along the sofa. ‘In development. Not yet released.’ I would have asked how Simon knew this shit, but it was the sort of stuff that he always knew. Anything from the gauge of an unknown stretch of rail track in the Alabama mountains to the specifications of an unreleased microchip.

I made no protest. If you’ve no intention of obeying, then why not agree. Besides, I felt pretty rough. I could see myself wanting my bed by ten.

The night of Henri Arnot’s twenty-first was the night I discovered how a large amount of music and a modest amount of beer could take five hours and zip them past you like an express train.

To my knowledge, Elton had never broken a law in his life, but he could climb like a gecko, and from his dad’s stories about keeping bad guys out of buildings, he knew a few things about how to get into them.

‘How can they not work?’ I asked. ‘Like this.’ He hit the return button. The legend ‘password or username incorrect’ appeared. Simon tapped the word at the top of the list. ‘This is obviously his username . . . all lowercase, though . . .’ He turned to look at John. ‘There weren’t any capital letters in any of these passwords?’ ‘I . . . There might have been . . . Is that important then?’ John looked sheepish. ‘Yes.’ Simon squeezed a considerable amount of passion into one short word.

‘I can’t play this game. I’m sorry.’ I stepped away, bent, and picked up the light. ‘I need to unstick the future, jump us onto another timeline. We all need a chance. I can’t walk your path. I’m sorry.’ I glanced down the dark corridor. ‘Your Mia is old. Forty. She’s lived a life . . .’ Demus bowed his head. ‘How easily the young sacrifice the old. When you get to forty, it won’t seem quite so clear-cut. Believe me. But . . . Well, just remember that you told me the old were a price worth paying.’