Helen sat there on the underground carriage and was only vaguely aware of Tobias chatting away next to her. It had been quite a day. You couldn't really call it the most confusing, mystifying, frustrating and scary day of her whole life because, as she understood it, what had previously been her life had ended last night sometime around three thirty AM. So in effect she thought to herself, today had in fact been the day of her entire life on the grounds that technically this was the first, and so far only, day of her newly acquired life. She wondered if it was all downhill from here and whether being immortal would grow on her and would become normal. She had already accepted quite a lot today. It was almost something worth being proud of. She was certain there would be people that couldn't possibly have coped with the day she had been experiencing so far.
The company apartment building, she was told, was wedged between new developments on the Isle of Dogs. Apparently you could see the towers at Canary Wharf if your apartment faced out in the right direction Tobias had enthused as they started their journey. If you were up high enough you could even see the Millennium Dome as well. He wasn't quite sure if her apartment on the twenty second floor would have a view of it.
“So tell me again how the company manages to have a forty storey apartment block that I have never heard of slap bang in the middle of the most valuable real estate in all of London?”
“It wasn't always that great real estate let me tell you,” Tobias replied, “I lived there long before they built any of these new fancy developments. There were a good few decades when we felt like we were literally as far from anywhere as you would possibly want to live. That area wasn't always shiny towers, expensive domes and new transport links you know.”
“I do remember the time before the Jubilee line you know.”
“Very funny,” Tobias laughed, “You know I mean well before that, although to be fair, you aren't that wrong either. It was hell trying to use the damned Docklands light railway every day to get in and out. You have no idea how much I hate rush hour in this city. We have been there long, long before that.”
“So what constitutes a long time for you guys?”
“A very long time in normal people scale I guess. If I remember rightly it was built around the late eighteen nineties. Maybe we moved in around ninety eight or so, it was around then at any rate. In those days it was just around the corner from North Greenwich station on Manchester Road. The apartment tower is still where it always was of course, but the station isn't there any more.”
“I thought you said the apartments were on the south of the isle down by Island Gardens? Isn't North Greenwich on the other side of the river from the wharf?”
“The North Greenwich tube station is there now yes, but it wasn't there in those days. In those days the North Greenwich station was close to where Island Gardens are now. It used to be part of the Millwall extension railway which it turns out was not a popular line and got itself closed in the nineteen twenties. We thought having that station there was a stroke of luck when the building appeared. We thought we could start to take advantage of the new transport links the city was building but ended up stuck out in the damn sticks beyond it for many years.”
“Hold on a minute,” Helen interrupted, “what do you mean when you say the building appeared? Buildings tend to be built, not just turn up like unexpected house guests.”
“In your old world maybe,” Tobias laughed, “In ours it is still rare, but not unheard of.”
“A forty storey apartment building just appeared sometime in the eighteen nineties? Besides didn't you just say it was built? Then it couldn't have just appeared.”
“Well of course it was built somewhere, everything comes from somewhere, from one of the timelines.”
“So it wasn't originally built in this time-line?”
“Now you're catching on. No, it was built in a fairly obscure time-line on the periphery of our reach. Don't you think you would have heard of a forty storey building being constructed that long ago? There wasn't a taller building in England for almost a hundred years.” Tobias explained, “It was built by a very interesting chap called Edmund Leverage the Third who would have been hailed as a genius if he had existed in the real time-line.”
“There are people who only exist in alternate time-lines?”
“Yes, we call them fringe actors. They are results of actions that never happened in the main time-line. You would be amazed how close most of the time-lines actually are in terms of who gets born and who dies, but there are also a lot of people who only exist in some of the more outlying time-lines. Edmund Leverage the Third was one such person.”
“and he built the apartment building?”
“Yes he did. He was a real visionary from what we could tell. He studied many of the ancient constructions, like the Pyramids and the Roman Colosseum and he was apparently fascinated by building bigger and better structures. I think someone told me that the Colossus of Rhodes had survived in his time-line too, and that he had been there to see how they made that as well. He basically had a burning passion to extend building upwards. Well ahead of his time, he would have loved modern America I think, he might have even liked Canary Wharf.”
Helen suddenly wondered what kind of worlds existed in all these possible alternate Earths. They kept telling her that most of these alternate realities were almost identical, almost so that you could never tell the difference, but it sounded like some were actually quite different. The idea of being able to go and visit a time where the wonders of the ancient world still existed intrigued her. The fact that entire apartment buildings could hop between one and the other wasn't one of the more credible stories she had heard today. “So you are telling me that an entire apartment building, which would have been the tallest structure in all of Europe, can just appear here and no-one notices?”
“You know it's strange, but yes, from a certain point of view that is exactly what happens.” Tobias shrugged, “To be honest I don't think even our guys understand it completely. You see if something very strange happens, or there is something very out of place in the time-lines, then people from this time-line seem to ignore it. They just don't seem to see things that aren't supposed to be there. It has a lot of advantages.”
“What do you mean by advantages?”
“We don't pay council tax or a TV license for a start,” Tobias joked, “but that's just a fringe benefit. The main advantage isn't so much the buildings or structures that appear it is the fact that people don't really see us. I mean they do, and if you were to talk to someone they would answer...”
“Or just ignore me anyway if we were on the tube,” Helen quipped, “sorry, couldn't resist, please go on.”
Tobias grinned, “Ok, you aren't wrong there. The tube is indeed hardly the most sociable of situations. Anyway, so if you chose to talk to someone and they chose to answer they would see and hear you fine. We aren't figments of anyone's imagination, but very quickly after we had finished speaking to them they would completely forget about ever having had that conversation. We are almost instantly forgettable you see. We can string people along to make sure they keep engaging with us, you will pick up tricks and techniques there, but by and large once we are out of sight we are out of mind, sometimes even before we are out of sight.”
“They just forget us?”
“Yup, completely and utterly.”
“How is that possible? People don't just forget like that.”
“Like I said, we aren't quite sure on the why it happens thing. I can assure you it does happen. They just forget. Take that guy you woke up with this morning...”
“I was trying to forget about that thank you very much.” Helen sighed.
“Well, that aside, that guy wouldn't remember you if you came up to him and said hello right now. He would already have forgotten you. He will remember taking someone to bed that night, and might recall whether it was a good or a bad time, but he won't remember you specifically.” Tobias elaborated, “It's kind of like being invisible when it suits us. If we don't bring attention to ourselves we can pretty much go where we please.”
“and just have people we talk to almost instantly forget us?”
“Pretty much so,” Tobias nodded, “want me to demonstrate?”
“What do you mean?”
“Watch this,” the Irishman grinned, “it can be fun too.” With that he got up and walked down towards the back of the carriage and sat himself down next to two girls who looked like they were dressed for a night on the town. Helen couldn't hear from where she was sitting but she saw Tobias smile, say something then lean towards the prettier of the two girls and whisper something in her ear. She reacted instantly to whatever he said, blushing a bright red and then firmly slapping across the cheek. “Pervert!” she screamed out, and pushed Tobias away. He was chuckling as he made his way back to his seat next to Helen.
“That didn't seem very much like she ignored you!” Helen said raising an eyebrow. Tobias just raised a single finger to his lips as if to motion her to be quiet.
“Wait, watch what I do now. That was the easy part, I can usually offend people at the first attempt if I try, and the length of that skirt just made it easy for me.”
Helen watched as Tobias seemed to be counting in his head, nodding slightly every few seconds until he was happy enough time had passed. He smiled at her, winked, and then slowly made his way back to the girls at the rear of the carriage and once again sat himself down beside them. Again Helen watched as he smiled, leant in towards the same pretty girl and again seemed to whisper something in her ear. This time though rather than the viscous slap he had incurred before the girl started to giggle and blush. He still made her turn a bright shade of crimson, but this time she seemed to have appreciated whatever it was he whispered in her ear. Smiling broadly he wandered back towards Helen and sat himself back down beside her.
“I still have the touch,” he beamed, “it is a hell of a lot easier these days as well if you don't mind me saying. Girl's these days are up for almost anything.”
“She didn't remember what you said the first time did she?”
“Not a single word,” Tobias smiled, “she didn't even remember me speaking to her the first time. They will only remember if we want them to, or if the event was some kind of an important event, the type you can't forget even if you wanted to. Like if I saved one of their lives, or bought them a winning lottery ticket. They would most likely remember me then.”
“So it's selective in some way?”
“Not so much selective as life is able to override it on occasion. Think of it as life sometimes deciding that an event is important enough that you never forget it, even if it involves one of us.”
“This is all seriously freaky you know that don't you? I don't even want to know what you said to that girl...on either occasion!”
Tobias just smiled and continued, “as far as we can tell, the only real effect on them is usually a slight feeling of deja-vu. Besides I imagine that 'seriously freaky' would be a good way to sum up your day in general in any case. You can't have had many days like this before have you?”
“That is an understatement,” Helen sighed, “right now all I want is to relax and have a good long shower.” What she didn't say was that she was still holding out for the slim hope that she would wake up from the next time she got to sleep to find out this was all a dream after all. It was a very slim hope. She looked back at the two girls. The pretty one was no longer blushing and didn't seem to give so much as a second glance to Tobias as they passed by on their way out of the tube to make their connection. Helen wasn't sure that she was going to be able to get used to this whole being anonymous thing.
They made their away across the platform to the Docklands light railway that would take them on to Island Gardens. Part of the supplies that Tobias had been instructed to fetch for Helen contained a nice new leather handbag. It was black and still had that smell of fresh leather to it. It fit neatly under her shoulder. The handbag came with a matching purse that itself came with some very helpful items. There was an oyster card that apparently worked on any trip on the London transport system and never needed recharging. It was joined by a gold VISA card that she was told could be used for just about anything she wanted. There was a limit of a thousand pounds per single transaction Tobias informed her so that operatives couldn't run off on a spending spree. There were apparently limits to the company's resources.
She was also given a new mobile phone, a nice sleek high end one as well. It was almost wafer thin. Helen had always wanted one like that but couldn't have afforded it in her old life. It even did the internet too. She knew that wasn't exactly a new development but she had never had a phone that she could connect to the net with.
Lastly, there was also a passport and a national insurance card that bore her name. She was told they would prevent anyone who demanded to see such proofs of identification from becoming suspicious. They were technically real documents, just real documents for people that didn't really exist.
Helen swiped the Oyster card over the reader and they soon found themselves trundling slowly along the tracks south from Canary Wharf down the length of the isle towards the river. Helen wondered if the apartment would give her a view of the river or of the city and the wharf to the north.
“You know I have been here before and I never noticed an apartment block either," Helen said as she looked out of the window, “shouldn't I be seeing it by now? I can't see anything.”
“You'll just be adjusting,” Tobias explained leaning over and pointing out the window, “give it a minute then look out towards the river just over those old warehouse buildings to your left.”
“Where?” Helen asked again, “I really don't see anything.” She strained her eyes into the darkness and then the strangest thing happened. It was as if she blinked and there it was. A huge forty storey U-shaped apartment block loomed above them. It wasn't just tall and thin either. Helen couldn't count from here but it looked like there were at least a dozen windows in the central block that spanned between each of the side wings. The wings themselves seemed to be several apartments across as well. There was also some kind of strange steeple on the top of the central section. It was quite gothic looking with one central tower that climbed upwards some fifty feet or so above the roof of the building. It was quite out of place on the London skyline, Helen hadn't seen anything like it anywhere else in the city.
The building itself was a contradiction all of its own. Parts of it looked like they were very modern, with glass panels and metallic balconies adorning the upper half of the building while the lower half seemed to be largely red brick with tall thin windows. It almost looked like it could be two seperate buildings.
“You didn't have the budget to refurbish the entire building?” Helen quipped.
“It is an odd looking place isn't it.” Tobias chuckled, “I did say old Mr Leverage the Third was an eccentric didn't I?”
“He couldn't possibly have made half that building in the eighteen nineties!”
“That's very true. We have his grand-son to thank for that. We just woke up one morning in nineteen eighty six and the building had changed. Well, at least half of it had. From what we can tell Edmund Leverage the Fifth renovated the building in the alternate time-line. Somehow, and our seers weren't exactly sure why, part of the building decided it needed to try and catch up with itself in our time-line.”
“You are telling me that ordinary people just don't see that building. How on earth is that possible?”
“You yourself didn't see it just now until you focused did you? It is the same for everyone else,” Tobias reminded her, “they don't know it is there, it isn't supposed to be there, so it isn't there. Their minds just don't recognise it”
“So which half of the building am I in?” Helen asked, “I am hoping that the twenty second floor is in the renovated part?”
“Yes it is, although to be honest all the rooms are quite nice. For some of us the pretentious eighties architecture is more of a turn off than the original building.”
“I can understand that. The eighties were certainly an acquired taste by all accounts. I was a little young to make any judgement there myself. If re-runs of Dallas are anything to go by then I am glad I dodged the whole shoulder-pad thing at least.”
“Those were scary,” Tobias agreed nodding, “and the big hair. I don't miss that at all. God I used to hate the smell of hairspray. Anyway, enough idle chatter, here we are.”
As they stepped out of the station Helen wondered if the day could get any stranger. The apartment building totally dominated the south of the isle and towered over the river. It had taken her a good few years to get used to Canary Wharf and the slow but gradual growth of that part of London upwards as well as outwards. She wasn't sure how well this was going to sit with her. As they walked the short distance from the station to where the entrance was Helen was struggling to think of any other building she had ever seen that was quite that bizarre.
It also wasn't any less bizarre the closer you got to it. The main doors to the building were massive, in fact massive didn't really do them justice. They must have been about twenty feet high Helen guessed, and looked to be made of polished dark mahogany. It was the type of door you might see as part of a prison gate except this one didn't have any smaller door inside of it that was actually practical to open and close.
“You actually use these doors?” Helen asked, slightly incredulously.
“Yeah, they still work fine,” Tobias answered, “watch this. It is actually cool the first couple of times you see it.”
“What do you mean? What is cool?”
“Just stand back there and watch,” Tobias said, gesturing to a spot on the ground a little behind him, “just watch the doors.” Helen watched as Tobias went up towards a little metallic panel on the wall to the right of the door and slid some kind of an access card against it. No sooner had he finished the motion of swiping the card then a small but discernible rumble started to emanate from beneath the gate. Helen could hear the sound of large metal gears clanking against each other deep inside the walls, as rather than open, the door began to disappear up into the wall above it. These doors didn't swing open they ascended, and remarkably quietly given their size Helen thought to herself. She could certainly hear it, but she would have expected something that size and that old to be considerably louder.
Tobias was grinning broadly as he beckoned her towards the door. "See, totally cool isn't it? To be honest I secretly don't ever tire of that."
"It is definitely impressive."
"Like I said, the guy was a total eccentric, no concept of the practical when it came to making the building the way he wanted it. You should see the dumbwaiter system he had installed. It is almost a work of art. He definitely had a fetish for the elaborate. Come on, lets get you up to your room, you get to experience the wonder of the elevators he designed as well, or at least half of them, we have to switch on the twentieth floor from the original ones to the new ones."
"How did an elevator manage to get cut off half way and still work?"
"It's genius, easier to show you than it is to explain it, come on, lets make our way up."
Tobias led her up a short flight of stairs to a large atrium that served as a lobby of sorts. Huge glass windows with bronze gilding ran the length of the semi-circular room and dwarfed a tiny table at the far end that Helen presumed was a reception desk of some kind. In many ways the desk looked a touch absurd, such a small piece of furniture sitting in solitude in front of the huge span of the windows. Helen guessed the windows must stand at almost ten meters tall, and the length of that far wall would probably have been a good work out for a hundred meter sprinter. The domed roof, cast in what looked like plain white marble only served to make the space feel even larger. She was pretty sure it could have passed for a half decent concert venue.
Behind the desk and to each side of the room were separate sets of double doors, cast in what appeared to be bronze. To the sides, the words 'EAST WING' and 'WEST WING' were carved in the marble in large Roman looking print above each of the double doors. The doors behind the desk on the other hand, while identical, were unmarked in any way. Helen presumed they would lead to the central section that started above the atrium itself.
"Come on, this way," Tobias said, leading her towards the door to the west wing, "Your apartment is this way. Wait till you see these elevators."
The double doors swung open almost silently as they approached. Helen didn't see any motion sensors of any kind , but was beginning to not be surprised by anything she experienced today.
"Pressure plates in the floor," Tobias explained, assuming she was going to ask, "really sensitive too, still work to this day and only require a little extra polish and dusting once ever few years. This is really an extraordinary piece of architecture. Would never have happened in this timeline."
Helen nodded and followed him into the corridor beyond the double doors and immediately decided she had been a bit hasty in deciding she couldn't be surprised by the day any further. The corridor that they were walking into was made entirely of polished brass. Floors, ceiling and walls, all brass, and all intricately carved with an almost art deco motif. It was not a short corridor either and along each wall were a bank of single doors all with a number neatly carved into the brass above them. To her left the numbers ran from one to twenty, to her right from twenty one to forty.
"Those are all lifts?" Helen asked incredulously, "each floor has an individual lift?"
"What can I say?" Tobias chuckled, "seems he didn't like waiting for lifts. Now obviously the ones on the right are out of commission on account of the top half of the building not being the same top half that the building started out with. So we will need to take the one at the far end up to floor twenty then take one flight of stairs till we get to the modern lifts."
As they walked along the corridor Helen noticed that each of the doors were also carved, and each had a unique but similar carving, all bearing the same head in profile of a slightly strange looking gentleman with a very angular nose. On each though the man seemed to age somewhat.
"Is that him?" Helen asked, "The architect guy? Is that his head?"
"Yes, that's him. Apparently he had planned this building for years. He was sixty years old when they finished it so each of those doors shows him from age twenty to age sixty. He apparently had a photograph taken every year since he was twenty just for that purpose because even then he had the idea for these corridors even though the work didn't start until he was almost fifty."
"It took them ten years to build the place?"
"Yup, and hell, by today's standards I would say that wasn't half bad you know!"
Helen wasn't sure what to expect as Tobias opened the door to the elevator. The door swung open like a regular door, almost as if deliberately contrary to the way she expected a door to work, but she guessed that when this was built elevators weren't exactly commonplace, if they even existed. She was pretty sure that elevators like this didn't exist. The elevator itself was made of thick glass, with a wide band of bronze running around it's length at about waist height. The floor even appeared to be glass, albeit of an even thicker variety that made it hard to see what was below. The really startling thing about the elevator was what you could see on the other side of the glass. On all three sides of the square glass contraption were an elaborate series of cogs, wheels and mechanisms, all of which appeared to be made from either bronze or brass. It was like staring at the inside of a really large antique watch, or perhaps more like actually being inside one.
As Tobias pushed the single ivory button by the door, it swung shut firmly and Helen watched in amazement as the cogs and wheels started to turn all around them without so much as a hiss. It was almost completely silent as if the glass cabinet was fully sound proofed from the polished machinery outside. Then they started to move, and faster than she thought. It appeared as if the glass chamber was being passed up from cog to cog, wheel to wheel. She guessed there were some kind of latches on the outside of the bronze strip that were being passed up through the machine, it was amazing how fluid the movement was.
"Thirty seven thousand, four hundred and eighty six separate cogs," Tobias said, "not sure who counted them, but I always remember that number, and that's just for one shaft. Amazing isn't it?"
Helen was speechless, her hand pressed against the glass wall and staring intently at how it all turned, pulled, twisted and slid to allow the glass chamber to ascend upwards. They were picking up pace as well, all without a single shudder, bump or tremor and an uncanny lack of inertia.
"This is stunning!" she exclaimed eventually, "and you thought the doors outside were cool?"
"Maybe not quite as cool as this," Tobias shrugged, "but I get more of a kick out of the main door. Don't know why, I just do. Here we are, twentieth floor."
The glass chamber slowed down gently and came to a halt next to the exit door without so much as a stutter and the door swung open. "Ladies first," smiled Tobias ushering her out of the elevator, "this way just one flight of stairs."
He lead her down to the end of the hallway and they climbed a stairwell that was remarkably ordinary compared to everything Helen had just seen.
"Want to see the modern elevator too? We could just walk up one more floor to where you apartment is, but may as well make the tour complete eh?"
Helen nodded and Tobias pointed her to a large metallic door at the end of the thin whitewashed corridor that lead off from the stairwell.
This time the doors slid open as you might expect elevator doors to slide open. Inside the three walls seemed to be covered with huge video screens. Not the smooth high definition kind you see today, but very much the slightly pixelated and blurry versions you might have found in the nineteen eighties. This time Tobias when pressed the single black button there was a loud clunk and the sound of elevator cables coming to life. As he did so the video screens flickered into life and started to display images of the old cogs and wheels from the old lift, as if trying to mimic what you saw from the glass chamber in the old elevator. Tobias chuckled and shrugged, "we guess that it was some kind of homage to the original system."
Before they could continue, the elevator came to a halt and they were at their final destination on the twenty second floor.
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