Read Online Doctor How and the Deadly Anemones by Mark Speed - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Mark Speed
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had a bot leave a voicemail for him. “Yeah, no problem.”
“And thanks to you and Doctor How for bringing in those casualties yesterday. They weren’t my patients but I heard only good things through the grapevine about what he achieved.”
“Right.” He decided to test the deeper water. “It wasn’t a problem that we just rocked up with them like that?”
“Not at all. It’s an emergency department, Kevin. For the life of me I have no idea why the police were there either.” Her face took on an uncharacteristically puzzled look.
“Whassup, Mum?”
“Nothing. It’s all a bit confused, to be honest. I just know you did yourself proud, young man. That Doctor How – he’s a good influence on you. Is he feeding you right?”
“Yeah, I’m doing well.”
“Oh!” his mother said. “The time! I’m gonna be late for my shift. My alarm went all funny. If I’d not been on a two-to-ten shift I might not have woken up in time at all. There’s stuff in the fridge for you if you get hungry. Friday night – don’t be doing anything stupid.”
“Sure. See you later.”
She gave him a kiss and locked the door behind her.
Kevin wandered through to the kitchen and looked in the fridge. There was a Tupperware box of something Afro-Caribbean – fish and rice, it looked like. He took it out and plucked a fork from a drawer. He went over to the kitchen window and looked outside. On the windowsill there was a new piece of bric-a-brac: a white plastic flower with a yellow centre. It bobbed up and down on a bulbous blue plastic pot which was about three inches in diameter. It had two green plastic leaves that seemed to act as a counterweight to the stem and the flower. He picked it up and looked at it. On the top of the pot were a couple of small solar cells, of the type he’d seen on pocket calculators at school. His mother was always buying tacky rubbish like this. She would have been taken with the way it responded to the sun. He shook his head and took the Tupperware bowl out of the kitchen and into his bedroom.
If the estate he’d grown up on now appeared small, his room was miniscule. It was risible for a man of his experience, he thought. But he recognised it as his own time capsule. It was not just a moment frozen in time from his previous life – his pre-Doctor How life – it was a museum exhibit. It was a diorama of the low expectations and limited horizons of his South London upbringing. The teenage posters of singers could go, for a start. He fired up his computer, which was probably the best on the estate, having been cobbled together from the latest cannibalised and stolen parts.
The time on the computer was way out. Faulty motherboard? he wondered. He ran a few checks. There was nothing wrong with any part of the software or hardware that he could detect, so he corrected the clock and began researching the news from the previous twenty-four hours. Apparently there was a rise in absenteeism in London. There was a bit of a scare about a virus affecting the internal clocks on computers across the capital, as well as on mobile phones. However, no virus could be found, and it was intermittent. A software glitch was thought to be the culprit.
The only thing related to his and the Doctor’s exploits that he could find was a story about a small tremor under Essex related to fracking. It was as if the whole series of spectacular events hadn’t happened. He leaned back in his chair and whistled. The world really was as he’d suspected it to be before any of this kicked off. Conspiracies and cover-ups were everywhere. It wasn’t exactly as he’d believed, but even his wildest beliefs hadn’t been too far-reaching.
An evening of nothingness yawned before him. He turned his attention back to his computer, donned his headset and joined a game of Rorrim . He gave a few lame excuses for his absence to the other people in his gaming posse as they prepared for a virtual assault on an alien citadel. As he
“And thanks to you and Doctor How for bringing in those casualties yesterday. They weren’t my patients but I heard only good things through the grapevine about what he achieved.”
“Right.” He decided to test the deeper water. “It wasn’t a problem that we just rocked up with them like that?”
“Not at all. It’s an emergency department, Kevin. For the life of me I have no idea why the police were there either.” Her face took on an uncharacteristically puzzled look.
“Whassup, Mum?”
“Nothing. It’s all a bit confused, to be honest. I just know you did yourself proud, young man. That Doctor How – he’s a good influence on you. Is he feeding you right?”
“Yeah, I’m doing well.”
“Oh!” his mother said. “The time! I’m gonna be late for my shift. My alarm went all funny. If I’d not been on a two-to-ten shift I might not have woken up in time at all. There’s stuff in the fridge for you if you get hungry. Friday night – don’t be doing anything stupid.”
“Sure. See you later.”
She gave him a kiss and locked the door behind her.
Kevin wandered through to the kitchen and looked in the fridge. There was a Tupperware box of something Afro-Caribbean – fish and rice, it looked like. He took it out and plucked a fork from a drawer. He went over to the kitchen window and looked outside. On the windowsill there was a new piece of bric-a-brac: a white plastic flower with a yellow centre. It bobbed up and down on a bulbous blue plastic pot which was about three inches in diameter. It had two green plastic leaves that seemed to act as a counterweight to the stem and the flower. He picked it up and looked at it. On the top of the pot were a couple of small solar cells, of the type he’d seen on pocket calculators at school. His mother was always buying tacky rubbish like this. She would have been taken with the way it responded to the sun. He shook his head and took the Tupperware bowl out of the kitchen and into his bedroom.
If the estate he’d grown up on now appeared small, his room was miniscule. It was risible for a man of his experience, he thought. But he recognised it as his own time capsule. It was not just a moment frozen in time from his previous life – his pre-Doctor How life – it was a museum exhibit. It was a diorama of the low expectations and limited horizons of his South London upbringing. The teenage posters of singers could go, for a start. He fired up his computer, which was probably the best on the estate, having been cobbled together from the latest cannibalised and stolen parts.
The time on the computer was way out. Faulty motherboard? he wondered. He ran a few checks. There was nothing wrong with any part of the software or hardware that he could detect, so he corrected the clock and began researching the news from the previous twenty-four hours. Apparently there was a rise in absenteeism in London. There was a bit of a scare about a virus affecting the internal clocks on computers across the capital, as well as on mobile phones. However, no virus could be found, and it was intermittent. A software glitch was thought to be the culprit.
The only thing related to his and the Doctor’s exploits that he could find was a story about a small tremor under Essex related to fracking. It was as if the whole series of spectacular events hadn’t happened. He leaned back in his chair and whistled. The world really was as he’d suspected it to be before any of this kicked off. Conspiracies and cover-ups were everywhere. It wasn’t exactly as he’d believed, but even his wildest beliefs hadn’t been too far-reaching.
An evening of nothingness yawned before him. He turned his attention back to his computer, donned his headset and joined a game of Rorrim . He gave a few lame excuses for his absence to the other people in his gaming posse as they prepared for a virtual assault on an alien citadel. As he
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