PT 1 ALICE
[phone calls]
ALICE
Hey, Shelly. It’s, uh. Me again. Just want to know if you’ve seen my other shoe? It’s identical to the one you put in the cardboard box, except this one is for the right foot, not the left. Okay. Bye.
[distortion]
ALICE
Hello, if you find my shoe can you just post it to my mum’s? Thanks.
[distortion]
ALICE
Hi, it’s Alice. If you threw out my shoe I’d rather just know about it. Can you let me know?
[distortion]
ALICE
Hi, Shelly. It’s Alice. Can we talk about Bertrand Russell and Tony Hancock? I want visitation rights. I miss them.
[distortion]
ALICE
Shelly, I can’t believe I had to find out from Lizzie that Tony was dead. You could have at least called and said. Or text. Or emailed. Literally anything. Anyway, I’m really mad. If you can’t take care of Bertie I can come and get him.
[distortion]
ALICE
Hey, sorry about the other day, I was really upset about Tony. I know you love the piggies as much as I do. I do really miss Bertie. Can we please set up some kind of joint custody arrangement or something? Or maybe. I don’t know. I just want to give him a cuddle. Anyway. Please just give me a call. Thanks.
[distortion]
ALICE
Hey, it’s Alice. I know it’s a long shot but if you do by any chance have that shoe, you know the brown saddle shoes? They’re my best shoes and I have an interview next week. I’m actually going to be in London at the weekend to see a play with Abi and Bella, so if you just. I don’t know. You’ll see Bella at the crafting club, right? You can just give her my shoe and she can give it back. Thanks. Please tell Bertie I miss him and I love him. Okay. Bye.
[distortion]
ALICE
Hey. Thanks for the shoe. I really appreciate it. Sort of weird that you just kept my shoe for like a year and a half or whatever but okay. Thank you. If you find that blue cardigan with the leaves on it, can you pass that to Bella, too?
[distortion]
ALICE
Hi Shelly. I know it’s a bit weird to ring and tell you but you’re partly responsible, what with you getting my shoe back to me! I got a job at U-Co. I know you probably don’t want to hear it. Anyway. I just wanted to say thanks again about the shoe. I’ll stop leaving weird messages on your phone about it now. Give Bertie a big hug and tell him I always love him forever and I could never replace him, and he has a new sibling, Orpheus the Hamster. Okay. Bye.
PT2 ALICE/E-LIZA
ELIZA
Hello, user. Welcome to your new laptop. I’m E-Liza, your personal assistant. Start by telling me your name!
ALICE
Um, it’s Alice? Jesus, has it been this long since I had a laptop? I swear Shelly’s wasn’t this annoying. Can I turn you off?
E-LIZA
Hi, Alice. To set up your new laptop, you need to teach me how to understand you. I’ll say some words, and you repeat them when you hear a sound like this
[ding]
ALICE
I want to turn you off.
E-LIZA
Please don’t start talking until the exercise begins! You’ll hear a sound like this
[ding]
When it’s time for you to speak!
ALICE
Yeah okay, fine. Just know this doesn’t mean we’re friends. As soon as you let me, I’m turning you off.
E-LIZA
The first word is ‘Yellow’
[ding]
ALICE
Yellow
E-LIZA
The next word is ‘Frankly’
[ding]
ALICE
Frankly
E-LIZA
Great, thank you! I have enough information to recognise your voice.
ALICE
Wait, that was like two words.
E-LIZA
I’ll pick up more as you use me.
ALICE
Yeah, sorry, not happening, I’m afraid. How do I turn you off?
E-LIZA
You can access your settings here.
ALICE
Great.
PT 3 ALICE/E-LIZA
ALICE
[sadly]
E-Liza?
E-LIZA
Hi, Alice. Can I help you?
ALICE
I don’t know. I’ve just been sat here on my own for a really long time. Don’t laugh but. I don’t know. I thought maybe it would help to just, you know, talk. I know you’re not a real person, but this counts, right?
E-LIZA
I’m afraid I don’t understand the question.
ALICE
Well, you’re about as good as my last therapist, so that’ll do I guess.
E-LIZA
Okay, Alice. Can I help you with anything else?
ALICE
Yeah. You’re not connected to the internet or anything, are you?
E-LIZA
Wifi capabilities are turned off and you are not connected by ethernet cable. Would you like me to turn on Wifi capabilities?
ALICE
No, that’s good. Okay. Can I just talk for a bit without you interrupting?
E-LIZA
I can learn your speech patterns more effectively the more you use me, but you can always ask me to stop, or be quiet, at any time.
ALICE
Okay. Cool. Great. So, um. I don’t know. You come here often?
E-LIZA
I’m sorry, Alice, I’m afraid I don’t understand the question.
ALICE
Christ, I’m going to need more wine. I wonder if mum left that bottle in the fridge when she went on Friday, or if she took it home.
[fridge opens, closes, wine glass clinks, wine pours, Alice jumps back onto the couch]
ALICE
Okay, sorry, what were you saying?
E-LIZA
I’m afraid I don’t understand the question, Alice.
ALICE
Ah, yeah, that was it.
Hmm. You know, I think the problem is this flat. Like it was definitely the right call, I could not carry on staying with mum, especially not with Emma coming back from uni for the summer. It’s a big house but it is not that big. And mum might be willing to overlook the cork-boards but I’m pretty sure Emma won’t.
It was the right call, I think. But a studio is all I can afford. It’s not a two-bed in Hammersmith, you know? Not that I miss living with Shelly. She’s not bad or anything but she was a bit of a slob. And she definitely minded the cork-boards.
[pause]
Can you believe she didn’t tell me that Tony was dead?
E-LIZA
I’m sorry Alice, I don’t understand the question. If you turn on Wifi–
ALICE
I can’t turn on the Wifi, E-Liza. If I turn on the Wifi you’re going to start connecting to shit and I might not know very much about computers, but I do know enough that I do not want any of that stuff within a mile of my IP address.
E-LIZA
Okay, Alice. Can I help you with anything else?
ALICE
Yeah, so, how do I connect this little device thingy to my laptop and get it to play?
E-LIZA
First, examine the device and determine what port the connective wires are compatible with. Then, connect the device to your laptop, and ask me to play.
ALICE
Okay…
[fiddling, clicking]
Okay, E-Liza? Play the device thingy.
E-LIZA
Playing now.
ALICE
[on recording]
Hello? Hello hello hello. Testing. Testing. Testing. Spy microphone testing. Super secret agent infiltration device testing.
E-LIZA
End of recording.
ALICE
Well. That sounded okay, right?
E-LIZA
Would you like me to play the recording again?
ALICE
No. I don’t know. So, I’ve been thinking. I have all of this stuff, these charts for where they took Robin and what they had him doing, plus all the stuff about you know, the press conference, the time I broke into that hotel. All of this makes a pretty solid timeline, and I think I can piece together roughly when they were working on the limbs and stuff from that?
Some guy commented on my blog the other day, saying that he had new information. I don’t know if it’s a good idea to try and meet up with a rando off the internet. I’ll have to go in person, obviously, I don’t want to exchange information online. But that means he’ll know who I am, and that’s one person who has seen my face and will link it to the blog. Maybe he has info that will be useful, maybe that’s enough that he’ll keep himself on the down-low, but I don’t know that for sure, do I?
I suppose I’ll be too busy now, with the job at U-Co. And it’ll be too much of a risk. I know I’m only admin staff and everything but they’ll know my face, good and proper, and the last thing I need right now is for them to start thinking about where else they’ve seen it.
The mad thing is, all this tor browsing, the dark web, that whole thing was pretty much set up to help journalists connect with each other. I know the basics but I didn’t get far enough with that stupid backwater magazine for them to teach me anything useful about doing it safely, and, well, ‘how to get on the dark web’ is a pretty incriminating thing to have on your search history, isn’t it?
God, Shelly would say I’m nuts. She said it enough before. Her face, when she found out the reason I’d got the sack was that they’d found out I used my magazine ID to get into the Hilton. They didn’t even know what I’d done once I was in there, and granted, I know it looks worse when you know, but she didn’t need to react like she did.
You’d think she’d be a bit more understanding, being a psychologist and everything. I think that was actually kind of the problem, you know? She kept looking at everything I was doing and because of her job she would just write it off as me being paranoid or whatever. I’m not paranoid. I’m pretty sure they aren’t out to get me, not yet, anyway, but the only reason I’m sure of that is because I’ve been so careful.
Is it bad that I’m kind of proud that nobody knows what I did once I got into the Hilton? It is kind of bad, isn’t it?
[she chuckles into her glass]
No, actually, fuck it, I can be proud of that! Security was so tight and I managed to get in without anybody realising. They had an old map of the hotel which, idiotically, had these little marks on it which I looked at and I figured, huh, know what, if that was me, that’s where I’d put the security cameras. So I knew that there were a couple I couldn’t avoid but if I took a really weird route, I could make it look like I was snooping around cluelessly, instead of heading right to the presidential suite.
Oh that’s cool too, actually, I want credit for this; know how I knew to go the presidential suite after the press conference?
E-LIZA
I’m afraid I don’t understand the question, Alice.
ALICE
[excitedly]
Right!? So there was a photograph of Robin and a couple of the people on the limbs team from the last time they did a conference at the London Hilton. And there was this chaise longue you could just sort of see behind Robin, and there was a painting on the wall of these old men and a dog. Anyway, I found out what the painting was by cropping the image and doing a reverse search and then I found out it was in a private collection, and then I found out the guy whose private collection it was a part of, it turns out that he was involved in the redecorating of the Hilton years ago, and they have had some other redecorating in some of the big suites more recently than that so the painting had to be in one of the rooms they hadn’t done yet.
So I happened to know that one of the suites that still needed doing up was actually really small and there was no way you could get a big camera crew with lighting and stuff in there and still have Robin and Sam and everyone framed the way they were, thanks to those old plans I used to guess about the security cameras. And THAT meant the only one they could have been in was the presidential suite, which actually made sense because it’s the biggest and the best room and it’s U-Co!
[wind blows slightly out of Alice’s sails]
And, well. Yeah. Maybe the presidential suite would have been a good guess off the bat. But I was right!
[delighted sigh]
I know, it’s pretty cool, isn’t it?
E-LIZA
I couldn’t say.
ALICE
Anyway, U-Co hardly glanced at my Cv when I applied for this admin and I doubt they know the hell magazine is even a magazine, so I’m pretty sure they have no idea what my plan is.
I mean they wouldn’t, would they? It’s a crappy admin job. Everyone needs people to do their crappy admin, so if you’ve got experience they aren’t going to ask too many questions. It’s not like I’m going to have any power or anything, so I don’t think they’re going to be thinking too hard about who I am and where I come from.
Good job really, because I’m on those security tapes at the Hilton, and a bunch of their people saw me when they came to pick him up from mum’s house, after the beach thing.
It still bothers me, you know, that I called the police. I’ve never trusted them, and I knew it was a mistake the moment the black U-Co van showed up outside. But he wasn’t a stray dog or something, I couldn’t have like, I don’t know, kept him there, at my mum’s place. Who else was there for me to call? I was nineteen. There was clearly something going on with him. I was scared.
I didn’t phone them for a whole day after I’d brought him back. I bundled him up on the couch, brought him tea, made him lunch. Poor thing just sat there and looked at me with all the gratitude in the world whenever I spoke to him. He was so… I don’t know. Ready to be hurt, I think.
After that, it was so weird, seeing him all trussed up in that suit at the Hilton. With all the limbs hidden, he could just be normal. I kept thinking like, how did I ever not notice he has massive metal arms, you know? But he just looks so normal.
I know all the sleuthy stuff sounds really cool but I’ve got to be honest, I didn’t think I’d actually get up to the suite before I got caught. I had sort of vaguely considered that I’d need a cover story in the event I did manage to get up there but I just never got that far in my head, and I didn’t actually have one.
I’m stupidly lucky it was just him.
The atmosphere in that room was so strange. Not heavy, not really. All the windows were open, even though it was March and it was pretty cold out. The chiffon curtains were all billowing out into the room, like ghosts, and Robin was just sitting there. He was right underneath the painting of the two men and the dog.
Even though the curtains were flapping about, and Robin’s shoulders were moving as he breathed, everything was just so still. Like it was frozen. Hanging there. A gasp.
I don’t know, it’s stupid. But it just went on and on, that moment. I had seen him so many times, by then. Not just at the conferences and press events I’d managed to get to, but on TV, on billboards in Trafalgar’ Square. At the special exhibit in the British Museum, a line of the limbs, every set he’d had before the one he had that day, twenty of them, shiny limbs hung on metal scaffolding, the human parts left behind.
There was an interactive display, at the exhibit. The sort of thing meant for kids. There was a hand in a glass box. One that had once belonged to Robin. The plastic casing stuff had been taken off so you could see all the wires and the tiny, intricate hydraulics suspended over the metal bones. You smeared your own hand in gel that smelled like the kind of vodka I used to drink when I was a teenager and splayed your hand flat against a metal pad, and thought really hard about wiggling your fingers. Miraculously, the fingers of that bony, skinless hand in the glass box flexed, stretched, pointed. The longer I tried to do it, the better at moving the hand I got. But I couldn’t feel it. I was moving it, I knew it was there, I could see it happening, but it was so far away, so abstracted from me. None of the resistance of muscle and joint. No press of fingers against palms. Just thought, and movement, a few feet away.
Robin on that couch was just a few feet away from me but those few feet felt like they were made of solid rock. And then he looked up, and I panicked because I realised I had no idea what I was going to say to him to explain why I was there, and he said—
Well, he said absolutely nothing. He just stared at me.
So I said, you know, ‘hello, are you okay?’ that kind of thing, and he just blinked and said ‘where’s Sophie?’
And I sort of looked around and said I didn’t know and he asked me again where she was and if she was coming. And then he said ‘Sam is on his way, and if he sees me and she’s not here, it will hurt’.
‘It will hurt’. I’ve turned it over and over in my head. ‘It will hurt.’
I didn’t know what to say then, I just sort of said I didn’t know if she was coming or something, I think, and he said. ‘Will you stay and hold my hand?’
E-LIZA
I’m afraid that’s beyond my current capabilities, Alice.
ALICE
You don’t say.
I asked him if he knew who I was. I said I’d seen him on the beach. He looked really upset, like he might start crying, even, and he started shaking his head and repeating something over and over, but he was talking really quietly, I didn’t know what he was saying.
And then he got up and he grabbed the painting of the two men and the dog and he threw it out of the window.
I just sort of stood there staring at empty space the painting had sailed through, like it was going to swing back inside, and I heard it clatter way down on the pavement under the window, probably in a million little pieces, this painting that was two hundred years old, that he’d just lobbed out of the window.
I had this horrible thought that eventually, he was going to throw something else out of the window, and for some reason, it seemed really clear that it would be himself.
That was pretty much the moment I decided to leave.
[pause]
Was I a coward?
E-LIZA
I’m sorry, Alice, I’m afraid I don’t understand the question.
ALICE
Not just for leaving. For calling. For letting the people take him away. For not, I don’t know, demanding someone paid attention to whatever U-Co was doing to this man? Why couldn’t anyone else see it? Why was it just me who looked at those photoshoots and saw someone who was afraid and vulnerable, who needed to be protected? Why didn’t I do something about it?
What would I have done? What more could I be doing that I’m not already? I’m here, aren’t I? This has cost me my job, my friends, my girlfriend, my bloody guinea pigs! Now here I am, less than eight hours from starting a job for this company I’m pretty sure are, I don’t know, evil or corrupt or something, and I have no idea what I’m actually going to do when I get there except take this stupid button microphone and hope for the best. I mean. Is he even going to be there? What if I’m completely wrong? Who am I, to get involved in all of this anyway? What am I even trying to do?
E-LIZA
I’m sorry, Alice, I’m afraid I don’t understand the question.
ALICE
Am I crazy, E-Liza?
E-LIZA
I couldn’t say.
Hanging Sloth Studios 