‘Oh, whatever,’ Tiggy says. ‘I’m bored now. When are we heading to the retreat?’
Harvey ignores her.
Amelia fastens the watch onto her wrist, and as the final clasp clicks into place, a green, wavy line starts to flow across its screen.
‘It’s your heart rate,’ Harvey states. ‘It’ll go dark again once it’s calibrated. Make sure you keep it fastened tight, so the sensor gets as much skin contact as possible.’ He snaps the lid of the white box shut, then addresses them all. ‘OK then. Here’s what’s going to happen. Your sensor is tapping into your neurological pathways as we speak. It is picking up your vibe. It is assessing your health. It is investigating your pleasure points, and your quirks and foibles, and all the things you don’t like. After about ten minutes, your device will have completely mapped your body and mind, and it will provide you with a personal programme for the day. Everything you need will be individually transmitted – just for you.’ He pauses, looks at his watch. Then he holds the screen towards them, letting them see what’s on it. ‘It’s T minus 19. The device knew that I wanted to know the time, and that’s what it’s shown me.’
‘Oh, please,’ Lucy says, ‘this is nonsense. There’s no device that can read your mind.’
Harvey smiles. ‘You don’t know about Timeo yet.’
‘We don’t know anything yet, buddy,’ says Scott. ‘You’ve told us nothing about the company, or why we’re here, and I guess now we’re just supposed to believe that this device you’ve jammed into our skulls is going to tell us what to do for the rest of the day?’
‘How does that even work?’ James says. ‘She’s got a watch like yours – she can see what it says. How are we supposed to know what to do, if the thing’s just attached to one of our ears?’
‘T minus 19?’ Tiggy blurts. ‘What kind of time is that anyway?’
‘You must’ve heard it like this before? It’s a countdown. Like when they’re about to launch a space rocket?’
She gives him a blank stare.
Harvey sighs. ‘It’s nineteen hours until the party, where all will be revealed. I’m going to leave you to it. If you need help, help will arrive. In the meantime, just decide when you want to start . . . and it will happen.’ He makes a double-tapping gesture on the side of his head, then he picks up the box and disappears out of the door before they can ask him anything else.
‘Right then,’ Scott says. ‘So, who’s gonna go first?’
‘We need to clear our minds,’ James says, ‘you know . . . like in Ghostbusters.’
‘The Marshmallow Man,’ Scott and James say together. They both laugh. ‘Don’t even think of that,’ James says, his expression serious again. ‘I think we need to be careful.’
‘We need to do something,’ Scott says, ‘or we’re going to be stuck in this room for nineteen hours.’
‘Let’s just go with it,’ Giles says. ‘I’ll go first . . .’
Lucy
Lucy leans back into the soft cushions of the sofa and pretends that she’s not taking in the other six people who are scattered around the small room. The girl in khakis – Amelia – looks relieved at not having the tracker stuck into that soft, thin skin above her ear, and Lucy feels a prickle of annoyance that she’s got away with it. Maybe this is all part of the ‘game’. That’s what Giles seems to think it is. Maybe she’s in cahoots with this ‘Harvey’ guy – if that’s even his name.
Of course the ‘tracker’ thing has to be just a bit of fun. She’d laid it on a bit thick, saying she felt funny after it was attached to her. The feeling had passed soon enough; no way are they really firing drugs into her head. She wrote an article once on autosuggestion, after one of the celebs she was digging into said they were being hypnotised for an addiction and ended up acting all weird. It’s easier to trick the mind than people realise.
She’d done a bit of digging on Timeo before she’d RSVP’d, but their website hadn’t given anything away. It had a black background – making her think she’d crashed her laptop – then a single line of scrolling text appeared, saying ‘Creators of the technology you didn’t know existed’, before ending with their simple logo, just like on Harvey’s polo shirt. That was it. Nothing else in Google – every search link led straight back to the same place. Which – although frustrating for someone used to being able to find all the information required, in record time – was more than a little bit intriguing.
Lucy’s whole online life is based on intrigue. Intrigue and cynicism, in fact. It’s not as if you can write a high-profile gossip column and not experience both those things on a daily basis. She’s heard of Tiggy and Giles – these so-called ‘influencers’ have become celebrities in their own right, and it’s especially intriguing when they come as a pair. Lucy had done a piece on Giles Horner only a few months before, dredging some dirt on some of his previous work, before he became a YouTube sensation – sharing his bespoke games and his views on those developed by others. The virtual reality games are particularly popular, and her column had a lot more hits than usual when she’d hinted that it wasn’t actually him who’d developed these but a silent partner – someone who wasn’t quite so Instagrammable. It’s just like those music scandals in the eighties and nineties. Milli Vanilli with their big hit ‘Girl You Know It’s True’, and the two pretty boys with the braids who turned out to be nothing more than glorified dancers – the real singers not being photogenic enough to show to the world.
It’s exactly this kind of thing that’s wrong with the world, in Lucy’s opinion. Hence her glee at exposing all the celebrity mistruths and cover-ups she can find. Most of it isn’t meant to harm, though – she strongly believes that the majority of the celebrities out there are fully aware of the nonsense of it all. Except for the reality TV stars who truly believe their own hype. Still, let them have their fifteen minutes of fame. Their antics are what pay Lucy’s exorbitant London rent. She can always move back to Scotland when she gets bored of it all.
But there must be some dirt on this Timeo set-up, and she’ll do her best to uncover it – but obviously that’s not really why she’s here. She’s been invited here to review the experience with a view to attracting the very celebrities she spends her days toying with. Well, there’s that, and the promise of a significant sum of money to lure a couple of young royals onto the island, should the whole retreat thing end up going ahead. And of course, it’s not like she had much of a choice, with those links she’d been sent. Self-preservation and financial gain are a potent combination – one that she’s definitely not immune to.
‘I’ll go first,’ Giles says. ‘I reckon I can play this thing.’
Lucy glances over at Amelia and pulls a face. Amelia gives her a brief smile. She looks nervous and out of place, but she shouldn’t worry about that. Everyone here is in the same boat right now. No one knows who anyone really is. It’s going to be interesting to see how the dynamics shift as people start to come into their own. What Tiggy said about it being a reality TV show set-up was spot on. Before she’d started her own – anonymous – column, Lucy had worked for a couple of the overpriced glossy magazines. She’d been forced to go on a team-building weekend once – one of those adventure things with ropes and helmets and zip wires, except they’d adapted it for the company, added in shelter-building and fire-making, made them all camp out there overnight. Her sense of humour had got her through it, but her cynicism had been in overdrive – mixing creatives with sales and marketing and the high-level finance bods had been an interesting idea. It had shown her that people always show their true selves when under pressure. Mainly it had shown her that she hates climbing ladders, and has no patience for the timid. Who’s going to be the timid one today? Her eyes are drawn to Tiggy, who’s busy nibbling the skin on the side of one thumbnail, her eyes flitting from one person to the next, as if awaiting instruction.