The Raw Shark Texts. Steven Hall

      

      For Stanley Hall 1927–1998 A gentleman and a scholar

      THE

      RAW

      SHARK

      TEXTS

      STEVEN HALL

      Contents

       Title Page Dedication One Chapter One: A Relic Of Something Nine-Tenths Collapsed Chapter Two: Kitchen Archaeology And Second Post Chapter Three: My Heart Was Deep Space And My Head Was Maths Chapter Four: The Light Bulb Fragment (Part One) Chapter Five: White Cloud And Blue Mountain Chapter Six: Time And The Hunter Chapter Seven: The Crypto-Zoology Of Purely Conceptual Sharks, Dictaphone Defence Systems And Light Bulb Code Cracking In Selected Letters From The First Eric Sanderson Chapter Eight: The Impressionist Two Chapter Nine: On The Trail Of Trey Fidorous – Recovered Palaeontology And Finds (Hull To Sheffield) Chapter Ten: Flotsam And Jetsam Chapter Eleven: Time’s Shrinking Little Antarctica Chapter Twelve: The Light Bulb Fragment (Part Two) Chapter Thirteen: All The Angels Come Chapter Fourteen: Mr Nobody Chapter Fifteen: Luxophage Chapter Sixteen: Ludovician Chapter Seventeen: An Invisible Eddy Of Breeze Three Chapter Eighteen: Yippy Yippy Ya Ya Yey Yey Yey Chapter Nineteen: History Sinks Downwards Chapter Twenty: The Arrangement Chapter Twenty One: Erm … Chapter Twenty Two: A Tetris-Gap Of Missing Bricks Chapter Twenty Three: Biro World Chapter Twenty Four: The Doctor Of Language Chapter Twenty Five: Hakuun And Kuzan (All The Stars Are Bleeding) Chapter Twenty Six: It’s A Poor Sort Of Memory That Only Works Backwards Chapter Twenty Seven: Who Are You Really, And What Were You Before? Chapter Twenty Eight: The Cube Of Light Chapter Twenty Nine: Orpheus And The Qwerty Code Four Chapter Thirty: Farewell And Adieu To You, Fair Spanish Ladies Chapter Thirty One: Feelings Or Whatever Chapter Thirty Two: Farewell And Adieu To You, Ladies Of Spain Chapter Thirty Three: The Light Bulb Fragment (Part Three /Encoded Section) Chapter Thirty Four: Last Stand Chapter Thirty Five: Just Like Heaven Chapter Thirty Six: Goodbye Mr Tegmark Acknowledgments Undex (Incomplete UK) Praise Copyright

       ONE

      Some limited and waning memory of Herbert Ashe, an engineer of the southern railways, persists in the hotel at Adrogue, amongst the effusive honeysuckles and in the illusory depths of the mirrors.

      Jorge Luis Borges

       1

       A Relic of Something Nine-tenths Collapsed

      I was unconscious. I’d stopped breathing.

      I don’t know how long it lasted, but the engines and drivers that keep the human machine functioning at a mechanical level must have trip-switched, responding to the stillness with a general systems panic. Autopilot failure – switch to emergency manual override.

      This is how my life started, my second life.

      My eyes slammed themselves capital O open and my neck and shoulders arched back in a huge inward heave, a single world-swallowing lung gulp of air. Litres of dry oxygen and floor dust whistled in and snagged up my throat with knifey coughing spasms. I choked and spat through heaves and gasps and coughing coughing coughing heaves. Snot ropes unwound from my nose. My eyesight melted into hot blurs over my cheeks.

      The shudder-hacking violence of no air then too much knocked me dizzy, sent the floor tilting away under my fingers. Static behind my eyes bacteria-swarmed dangerously towards another blackout and, snow-blind and shaking, I pushed my wet mouth down tight into the palms of my hands, trying to pull controlled, steady breaths through my fingers –

      Slowly, slowly-slowly, the world began to reappear in sickly greens and thumping purples and after maybe a minute, it steadied itself into a shaky-solid kind of balance.

      I wiped my hands on my jeans and gave in to a last scratchy cough before rubbing out the last of the tears.

      Okay. Just breathe, we’re okay.

      I had no idea who or where I was.

      This was no sudden revelation, no big shock. The thought had congealed itself under the gasping and the choking and even now, with my body coming back under control and the realisation fully formed, it didn’t bring with it any big horror or fear. Against all that physical panic it was still a small secondary concern, a minor oddity at the corner of things. What mattered most to me – a million times more than anything – was air, breath, the