The Raw Shark Texts. Steven Hall

I must tell you that Dr Randle’s viewpoint concerning your memory loss will prove unproductive at best. She is wrong about what is happening to you, Eric. More important, she can neither help nor protect you. I know this from experience. On the other hand, if you can bring yourself to trust me enough to continue to read these letters, you will learn to negotiate the dangers which – thanks to the stupidness of my own actions – you will soon encounter. I realise I am hardly in a position to convince you of anything at this stage. The decision is yours to make and until your identity starts to establish itself in the wider world, you will be safe to consider your options. I’m afraid your thinking time after that will be limited.

      There is a second envelope inside this envelope labelled RYAN MITCHELL. Please read the information enclosed carefully and save in your memory as much of the text as you can. I ask that you do this even if you do decide to disregard all of my further communications.

      The information will be important in case of emergency.

      You do not have long to make your decision. Please think carefully.

      With regret and also hope,

      The First Eric Sanderson

      I pushed my hand into the envelope and found a second, chubby package marked just as I, he, the First Eric Sanderson said it would be. RYAN MITCHELL.

      I wandered through the living room, into the kitchen and back into the living room again re-reading the letter. She can neither help nor protect you. I know this from experience.

      The afternoon sunlight drew a bright stretched rectangle on the carpet and a small bird sang on the TV aerial of the house opposite mine. I heard the sound of a car a couple of streets away, growing quieter and quieter with distance. The fractures in this broken world spread out under my feet.

      •

      At 3.30 p.m. on the second day of my second life, a big ginger tomcat arrived in the kitchen. He hauled his heavy self in through the open window, stepped across the worktops and planted himself down solid in the middle of the floor. Then he just sat there, staring up at me with round cynical eyes. I stared back, surprised. I thought he might run if I tried to get too close but he didn’t budge at all, he just kept on looking at me as I knelt down to read his collar tag. There was a name – Hello! I’m Ian – and a full address, although the first line told me everything I needed to know.

      I had a housemate.

      “So, slugger,” I smiled. “Where have you been hiding?”

      The cat just looked at me.

      I tried again: “Are you hungry?”

      The cat just looked at me.

      “Hmmm,” I said, stepping back. “What kind of a name is Ian for a cat anyway?”

      And the cat just looked at me, his big ginger face managing to do bored, irritated and smug all at the same time. He looked at me as though I was being very stupid indeed.

       3

       My Heart was Deep Space and My Head was Maths

      Every single cell in the human body replaces itself over a period of seven years. That means there’s not even the smallest part of you now that was part of you seven years ago.

      Everything is changing.

      In the early days of my second life I noticed how the shadow of a telegraph pole would inch between the gardens of two houses across the street – from 152 to the garden of 150 – over the course of several hours, from lunchtime into evening. After watching this a few times I did the maths: the shadow movement from one garden to the next meant that both houses, the telegraph pole, the street, all of us, had travelled one thousand, one hundred and sixty miles around the earth with the turning of the planet. We’d also travelled about seventy-six thousand miles through space around the sun in the same period and much much further as part of the wider spiralling of the galaxy. And nobody noticed a thing. There is no stillness, only change. Yesterday’s here is not today’s here. Yesterday’s here is somewhere in Russia, in a wilderness in Canada, a deep blue nowhere out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. It’s behind the sun, it’s in deep space, hundreds of thousands, millions of miles left behind. We can never wake up in the same place we went to sleep in. Our place in the universe, the universe itself, it all changes faster and faster by the second. Every one of us standing on this planet, we’re all moving forwards and we’re never ever coming back. The truth is, stillness is an idea, a dream. It’s the thought of friendly, welcoming lights still shining in all the places we’ve been forced to abandon.

      •

      “What?”

      “No.” Dr Randle wore a green jumper with red stags or reindeers on it and brown tweedy cross-check trousers. “It’s just – you never mentioned having a cat before.”

      “Well, I’ve got one now. When I left he was sitting on the sofa watching Richard and Judy.”

      “That’s interesting.”

      “Is it?”

      “You said he had your name and address on his collar?”

      “No, his name and my address. Do you think it’s someone’s idea of a joke?”

      “Hmmm … it wouldn’t be much of a joke, would it?”

      “No, suppose not. Maybe someone’s taken to palming animals off on me because they know I won’t realise they’re not mine.” I was trying to be funny. It wasn’t working.

      “I can’t see that, Eric. And, anyway, you said he’s fond of you?”

      “No. God, no, not fond. He’s not frightened of me though.”

      “Well, maybe he’s just new. It’s possible that you got him before your last recurrence and never had the chance to mention him to me.”

      “He doesn’t look very new. He’s quite old and miserable looking.”

      Randle laughed. I’d not heard her do this before. The sound came in somewhere between a horse and a Catherine-wheel.

      “Well,” she said, “I’m happy he’s keeping your spirits up, wherever he came from. What’s his name?”

      “Ian.”

      “Oh,” she said.

      “Yeah, I know.”

      I’d decided not to take the letter from the First Eric Sanderson along to my second meeting with Dr Randle. I’d begun a lie by denying what I’d found on the hallstand table on the first day of my life and – partially – it was easier to carry on than to backtrack to the truth. The other part? You could call it a wait-and-see attitude. I’d decided not to open any more of the letters if more came, but I’d also decided not to tell Randle about them for the time being. This seemed to be dead centre of the situation to me, completely middle of the road. I would be following the important part of the Doctor’s instructions without actually turning the letters over. I knew the letters might help Randle cure my illness, but. But but but. Can I explain this? It was just too soon – I’d not been in the world long enough to be comfortable with so much blind trust in her diagnosis. The letter from the hallstand table, the second letter that arrived a few hours ago, and any future unopened ones, they would all go into a cupboard in the kitchen and be left there until such a time as I felt ready to hand them over. I thought, after a couple more sessions, when I’m comfortable, when I’ve found my feet, then I’ll come clean.

      As soon as I could get off the topic of Ian the cat, I asked Randle about my family and friends. She said she knew nothing about them.

      “Nothing?” I said. “How can you know nothing?”

      “I