The X-Project

Late at night, in the Brownstone, Pete Wisdom dreams of his youth...


"God save the queen we mean it man
There is no future in englands dreaming
No future for you no future for me
No future no future for you"

The was the coolest thing Pete Wisdom had ever seen.  He'd snuck out and followed Romany here, and by the time that she'd realised that her seven-year-old brother had followed her, it was too late for her to take him home and still make the gig, so she'd sweet-talked the bouncers into letting him in anyway.

So he'd hung on the railing, just in front of the low stage, and stared up that the band in awe, as they'd sworn, fought, and shouted their way through a violent and angry set.  Once or twice, the crowd had surged into him crushing him against the barriers, but he barely noticed.

The club itself was small, cramped and badly-lit, with a surprisingly low ceiling - the band didn't quite have to stoop to avoid brushing the heads, slightly raised as they were, but it was a near thing.

Romany Wisdom might have looked like she wasn't paying that much attention to where her little brother was, chatting with her crowd of friends near the bar, but every so often, her eyes unfocused just slightly as she sipped her drink.

Still, at least the little git seemed to have been distracted by the band, thank fuck. She was dressed the part tonight - ripped t-shirt, old fishnets on her arms, trousers she'd made herself from binbags and gaffer tape, and her hair dyed jet black. Her Dad would have had a fit, but there was no way she was passing tonight up.

The place had been stuffed with a mix of locals and students from various universities. ou could always tell the university students, most of them just as scuffed up as they could be but still obvious in the better clothes, more expensive leather jackets. One of Romany's friends waved over a pair of guys from the side, mentioning that it was her cousin and his friend down from Oxford. Unlike the other students, they seemed to fit better, more workman in dress.

"Alright there?  Enjoying the show?"  The bored drawl was one that Rotten would have been proud of.  She looked them up and down slowly, a slightly bored look on her face.  "I'm Romany."  She stuck out her hand.

"Nathan." He shook her hand firmly, almost a little bit too much so. His fingers were very strong. "Dave said he saw them up in Manchester months back. Him and three roadies and fuck all else."

"'s right." Her friend's cousin said, lurching against his friend, well into pissed. Nathan shoved him back.

"Get you a drink, then?"

Just then, the band finally finished, with a certain amount of shoutingand swearing, then applause and cheering from those that had been paying more attention. Eventually, the cacophony was replaced by the buzz of conversation.

"Fuck, that's better." Romany smiled in relief.  "Malibu and Coke, ta. What d'you do in Oxford, then?"

"Med student." Essex grinned lazily. He waved at the barman for drinks, ahead of the crowd that was filtering back from the tiny stage. "Got me own corpse and everything. What 'bout you?"

Romany grinned back.  "Philosophy.  Me high school was so dead set on teaching me not to think for meself, I thought I'd better go do a degree that might teach me somefing about how to do it."

"Yeah? That's alright then. Long as you don't end up one of those tossers moaning on about the detachment of self in a post-modern nu-sexual urban construct." Nathan's voice had the easy lazy slang of any of her friends, but his eyes were very intelligent and sharp. Not the kind to miss a thing. "It's about actually being able to do something, right."

"Exactly. Learning new ways to look at the world, learning how to use new tools to change things around you." Romany's bored drawl started to slip a little. "Learning what questions haven't been answered yet."

"Figured any of them out yet?" he said, but it was only half in jest. He'd just started into his work on genetics, and the idea of where everything started had fascinated him. Like her, he was looking to provide answers, but first, he needed to figure out what the right questions were.

"Questions? I'm starting to think I might have found a couple." Romany's eyes went distant for a moment. "Actually answering them might take a little bit longer than a three year degree, though."

"Especially an arts degree at that." Essex said with a grin, taking a sip from his beer. "'s good. Too many people figure that they already got the whole world worked out, don't bother to ever ask why? We've got textbooks that haven't been updated since fucking Darwin was on staff, 'cause half the twats figure we're all just supposed to be traditional British country doctors or some shit."

"Christ, don't tell me that. You'll destroy me faith in modern medicine, and I'll have to go to some bloody hippy when I get sick." Romany's smile was just slightly sly.

"I'd offer to give you a physical meself, but I got a feeling it would get me nutted." Essex gestured with his bottle. "And even if it is a Pistols gig, it's too early in the night to be bleeding."

Romany raised an eyebrow, and her smile turned a little arch.  "Might not get you nutted, but didn't you say you were still studying?  I don't know that I want a physical from someone who hasn't got a certificate to prove they know what they're doing."

"I'm a pretty gifted student. Almost a damn prodigy." He said, enjoying the banter. Romany was attractive, but more importantly, she was a sharp one, both mentally and in reactions. Essex always liked those types best. "You could always trust my natural talent until I get the degree then."

"You know, the more I study, the more I think that it ain't our natural talent that's important.  It's how we rise above it.  I'm reading all these books by all these dead men who were meant to be terribly terribly clever, very impressed with their own natural talent, but that's all a lot of 'em did.  Write books.  You want to put your natural talent to use, but I think that what you need is someone who won't settle for just a natural talent."


---



"I hate shit. I hate hippies and what they stand for. I hate long hair.I hate pub bands . . . I want people to see us and start something, or else I'm just wasting my time."

Pete was sitting unnoticed in a corner, not far from where the band were drinking and chatting to journalists, with something very like awe on his face as he listened to Johnny Rotten talk.

"Oi!  Pete!  Time to go!"  Romany came striding over. Nathan was not far behind her, about to say something quietly in her ear when suddenly the sound in the club went haywire. It wasn't actually audible sound, but their brains could only translate the sudden flash of psionic energy sleeting over them into an auditory input. Everyone grabbed at their ears, ducking as if to ready for the crash of a wave.

Blue light bathed the corner of the club, where three students stood backed up against the wall, staring down in horror. The legs of a man were just barely visible in the light, thrashing and twisted as if he'd been knifed.

Pete started toward the thrashing me, only to be grabbed by Romany and shoved behind her.

"What the fuck d'you think you're bloody doing, you stupid little git?" she shouted at him over the din.

"He might need help!  No-one else is doing anything!" Pete shot back.

Essex glanced between Romany and the boy, obviously trying to figure out how the mechanics worked out if Pete was her kid. She would have had to have been twelve to have one this old, and she didn't look Welsh.

"Keep him here." Nathan said, walking over towards the glow. It was like the sound of a raging sea in his mind; swells and eddies and breaking creasts of thought it seemed, as if they had become the water collectively. Two of the three men were Chinese, very young and more than a little frightened. The man on the ground stopped thrashing as wildly, but the gestures around his face were no less violent. How the hell could the man's head be glowing?

"Oh fucking hell." Romany muttered to herself, holding Pete firmly behind her with one hand, the other held in close to her body, tracing discrete symbols in the air. "You stay with me, Pete. We'll make sure he gets help, but you sodding well stay with me."

Essex leaned down, unable to look closely at the face, but getting the feeling that it was somehow the wrong shape now. He prised away one of the hands with his abnormally strong fingers, seeing it undamaged, and felt for the pulse. It was rapid, panicked. The man's chest no longer rose and fell with breath, but his movements were conscious.

"You!" Essex pointed at one of thr Chinese. "Call a fucking ambulance."

"What's happened to Xorn?"

"Fucked if I know. Just call." Essex snapped, and the young Asian almost lept to the phone. Oddly, half the bar was no longer paying attention, gone back to their drinks and knots of conversation. Xorn. That little bit of information lodged into Essex' brain. "Romany, can you find me a coat or something?"

"Sure." Romany turned to find Pete already pulling a coat out from under a pile of bags and coats in a nearby corner. Someone else had spotted him a gawky young man in a ripped t-shirt, though and was heading towards him.

"Oi that's-" the kid started, before Pete cut him off.

"Shut it, cunt. Can't you fucking see that that poor bastard needs it loads more than you sodding do!"

The words sounded slightly ludicrous, in the high pitched register of a seven-year-old, but still, it stopped both Romany and the bloke dead in their tracks. Romany stared at her brother in a combination of admiration and horror.

"Where did you learn - no nevermind, give that here..."

She passed the coat to Essex.

"Ta. Nice kid." Essex said wryly. He carefully wrapped the man's head in the coat, mercifully muting the brightness and seeming to calm him a little. Whatever was happening to him didn't seem to be stopping, but his body slumped now, instead of thrashing against it. Essex spoke the man's name a couple of times, without any luck of a response.

Finally, there was nothing to do but wait. Essex' glower kept any curiosity seekers away from them, but few seemed to notice. He stood next to Romany, who was making sure her little brother didn't get too close either. Finally, a pair of drivers pushed through the crowd, carrying a stretcher. Essex' attempt to talk to them ended nothing but a clipped 'piss off' from them, used to arriving at the club to pick up the latest dancefloor casualty with broken bones and a concussion.

"Twats." He muttered at their backs as they disappeared out the door with Xorn on the stretcher and his friends in tow.

Romany watched them leave, her hand on Pete's shoulder.

"Happy now?"  She asked him.

"What happened to him?" asked Pete.

Romany shook her head, but it was Essex that answered. "I don't know." He muttered, staring after the departed ambulance. Finally he took a deep breath and shook himself out of the musing. He wasn't going to figure it out immediately. "How 'bout we got get something to eat? After all that, I'm..."

His voice trailed off as he looked at Romany's arm, where she was holding Pete. Carefully, he reached down and turned it somewhat, puzzled enough that the gesture couldn't be taken for something forward. On the inside of her arm, just above the elbow, was a slightly raised red weal mark, like a long healed cigarette burn. Except she didn't have that only twenty minutes ago. Essex crouched down infront of Pete, to check the boy's arm. He didn't flinch away from Essex, only glancing up at his sister first.

There was the same mark. Finally Essex rolled up his own sleeve, looking at a third identical weal. "Now that's interesting." he muttered.


---

Pete Wisdom sat bolt upright in bed.

"Fuckin' 'ell.  Blast from the fucking past, or what?" he muttered to himself.

He groped for his cigarettes on the nightstand.