Roman is shaking his head. He’s thinking about it. After a while, he says, ‘If an AI attacked you, it would explain how you were targeted in broad daylight riding your bike.’

‘I crushed that bird in my hand. Crushed it to bits.’

‘Good for you. Why don’t you get your head down? I’ll be sitting right here at the desk. There’s nowhere you can go without my knowing.’

I pull the afghan right up to my chin and close my eyes.

In general, I try to be a good person. But dreams are a medium where a person can act out power fantasies without being held to account, for real. So in a sense, I guess I hate and fear Elstree partly because he’s just a more extreme version of me. He wouldn’t hurt a fly in real life, but he’d take a power saw to his boss and get off on it in his fantasies. He’d make a musician walk off a high-rise and act like none of it was real – but it is real.

And me? I’m going to kill him. It won’t be a fantasy.

Secret Diary of a Dreamhacker

Entry #56

Codename: Chaplin

Date: 27 September 2027

Client: Martin Elstree

Payment in advance: N/A

Session Goal: Kill the client

Location: O’s sofa

Narcolepsy status: Strangely OK

Nutrition/stimulants: At least a pint of Stoli

Start time: 4:35 a.m.

End time: 4:59 a.m.

It takes me a while to locate Martin’s building in the Dream City, not because it’s hard to find but because I’m drunk. It’s there in dream-Convoys Wharf, reality mixed up with imagination in some whacked-out cocktail. Martin’s building is juxtaposed with a giant tree and a cycle-superhighway beside a building site with a crane. At the foot of the crane is the hedge maze where I got lost, and there’s a stone staircase winding around the outside of the building itself. I climb right up to the window of his bedroom and break it open with my Thor-hammer.

He’s in bed, asleep. He’s not even in REM sleep, but nevertheless when he rolls on his side I see the big wind-up key sticking out of his back, just like Bernard when Daphne hacked him. This is my moment.

He’s vulnerable. He’s asleep.

Am I really going to do this?