‘Charlie,’ Shandy says, ‘do you know for a fact that O doesn’t use any of the BigSky platform? Because if I were a hacker and BigSky were my enemy, I’d be all up in their files no matter what I told anybody. How else would she know what they’re doing?’

I need to lie down. Why are people still talking to me?

‘So?’ I grunt.

‘So if these guys hunt her down in France, do you really think they’ll catch her? Do you really think they’ll get the truth out of her? Ten to one if you look on Sweet Dreams, you’ll find her there. Disguised as a lamp-post or something, but she’ll be there.’

‘How can you be so sure, Shandy? I know her. She doesn’t use BigSky.’

Shandy takes my arm gently and leads me back inside.

‘Love, don’t take this the wrong way. But it would seem you don’t know her at all. What harm could come from trying?’

What harm indeed?

Secret Diary of a Prawn Star

Entry #57

Codename: Chaplin

Date: 27 September 2027

Client: O

Payment in advance: I never seem to get paid any more

Session Goal: Find her and make her tell me everything

Location: Sideways Gravity Hotel, Dream City

Narcolepsy status: Some sort of remission at the moment?

Nutrition/stimulants: N/A

Start time: 11.20 a.m.

End time: 12.03 p.m.

I’m standing at the foot of the building with the sideways gravity, the one that’s always caught my attention. The one where I thought I saw O the night I dreamed without my earring. In this dream-night I can see many people, fifteen or twenty storeys up, dining at tables scattered across the black glass surface of the windows. It’s dark apart from a tiny candle flame at each table and the faint neon glow of the canal’s ribbed bridges.

The tulip concierge tries to stop me entering.

‘We don’t take your sort,’ it says.

I’m not in the mood. I produce a pair of garden shears and chop its head off.

In front of me, the swanky revolving door to the building disappears. I rap on the wall with the butt-end of my garden shears.

‘Oi!’ I yell. ‘Don’t make me get explosives.’

There’s a groan of machinery and what had been a glass wall becomes the open door of a freight lift with a battered, rusting metal cage instead of proper walls. I can’t see any shaft walls, but this is a dream so I don’t worry about it. I get on and haul the doors shut manually. There’s no panel with buttons for each floor, just a pull-cord.

I tug it.