Zero History

Embroidered in white, on the black sweatshirt, were the crescent moon and palm tree
of the South Carolina state flag, a bit larger than one of Ralph Lauren’s polo ponies.
Milgrim’s buried module instantly extruded an entire DEW line of arcane cop-sensing
apparatus.
Paranoia, his therapist had told him, was too much information. He had that now as the
woman dipped into her purse, brought up a matte silver phone, opened it, and furrowed
her brow. “Messages,” she said.
Milgrim looking straight into the infinitely deep black pupil that was the phone’s
camera. “Uh-oh,” she said, “I see I have to run. Thanks anyway!” And up, purse under
her arm, and out into Seven Dials.
Leaving her drink.
Milgrim picked it up. Empty. The white lid smudged with a dark lipstick she hadn’t
been wearing.
Through the window he saw her pass an overflowing trash canister, from which she’d
likely plucked this cup for her prop. Quickly crossing the intersection, toward Sassoon.
Vanishing around a corner.
He stood, straightening his jacket, and walked out, not looking around. Back up
Monmouth Street, toward his hotel. As he neared it, he crossed Monmouth diagonally,
still moving at a calculatedly casual pace, and entered a sort of brick tunnel that led to
Neal’s Yard, a courtyard gotten up as a kind of New Age mini-Disneyland. He bolted
through this so quickly that people looked after him. Out into Shorts Garden, another
street.
Purposeful pace now, but nothing to attract attention.
All the while aware of his addiction, awakened by the flood of stress chemicals,
urgently advising him that something to take the edge off would be a very good idea
indeed. It was, some newer part of him thought, amazed, like having a Nazi tank buried in
your back yard. Grown over with grass and dandelions, but then you noticed its engine
was still idling.
Not today, he told the Nazis in their buried tank, heading for Covent Garden tube
station through an encyclopedic anthology of young people’s shoe stores, spring’s
sneakers tinted like jelly beans.
Not good, another part of him was saying, not good.
As much as he wished to appear relaxed, the usual crew of beggars, floating in solution
on the pavement in front of the station, faded at his approach. They saw something. He
had again become as they were.
He saw Covent Garden as if from a great height, the crowd in Long Acre drawing back
from him like magnetized iron filings.
Take the stairs, advised the autonomic pilot. He did, head down, never looking back, a
unit in the spiral human chain.
Next he’d take the first train to Leicester Square, the shortest journey in the entire