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supposed to like. No guns, just soft people swallowing each other.
    The dog survived the affection. It trembled under George’s hands. Some love is strictly clinical. Maybe this was like one of those deep tissue massages that release difficult feelings? George forced his hand along the dog’s awful back, wondering why anyone would willingly touch another living thing. What a disaster of feelings it stirred up, feelings that seemed to have no purpose other than to suffocate him. Finally the dog turned in George’s lap, as if standing on ice, and carefully licked its master’s face. Just once, and briefly. A studied, scientific lick, using the tongue to gain important information. Then it bounced down to its corner again, where it sat and waited.
    Months after his father’s death there was still no word from Pattern. After he’d returned from California, and cleansed himself in the flat, grey atmosphere of New York, George had sent her another email, along the lines of, ‘Hey Pat, I’m back. I’ve got Dad’s dust. Let me know if you want to come say goodbye to it. There are still some slots free. Visiting hours are whenever you fucking want. – G.’
    He never heard back, and figured he wasn’t going to – on the internet now Pattern was referred to as a fugitive wanted by Europol, for crimes against the environment – but one night, getting into bed, his phone made an odd sound. Not its typical ring. It took him a minute to track the noise to his phone, and at first he thought it must be broken, making some death noise before it finally shut down.
    He picked it up and heard a long, administrative pause.
    â€˜Please hold for Pattern,’ a voice said.
    He waited and listened. Finally a woman said hello.
    â€˜Hello?’ said George. ‘Pattern?’
    â€˜Who’s this?’ It wasn’t Pattern. This person sounded like a bitchy tween, entitled and shrill.
    â€˜You called me,’ explained George.
    â€˜Who’s on the line,’ said the teenager, ‘or I’m hanging up.’
    George was baffled. Did a conversation with his sister really require such a cloak-and-dagger ground game? He hung up the phone.
    The phone rang again an hour later, and it was Pattern herself.
    â€˜Jesus, George, what the fuck? You hung up on my staff?’
    â€˜First of all, hello,’ he said. ‘Secondly, let’s take a look at the transcript and I’ll show you exactly what happened. Your team could use some human behaviour training. But forget all that. What on earth is new, big sister?’
    She wanted to see him, she said, and she’d found a way for that to be possible. They had things to discuss.
    â€˜No shit,’ said George. He couldn’t believe he was actually talking to her.
    â€˜Wait, so where are you?’ she asked. ‘I don’t have my thing with me.’
    â€˜What thing?’
    â€˜I mean I don’t know where you are.’
    â€˜And your thing would have told you? Have you been tracking me?’
    â€˜Oh c’mon, you asshole.’
    â€˜I’m in New York.’
    She laughed.
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜No, it’s just funny. I mean it’s funny that you still call it that.’
    â€˜What would I call it?’
    â€˜No, nothing, forget it. I’m sorry. I’m just on a different, it’s, I’m thinking of something else. Forget it.’
    â€˜O- kay . You are so fucking weird and awkward. I’m not really sure I even want to see you.’
    â€˜Georgie!’
    â€˜Kidding, you freak. Can you like send a jet for me? Or a pod? Or what the fuck is it you guys even make now? Can you break my face into dust and make it reappear somewhere?’
    â€˜Ha ha. I’ll send a car for you. Tomorrow night. Seven o’clock.’
    George met Pattern in the sky bar of a strange building, which somehow you could not see from the street. Everyone had thought the