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his school trousers. Those are his school shoes. It was just a joke. They were all laughing about how funny it would be. He was laughing. He was the one who pushed the door open. He can still feel the door now pushing hard back at him on its fire hinge. They used one of the new scanners. A child could have done it, though, even on old equipment. It was a pretty easy procedure. But they were both computer-stupid. They couldn’t have done it if he hadn’t shown them. First they scanned her. Then they scanned the other picture. Then they dragged the head on to the other picture. Then they emailed the jpeg round the email list. Then they went on doing things, clothes, shoes, school corridors, home, days of the week, day after day, for days. On one of those days, she killed herself.
    Is it light? Magnus blinks at the blind pulled down over the window. You can pull down a blind but it’s all still there behind it. Light makes all his muscles like they’ve been drugged. It makes his legs not want to do anything. It makes his arms like they’re set in stone. If it’s light, it’ll darken. They took her head. They put it on a different body. They sent it to people. Then she killed herself.
    He sits up, holds his stomach. He squints in the light, the dark. Far far away, as if he is looking down the wrong end of a telescope, he can see a boy. The boy is the size of a small stone. He is shining, as if polished. He is wearing his school clothes. He waves his arms the size of spiders’ legs. He speaks in a squeaking voice. He says things like
well cool, quality, quite dodgy really
. He talks all about things. He talks as if they matter. He talks about calculus, about how plants grow or how insects reproduce or about what the inside of a frog’s eye is like. He talks about films, computers, binaries. He talks about how holograms are produced. He himself is a hologram. He has been created by laser, lenses, optical holders, a special vibration-isolated optical table. He is the creation of coherent light. He is squeaking about it now. He says coherent light is well cool. He is quality. He contains all the necessary information about his shape, size, brightness. He is sickeningly excited about himself. He is quite dodgy really. He only seems to be dimensional. He is a three-dimensional reproduction of something not really there. He was never really there. Look at him. He’s lucky. First of all, he doesn’t exist. That’s lucky. Second, he is so small. He could slip away under a door. He could slip away through a crack in a wood floor. Third, he is back then, before. The real Magnus is this, now, massive, unavoidable. The real Magnus is too much. He is all bulk, big as a beached whale, big as a floundering clumsy giant. He looks down at his past self squeaking, shining, clambering about on his own giant foot as if the foot is a mountain, an exciting experiment or adventure. Hologram Boy has no idea what the foot belongs to. Hologram Boy could never even imagine such monstrous proportions. First they. They then. Then they. Then she.
    Magnus lies on the floor face down. If he were really a whale, even a beached whale, it would still be possible. If he were a fish, any kind of fish, in or out of water. It would be possible to go on breathing. Or it would be a relief, the flap, the panic, the not being able to breathe any more. If he were just the water or air that passes through the gills of a fish. Or if he were a dog, any dog, on or off a lead. If he had paws with pads leaving galloping trails of pawprints along a beach in the sand. If he were a dog with a dog-brain. He could be a dog from now on. He would be loyal. He would wait all day in a house for nothing but someone to come home. He would enjoy the waiting. He would eat from a bowl. He would drink with his tongue. He would do as he was told. He would do stupid tricks. It would be brilliant. He could be any animal. He could be a badger. He could live in the ground. He could eat