Gallagher's Smile

Tulip Toothpaste: The latest craze from Indigo Consumables’ line of lifestyle products. As soon as you thought you were living the Indigo dream, like Max Gallagher with his bioluminescent scotch grinning at you through the spinning blades of the roadside turbines, they would begin to hint at a missing piece to the glamorous puzzle. The human-level AI champagne stand would slowly slide out of centre stage. Commercial by commercial, yestermonth’s craze was elegantly brushed under the synthetic sabretooth rug. You start to realise that you’re still missing something; there are still a few people out there who laugh at jokes you don’t understand…and then in a few months, the grand reveal. Whether you put it down to short memories, or the trillions sunk into each campaign, each new product was a revelation.

And there he stood now, grinning his copyrighted Gallagher smile, teeth sparkling with holographic light, projected onto the eternal cloud cover above me. And in his hand, a gigantic tube of lilac paste.

“I met him once you know.”

It was the person sitting next to me. Gallagher is that pervasive. I remember when people used to say things about the weather to strangers on the train. But then again, the weather used to be an uncontroversial topic.

I closed my eyes, and a faint outline of Gallagher's shining teeth remained, a glowing blotch in the void. I wondered how much had been spent on getting that blotch just right.

My optics flared up as the MXGHG travel app told me I had reached my stop, and I opened my eyes and stood. The doors hissed, and the smells of the city spilled into the train: burnt rubber, sewage, machine lubricant. Not as bad as it sounds; those smells are the backdrop to many of my fondest memories. I can’t think of any in particular right now.

I let myself get swept up in the tide of commuters. Each fights to force their own way, but the harder they struggle, the more irresistible the collective flow of people becomes. I got mushed up against a man in a clown costume, big red nose and all. I tried to meet his eyes and smile, but he didn’t see me. He looked stressed and distracted, like he had woken up in that outfit with no memory of the night before.

The train spat me out into the boarding tunnel. Its walls were lined with shining Gallaghers, pulsating florescent in the dark blacklight. I let my eyes go soft focus and followed the vague glowing shapes on either side of me like I was on a landing strip at night. There were splashes of graffiti in phosphorescent paint that gave me some sense of time passing as I plodded through the tunnel. Mostly political slogans that made me want to sigh: Death to Gallagher was splashed across Max’s face in a lovely glowing teal, with little flowers and leaves sprouting from the letters. Over that, somebody had written stupid hippy in a black scrawl, maybe ballpoint pen. There were also penises , of course.

I was thinking about the politics of that graffiti when the power went out. No siren or announcement. Death To Gallagher glowed faintly in the dark. I went to put my hand on the wall, and stood there waiting for the blacklights to switch back on. A tremor ran up my hand.

I heard a spattering of gun shots.

And then the wall beside me exploded.

I landed with rebar burrowed into my thigh, and concrete crushing my chest. In the light of the low flames I saw three men in clown outfits burst through the hole in the wall, bent double. One turned and let loose a spray of bullets from a huge gun on a strap around his neck, the muzzle flare bringing flashes of daylight to the tunnel. I didn’t think it was the clown I had seen earlier. He took a step back as he was shooting, and I guess his foot caught on some rubble because he went flying backwards. His two colleagues had disappeared down the tunnel. From the hole in the wall came the flashing red and blue drone lights, and the clown with the big gun was looking around frantically for a pile of rubble to hide under.

I closed my eyes and checked on my leg’s stats; it was nothing permanent for now. I dialed up the pain a little, just to feel what was going down there. I must have hissed or something, because now Clown had seen me. He lurched towards me and slid into my pile of rubble. I met his eyes and tried to smile through the pain. He didn’t seem to notice. He raised one finger to his lips, so I switched on all my privacy settings so the drones wouldn’t get a read on me.

From this close I was sure that this was a different clown than the one on the train. He had a little golden locket around his neck which the other one had not had. I also had a hard time imagining where the clown on the train would have hidden a gun that big. Although clowns can hide big things in small places, right?

The drones were through the hole and most of the swarm sped off down the tunnel after the rogue clowns. Two were following much more slowly, presumably scanning the wreckage for my new friend. I really found it hard to believe that he would escape. He seemed to think something similar, because, as quietly as he could, he pulled the locket over his wig and handed it to me. Then whispered something I couldn’t hear. I dialed the pain back down, and tapped my ear to say I cant hear you. He took a breath and then said, a little louder,

“Open it when you’re alone—” and then I think he said and follow the instructions, but I wasn’t sure, so I tapped my ear again. He glanced over his shoulder, and then hissed “Open it when you’re alone and follow—” The drone picked up the sound. He couldn’t see it, but I saw: It whizzed down over to our hiding place, paused for the second it took to identify us, and then jabbed his ankle with a hypodermic needle. Poor Clown hissed as his body went rigid (I think it’s because they’re easier to transport that way) and his life as a free man was over.

The drone spoke to me directly in a lovely old-Spanish accent as per my preferences:

“Please relax, Mr. Sky, medical personnel will be on site in Three Minutes Twenty-Eight Seconds. You can submit any complaints Here.” I waved my rights to complain about the situation off the screen and walked off; my internal mods could handle my injury without any trouble.

I exited the boarding tunnel and walked out into the one above, lit with powerful golden lights, and the light spilling out of the shops that lined the walkway. A few hundred meters later was the elevator, where the Spanish voice told me “Welcome back, Mr Sky,” and blasted me up two hundred stories imperceptibly fast. The doors opened and I stood in a magnificent corridor, which is basically just another tunnel. The walls around me were all synthetic sky with giant stylised coy-fishing floating around us like we were trapped in a rolled-up piece of oldworld Asian art. At the end of the tunnel was a lacquered door. I knocked, which was a bit of a joke, because it’s automatic. It slid open and I stepped into the next room.

It’s the best place in the world, because nobody is trying to sell you anything there. Only unbranded paintings, hand-made furniture, and no text anywhere. Also, it’s quiet! Total radio silence in Max Gallagher's studio.

He was reclining on a beige sofa, sipping from a glass of beer and basking in the light from his many windows. It’s not synthetic sunlight, he literally terraforms the atmosphere above his penthouse; I don’t know how, maybe drones or something. It doesn’t really matter; he might just as well have paid off God.

“Blue!” He grinned at me and stood. “Beer? Jesus, what’s that on your coat, man?”

“Oh, yeah, had some trouble on the tube over.”

“You alright?” A hug. “I don’t understand why you don’t just take the shuttle!”

“I’m fine. It makes for good stories.”

“Tell me over dinner then. It’s on the table.” He walked into the next room; a humble, unmarked dining room, like nothing you’ve ever seen.

I don’t remember what was for dinner. I don’t really like Max’s food. It’s got too much personality, and it always makes me a bit ill. He eats things that actually used to be alive. We spoke about his boyfriend, and he asked me “Why are you still single, man?!” which irritated me a bit, but then we had a good laugh about Tulip Toothpaste, and congratulated each other on the new campaign, and started playing with some ideas about what we could try next.

“Do you think people want, like, horns or something?”

“What?”

“Or I don’t know…an unusual cosmetic choice, you know?”

“Remember shoehorns? Dad had one when I was growing up—”

“We did shoehorns already.”

“Nooo, no way we did!”

“Yeah, remember, because then all our smaller shoe sizes started selling triple.”

We both chuckled a bit.

“You never told me about what happened on the train!”

“Oh, yeah.” So I told him.

“Have you got it here?”

I nodded.

“Show me!”

I pulled out the little locket and put it on the table.

“Open it!”

I grinned and flicked it open. There was a little roll of paper inside, like a speck of ivory in the natural sunlight; totally analogue. The writing was so tiny I had to scan it. I had my audio read it out to both of us at the same time.

“Drop this locket on the ground on the threshold of the west exist of Turnaby Station on Wednesday 27th May at 15:03 precisely.”

“Love that accent!” Max whispered to me across the dinner table.

“—May 28, 8pm, 23 Golden Lane, shaft AB-9, floor 200—”

Max’s eyes widened, and I said “no way,” because that’s Max’s address, where we were sitting at that moment. The voice went on:

“—2Bx300MXGHG – 62221# - Dorothy.”

“Those are my access codes! For this building!”

“What do you think they were planning?”

“Assassination probably; down with the corporatocracy!”

I grinned. “I’ll pass this off to security then.”

Max shook his trillion-dollar head. “Security might put me on lock-down, and I really hate working remotely. Just throw it away.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, they wouldn’t have gotten far anyway.”

“Alright.”

He stood to head into the kitchen. “Beer?” he said back to me over his shoulder. I nodded.

“Doesn’t that mean we have a leak in Indigo though?” I shouted into the kitchen.

He stuck his head back into the dining room. “What?”

“Doesn’t that mean we have a leak.”

“We know we have leaks; we plan for that. Right?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“It’ll be absolutely fine, Blue. Just think of the resources dedicated to keeping me safe. What can anyone do? I’m probably the least killable thing in history.”

“Jesus?”

“Got killed!”

“I could kill you now.”

He laughed and disappeared into the kitchen again. After a moment I heard him shout “What about if we held a competition of who can design the best Indigo product? Crowd-source it.”

Through his shining windows the city stretched out beneath us. From this height it was just a mess of little black pipes and tiny grey rectangles. Grinning above it, above us all, was Max’s gargantuan smile projected onto the roiling mass of clouds.

“Hey, Blue? You alright, man?”

I shrugged. “Give the people what they want.”