The Quest For Perfection (Is A Damn Fine Thing)

Part III: The Flooding of Fredrick Street - Chapter 23

23

Sarah lay back in the cold bath, the water taking her breath away. She had watched as the houses had started to crumble around them and felt her head get heavy and her body start to feel odd. She knew that was the signal. She tried to acclimatize to the temperature and closed her eyes. It was such a strange feeling, as she felt the world she was in slip away, slowly.

Then, she was in a new one. It was a disused flat, wallpapers peeling and yellow with nicotine stains. The floor was strewn with needles and empty bottles. Water started to fill the room. She waded through; her lake of past mistakes. Finding her reflection in a cracked mirror, stepping over a lifeless body, she saw who she really was. Her face broken with misuse, her body was spindly. She was starting to remember it all again as she stood, unseen, watching her past self stagger around the room without a purpose. There was a bottle in her hand and she drank from it. A cigarette in her hand and she smoked from it. A needle on the ground and she hit from it. Experiencing it again, watching what she used to be, didn't scare her. She knew she wasn't going back to this life. The life she had lived here in Fredrick Street had been pleasant, until she realised that it wasn't real. If she got the chance, she would try to live the life she had in here, for real.

Bouncing through the room, the movie continued. She watched as old Sarah reached down and picked up car keys. A sickening feeling rose in her stomach as she followed the memory. Stumbling out of the flat she watched as she found the car. They were out of booze, what else was she supposed to do? She put the keys in the ignition and the radio played, that familiar song. Then, Old Sarah started to drive. As she watched on, she remembered. She remembered what was about to come next. This time, she saw the man step off the pavement and cross the road. When it happened the first time, she didn't. At least that's what she had told the court. Sarah thought back to what Tom had told them.

"You'll each see your past mistakes. The moments that brought you here, the moments and actions you wish you could take back. But you can't, they're part of you. We erased them as you started the project, the memories. The fail safe I've built into the system reverses that. All you have to do is watch and remember. Once the memory goes back in, the shock of that will help bring you back. But it's also the final piece missing from who you are. Each of you now, in this life...I've watched you. You're human. And the only thing that separates us are our mistakes. What makes us different, and what makes us maybe close to perfect, is how we own them. And how we change. Without your mistakes, you can't be the people you are in here. For what you will see, I'm sorry. But if you want to go back, then you need to watch. You need to remember. You need to live."

So Sarah did. She watched as the man stepped out onto the road and the car Sarah was driving careened into him. His body crunched off the hood of the car and flipped over, landing on the road behind with a sickening thud. The car came to a stop. Both Sarah's got out. She watched on as her past self got out of the car, took one look and then got back in and drove away. Sarah stood there, in the aftermath, the car speeding away. She looked at the man, in the middle of the road, and decided to do the thing that she should have done in the first place. She knelt beside him and took his hand. She'd seen her mistake, she'd watched just as Tom had asked. But she wouldn't let the man die alone in the middle of the night in the middle of an empty street. Not again. Sarah closed her eyes, tears starting to form.

When she opened them again, she would be back in the real world.

Transcript of Interview with Ray Samson. August 26, 2015. Conducted by J.P. McNair.

After the porter had broken down the walls and let the water in, what happened next?

"It was carnage. The water was filling the room so quickly. You've got to understand, the bastard....sorry...the guy Peter, he hadn't just created a leak in the wall. He'd torn a whole section of it away and the more water that poured in, the more of the wall fell away. It was like a set of dominoes, falling and cracking all around us."

What about Tom and Issie? What happened to them?

He fell silent and looked away.

"After so much time apart, and everything that they had lost, including each other, I can take a little solace that they at least got to be together again. Sometimes I think I could have done more though, maybe I could have stopped it or saved one of them. The benefit of hindsight, eh?"