Voices in Stone - Emily Diamand Page 0,44

where your smartphones and funny cat websites and phone games come in. You think they aren’t loaded with tricks? You’re getting mind-warped, and you don’t even know it.”

“That’s not even possible,” I said. “You can’t mind-control people without them even knowing…”

“What about hypnotism?” Stu said. “That’s mind control.”

Dad shook his head. “Hypnotism’s no good on a large scale, because anyone who’s got a bit of willpower can break out of the control once they know it’s happening. Like me, I could never be hypnotised, because of my strong mind.”

Me and Stu shared a look.

“Games and cat websites are just for fun,” I said.

“Are they?” asked Stu.

“What else are they for?”

He shook his head slowly, like I was being thick.

“Rates of youth crime are going down, did you know that? Not just in this country, but all over the world. And why? Because you’re all being brainwashed, all getting tracked. You’re all soft and docile, the way they want you, so you won’t fight back when it starts…”

“That’s enough, Stu,” said Dad.

Stu looked at Dad, so all I could see was the blue of his anorak with his nose poking out.

“Don’t you want your own son to know the truth?” he asked, like he couldn’t believe it.

“Let him be,” said Dad.

“Know what?” I asked. “What are you talking about?”

It had to be another of his conspiracies. The freaks in the Network are always cooking them up. Like when Stu told me the scandal about horsemeat in food was really a cover-up for aliens. He said the aliens were kidnapping the horses, doing weird experiments on them, then selling the dead ones to supermarkets in order to infect us with alien DNA. He said the horse DNA was really just a tracer, so the aliens could work out who’d been alien-infected.

I mean, if Stu believed the moon was made of cheese, he’d claim that every astronomer in the world was secretly controlling Stilton supplies.

Now Dad shook his head at Stu. “Gray’s heard enough, okay?”

Stu didn’t move for about ten seconds, then he quickly scrunched round to face me, before Dad could stop him.

“Think about it,” he whispered. “Seven billion humans in the world, and half the wealth owned by just a hundred of them. How can such a tiny group of people keep hold of all that money? With the Organisation, which they set up to…”

“Stu!” snapped Dad.

“What’s the Organisation?” I asked.

“You’ve said yourself the lengths they’ll go to,” Dad growled at Stu. “I don’t want Gray involved!”

“You think he isn’t involved already? You think you aren’t on their radar? He needs to know.”

“Know what?” I asked. “What are you going on about?”

Neither of them said anything for a minute, just Stu glaring at Dad, and Dad glaring at the road.

“All right,” snapped Dad. “But no details, okay?”

Stu turned back to me, and he looked happier than I’ve ever seen him. It must be like getting a present for him, being able to fill someone in on one of his conspiracies.

“You know about Roswell, yeah?”

I nodded. It’s this place in the United States where a UFO supposedly crashed in the 1950s, and the American military found bodies of alien pilots.

“Well that’s total rubbish,” said Stu. “Just a weather balloon and Cold War hysteria. I mean, aliens don’t go crashing flying saucers; they don’t even use flying saucers.”

Dad nodded. “Think about what we saw this summer, the footage we got.”

I wanted to tell him that those balls of light weren’t UFOs either; they were ghosts. But I didn’t; it would’ve taken way too much explaining, even if they’d believed me.

“Those of us who’ve delved deeper,” continued Stu, “we know that Roswell is just a red herring. A distraction so people won’t even go searching for the real truth.”

I didn’t ask what the real truth was, he was going to tell me anyway.

“Aliens contacted this planet decades ago,” said Stu darkly. “They want to help us; they’ve got technology we can hardly even imagine. But those people, the ones who own everything, they don’t want us having free energy, an end to disease and poverty, the knowledge of advanced civilisations. If everyone had everything they needed, how would the rich be able to control things? How would they make more money? So they set up the Organisation, to stop us finding out about the aliens and all they could give us, and to stop the aliens from contacting us. It’s why they do their mind-wiping on anyone who gets close to the truth. It’s