‘She had some techniques involving in vivo machinery that were promising in animal trials. The problem was the inability to control the machines she had built once they were in situ. We needed an interface. Now, with animals you can image their brains and you can give them cognitive tests, but you can’t ask them directly about changes in their consciousness. We needed to do trials on people, but there are a lot of ethical issues there.’
‘No kidding.’
She ignores my snide comment and continues.
‘So the only other option was to deploy the agent in a simulated human brain to see if we could build a case for human trials. The problem is cost. Rightly or wrongly, simulated people are actually a lot more expensive than real people. Time was of the essence, so I started looking around for VR studies we could piggyback on, and that’s when Bernard’s team came to my attention.’
‘My study.’
‘Yes. Your study. We could see that the techniques being used by the team would be very helpful to us, if modified properly, because as you know, you ingested a substance with a time-dependent effect that could be controlled via the BigSky interface, using your headware. They already had their hooks into you, so to speak. I had a unique view of the proceedings, for of course there’s very little that goes on in BigSky that I can’t access.’
‘Shandy was right. You’ve been all up in BigSky this whole time.’
‘In a covert way, yes, of course. I was very careful, though. Anyway, when the anomalous results started to become apparent, BigSky pulled the plug on the whole thing. And that would have been the end of it.’
‘They really dropped it?’
‘It was shelved by the ethics committee. I’m sure it would have been revisited eventually. But then Martin Elstree and I found a loophole in the IP agreement between Bernard Zborowski and the study he worked on. The study was done through Excelsior-Barking, that bastion of higher learning.’
‘Don’t make fun of my alma mater.’
Her mouth twitches, almost a smile. ‘The work was funded by a BigSky grant but not included under their corporate envelope in terms of disclosure and IP. The loophole allowed Bernard to take his developing ideas elsewhere after the study was closed.’
‘And that’s where you picked him up.’
She nods. ‘The failure of the original project didn’t stop BigSky from continuing to work on other aspects of the sleep interface. They are keen to further develop Sweet Dreams and they will. But they’ve backed off from the use of a chemical delivery system; it’s just too fraught with litigious risk. That’s why, with the help of Martin as a negotiator, we now hold the patent on the anti-dementia agent. That is to say, Meera and I hold it.’
‘And where is Meera in all this?’
‘Her intervention is why your dreamhacking has been improving. I kept all your recorded sessions – Meera studied them and used them to make corrections. She could send instructions straight to you using the interface. Some of this was delivered directly via the dream content and some of it came through ingrowing machinery introduced directly.’
‘What do you mean, “introduced directly”?’
She clears her throat.
‘We er . . . we spiked your tea.’
‘You what?’
‘Spiked your tea, darling. It was easy. You make it so strong and you often let the milk go sour, so your taste buds can’t have much sensitivity.’
‘I . . . You drugged me with tiny machines and now you’re blaming my taste buds?’
‘It was a terrible thing to do. I am a terrible person, you know. I keep telling you, and you think I’m joking. I wasn’t joking. I’m not joking now. In fact, I rarely joke. It’s why I seldom attend parties. Laughter is tedious.’
‘So . . . this is why my ability has been evolving? Bernard said it was because the original treatment is a nanomachine.’
‘Yes, and Meera has been communicating with the machinery that now lives in your brain. Like what’s happening right now. The Dream City. This is all a construct created by the machinery burrowing into your skull and operating on your brain tissue. The sideways tower is your brain’s effort to translate all the building that’s going on neurally. In fact, we could argue that the alterations the dreaming process has made in your neural architecture are much more radical than anything I could put in your tea. But maybe the chemical side of things feels more violating to you.’
‘Violating? You want to know what feels more violating? All of it. This. Now. Everything. No special order. You. You feel violating. How . . . how could you, O?’
‘So far, so predictable. You can’t seem to understand that my conscience extends towards all of humanity, not just you. I’ve done my best to equip you for the coming reality. I can’t say I’m surprised that you take a different view.’
‘You’re talking like you fancy yourself some sort of god.’
‘I’ve done the best I could, knowing that you had to find out eventually. I kept expecting you to suss it but you never did. That trusting nature will be your downfall someday.’
‘What about Martin Elstree? He used some kind of robot to dreamhack me.’
‘Bernard built it.’
‘Built it out of what? Can BigSky kill people with robots now?’
‘Not that they know of. Bernard modelled the robot dreamhacker on the processes he gleaned from your records.’
‘He built robots from my Secret Diaries?’
‘Reverse-engineered you into a killer-robot Charlie of sorts. Of course, all personal characteristics were scrubbed. The robot dreamhacker can’t hold a candle to you, Charlie.’
I am speechless. I look up at the stars over the Dream City. None of the constellations are even familiar.
‘All your records were sitting there on BigSky, practically out in the open for someone like me. So were the developers’ various templates for the Sweet Dreams technology. Bernard was a kid in a toy shop, isolating the processes and building them into the Sweet Dreams code.’
‘In that case, why would you kill Bernard? What possible reason could you have? Will you go after Meera, too? Talented people who were inventing amazing things – and you’re taking it on yourself to remove them from the world. Not to mention Mel. There’s just no excuse for it, no justification—’
I’m spluttering and ranting but she’s totally unmoved.
‘Well, you are full of accusations, aren’t you, Charlie. Can you back any of them up?’
I say, ‘I know I got it wrong a couple of times, but in the end it seemed clear that the Creeper was Martin Elstree. Everything seemed to point to him. Now you’re saying that he was directing a bot that Bernard built. Well, why was Martin Elstree using it to destroy people? Roman told me that every single person in the study is dead, bar me.’
‘Maybe I was fond of you.’
‘I guess you needed me for my Secret Diaries.’
‘Martin and I didn’t remove those people to be cruel. They were crash-test dummies for the technology. Because of them, you and Daphne are both improving.’
‘Then why tell Daphne to kill Bernard?’
‘That wasn’t me. That was the Agency.’
‘Oh, please. Like I believe that. You may as well confess to the lot, O. Anyway, you told me yourself that the Agency is a joke from when you were kids.’
She gestures expansively at the building, the cityscape, the night in general. ‘You’re missing the most fundamental understanding of what is happening. Look around you. We are building a new world.’
‘No, don’t start talking about dream landscapes. I want you to tell me what you’ve done in the real world, in waking life.’
‘Oh, stop blathering,’ she says testily. ‘You should hear yourself. Of course I didn’t kill Bernard, or have him killed, or anything like that.’
‘Of course? Well, who did it, then? Daphne was taking pigeon orders from you, so . . . Wait a second. Are you saying Martin sent the pigeon to Daphne?’
‘That i
s my presumption.’
‘And you thought you’d be next, so you ran away.’
‘Martin had got slightly out of control. You see, the fight with BigSky required dirty tactics. Martin told me that with such deep pockets, BigSky would probably win the IP suit eventually. The courts weren’t going to help us. So it occurred to me that a dreamhacking bot could be instructed to do things that you, for example, would refuse to do.’
‘So you built a murderous robot. What could possibly go wrong?’
‘Martin obviously was worried about Bernard’s ethics getting in the way. It happens a lot with scientists. Martin was concerned that the Dream Police would eventually trace the sleepwalking deaths back to us. He made a tactical decision.’
‘So when you found out Martin was siccing the dreamhacker bot on people, you ran away. Why didn’t you at least warn me?’
‘I could lie and say it was safer for you that you didn’t know, but I’m sure you can see that you would have only hampered me and made it harder for me to get away.’
We stare at each other. The surface of the building is no longer glass. It’s ice. Vapour rises from it in the darkness, and it’s starting to creak.
O says, ‘There are numbers under everything. Under all of this. Under us. All numbers, a heaving sea of them that we’ve got to navigate. I’ve worked with numbers all my life. Sometimes things need to be done, and it isn’t nice but it’s necessary. In the case of Meera, she’s squeamish. The minute she finds out she’s been involved in something illegal or in any way immoral, that will be her finished. She’ll sell out her share to BigSky or give it to one of the universities or the Cat Protection League for all I know, and everything I’ve worked for will have gone to waste. No. This is how it has to be. I knew it from the beginning.’
It’s funny how easily I’m swept up in her rationale. I mean, it’s not funny. But it is strange. I feel unmoored. I don’t feel big or important enough to contradict her. I’m right under her thumb, even now, and then I remember: this is a dream.
It’s a dream. But O is being too sensible. She’s not acting like a typical dreamer – I’ve been with enough people in their dreams, I should know. She’s just talking to me as if we’re face to face. How do I know this is really O? If it’s her, really, that I’m talking to, then does that make the Dream City her creation, or mine? Which one of us built the sideways building, and who carved the canals, and what is the ‘little bird’, really? Who is in charge here?
‘You enjoyed killing Martin Elstree,’ she says. ‘It was gratifying. How do you feel, Charlie?’
‘Honestly?’ I reply defiantly. ‘I feel happy. Not about killing but about standing my ground.’
‘Then it hasn’t all been a dead loss for you, has it.’
A wintry smile. Even the stars are frozen. Icicle points in the darkness.
‘It’s true that some people had to die,’ she says. ‘This is inevitable when breaking in a new technology, though. It took a while to work out how to optimize the treatment – fix your narcolepsy, for example. There’s been trial and error, but we had to make these calculated decisions so as to keep control of the technology.’
‘You mean keep it away from BigSky.’
‘People were going to die no matter who did this, Charlie. One factors these things in to any new venture. One runs the projections and and tries to minimize risks, but it would be foolish to expect to have zero casualties. And now that Little Bird has the patent, all of the ethical ramifications can be considered before we even begin to think about distribution.’
She falls silent, and as I’m roiling inside, trying to figure out which of my many objections I should raise first, she adds, ‘Or you could let your Dream Police find me. I’m in no condition to be running around the French countryside trying to avoid the authorities.’
‘Aha! You are in France!’ I drum my feet against the ice floor, teeth chattering.
‘It’s a spare property I sometimes use. I know they’ll find me eventually – maybe quite soon. When they search my possessions, they’ll find my will, in which you are named to inherit my share in Little Bird. And then the police will come for you, for obvious reasons. You may well be pinned with elder abuse.’
There’s thunder in my ears. Not sure if it’s my blood pressure or the groans of the ice beneath our feet.
‘I’m sorry about that,’ O says. ‘But I want Daphne to live out her life in peace. And you have killed a man, thereby proving that even the smallest worm turns in the end.’
She really has me checkmated. No matter what I do, she wins. Every action I’ve taken to try to save myself has only driven me deeper into her labyrinth.
There’s a loud crack, like a gunshot, and I flinch. Too late, I understand that the ice has cracked in two just beside the table where we are sitting. Our side of the crack pitches abruptly down and we slide, O in her wheelchair and me falling out of my dining chair, while our table topples into the gap. Amid a rain of salad and croutons and wine, we fall.
I grab at O wildly and manage to grasp her ankle. I stay with her psychically, too, following her mental presence back through the shreds of her dream. I need to know where she is.
The scene changes. O is in a sunlit bedroom. It’s rustic, with a brass bedstead and oak furniture, a high view of fields lined with poplars. Thread of single-lane carriageway, faint haze of distant ocean. O sleeps curled on her side, on top of the duvet but with a throw blanket over her legs. She’s wearing a blue-and-white striped kaftan that’s too big for her, so that she looks like a child. She has begun to stir. Soon the dream will break up and I’ll be forced out, but for the moment I’m still sharing her consciousness.
I look around the room for anything that could identify her location. Spilled across the bed are the contents of one of the bureau drawers, mostly papers. One looks like a legal document. I pick it up to see it better. It’s O’s will.
There is my name.
‘To Charlotte Aaron I leave my shares in Little Bird . . .’
She wasn’t kidding. She named me in her will – but not to help me. To control me, like the tool I’ve always been. I’m trying to put my thoughts in order when I hear Daphne’s voice, behind me, pantomime-style.
‘I’m afraid I am here to remove you. I’ve been given my orders.’
I turn. In the dream, Daphne’s voice is breaking and there are tears in her eyes as she looks right at me. Her eye sockets enlarge and her face begins to whiten, and stretch, and harden. Chemical bonds etch themselves its surface until her face has become the flat mask of the Creeper. She moves towards me and I realise I can’t breathe. I can’t move.
I’m rigid.
I’ve seen what Daphne can do. It shouldn’t even surprise me that it’s my turn to be targeted. After all, the other experimental subjects have been picked off one by one, Bernard is dead, Martin Elstree is dead – I’ve served my purpose and now it’s time for me to go.
I have no tricks up my sleeve. I have no one to save me. This is it. Me and Death dressed up as the Old Woman. Daphne comes very close to me. I want to push her away but I can’t escape. The white face looms large in my vision, the lightless holes for eyes and mouth, the sense of oxygen starvation. I can suddenly feel my heart very loud but I can’t move or breathe. There’s something captivating about it, like when a wolf picks out a sheep for death and I’m the sheep and I just stand there and let it take me. That’s how I feel.
‘I know what you did,’ Daphne says, ‘and I’ve been given a new target by the Agency.’
The giant white face comes closer and closer, my breath stops, maybe my heart stops— And then it’s like something passes through me and out of the other side, bone for bone, vein for vein, molecule for molecule. Then I can’t feel my body at all. I appear to be floating near the ceiling of the room, and I’m looking down on O’s bed where she lies curled up and vulnerable. Only now there’s a big brass key in her back, and it’s turning slowly.
As before, I see Daphn
e shrink and climb inside O. But I am still in O’s dream. In her dream, the sideways tower has turned to a shard of ice, she and I have fallen, and she is waking in her own bed.
She stirs and thrashes her head, jaw working. I see the veins standing up in her arms and neck and legs. Her veins turn green. They grow branches that pop through her skin and spread across the bed, swelling and extending like the tendrils of a plant. The tendrils thicken to vines and then roots that spread into the floor, gripping the entire room.
Like stars showing through fog, O’s eyes open halfway. She struggles against the bonds, breathing rapidly. She tries to sit up, but she’s restrained by the plant that has grown into her blood system. Her physical weakness is evident. The vines crush her chest. They wrap around her throat.
O stops breathing. Her eyes fade.
She hasn’t even managed to kick off the coverlet. There is no sign of a struggle. Her last will and testament isn’t even wrinkled.
I fall out of O’s dream onto O’s sofa, where I waken reeling in a marsh of sweat and racing heart, my breath coming in sobs.
Delivered by ghost pigeon
When I Spacetime Roman he’s in a meeting in Shoreditch. He extricates himself and talks to me from the pavement outside. ‘Let me get this straight. Bernard Zborowski used your Secret Diaries to create dreamhacking bots on the Sweet Dreams platform. And BigSky knows about this?’
‘I don’t think so. I think O took everybody for a ride, including Meera and Bernard. But she had a certain moral conviction that what she was doing was the lesser of various evils.’
‘Yeah, well, that’s going to complicate things here. I’m going to need to confirm where O is and what condition she’s in. I’ll notify Donato of the situation and I’ll head over there myself. Meanwhile, you should stay in the flat and make yourself scarce with everyone. Where’s Shandy?’
‘I’ve left her to work in my room. I don’t want her to get in trouble with her boss.’
‘And you trust her?’
‘More than I trust you, mate.’
Sweet Dreams Page 28
