I started to turn my head in small increments. Each brusque jerk gave me the impression of losing my balance.
I looked up at the ceiling and saw it move quickly towards me. Instinctively I moved back to avoid it, but it stopped in front of my eyes.
I targeted the entry to the showers, wondering if I could centre it.
It wasn’t just a sensation, the entrance was moving towards me! I could bring it to me slowly or quickly, it was enough just to increase what appeared to be the movement of my legs. It was, of course, a very alien sensation. I imagined walking and running towards the door, but in reality it was actually the door that came towards me at varying speeds according to my gait.
I tried to go beyond that step, but I bumped my shoulder against the doorjamb and I saw the room wobble alarmingly so that I had to lean against the wall for fear of falling.
When I came out of the shower room, the objects and the gym itself had not changed and that strange feeling was not gone. I looked around for Sgrunff.
I seemed to drag him towards me. I stopped a few feet away from him - indeed it would be better to say that he stopped a few feet away from me.
He looked at me. Not needing to ask questions he said,
"We tricked the lower mind but the effect will not last long. Soon you will again feel that it is the body moving into the room and not vice versa. Carry on observing carefully what is happening to you, we’ll analyze it later.”
I continued to move around the gym and gradually the effect began to reduce to the point where the room had become still and I felt that my body was moving correctly in the directions that I took.
I paused to reflect and a suspicion crept into my thoughts. Maybe it was the fault of that strange drink that was served up to me by Bones? Had I taken drugs without my knowledge?
But it didn’t seem sensible to me and I felt that it was not true, so the suspicion retreated.
I took a shower, changed again and went back to Sgrunff in the classroom.
Moving on to the infirmary, Bones gave me another drink "to replenish the salts you've expelled through perspiration," as he said.
After drinking I naturally started to fire off a lot of questions to Sgrunff, but just repeated jokingly yet again,
“Enough questions! I have the timetable to respect!”
He explained that we had faced the first possible deception against the‘lower Mind’and that now I had to analyze everything that had happened in the gym.
I asked him why we had not used some kind of drug to achieve the purpose. He said,
"In fact we can synthesize particular drugs to achieve a similar result, but we do not want to tarnish your analytical skills, which is what drugs tend to do. The experiment done in this way is more effective because it occurs naturally. The lower mind activates its automatic reactions and more time is required before the lower mind can be turn them off. In this way we see things with much more clarity.”
I asked him if the experiment always worked and he conformed this, it was only necessary to wait a couple of days before repeating it.
"Now Kate tell me about what you observed during deception."
I began my report.
"The body remained motionless while I had the feeling of moving the lower limbs. The movement seemed very robotic to me, like a military march with movements of the head following the movements of the room. It was like having a large three-dimensional monitor revolving around inside my head, depending on the direction you looked.”
“Good, and what conclusions do you draw?"
"For the moment only one conclusion, namely that I am always in the same place, but in some way I manoeuvre the environment around me." Sgrunff said,
"This assessment is correct. Now, update your notes and go get a little rest. Later there will be a demonstration prepared by Sonia and Sven.”
I asked him about it but he would only say that I would find out after resting.
He took his leave and left me to sort out my notes.
THE FIRST SIMULATION
Everything was ready in the infirmary. Bones had made careful preparations to monitor me during the experiment and Sonia and Sven were ready to explain the procedure to me.
Sonia began by explaining that they had developed a‘Virtual Life’system using the Planet H technology. It was very realistic and a real technical leap forward.
At the beginning of the experience I would have stored the memory of the protagonist and he told me that I would live the experience in both first and third person.
We chose something that would be very vivid but at the same time might seem like a story.
"Take it as it is. It contains a variety of emotions that are present in Planet H including some of the changes made by Externals. Sven will explain the rest."
Sven indicated two transparent objects - the first looked like a welder’s mask which covered the entire face, including the mouth and ears. He showed me how to wear it.
The second object was a wide band that covered the area from the stomach to the pubis, and extended partially down the sides
He said they were required to shield the signals. He would set the machine to an intensity of fifty percent so that I would always be conscious of the fact that I was living a fictitious experience.
In practice, the aim was to remind me that I was on the couch with them at my side throughout the experiment.
The experiment would last about two minutes, but for me the simulation time would seem much longer.
He explained that the first part would run a little more slowly than the second, thus giving me the best chance to assimilate the memories.
In the second part some events would run more quickly because this was the most intense part emotionally.
The aim was for me to live the experience as if it were a very vivid dream but at the same time to make me feel detached from events.
He put a kind of glove on my right hand, explaining that it would serve as an off switch.
I just had to snap my fingers to make everything shut down.
He placed the first diffuser above the navel and the second above the forehead.
The last words served to reassure me - if they noticed any abnormality whatsoever, Bones would be ready to intervene.
"Close your eyes and let’s go!"
I closed my eyes and I was surrounded by a bright light that penetrated the walls of my skull. At the lower level I felt a strange sort of heat.
The light grew in intensity until I began to see the first images.
There was a loud pop and I found myself .....
THE DOUBLE LEAP
A.D 2160
Big Pay Day! Francesca, like a wise old ant, had finally successfully managed to save enough to pay for a new trip.
She felt excited, even exhilarated as if it were the first time. She walked decisively almost skipping and repressing the urge to run, to her desired and planned goal.
She felt the same feelings of when she fell in love. The heart pounding and a lump in her throat that prevented the free flow of air to the lungs.
And yet she should have been accustomed to it. She had spent and was still spending everything she had to try and find those emotions again.
Already that morning she had decided to leave her job and go directly to the NTF (New Frontiers Travel), so she had prepared everything necessary. Not that she needed much to be honest, but since the only requirement for the agency was a nice brushed hairstyle she had already passed by the hairdresser.
She accelerated her pace while an interactive window called out to her by name:
"Francesca! With that new haircut you would look just fine in this outfit."
From the corner of her eye she saw her whole figure, tall and slender, wrapped in a skintight leather dress and red shiny boots to mid-thigh. Just enough time to think, "Mhhh, not too bad in fact! We'll give it a little more consideration after my return! "
The wild haircut style by now had become a hallmark
of all those who, like her, were travelling. They recognized each other with a nod when their paths crossed and a look of complicity and understanding.
It was their drug.
Over the years, synthetic drugs had become stronger, faster, and their effects were ever briefer so that the demand had increased as well as the supply, bringing down prices.
Around the 20's there was a Ketamine boom. Initially, the phenomenon of Near Death Experience created by it were kept hidden, thwarted and imprisoned by benzodiazepines. Soon however people began to understand the true effect of this substance.
In an era in which technology and science had crumbled the dogmas of faith and found ways to explain almost all the classic mysteries of creation, men tried drugs as an answer to questions of the spirit. The desire was to understand and ketamine responded to that need, stripping the human being away from the prison of his flesh.
The people of the‘True Believers’, a third of the world's population were those who, not having a strong identity, clung to the ideas of others, in the process becoming fanatical and dangerous, scattering desperately in their search for a spiritual leader to follow.
A few years later came the trips. Expensive, but with a powerful pull - adrenaline rush up to the extreme limit.
Immersed in her thoughts she arrived at the agency. The two‘Guardians’madeher stop at the entrance to check her‘Angel.’No-one entered if there were no credits to their account.
Money had slowly disappeared around the 80s, replaced entirely by credits, uploaded and downloaded immediately from Digital Angel.
A microchip that had evolved to perfection.
At the end of the last millennium, around the 90’s, the American company ADS Applied Digital Solutions, which later became the Digital Angel Corporation was traded publicly and acquired the rights to the patent called Digital Angel.
A beautiful name for a future of slavery.
A sensational discovery that went unnoticed to many. In fact, the new development was a microchip implanted under the skin which had the advantage that, in addition to emitting a detectable GPS signal, it could also be recharged simply by the electro mechanical movement of the muscles.
Initially used to monitor the functions of the body, it was then used as an implant on repeat offenders in order to prevent further crimes.
The project was such a success that the microchip was implanted in all those who received a conviction. The crime rate fell by eighty percent.
Men felt more safe and secure, and governments, in the name of security, decided unanimously to implant Digital Angel in all newborns.
The microchip became so well-developed that, in addition to being permanent and unremovable, it started not only to transmit data but also to receive it, enabling a continuous exchange with databases spread across all the territories.
Everyone now knew that someone, somewhere knew where he or she was, who he or she was with and even what he or she was doing. And so, in the name of security, we lost our freedom.
When the Guardians finally allowed her inside she made her way immediately to Ernesto’s room. She found him practically lying across his desk intent on deciphering numbers that could have been Arabic to her.
His face lit up with a genuine and sincere smile. He was tall with dark eyes, darker hair and a short beard.
The attractive appearance of the damned poet .
"But you're already here! You were quick this time to save credits!"
"Right," she said, passing behind the desk and giving him a kiss on the cheek, "I don’t know how to stay away from you, you know!"
"Yeah right I’m sure! You want to make another trip! Okay, I get it! Let’s not waste time. Where are you going this time?"
She looked him straight in the eye and smiled mischievously. That smile was enough to create a perfect understanding .
"But no! Come on! Shit! Francesca, you don’t want to go back there?!"
"Yes," she said turning her back on him "you know what I like, don’t you? "
"Oh yes I know! But four trips! You're the only one I know who makes such boring choices. Come on then! Come in, get undressed and prepared.”
She entered the small brightly lit room as if it were her second home. By now all the equipment, wires and monitors had become pleasantly familiar.
She took off blouse and trousers. Her slightly tanned skin from the spring sun shone amber and inviting. When it came time to take off her bra and underwear she looked at the man staring at her on the other side of the large glass partition.
"Ernesto! You're just a voyeur," she said jokingly. "Do you stare at all your customers like that?"
"No, dear! Only those with a nice ass that gets me hard.”
She played the game and undressed slowly like a night dancer, moving to the rhythm of imaginary music. She undid first the black bra and took it off without stopping to look him straight in the eye and twirled it in the air before throwing it on the chair beside her. She turned her back and then slowly brought down the thong, keeping her legs straight and assuming a ninety degree position. When she looked back to enjoy the effect, she read the unspoken words from his lips.
"What a bitch you are!"
"Sorry Ernesto? I didn’t hear!" She smiled and lay down on the couch.
"Do you enjoy getting me hard? I remind you that you will be available to me for a while so don’t be sly with me!"
He knew he was bluffing because everything was carefully recorded and monitored.
The technician placed electrodes in the tiny and almost invisible holes in the skull and then left her alone in the room.
He could in any case still observe her from the other side of the glass. He was her guardian angel.
To those like him had been given the imaginative name of Nephelim, the fallen angels of Genesis.
He was there to pull her out in any emergency, that is when the body could not stand the strong pulse of adrenaline any longer.
"And remember that this is not a time machine ......" he recited mechanically "Bla .... bla ... bla ... you're not really there. bla .... bla ... bla .... you're here."
He sang out the standard warning that had to be repeated to anyone who wanted to take a trip.
In the history books you could find the first attempts at virtual reality using the helmet and body sensors attached to react to the peripheral nerve branches.
Since then they had madegreat strides.
The body was lifted and floated in the air a few inches to avoid any tactile sensation.
At first they tried also with sensory deprivation tanks, but many suffered from sensations of claustrophobia and so they had abandoned them.
During the trip the memory of this was almost completely cancelled. Almost, since some people retained fragments or indistinct parts.
The only thing that remained was what they called the‘Path’or destiny, a trace that the person pre-decided to bring them to where they wanted.
Causality and coincidences were the fruits of the Path.
The timing of the end of the trip was decided beforehand also. The only restriction was that you could choose when but not how.
During the trip you were placed before various crossroads and choices, which were reworked by the computer on the basis of those available choices made. A person could, ironically, enter a thousand times in the same game and get to the final destination through a thousand different ways. That was the beauty of the journey. The not knowing what would happen; confronting easier or more difficult challenges, knowing you are alone.
You could choose who to be. Some preferred easy trips, some more adventurous ones and others more painful. Some were short trips where the player just came to caress the body of the woman they wanted, others were more adventurous and pushed to the extreme limits.
The important thing was to have an ever-stronger adrenalin rush; only then could you feel truly alive.
The sensations transmitted to the brain were real, like the cold experienced a
t that time in that small room inside that majestic skyscraper.
The course of time had a totally different significance.
An entire life, from birth to death could last no more than two days in this time.
"All right, Francesca, we’re ready. Year? "
"A.D. 1310," she said without hesitation.
"Location?"
"Languedoc ...... land of the Cathars and heresy!"
"OK! But be careful. You remember how that turned out last time, right?"
Of course she remembered. She had angered the good Bishop Fournier, who later became Pope Benedict XII.
"It's not nice to joke with the Holy Inquisition!"
Right, she thought. Especially with the threat of torture to make you confess.
But on that particular trip, in the prisons of Avignon, in male clothes she had met a special man. Offering superior intellect, knowledge and the secrets of a soul so passionate he preferred prison rather than deny his ideas. A religious man who had dared to define the church‘A Babylonian whore’in front of Pope Clement VI. A man known to history, but unknown to many. Known, however, to the searchers for the Being.
And so .....
I grew up in a small family in the village of Roquetaillade. My father had learned all the arts of the blacksmith from his father, who learned it from his grandfather and so on until time immemorial. Our language was Occitan.
My mother was a timid female, fearful and respectful towards her often violent man, who often took advantage of her on the town pallet with no scruples. My sister was solitary and quiet and kept me at a distance - she thought me presumptuous and arrogant.
Planet-H: The End of the Beginning Page 17
