Cry Darkness

by Hilary Bonner

  ‘Ah,’ said Jones. ‘Why didn’t you say that in the first place?’

  ‘I kinda thought I had,’ responded Connie, grinning easily.

  ‘So, have you recorded any deviation in the results attributable to individual operators?’ Jones continued.

  ‘Yes, we have discovered operator patterns. We have also found that the effect is on average generally greater if more than one person is using the same mental intention on the same REG. We experimented with co-operating couples, and we have even found that the composition of the pairs is a factor. It is not just a case of two people automatically getting results that are twice as large as one person’s results.

  ‘Same sex pairs, men or women, tend if anything to produce more negative results, in other words they often influence the REG less than one individual. But opposite sex couples have consistently produced an effect that is indeed approximately twice that of individuals, and, beyond that, emotionally linked pairs – lovers, close family members, spouses – have consistently produced an effect more than four times that of individuals.’

  Jones cocked her head to one side, intrigued in spite of herself.

  ‘So what you are establishing here is not only the power of consciousness, in these instances, and in the most simplistic terms, the possible power of mind over matter, but also how much greater that power is if two minds are linked together and dedicate themselves to one purpose?’

  ‘Exactly.’ Connie beamed at her.

  ‘So, leading on from that, how much greater is the effect if a large number of minds are concentrated together in this way?’

  ‘Ah, the power of global consciousness,’ Connie said quietly. ‘Now that is the most exciting prospect of all.’

  Global consciousness. It wasn’t the first time Jones had heard the term, but there was something in Connie Pike’s voice when she spoke of it which made the hairs on the back of Sandy Jones’s neck stand up.

  ‘We have considerable evidence of the REGs being affected by the mind power of the masses,’ Connie continued. ‘And also by monumental and emotionally charged events.

  ‘We have recently developed a field version of the REG which we have taken to places where something enormous, something tragic perhaps, or something wonderful, has happened – a natural disaster, a murder, a huge rock concert – and the graph has been significantly affected. But if the event is big enough you don’t have to take the REG anywhere. Live Aid in 1985, which was almost a celebration of global consciousness, resulted in a marked deviation on this REG right here.’

  Jones glanced involuntarily towards the unlikely looking box. Her gaze travelled again around the equally unlikely and curiously homely decor of the lab, the panelled walls, the carpet, the squashy sofa and the cuddly toys. It was like a room in a home that was properly lived-in, and almost certainly by a happy family. The lighting was low, and came mostly from various small table lamps. The aroma of fresh coffee filled the lab. Music was playing softly, so softly that she could barely discern its nature. It was something classical, something gentle, something dominantly piano. Mozart perhaps?

  ‘The decor is deliberate, you know,’ said Connie, breaking into her thoughts.

  ‘I assumed so.’

  ‘Yes. We encourage relaxation coupled with an almost playful approach, and the lab staff interfere as little as possible. Our operators take part in the experiments as and when they are in the mood, and sometimes if they are in a particular mood or emotional state, if they are aware that their attitude at a certain moment is particularly negative or positive for example, then they may wish to explore the effect on their performance.’

  ‘Can I have a go?’ Jones startled herself with the request.

  Connie, however, did not look even mildly surprised. Jones considered it likely that most visitors to the lab found it impossible to resist wanting to take part. You might think the whole thing was a load of baloney, but there was still an almost irresistible urge to see if you, personally, could upset the accepted laws of physics.

  ‘What, now?’ Connie asked.

  ‘Why not?’ Jones shrugged. ‘I’ve nothing else to do except complete a thesis on super conductivity by tomorrow night.’

  Connie grinned.

  ‘Perfect attitude,’ she said.

  Jones found herself grinning back.

  ‘But weren’t you coming with me to the library?’ asked Ed, who had been almost entirely silent until then. Reverential, Jones thought.

  ‘Sod it, I’ll do what I have to do first thing tomorrow, get up at dawn,’ responded Jones.

  ‘Well, I’m going to have to go now,’ said Ed. ‘I’ve got hours of work to do before the morning.’

  ‘OK. You go on. Maybe I’ll catch up with you later.’

  ‘Right. I’ll be off then …’

  Ed hesitated at the door, glancing back over his shoulder. Sandy didn’t notice.

  She gestured to the armchair in front of the REG.

  ‘Is this where I sit?’

  Connie nodded, and pointed at a piece of paper, upon which was a typed chart titled ‘REG Experimental Options’.

  ‘You can choose the number of bits, coin flips if you like, per second, and the number of trials you wish to undertake by turning these switches.’

  She indicated four raised knobs on the front of the REG next to a round dial.

  The whole thing was more than a touch Heath Robinson, Jones thought. None the less she was now intent on seeing for herself what it was all about.

  ‘I would suggest a counting rate of a thousand bits per second and five hundred trials. That will probably take about an hour.’

  Connie glanced at her quizzically.

  ‘Can you spare an hour, Miss Jones?’

  Sandy held out her arms in a gesture of submission.

  Connie opened the top drawer of a filing cabinet which stood beneath the table carrying the REG, removed a ledger and passed it to her.

  ‘Our log book,’ she said ‘Now, first you must record the choice of programme you have selected in the book, then set the REG controls accordingly.’

  Jones did so dutifully, passing the ledger back to Connie, before focusing her full attention on the REG. The controls were fairly self-explanatory, the purpose of each ridged knob clearly labelled. She needed only a very little additional prompting from Connie in order to complete the task.

  ‘OK, now what?’ she asked.

  ‘You need to decide what direction you are going to take,’ replied Connie. ‘In other words, whether you want more ones than zeroes or the other way around – and then record that in the log.’

  She passed her the big ledger again. Jones was aware that Connie had not looked at what she had written. She once more did as she was told and, when she passed the ledger back, Connie again did not look at it. She passed Jones a small handheld remote-control device, not unlike a television remote, but simpler, containing only an on and off switch.

  ‘When you are ready, activate the REG with that remote, and do your best, with the power of your mind, in any way you wish, to influence the output of the machine so that it conforms with your intentions, the intentions you have already recorded in the log,’ Connie instructed.

  Jones nodded. Connie held up a hand, her body language telling Jones not to flip the switch yet.

  ‘It’s usually best not to concentrate too much,’ she advised. ‘This is about your inner consciousness, an area of our being most of us barely acknowledge. We are rediscovering a forgotten art here.’

  A forgotten art. This was the first time Jones heard Connie use that phrase. She did it in such a way that Jones, an arch cynic, found herself meekly accepting what was being said as fact. For that moment, at any rate. And in the surroundings of that laboratory.

  ‘It’s not about will power,’ Connie went on. ‘It’s much more than that. You have decided on your intentions, so just relax. Let your inner consciousness take over.’

  Jones smiled, a little of her natural scepticism resur
facing.

  ‘You sure I have one?’ she asked.

  Connie smiled back. ‘Sure I’m sure,’ she said. ‘Whether it’s still operating after the neglect you have no doubt shown it throughout your life is another matter.’

  ‘Touché,’ Jones responded, as she flicked the switch.

  Almost exactly an hour later the REG shut down. It had completed the programme she had set for it.

  Connie, who had retreated into her little office and left Jones alone, re-emerged by her side.

  Jones watched expectantly as she began to check the dials on the machine.

  ‘So, was it ones or noughts that you went for, young lady?’

  ‘Ones,’ Jones replied.

  ‘Umm. And what sort of result do you think you’ve had?’

  ‘I have absolutely no idea.’

  ‘In the way that I explained it to you – the REG flipped fifty-two per cent ones during your hour of operation.’

  ‘One per cent more than the average, yeah?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Is that good?’

  ‘It’s not supposed to be good or bad, Sandy. But the odds against that two per cent swing being chance could be a trillion trillion to one.’

  ‘I don’t understand “could be”. Surely, with your knowledge of this phenomenon and the data you have already accumulated, the odds of probability are not a moveable feast, are they?’

  ‘Damned right they’re not. But you have completed just one experiment, you need to complete a full series in order for your results to have any real significance.’

  ‘Right, but just say that it stays at fifty-two per cent. What would that mean?’

  ‘It would mean you are more receptive than most of our operators, that’s all. Just a fraction more actually, but highly significant, in fact, phenomenally significant, in terms of the odds involved.’

  Jones felt a quite idiotic surge of pride. There was something extraordinarily seductive about the RECAP project, she realized. She supposed that was why there were always so many willing participants for experiments like these, however time-consuming they were. Most people liked to think that they were particularly perceptive, blessed with greater depths and a deeper sensitivity than those around them. Most human beings liked to think themselves special. You could call it what you liked, but in Jones’s experience people often got a huge buzz out of thinking they were psychic.

  Rather to her surprise, even at Oxford, where a certain degree of intellect was supposed to be taken for granted, there had been a Psi Society made up entirely of students who believed that they were psychic. Jones had previously been inclined to regard such tendencies as the prerogative of the less cerebrally gifted. Indeed, she’d always avoided the term psychic in almost any context, and had considered the bad press levelled at psi over the years to be totally justified. Obviously Connie Pike and Paul Ruders were having to fight against that. Jones’s own initial attitude to the project was proof enough. And yet, in spite of her innate prejudice against everything RECAP and the REG experiment was about, she felt herself being drawn in.

  ‘But why?’ she asked suddenly. ‘That’s the question, isn’t it? Why did I get these results? Why, if I were in this room with my mother, or my husband, if I had one, would I probably get even more significant results, according to what you have told me today? Why?’

  Jones raised her arms and placed the fingertips of both hands against her temples, as if willing her brain to tell her what was going on inside her head. Inside her mind.

  ‘We don’t know why, Sandy.’

  Connie produced a packet of cigarettes. Jones watched silently as she removed one and lit up. As an afterthought she held the packet out towards Jones inquiringly.

  Jones declined. Apart from the obvious more serious consequences, cigarettes made your breath smell and discoloured your teeth.

  ‘If we knew why, then we would have solved the secret of consciousness. And that, Sandy, as I am sure you know, is arguably the last great mystery of mankind.’

  Jones nodded.

  ‘Thing is,’ she responded, ‘you are compiling evidence put together under laboratory conditions. That’s valid and inspiring scientific exploration, Connie. But it is just so hard for someone like me, for most people, I think, to accept that the power of the mind could possibly affect a machine like this. I mean, I’m a person who has never accepted psi at all …’

  Connie took a long pull on her cigarette. The little room was filling with smoke. Jones was not surprised that she so blatantly ignored the university’s no smoking rule – she assumed that Connie Pike would ignore any rules that didn’t suit her.

  ‘Sometimes I think the terminology is wrong,’ Connie replied. ‘Certainly the way we look at things, the way we see what’s around us, is highly suspect. The lay person, but probably most of all the scientist, has an attitude all too often governed by the times we live in, by a pragmatic materialistic society, and by the dictates of a regimented kind of thinking that is imposed upon us from birth. Let me turn it around for you.

  ‘Do you really think that man is on this earth merely as a visitor whose presence has absolutely no effect on the world he meanders through?’

  ‘Well no, of course not,’ responded Jones. ‘Most of us leave a mark of some kind, good or bad, and many of us, particularly scientists, medical practitioners, creative people too, architects, designers, writers, artists, can change the world significantly.’

  ‘Yes, but you are still looking through eyes with limited sight. You are seeing only the material, the tangible. Only what you can reach out and touch. Take that a stage further, Sandy. Move on to what you can feel. Take our traditional way of thinking to the other extreme. Turn it around, a full one hundred and eighty degrees. Embrace ancient and traditional concepts, cultures and beliefs from other eras. Recognize that within you, somewhere, the memories of lost skills remain, skills which it might not be impossible for you to retrieve by the simple inexplicable power of your own mind.

  ‘Try to imagine that it is possible for every single experience that you have in your life time to be created by your own consciousness. Can you even begin to get your head around that, Sandy?’

  ‘Probably not. It’s a quantum leap, isn’t it, Connie.’

  ‘It certainly is. But most of us can probably cope with the in-between ground. “We are both onlookers and actors in the great drama of existence.”’

  ‘Neils Bohr,’ said Jones.

  ‘You’ve read him?’

  ‘Of course. I am a physicist. Read a bit of Shakespeare too. “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”’

  ‘If you like. But Sandy, do you see that if you take those two diverse perspectives and explore the ground in between, if you accept that consciousness involves at least some mixture of the passive and the active, and if you then do what we are doing here, which is to record and collate all of this in an approved mathematical manner, then at the very least, Sandy Jones, we are embarking on probably the most thrilling, and most significant scientific journey of discovery of our age.’

  Connie’s eyes were not shining any more. They were blazing. Jones had the feeling she had said all this before many times. It did not make her outburst any less genuine nor any less passionate.

  ‘Wow!’ she said.

  Connie laughed abruptly.

  ‘Sorry. I get a bit carried away at times.’

  ‘You’re allowed,’ said Jones.

  She was going to say more when the door to the lab opened and in walked a big, bumbling sort of man, probably not a lot older than Connie but with thinning white hair. He had a straggly white beard, and was wearing an untidy tweed jacket and baggy grey flannels. He was surely everybody’s idea of an absent-minded professor. Under one arm he carried a Yorkshire terrier puppy, with which he seemed to be engaged in conversation.

  ‘Now, you’re going to sit in your basket like a good girl, Lulu, aren’t you? Aren’t you, honey? And when you want a wee
you’re going to tell me, Lulu. Like I’ve taught you.’

  With that the big man placed the small dog in a basket, surrounded by more newspaper, which stood in one corner of the room.

  He then turned towards Connie and Jones as if noticing their presence for the first time.

  ‘Good afternoon, Connie, and who’s your new friend?’

  Connie introduced Jones.

  ‘And this, Sandy, is Professor Paul Ruders, the director of RECAP,’ she said.

  ‘I’m very pleased to meet you, sir,’ said Jones.

  ‘Good show. Good show.’

  ‘Sandy’s been operating the REG today,’ continued Connie.

  ‘Good show. Good show.’

  Paul Ruders smiled benignly and disappeared into an office next to Connie’s. The Yorkshire terrier puppy followed at once. Ruders either didn’t notice or was used to being disobeyed by the creature. He simply closed the door, shutting himself in with the little dog.

  ‘Don’t be misled by appearances,’ Connie instructed. ‘Paul is the brains behind RECAP. He’s quite brilliant.’

  Brilliant or deluded? Jones wasn’t sure. But against her better judgement she found that she wanted to know more. She turned again to study the REG, that Heath Robinson wooden box with its range of dials and switches. Maybe it did hold the key to man’s most extraordinary secret. She had no intention of allowing herself to become too fanciful – but she realized suddenly that she did want to continue to explore the possibilities. To take a further part in Connie’s scientific journey, and at least discover just how much the parameters of her own mind could be expanded.

  ‘So how many more sessions would I need to do here before my data became valid?’ Jones asked.

  ‘We’d need to complete a series, and the length of the series should be set now, at the start of the experiment,’ replied Connie. ‘A series typically consists of 2500 or 5000 trials in blocks of fifty or one hundred runs. And a full series usually takes an operator anything between two and six weeks. I’m afraid it does call for quite a major commitment, particularly when you consider that almost all of our operators, like you, have their own heavy workloads away from RECAP. But we have found that only series on this scale produce the absolute minimum base of data from which consequential systematic trends can be reliably extracted.’