LifeGames Corporatoin

by Michael Smorenburg

  Ken took a closer look. The pitch was shorter than the other two by precisely 0.7 seconds. “Any ideas?” Ken was pointing from one screen to the other, indicating the missing time.

  “I saw it too, Sir. But I wasn’t sure if it mattered. I was trying to figure it.”

  “Where does Mr. Angelis’ voice fit into all of this?” Ken asked, almost rhetorically.

  “I edited it out.”

  “Can you put it back in?” Ken probed.

  “Easily,” Stuart went straight to the task. That moment the phone began to ring and without breaking stride on the keyboard Stuart scooped the handset up and wedged it between his ear and shoulder. “Audio… Yes… Yes, Miss Armstrong, he’s right here with me,” he handed it over, “For you, Sir.”

  “Thanks,” Ken took the hand piece, “Hello, what’s up Nance? Okay… hmmm, alright… God, I didn’t realize the time already. Tell them to start without me. I’m here if you need me,” he replaced the receiver.

  “Would you like to carry on later, Sir?” Stuart inquired.

  “Not a chance of it! We’re on it, let’s run it to ground.”

  Stuart was equally captivated to ferret out the elusive key to the mystery, “Two more ticks and I’ll have it, Sir… Hang on… here it comes… okay,” he hit the Enter key.

  The high pitch sound echoed around the room again, but instead of stopping short Craig’s voice was neatly tagged on to its tail. The graph showed just shy of seven seconds—precisely 6.6 seconds.

  “Gotcha,” Ken punched his hand with his other fist in triumph, then looked perplexed, “but, what does it mean?”

  Stuart shook his head, “It’s somehow familiar, Sir. An old style transmission… Shortwave?”

  “No. It’s not electronic sounding,” Ken was massaging his head, the detective work becoming a thrill, “Water? Maybe boiling water… a burbling stream?”

  “I doubt it,” Stuart spoke, absentmindedly nibbling his nails like the teenager he was, “wrong waveform, wrong slope, the wavelengths are too abrupt.”

  The sound was familiar yet foreign.

  “Wait a minute,” a notion flashed through Ken’s mind, “…can you slow the sequence?”

  Once suggested, it was an obvious choice, “I’ll slow it five-fold.”

  Moments later the porridge of sound began; slowed, it had morphed into a jumble of clipping sounds resembling swallowing or chewing. It possessed rhythm and pace, with a human quality. “Another language? It sounds like someone speaking underwater,” Ken mused out aloud.

  Stuart shrugged, wracked by confusion.

  They ran the sound through several times before there was another knock at the studio door. It was Catherine and she was breathless, “Morning Ken, Nancy showed me down. I’ve briefed them and we’re on a break; I’m about to run the commercials. I know you wanted to be in on it…?”

  “Hi, Cath. Oh, this is Stuart Reese, our audio tech. We’ve had a hitch with a project I must work through, I’ll be up in a moment.”

  Ken had moved across the room to her, instinctively blocking her view of the graphs on the monitors, ready to usher her out of the room if Stuart ran the audio again. Something within him insisting that she not hear a bar of it. Then he rethought this irrational reaction and decided her opinion would be good.

  “I told Nancy that you should go on without me,” his voice brittle.

  “She told me, but I knew that you invested a whole day in a preview and really want to be in on it when we reveal to the team, so I thought I’d better be double sure.”

  His jealously protective demeanor drove her on a retreat through the door, but his attitude suddenly changed and he stopped her short;

  “Just a moment, Cath. Give this a listen, it’ll only take a second… Run it, Stuart,” Ken instructed.

  As the sound of the chewing obscurity began, Catherine cocked her head over to one side like an inquisitive dog. Something in it resonated with her at an emotional level. With each passing moment she craned with ever more puzzlement, her forehead creasing into a scowl.

  When the sequence ended, Ken put their best guess to her, “Human?”

  “I think so?” she remarked adding, “Sounds like it’s backwards though?”

  “That’s-it!” the two men sung in chorus, “Thanks, Cath!” Ken was steering her out the door. “You run along, girl. I’ll be up in a moment.”

  Catherine stood for a moment in bewilderment, looking at the door closed in her face.

  It took Stuart two keystrokes to invert the garble and the resulting sound was human all right, a yawningly slow human drone. A deformed inflection. The labored rendition of a weary old man intoning. “Our Father, who art in Heaven. Hallowed be thy Name…”

  Euphoric at cracking the riddle, Stuart seemed untouched by the content of its utterance. He paused the recording, “Damn!” he said excitedly, “Still too slow!”

  The smile of triumph on Ken’s face had melted to an ashen blank gape, plucked from his spot as master of his empire and dumped into the echoing halls of his Catholic upbringing.

  Stuart saw the terror, “Are you all right, Sir?”

  Ken didn’t reply, he absently waved Stuart back to the task at hand.

  “Our Father who art in Heaven…” Craig’s familiar voice began to recite, the tone a nightmare of foreboding cascading from the speakers on all sides.

  Something slid through Ken’s gut—the haunting terrors preached into him from the knee usurping his adult confidence.

  Stuart was oblivious to the childhood stirrings and improbability of the message’s impossible timing, recorded as it was on Ken’s phone hours after the man should’ve been cold in a fridge. But he saw the naked terror in his master’s gaunt face.

  “Do you want me to audio fingerprint it, Mr. Torrington?”

  “Don’t bother,” Ken had stood up and started making for the door. He was in a stupor. A look of glazed bewilderment and colliding thoughts consuming his expression. “It’s him, I know his voice.”

  On the threshold Ken stopped and turned back to face Stuart. He looked stooped, withering under the burden of shock and horror, but he found his voice of authority and instructed Stuart to “send a report, up to my office.”

  He went out through the door without looking back.

  Back in his office, Ken locked the door and set a large mug of coffee down on a low table before slumping into a sofa.

  After tapping a quantity of white powder from a vial onto the tabletop, he cut it into several lines with his Black Card.

  “This is bullshit…” He shook his head as he worked. “There’s a logical solution…”

  He felt aggressive, cornered—frightened and stalked. His fists clenched until the nails bit into his palms. A lather of emotions had him on long-forgotten shaky ground where Jesuit priests in long black cassocks with leather lashes hanging from their belted rope cincture would stalk the cold drafty corridors of his school.

  He shook his head to clear the distant memory of it and checked his watch.

  “Four past eleven. I’ll go in at eleven twenty,” he assured himself aloud. With his feet slung up onto the table, he shut his eyes and began to file all of the events into a logical perspective.

  At precisely 11.20am Ken swung the Board Room’s door open and strode in. The gathering within was a full house of hushed suits hunched in eager digestion of the screen’s unfolding visual feasts.

  Catherine stopped the image with the pause button and a sea of faces swiveled around as one to stare at Ken. “Morning,” he greeted in a voice made with manufactured cheerfulness.

  “Morning,” the chorus replied.

  “Forgive… urgent issues needed attention,” he smiled at Catherine. “Continue.”

  He slid into his vacant seat as the image on screen burst into life then jumped to the start of the sequence so it could unfold as one for Ken’s benefit.

  “Our Father who art in Heaven…” Craig’s voice crept back.

  Chapter 6r />
  Mid-day saw the review break for lunch. The afternoon session had been scheduled for analysis and comments.

  Catherine pulled Ken to one side, by now she felt familiar enough to be direct, “What’s up, Ken? You’re really not looking well.”

  “Nothing Cath, Just pressures.”

  He’d recovered almost fully from the morning’s emotional roller coaster ride and had mostly shut the repetitive voice out.

  Ken had slipped out of the review before the break to phone Alex King.

  Alex was a private investigator to whom Ken paid a retainer that ensured his services would always be at his beck and call. In addition, Ken had always made a point of including Alex into the spoils of his questionable deals. He believed that by mutually linking their fates, Alex was married into vested interest if and when trouble brewed.

  “Alex… It’s Ken,” he’d hit Alex’s voicemail so kept the brief vague. “There’s an issue in Colombia, scouting that needs doing. You can collect details from Jo. I scribbled a note detailing what I need done. Sorry it’s such short notice, but it’s mighty urgent,”

  Jo oversaw the security team at LifeGames HQ, her office was at the main entrance. Ken always utilized her whenever he needed confidentiality. She was ex military with high clearance and low curiosity.

  The brief to Alex was simple; establish contact with the laboratory but maintain anonymity—pose as a businessman, review their capabilities for reverse engineering and duplicating patented pharmaceuticals, and gauge their willingness and price to work anonymously. Left unstated was that they’d be re-engineering the Time Dilation drug.

  Catherine was still chitchatting with Ken when Anton breezed over bearing a smirk and good news. “The code seems good.” He flashed a toothy grin, “I’m burning with curiosity so I’ll pull an all-nighter to check it out. Care to sit in and see if it works?”

  “No, but thanks anyway Anton, I can only get in the way.”

  With Anton’s news Catherine noticed a dramatic recovery of Ken’s mood. In her mind, she mulled the possibilities “Code? They’re like little boys with a secret.”

  “What’s that about?” she asked as Anton moved on.

  Ken’s eyes twinkled, “You’ll see, sunshine.”

  “Even more interesting,” she was eaten up with curiosity.

  Ken just grinned.

  “At least it’s cheered you up…”

  At that moment Nancy entered the room, scanning about. She spotted Ken amongst the crowd and briskly made her way over. Stopping out of earshot of others she beckoned him over.

  “The hospital called… The General… Roger Daly… he’s stabilized, but there are… complications. Leon said it could be serious… psychiatric anomalies, he said.”

  “Any details?”

  Ken was polling Leon’s degree of discretion in the matter—whether he was disclosing privileged information; but Nancy was wise to it. Even if he had, she wouldn’t betray him.

  “Not really, all I do know is that he’s under observation and has extreme symptoms of schizophrenia. He thinks that he’s some kind of priest,” Nancy shrugged, “They’ve just appointed a new specialist, a psychiatrist, to look into it. I took down the doctor’s name and put it on your desk, not sure if you want me to involve Leon?”

  “Thanks, Nance, not to worry—I’ll gauge it and brief Leon. I’ll be up in a second.” Ken returned to where Catherine was standing, “Just the ups and downs of business,” he sighed, not wanting to kindle any more curiosity in her than was already evident by her expression.

  Catherine checked her watch, “Time to get on with it.”

  “Don’t wait for me Cath, I’ve gotta make a quick call, then I’ll be right back.”

  Back at his desk, Ken had the phone to his ear, “Doctor Rupert, please.”

  A moment later… “Rupert speaking,” the doctor’s voice bore a beautifully modulated and cultured Etonian accent.

  “Doctor Rupert, Ken Torrington; LifeGames Corporation.”

  “Ahh yes, Mr. Torrington, I’m honored… What can I do for you, Sir?”

  “Please… call me Ken,” Ken was not fond of titles; particularly once he’d been out-ranked by academia.

  “Thank you, do call me Andrew. The Daly case no doubt?”

  “That’s right. My PA mentioned that he’s surfaced, but suffering a trauma? Schizophrenia, I believe?”

  “Schizophrenic-like… yes. That’s not a diagnosis, just the closest bead we have on it for the moment… General Daly is having rather a problem adjusting to reality.”

  The doctor’s tone brimmed with the British penchant for understatement.

  “…I confess, it’s perhaps the worst cases that I’ve ever seen. The damnedest thing is that his file presents a perfect psychological profile. We don’t understand how this could have occurred. The man’s seen action in every corner of the globe and been through some real hellholes… a seasoned veteran.”

  “I believe he thinks he’s a priest of some kind?” Ken queried, the dark ruminations from the sound room and flashbacks to cold corridors once more threatening from the shadows of his mind.

  “Convinced of it, sir… The man has no inkling of reality and doesn’t respond to his own name. Suddenly, and this is most vexing, ranting and raving, speaking fluent Latin… there is nothing about fluency in Latin recorded on his file.”

  “Very peculiar! Would you mind if I come down and see the situation for myself?”

  “Of course…. that won’t be a problem, they’ll track me down if you ask for me by name at reception. I’m here until eight tonight.”

  They said their goodbyes and signed off.

  A plethora of motives urged Ken to get down to the hospital as soon as possible; his eagerness to read the military’s mood for investigating the cause of the incident, and the strange new coincidence of Latin and priests popping up yet again; it was of course a coincidence, he thought… a strangely unsettling one. These things begged him to investigate.

  The shifting terrain of his day meant that Ken had lost all interest in sifting through the details of Catherine’s review. It was a good opportunity missed, but there would be others.

  Instead, he spent the following hour sorting through various dilemmas that needed his urgent attention. Only then did he return to the Board Room to see how the review was progressing.

  The review was winding up and Henry, who had quit sulking about the earlier affront down in the sound room, summarized the findings for Ken in a whisper behind his hand.

  The executive staff came to pretty much the same conclusion as Ken had.

  “I led a good team,” Ken praised them and himself to Henry in one succinct opinion.

  After the adjournment, Ken made his way over to Leon Goldstein, Head of Psychology and chief officer in charge of the hypnotism sequences;

  “What did you think of the review, Leon?”

  “Excellent, excellent! We’ve got a winning team in Kaplan. Brilliant work, Ken’o, just bbbbbrrilliant!”

  During the creation phase of the campaign, Leon had been invaluable as an in-house consultant. His background in psychology had provided a vast depth and clarity into the machinery of a consumer’s mind.

  “There’s an interesting situation that’s developed with General Daly, our wayward subject in the hospital.”

  Leon’s eyes popped wide open with interest. It was usual for him to appear nutty, but even the slightest surprise could make him look utterly insane, “Ooh,” his mouth formed a perfect circle.

  “I’m going down to see for myself, care to join me?” Ken invited.

  “Sure… sure. It’s my department all right. Must do, must do,” he always tended to repeat himself when his mind was running too fast. Indeed, with age, he’d allowed creeping idiosyncrasies to have their way with him.

  “I have to go over a few things here and I don’t know how long I’ll be,” Ken explained, “We’d better go separately. I’ll see you there around five, is that all right?
”

  “Sure. Definitely,” Leon bumbled away.

  Chapter 7

  “Calling Doctor Rupert, Doctor Rupert to reception please.”

  The military nurse snapped the public address system off, “Doctor Rupert will be here in a moment, please take a seat;” she indicated for Ken to proceed through to the adjoining waiting room where he saw Leon sitting reading a magazine.

  “Thanks.”

  The nurse smiled, unable to resist his charm.

  “Leon… Ahead of time as always.”

  “Ahh.. Ken’o, isn’t it strange how somebody always disturbs you as you reach the juicy bits in a waiting room magazine.”

  “Shall I sit over there?” Ken pointed to the far side of the room.

  “No, no. Definitely, no!” peering over the top of his glasses at Ken, Leon patted the seat beside himself. “What’s Gerald’s problem then?”

  “Gerald?” Ken was stumped, “Gerald who?”

  “Yes, Gerald… The one you wanted me to visit here,” Leon removed his glasses and twirled them by one arm as he spoke, a puzzled look on his face.

  “Gerald…? No Leon, not Gerald! General… The General with the issue… Daly… General Daly. You don’t remember the situation we had with him… the meltdown?” Ken scowled in frustration.

  Leon was a brilliant psychiatrist with a string of books on hypnosis to his credit and a mind like a sieve.

  “Golly… General Daly… quite right, Ken’o! How did I get that muddled?” He shook his head and replaced his glasses.

  Ken spotted a tall regal gentleman marching up to reception. The nurse pointed toward Ken and Leon, and Ken immediately rose to his feet.

  “Andrew?” Ken inquired of the approaching man.

  “Yes, you must be Ken?”

  They both extended hands to shake as Leon still discussed his own confusion with himself.

  “This is our in-house psychiatrist, Leon Goldstein,” Ken was hesitant to mention Leon’s official title at LifeGames. He thought it prudent to first gauge Doctor Rupert’s reaction to Leon’s peculiar mannerisms.