The Game

by Christopher J. Thomasson

  * * *

  Potter is wide-awake now. To have the only successful test subject (and he knows he’s using that word loosely) standing right before him—volunteering, no less—to step back into the project…it’s the one thing that might help save this experiment. The last couple of years were the hardest. His fight for budgeting from both the government and private entities is on the verge of elimination. At first, the tiny successes were enough to keep everyone hopeful that all the bugs could finally be worked out of the system, but after years of no progress, even the government has become more anxious about relinquishing any more funding.

  On many occasions, he mentally kicked himself for not going after the boy, Paul. However, it had been the right decision. To illegally bring in a child for this type of project was already pushing the envelope—he’d been able to get away with it then, and to continue pursuing the boy after he fled Singleton’s warehouse would have more than likely brought a lot of unwanted attention to his secret project. As long as the boy stayed quiet (which he did), Potter was more than satisfied at the glimmer of hope the boy provided for the project. That mini-success was enough to solidify funding for two more years. However, the project’s success stalled and each year, from then to now, he saw his funding decrease exponentially.

  That’s when his thoughts turned back to the boy. By this time, Paul would have been nineteen or twenty years old—an adult without the potential legal ramifications that might have plagued Potter.

  Yes, he thinks. Leaving the boy alone was the right decision at the time.

  Now his luck is changing for the better: a future, so dark and gloomy these past few years, is now beginning to brighten. If they can successfully remove Rob’s consciousness from Paul, and place it back in another host—the scientific potential is more than he can imagine. The silence draws out. Potter suddenly pushes his chair away from the table. The noise of the chair legs against the floor is startling. He stands, grabs his gun, stuffs it into his waistband, and says, “Let me get dressed.”

  * * *

  Paul shares a silent glance with Singleton as Potter hurries from the room. He can’t believe how smoothly this is going. It’s almost too good to be true. He reaches into his back pocket and shows Singleton his phone.

  Singleton nods.

  Paul types out a two-word text message, “Get ready.”

  A few minutes later, Potter joins them back in the kitchen and says, “Who’s driving?”

  Singleton stands, car keys jingling in his hand, “I guess I am.”

  * * *

  The possibilities still tumble through his mind. Successfully moving a consciousness from one body to another…now that would be a life changing—no, a life-extending—event. What would a person pay for such a service? To potentially live forever? They’d pay a hefty sum.

  He follows Singleton and the boy outside, locks the front door, and heads toward the waiting car parked at the curb. He addresses Paul snarkily, “So, how does it feel having two personalities in your head?” As they approach the car, Singleton holds the back door open for him.

  Paul doesn’t answer, but rounds the front of the car and approaches the driver’s door. His face, hidden by heavy shadows, looks like a dark skull to Potter.

  For the first time that night, a chill of unease tingles up Potter’s spine.

  He slides into the back seat.

  He doesn’t notice there is no interior light in the car.

  He also doesn’t notice the other person sitting behind the driver’s seat until he is already seated.

  What he does notice is the sharp pinprick of pain in his leg. He looks down, takes note of the delicate hand holding the syringe pressed to his leg, then finally notices the figure sitting beside him in the dark shadows. “What the hell is this?”

  A thin arm rises to the ceiling and light suddenly fills the small interior.

  “You!” he says, recognizing the other person immediately.

  A crooked smile plays across Georgia’s lips. She roughly extracts the needle from his leg. “Well hello there, General. I’m surprised you even remember me.”

  His vision begins to blur. He tries to focus on her face, on that condescending grin, but can’t seem to get his eyes to work. Singleton slams the door and it crunches against his right elbow, but he doesn’t notice the sharp pain—his body passed beyond the ability to feel pain about two seconds ago.

  “Nighty-night, General.”

  His eyes close and he slips into darkness.

  * * *

  Georgia wipes a drop of sweat from her left eyebrow before it can drop into the surgical opening at the back of Potter’s skull. They are nearing twenty-four hours since abducting the General and she has only slept a couple of hours. Thankfully, her part of the task is almost complete. She was nervous at first, not having done anything like this in several years—since being forcefully removed from her position. However, the longer she worked, the more rust fell away and by the end of the surgery she was back in that old relaxed rhythm. Just a few more stitches to close the incision around the fiber optic cables and she’ll be done.

  Paul stands sentinel in the corner of the room, ready to assist her if she needs anything. He’d been at her disposal throughout almost the entire process—the only time he left was when she fired up the saw that would cut through the general’s skull, exposing the pinkish-grey brain beneath. No, he couldn’t handle that part of the process and had to leave the room. She didn’t blame him—most people couldn’t stomach seeing that.

  “Tell Singleton I’m done.”

  Paul slips out of the room and walks quickly down the hallway to a door marked Security. While she waits, she stares down at the man who singlehandedly ruined her credibility in cybernetics. She glances around the room. She developed most of the tools and techniques used in this research facility and Potter took it all away from her. These past few hours, on more than one occasion, she was tempted to let her hand ‘slip’ and plunge her scalpel deep into the man’s brain.

  In the end, she refrained from taking his life by her own hand. The last thing he deserves is to die peacefully in his sleep. No—a sinister grin transforms her pleasant face into something ghoulish—Paul, Rob, and Singleton’s way is going to be so much better.

  She fingers the ends of the cables, checking the connections for drops of dried blood, flakes of bone, or pieces of skin that might interfere with the electronic signal once the power and information supply components are attached.

  Paul returns with Singleton in tow. The older man’s eyes are heavy. His feet drag the floor and his eyelids flutter dreamily. He’s a man in dire need of rest and Georgia wonders just how much help he’ll be to her.

  “You going to make it?” she asks.

  He nods. “Let’s just get this over with and we can all get a few hours of sleep.”

  Paul, back in his corner, leaning against one wall with his arms crossed in front of him says, “Amen to that.”

  Singleton steps up to the table, opposite Georgia. Potter lay face down between them. Scattered between his legs are an assortment of metal components and circuits. “Hand me the skull plate?”

  He picks through a couple of items and finds the concaved piece of metal near Potter’s ankles. He hands it to her. She holds it above his head while Singleton carefully threads the cables through the two-inch by one-half-inch slit in the center of the metal.

  “Screws, please.” He hands over four screws. Normally, she would have insert four threaded posts into the skull and the curved plate would fit over them with lock nuts to secure it to the back of the head. Since they are pressed for time, she has to turn to a more barbaric means of attachment.

  Using a cordless drill, she attaches the plate to Potter’s head.

  * * *

  Over in the corner, the grating noise sends a shiver creeping up Paul’s spine. The sound reminds him of a dentist drill boring a hole into his tooth. Then there’s the faint smell of burning bone. It fills the room
and he pinches his nose in an attempt to block the smell.

  You, okay? Rob asks.

  Yeah, I’ll be all right.

  Just hang in there. This will all be over in a few hours.

  In the center of the room, Georgia and Singleton work methodically at attaching all sorts of components to Potter. She’ll ask for something and Singleton will search for it, then hand it over for her to attach.

  An hour later, he hears a collective sigh from the center of the room. He perks up. Had he been dozing? Probably.

  Georgia and Singleton stand there admiring their efforts. Paul crosses over and joins them. He looks down at the man on the table. Polished metal, wires, and computer circuit boards cover most of the man’s head. More components cover the area across his shoulder and spine. Between his shoulder blades is a thin, black box with a small slit in the side. It looks to Paul like a computer disk drive. As if to answer the unasked question, Georgia produces a silver disk and slides it into the slot.

  The body jerks, startling all three of them.

  Singleton asks, “What the hell was that?”

  “Just the uplink initiating contact with his brain. Reflex, that’s all.”

  “Creepy as hell,” Paul ads. Inside his head, Rob uses some decidedly harsher language to describe what they’d just seen.

  Singleton yawns. “I vote we get a couple of hours of sleep now.”

  “I’ll second that,” Georgia adds.

  * * *

  There are several offices with either a small couch or leather recliners, so none of them had trouble finding a comfortable place to sleep. Paul sets the alarm on his phone for three hours but spends each hour tossing, turning, and unable to sleep. He and Rob are too excited—the end to Potter’s empire is in sight—and with it, the end to Potter as well.

  Singleton is in the next office. Paul can hear his heavy snoring through the thin walls but even if he were in his own bed with familiar pillows, he still wouldn’t be able to sleep—even if there is complete silence.

  Finally, his phone vibrates. It’s six o’clock on Sunday morning. He steps into the next office and gently nudges Singleton’s shoulder. The older man’s eyes flutter open.

  Paul says, “It’s time.”

  Singleton yawns and pushes himself out of the recliner. They wake Georgia and the three of them shuffle tiredly into the room where Potter still rests facedown on the table.

  Paul asks, “Are we positive this is going to work?”

  Georgia responds, “In theory, yes.”

  “At any rate,” Singleton adds, “We’ll be rid of him for good.”

  The two men unlock the wheels of the gurney and roll Potter out of the room and into the hall. At the far end is a set of double doors. They wheel the General through the doors and into a large room. In the center of the room is a giant, milky-white sphere—almost identical to the one Paul used all those years ago. The sight of it makes him want to throw up.

  “You okay?”

  Paul tears his eyes away from the sphere. He nods. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m good.”

  They continue into the room. The door into the sphere is already open so all they have to do now is carry the unconscious General inside. Advances in the technology have eliminated the need for the silky black shirt Paul had worn years before. Now the simulator feeds right into the central nervous system, directly triggering the nerves within the body. The gun lies on the floor of the simulator and they set the General down next to it. Paul places the gun near the General’s hand and then, using a long cable with locking connectors, attaches it to the computer components hardwired into his spine.

  Singleton flips a couple of switches near Potter’s neck and steps outside the sphere. Paul doesn’t follow so he looks back inside to see the younger man leaning over the General’s body. “You okay?” he asks for the second time.

  Paul nods again and then addresses the unconscious body, “Have a nice trip, asshole.” He slaps the General’s slack face—hard.

  And as if that weren’t enough, he slaps him again—harder.

  * * *

  The two men join Georgia in the control room. There are no windows. Before them, the wall and ceiling are one large, curved surface. A high definition projection system will transmit the images onto the curved surface, giving them the same view as that of the test subject—who, in this case, is General Potter.

  Singleton takes a seat beside her. “Any idea what we can expect?”

  She is silent for a moment. Her fingers dance across a computer keyboard as she completes uploading information into the system linking the software to Potter’s brain. She says, “I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately.”

  Paul takes a seat opposite the others. He stares at her intently and the look is slightly unnerving. His gaze is that of a much older man. She knows it’s just a reflection of Rob’s personality showing through, but it still seems impossible.

  She addresses the younger man, “When you and Rob…” She glances up and meets his eyes.

  He nods to her, silently telling her to go on.

  She clears her throat. “Well, when the two of you were hooked up, the transmission was supposed to only work one way—from Paul in the simulator to Rob at the other end of the line—to put it in the simplest of terms. In all the other experiments, that one-way connection was the undoing of the person in the simulator. Their consciousness left the simulator, entered and controlled the avatar, but then was unable to return again.

  “For some reason (and for all I know, even the General never found out how it happened), during your simulation, the mental connection worked two ways. While we thought that Rob was completely brain dead, we were apparently wrong, and his consciousness found a way to transfer into Paul and share residence—so to speak.”

  Singleton looks thoughtful. He says, “What if that was the key?”

  She turns to him, “What do you mean?”

  “What if the fact that he wasn’t brain dead is what caused the mental transfer—and all the others actually were brain dead? In all those other tests, the subject sent out their mental capabilities into a host whose brain was incapable of containing it. Kind of like overloading a circuit breaker in your home—at some point it draws too much electricity and blows.”

  She’s nodding now. It makes sense. Until Paul showed up a few weeks ago, the question that Rob’s brain wasn’t dead never crossed their minds. She had hoped all those years ago, but she never really knew—until recently. “That’s got to be it,” she says.

  Paul asks, “So what about now?” He points to one of the computer monitors. On the screen is an interior view of the sphere with Potter lying in the center.

  “Feedback,” she says.

  “What?” Singleton asks.

  She tries to explain. “Feedback—reverb. That thing that happens when you put a microphone too close to a speaker.”

  “So instead of that one-way street between the simulator and the host—what?” Singleton shakes his head, trying to get a grasp on where his thoughts are taking him. He is still extremely tired. Georgia can see it all over his face.

  “What?” Paul asks him.

  A knowing smile creeps across Singleton’s face and she knows he’s figured it out. “A closed circuit,” he says.

  She smiles.

  Singleton continues, “His mind leaves the host and goes out in search of the test subject, just like the program is going to tell it to do. But it’s just going to come back to himself since he is the subject.”

  “So,” Paul begins, moving back to the original question posed to Georgia. “Any idea what we can expect?”

  Her smile broadens. “All those other tests left the subject mentally handicapped. Even after the test failed, there’s still a fraction of their old selves within them. This time though, I’m afraid the poor General’s going to destroy himself—complete mental overload.”

  They sit in silence, each one pondering these new speculations. After a few more moments, Paul slaps h
is hand against the desk, startling the other two. He shouts excitedly, “Well let’s get this show on the road!”

  Georgia adjusts the computer mouse under her fingertips and clicks a button on the screen before her. The screen turns dark and two words flash repeatedly: Program Initiated.

  She turns to Paul, an evil glint flickering in her eyes. “You want to do the honors?” He leans forward and glances at the screen. The curser hovers over a button labeled with the simple word, Go.

  * * *

  All before him is dark. It’s as if he is spinning through space—but without the stars. Then a sliver of light appears in the distance. Over time, it thickens, grows wider…taller. He can’t tell if it takes seconds or hours. All sense of time has slipped away.

  Where am I? he thinks, and his words echo back within his mind. The pain is severe, striking him like an ice pick to the eyes. The darkness closes around him again, then reappears—brighter this time. Finally, the bright light dims and he can see more clearly. Above him is a bright blue sky. Intensely bright, like the sun reflecting off snow. He turns his head to look to his left. He looks right. He appears to be lying on the top level of a parking garage. About a dozen cars are scattered around in various parking spaces.

  There’s something in his hand.

  He lifts it. It’s a gun—a gun that looks eerily similar to the ones he had developed for the program...

  “No,” he says aloud and it’s as if that one word is amplified ten-fold. It echoes around him and slams into his ears. His eyes flood with tears. Echoes usually diminish over time as the sound travels further away and bounces back from greater distances. But not this. His single, spoken word gets louder and louder with each reverberation. It pounds into his ears and pierces his consciousness—pounding his brain like a hammer. He puts a hand to his eyes and presses. The pressure doesn’t help.