As Above, So Below

by Richard Lawther

  Ms Ames: The problems we face in developing effective AI are manifold. The main one today, however, is brought about by our humble and constraining technology. It is, in theory, possible to connect together a few thousand microprocessors and, in-so-doing, model a crude neural network – but this would be a very simple structure compared to the human brain. The cerebral cortex alone, for example, contains over twenty billion neurons, and some of these connect to thousands of others. Our artificial device wouldn’t even match the complexity of the insect brain.

  Suppose, for a moment, that the technological constraints were lifted, imagine that we had the ability to construct, from scratch, something as complex as the human brain. Then suppose we connected this up to a sensory unit, thus enabling ‘the brain’ to ‘see’ the outside world. Would this new brain become conscious? – probably not. What we lack is the understanding of the link between this highly evolved structure and the appearance of consciousness.

  Take, for example, your idea of ‘self’ – the fundamental you – where is that to be found? Modern science can only say that the question is flawed. There is no seat of–

  A hospital bleeper abruptly woke me up.

  Amazing! ... Ms Ames’ lecture was just a dream, already the details were beginning to fade. This had been a proper dream: a good, old-fashioned, take-it-all-for-granted dream. I wondered how I could ever have taken this for granted.

  Firstly: the subject matter: brain science – not part of the Business Administration curriculum.

  Secondly: I didn’t have a lecturer called Ms Ames.

  Thirdly: the lecture had taken place in Ms Ames’ bedroom; she’d conducted it wearing nothing but a one-piece silver swimsuit – and all the time I just sat there, taking notes!

  If only real lectures were like this:

  ‘Hi, Steve, what do we have this morning?’

  ‘Hi, Geoff, At ten we’ve got Saunders, in G16. He’ll be continuing that stuff on economies of scale. Then, up at eleven, we’ve got Ms Ames, in her bedroom; she’ll be talking about the brain.’

  ‘Will she be naked?’

  ‘Err, let me see... no, she’ll be wearing a silver swimsuit.’

  ‘Okay, now about these economies of scale...’

  The bleeper had been useful, without it I might have remained asleep all night.

  Now fully awake I began to plan for the night ahead. If Hargreaves remained the only ‘dreamer’ available, I’d use him again, but this time – to control the dreams more effectively – I’d use a new technique. I’d ‘call up’ a laptop computer, and make that do all the work. All I had to do was believe that it would work. Hopefully this would allow me to alter the dreams precisely and dispense with the need to constantly ‘will’ things to happen. The problem with ‘willing’ was that the harder you tried, the poorer the results became.

  I pondered this and many other problems before an ominous realization dawned: I had to get out of my body first! How the hell would I do that? I waited, and tried to clear my head of thought-clutter. The air-conditioning hummed away in the background, and, off to the right, Hargreaves coughed. I continued to wait, but nothing happened; the minutes ticked by as I remained dimensionless in my private black box. It occurred to me that yesterday’s activity might have been a freak – a one-off. Astral projection, after all, wasn’t exactly an every-day occurrence! I waited some more but still nothing happened.

  I focused on the air-conditioning. That was it! The rattling, spluttering AC provided some sort of fix in space. Last night it had failed, but what were the chances of that happening again tonight? I continued to listen to the hated air-conditioning for at least another half hour before my mind began to drift. Sleep beckoned.

  I became lost in the grey twilight, drawn back to slumber by the enticing image of Ms Ames. But then a sudden click followed by a death-rattle snapped me back to full waking alertness. The air-conditioning had fallen silent!

  At last – nothing but nothingness.

  For a few seconds, nothing persisted, but then, slowly at first, I began to ‘move’. The spinning returned and along with it came that nauseating dimensional inconsistency. The sensations grew worse and worse, and, like the previous night, they became hard to bear. I reached the point at which I no longer cared about the dreams – I just wanted this whirling dervish to STOP!

  It stopped.

  I was out.

  As before, I found myself floating, face up, close to the ceiling. I turned to look at the ward and observed the same cluttered scene as before: nothing had changed, save for one important detail: Hargreaves was awake; the old bugger obviously couldn’t sleep. He clutched a small torch in his right hand and in his left perched a book. I moved in to take a closer look.

  Hargreaves studied something called: Public Speaking: The Art Made Simple. This guy had a one-tracked mind! I moved in closer still, and noticed his aura. I could see no point in making contact with it: either nothing would happen, or worse, I might become trapped in his conscious mind.

  I pulled back.

  This presented me with a dilemma: if I wanted to ‘dream’ I’d have to leave the ward; but would I be able to do that? Supposing the link to my body ‘broke’? I’d become ... a ghost!

  I couldn’t see any point in returning to my body – not until the air-conditioning was repaired – so I started gently gliding away.

  I moved effortlessly through the wall and broke out into a well-lit corridor. At one end, a nurse sat at a small desk: she looked tired, on the verge of falling asleep. In the other direction, the corridor led to a set of lifts. I drifted back and forth, but found no other sign of life. I decided to move up to the next floor.

  My astral form passed through the ceiling/floor and into another ward, larger than mine, and full of sleeping patients. The ‘body’ nearest to me radiated a large and strong aura – it extended out by at least a foot, but, unlike Hargreaves’s, this one glowed with a crimson light; it also appeared to contain several black spokes, possibly areas of missing aura.

  Fortune favours the bold, I said to myself, as I charged in.

  I found myself in a small living room, sitting on a lumpy sofa; on a nearby chair sat the patient – a young woman. She smoked a cigarette and gave me a startled look.

  The room smelled of spilt beer, spilt fag-ash and cat urine. I smiled at my host and summoned up the laptop.

  Remove household odours.

  Fresh air. Great! This really did work! I smiled again at the woman, but she just returned an expression of angry contempt. What had I done? Maybe she resented the way I’d just ‘popped in’. More likely, her subconscious had quickly built up an elaborate plot to explain my sudden appearance.

  Okay... now, how to play this..?

  The woman let out an ear-piercing scream.

  Something had dropped onto my back. I turned to look over my shoulder and saw what, at first, resembled a branch – but it twitched. I looked over at my other shoulder and saw another twitching ‘branch’. I jumped up and attempted to remove the ‘thing’ that clung to my back. Gaining purchase on something, I yanked hard, and it broke free; I brought it around into clear view and the woman let out another blood-curdling scream.

  Held securely in my grip: a mass of writhing legs; they belonged to a plate-sized, fawn-brown, spider. Disgusted, I instinctively threw the spider against the opposite wall: it landed with a thud, but held its grip. Remaining at the same height – roughly eyelevel – the spider began to run around the four walls of the room. It was fast – the legs, a blur of speed.

  My laptop still sat on the sofa. I reached down to retrieve it and felt the spider land, once again, on my back. I remained calm as the monstrosity tried to climb inside my shirt.

  I typed:

  Remove spider.

  I gave out a sigh of relief – the spider was gone; but within seconds the woman let out another loud scream and the bastard was back! Again, it dropped onto my back! For a second time I typed in the command, and the spide
r promptly vanished, but without much delay, it returned.

  I grabbed the spider and plucked it off my back. Feeling nauseous at the sight of its gyrating legs, I clutched it in my hand and approached the screaming woman.

  ‘Stop dreaming of spiders!!!’ I shouted into her contorted face. No good, the woman just closed her eyes and screamed and screamed. What should I do with this damned thing!? – I hated spiders as much as I hated this arachnophobic woman!! Finally, I could stand the wriggling no longer, and in frustration I hurled it at the woman.

  It bounced off her head like a rubber ball and disappeared out of sight.

  I looked to where it had fallen, but it was not to be seen. I studied the walls, the floor and the ceiling: still no sign of it. I expected it to reappear on my back, but it didn’t. As I tentatively examined a corner of the room, the woman screamed again.

  Rising from her chair and slowly backing away, the woman’s wretched eyes focused on the new arrival. It stood on a table, by the window – another spider: black, very hairy, the size of a German Shepherd. Massive spring-loaded legs held the bulbous body above the surface of the table; the beast looked strong and fast, capable of moving in the blink of an eye; but the spider remained completely stationary – watching us.

  So still, in fact, that for a moment I thought it might be dead. No such luck. As if reading my thoughts, the spider began to tap one of its giant front legs against the tabletop.

  Out of the corner of my eye I could just see the laptop, but if I reached for it the spider would surely strike. The woman came over and took a firm hold of my arm; thankfully, she’d stopped screaming, maybe if she remained calm, the spider would go away.

  ‘This is all a dream,’ I said, in a murmur, not wishing to let the spider overhear, ‘stay calm – it can’t hurt us.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the woman, seeming to understand.

  We waited.

  Nothing happened. The spider didn’t go away – but it didn’t strike either, it just continued to tap on the tabletop, waiting for us to make the first move. We waited for what seemed like several minutes, frozen to the spot, mesmerized by the incessant war-beat. The more I listened, the more it began to sound like Morse code. I couldn’t understand it – but maybe the woman could.

  ‘Is this Morse code?’ I whispered.

  ‘Morse? ... I know Morse, I’ve been trained in it.’ The woman craned forward and listened to the arachnid ‘message’. ‘Yes, it is Morse.’

  ‘Well!?’ I eventually asked. ‘What is the fucker saying!?’

  ‘Err.., it’s repeating: S....O....U....T....H....I....S....W....A....T....C....H....I....N....G....Y....O....U.... S....O.... “south is watching you?”’

  More dream gibberish...

  The spider abruptly stopped banging.

  For several seconds all remained still, but then, suddenly, the spider jumped off the table, its bouncy legs acting like giant shock absorbers. It edged over towards us with movements that implied a certain caution. And then it stopped. Slowly, it extended a front leg and gently prodded my foot. At this point, without thinking, I moved forward and kicked the spider in what passed for its face.

  In a normal dream this might have been the right thing to do: confront the nemesis, but this was the woman’s nightmare. For her to extract the maximum fright-potential she had to be on the verge of disaster without ever actually crossing the line and being forced awake, granted an escape. This seemed to be the reason why the spiders never directly went for her. I, on the other hand, was an expendable prop. My job was to become victim while the woman looked on in horror. This might have been a nightmare for me as well, but I couldn’t wake up from it, no matter how bad things became. If I wasn’t careful, I could get eaten alive!

  So, kicking the spider had been a bad move: the beast simply wrapped its legs around mine. I struggled, but it soon became apparent that the spider’s tight grip could not be broken.

  It started to move up my legs.

  ‘Get me that!’ I shouted, pointing to my laptop.

  I grabbed the computer from the woman’s trembling hands as the spider climbed over my groin, rewarding me with a suffocating embrace.

  Provide Spider gun.

  I held an orange water-pistol in my right hand. Without hesitating, I shoved the gun in the spider’s mouth and pulled the trigger. There followed an explosive bang and the spider burst like a balloon, filling the room with its twitching remains. I fired the gun again and this time a clear blue light emerged from the barrel. As the ray of light made contact with the spider’s parts they smoked out of existence. I proceeded to clear the room, and had almost completed the job when the woman let out another terrible shriek. What now!?

  Thousands of normal-size tarantulas streamed in through the open window. I fired the gun, and one – but only one – spider bought it. I grabbed the laptop and tried to think of an appropriate command but the stress of the situation had rendered my mind blank. I was out of ideas...

  Then it dawned on me.

  My approach had been wrong, right from the very start. I typed in a new command, and pressed return.

  Turning to the woman, I held up my altered hand allowing her to see it clearly: a football-sized, orange and green, exotic tropical spider.

  ‘This is the Amazonian face-eating spider!’ I shouted, as the first tarantulas reached my feet and climbed.

  I pushed the pretty spider into the woman’s face and watched it squeeze her head – she didn’t have time to scream.

  At last the nightmare ended.

  The shock of having the spider thrust into her face had forced the woman to wake up. Her will was powerful, and I shot from her mind with the force of a speeding bullet. I zoomed upwards, blasting through the ceiling, then through the hospital roof.

  I was out in the night, continuing to zoom upwards. Higher and higher I climbed, showing no inclination, consciously or otherwise, to slow down. Only when I looked down, and recognized the outline of Preston, did I make an effort to stem my rocketing ascent. Eventually, at an altitude of several miles, I forced myself to stop.

  A clear and cloudless night. A full moon illuminated Preston and the surrounding country, all of the town’s streets were visible, marked out by the orange gossamer threads of sodium streetlamps.

  I descended slowly.

  Once I had dropped down to within a few feet of the ground I made myself come to a halt, still strung-out by the experiences of the last dream – literally a nightmare. If I wanted to make a ‘living’ out of this I clearly needed to be more cautious in future; and in the absence of any other stimulation in my life, I saw no alternative but to ‘dream’.

  It was difficult to recognize the available landmarks, everything seemed diffuse, as though belonging in somebody else’s universe; but, in due course, I managed to identify my immediate surroundings as Fishergate, Preston’s main high street; close by and to the left stood the large edifice of a Lloyds bank. The town appeared to be completely deserted, it must have been very late at night.

  I roamed the dark and gloomy streets becoming ever more despondent. This exercise simply served to show how strange and pointless my life had become. Dreaming might be occasionally thrilling, and always interesting, but all I really needed was a normal life. I stopped my wanderings at the student-dense Plungington Road.

  This ‘astral projection’ gave me the creeps. It was time to return to the hospital, my body would be getting worried. But where was the hospital? I drifted back towards the town-centre but was at a loss to know where I should go next. I considered doing one last dream tonight.

  Okay, let’s just think this through, I said to myself: so far I’ve experienced two dreams, one was largely out of my control and occasionally strange, the other became truly monstrous. Not an encouraging start, but if I chose the right ‘dreamer’ – maybe I could still get something out of this.

  It seemed apparent that I should avoid any other dreamers whose psyches resembled that of the woman patient: sh
e had projected a large, red, spoked aura. After applying a little common sense, and making one or two baseless assumptions, I conjectured that an aura’s colour indicated the nature of a person’s general personality – neurotic and arachnophobic in the woman’s case. The spokes possibly pointed to character flaws or psychological scars. Lastly, the large size of an aura represented the power of the individual’s mind. This could explain why my attempts at organizing the woman’s dream had been so constantly thwarted.

  My hastily arrived at presumptions might have been utterly wrong for all I knew, but until I gained more experience I would use them as a basic guide. The best type of dreamer, I therefore concluded, would be someone with a small, even, and pale aura. Who might have one of those? I pondered. I wracked my brains and eventually came up with the most likely candidate. I turned away from the town-centre and proceeded rapidly towards Cube’s house.

  Cube had been a regular visitor to my flat at Adelphi Place, not surprising considering its close proximity to both the union and other university buildings. I, on the other hand, had visited Cube’s house, in the ’burbs, only once, and, as a result, it proved much more difficult to locate than I had anticipated. A large and distinctive monkey-puzzle tree in the front garden eventually provided the prompt that led me in.

  I levitated up to Cube’s bedroom and found him there, fast asleep.

  I came in close and cast my professional eye: not exactly what I had expected.

  Cube’s lilac/turquoise aura, the largest and most striking yet, extended eighteen inches or more beyond his static form. There were a few multi-coloured spokes, but these appeared relatively small, and they weren’t complete gaps...

  I ruminated over the size and nature of Cube’s aura for several minutes before finally taking the plunge.

  A late-afternoon summer heat-haze softened the edges of Preston’s Avenham Park. I stood alone, down in the large bowl near the river, staring at the distant figure of a young girl performing cartwheels. She rotated serenely, and from my position resembled a slowly rolling tyre, her cartwheels possessing an effortless and fluid grace. Flawless. She approached and passed by, before wheeling off again, back to the shimmering distance. After a couple of minutes I lost sight of her as she faded into a dense, silvery haze.

  This really was like a dream.

  I turned around, looking for Cube, but found no sign of him. Odd, since this was his dream, he had to be around here somewhere. I moved from the bowl through to the smaller but more complex tiered gardens. Where had Cube got to? This was becoming slightly worrying: how could I be dreaming someone’s dream, if that someone wasn’t even there?

  I discovered him after a lengthy search. He stood on a terraced bank, talking to a small but enthusiastic group of sitting figures. I strolled up and joined the group.

  Cube spewed out the minutiae of a long and rambling joke. He frequently broke down, unable to continue through flooding tears of laughter. If he’d noticed me arrive, it certainly didn’t register.

  ‘...and he called in his sister, the marketing expert, and asked the vicar the same question. Well, the first guy stops – he’s heard this from the thingee – that one what limped – and it wasn’t that far! ...Anyway.., the Frenchman was having none of it!’

  And so it went on ...and on, and on, and on. Cube’s ‘joke’ was pure gabbled nonsense, just like Hargreaves’ file notes and street map. But the audience were loving it. Cube’s cackling fan club consisted of the drug dealer, Hammer, another student, Matt Damon and Sandra Bullock.

  ‘... Umm, so the Scotsman remarked, “I bu’ a cannai dee we yu fey English mendacity, C U Jimmy?”’ The audience celebrated every word. ‘...So, finally, the guy asks... err, oh, what was it, now?’

  ‘With a pig like this, you don’t eat it all at once,’ I offered.

  The audience exploded with uproarious laughter.

  ‘That were great that, blummin’ ’eck, funniest joke I ever did hear,’ said a Lancashire Sandra Bullock.

  Cube was livid. I had stolen his thunder. I summoned up the laptop and held my fingers ready to perform some hasty typing – just in case.

  ‘Oh, I’ve never had so much fun, and I owe it all to you, Geoff,’ said Hammer. I felt sure the real Hammer would never say anything like that. I reminded myself that this wasn’t the real Hammer, not even the dreaming Hammer – this was figment Hammer.

  ‘That’s okay, I know plenty more.’

  ‘Go on then, Geoff, gee is ’nother,’ pleaded Sandra.

  Cube stormed off in a huff. As he turned his back on the group, they all instantly vanished. Would Cube now descend to some darker milieu? I had to keep him happy.

  ‘Cube, Cube, wait up, man,’ I caught up with him as the skies above Avenham Park began to cloud over.

  ‘Where is your favourite place, Cube?’

  ‘What!?’ He was still annoyed.

  ‘Where do you like to go, you know, to relax, to chill-out.’

  Cube appeared to snap out of his strop, but storm clouds continued to build at an astonishing rate.

  ‘Hmm, that’s an interesting question,’ said Cube; he definitely seemed happier now, but the skies were becoming black with boiling badness.

  ‘hm, hmm, err.., hmm.., interesting question.., hmm...’

  Come on, hurry up, I silently pleaded. The ripped and shredded storm cloud began to develop a rotation.

  Cube continued to contemplate the ‘interesting question’ as a black funnel cloud descended down towards the park. Everything it touched – people, buildings and trees – got sucked up into the clouds. ‘What’s that?’ he asked, noticing it for the first time.

  ‘It’s nothing, Cube, just a storm.’ I said casually, noticing that the whirlwind was bearing down on us.

  ‘That’s no storm, it’s a tornado!’

  I held onto Cube’s arm to prevent him from running away. ‘Your favourite place, Cube, where is it?’

  ‘Hmm, interesting question, err, hmm,’ waffled Cube, ‘I think it would have to be ... a tossup between Ibiza and the Lake District.’

  ‘Yes, good choice, Cube.’

  Take us to the Lake District.

 

  10