The London Project (Portal Book 1)

by Mark J Maxwell

  ‘Well…no, but—’

  ‘Excellent. Lie back now, Claire.’

  The woman reached up to the Portal screen above Claire’s head and extended a cable from its rear. There was a U-shaped slit cut into the foam headrest and she reached underneath it and fiddled around for a moment before straightening. The woman looped some leather straps around Claire’s ankles and wrists, wrapping them around the bed’s metal frame before buckling them in place. Then she did the same to Claire’s forehead. ‘You’ve been great so far, Claire. A model patient. But we’re going to try something different this morning. The final neural lattice integration stage.’ The woman tapped a few commands on the console’s screen. ‘Okay, we’re good to go.’

  Another feed had appeared in Claire’s profile emulation, but it was blank apart from a flashing cursor.

  ‘Repeat after me,’ the woman said. ‘One…two…three.’

  ‘One, two three,’ Claire replied.

  ‘Now do it again, but silently, in your head.’

  > …one two three…

  The words had appeared in the new feed’s window. Louisa shook her head slowly. Surely it must be voice recognition.

  ‘Good girl,’ the woman said. ‘See? That wasn’t hard, was it?’

  ‘No,’ Claire mumbled.

  > …patronising cow…

  ‘Yes,’ the woman replied somewhat testily, ‘you’re definitely ready.’

  Were they actually recording what Claire was thinking? Louisa shivered in revulsion. Dietrich mentioned the aim of the neural lattice project was to create a new Portal interface from the user’s thoughts. But this? This was something else entirely.

  A man spoke then. ‘Start her on the first emotional feedback assessment, Elaine.’

  Louisa recognised the speaker as Professor Keenan. He wasn’t in the cube with them but the woman nodded almost imperceptibly in response. Claire didn’t appear to have heard him.

  ‘Close your eyes now, Claire,’ Elaine said.

  Louisa noticed a jump in Claire’s heart rate. The reading on her fear-spoke spiked.

  ‘Try to relax,’ Elaine said. ‘You might notice some flashes of light at first. That’s perfectly normal. Let me know when it happens.’

  Claire frowned. ‘I can see the flashes now. Wait. I can see something else. It looks like, it looks like a dog?’

  ‘Yes, Claire. Very good. Tell me what the dog’s doing.’

  ‘She’s running. In a park. Someone’s thrown a ball and she’s chasing it.’

  > …she’s so cute…just a puppy really…all gangly legs and giant paws…

  ‘Very good. What’s the dog doing now?’

  ‘Her owner’s thrown the ball again. It’s going further this time. She’s chasing it.’ Claire paused. ‘Wait. It’s bounced onto the road.’ Claire let out a yelp and clamped her hands over her mouth.

  > …oh, God, no…

  Claire had her eyes open now. She was sobbing, tears rolling down her cheeks. Her perception feed was registering spiking levels of fear and sadness.

  ‘Claire, it’s all right,’ Elaine said. ‘Please try and relax.’

  ‘But there was a car, and it…it hit the dog. There was blood everywhere!’

  ‘Shh, it’s all right Claire. It wasn’t real. They were only pictures in your head.’

  > …this is sick. I want it to stop…

  ‘One more simulation, Claire,’ Elaine said. ‘Then we can stop. Are you okay to continue?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Claire sniffed. ‘I guess so.’

  The professor spoke again. ‘Bump her to a high threat assessment.’

  There was a pause. ‘Are you sure?’ Elaine’s voice was barely audible. ‘That’s quite a jump—’

  ‘I said a high threat assessment,’ the professor snapped. ‘The most aggressive one we have.’

  ‘Sorry?’ Claire said.

  Elaine cleared her throat. ‘I was just thinking out loud. We’re going to try it once more. It’s the same as last time. Close your eyes and relax.’

  Claire shut her eyes. ‘I see the flashes again.’

  ‘Good. Now what’s happening?’

  ‘I see someone. A girl. Wait—it’s me! Is it a screencast advert? I’ve heard of those.’

  ‘Please keep telling me what you see, Claire.’

  ‘Um…I’m walking down a street, in London I think. It’s dark. I’m on my own. There’s no-one else around.’ She paused. ‘I hear footsteps now. Behind me. I—I don’t like this.’

  > …this is really creepy…

  ‘It’s all right. Keep talking.’

  ‘The footsteps are closer now. I’m looking around behind me. It’s a man.’ Claire’s heart rate was through the roof. ‘Oh God, he’s grabbed me. He’s got his hand around my mouth!’

  Claire opened her eyes wide and looked around the room. ‘It won’t stop.’ She reached towards Elaine, feeling with her fingers splayed as if she was blind. ‘I can’t see! Please, make it go away!’

  ‘Keep the simulation running until its conclusion,’ the professor said.

  ‘Claire,’ Elaine said, ‘please try and relax. They’re only pictures in your head—’

  ‘I don’t want to do this any more,’ Claire cried. ‘I can’t breathe.’ She coughed and wheezed, as if struggling for breath. ‘Oh God! He’s dragging me down an alley. He’s too strong. I can’t break free!’

  > …please…oh, God please…

  Claire closed her eyes again. She was shaking and tears were streaming down her face. ‘No…no…please don’t—’

  ‘Claire,’ Elaine said. ‘Claire?’

  Claire drew in a ragged breath. Then she screamed. She tried to sit up on the bed but the straps held her in place. She twisted and thrashed, the tendons on her arms and legs straining as she arched her back.

  > …no no no…please make it stop…please…please no more…I want to go home…please…please make it stop…

  ‘Professor,’ Elaine hissed through her teeth, ‘we need to drop the connection. Now, before she suffers permanent psychosis.’

  ‘Yes, very well, Elaine,’ the professor said. ‘I think we’ve extracted enough data from the current session.’

  Elaine tapped the Portal screen above the bed. ‘Claire?’ She rubbed Claire’s shoulder. ‘It’s all right. It’s over now, Claire.’

  The simulation ended abruptly, leaving Louisa staring at the list of Claire’s profile snapshots. What had been the point of it? Scaring the life out of a fifteen-year-old girl? And the calm, detached manner of the professor when Claire was in distress. It wasn’t just abhorrent, it was unnecessarily cruel.

  Louisa scrolled down the list. According to the timestamps there were two months unaccounted for before Claire died. Louisa tried searching again just using ‘Claire’ and then ‘Harris’ but the same profile match kept coming up.

  She debated whether or not to attempt a transfer of the profile simulation data out of the facility’s subnet. She could sync it with Dietrich’s profile, but Portal surely had security in place to prevent someone from doing that. It wasn’t worth the risk.

  It was hard not to feel disappointed. Even if she managed to extract the profile simulations, what did they prove, really? Dietrich was right. If Claire volunteered for the trials then Louisa doubted anything she’d seen in the simulation was illegal. Apart from the hint the neural link was potentially harmful, Louisa had seen nothing to implicate the professor or Portal in Claire’s death. How did she get all those wounds? Either the last two months worth of profile simulations had been deleted or she’d been transferred to another lab.

  Louisa stuck her head out into the corridor. It was empty. The guide light was patiently waiting. Apparently White Hat wasn’t done with her yet. She took a step towards the spot and it danced off down the corridor.

  She passed four more rooms before it finally stopped before a set of sliding doors identical to all the rest. Louisa held up her terminal.

  The neon blue overlay beside the doors
read: Adam Walsh - CTO.

  Benoit had taken over from his father when he died. Was he on the other side of the doors waiting for her? Is Benoit White Hat?

  Louisa took a deep breath and tapped the door release icon. They slid open and Louisa entered to find…no-one. The room was empty.

  She looked around in confusion. It was a room perhaps four times as large as the professor’s, empty apart from two Portal consoles spaced a few yards apart. The consoles were covered by plastic sheets; a thick layer of dust had accumulated on them. The room hadn’t been in use for a long time. Maybe since Adam Walsh had died.

  The doors slid shut behind her.

  Why did the guide light bring me here?

  One of the console screens flickered on. Louisa stared down at the terminal in her hand. She hadn’t touched it. She pulled off the plastic sheet and waved away the cloud of dust motes that filled the air.

  Text appeared on the screen. Open the pedestal drawer.

  Louisa tutted in annoyance. More games? She tapped a release icon and a drawer slid out from the pedestal. Inside was a pair of glasses, ear buds and several small plastic bottles containing tablets. There were no labels on the bottles to indicate what medicines they contained. The glasses were the ancestor device of the modern day Portal lenses. They were the one Portal product that never really took off. Apart from being highly unfashionable their wearers frequently ended up getting mugged for the devices or beaten up by people accusing them of surreptitious recording.

  Pair the glasses and ear bud and put them on.

  Louisa shook her head, bemused, but did as she was instructed.

  ‘Hello, Detective.’

  Louisa jumped at the voice in her ear. She frowned. It sounded familiar. ‘Who is this?’

  ‘Turn around.’

  In the middle of the room stood a man. He was staring at her with the same innocent, boyish grin she’d seen so many times on the Portal newscasts.

  ‘It’s good to finally meet you, Detective Bennett,’ said Adam Walsh.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  ‘Who are you?’ Louisa demanded.

  ‘My name is Adam—’

  ‘I know who you’re pretending to be. Adam Walsh is dead. You’re an AR projection. Who am I really talking to?’

  ‘Yes, I am as you say—dead. But I do continue to exist, in a certain capacity.’

  ‘So what did you do?’ Louisa said in a mocking tone. ‘Upload yourself to Portal?’

  ‘Actually, Detective, you’re not far off the mark.’

  ‘I don’t have time for this crap.’ Louisa looked around the room. ‘Whoever you are…this isn’t funny. I want to speak to you now, in person.’

  ‘You came here expecting to meet White Hat, I presume? Well, that’s me.’

  Louisa frowned. So she was speaking to White Hat.

  White Hat’s wry smile turned to laughter. ‘How did Ken react to my exposé of his Portal incursions? He wasn’t happy, I bet!’

  ‘Why did you bring me here?’ Louisa was losing her temper. ‘Is all this just a game to you?’

  White Hat’s smile slipped. ‘No, not a game, Detective. It’s very serious indeed. I took a great risk in reaching out to you. I apologise if my methods were somewhat, indirect.’

  ‘My profile hack, the Portal breach, they were all your doing?’

  ‘Yes. And with the singular purpose of facilitating this meeting. Although I’ll admit, the leaking of the Portal data did result in some unforeseen consequences.’

  ‘I wouldn’t call five deaths and a night of rioting unforeseen consequences!’ Never mind Jess ending up in hospital.

  ‘I’m afraid I had no other way of communicating with you. I couldn’t simply put a call request through to your profile. This is a high security facility we’re in with its own firewalled subnet. Any network traffic in or out is rigorously screened by automated Portal routines. Routines I helped design and create, I might add. Their efficacy was neatly demonstrated when they detected the Portal feed I instigated between Claire’s research profile and your own. I barely had enough time to cover my trail before the subnet was flooded with seek-and-find bots released to discover the transmission’s source.’

  ‘If you nearly got caught hacking my profile then why did you cause the Portal leak?’

  ‘A man shouting in a library attracts attention. Put him in a crowd of thousands crying out simultaneously and he becomes indistinguishable in the tumult. If I couldn’t openly communicate with you the best alternative was to bury the message in a such a large volume of harvested data only you would be able to find it.’

  ‘I still don’t buy it.’ Louisa shook her head. ‘There’s no way you could have coordinated the extraction of so much data from within this subnet and remained undetected.’

  ‘I didn’t instigate the breach from here.’ White Hat’s smile returned. ‘Do you know how many devices connected to the global web are susceptible to usurpation? Personal computers with unpatched vulnerabilities are legion, never mind private routers secured with default passwords, or ancillary devices like so-called Smart TVs. One of those devices might not be able to extract the leaked Portal data alone, but how about a botnet composed of ten million compromised devices?’

  Had Ed been right? All that trouble caused just so I could find my way here, now? White Hat studied her silently, seemingly content to wait for her. She was still having trouble wrapping her head around his claim he was Adam Walsh. Then again, he could have used the AR projection to become anyone he wanted. Any nameless disgruntled Portal techie would be a believable scapegoat for the breach, so why did he choose Adam Walsh to be his avatar?

  Louisa hadn’t known what to expect from White Hat, but she could never have imagined this. Either the projection she was speaking to was being controlled by a raving lunatic or—she couldn’t believe she was actually considering it—she really was speaking with a simulation of Adam Walsh. A simulation created using data obtained from the same experiment which killed Claire Harris.

  The simulation…he—it—whatever…continued to stare at her with the same measuring gaze. It made little difference who White Hat really was. She needed to find out what happened to Claire Harris. She could play along with his delusions, for now at any rate. ‘Do you seriously want me to believe you did all of this because of Claire Harris? Why would you go to so much trouble over the death of one young girl?’

  ‘How much do you know about the neural lattice project? Did Dietrich fill you in on all the details?’

  ‘He said it was supposed to be a replacement for the terminals.’

  ‘Yes, up to a point. The neural lattice was designed primarily as an interface with Portal, removing the need for handheld terminals entirely. At first we experimented with implanting nanoscopic filament arrays directly into the subjects’ brains to measure the electromagnetic wave forms produced by their firing neurons. However once Professor Keenan had perfected his neuron-based interface the quantity of discrete data we were able to detect and record increased dramatically. The only puzzle left to solve was the translation of the avalanche of data we were now receiving from the test subjects into a form we understood. It was at this point I decided to undergo the implant procedure myself. From the moment I was implanted we recorded and stored every shred of brain activity my neural lattice detected. It was this data set I worked with right up until my death.’

  ‘But Dietrich said the project was shut down because it was causing brain haemorrhages in the test subjects. You should know all about that, after all, having suffered the same fate.’

  If the words stung White Hat, he didn’t show it. ‘I personally ordered the cessation of human trials after the first death. But the experiment wasn’t entirely shut down. I continued to work on the final phase of the project. The project’s real goal, known only to a trusted few, to use the data set obtained from my lattice as a model for developing a replicated awareness.’

  Louisa frowned. ‘Replicated awareness? You mean an artificia
l intelligence?’

  ‘I prefer my term. I believe it more accurately captures the essence of what I am.’

  ‘You make it sound easy. So did you just press record on your thoughts and—hey presto, a new life form?’

  ‘Oh no,’ White Hat chuckled, ’it was infinitely more complicated. We first attempted to recreate a mind physically using Professor Keenan’s synthetic neurons. We found early on we could grow as many synthetic neurons as we liked, but even though we detected a large amount of inter-neuron activity, there wasn’t any evidence of an emerging consciousness. Neurons by their nature are sociable little blighters, they want to talk to each other, but we couldn’t get them to communicate in a coherent fashion. We even grew around eighty billion individual neurons at one stage—the same number as the human brain contains. We thought perhaps the quantity of the neurons might have some significance, that there was a critical mass needed before conscious thought originated. But in the end it had no effect. Instead we concentrated on modelling the neurons using software designed specifically to mimic their characteristics. Our breakthrough came when we successfully modelled a simplified version of the brain with all its constituent parts represented: the medulla, cortex etc. Once the simulated brain, or virtual mind as we named it, was given a form similar to our own brain, the synapses firing in the modelled neurons began to manifest discernible thought processes, albeit resulting in a mind with a much more animalistic state to our own. It reacted to external stimuli in an expected fashion, but it still had no true consciousness. Something was missing. An essence, if you will, that gives form and meaning to our thoughts.

  ‘Perhaps you were missing a soul.’

  White Hat grinned. ‘Ha! We had an intern on the project who suggested something similar. I sent him packing. I didn’t have any time to waste on ignorant superstition and religious mysticism. How many historic scientific advances would have remained undiscovered if the scientist had thrown up his or her hands when they reached a stumbling block and decided God was the reason behind why everything in the universe worked?’