by Ian Hocking
Well well well after all these years! Im looking forward to seeing an old friend. Come into my parlour said the spider to the etc.
David rocked back, hugged his knees and stared at his oldest friend.
~
Later, he left the room, crossed the main laboratory, and entered the suite of immersion chambers. There were six of them arranged either side of a walkway. Their transparent doors were blackened but otherwise intact. The first one opened easily. David put his head inside and tried to inspect the vents in ceiling of the cubicle, but his helmet was too cumbersome. The visor’s alarm whooped as David broke the seal. Perfect darkness slid up. When, finally, he took a breath, he gagged on the air. It stank like an old incinerator. He looked again at the cubicle vents. They were clear. He put the helmet on the floor, imagining the spill of dust, and removed his clothes. His bare feet stepped on silky sediment. The chamber was no larger than a shower stall.
‘Ego, has the computer finished the diagnostic program on the fines in this cubicle?’
‘Yes. The diagnostic has been passed. The machine is safe.’
Next to the vents in the cubicle ceiling was a full-face mask. It slid down like a periscope. David turned aside as two decades of dust hissed out. When the apparatus was producing good air, he attached it to his head, which was now locked in relation to the cubicle. The door closed automatically. Next he heard a whine from above. A warm, viscous liquid poured on his head. White droplets covered his mask, and then his vision was obscured entirely by the deluge.
The liquid evaporated to a crumbling residue, which soon lifted from his naked body as though blown by a wind from below. It formed a swirling, buffeting storm. Each microscopic mote in that mist was a ‘fine’: a smart particle not unlike a bumble bee in appearance. The uncountable billions of fines could move according to instruction and induce temperature through friction. They were a haptic cloud of edges, shapes, and objects. They created the solidity, texture and danger of physical reality.
David watched some log-file text slide across the internal screen of the mask.
‘My voice is my passport,’ he said. ‘Verify me.’ The computer heard the keyword and checked his voice against a database. Its essential components had not changed in twenty years.
The log-file text was replaced by an epic vista. As always, its beauty staggered him. The image was rendered on a screen with pixels so small his eyes could not discern them individually.
He was looking over the ocean of Onogoro. The dawnlit waves at his feet lapped against a sugar-white shore. The grains beneath his feet were virtual surfaces created at whim by the fines; but the feeling was like coming home. It conjured a sudden, painful nostalgia for glory days.
A virtual square appeared. On it was a user interface. One icon would summon The Word, the programming language that controlled the universe. He moved his virtual hand over this panel and a blue dot appeared beneath his index finger. He hesitated over ‘shut down’. A gesture would stop the program. It would send him back into the real world forthwith. He could not guess where it would send Bruce.
He touched another icon. It was a picture of his younger self. His old account.
‘Professor,’ said Ego, ‘the low-frequency transmitter has received a response from McWhirter. He seems upset.’
‘Go on.’
‘I will paraphrase. He knows about the fire that destroyed your home in Oxford this morning, and wants you to cease all activity while an emergency shaft is sunk to remove you from the laboratory.’
‘How long do I have?’
‘The estimate is one hour. McWhirter already has the equipment on site. Do you have a reply?’
‘Tell him to go fuck himself. No need to paraphrase.’
Chapter Seven
David rushed into the image of the ocean and shore, which blurred away as though he had been accelerated to the speed of sound. He flew over lakes and trees, through mountain passes never seen, across waterfalls, into grasslands and desert, over ice floes and volcanic islands. Night fell in seconds. He slowed, felt vertiginous, and landed in a tropical glade. The mimetic cloud of fines rendered the springy crunch of the undergrowth perfectly. Experience told him not to imagine his real body. He made a mental effort to place himself here, now, walking in the woods: its strange blue fronds; its dampness; its predators. Onogoro had no moon, but he could adjust the brightness using the command console. Doing so, he walked on through this alien world. Its plants were blue, not green, and typically angular. Through breaks in the canopy, he saw a snow-smudged mountain. The peak was bright with dawnlight. Was he being watched?
If a race of intelligent beings had evolved in this universe, and developed science, their physicists would discover that matter is continuous, not discrete. Their astronomers would find that their planet is the only planet, their star the only star. They would correctly place themselves at the centre of the universe. Should they build a computing machine, it would never outrun the computer that ran their universe: and what, indeed, would they hypothesize the limiting factor to be? God?
The ground inclined. Ahead, David saw a cabin that had been modelled on an Alaskan hunting lodge from a hiking magazine and, by dint of Word, conjured. It overlooked the lower forest. David turned to the vista. The valley throat opened at the east and he could see the mist of a waterfall and a double rainbow in the opening eye of sunrise.
It began to rain.
‘Quite a view,’ called a man.
Bruce Shimoda, whose rat-smothered body was lying only metres from David in the abandoned laboratory, stepped from the cabin. He wore a haphazard patchwork of fronds and looked like a survivalist. The computer had used the instructions in his DNA to forge this body anew in zeroes and ones, so he was twenty years old once more and bearded. Yet there was a greater, unplaceable difference.
David said, ‘I didn’t know about the fancy dress code.’
Bruce smiled. ‘That’s rich, coming from a giant, sparkling bogey.’
The difference: His eyes were clear and steady. Bruce Shimoda, blind in the outside world, could now see.
~
Bruce stirred the fireplace. His feet rested on the rump of a grizzly bear rug, a photographer’s idea of a lodge accessoire. The kitschery continued with tasselled lamps, a mahogany bar, shotguns, and mounted animal heads.
David moved towards the fire. He felt the fines mimic its temperature. He was reminded of McWhirter. ‘I’ve got about half an hour, Bruce. Can we talk?’
‘I jinxed the room. It’s encrypted.’
‘For you, maybe. McWhirter could be listening at the door to my immersion chamber.’
‘Jesus, is he still alive?’
‘And kicking, you bet.’
Bruce sighed. ‘How much do you know, David?’
‘Not much. Our mutual friend, whoever she is, told me to accept the summons to Scotland, which I did. She told me my house would go up in smoke, and it has. I know I have a job to do.’
Bruce leaned on his hand. He coughed with a scraping sound that David associated with the pneumonia cases of his junior doctoring days. When the fit passed, Bruce looked up. There were red flecks on his teeth.
‘I’m infected, mate. On Onogoro, we’ve got all kinds of animal—analogues of them, anyway—from birds and fish to viruses. I wasn’t born in this world. I have no history of exposure. My immune system hasn’t been toughed up. Vaccinated.’
‘The program I wrote should have compensated, but it was never tested.’
‘Me. The test pilot. The dog in orbit.’
David’s tired eyes dropped to the floor.
‘Dave?’ said Bruce.
‘What?’
‘I’m dying. But.’
‘But what?’
‘I haven’t seen hills and trees for forty years.’
‘Was it worth the wait?’
‘Every second.’
The estranged friends watched each other.
‘Bruce, talk to me.’
‘I’m already dead. Unplug me, I die. Shut down the computer, I die. The computer has me by the balls.’
David drifted to the edge of the room. Rain sizzled at the pane. He ran his hand along the sill. He withdrew it quickly and looked at the palm. A droplet of blood grew from the hair-line wound. He made a fist and looked again at the edges. They did not precisely align. The exposed planes were infinitely sharp.
‘What does this have to do with our mutual friend? The woman who summoned me here?’
‘I won’t know until you’ve done the deed.’
‘The deed?’ David sighed. ‘How did it get it to be twenty years, Bruce?’
‘Time gets what it wants.’
‘Meaning what?’
There was a distant boom.
‘Did you hear that?’ asked David. He looked into the rain.
‘Nope.’
‘If you didn’t, it must be McWhirter’s men. They’ve blasted through. Who is she, Bruce?’
‘All will be well.’
David heard breaking glass, but the cabin window remained intact. It was the immersion chamber smashing. Abruptly, the scene shifted. Somebody was trying to remove the mask from his face.
‘Bruce,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. For the time.’
Bruce pointed at his eyes and then at David.
‘See you later, alligator.’
Chapter Eight
David surfaced in the interstitial moments, gasping, his vision blurred. The memories of childhood holidays around the beaches of Padstow—deep water—were hard against him. He tried to wipe his eyes but his wrists were bound to his chair. He slumped asleep. Woke again. Slept. Troughs of anxiety. Peaks of fear. David rolled through the minutes.
‘David Proctor,’ said McWhirter, as though distracted by a certain music in his name.
A nurse.
A nurse moved away from David’s arm, where she had stopped to tend something.
To adjust.
A drip.
‘Mc,’ David said. ‘Whirter.’ His voice was crumbly, flawed.
‘That will be all.’
‘What will be?’
‘I’m not talking to you.’
David felt the nurse leave the room. She closed the door with the care of a butler.
‘I feel sick.’
‘The old research centre is not a healthy place to linger.’
‘No, sick of you.’
McWhirter laughed, and David focused on his moustache. Brush-like.
‘Look around,’ said McWhirter.
He was in an empty luggage store. Still in the hotel, then. A blank table separated him from his interrogator. He noted the clear, hanging bag and tried to guess which chemicals it contained, but the only memories at his recall were sentimental. His father painting the house with a brush like McWhirter’s moustache. Two-tone. Black and white. His daughter as a girl, drawing a house on sugar paper.
‘Beautiful, Jenny. Do you think you can draw it without taking your crayon from the paper? Good girl. And can you do it again without tracing the same line twice. Jenny? Hey, clever girl.’
‘How long have I been in here?’
‘Let’s start at the beginning. Why did you come, Proctor?’
‘You invited me as a consultant.’
‘Why? Isn’t there another reason?’
‘To talk to Bruce. To find out why he came. Is he still down there?’
‘Yes. Why?’
Jenny asking, ‘Why?’ and David answering over and over, each explanation a cheerful retreat, until he backed into atoms, to orbits, quarks, the Higgs field.
‘I’ll tell you everything if you’ll tell me one thing.’
‘Let me guess. You want to know if the research centre has been evacuated.’
A sucking, heavy despondency pulled at him. What did McWhirter know? What drugs had they given him?
‘Why?’ asked Jenny.
‘Yes.’
‘Looking for this?’
McWhirter held Ego in his fingers.
‘Fuck.’
‘My security staff found enough explosive in the core of this computer to finish the demolition job on your laboratory. You weren’t happy with the destruction you caused the first time. You wanted a second go. But why this? You would have killed your friend, man.’
‘The Onogoro computer needs to be destroyed.’
‘Listen to me, David. See that drip? You’re on the cusp of irreversible brain damage. You’ll feel the lights going out, one by one. Now. Why destroy Onogoro?’
‘To stop…’
‘Concentrate. Who?’
‘Hartfield.’
‘What does it have to do with Hartfield?’
‘And to kill Bruce.’
‘Bruce is your friend.’
‘Dead anyway. Viruses.’
McWhirter flashed his knuckles across David’s forehead.
‘Wake up. How did you expect to get away with it?’
David licked his lips sleepily. ‘Relied on a weakness.’
‘What weakness?’
‘You.’ David opened his eyes. Woke in this gap between moments. ‘As head of security in 2003, you failed. Now, in 2023, you will fail again.’
‘Talk to me.’
‘You’re a one-trick pony. I knew you would order a fast search of the laboratory, find the card, and wave it in front of me. But think. How could I, above ground, expect to communicate with a computer in the research centre?’
‘A timer,’ said McWhirter.
‘Then why would I ask if the centre had been evacuated? The logical solution, Colonel, is two computers. The Ego unit in your hand has already interfaced with the local ELF transmitter. Now it is ready to trigger the second Ego unit I hid somewhat more expertly. Is this not true, Ego?’
‘Yes, Professor,’ said the card.
McWhirter held his stare. ‘You have control, Proctor. I concede that. Now easy. Think about it.’
‘Get fucked.’
Ego bleeped. ‘Ignition signal transmitted, Professor.’
‘David, you understand that nothing will be the same again?’
‘I understand.’
The explosion came like a croak of thunder. The table buzzed against the metal band of McWhirter’s watch. He did not move his eyes from those of David, and when a uniformed officer returned with news of smoke from the evacuation shaft, McWhirter spoke in his ear before resuming the interrogation.
The minutes collected. David watched the questions pass. They did not touch him. He smiled and remembered the questions of his daughter.
Jenny asking, ‘Why?’
Chapter Nine
Berlin
The FIB equipment division had given Saskia a standard issue outfit for women field agents: black trouser suit with a short, double-breasted rain jacket. They had thrown in ankle boots. In these, Saskia was now was walking Berlin. With the wind in the north-east, she looked at the Brandenburg Gate and wondered if her memory of passing beneath it was implanted. Greened steel horses looked east. Saskia turned too. Pariser Platz stretched out. A drum skin. Her eyes dropped to a human street cleaner. He was too distant for her to see his epaulettes. She thought, again, of the Soviet memorial to the west.
I know what Soviet means, at least.
I know what meaning means.
The Gate’s sad blocks, its darkness, its gold lettering: these said nothing to her. What did those with memory read in the stones?
Her coat was swept open by the wind. It exposed the dark handle of her gun in its pancake holster. She gathered the coat about her, embarrassed, and walked towards the shadow of the Gate. She collided with a man. He took her wrist and said, ‘Seien Sie vorsichtig, Frau Kommissarin.’ The Russian accent was strong like his grip. He opened and closed an FIB badge.
‘Klutikov?’
~
Coffee in a dark, long room where flowers in wire spirals sagged across the tables. Amaretti biscuits. Coffee with her past in the form of an overtall man cal
led Klutikov—FIB, Moscow Station. He had a translucent raincoat. It hung now behind them on an antique coat stand. Saskia’s jacket remained in place. It covered her holster, her speedloader and her shape as a woman before the eyes of the man who could thumb through her identity at will. Coffee with memory. Klutikov licked sugar from his palm.
‘Cigarette?’ he asked.
‘Here?’
‘It’s the only place.’
‘I don’t smoke.’
‘Take one. Draw it beneath your nose. Now. Want a cigarette?’
‘God, yes.’
He laughed as he put the lighter to the cigarette. Saskia saw something important in its golden reflection, but he withdrew it before she could trace the source of her curiosity. The smoke left her mouth slowly. She spread out in her chair.
‘Better?’
‘Sure.’
He showed her his empty palm. Then he touched his fingertips in order: ‘One, no names, ever. Two, after this coffee, you forget you saw me. Three, smile.’
Saskia blushed. She drank some coffee. It was ashy, like the cigarette.
‘Any synaesthesia?’ asked Klutikov.
‘What’s that?’
‘You never need to ask that kind of question again. Ask yourself.’
‘What?’
‘Do it.’
What is synaesthesia?
An answer entered her head. It had a fundamental strangeness that took her a moment to identify: it did not use the same voice as her thoughts.
Synaesthia, in this context, is the experience of sensation in a modality that did not trigger the initial sensation. For example, a voice might be described as ‘crumbly, yellow’.
‘What was that?’
‘Intel. Don’t worry about it. The important thing is that you haven’t had any synaesthetic experiences. It’s an indicator that the operation went wrong.’
