Manipulator

by Thom Parsons

  He moved forward quickly, heading cautiously down the spiral staircase and towards the heart of the PRoGRaM team’s analytic base below him. The old staircase shook with every step he took. It felt like the entire thing was about to collapse underneath his weight.

  Time was of the essence here. He didn’t want to push his luck, and he certainly didn’t want to hang around any longer than he had to. Even though he knew the only PRoGRaM team at this base was out on a job, he just couldn't risk being caught here. It wasn’t like some of the FBI Special Projects Division's directors to just drop into one of their PRoGRaM Analytic Base’s at anytime, but it wasn’t an impossible situation. He was planning to be in and out of the base in a matter of minutes.

  Reaching the bottom of the stairs, he was met with yet another dark grey room, although this one was a little bit bigger than the one above him. The only difference was that in this room there was a huge, thick stainless steel door in front of him. Attached to the the wall to the right of it was a small card reader. He dropped down on one knee and opened up his briefcase on the floor, taking out a keycard and a few pieces of circuitry. He pulled a gun out casually from his briefcase and used its handle to gently nudge open the card reader, exposing its circuitry inside. Carefully, the man attached his pieces of circuit board to the corresponding places on the card reader, then ran his card down the relevant space.

  The light next to the door turned from red to green, and the huge steel slab door unbolted itself with a hiss. He didn’t bother putting the card reader back together, as it was a pointless and irrelevant task considering what he had come here to do. He closed up his briefcase, grabbing it from off the floor before stepping straight through the huge steel door that he had just unlocked. He took extra care not to shut it behind him, as he was going to need a way out, after all.

  Reaching into his pocket, the man pulled out his mobile phone. He dialled a number and brought the phone up to the side of his head as he walked across the huge expanse of space that was the main room of the PRoGRaM Analytic Base.

  “I’m here,” the man said quickly, skipping all courtesies once his boss on the other end of the line picked up the phone. “What do you want me to do?”

  He waited a few seconds for the answer from his boss, which was said seriously, and with a voice modulator, so that their identity was protected. Not even he knew who his boss was, and he didn’t want to ask questions. Questions could get you killed, as Owen and his team were about to find out…

  “Send them a message,” the voice on the other end of the phone said. They hung up, not one for wasting words.

  The man looked at the room around him as he continued to walk across its huge expanse, the heels of his fancy leather shoes clicking and echoing in the vast space around him with every step he took. It was a contrast to the dark and gloomy rooms that he had moved through to get here. This place was bright and inviting, even if most of the space was empty. Only a few desks were dotted around the base, the majority of which were extremely messy, covered in papers and pictures, holding the core research of a PRoGRaM team. He spotted on one desk that they had a picture of Marcus Ortega.

  My contact was right. They’re closing in.

  He moved swiftly across the room, past the PRoGRaM chairs and towards the security room at the far end of the complex, which he knew for a fact housed the interior CCTV. Lucky for him, he was also aware that these devices only pooled their data to be sent off-site once every twenty four hours, so removing their hard drives now would erase all traces of him ever entering this place.

  Entering the security office, he looked at the vast array of screens in front of him which displayed the CCTV from the entire base. The views ranged from the main central hub, to the empty underground garage and even extended up into the laundromat above them.

  Finding exactly what he was looking for hidden underneath a panel at the security station, he pulled all of the hard drives from the server and watched the screens showing the CCTV in front of him go blank. He threw all four of them into his briefcase that had earlier housed the equipment he had needed to get into this place. As he put the hard drives into his briefcase, he reached in and took another device out. Something a lot more sinister than anything else he carried.

  A wedge of plastic explosive.

  He man stood up and moved out of the security room, heading back towards the entrance that he came in from. It wasn’t the only way into to this place, but it was the most inconspicuous. As he walked through the main room and past some of the desks, he crouched down and stuck the plastic explosive to the underside of the nearest one to him. He then took a trigger circuit board out from his jacket pocket and pressed it firmly into the plastic explosive.

  Time to leave.

  He left the same way he came in, without bothering to close the heavy steel door behind him. In a burst of energy, he ran back up the rickety spiral staircase, back up towards the Laundromat. He reached the drab grey room at the top of the stairs, and instead of heading back out through the shop, he instead made his way through the storage room out back, and towards the rear exit of the building.

  Before he left, he used his briefcase to smash the glass fire alarm panel on the wall. There was no need for any innocent people to get hurt on his behalf. He felt like it was a touching gesture on his behalf. The man walked out the back door and into an alleyway, the cold winter breeze catching his bare skin and sending a shiver down his spine. It was time to get as far away from this place as possible. There was a storm coming, and he didn’t intend to be anywhere near it.

  Now, for Ethan Darkes, it was just a matter of time.

  Chapter Twenty Five

  Date: December 9th 2035

  Location: PRoGRaM

  “You know who I am?” Owen said in shock and surprise with his eyebrows raised and his mouth agape. Hearing Marcus say his own name back to him had instantly knocked him around inside a little bit. Marcus has no way of knowing who I am! But then again... If he’s linked to Annie's death, then of course he’s going to know me.

  “Yes and no,” Marcus replied slowly, turning his gaze back to fixate on the ocean rather than on Owen. “I know your name and your face, but… I don't know why,” he spoke matter-of-factly, with a hint of anger in his voice. It must have been the not knowing why that was killing him inside.

  “What’s happened to me?” he asked as he turned and looked directly into Owens eyes, almost pleading with all of his soul for an answer.

  “You’ve been in a car crash. You’re in a coma,” Owen said bluntly, not even trying to ease him into the answer. This man doesn’t deserve my sympathy. Not if he’s linked to Annie’s death…

  “This might be hard to take in, but I need you to believe me,” Owen explained. “None of this is real. Everything around us is fake. We’re in a computer generated world. This is hard to explain… but none of this is real Marcus. No matter how it looks, we’re all in a digital reality.”

  “I figured as much,” Marcus said as he took his glasses off. He sat in silence for a few seconds, rubbing his eyes with his free hand, taking it all in. You figured as much? Thought Owen. What can you possibly mean by that?

  “That damned machine,” Marcus muttered under his breath before he began to laugh quietly to himself.

  Owen was taken by surprise once again by hearing the words that came out of Marcus’ mouth. Something about this man that was sitting in front of him made Owen want to ask all sorts of questions. Kate watched the two of them intently, not wanting to interrupt the flow that they had going between them. Owen’s personal connection to all of this was paramount, and she didn’t want to get in his way.

  “You mean, you know about…”

  “PRoGRaM?” Marcus interrupted him, giving the answer before Owen finished his question. “I should hope that I have heard of it.”

  “How do you…”

  And then Marcus did it again, answering the question before Owen had finished speaking. But this time, Owen never
expected the answer that he was about to hear.

  “I invented it,” Marcus said.

  “You invented it?” Owen enquired quickly, repeating the mans words back to him. He desperately needed to know more than he had been told. Nothing this man was saying was making sense. Why would Marcus, the man who invented PRoGRaM, be caught up in a conspiracy to kill my wife?

  “To some extent,” Marcus continued. “But not on my own. I was a part of the original development team for it, back when it all started up a few years ago.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Before? I was a programmer working for Veridian. I worked mostly on their mapping systems. I looked after the entire project for a long, long time. And then a few years ago I was headhunted by someone… I don't remember who exactly. I can't remember for some reason? Anyway, it was to work on a special project for them, and I ended up being a part of the team that created this world, adapting it onwards from my original work at Veridian.”

  Owen nodded, taking in everything that he was hearing. “And since then?” he asked.

  “Early retirement,” Marcus answered with a slight smile. “Never had any reason to come back. I just wanted to travel the world. The real one of course, not this thing.”

  “Marcus. I need to know something. Do you know two other men, called Alex Morgan and Ethan Darkes?” Owen asked, trying to get some useful and relevant information out of the man. He wasn’t the type of person that Owen was expecting him to be, at least not so far anyway. Owen was under the impression that he was going to be one of the bad guys, purely because of his suspected involvement with Annie’s death. And the fact that he was holding a gun up to the back of another man's head in the street didn’t bode well as a first impression either.

  But, the Marcus before him wasn’t anything like his expectations. He was simply, a kind old man.

  “Maybe, I’m sorry, I really don’t remember,” Marcus replied.

  “What about a woman named Annie Archer?”

  Marcus turned his head slowly to look at Owen, as if the name rang some sort of alarm bell inside his head.

  “That name…” he started to say. You could see it plastered all over his face, Marcus was thinking deeply about it. “There was a place… Where something important happened. I can’t remember what exactly. But I’m sure that it was where all of this began. It was where our original PRoGRaM team worked. I can’t remember exactly, but I think something happened there.”

  He looked out to the sea as if it held all of the answers. “Annie Archer,” he said again, repeating her name seemed to be loosening some of those clogged up memories inside his head. “Something to do with that place and her name… seems familiar.“

  “Do you remember where it is?” Kate asked urgently, jumping into the conversation for the first time.

  “Of course my dear. I’ll never forget that place.”

  “Marcus,” Owen said, looking directly at him, his tone deadly serious. “I need you to take us there.”

  Chapter Twenty Six

  Date: December 15th 2035 (Present Day)

  Location: Unknown

  There was a gleaming look in Victoria’s eyes and a subtle smile on her face. Owen figured that she was beginning to put together the pieces of the story that he had told her so far. She broke her silence and spoke. “I remember that earlier, you told me that you met the creator of PRoGRaM. I see what you mean now. Marcus was the creator?”

  “One of them,” Owen answered.

  She nodded slowly. “And the others?”

  “You’ll find out who the others are in time,” he said. “We’re getting there, but do me a favour? Don't jump to conclusions and think you know the answers in advance, because trust me, you don’t.”

  Victoria gave him a hard look before she averted her eyes and glanced down at the table, making some notes on her pad before continuing the conversation. “Where did Marcus take you?”

  “The birthplace of PRoGRaM. Their headquarters. The place where the original PRoGRaM conception team worked and perfected the technology.”

  “How did he take you there?” Victoria asked.

  “It’s going to sound stupid, but he pointed it out on a map.”

  Victoria frowned at him, unsure of what to ask next. She didn’t quite understand, and Owen could see that just by looking at her. He chipped in and explained. “Even though we have the technology to go anywhere in the world. We still need to know where it is we’re going.”

  This time around, she understood where he was coming from. “And you just walked out of The White Room and into PRoGRaM’s HQ? Just like that?”

  “Just like that,” Owen repeated, clicking his fingers as he spoke. “This first time round, it took us a long time for Nick to find the building and an entrance point, because Marcus was the only one who knew where this place was.”

  “This first time, you say?” Victoria said, intrigued by his choice of words.

  “We had to go back there a few times. You’ll see.”

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  Date: December 9th 2035

  Location: PRoGRaM

  Marcus, followed closely by Owen and Kate, walked out of The White Room as a group and stepped into the entrance hall of the PRoGRaM Conception Team’s Headquarters. The place was mesmerising and absolutely grand in scale. It was an old building, a huge mansion from the 17th Century. A flight of stairs on either side of the hall led up towards the upper level. The ceiling, far, far, above them had a small circular stained-glass window smack bang in the centre of it, letting different coloured shades of light seep through. Mahogany furniture packed out the entrance hall, giving a real old-age feel to their surroundings.

  Owen walked slowly forwards, taking in the atmosphere, his footsteps echoing off of the marble floor which he walked over. He could almost smell the furniture too, the aroma of old wood around them. It was almost the only difference between the real world and the PRoGRaM world. Suffice to say, he was impressed.

  “I enhanced the design of this place,” Marcus said. “It was one of the first things that I set out to do after my team got the basic version of PRoGRaM up and running. I needed to test my skills out and see how real I could make things. This was my first project. To reconstruct an accurate, life-like headquarters.”

  “This is the most detailed room I’ve been in within PRoGRaM,” Owen said in amazement as he continued to walk about the room and touch some of the furniture. “It’s a whole new level of real.”

  “It’s incredible,” Kate agreed, sounding as awestruck as Owen did.

  “This way.” Marcus ushered them forward, using whatever piece of memory that he was still clinging onto to guide them through the enormous mansion. Together they moved down a corridor, walking endlessly towards the opposite end of the house. Just like the main entrance hall, the corridors were packed out with furniture, paintings and incredibly lifelike decor; It had everything that they would of expected in a house of this magnitude. Marcus turned a corridor and came to a door at the end. Cautiously, he reached out and pushed it open, stepping forwards into a large living room area. Dotted around were several leather sofas, and attached to the wall in front of them was a huge fireplace. Marcus found a nearby solo leather chair and sat himself down. Owen and Kate did the same, dropping themselves down together into a large three seater sofa nearby to where Marcus was sat.

  “This room,” Marcus said slowly, tapping the arm of the sofa with his finger. “This room is important.” He was searching himself for the answers, desperate to help Owen and his team in any way he could. If only he could access the right piece of his mind…

  Owen leaned forward from his chair. He was sitting on edge, eager to get the answers that he came here for. “Take all the time you need,” he said. On that note, Marcus leaned back into his single leather chair and closed his eyes.

  “Ah ah ha!” a voice erupted into the thin air around them. Owen and Kate both jumped at the sound of it. “It’s been too long my ol
d friend!” It was Marcus’ voice, yet at the same time… it wasn’t. He was still sat in his chair with his eyes closed.

  Owen suddenly realised what was happening.

  Marcus is projecting a past memory around us!

  But it wasn't happening in a conventional way. The man was only projecting the audio. He was only forcing out the voices that he had heard from whichever time he was thinking about. Owen sat back into his chair, his ears pricked up and alert. He watched Marcus intently as the man continued projecting his memory. Hopefully, some answers to the questions he never thought he’d be asking would come out of all of this.

  “… How have you been?”

  “… Of course, I never turn a drink down!”

  There were huge gaps in between the sentences that Marcus was speaking. It was as if he was talking to other people, but their voices just weren’t there.

  “… So, lets get down to business. What’s going on Ethan?”

  Ethan!

  There it was. Owen and Kate both turned to look at each other. One of the other names on Owen’s list! Finally, a connection between Marcus and the others, a promising development in this entire mess.

  But, what struck Owen as odd in all of this, was the fact that Marcus was only projecting one side of the conversation. This isn’t normal. Every time before this in which Owen had known someone to project their memory, they always got both sides of the conversation. Having Marcus only relay his side of it wasn’t right at all.

  Could it be attributed to the fact that he's in a coma? The thought crossed Owen’s mind, but he shook it away. Maybe. But this is too suspicious. It was too much of a coincidence that they couldn’t get the information that they came here for. It was just like… No. It can’t be true.