The Creative Sponge

by Andy Marlow

  Chapter 13

  Two weeks, three days ago

  Kathy awoke in a cupboard.

  The noise of sirens had roused her. They were loud and brash and deafening and seemed to be coming from all around her with no specific place of origin. They were like no other sirens she had heard before: like a mix between bedroom alarm clock and police cars.

  Her first sensation was just how uncomfortable she was. This being a cupboard- presumably a broom cupboard- she found herself lying on many odd misplaced things. A hammer was sticking into her thigh and her shoulder was cramped by what felt like a broom handle. She could not be sure, though: this being a cupboard, there was no light. She could merely feel her way around and try to make sense of her whereabouts.

  There were shelves above her. She groped at them and painfully pulled herself up. Aches and pains covered the whole of her body from goodness knows what. Having fallen asleep in a comfortable bed, she could only assume that her sleeping form had been moved in the night to wherever she now was, and that her many bruises had come from being mistreated on the journey.

  A tiny sliver of light penetrated through the crack between the door and doorframe. She moved her face close to it and peered through, but was unable to see much. All she could tell was that the light seemed artificial and, given that her eyes were not used to light, having spent who knows how long in a pitch black cupboard, blinding.

  Her ear was pressed to the door, yet she could hear little over the sound of the sirens. She could just about make out feet dashing to and fro; voices calling out indistinct cries of alarm and instruction. For the moment, then, silence was her friend, for her only guess was that TGN had somehow dumped her in Cybertech’s headquarters and that it was from here that she would have to begin her mission.

  What that mission was, however, remained a mystery. Douglas had used the word ‘spying’. Kathy remembered him also mentioning the contact lens cameras and suddenly became conscious of something floating in each of her eyes. Escape would be difficult, then, for TGN could see her every move. At any rate, it was somehow comforting to know that someone knew where she was. On the other hand, it was not comforting to know that the person who did know was an employee of an organisation whose motives were still unknown and evidently hostile to her own interests.

  She tried to make herself relatively comfortable in her cupboard until the commotion outside stopped. Soon the footsteps subsided, although voices were still audible from several rooms away. Snippets of urgent conversations were carried to her through the air, in which words like “intruders” and “TGN” were used in panicked tones.

  It suddenly occurred to her that she was alone in this cupboard. She had thought that Thomas and Gregory would also be forced into spying for TGN, but they were nowhere to be seen. Perhaps they had been dropped off elsewhere, or begun without her. Or, perhaps, they were working with TGN to deceive her. She could not be sure of anything anymore.

  The sirens lasted for what seemed like hours. Kathy entertained herself with her thoughts while she was waiting. It was almost comfortable to be sitting there in her cupboard, finally free from the stress and trauma that her life had become. The darkness was like a friend providing her with rest and comparative peace, if only for a brief time before she would, inevitably, be forced to leave her cupboard.

  Eventually, the alarm ended. A flurry of heavy footsteps proceeded past her and then for ten minutes there was silence.

  She had waited to ensure the coast was clear. Once she established that it was, she had but one thought: escape.

  The cupboard door was stiff and difficult to open. Thankfully, however, it was not locked. A good shove forced it and she found herself in a brightly lit corridor reminiscent of what people in the 1980s thought the future would look like. The silver, metallic walls had the word “Cybertech” emblazoned on them at regular intervals with a logo of a robotic arm clenched into a fist just beneath the lettering.

  Kathy felt exposed. Luckily she was alone in the corridor and could hear no movement or voices in the vicinity. She had been worried that her banging the door open would have alerted someone of her presence, but nobody was there to notice: she was safe, for now.

  Yet she was still lost. She had no idea where she was in the Cybertech building and no way of knowing how to get out. With only blind chance as her guide she decided to turn left and walk.

  What was conspicuous immediately was the complete lack of windows. It felt as if she were in an underground maze or labyrinth or prison. It was not so bad here, for the lights were so dazzling that she had no need to natural sunlight, but she could not help wondering why all these secretive organisations hired such shoddy interior designers.

  About every fifty paces down the corridor were doors on both sides. Her journalistic instinct kicked in and, despite her need to escape, the curiosity within her was irresistible and she had to look at what was on the other side of them.

  Each door had a small, square window about head-height through which Kathy could peer. In each room, Kathy saw the same thing: a bed, exactly the same as the design she had seen on Douglas’ presentation the day before. Each one had restraints and wires leading from a headset into the wall. Some of them were not yet in use but, as Kathy darted from one room to the next inspecting her surroundings, some already had occupants.

  The people strapped into these beds appeared peaceful. They were clearly unconscious and wore a blank expression on their faces. Kathy even wondered if they were dead, until she spied the gentle rise and fall of a breathing chest in each case. Yet it looked as if all personality or individuality had been drained from them, and not just because they all wore the same uniform hospital overalls: their faces appeared empty, unused, uninhabited. It is a strange phenomenon to write on paper and probably difficult to imagine.

  Kathy had gone so far and must have reached her eighth room before she recognised anyone in particular in the beds. In a room marked “15” she gazed in through the window and saw the round face and muscular form of Gregory. He was restrained on the bed but struggling. A man in a white suit stood over him with a syringe and a leery smile.

  She stepped to her side a little to hide herself. Her face had been clearly visible in the window and she feared that she had been seen. However, the man in white and Gregory were too engrossed in their struggle to notice the woman looking through the door: now, only her eye was showing, and barely. She continued to watch the events in the room as they unfolded.

  The man in white leaned towards Gregory. His podgy, leering face appeared quite creepy, even from a distance- he could have been uttering a stereotypical evil cackle and it would not have been out of place. Gregory, for his part, was not lying still. His previously frozen look of permanent fear had melted, and his face was a fascinating, undulating picture of dynamic terror: his eyes were wide, his mouth was agape and he was bellowing swear words and curses with his whole heart. The man in white was unperturbed, however. He said something before plunging the needle into Gregory’s arm, but Kathy could not make out the words.

  Kathy’s eye darted to the other side of the room. She could not bear to look as her new friend was victimised in this way. She had not found Thomas yet and couldn’t bear to think about what may be happening to him, either- or what must have happened to them both while she was still unconscious. On the right wall of the room, she spied what appeared to be a projection of complicated-looking diagrams and images: wave-lines undulating up and down, cell diagrams, and, most disturbingly, a view of the man in white’s face as he stood over Gregory. Presumably they had somehow tapped into the camera contact lenses that TGN had given to Gregory- or maybe they could simply enter his perception and see what he was seeing anyway.

  She turned away and did not want to look anymore. Whatever had happened to Gregory, she could do nothing- it had already been done. At best, she could escape, report her findings to the police and hope they come to investigate and rescue her friends.

  Her atte
ntion suddenly turned to her clothes. She realised that she had been lucky so far, but that if anybody saw her she would stand out like a sore thumb: in a company staffed by people in white coats, a woman wearing jeans and a black shirt would not fit in at all.

  Her head swivelled around seeking anywhere she could find a white coat to borrow. She darted down the corridor peering in every room, hoping to find one with a spare lab coat- but no luck.

  Presently a door slammed behind her and she darted into the nearest empty room to hide. She poked her head around the corner and saw the man in white leaving room 15. He was a long way back now, for Kathy had run a long way down the corridor since leaving Gregory’s room, and luckily he turned right rather than left: he therefore had his back to Kathy and did not see her. Crucially, he did not have his lab coat on. Instead he was now wearing a simple white shirt.

  The idea struck Kathy like an obvious lightning bolt. She ran back to room fifteen and darted inside. The lab coat was left on the back of a chair in the corner. She tried it on, and it was a perfect fit- although she noted that the name badge might be a problem. On the left lapel was a strip of plastic with the words “Doctor Earnest Jones” emblazoned thereon. She tried to pull it off, but it was sewn on and impossible to remove. Kathy winced, for if anybody read it they would instantly realise she was a fake- nevertheless, from a distance she would not be suspected.

  The coat covered entirely her shirt and most of her jeans. Feeling slightly more secure now, she approached Gregory. Whatever he had been injected with had worked fast. He was unconscious, or maybe even comatose. His face resembled those of the other patients she had seen in that all identity had been stripped of it. His body looked like an empty shell.

  The beige wall behind his head still displayed the projected computer screen she had seen earlier. The diagrams, graphs and charts bordered the image and in the middle was curious footage of a man walking down a busy street in London during rush-hour. It was as if she were looking through his eyes. She became fascinated for a minute or two and watched as he turned to look at the tube station he had just left before continuing down the street. Whether this was a live image or not, she could not tell- in fact, it occurred to her that she did not know what time it was anyway. The weather and light on screen indicated that it was morning, and the man was going to work.

  Her mind began to think- what did this video footage mean? Previously, when the screen had shown the view of Doctor Jones leaning over Gregory, she had assumed it was footage of what Gregory was seeing. Yet Gregory was now unconscious, comatose- was this his dream, then?

  Such questions did not trouble her for long, for she realised: if the screen had been left on, Doctor Jones may be returning soon. And if that were so, he would either catch her or discover that his coat had been stolen. Either way, the alarm would be raised and her chances of escape would be dashed.

  She wanted to escape. Yet something inside her prevented her from leaving without her friend. Even though she did not know him and could not even be sure whether to trust him, she could not simply leave a fellow human being in his condition. Her first act was to try to untie him. Releasing him from his restraints was comparatively easy, but there remained the question of the wires and drip-feeds connected to his body. Kathy hesitated. As much as she wanted to rescue her friend, she did not know what these tubes were doing for him. For all she knew they might be keeping him alive.

  The grey machine connected to the wall was monitoring his heart-rate and blood pressure. That much was clear to Kathy, but she could not decipher what specifically the graphs it displayed and noises it made meant. The number “146” kept on flashing in a display in the top-right of the console, and she had no idea whether that was a good thing or a bad thing. She bit her lip and pulled out a tube connected to Gregory’s arm, but as she did so a piercing alarm began to sound and the machine began to light up like a Christmas tree. She feared that the whole floor would hear her and come running. As quickly as she could, therefore, she reinserted the drip. The alarm fell silent and she reluctantly fled, making a mental note to call the police for Gregory’s sake as soon as she managed to make her escape.

  Her strides were long and fast. She could not risk running, for that would arouse suspicion if she were to meet anybody on the way, but her current pace would have made her appear like a busy worker on her way to an important task. People would look at her and nod approvingly at how industrious she was, little aware that she was actually an intruder trying to escape.

  The corridors were a maze. After the one, long corridor she had until now been traversing, she reached a junction with at least five possible turnings and no helpful signs. She wondered how the employees here could ever find anything in the building- or perhaps this was not a serious building, but rather a labyrinthine maze built solely for her torment. Yet that seemed unlikely.

  She took the third right and ended up at another junction where she chose the second left. When she reached the next junction after that, she went straight on; at the following junction, the first right. These were all complete guesses based on blind, baseless hunches and she had no idea where she was going. Each corridor was identical: empty, shiny and lined with rooms identical to the one Gregory had been restrained in. The only distinguishing features were the numbers on the doors to the rooms and they went on to ridiculous extremes: presently she was dashing past room number 275. She was baffled. She had not descended or ascended any flights of stairs, nor had she used any lifts or elevators- yet the building she had been shown on Douglas’ slide projection had looked completely typical, and a completely typical office block could not house a floor of such epic and mind-bending dimensions.

  It was horrifying, too, that Cybertech had so many rooms dedicated to doing to countless others whatever they were doing to Gregory. Now she was passing room 333- what kind of operation were they carrying out here? Whatever it was, it could not be good, for the patients were by no means willing volunteers.

  After half an hour of dashing through deserted corridors in this crazy maze, she finally found something hopeful: a lift. Sliding steel doors had never looked so inviting or appealing. She practically sprinted towards it and pressed the ‘down’ button, eagerly awaiting her ride to freedom.

  The lift emitted a disappointing buzz when she pressed the button. It was clear that it would not operate for her, unless- but of course. Her heart sank. To the right of the ‘up’ and ‘down’ buttons were various security measures, including a retina scanner and a sensor in which one would swipe an ID card. She fumbled around in the pockets of her stolen jacket, but with no success. Doctor Jones had not left his ID card simply lying around. Besides, even if he had, she would never have been able to pass the retina scan.

  She stood there listlessly for a minute. She was not even thinking anymore, for it seemed pointless: escape was, indeed, not an option. TGN had sent her there with no intention of her ever getting out. Her mind was simply numb by now and she sank into the not unpleasant sensation of feeling nothing: no pain, no fear, no despair, but simply a resignation to the fact that she would be caught, restrained, injected and… whatever happened then. TGN claimed that Cybertech had been responsible for what had happened to Thomas, yet she did not fully comprehend what had happened to him. Nevertheless, whatever that was, it would probably be happening to her.

  “Hey!” a voice called behind her. “You’re late!”

  She span around on the spot and saw that the person addressing her was a young woman in a white coat. She was blonde, fresh-faced and tanned, with an infectious smile. Kathy merely stared back at her with a bewildered expression.

  “Come on!” she called cheerily and dashed off through a door to her right.

  Kathy chose to follow. After all, she had nothing else to do, and this woman appeared to have been fooled by her disguise. She was treating Kathy like an employee there rather than like an escaped fugitive.

  Through the door was yet another corridor, though shorter. At
the end was a pair of double doors through which Kathy’s guide was presently dashing.

  Kathy followed and found herself in an enormous auditorium. Her guide beckoned her to sit next to her near the back of the theatre in an empty row of seats.

  “I’m so excited,” she chimed merrily. “Most people my age don’t even have a job- and look at us! On the cutting edge of science, listening to someone as famous as Doctor Earnest Jones!”

  Kathy froze. Evidently their lecturer was some sort of expert, eminent in his field and idolised by the staff- and she had stolen his coat. She nervously hid her name badge and smiled sheepishly at her newfound friend, hoping she would be too star-struck to notice.

  The pair of them had walked in late. Doctor Jones, the man Kathy had seen leering over Gregory, was standing before them in the middle of a lecture he had already begun before they had entered. The lecture theatre was huge. To Kathy, Doctor Jones appeared to be the size of an ant. She could only hope that she was similarly tiny and unnoticeable to him.

  “…using Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious,” he had been saying when Kathy had entered. She had walked in at the end of his sentence, and subsequently struggled to understand what he was talking about. Nevertheless, she listened: his speech may give her clues about what had happened to her and her two friends, and about how to escape from this terrible place. “We have already used our Cortical Manipulation Matrix to control, move and, well, manipulate individual minds, but this new development will allow us to do the same to collective minds. During the 1950s, Carl Jung worked with a physicist called Wolfgang Pauli to investigate whether electromagnetic fields could explain the phenomenon of the collective unconscious. Unfortunately their work was never completed. We, however, have gone down a similar route and found success.”

  “We used the theory of Quantum Brain Dynamics to discover that human consciousness is experienced through the action of a cortical field on the water within neurons in the brain,” he continued. “We used that to create the Cortical Manipulation Matrix and to move people’s minds into different bodies. It has created some interesting, if morally dubious, results. What we have recently discovered, however, is that this cortical field exists everywhere. It defines the human experience. If we can manipulate individual minds, then that is interesting- but if we can manipulate everyone’s mind collectively, at the same time… well, that is true power.”

  Kathy could barely follow what he was saying, but it sounded sinister. The scientific terms went right over her head. Nevertheless, she was able to understand the implications of what he was saying and they horrified her.

  “We have already conducted an experiment into its possibilities and, let me tell you, it has shown promise. Is Kathy Turner in the room?”

  Suddenly a spotlight shone on her seat in the back of the auditorium and two burly security guards appeared just behind her. They did not lay a finger on her, but did not need to: she understood clearly that leaving was not an option.

  “Welcome to Cybertech Industries, Kathy Turner!” Doctor Jones called out. The whole theatre broke out in spontaneous applause. Kathy looked to her side and saw the woman who had led her in here clapping enthusiastically and smiling relentlessly. Their eyes met: Kathy’s, scared and confused; those of her guide, jealous and joyful. It was like she were some kind of celebrity rather than an intruder or captive. The whole situation was surreal in the extreme.

  Kathy nervously began to descend the steps to the stage where Doctor Jones was waiting with open arms.

  Her blood ran cold. A sense of doom started to flow through her body, beginning in her centre and slowly engulfing her as she neared her smiling nemesis. This was the beginning of the end, she was sure. A strange sensation took over her mind as if she were a mere observer in her own life. She felt like she were simply an audience member sitting in a cinema in her head, watching her own life and having no say over her choices or actions. She knew this was merely her dissociating from her own life to avoid dealing with the horrific reality of it all. A more extreme version of this same phenomenon would have resulted in full blown multiple personality disorder, whereby her mind would revert to a childlike state and create a brand new, independent personality in her head, who would have her own memories and her own experiences.

  Her thoughts went on like this was she walked. She wondered through her life, her interests, her hobbies. She began thinking about deep questions such as: do horses ever get annoyed by flies? And: how is it that hair can clean itself after six weeks? She sought for anything, anything with which she could escape the inescapable.

  She had reached the bottom of the steps. The podgy face of the man beckoning her was but metres away now, and he was smiling at her in a friendly manner. She was not fooled, though. She knew this was a smile like that of Douglas: borne solely out of the security of knowing that he had full control over his quarry.

  Now on the stage, Kathy turned and smiled sheepishly at the audience. The applause had ended now and they were staring in her direction with mere stony silence and serious concentration. They were not interested in her, of course: everyone here was intrigued as to why Doctor Jones had invited an intruder down to the stage like a special guest, rather than simply calling security half an hour ago and sending her to the basement. Doctor Jones seemed happy to see Kathy, so his audience had followed suit and applauded her; indeed, anybody here would kill to be invited on stage with an idol like Doctor Jones. Kathy did not yet understand why they idolised him so. Nevertheless, the atmosphere of applause had descended into one of curiosity and serious contemplation. It was even more unnerving for Kathy. It was like being a gladiator in the coliseum being watched by an eager crowd, who was waiting with baited breath for the moment when she would be mauled to death by a lion.

  “My coat, please,” beckoned Doctor Jones curtly. His annoyance was impossible to disguise, so Kathy did his bidding and handed it over. It was no use to her now, anyway.

  When he had received his coat, his mood rapidly improved.

  “Welcome once more, Kathy Turner!” he shouted out and extended his arms wide like a circus performer introducing the main act. The auditorium burst out once more in surreal applause, but only for a brief moment.

  “Now, Kathy, would you mind describing to us what has been happening to you in the past several days?” he asked cheerily.

  Kathy merely opened and closed her mouth like a lost fish. She had no idea what was going on here or why she was here.

  “But of course- you’re shy!” yelled the talented showman, and the audience gave a little chuckle. “I shall tell them for you, and maybe you’ll learn something.”

  The showman attitude disappeared and he became once more the serious, learned lecturer. He began to talk once more, but in a way that Kathy could understand. It was clear that everyone in the room already understood the science- incomprehensible to Kathy- and that this explanation was mainly for Kathy’s benefit, although it also served to document the results of an experiment which would be of interest to the audience.

  “Our story begins when our dear friend Thomas Wilson disappeared,” he began. Kathy shot him a confused glare. Clearly these people already knew about Thomas Wilson. She guessed that his case was an already much discussed one and all doubt in her mind as to Cybertech’s involvement with Thomas’ disappearance vanished in an instant. “Of course, that situation has come full circle now. We knew it would happen, but not quite how. Luckily TGN sent a man named Gregory Smith to us so we’ve plugged him in to one of our machines.”

  “I’ll explain how these work later, darling,” he said as a quiet aside to Kathy. “But it is not relevant for the present lecture.”

  “Kathy, being a good friend, went in search of Thomas. But- quelle horreur!- something went wrong: she was sexually assaulted by a nasty man named Arnold. Arnold, stand up, you bad, bad man.”

  As if the situation could not get any worse, the spotlight shone on a man who had just stood up in the audienc
e. He was distant but Kathy could get a clear look at him: it was Arnold. His face had been etched in the back of her skull ever since that day in the car, always present at some level of her unconscious mind. She despised and feared that man in equal measure and had hoped to never see him again. But- wait- hadn’t he been arrested?

  Kathy could have slapped herself for her stupidity. The world had forgotten she existed, and the police could not hold a man on charges of sexual assault against a woman who nobody could remember.

  As if to confirm her fears, Doctor Jones continued: “Arnold was a very bad man. Luckily he works for us, and we take care of our own. So we decided that Kathy would be our perfect test subject.”

  “We have invented a machine, Kathy, which can manipulate one’s mind. It can move it from one person’s body to another and change its identity, personality and memory. So, we can move the mind from person A and put it in person B, and although it is the mind of person A, it has all the memories, personality and identity of person B. In fact, it even thinks it is person B.”

  “It raised some very difficult philosophical questions. For example: if this technology exists, then how can we ever be sure we are who we think we are, that we weren’t a completely different person five minutes ago? Or: what is identity? I mean, I have just said that person A’s mind is in person B’s body- but is it still person A’s mind, or has it become the mind of person B? Does person A still exist? And what happens to the original mind of person B? Is it displaced, lost, killed?”

  He pondered for a millisecond, but no more. “Of course, we are not philosophers here. We are scientists!” he yelled happily. “And so we are not troubled by such questions. We worked out we could do this by manipulating what is called the cortical field. You do not need to know what that is, dear.” At this, he put his hand patronisingly on Kathy’s shoulder and gave her a superior smile, as if to say you wouldn’t understand it anyway. She thoroughly hated this man.

  “We discovered that we can manipulate the cortical field to play with the collective mind. You know a little bit about psychology, yes?”

  Kathy remembered back to when she used to help her friend with her psychology revision and homework. Some of it had sunk in, so she did know a little bit. She nodded silently in the affirmative.

  “Good! So you’ll have heard of Carl Jung, then. He had a theory called the collective unconscious, which means that humanity shares a collective unconscious mind from which each individual gets archaic memories and archetypal ideas, which often crop up in dreams. We’ve discovered how it works, and we’ve played with it.” When he said this he looked like an excited little boy who had just received the toy he had always wanted for Christmas. It frightened Kathy.

  “So, I’ll continue with your story. At first, you saw the colour of the paint in your room change, didn’t you? And then you saw the paintings talking to you, yes?”

  He paused, waiting for a response from Kathy. She nodded obligingly.

  “But you weren’t going mad. Don’t worry. Because other people could see it too, right?”

  Doctor Jones suddenly began shaking excitedly. She turned away from Kathy and began pacing up and down at the front of the stage, now addressing his audience.

  “We did this. By manipulating the collective cortical field, we changed people’s perception of the world. It does not matter whether the walls actually changed colour, or whether the paintings were actually talking- we could manipulate the collective mind so that everybody would see that they had and they were.”

  He turned back to Kathy. “And then the world forgot you. You came home one day to find an empty flat and a landlord who didn’t know who you were.” He spoke solemnly, with mock sympathy- mock, for everyone knew he cared little for his guest’s actual situation. He cared nothing for the suffering he had put her through. On the contrary: he was only excited about the scientific implications of his work, no matter who was hurt by it.

  “This was our next experiment with the collective mind,” he continued, once more the dignified academic lecturer. “We know archaic memories are stored there- but what of recent memories? Is it possible to modify, even delete them? As it turns out- yes. Right now, Kathy is in the unenviable position of having been forgotten by everyone, for we removed all memory of her from humanity.”

  “But…” Kathy interjected nervously. “But… it’s not just memory. All my stuff was missing from my flat, too.”

  “Ah, now it is time to get philosophical,” grinned her teacher. “For what is the world if not our subjective perception of it? If your laptop is on the table, but you cannot see it, how do you know it’s there?”

  He was speaking in riddles, so he began to explain. “We can go back to Descartes to explain this one. Descartes was a 16th century French philosopher. He began by asking: how can we know anything exists? He was the one who came up with the famous phrase “I think, therefore I am”. The first thing he could be certain of was that he existed because he was thinking; that when you are thinking, it is certain that you exist in the moment, in that place. But how can you be sure of anything around you existing? Only by putting faith in your senses. He believed that he could trust his senses, for a good, kind, loving God would not have given us senses to deceive us. But we know better now. There is no God.”

  “So if you can manipulate senses and perception as we now can, we can make it appear that the room had nothing in it. And who knows? Maybe it did have nothing in it. Maybe the existence of your stuff was dependent on your mind, or the minds of others, perceiving it. Maybe when we manipulated your mind and the collective mind, they ceased to exist.”

  “But like I say, I am no philosopher. I am a scientist. Such questions are beyond my remit. All I know is that the brain is a remarkable machine. It is like a grey sponge in your head, literally and metaphorically.”

  “In fact, it’s not just a sponge,” he thought aloud to himself. “It’s a creative sponge, really. It’s your own perceptions that create your reality. Ooh, that’s quite deep, isn’t it?”

  His tone had become rambling. Presently, however, it changed tack and became jubilant again.

  “And that is how we rescued a valued employee from the long arm of the law and experimented with our new toy… I mean, invention!”

  “With all memory of Kathy purged from the universe, the police could not hold Arnold in prison anymore. They could not even remember why he was there. Why, Arnold, you could even sue the police for false arrest!”

  Arnold was still under the spotlight, but sitting down now. He smiled creepily at this suggestion and fixed Kathy with one of his superior, impenetrable gazes. Kathy shuddered.

  “But Arnold, we must scold you. You were a very, very bad boy. Don’t do it again.”

  Kathy was gobsmacked by the casual attitude the people here had towards everything. They did not care about playing with people’s minds and identities. They did not care that one of them was a sexual predator with no respect for women. The people here were despicable.

  “Now, any questions?” Doctor Jones asked. His face was to the audience but it was clear his question was addressed to Kathy alone. She shook her head in shock. Her head hurt with the effort of keeping up with his explanation, but she understood now. She had been a toy, a pawn in their game. These were evil people who enjoyed playing with people’s minds- literally- with no morality, no regret, no remorse, no respect for privacy or human dignity. And the whole world was in danger. Literally, if they so chose, they could manipulate the mind of any individual on the planet, or even the whole of humanity, to get their way. And that, as Doctor Jones had said, was power indeed.

  “Well, then, we’re done with you,” declared Doctor Jones, suddenly cruelly. “Off you pop. Shoo.”

  He pushed Kathy to the side of the stage and into the wings. She was confused now: unsure where to go, unaware of where she was. Doctor Jones continued talking for another half an hour and simply left her alone backstage.

  For the first t
wenty minutes, she used her lucky situation and hurriedly scrambled around looking for an exit. They had made the mistake of leaving her alone here, unguarded. They might even want her to leave. Yet her search was fruitless: every door was locked, every trapdoor hidden, every window barred. In the end, she resigned herself to her fate and simply found a chair, sat down and pondered on what she had learned while she waited for whatever.

  After half an hour, Doctor Jones finished talking and received rapturous applause from his audience. He came backstage to meet Kathy and looked down at her without emotion.

  “Well, then, how have you been?” he asked nonchalantly. “Come with me.”