The Creative Sponge

by Andy Marlow

  Chapter 16

  The story of Thomas and Gregory

  Thomas was awoken by the same sirens which had roused Kathy.

  Yet he was not in the same place as her. His sharp mind and keen senses took stock of his location before he even twitched a finger; his eyes darting to and fro to take in a visual record.

  He was in a store room. To his left were shelves and buckets and brooms; to his right, a short walkway to yet more shelves and buckets and brooms. To his right was also Gregory. He was still snoozing: unconscious but relaxed. Straight in front of him was a door.

  The walls were metallic and futuristic. Spaced along them evenly was one recurring logo which confirmed his suspicions: the robotic fist and the embossed word CYBERTECH. He had no idea how, but TGN had carried both him and Gregory unconscious right into the gaping jaws of the beast and left them there.

  They had also left a mobile phone. Presently it rang.

  “Good afternoon,” chimed the creamy voice of Douglas Carswell when Thomas answered. “Or is it morning, or even evening? You never can tell in that place, can you?”

  “You’re in the belly of the proverbial beast, if you had not already guessed,” he continued. “We dropped you off in the middle of Cybertech for a bit of espionage. I’m afraid things got a little hairy on the way in. We had to deposit your friend elsewhere, but I’m sure you’ll find each other.”

  “What do you want us to do?” asked Thomas in his direct manner. As he saw it, he was at the mercy of this man. TGN had got them in and TGN were the only people who might be able to get them out, so it was important to remain on their good side.

  “Ah, a co-operative one!” Douglas said with glee. “You have your contact lens cameras. We can see everything you can. Simply explore your surroundings and find out as much as you can. We’ll get you out when we know enough.”

  “And these sirens?” Thomas pointed out. “It sounds like something big is happening. I don’t think now will be an easy time to go snooping.”

  “Yes, that does make things a little trickier, doesn’t it?” Douglas agreed. “Still, you know your mission. Good luck.”

  With that, the line went dead. Thomas examined the phone and saw that it was designed to only receive phone calls rather than send them: there was no way for him to return the call, or even to see the number it came from.

  He looked to his right. Gregory was stirring. It appeared that he had been enjoying his slumber: he was mumbling incoherently and smiling to himself. Yet as his eyes reluctantly began to open and he became aware of his surroundings, he jolted upright. His head began to rotate like an owl until his eyes reached those of Thomas, when they locked.

  “Where are we?” he asked. Panic was palpable in his voice.

  “In the heart of Cybtertech Industries’ headquarters. TGN want us to do some spying, and then they’ll get us out of here.”

  Gregory’s eyes grew wide and fear etched itself on his face. “Bugger that!” he shouted suddenly. He stood up and began running for the door. For a man so muscular and so apparently physically fit, his lumbering frame appeared surprisingly awkward as he bounded forward. Thomas stood up too and grasped Gregory’s arm to stop him.

  “Stop!” he ordered. “TGN are clearly a very powerful and very clever organisation. They drugged us and somehow managed to get us into this high security building without anyone seeing us. They were the only ones who could get us in, and they’re the only ones with any chance of getting us out. We need to do what they say.”

  Gregory froze and paused to think. His expression was comical: part of him wanted to flee, while another equally large part wanted simply to freeze like a startled deer, and both parts ruled different parts of his face. His eyelids twitched maniacally as if his facial muscles were overloaded by conflicting messages. Both parts, however, were governed by a base instinctive panic. In this moment his face was less like a human’s and more like that of a cornered beast.

  He considered Thomas’ argument for but a second before rejecting it and turning back towards the door. When Thomas tried to stop him again, he used his powerful muscles to shove him out of the way and make his escape. Winded, Thomas could only watch as his partner wrenched the door open and disappeared onto the other side.

  A bright light flooded in momentarily as the door opened and he suddenly noticed how dark the store room in which he found himself was. The sirens, too, became deafening; so much so that Thomas was forced to cover his ears as he lurched backwards from the force of Gregory’s punch. His back impacted painfully on the shelves behind him and mops, brushes and pans clattered down from above him onto his head and shoulders.

  The whole moment lasted but a second; then Gregory was gone and Thomas was left lying against the side of the store room nursing his bruises and groaning in pain. He felt a shooting agony in his left shoulder from where a hammer had fallen on him. A mop was leaning on his other side and a strange black powder now covered half of his face. Nevertheless, time was of the essence. He could not waste a second sitting here, for every second wasted meant he was a second further from his freedom.

  So he stood up, brushed himself down and did his best to ignore his aches and pains. As much as he resented Gregory for leaving him and going it solo, he had done the right thing by running out the door. There was nothing to be gained from waiting or planning. After all, he had no idea what lay out there. A nervous tension arose inside him accompanied by the excitement he had learnt to associate with his previous undercover investigations; in fact, although the complete secrecy and mystery of this mission should have scared him, it merely made the whole affair an even greater adventure for him.

  He grabbed a disguise (a battered lab coat lying nearby), rubbed his hands in glee and pushed the door open, ready for whatever lay outside.

  The first thing he noticed were the sirens: those endless, blazing, deafening sirens. His hands instinctively flew to his ears and his eyes inexplicably screwed themselves up to protect themselves from the uproar outside. His will triumphed, though, and he forced his eyelids open so that he could get a view of his surroundings and decide where to go next.

  He had walked out into a busy corridor. Men in white coats ran up and down in urgency and panic. Luckily, though, they were too engrossed in their emergency to notice the man who had walked out of the cupboard; moreover, they were all covering their ears too, so Thomas did not look out of place. He decided to join the crowd and rush off in whatever direction they were all going.

  They were going left, and so he started to run left, too. His running companions were shouting and spluttering to each other, yet Thomas could not catch a whole sentence: mere solitary words such as “rush”, “cortical” and “breach” reached his ears from the mouths of his new colleagues. He supposed it was important to work out what was happening to panic all these scientists, but he would ask later. For the moment, the panic was a perfect cover for his movements.

  There was an open door to the right. He rushed in as if he were an official and slammed the door shut. Nobody questioned him, and nor did he expect them to, for he knew that if you act confidently like you’re supposed to be somewhere, you normally don’t get challenged.

  He found himself in what looked like an empty classroom. A blackboard lay to his right with some incomprehensible half-finished equations scrawled on it. To his left were wooden desks and chairs. The whole scene was reminiscent of a classroom from the 1950s (there was even a cane leaning against the corner) and it clashed oddly with the rest of the interior he had seen so far. It certainly didn’t go well with the future-according-to-the-eighties theme which seemed to be going on in the corridor.

  Right before him, between the desks and the blackboard, was a large table. While there was nothing on top of it, Thomas could spy drawers underneath which may have contained something useful. He therefore went straight over to them and began snooping.

  Normally he would have been discreet, but given the general atmosphere of panic he figu
red that it wouldn’t look out of place for an employee of this establishment to be ruffling through papers in an urgent manner as if searching for an important document. And with his old lab coat on, he was confident that a quick glance through the door’s window from someone outside would not raise any suspicions.

  In truth, though, he did not know what he was looking for. The first two drawers contained mere stationery: rubbers, pencils and the like. It was only when he opened the third drawer that he found any papers.

  Most of them were to do with accounts. He found papers with the words ‘overhead’ and ‘tax deductible’ and other such incomprehensible phrases written on them. They meant nothing to him, but given that TGN had not told him what to look for, he scanned them anyway in case the man watching the footage from his camera contact lenses took an interest and wanted to see more.

  He began to wonder what precisely TGN did want from him, Gregory and Kathy. They had dropped them off in the centre of the enemy’s building without being caught… surely they could then have dropped off one of their own agents, with experience and training? It made Thomas wonder whether TGN was actually working with Cybertech, or whether they even had any intention of getting the three of them out alive…

  Such thinking was not conducive to the situation, however. He had to think positive. As he saw it, if TGN were double crossers, he was done for already- whatever he did. If they were not, his best chance of escape lay in doing whatever they wanted and waiting for them to rescue him. Then, hopefully, they would have the information they needed and let the three of them go free- with the answers they had come to seek, of course.

  Presently he opened the fourth drawer and found two documents of great interest to him. The first item was a discarded blueprint for a machine. The head of the document was labelled “Cortical Manipulation Matrix mark III”. There was a date on the bottom right hand corner: 20th July, 2006. This was old, then. Nevertheless, despite the fact that the formulae and designs went right over Thomas’ head, he reasoned that TGN might be interested in this and took a good, long look at it for them.

  The second item was an old copy of Science Today, its pages battered and torn as if someone had screwed it up in great frustration. He recognised it immediately as the magazine Vera Pidgeonsworth had been reading on the day before his abduction by TGN. It felt so long ago now, but the memory came back to him as clear as a summer’s stream of her wondrous expression and her insistence that she could see something in his eyes. His desire to have her explain herself had been thwarted by the arrival of her headmaster.

  Yet here was his opportunity to read what she had been reading and perhaps discover the answer to his long-held curiosity. The front cover pointed his attention to an article entitled “Cortical Confusion: Are You Who You Think You Are?”, which could be found on page 12. He hurriedly flicked through the pages until he found it and began reading voraciously.

  The article explained in simple language the theoretical discoveries of a Doctor Earnest Jones. It discussed the possibility of creating machines which could use his discoveries to transfer the human mind from person to person, although the debate was purely theoretical and the paper seemed unaware that such machines already existed. One interesting segment to the side of the page caught Thomas’ eye immediately. It was entitled “How to tell if your mind is not your own” and read thus:

  Although this technology is purely theoretical at the moment, it is a very realistic possibility that such machines may exist in the near future. Given their capability to send the human mind through time as well as space, it seems entirely possible that some people are even now living with borrowed minds, mistakenly convinced that their memories are their own. Here are a few tips on how to tell if you are such a person.

  The only real clue can be found in the eyes, yet it can be almost impossible to spot. An interesting finding in Cortical Field research has revealed that the individual iris pattern of a person is somehow linked to their consciousness, so that if their consciousness is transferred, that iris pattern travels with it. The iris pattern is as unique as a person’s fingerprint. Nevertheless, very few people will be able to notice this difference, and so it remains the case that someone living with a borrowed mind will most likely not find out.

  A sudden dryness assaulted his throat as his rational mind worked through the implications. That girl, so many days ago, had told him, “there’s something in your eye.” How she had been able to detect it he was not sure, but if she was right then the sickening thought that he may not be himself was a real possibility.

  He suddenly reeled back. His back hit the wall with a thud and a crash, and he found his head spinning. It was as if he had just had a flashback. It was like that day on the tube in London, before this had even begun. Simultaneous to the workings of his rational mind, his unconscious had drawn something deeper from the article and was screaming at him: Get Out. A sudden instinctive fear and panic began to grow in him and he lost all faith that TGN would ever rescue him; rather, with growing certainty he realised that he would die in this cursed building before the hour was out.

  But why? How? Where had these alien ideas and borrowed memories come from? An image came to him: his own death, at the end of a pistol; he was watching it from five paces away and his face was contorted in abject horror. And this was an image like a recollection, not like something produced in the imagination.

  Another image came to him: he was lying on a bed, similar to the one he had seen in the blueprints, and a podgy, balding Doctor was leaning over him with a needle….

  His hands flew to the sides of his head to stop the images. He had always been a calm, rational person, working better under pressure than at any other time- so where had this panic come from? He wanted to freeze or to flee, or to do both at the same time, if possible… yet these were his instincts talking. His mind, his rational mind, knew that running would be a mistake, that his only way out was through TGN.

  His instincts won out. They were more powerful than he had ever known them and he fled for the door and turned right, back into the panic that was gripping the staff here. The sirens and the lights and the people only served to build up his panic even more: had they always been this loud, this bright, this chaotic? He had never known fear like this and urged his feet to move faster, ever faster…

  To where, he did not know. To an elevator and down to the lobby, perhaps. Five minutes ago he would have understood that this was really no option because the elevator would undoubtedly require some sort of security pass and even if he made it downstairs, he would never make it out the building before being captured. Nevertheless now he clung onto any hope.

  Luckily the other men in lab coats were still rushing around, so he had some measure of disguise. However, they were rushing in a manner of professional urgency. Even in a crowd such as that, it is easy to tell the difference between a professional in a hurry and a man in blind panic. Thomas thus began to notice the people he passed glancing at him with curiosity, even animosity on some occasions. His cover was blown. His rational mind begged him to stop, but his instincts kept driving him on like a jockey with a whip.

  He found the elevator. But, as he knew it would be, he could not open it. Even if he were able to steal an ID card from someone, he would never pass the retina scan or fingerprint test. His hopes should have been dashed, but his instincts drove him on still further: run, run, run!

  Yet he stopped. There he stood, transfixed before the door to the elevator, unable to move. He wanted to- of course he wanted to! He was so self conscious now and painfully aware of the eyes of the men rushing past fixing on him. Gradually their glances became stares and their rushing became ambling, until they had slowed so much that they had practically stopped and were now openly discussing the case of the man frozen in the corridor.

  “What should we do with him?” one asked.

  “I don’t know- poor devil, the fright has got to him. Get him to the nurse, quickly!” suggested another.
>
  Thomas’ rational mind breathed a mental sigh of relief as he realised that these men in white coats were treating him as a stressed colleague, not as a fugitive or intruder. He still had a chance. If he had been himself, he would have coolly brushed off their comments, insisted he was fine and carried on his way, exuding an outer air of calm and control.

  Yet he was not himself. He felt less and less like Thomas every second. And as Gregory came hurtling round the corner and nearly crashed into him, he realised with horror that it was like looking into a mirror: he was Gregory, and Gregory was him.

  Suddenly the memories came flooding back. The time spent at TGN being deprogrammed. What had happened yesterday, when he had been dragged away by their goons and hypnotised into once more taking on another man’s identity. Finally, most crucially and most painfully, he remembered being the man in front of him; he remembered precisely what must happen next: being dragged away and implanted in that horrific machine, and finding himself in the head of a man named Thomas Wilson as he stepped off the London underground one morning so long ago, with his memories and identity stripped of him and replaced by that of another man.

  He also remembered his final fate, the end of this infinite loop. He remembered being the man now in front of him and watching as the man he now was died before him from a gunshot wound…

  The crowd around them was no longer sympathetic. They understood perfectly what was happening, for they worked with the Cortical Manipulation Matrix every day and they knew that what they saw before them was the same man in two bodies at different points in his personal timeline. The faces of Thomas and Gregory now resembled each other’s perfectly in expression and pose. Although they did not know who was who, it was clear to those assembled that one of these men was the original, and the other was the man who now carried the original’s mind after it had been flung back into the past and into his head.

  One man, however, did know which was which. The still sinister voice of Doctor Jones chimed over the excited hubbub, “Thomas Wilson, I presume?”

  And out from the crowd came three men: the creepy, greasy face of Earnest Jones in the middle, with his ever present security staff shadowing him at his sides. The two Gregorys turned in silent horror to face their enemy: one of them knowing precisely what was going to happen, the other with similar fears.

  A fourth man, whom the reader would recognise as Doctor Curtis, stepped forth from behind Doctor Jones. He was very much a background character who clearly wanted to be part of the action but was merely an observer, a sidekick to Doctor Jones. His face twinged with envy as he looked at his superior as if he wished he were the famous one, standing in front of everyone else receiving their adulation. As it was, however, he occupied second place on this stage and attracted no-one’s attention.

  By now all shades of Thomas’ personality had been stripped of him and, although Thomas’ body stood before Jones, it was most certainly Gregory who inhabited it. He therefore froze, as Gregory has been known to do in such panic-laden situations. No words came out of his mouth for none could. Although he was a scared man, he was a clever man and not only knew what was going to happen, but knew that it must: for if he did manage to escape, if he was not killed here, then how would his younger self standing right next to him have ended up in Thomas’ head? He would not have, and however attractive that proposition was right now, he knew that to prevent the inevitable would be impossible. It would create a paradox. Because it had already happened, it must happen once more.

  “But we all know your real identity now,” continued Jones evilly. “I can tell from the look on your face.”

  He turned to address the original Gregory, who had not yet understood fully. “Can you not see?” he asked. “The man next to you… is you!”

  The original Gregory finally understood. He turned his head towards the Gregory inhabiting Thomas and each of them recognised the identical look of terror in each other’s eyes.

  “We have here machines which can rip your mind from your body and send it into another person’s body,” explained Jones lyrically, just in case Gregory had not fully understood. “They can also send your mind into another time. So the man standing next to you is you. What we are going to do is this: we will kill Thomas, er, Thomas-Gregory… my, this is confusing, isn’t it?” he chortled.

  “Anyway, we will kill you,” he said, pointing towards Gregory-inhabiting-Thomas “and then we will send your mind, Gregory, into the body of Thomas at some point in the past. You will then enjoy a blissful, ignorant existence until you inevitably return here and- ah, look!- you realise the horror of your fate, but also its inevitability. In essence, this is the cruellest of executions. But also the most kind.”

  Gregory-in-Thomas looked around, appealing to those gathered around not to allow this travesty to occur. Yet it was like they were under a spell. As soon as Doctor Jones had entered the fray, their whole attention had turned to him as if he were their god, their idol; as if he could do no wrong and whatever he said or did was instantly beyond reproach. Not one solitary employee of this sordid industry appeared horrified or shocked by what had just been pronounced.

  The death was quick. In a way it was a blessing, for Gregory-in-Thomas was not even aware a gunshot had been fired before his empty body crashed to the floor, finally dead. The bullet entered his skull and killed him instantly before he could even feel it.

  Of course, the mess was appalling. A pool of blood began to form below where his head had fallen, permanently staining the nice woollen carpet in this area. A cleaner walked by and gave Doctor Jones an angry glare. Yet that was the extent of regret or sympathy from any employee of Cybertech. As soon as Gregory-in-Thomas had been killed, the original Gregory was scooped up in the strong arms of a security guard and carried kicking and screaming into room fifteen. With that, the incident was over, the sirens ended and the cleaner reluctantly went to mop up the blood.

  The shot had not been fired by Doctor Jones. He had, however, ordered the shooting, which had been carried out by the guard to his right. He had been completely po-faced as he pulled the trigger, as if taking a human life was no big deal at all. And that had been the end of Gregory: no tears, no sadness; just a cleaner annoyed that her carpet was now stained.

  The inhumanity and horror of it all was clear in original Gregory’s head. Room fifteen was fairly near to the site of Gregory’s murder so it took less than five minutes to get there. Had Gregory been able to escape, however, he would not have been able to find his way through this maze of corridors. It seemed that the building had been designed this way to ensure that only employees could successfully navigate around it and intruders or escapees were guaranteed to end up lost.

  He put up a fight. Gregory was not weak and he used his formidable muscles to try to kick and punch and push and struggle his way out of the grip of his captors- but to no avail. They were simply stronger than him, with chests and forearms at least twice the size of his.

  Presently they reached the door to room fifteen. The four of them entered a room already familiar to the reader, so I will not describe it unnecessarily. He was strapped in quickly and unceremoniously. Wires and electrodes were roughly stabbed into his skull, several times in some cases where the operator didn’t get it in the right place first time. Every electrode and every drip hurt like hell and the stabbing pains enraged Gregory even more. It was not easy to do the procedure with a patient panicking as he was.

  He shouted and splutter; he raged and roared. His words would have no effect on his tormentors, but it felt better than simply sitting there, doing nothing and taking it like a coward. If he was going to go, he would go down fighting.

  But he had already seen his death. What man would want to see their death before their time? He knew exactly how and when it would occur, and it weighed heavily and painfully on his mind. It slowed his thinking down but spurred his muscles- anything, anything to escape.

  “Why?” he roared at last. The least they could do
was to spare him the indignity of an unexplained death.

  “To shut you up, of course!” explained Doctor Jones. “I’m sorry, but you’ve seen too much. We can’t have you blabbering to the whole world about what’s going on in here.”

  “TGN are watching!” Gregory yelled, trying to scare the team of doctors and technicians who had appeared from nowhere around him. “They gave us contact lens cameras. They’ve seen everything.”

  A look of annoyance flashed across Doctor Jones’ face. He roughly jabbed his fingers into Gregory’s eyes and pulled out the contact lenses while two technicians held his eyelids open. Gregory roared with pain: Jones was not gentle and, after he had taken the lenses out, Gregory was sure the vision in his left eye had been damaged by his rough hands. This did not matter to his tormentors, however.

  Jones inspected the lens and smirked. “TGN will not be a problem,” he declared without explanation, and threw the lenses away.

  Gregory wanted to ask why, but he could not. His energy was almost drained and with his last hope gone, he simply sank into the bed and accepted his fate. Of course he still struggled, but there was a noted lack of energy now in his efforts as if they were merely obligatory but there was no passion, no hope, no belief present in them.

  A whirring noise came from behind his head to the left. He could not see what it was, but guessed that it was the Cortical Manipulation Matrix firing up. The room suddenly became lit up by a strange, blue aura as everyone in it turned to look at the screen that had just appeared behind Gregory’s head.

  Doctor Jones and a colleague began to press buttons on it like an interactive whiteboard. They inspected brainwave patterns and cell diagrams; bar charts and equations. Soon they were done, and Jones clasped his hands in glee.

  He picked up a needle from beside the bed and leered over Gregory. He then uttered the last words Gregory would ever hear from inside his own body:

  “There, now, this won’t hurt a bit…”