Mortal Ghost (28 page)

Then he’s alone inside the room. For a moment he closes his eyes. The air is cool and tangy with woodsmoke, an autumn afternoon, someone burning leaves. Voices whisper sounds and sweet airs.
These our actors, as I foretold you, were all spirits, and are melted into air, into thin air . . .
He lays the blade against his wrist—is this the escape key? There’s always a way to abort the program.

A strong scent of lavender. He shivers and drops his arm. Carefully, he examines his surroundings. Still no exit, the only way out through the wall. He approaches it reluctantly. He doesn’t like the way it quivers. Only a computer simulation, he reminds himself. Raising his knife, he takes a deep breath and plunges it into the fleshy surface. Blood spurts at him, and he gasps, steps back, drops the knife, screams.

Finn helped Jesse up from the seat. His knife lay on the floor, and his hands were splattered with blood. He was too stunned to speak. Finn accompanied him to a small lavatory where he washed his hands and face. Upon their return Ayen was on her hands and knees wiping the floor with a cloth, the water in the bucket pink. She’d placed his knife on the table, and it too had been wiped clean. A few small vials, obviously for testing. Jesse allowed himself to be propelled into a chair. He sat quietly, trying to gather his thoughts, trying not to shiver. Ayen left and after a while came back with a tray of tea and some biscuits, and a clean T-shirt. She’d discarded the disposable gloves.

‘Take some sugar,’ she said. ‘You need the energy.’

Jesse drank one cup, then a second.

‘What was that?’ he asked, by now composed enough to pose some questions.

‘A prototype of what we think may be the next generation of computers,’ Ayen said. ‘Well, if not the next, then somewhere not far down the line.’

‘But how—’ Jesse stopped to rephrase his question. ‘The computer didn’t just respond to verbal input. It culled my memory.’ He glanced at Finn
.
‘My memory,’ he repeated bitterly. ‘How could a machine do that? How could anything do that?’

‘That’s one of the things we ourselves don’t quite understand,’ Ayen said. ‘The mathematics is extraordinarily complex, and only a very few people, highly unusual people, are involved in writing the software, which along with the hardware is still in the developmental stage—if hardware is the right term.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The prototype is a hybrid system comprising traditional, if very advanced, electronics side by side with chips that our bio-engineers have designed. The basic chip is carbon rather than silicon-based. A biological chip of organic molecules. It’s grown rather than manufactured.’

Jesse stared at her. ‘You mean the computer is alive?’

‘It depends on how you define alive,’ she answered.

‘And it reads minds?’

‘I wouldn’t put it like that but, yes, in some cases, where the individual is particularly sensitive.’

‘Sensitive to what?’

‘In all cultures there have been people who can stretch the bonds of space and time, who can perceive beyond the normal limits of everyday experience.’

‘You’re talking about mystics, shamans. That stuff isn’t real,’ Jesse said, conscious of how ridiculous the protest sounded, coming from him. At least they didn’t know about the healing.

‘Isn’t it?’ Ayen asked.

They both looked at the knife lying in front of them on the table.

‘It’s a trick.’ Jesse turned to Finn. ‘It must be. You brought it with you for god-only-knows what reason. I have no idea what you think I am or can do, but I’m no magician.’

‘
One person’s magic is another’s logic,’ Ayen said. ‘Have you ever seen the emaciated body of someone who has been instructed—
unbeknownst to himself
—to stop eating?’

Jesse shook his head, his eyes on the knife.

‘You Europeans,’ Ayen said. ‘That’s going to be
our
contribution—unifying science and the sacred.’ Though uttered with a smile, there was an edge to her words which reminded Jesse of certain schoolyard confrontations.

‘Look, Jesse, we all know research often yields unexpected results. And any ten-year-old can give you a list of accidents that became fabulous discoveries,’ Finn interjected adroitly. ‘No one expected this to happen, and no one really understands why, or how. I certainly don’t pretend to.’ He grinned. ‘I’m just a lowly photographer.’

‘Then why are you involved?’

‘I’m not, or only indirectly. When I saw what you could do with fire, I did a little checking on my end, got in touch with a few experts. Hence Ayen and her people. She requested an interview.’

‘Requested is good. I don’t recall anyone asking me.’

‘Would you have come? Would you have believed me if you hadn’t seen this place?’ Finn asked reasonably enough. ‘This computer?’

Jesse picked up the knife. He ran his fingers over the blade, examined the handle, and finally balanced its length across the palm of his hand, hefting it a little to test its weight. If it wasn’t his, it was a perfect replica.

By all rights, Finn should have reported him to the police as soon as he found out about the discrepancies in Jesse’s story, or at least thrown him out of the house.

‘You really didn’t bring my knife?’ Jesse asked Finn.

‘I didn’t even know you owned one.’

‘Jesse, no one wants to trick you,’ Ayen said. ‘What purpose would that serve? The knife is as much a surprise to me as to you.’

‘Then explain how it got here.’

‘I can’t, other than to assume, as a working hypothesis, that you were able to reproduce it, or fetch your own knife here.’

‘
Fetch? As in teleport?’

‘
I wouldn’t like to put a name to the phenomenon just yet.’ She smiled. ‘Quantum physicists—I’m not one—tell me that there are going to be some very interesting developments in the next twenty years.’

‘Quantum physics is often misunderstood,’ Jesse said. ‘It’s used as proof of subjectivity by lay people with a taste for mysticism. They’d like to believe that consciousness creates reality. People who have no clue about processes like superposition, decoherence, and entanglement.’

Ayen laughed. ‘I’ll let you loose on our physicists later on. You won’t find a mystic among them, I promise you.’

Jesse waved his knife in the direction of the computer console.

‘What did you see on the monitor?’ he asked.

‘Nothing,’ Finn said. ‘It remained blank.’

‘Why? Wasn’t it switched on?’

‘It’s a little more complicated than that,’ Ayen said.

Jesse frowned. He was beginning to want a cigarette rather badly. Instead, he leaned back and gnawed on the handle of the knife. When nobody contributed an explanation, he spit out a question.

‘Yeah? More complicated than mind-reading? Or materialising objects?’

‘The monitor doesn’t always respond,’ Ayen said. ‘And on occasion it shuts down. At first we thought it was a hardware problem, but now it’s beginning to look like a programming glitch. One of the things we need to deal with.’

‘No pattern you can find?’

‘None that we can detect. Entirely random.’ Ayen stressed the word
random
with a faint musical inflection
,
the first hint that English wasn’t her mother tongue.

‘All right. What else can it do?’

‘
The prototype?’ Ayen said. ‘Everyone who’s been able to communicate with the computer—and thus far there haven’t been many—reports a similar experience—an intelligence that can access at least some portion of one’s memory.’

‘
Anything else like the knife?’ Jesse asked.

‘
No. You’re the first person to produce a physical manifestation—the blood, the knife.’ Ayen glanced at the console. ‘This is no longer a question of virtual reality,’ she added, leaning forward. ‘You have to let us try to find out what’s happening. We may be on the verge of an incredible breakthrough.’

‘
There are things it might be better not to unleash.’

‘Every age has had its fearmongers, telling us not to explore, not to extend our knowledge. The earth is flat. People aren’t made to fly. Genetic manipulation is contrary to God’s will. I know all the arguments, have heard them a thousand times since childhood. Not all of my family supported my interest in science.’

‘And you’re not afraid?’

‘It’s never been possible to predict the long-term effects of our endeavours. Do you think the first person to poke a stick through the hole in that odd round flat stone could ever have imagined a car? Or whoever roasted the prehistoric haunch of meat over a fire, the power of a jet engine?’

‘
Or a nuclear weapon,’ Jesse said.

‘
I won’t deny there’s always the risk of misuse. But an interaction between a mind like yours and our computer could only be fruitful for both sides. Just think of what might be possible.’ Ayen’s voice remained perfectly even, but her dark eyes brightened like a stained glass window suddenly backlit by the sun.

Finn poured himself another cup of tea, then pushed his chair backwards a couple of centimetres and crossed his legs. He reached for a biscuit, bit off a piece, and wrinkled his nose. ‘Stale,’ he said, tossing it down.

Jesse felt some of the tension leave his neck and shoulders, his jaw. No, Finn wouldn’t let Ayen have it all her way. But she would try. It hadn’t escaped him that she’d deftly sidestepped his question about further capabilities of the computer. Jesse could see the headlines:
Nobel Prize Awarded to Sudanese Neuroscientist
.
Science Cracks the Crystal Ball.
If she were a neuroscientist. Perhaps he was being unfair, but he didn’t quite trust secret installations. And he didn’t care what anybody told him: this place reeked of power and money and a military agenda.

‘
What do you want to do with me?’ Jesse asked.

‘
First of all, a few simple diagnostic tests: a routine physical—bloodwork, urine, major organs, that sort of thing; then cranial CT scan, EEG, MRI. Nothing alarming, nothing invasive. We want to do some baseline mapping. Then the standard psychological tests: IQ, creativity, ESP. Possibly some disorder screening.’

‘
ESP?’

‘
Well, yes, they’re not exactly accepted by the scientific community, but they might point us in a useful direction. After that, we can move on to some tests of our own devising.’

‘
You want to do all of this right now?’

Ayen smiled. ‘Hardly. We’ll start with one or two of the physical tests today, the rest in stages.’

‘
And then?’

‘
More work with the prototype.’ She grinned. ‘Some of the lads have nicknamed it HAL. After Clarke’s—’

‘
I know who HAL is,’ Jesse said. ‘Not exactly reassuring, wouldn’t you say?’

He looked over at the computer, which was quiescent—outwardly. But so was a volcano until eruption, or a star about to nova. He wouldn’t mind a few harmless tests—perhaps he’d learn something about his own memory—but there was no way he’d have anything more to do with that digital monster over there. Let them find some other ape to take the next evolutionary leap for them.

And yet, whispered something in his mind, imagine . . . Ayen and her lot would never have to know.

‘
What is your part in all of this?’ he asked Ayen.

‘
I’m a neurophysicist, among other things. And a medical doctor, so you needn’t worry about that side,’ Ayen said.

‘
Who will conduct the tests? You’re not working alone here, are you?’ Jesse asked.

‘
Of course not. You’ll meet some of the technicians in a little while. And after the routine tests, perhaps some of the scientists and researchers.’ She laughed, a throaty sound. ‘One software type would trade his mother and his girlfriend and his future progeny—plus the organ to produce them, I daresay—for a shot at you.’

‘
I only trade in souls.’

Her eyes glinted. ‘It won’t come to that.’ Then she made a dismissive gesture with her hand. ‘Stop fretting. There’s nothing satanic about research.’

‘
What if I refuse?’

Finn spoke up. ‘It’s entirely up to you, Jesse. There’s going to be no coercion.’

‘
Can I withdraw at any point?’

‘
The tests are costly and time-consuming,’ Ayen said, ‘so it would be better if you—’

‘
Any time you wish,’ Finn intervened smoothly. ‘Nobody will hold it against you.’ He paused for a moment before continuing, ‘Nor will it affect your relationship with my family.’