Chapter Five

I awoke in a darkened room, not my room though. And from another dream. This time it was a brand new one. Someone, not me but the guy whose head I was in, was driving at night. We seemed to be following the taillights of another car along a moonlit highway running parallel to a beach. Behind in the mirror a distant city shone with a brilliant neon carapace. I/he lowered the window. We the ocean breeze on our face and its sharp tang in our mouth. The car up ahead slowed then turned onto a makeshift track heading towards the dunes. We followed at a stalking pace, lights off now and guided just by the moon. The car stopped so we cut our engine and got out onto the sand, shutting the door quietly. It began to rain. We looked up. A heavy sky threatened a violent storm. We began to walk, the sand sucking at our shoes as we misplaced our footing, tripped on rocks and stumbled through pools. Despite this the other car’s occupants were obviously still unaware hear our approach. There was a man and a woman framed in the back window. We stole up to the vehicle’s side as the vehicle’s chassis began rocking in that agitated way that could only mean sex. There was muffled laughter as the two pink blurs moved in time together. We were just a touch away when the woman’s face appeared in the glass, her blonde hair tousled and lipstick smudged. She gave a sudden orgasmic scream; I separated from the other man and opened my eyes.

I opened the plastic blinds, wincing at the invading sunlight. When I could see I was staring out at a car park. The previous evening had been a constant round of medical tests and evaluations. There had been blood samples, heart monitor readings and sight and hearing checks plus some annoyingly personal psych evaluations I could have done without. I felt exhausted.

I needed to find out what exactly had happened yesterday afternoon. Surely I could sue Trans-Port for this? Whatever that degrading ritual had been it must have something to do with virtual reality, maybe a new game or some kind of immersive travel experience. Why was a start-up teleportation business developing a VR product? I remembered that the actual control centre place had been run down and deserted so perhaps they needed an alternative market. Whatever the case, I was pretty sure I hadn’t signed up for being used as a human guinea pig no matter what that stupid form had said. I needed to see Carver straight away. I got dressed quickly. Outside my door a security guard snapped to attention.

“I want to see Professor Carver.” I told him.

“Please wait inside while I inform the Professor.”

I was being treated like a prisoner. “I’m a company employee,” I dangled my photo ID lanyard at him, “please get out of my way.” 

“Sorry Mr Cooper, just obeying orders.”

“Sod you then!” I slammed the door in his face.

A couple of minutes later there came a brisk knock. I flung it open again. “What now?”

Carver grinned at me. “Good morning young Peter, ready to go?” He beamed like he’d just won the lottery.

“I thought I was your prisoner.”

“Really?” The beam stayed fixed. “Some slight misunderstanding probably.”

“Probably.”

“Anyway, I expect you fancy some breakfast.”

“I feel a bit sick actually.”

“Full English okay? We’ll do the debriefing in the refectory. It’s just down the way here.” He pointed to the double doors I’d noticed before from the restaurant side. “Personally I’m feeling famished Come on, you deserve it.”

He put a heavy arm around my shoulder and led me down the corridor.

Dorothy Harding and Christian Steiner (I remembered seeing him skulking in the background while I was lying in that damn dish) both joined our table. Claire was already there.

The group silently watched as I demolished the full English Martha had served up. The giddiness had gone with my first mouthful. Perhaps the Sending experience had affected my biological clock, or metabolism, or whatever. As long as that was all it had done. I wanted to ask Carver about my vision, actually my whole nervous system. Had the medical check’s found anything wrong? I could see okay now, although my eyes still watered a bit when I tried to concentrate, and the nausea had left me. But what long damage had been done? Would those release forms protect them from responsibility and could Trans-Port do anything they liked with impunity?

I became aware of all eyes focused on me as a piece of fried egg slithered from my mouth.

“Sorry, apparently I am rather hungry after all.”

“No rush, take your time,” Carver attempted a strained show of patience, “but if you’re finally ready we might start the debriefing.” I took another swig of tea. “Tell us Peter, what do you imagine actually happened to you last night? You went to another place. Have you any thoughts on that? Don’t be embarrassed to speculate.”

I really hadn’t any apart from my VR speculations of earlier. I was far too knackered to think about anything else but bed the previous night. Mental snapshots of the experience made little sense; a patch of grass, a wall of coloured glass, a golden figure pointing at a distant townscape of coruscating lights. It was Capistrano seen from the top of The Promontory but so what? A programmed experience of no particular use just to prove something or other worked. Maybe it was some hyper-real modification they’d stumbled upon whilst sodding about with their precious Projection beam. The point was they’d used me for it without my permission. What an idiot I was.

Rising anger joined the breakfast in my gut. How dare they con me! Had James known about this? I’d be seeing him in the Druid again tonight so he’d better make it damn good!

“Peter?”

“What?” My coolness impressed me. I was handling the situation pretty well considering. Maybe Martha had drugged my tea; I didn’t trust anyone here now, even Claire. Especially Claire.

 “Peter, please don’t take things the wrong way.” Carver frowned at me. “We didn’t just pick you at random you know.”

It took a few moments for that simple statement to hit home.

“I don’t understand…”

“Be honest with yourself. You must have had some intimation you were being singled out. The co-incidental connection with James, the interview, the demonstration of the Projection Beam; do you think we show our tech to any old Tom Dick or Harry? You must have had your suspicions yet you got in the Sending Dish of your own volition. You needed to find out what it was all about.”

“Well, all I know is it’s a big deal just to test a bit of VR software.”

He seemed insulted. “This has got nothing whatsoever to do with Virtual Reality! There’s nothing ‘virtual’ about where we sent you went yesterday. Let me ask you a straight question.” Well that would make a change. Carver’s blue eyes fixed me with an intense stare. “Why do you think you’re here?”

“Because I passed your damn interview.” But I knew that wasn’t true anymore.

Carver shook his head as if disappointed in me. “There was no interview.”

“So that was another set-up.”

“Is this really the time or place?” Dorothy Harding’s brow furrowed with impatience. “He doesn’t have to know all the facts. He’s signed the confidentiality clause.”

Carver half-turned to her. “I’m aware of that but I think Peter’s about to walk out on us all the same. I think we should level with him, clause or no clause. We need his co-operation and resourcefulness, that means we need his trust as well.” He turned back to me while she simmered at the public put-down. “Enough farting around. I’m going to explain exactly why we need you, only you, and where you really went to yesterday. Next time it will be crucial.”

“I’m not doing that again!” I glared around at them. “Why the hell should I after the way you’ve lied to me?” I rose in my seat dramatically. “I’m…I’m off!”

But Carver was shrewder than I’d given him credit for. “I suppose that’s up to you but walk out now and you’ll never know what it was all about. Or,” he smiled and played his trump, “why you’ve never left this town in your whole life.”

I sank back down. “What do you mean?”

“Your childhood friends, your fellow students, everyone going their own ways apart from you. You’ve been stuck here. In fact, you’ve never been anywhere else.”

I stared at him. “Well that’s a bloody lie for a start. I’ve been to Paris, to Spain, I’ve been…”

“You think you’ve been to these places but we put them all in your mind. You haven’t.”

“I remember I was chucked in the pool in Magaluf, I nearly…”

“Drowned? You weren’t and you didn’t. We gave you that story. You’ve been coming here every month for the last twenty years. You don’t know you do it; it’s an impulse we’ve programmed in you. Every time you’re here we hypnotise you into believing you’ve done these things; refresh the images we want you to remember. Then we wipe the visit so that when you get home its as if you’ve never left. Otherwise you might do something extremely regrettable.”

My mind was reeling; this was kidnapping, mind control, mad…definitely illegal.

“Like what?”

Carver gave a shrug. “You might leave Capistrano.”

And right then, sitting with these strangers in a building I’d supposedly never set foot in before, I knew he spoke the truth. I felt it. Because I had met these people before, had been here in some hazy half-memory, not once but again and again. There had been a strong white light shone into my eyes, penetrating my thoughts and telling me things I had no option but to believe. The places I’d been to and people I’d met, a whole fabricated history to make me think I was just normal guy who was maybe a little slower on the uptake than his equals, a little less ambitious. The school summer holidays spent in Eastbourne with the Keens at some crappy guest house, kicking a ball about with Mike on the beach while Joanne gamely kept goal, ice creams, musical shows on the pier, visits to the zoo and the model railway. Fun times all round. And then later on the debauched holidays with the University crowd; the drunken nights of revelry, the girls, the pranks, being thrown in the pool and being sick on the coach back to the airport. I knew in that instant that these things had never happened. I was a prisoner of Trans-Port, company property, and had been since my parents died twenty years ago. I’d never been allowed to marry, not even have a steady girlfriend. I naturally shied away from serious relationships. There had been Amelia but that had crashed and burned like all the others. Or had it? ‘They made me do it’ she’d told me in the roof garden of the Druid, looking half scared to death. Were ‘they’ Trans-Port? And James, the best mate who’d stood by me through my University years, been on all those riotous holidays and set me up with this job. Was he a company man too?

“Is James working for you?” Carver’s apologetic expression confirmed it. “And Amelia?’ He looked away. “For Christ’s sake! You actually made the poor girl whore for you?”

“It wasn’t like that.”

“Then tell me what is was like!” I found myself gripping the table edge and leaning into Carver’s face. The first revolt had been a huff but now I was serious. I must have looked it too as the others shrank away in alarm. “Oh sod the lot of you. I’m not your bloody puppet anymore!”

The slammed door cut off any response. Outside the complex I belatedly remembered I had no transport and began the long trudge home, wiping away the angry tears.