A User's Guide to Make-Believe

by Jane Alexander

  The smell just as it should be: deep and black and strong. Perfectly real.

  On the desk in front of her, Oswald’s offer sat waiting – a solid-seeming promise of everything she could want. She clutched her mug, and tried to think of what it meant.

  Alan, and what they’d done to him. How stepping back into the Imagen fold would make her a part of that.

  How, within Imagen, she’d be perfectly placed to find out about the experiment. To find out how she could help him.

  But she only had half of the information. She knew what Oswald was offering her; she didn’t know, yet, exactly what he wanted in return.

  ‘OK,’ she said – and she saw how deeply he exhaled, how his shoulders lowered, revealing his previous, seemingly relaxed demeanour as something finely constructed. ‘No, wait. I mean, that’s OK as far as it goes: you’ve told me what I get. What about you? What does Imagen get from me?’

  ‘What we get. Of course.’ He nodded, seemed to take a moment to arrange his thoughts. ‘So, what you need to understand, Cassandra, is that there is a particular characteristic that’s specific to you. Not exclusively so, it’s shared by a number of other people, but – for various reasons – you happen to be ideally placed to help us iron out a small bug, that’s been causing us some minor complications.’

  A small bug. Minor complications. And yet, this whole encounter must have been extensively planned. They had waited for her to breach the terms of the agreement she’d signed. They had swooped in at the crack of dawn, brought her here to meet with the most senior bar one of the company directors. And since Oswald knew practically everything about her activities, how much time and effort had been expended on surveilling her? The mismatch sounded an alert. She rolled her shoulders inside Oswald’s jacket, and understood that whatever she was told would be a partial truth at best.

  ‘So, as you know,’ he said, ‘Make-Believe growth has levelled off over the last quarter.’

  ‘It hasn’t just levelled off. You’ve been losing subscribers.’

  Oswald looked pained. ‘New subscribers are on target, in fact. Almost precisely so. Account cancellations, however, have leapt up.’

  ‘Then there’s a problem with the experience? User expectations aren’t being met?’

  ‘You might say that.’

  ‘But – how? Your Make-Believe is up to you: it is your expectations.’

  Oswald shook his head. ‘It’s a problem that goes right back to the first stages of the development process.’ He clasped his hands in front of him. ‘Here’s the thing: you’ll know that, in the longer term, we aim to offer Make-Believe as a social experience – so that users can participate in each other’s virtual realities. What you won’t know is that, in the very earliest iterations of the technology, one possibility our researchers explored was that of direct contact between the sets of biomolecules that make up users’ individual networks.’

  Quorum sensing. Microorganisms communicate. Doctor connects with patient. Cassie said nothing, kept a question painted on her face.

  ‘So for example: if you and I were sitting here, both of us with our Make-Believe networks active, each happy in our respectively imagined worlds – well then, our networks would become aware of each other.’

  ‘The way screens sense each other, or lenses – with Wi-Fi or radio?’

  ‘Not precisely, but … similar enough. The idea was that users would then be presented with an option to connect with each other. To collaborate.’

  It was only confirmation of what she already knew, but she found herself leaning in, her heart beating faster. ‘You said this was in the earliest stages of Make-Believe, this research. Did they ever make it work?’

  He skirted the question delicately. ‘For a number of reasons, that line of research was dropped. But the functionality was built in to the biomolecules. It’s in every user, every network. It wasn’t active. You could think of it like your appendix, or your tail bone. You don’t use them. They’re not needed, they’re just left over from a time when they might have been useful. They don’t do anything. At least …’ His lips curved upwards; he seemed almost amused, as if he knew she was already ahead of him. ‘They’re not meant to do anything. But there is a complication. This latent capacity to connect is … becoming active. In some people. So far, a small number; fairly small. And as I’m sure you’ve guessed by now—’

  ‘Me. I’m one of them.’ She had to work at resisting the laughter that tickled inside her. Of course, Oswald wouldn’t understand the implications of what he was telling her. But this was confirmation: that Alan was real, in Make-Believe. That she hadn’t imagined him. That their connections had been genuine, and genuinely shared. Everything she’d hoped was true; she’d believed it, but now … Now, she knew for sure.

  ‘Tell me,’ she said, ‘how does it work? Why is it only affecting some users?’

  ‘A couple of reasons. First and foremost, what seems to be happening is that the more a person makes use of their biomolecular network, the more it … let’s say it evolves. In other words, the connective capacity emerges through extensive use of Make-Believe. So far, therefore, it’s only the very earliest users – staff members, beta testers, the first tranche of subscribers – who have begun to experience a Make-Believe in which they connect with other users. You, for example. You were an early user, of course.’ His gaze drifted inward, as he checked his facts. ‘You racked up some pretty serious hours in Make-Believe ahead of the product launch, before we implemented the two-hour limit.’

  Yes: Cassie thought of how deeply she’d dived into her imagined world. How systematic she’d been, working her way through every experience she could possibly think of – in the name of research, of knowing the product, but she’d have done her job for free just to keep on exploring.

  ‘And then, a second reason why only some users are affected is that these connections require close proximity between users. It’s not like making a phone call, where your data gets bounced around up in space and a second later you’re speaking to someone in Australia. This is primitive; it’s undeveloped. How close do you need to be? A matter of metres. Could you connect to someone in the same room as you? Yes. To your next-door neighbour? Perhaps. There’s some evidence to suggest the range increases with use.’ He raised a hand to massage the back of his neck. ‘Of course, you also need to be in a state in which you are unresponsive to external stimuli, with your motor response inhibited. That can mean an ordinary Make-Believe session, where this state is initiated by your receiver. Or, it can simply mean that you’re asleep.’

  To connect to someone else – to enter Make-Believe – without using a receiver. It made sense of something that had been baffling her: why the doctors at Raphael House wouldn’t simply remove the receivers from their patients in order to stop the connections. It made sense of the wound behind Alan’s ear. Not where an implant was located, but where it had once been. Cassie tugged hard on a handful of hair as she followed the wider implications. ‘That must mean once you’ve connected to someone in Make-Believe, you can stay that way for hours at a time – because there’s no receiver, no signal, to cut you off.’

  Oswald nodded agreement. ‘Essentially, we have no control over these connections. And with frequent occurrence, their duration seems to increase. The capacity to connect becomes more effective, we think, as it lays down stronger neural pathways.’

  Cassie paused, fingers caught in a tangle of hair, chasing a niggling feeling that something wasn’t quite right; that somewhere, there was a flaw in the theory. She was about to point it out when Oswald asked a question.

  ‘Do you remember the first time it happened to you? That you connected with somebody else?’ He sounded genuinely curious.

  ‘No,’ she said. Pushed it away, the brightness and warmth, and the poor bleached colours of afterwards. She had to stay here, stay now, stay focused. ‘Not really. There can’t have been anything special about it. What about you?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’<
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  ‘You must have run up more Make-Believe time than I did. And if you think proximity is important – I guess you would be close enough to other users.’

  Oswald’s laugh was dismissive. ‘Real life is actually quite demanding. I’m afraid I’ve never had endless hours to spend in Make-Believe.’

  ‘But still – there must be a thousand, several thousand people who’ve built up as many hours as I did. Professor Morgan, for instance: she’s had the connections, I know.’ It was just a guess – that haunted look, so quickly suppressed, when Morgan had denied such a thing was possible – but Oswald didn’t contradict her. ‘Imagen staff, early adopters; are they all experiencing this?’

  ‘We don’t believe it’s anywhere near the several thousands. But it’s only recently we’ve had sufficient market penetration for multiple users to often be active in a relatively small space. And as we expand, of course, the problem grows: more subscribers, more users building up the hours …’

  ‘Hang on, though. I can see there’s a problem with the lack of control you have over these connections, but what I don’t get is why it would make people cancel their subscriptions. I mean …’ She trailed off as his eyebrows lifted in an expression of surprise.

  ‘You don’t understand why someone would be disturbed by an involuntary, unexplained connection?’ He leant back in his seat, as though to study her more clearly. ‘The invasion of another consciousness into your most intimate, private fantasy? The reshaping of your experience into something beyond your control?’

  ‘But it’s not like that.’ Even as Cassie spoke, she heard static, a far-off roar. Felt burnt rubber catch at her throat.

  ‘For you, perhaps. Since this shared Make-Believe is mutually shaped by each user, the nature of the experience rather depends on whom you connect with. You were fortunate, it seems.’

  She saw not-Alan rocking, pulling out his hair. Swallowed, dry-mouthed. ‘And if you’re not fortunate … that’s why people complain?’

  ‘D’you know, surprisingly few do complain. Those like yourself who have positive experiences – presumably they put it down to a glitch in the system, and keep quiet because they believe they’re getting something for nothing.’ Cassie felt herself reddening, and dipped her head. ‘And then, connections that occur without receivers, when users are asleep, are likely to be interpreted as dreams. Sweet dreams – or nightmares.’

  ‘But even so – there must be some talk about it.’

  ‘Oh, there is some, of course,’ he conceded. ‘There are always people who are determined to share their unpleasant experiences – on social media, forums, blogs and so on. And we have strategies to deal with that. We’re able to minimise damage to the brand, to our reputation for safety and pleasure. But most are not vocal about it: they don’t appear to talk, not online at least.’ His focus loosened, as he checked something on his lens. ‘You have a background in psychology, is that right? Why do you think all these hundreds of people would keep such traumatic experiences to themselves?’

  For a minute, Cassie turned the question in her mind. Then: ‘It’s up to you, what you Make-Believe,’ she said. ‘It’s whatever you want. So – anything that happens, with these connections, people think it’s what they want. Even if—’

  ‘Even if it’s very much what they don’t want.’

  She should have guessed it straight away. If you believed the dark, the horror, was a part of you, was your deepest, unconscious desire … ‘They’re ashamed,’ she said. ‘That’s why.’ More powerful than threats, than entreaties. It was always shame that kept people silent.

  Oswald smiled, approving. ‘It’s good news for us, except that we still lose them as subscribers. Many of these are high net worth individuals. You understand the resources that go in to attracting them in the first place. You understand how valuable they are. We can’t afford to keep letting them go.’

  She did understand. And then, of course – despite Imagen’s strategies for protecting the Make-Believe brand – sooner or later those ugly experiences being shared online would pile up sufficiently to be noticed, and taken seriously. And when that happened – when it emerged that, despite the exhaustive testing, despite the assurances of absolute safety and its licence from the Department for Innovation, Make-Believe was not the secure, controlled space its users had thought – then, it would be touch and go whether the company could survive. She understood now the tension Oswald was trying so hard to conceal. Was beginning to understand the effort they’d made to bring her here.

  She cleared her throat. ‘These connections: if they’re direct, person to person – I mean, not controlled by the receiver – well, how can you track them? What I mean is … how can you know that it’s really so bad?’

  ‘You’re right, with no data to track it has been a challenge to ascertain the facts of what’s happening. But there are various forms of evidence. Personal testimony. Direct observation. And in a few cases we’ve been able to perform scans of subjects’ brain activity. So we’ve observed, for instance, that the connections are invariably accompanied by brain signals that indicate strong emotion. You might almost say the connections are driven by emotion, whether positive or negative. We can identify the neural signatures. Fear. Sadness. Anger. Shame. All very prevalent.’ He rubbed the side of his nose. ‘Particularly when a subject connects to more than one user at the same time.’

  More than one. The words resounded. Simultaneous, multiple connections. She saw a sackful of cats, trapped, swarming, scratching. In the locked ward, a dozen patients, Alan among them. His fingernails scrabbling at bloodied skin. Her eyes flickered shut as she tried to refuse the image, but when Oswald spoke it was as if he could see it too.

  ‘Imagine,’ he said – his tone soft, suggestive. ‘If it were a friend of yours, suffering in this way.’

  Cassie opened her eyes. Stared at him. His features were arranged in an expression of neutral sympathy, and between them a moment stretched into a space for her to ask: Alan? Was it Alan he was talking about? What did he know – what could he know – about Alan and her?

  But she didn’t. She didn’t ask. Thought, for some reason, of Nicol. His cynicism, his suspicion. His disapproval. Kept the opening-up sound of Alan’s name trapped behind her teeth, till eventually Oswald spoke again. ‘You can help, Cassandra,’ he said. ‘By stopping these connections.’ He placed his hands, palms down, on the desk between them. ‘Here’s what we propose: to make use of your connective capacity to distribute what we might call an upgrade – a network upgrade. You understand? An upgrade that switches off the facility for direct communication between users.’

  ‘I’d be going back to Make-Believe?’

  ‘That’s right. We’ve engineered the upgrade to be self-replicating – just like a virus. All we would need you to do is allow your biomolecular network to be upgraded, and that’s an incredibly minor procedure; we’ll do it via a nasal spray, just like your initial installation. Then, once your network is primed with the upgrade, you’ll log back in to Make-Believe and start the distribution process. Each time you connect to another user, you’ll pass it on, and their network will upgrade in turn.’

  ‘But – if the upgrade destroys the connection? I mean, once your network is altered, you’re – you’re switched off, you can’t connect to anyone else, so then how can you pass it on?’

  ‘Trust me, we have worked out the details. The upgrade will take roughly a week to modify the biomolecular network; that’s a week in which it remains contagious, as it were. During that period you will pass it on to everyone with whom you connect. Let’s say you pass on the upgrade to three or four people. In fact’ – his tone became confidential – ‘it would be significantly more than that. We’d want to make the best use of you as an active carrier during that week, make some strategic connections, in order to really get a good start on the upgrade program. But just for the sake of our example … During the next week, each of those people passes it on to three or four more. Or perhaps
one or two of them fail to pass it on – they’re not in contact with another subscriber who has an active collaborative capacity. But that’s fine, we’ve mapped the distribution, we’re still on track for the kind of exponential growth that will allow us to spread the upgrade through the population.’

  He placed his palms flat on the desk. ‘Now, there are other ways we could fix this bug – but the benefit of this, for us, is that it’s quick, and it’s quiet. No need for subscribers even to know that anything has changed. As the upgrade spreads through our subscriber base, quite quickly we’ll reach a stage where customer networks are upgraded almost as soon as the connective capacity becomes active. A single glitch, nothing more than the flicker of a light. That’s all that most people will register.’

  She had to admit it was beautifully neat. An elegant solution. No wonder Oswald was looking pleased with himself.

  ‘So.’ He turned his enthusiasm towards her. ‘It’s a fair offer, wouldn’t you say? What we’re asking is simple, painless, risk-free; what we’re offering is the opportunity to change your life.’

  It was too much. Too perfect. She wanted what he was holding out to her, wanted it physically, urgently – in her chest, in the soles of her feet, in her back teeth – and even so, she felt herself drawing away. He sounded, suddenly, like a salesman. She’d crafted too many sales propositions not to recognise it: he’d worked on that line, or someone had – and taken it too far. Sound too good to be true? We have hundreds of thousands of satisfied customers – check our testimonials! But as she drew breath to tell him no, tell him she wanted to think about it, he held up a hand.

  ‘But listen – the last thing I want is for you to feel railroaded.’ He gave a sigh. ‘Unfortunately this situation is time-sensitive. A decision is due to be made at the end of the year on our application to license Make-Believe in the US. It’s a critically important market for us, and there are a number of hurdles there – so the religious lobby, for example, are opposed to what they see as human modification of what God created … But more significantly, the US administration is a lot less obliging than the UK, in that they’ve defined Make-Believe as a drug – rather than as entertainment, as it is over here. Which means we’re applying to the FDA, and that means the technology must be seen to be absolutely, one hundred per cent safe. Our licensing application has been turned down once before, and if it happens again … well. And frankly I wouldn’t be telling you this, but I do want you on the team going forward, helping to clear those hurdles.’