by Chris Dolley
Maybe there was.
He switched on his terminal and quickly navigated through the DTI screens until he found the search page. He typed in "ParaDim" and waited. Would it be different this time? Would it show entries for resonance projects, maybe an explanation of what a resonance wave was?
It didn't.
But it did show two hits:
ParaDim Phase Two: General project overview and tender information.
ParaDim: Census Project.
Census Project? Graham stared at the screen. He'd heard that name before. In one of Annalise's messages. Access the Census logs.
He clicked on the Census Project and shuffled closer. A new screen appeared. A project overview and several sections of technical specifications.
The Census Project, jointly funded by ParaDim and Her Majesty's Government and based in London, is seeking partner organizations to help expand its highly successful and recently completed pilot project into a fully operational global model.
The Census Project is part of ParaDim Phase Two. Information on family and medical history will be gathered, collated and fed into the ParaDim model. The Census Project seeks to identify people with natural immunities to various diseases and conditions.
Information gathered will also be invaluable to the many other linked ParaDim research projects. As in Phase One, partner organizations will benefit through the distribution of shares in ParaDim Inc., details of which can be found on page 4 of the tender document.
Graham read the overview again. What could any of that have to do with him? There was nothing in his family or medical background that could possibly interest anyone. He'd had all the usual childhood diseases and had never been exposed to anything exotic.
It didn't make any sense.
He returned to the search results page and clicked on ParaDim Phase Two.
ParaDim Inc. is seeking partner organizations to help in the collection, collation and processing of data for ParaDim Phase Two. After the phenomenal success of Phase One, ParaDim is expanding its model into Health and the Humanities.
Data collected during Phase Two will be used to create the data reservoir required to power ParaDim Phase Three.
Many of the Phase Two projects are joint sponsored by national governments. Appendix H gives details of countries offering grants and tax incentives for ParaDim partner organizations.
As with Phase One, partner organizations will share in the success of the project by the allocation of shares in ParaDim Inc. This will be at a reduced level, reflecting the lower profitability of the Phase Two work. However, significant breakthroughs in the areas of health and insurance are forecast and Phase Two partners will be given special consideration when assessing candidates for Phase Three.
Pages and pages of technical specifications followed. Graham scrolled back to the top and logged out.
* * *
By four o'clock, Graham was having second thoughts. He'd meet Annalise another time. He wasn't cut out for clandestine meetings and even less for giving people the slip.
But she'd told him to be there. And doing what other people told him was one of the tenets that paved his path of least resistance through life.
He was torn and becoming more so by the minute. Why couldn't Annalise slip him a note? Why all the cloak and dagger?
He paced the fifth floor, tried to bury himself in work and in-trays but it wouldn't go away. The fear, the foreboding, the certainty that something bad was going to happen. Didn't she realize what she was asking him to do?
Even if he didn't make a scene at the tube station—which he was certain he would—she was asking him to break his journey home. A journey that had become a ritual. Seventeen years of treading the same path at the same time.
Ignore ritual and bad things were certain to follow.
He'd broken his journey home on Friday and, within an hour, a girl had unravelled in his hallway.
What would happen tonight? He wasn't just breaking his journey, he was going to change trains, run, hide, make a scene.
The world was unstable, evolving. Its fabric wafer-thin and in need of constant reinforcement. Streets had to be walked, buildings observed, rituals honored. Without that, the fabric failed and strands worked loose.
A tree falling, unobserved, deep in the forest makes no sound. He'd read that years ago. It was so true. A tree like that would have lost all coherence, it would have faded as it fell, its timber eaten away by neglect. There'd be nothing left to make a sound.
And it was worse today. You only had to read the newspaper headlines. Alaskan wilderness in danger, rain forests shrinking, ice caps melting. Take away the observer and the world unravels. Without observation there can be no substance and without ritual there can be no cement.
Even the cities weren't immune. So many people detached from their surroundings, walking by without looking. Was it coincidence that the oldest buildings were always the ones surrounded by tourists? Their walls thickened by centuries of observation and held together by the ritual of guided tours.
And if he turned his back on his usual train who was to say if it would be there tomorrow? His defection might be the last straw. His use, his eyes, his belief might be the only thing keeping the train from fading away. It could be cancelled, rerouted, the entire line might unravel and reappear several miles to the west.
Strange things happen. That was the nature of the world.
But if he ignored Annalise?
Wouldn't that be worse? Wasn't he caught up in a prolonged aftershock? Caught up in a thread where people broke into his home and threatened his life?
And if he didn't meet her tonight, mightn't he miss forever the opportunity to break free? Annalise and her message unravelling away into dust?
By the time he left work he was terrified. Terrified of drawing attention to himself at the tube station and terrified of missing his only chance to escape.
The lights changed and he followed the crowd across the road. He gazed at the shop on the corner and let his eyes trace its outline. He could feel the building strengthen under his gaze. The bricks looked darker, the cement more solid.
His inner voice agreed. Forget about the girl and celebrate the real world, observe and record. Who was he—an amateur—to think he could give professionals the slip? He'd only make things worse. Forget. Go home. Ignore. The girl was trouble.
But why were people following him? Why were they bugging his house? How could he ignore people who broke into his home?
He walked, he argued, he counted. He handed decision making over to fate. If the next set of lights changed on an odd number he'd go to the park—even, he'd go home.
They changed on fifteen.
A little voice in his head whispered, best of three.
By the time he reached the station, it was screaming, best of eleven.
He followed the stream of people onto the crowded eastbound platform and joined the small line of people snaking their way along the back wall.
His little voice pleaded. Forget. Go home. Ignore.
Graham pushed further along, stopping by an access tunnel to the westbound platform. He sneaked a sideways glance down the tunnel; the far platform was packed too. A train couldn't be that far off.
It won't work. They'll see you.
He felt terrible; the anticipation, the fear, the nausea, the rush of stale air against his face, the cold sweat, clammy hands, the feeling that a thousand eyes were watching his every move. The eastbound train arrived, roaring and rattling, lights flashing from the passing carriages.
He thought he was going to faint. Train doors opened, people surged forward. He moved with them. Every fiber of his being screamed at him to get on that train, forget, go home, ignore.
He closed his eyes, counted, dug in his heels. He had to meet Annalise. He had to!
People all around—milling and shoving. He hunched down and turned, saw the tunnel and pushed, squeezed, elbowed his way towards it.
He fell forward into the t
unnel, stumbled, regained his balance and flew the twenty yards to the westbound platform. He ducked left and pushed along the back wall. Another roar, another rush of air, another squeal of metal on metal as the westbound train roared in. He reached the end of the platform, the crowd thinning, the train stopping. He felt himself move forward—a strange disembodied feeling—he pushed and squirmed his way to the far side of the carriage, grabbed the metal upright by the door and gripped as hard as he could.
Eleven, twelve—he'd been counting forever—the train stationary, the doors still open. No one else getting on, the platform emptying. What were they waiting for!
The doors closed on fifteen. The train lurched forward. Graham swayed against the pole, braced himself and tucked his head down as far as it would go, praying that he'd got away, praying that his watchers were speeding away on the eastbound train.
He clung to the metal pole for three long minutes, his knuckles white from the pressure. He jumped out at the next station. He wanted to run, he wanted to get out, he wanted to push past. Why was everyone moving so slowly!
He reached the ticket barrier, the lobby . . .
Daylight! He blinked into the sun, took a deep breath, found his bearings, and started to run, glancing back every twenty yards or so, taking sudden lefts and rights though the maze of tiny side streets.
Gradually, he calmed down. He wasn't being followed. He slowed to a walk and adjusted his stride to the cadence of the street.
He looked round as he approached the park bench. A final check that he wasn't being followed. He glimpsed Annalise out of the corner of his eye, strolling across the grass to his right. Her long black hair had been bleached honey blonde and braided but it had to be her. Even from this distance, her walk was unmistakable. The way she floated over the grass, sinuous and effortless.
He watched her approach. She looked distracted. No smile of recognition or friendly wave. Didn't she recognize him? Was she a different Annalise?
"Thank God, you came," she said. "My name's Annalise, Annalise Mercado, and I'm here to help. Anyway I can. What do you need?"
Graham didn't know what to say. He'd expected to meet Annalise One, to hear what Kevin Alexander had to say. Not to start all over from the beginning again with another girl.
He shook his head. He'd risked so much. And for what?
"But you're the key," the girl said, grabbing his arm.
"The key to what? I wish someone would tell me."
"The key to getting us out of here! Look, you can talk freely in front of me. It's okay. I know what's really happening. I know about the VR worlds."
Thirteen
"What VR worlds?"
"You know," said Annalise. "Artificial worlds created by computers. That's where we are now—trapped in a VR world."
Graham frowned. He'd heard people talking about virtual reality, he'd even skimmed through a book about it once, but it wasn't a subject that held his interest.
"It's obvious, really," Annalise continued. "I can't understand why I didn't work it out earlier. Guess I was too busy listening to the others." She paused and tilted her head to one side. "The other Annalises? You know about the others, right?"
He nodded. "All two hundred of them."
"Exactly! That's my point. There's two hundred Annalise Mercados, some of us even live in the same city and yet we've never met. Now you tell me how that's possible if we all live in the same world?"
He could . . . up to a point. He could explain how the world was unstable and threads were forever unravelling. How, most likely, there was just the one Annalise whose life unravelled from time to time. But how she communicated with her other selves or how she had even learned of their existence . . . that was beyond him.
Maybe something unusual had happened during an unravelling. Maybe a thread had broken somehow and a fragment had been left behind. A fragment of Annalise's life forever snagged in the fabric of the world, not part of the world and yet not fully disconnected either. A loose thread caught between layers of reality. A loose thread around which two hundred others had gathered.
"It's not that we haven't tried to see each other. Last month two of us sat at the same table in the same coffee bar at the same time. Never caught a glimpse. We sat there, talking to each other in our heads, describing what we saw, who was sitting where and what was on the menu." She paused for breath. "It was like we were in different places! Can you believe that? Similar but not the same. The menu was the same, the decor too, even some of the waitresses, but the customers . . . they were all different."
"You talked to each other while this was happening?"
"All the time. And last week there were six of us. The full Des Moines chapter—except for Annalise One. We all met up at Rosie's Bar but none of us saw each other. It's like we all arrived on different nights. We took turns describing what we saw. One of the guys behind the bar—Sergio, I think his name was—five of us saw him and five of us described him wearing different clothes. Annalise Nineteen even said he had a beard. Now that's spooky."
Graham agreed, very spooky.
And, suddenly, very worrying. What would Annalise Twelve have seen last night if anyone had tried to break into his house?
"Of course, Annalise One thinks we're all dead—except for her—and that's why we can't see each other. We're all spirits on the astral plane, living in imaginary worlds, constructing imaginary Rosie's and describing imaginary barmen." She shook her head. "Doesn't work, does it? She can't have it both ways. She can't accept what we tell her when it suits her and dismiss it when it doesn't. You heard about her TV show?"
Graham nodded.
"That's what got me started. People would ring in to Annalise's show with the names of loved ones they wanted to contact. There were like ten or so a day and she'd pass them to us and we'd flip through our phone directories looking for them all. Most of the people we couldn't find or we contacted the wrong person. But I was interested and kept a list of all the names. Checked them out later. Found most of them too. But not in the phone book."
She stopped and looked right at him, daring him to guess.
"Where?" he said.
"Obituaries column of the local paper. Now you tell me how you can die when you're already dead?"
He couldn't.
"But the real clincher's what happened last Wednesday. Annalise One had a message for me from Kevin Alexander. Guess who he wanted to contact?"
"Who?"
Annalise looked disappointed. "You're supposed to guess."
Graham considered it for a while, hoping Annalise would relent and tell him the answer. Guessing was not something he was good at.
Annalise continued to look at him. "Well?" she said, carving winding motions through the air with her hand.
"Gary Mitchison?"
"Wrong! He wanted to contact Kevin Alexander. Now you tell me why Kevin Alexander's sending messages to himself? There's only one answer. He's not using the Annalises to contact the dead, he's using them to bridge the VR worlds. It's the only thing that makes sense."
"What was the message?"
"Exactly the same message he sent to Gary Mitchison the first time. You know—danger, resonance projects disbanded, Census logs, Graham Smith, resonance wave?"
Graham nodded.
"Except this time he gave us a telephone number to try. Annalise One said it was a test, just for a few of the girls, we had to ring this number and ask for Kevin Alexander. We had to phone from a call box and hang up the moment we found out if he was working there or not."
"Working where?"
"ParaDim, of course. Over here in London. I was the only one who got through. So I was asked to come to London and give Kevin Alexander the message from himself. Now why does anyone do that?"
A very good question. Was Kevin Alexander looking for a way to talk to the unravelled? But for what end? Pure research? Something to do with resonance waves?
"It has to be VR worlds, doesn't it? Two hundred of them and we're all str
apped inside these VR chambers with strange helmets on our heads and wires going everywhere. And then one day some wire gets crossed and suddenly all the Annalises can talk to each other. That's it, isn't it?"
She looked at him expectantly. He looked away.
"Come on, it's gotta be!" She grabbed him by the elbow and tried to turn him back to face her. "And there's more proof. Think about all those alien abductions." She shook her head slowly from side to side. "No one was ever abducted. That was just a cover-up to hide the real truth. Equipment malfunction."
"Equipment malfunction?"
"Damned right! The VR hookup fails now and then and people have to be taken off-line but sometimes they wake up during the process and see all these wires and probes and stuff and freak out. It's not alien experimentation, it's scientist guys fixing the VR hookup. Think about it. What would all that VR equipment look like? We're all strapped into chambers somewhere with wires poking in and out of us, there'll be guys standing over us with bright lights shining in our faces."
Annalise was animated. Too animated for Graham's liking. He glanced nervously to his left, was anyone looking at them? Was Annalise drawing unwelcome attention?
Annalise tugged at his elbow again.
"Do you know how many people go missing each year? Tens of thousands and that's just the U.S. Now, you can't tell me they're all living on the streets. And if they're all dead—where's the bodies? No, they're gone. Real gone. Program malfunction." She crossed her throat with her finger. "Zap. One minute they're walking around, the next minute they're history. Erased from the system never to return."
Graham thought about all the people he'd seen disappear. The way people vanished and then returned as though nothing had ever happened. Had Sharmila been switched off? Had Michael really been transferred to Greenwich six months ago or had he been off-line since January?