by Tom Gabbay
Ula waved her hand in the air, dismissing the idea. "They say a lot of things, but they don’t know anything. If they can’t use a drug or a knife, they’re mystified."
"Have you tried therapy? Or hypnosis?"
"Therapy?" A bemused, slightly drunken smile formed on Ula's lips. "I might as well let them attach leeches to my body. It would be just as effective."
"Well, you shouldn't give up," Mia said. "You never know what can happen."
"Oh, I haven’t given up," Ula replied, eyes drawn again to the candlelight. "In fact, I’m feeling rather optimistic"
"That's good, Ula," Mia said, reassuring her. "I really do believe that when you're facing adversity, staying positive is half the battle."
Ula was silent, staring into the flame for what seemed a very long time. Then she looked up, smiled cryptically, and said, "Can you keep a secret?"
10.
"Aside from Erik and me, you’ll be the first person to see it." Ula led Mia up the attic stairway. "I'm actually quite excited to show you."
"I'm really curious," Mia said, her voice betraying the nervous apprehension she felt.
Ula flicked the light switch at the top of the steps, revealing the makeshift laboratory where she'd spent pretty much every waking hour since coming out of the coma, ten months earlier. Something that looked like a dentist's chair had been set up in the centre of the space, with a computer station behind it. A cable connected the mainframe to a strange looking headpiece that looked like it was made out of a bicycle helmet. Mia stopped a few feet short of the configuration.
"What is it?" she asked.
Ula pointed to the chair. "Sit there and I'll show you."
Mia looked skeptical. "What does it do?"
"If you get in, I'll show you." Ula entered a series of passwords into the keyboard and the mainframe came to life. Mia took a step toward the subject chair but hesitated.
"It's not dangerous," Ula reassured her.
Mia nodded and reluctantly lifted herself into the seat. Ula did something at the control panel and the chair shifted smoothly into the reclining position.
"Just lie back and relax," Ula said, removing a silver clip from Mia's hair before placing the E.I.R. onto her head.
"What's that?" Mia asked, feeling increasingly anxious.
"It's called an Electronic Impulse Receiver," Ula explained. "It picks up electronic signals from your brain and sends them to the computer."
"Oh, wow... Really?"
"It's perfectly safe," Ula assured her as she made some adjustment to the headpiece. "You'll need to close your eyes."
"What's going to happen?"
"You'll see. Close your eyes."
Mia wondered what she'd got herself into. If this was a movie, she was playing the part of the dumb student who was about to be tortured and turned into some kind of zombie by the mad scientist.
"Are your eyes closed?" Ula asked from her seat at the computer station.
"Yes," Mia said as she closed them. "They're closed."
"Good." Ula executed a few quick key strokes on the keyboard.
"Are you relaxed?"
"Not really."
"Nothing bad is going to happen," Ula promised. "But it will work better if you're relaxed."
"I'll try," Mia said, attempting a deep breath but coming up short.
Ula launched the programme software, causing the screen to fill with an erratic pattern of random static noise, similar to an old analogue television when there's no signal. "Now I want you to empty your mind of all thoughts," she said.
"I’m not sure I can do that," Mia responded.
"It's not as hard as it sounds." Ula lowered the room lights from her control panel. "Imagine that you’re staring into space. All you can see is a deep, dark, empty void that goes on and on, into infinity. Now allow the emptiness to envelop you... Yes, good."
The electronic noise on the screen slowly diminished, until a calm, almost uniform pattern of black emerged. Ula made a few small changes to the polarity before continuing her instructions in a hushed, flat tone.
"Now I want you to think of a number. Any number between one and ninety-nine. But don’t force it. Allow it to come to you. Imagine the number sitting out there in the darkness, a bright white light seared into the empty space. That’s it... Now concentrate on it."
As she spoke, something started to form on the screen. Lacking definition at first, it slowly came into focus to reveal the numbers "3" and "7."
"Thirty-seven," Ula said. "You're thinking of number thirty-seven."
"Oh my god!" Mia sat up sharply and twisted around to face Ula, almost pulling the E.I.R. off her head. "How...? How did you...? Did you just read my mind?!"
"I read an image that was in your mind."
"Yes, but... Oh my god, Ula! How?"
"By processing the signal."
"What signal?"
"The electronic signal that your brain transmits."
Mia removed the E.I.R. and looked it over. "This thing can do that?"
"It just picks up the signal." Ula limped over to take custody of the headpiece. "The computer then has to process it. Or more accurately, the software does."
"Amazing!" Mia pulled herself out of the chair. As incredible as the demonstration had been, she wasn't keen on repeating it. Maybe it was some kind of mind trick, she thought. She'd seen that sort of thing on the internet.
"You're a good subject," Ula said as she returned the E.I.R. to its proper place. "You emit a very strong signal."
"Okay, well... I guess that's good. At least I'm unique."
"We each have our own electronic footprint, but you'd be surprised by how similar we all are. As with our DNA, human thoughts are ninety-nine point five percent identical to each other."
Mia shook her head. "I guess all this stuff is beyond me."
"Don't feel bad. It's beyond most people." Ula returned to the control panel to shut the programme down. "Think of the brain as an organic hard drive. It stores electronic impulses and, when called upon, sends them to another part of the brain for processing. Once the signal is intercepted, it's just a matter of teaching the computer how to read it. That's the challenging part."
"So how did you do it?"
"It's like learning a new language. A few years of trial and error, and then all of a sudden, it all makes sense. Once I learned how to send an image to the brain, it wasn't all that complicated to reverse the process. Same language, but instead of talking, I was listening. Downloading, instead of uploading."
"Well, however you do it, it’s amazing. But I have to say, it's kind of creepy!"
Ula gave her a look. "Creepy in what way?"
"Sorry..." Mia realised her mistake immediately. She and the wine had managed to lower Ula's guard and now it had suddenly shot up again. "I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just -- "
"Just what?"
"I guess I don't know why you'd want to read people’s minds."
"I don’t," Ula said, not bothering to mask her annoyance. "Most of them wouldn’t be worth the effort."
"So what is the point?"
"The point is to read my own mind."
"Your own mind? Why would you want to do that?"
Ula gave Mia a long, impatient look. "Because..." she said, drawing it out. "If I can capture my old memories and download them onto the computer's hard drive, I can then reload them into a part of my brain that hasn’t been damaged. Isn't it obvious?"
Mia ignored the derisive tone. She was starting to think that rather than some mad evil scientist Ula might be an honest to goodness genius. "Can you really do that?" she asked. "Reload your memories into another part of your brain?"
"There's no reason why not," Ula replied, her irritation dissipating with the question. "I just have to find an access point."
"Access point?"
"A door into my mind. If I can do that -- "
Ula noticed that a strange, distracted expression had come over Mia. She was looking around
the attic, as if searching for something in the air.
"Mia...?"
"Yes?"
"What are you doing?"
"Don't you hear it?"
"Hear what?"
"The voice..."
"You hear a voice?"
"Yes. Can't you?"
"No." Ula paused to listen, but there was only silence.
"It's very faint," Mia said. "It's a man's voice, calling out... You really don't hear it?"
"No."
"He's calling out," she whispered. "Calling for you. Saying your name... It's... It's coming from up there..."
She looked up and was met with a sudden blinding flash. Expanding out from its source, the attic was flooded with a light so intensely brilliant that it seemed to burn through everything it touched. Lines blurred and shapes melted into the background, until it finally became impossible to see anything but the white-hot glow of the incandescent haze.
11.
"Ula? ... Can you hear me, Ula?"
Erik held her eyelids open as he flashed the light of a doctor’s torch into them.
"Ula!" he repeated. "If you can hear me, you must wake up!"
She was unresponsive, her eyes unfocused and rolling into the back of her head. Erik moved quickly, retrieving the epinephrine injector from the drawer at the computer station, where he'd stored it for an emergency like this.
"Christ, Ula," he whispered to himself as he prepped the needle. "What the hell have you done?"
Concerned that her breathing was shallow and her heart rate becoming dangerously low, he held her head to one side, stabbed her in the nape of the neck, just above the shoulder, and depressed the plunger.
A shiver went through Ula's body, she blinked a few time, then groaned and sat up, holding her head. She stole a look at Erik.
"What happened?" she asked.
"You went online alone."
"Oh..." It started to come back to her. "Yes, I... What... What time is it?"
"It's morning," Erik replied. "Ten past eight."
Ula let out a low moan and massaged her temples.
"You mustn't do that, Ula!" Erik scolded. "You mustn't go online alone! We agreed this. You need to be monitored!" He checked the programme history on the mainframe. "You didn’t even collect the data! We must have all the data!"
"Fuck the data!"
Erik was shocked into momentary silence. Ula found her cane, pulled herself out of the chair, and headed for the stairs. Erik followed.
"Did you see something?" he asked.
She didn't answer until they'd reached the bottom of the stairwell. "I’m not sure," she said. "Maybe."
Reaching into her back pocket, she gave him a folded piece of paper. He opened it up to find the police composite of the man in the hood and sunglasses.
"What's this?" he asked.
"A police detective gave it to me."
"A detective? What detective?"
"She came last night. After you left."
"I hope you didn’t say anything about our work."
Ula gave him a look of utter contempt.
"It’s a reasonable question."
"Of course I didn’t say anything."
Erik studied the drawing. "Is he a suspect?"
Ula shook her head. "Someone saw him in the area that night. The detective thinks Mia might have known him."
"So you decided to go looking."
Ula nodded.
"Did you find him?"
Ula took the drawing out of his hand and looked it over. "I don’t know," she said, struggling to recall. "There was a man. On a street. He was harassing her."
"Did he look like this?"
"I don’t know. Maybe." She closed her eyes and tried to conjure up an image of what she'd seen in the memory. "He... He had blonde hair. Short blonde hair. I think she knew him." An image came to her and she looked up at Erik. "He was wearing sunglasses."
"Are you able to remember anything else about him?"
"No." She shook her head. "That’s all."
"A name?"
"A name," Ula repeated. "Yes, there might have been a name."
"Can you remember it?"
Ula stared at the drawing, struggling to recall. But, like a long forgotten dream, the memory was lost, hidden away in some far flung corner of her mind.
12.
Chief Inspector John Baynard looked like he had a case of mild indigestion. But he often looked that way. "For Christ's sake," he moaned as he handed the composite drawing back to Boyd, who'd been waiting by his desk when he came in with his morning coffee. "It looks like half the chavs in London."
"I know it's not ideal, sir, but the witness says she saw him fleeing the scene moments after she heard the victim's screams. I thought that with some media coverage we might get lucky."
"We'd have to get bloody lucky."
Boyd could see it was going be a losing battle, but she wasn't yet ready to sound the retreat. "To be honest, sir, we don't have much more to go on. In fact, we're at a dead end."
"And if we put this out there, the entire world will know it. We'll look desperate."
It was exactly what she'd expected to hear. The case was too high profile to put the drawing out discreetly -- it would be on the front page of every newspaper and featured on every evening news programme, and it would be followed by the inevitable question: "After four months of investigation, that's all you've got?"
The truth was that a part of her was relieved. After all, she'd be the one answering the questions. But there really weren't any alternatives. After interviewing all of Mia Fraser's friends, family, teachers, and every resident within two blocks of the crime scene, this was all she had.
"I'm certain we'd get some leads," she said, giving it one last go. Baynard shifted in his seat and cleared his throat a couple of times before answering. It was his way of signalling that he was becoming annoyed.
"Look here, Boyd," he said. "Even if I thought it was worth a punt, I couldn't get it past the crowd upstairs. No one wants to put this back on the front page unless it's because we've got our killer. Show the picture around the neighbourhood, see if you can't get something a bit more solid."
"Yes, sir," Boyd replied, even though she'd already done all that. Returning to her office, she sat at her desk and added the drawing to her file, which contained old news clippings, forensic photos, and a timeline of Mia's movements in the twenty-four hours leading up to her murder. She was a pretty girl, Boyd thought as she contemplated the front page photo in The Mail. With the kind of face that made you feel at ease. Non-threatening. Perhaps her assumption was wrong. Perhaps it was just a horrible, random act, perpetrated by a mentally imbalanced stranger. If that was the case, the chances of finding her killer were drastically reduced.
The phone rang. "Boyd," she said absentmindedly.
"Ah, hello, ma'am." The voice was unfamiliar. "This is P.C. Alan Ross, attached to the Edmonton branch."
"Yes?"
"I've got a situation here with a Mister Leonard Boyd. Would that be your father?"
Boyd sat up. "Yes. Leonard Boyd is my father. What's happened?"
"Well, we found him out on the A110, trying to set up a one-man roadblock. He was somewhat confused and, shall we say, inappropriately dressed."
"Oh, god."
"Yes, well, after a cup of tea and a chat he was able to give me your name."
"But he's all right?"
"Yes, ma'am. No harm done."
She breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank you so much for ringing, Officer Ross." She checked her watch. "Are you able to stay there with him for a bit? I'll be as quick as I can."
"Yes, ma'am, no problem."
"Thank you so much. Can I speak to him?"
"I think he'd rather not at the moment." The officer lowered his voice. "I believe he's a bit embarrassed about the situation."
"Right. Yes. I understand." Boyd had her coat on and was already out the door. "Can you text me your exact location?"
&nbs
p; It nearly broke her heart to see the expression on Leonard's face as he sat in the back seat of the patrol car. P.C. Ross approached as she neared the vehicle.
"He was a bit disoriented at first," he said. "But he's fine now. Just a bit quiet."
"I appreciate you contacting me."
"Not a problem."
She gave him a nod and approached the patrol car. Leonard, in pyjamas and dressing gown, was drinking tea out of a styrofoam cup.
"Hello, sweetheart," he said, doing his best to put on a brave face.
"Hello, Dad. Shall we go home?"
"Sounds like the thing to do."
Boyd thanked the officer once again and Leonard shook his hand as he got into the car. The short drive home was made in silence.
"Looks like I messed up," Leonard finally said as they turned onto Culloden Road. Boyd looked over at him, but took a moment to formulate a response.
"Do you remember anything about it?" she asked. "How you got there or how it started?"
"No, darling. I'm afraid it's all pretty much a blank."
"Okay,"she said as she pulled the car into the drive. "Let's not worry about that now. We'll figure things out."
"Course we will," Leonard said, doing his best to sound convincing.
13.
As Ula slept, Erik returned to the attic, hoping to recover some of the data generated during her unsupervised excursion into the memory file. He was becoming concerned about his partner's state of mind. The emotional stress of the experience was clearly causing her to lose objectivity -- an unacceptable development if the publication of their findings was to be successful. Even with the most diligent methodology and dispassionate presentation, the scientific community would be highly skeptical of the achievement. If a hint of personal feeling was detected, it would be an excuse to reject the entire study, no matter how revolutionary the outcome.
Compounding Erik's unease was the knowledge that he had outlived his usefulness. His expertise had been absolutely essential four months earlier, on the morning after the girl's murder, when Ula first proposed her radical idea. He'd rushed over as soon as he learned of the incident, arriving at half-past seven to find Ula seated at the kitchen table, surrounded by books, furiously making notes on a yellow legal pad.