by Gary Gibson
Metka nodded, surprise registering on her face. ‘The man who wrote the book about Ashford Hall?’
Susan supposed it was natural Metka would have known about it. ‘I read it the other day. Once I realised he didn’t live that far from here, I got in touch with him. After the things you told me, I thought perhaps he could answer some questions for me.’
Metka’s gaze was respectful. ‘We wanted to consult with him for the case, but Ashford refused us permission to contact him. I’m beginning to think we should have had you working for us.’
That Ashford had refused them permission to meet with the man who’d linked him with an infamous murder didn’t surprise Susan in the least. ‘I got to thinking about what you said about a link between the recordings and my experiment. I’m willing to admit at least the possibility a link exists. But that doesn’t mean a thing without experimental proof.’
‘Then how do you prove it?’
Susan patted the stack of newspapers with one hand. ‘With these.’ She rifled around inside a drawer until she found a pair of scissors and passed them to Metka, who stared down at them in confusion. ‘What we’re going to do is very simple,’ Susan explained. ‘We’re going to select several random pages from each of these newspapers, which are all this morning’s editions, and then we’re going to slice those pages up into random strings of text. Just short snippets no more than a few words long should be sufficient.’
‘How many?’ asked Metka, looking dubious.
‘For the sake of randomness, I think a few hundred should do.’
Metka gazed at the stack of newspapers. ‘That’s going to take a long time.’
‘I think we can get it done in just an hour or two at the most.’ Susan bent at the knees and picked up a wastebasket, emptying the contents onto the floor before placing the basket on another desk. ‘Once we’re done, we’ll chuck all of them in here and shake it until they’re all mixed up. Then we’ll take turns selecting fragments at random, sight unseen, and put them together to form nonsense statements.’ She nodded at the door beyond which lay the Beast. ‘Then we’re going to run a test.’
‘I think I see,’ said Metka, glancing from the wastebasket to the newspapers and then towards the Beast, behind its door. ‘You want to try and make your own EVP’s. Is that it?’
Susan grinned widely. ‘Nail on the head.’ She checked the kettle was full and switched it on. They were going to need coffee to fuel them through the rest of the day.
‘You get started with the scissors, and I’ll get Beast operational in the meantime,’ said Susan. ‘Then I’ll find another pair of scissors and get to work slicing up bits of paper as well.’
‘And then?’
‘And then,’ said Susan, ‘we’re going to read out our nonsense statements. I figure we should do it right here, or in the room where the array is.’
‘You think it makes a difference where we are when we read them out?’
‘I have no idea,’ Susan admitted. ‘I thought about the room where Clara Ward died, but if the Beast is involved, I might as well assume proximity to it counts. Logic, or at least the prevailing evidence, dictates we need to be somewhere inside Ashford Hall for this to work.’
Not, she thought to herself, that there was any way in Hell she was ever going to enter that room of whispers and bracelets if she could humanly avoid it.
‘Lastly,’ she added, placing a hand on Metka’s computer, ‘and only after we’ve read them out, we’ll see if there are any matches with any of the previously recorded EVP’s.’
Metka laughed. ‘Idea is brilliant,’ she said. ‘But no one will believe you had not first listened to the EVPs, then constructed appropriate statements to match them.’
Susan nodded sharply. ‘You’re absolutely correct. But think of this experiment as a proof of concept. I’m not expecting it to be absolutely rigorous – right now, the only people I’m trying to prove this to are you and me.’ She picked a copy of the Daily Mail from the stack and started to separate out its pages. ‘And keep in mind that I’m not really making up the nonsense statements – they’re all from newspapers published today, so there’s every reason to think any EVP’s we create today will contain information found only in today’s newspapers.’ She studied the parapsychologist. ‘So – are you in? Because if this works, you’re going to be telling your grandchildren about the day you won half a Nobel prize.’
Metka lifted a copy of the Telegraph from the stack, then paused, regarding Susan with a serious expression. ‘Is there not a risk that sending messages back in time breaks all kinds of laws regarding causality?’
‘Yes,’ Susan agreed, tearing sheets in half, ‘that is something I’ve thought about.’ Indeed, that was precisely why she had decided to transmit random information, rather than anything too specific such as the name of a recent US President or the fall of the Twin Towers. ‘But until now, all we’ve had is theory and zero experimental proof of what does happen, if anything.’ She handed the pages to Metka, then powered up Rajam’s workstation. ‘The only thing causality tells us is that if something can’t happen, it won’t happen. So let’s see what does happen, shall we?’
In the end, it didn’t take much more than an hour and a half to generate sufficient newspaper cuttings for Susan to feel they had enough randomised fragments for their purposes. They pushed them all into the wastebasket, then carried it next door to the Beast. After that, Susan went back through to Rajam’s workstation and got to work programming the array.
‘Okay,’ she called through once everything was ready, ‘fetch the camera and we’ll get started.’
Susan smoothed her hair down, then turned to face Metka, who had switched on the camera and held it focused on her. There were a couple of false starts while Metka reminded herself how the machine operated, and Susan kept tripping over her own words, but soon enough she was able to quickly explain, for the sake of posterity, the nature of the experiment they were about to undertake.
Susan made a satisfied grunt when Metka tapped a button on the side of the camera. ‘It’s a start, anyway.’
‘Whoever picks the cuttings out of the box should wear a blindfold,’ Metka suggested.
‘That’s a great idea,’ said Susan, sounding pleased. ‘What can we use?’
‘I have a bandana,’ said Metka, fishing one out of a pocket. She shrugged. ‘Better than nothing.’
Metka agreed to pick out the fragments while Susan read them out loud. They set the camera on a portable tripod Metka had fetched from the West Wing in one corner of the Beast’s laboratory. Susan, in view of the lens, arranged the bandana carefully over Metka’s eyes while she sat on a chair next to the Beast’s table.
‘I can still see through it a little,’ said Metka.
‘Cover your eyes with one hand as well if you want to,’ Susan suggested. ‘Remember, this is about proof of concept more than anything. If it works, we’ll run the experiment again, preferably with other people involved, and see if the same thing happens.’
Metka nodded, and Susan placed the wastebasket carefully on the floor between Metka’s legs where she could easily reach down with one hand. She even went so far as to spread a piece of cloth over the top of the wastebasket. For one moment, she had a sudden mental flash of herself as a magician’s assistant, waiting to pull a rabbit out of an impossible hat.
‘All right,’ said Susan, leaning over to peer through the lens, her heart and lungs heavy in her chest, ‘start picking them out.’
Metka reached under the cloth with one hand pressing the bandana against her eyes, and lifted out the first scrap of paper. Susan left the camera and took the scrap of paper from Metka, placing it on another piece of cloth she’d spread on the edge of the table. It read: “don’t burn the”.
The next scraps pulled out of the wastebasket read: “relatively, official announcement, said today” and “denied everything”.
Metka continued, and Susan started a second line with the next group of scraps.
Before long they had a good sixty or seventy words arranged into a half-dozen nonsensical-sounding statements – as close to truly random as Susan was able to get under the circumstances.
‘Now what?’ asked Metka, pulling the bandana off.
Susan took out her phone and pulled up the camera function before taking a snap of the words arranged on the cloth. She next mailed the picture to Metka. Metka’s phone chimed in response.
‘We’ll take turns reading the lines to each other,’ said Susan. ‘Once we’re done – and only after we’re done – we’re going to open up your laptop and see if there are any matches between our randomised statements and Melville’s EVPs.’
The whole thing took just ten minutes, with Metka’s camera recording everything. Then they went next door to the office, where Metka ran a search on her laptop with her phone propped up next to it so she could type some of their randomised statements into the search bar. Then she sat back and said something under her breath that was clearly in her native Polish.
‘No one will ever believe us,’ she said at last, looking around at Susan.
Her fingers moved once more across the keyboard. Static issued out of the laptop’s speakers. Mixed in with the static, and just barely audible, was a voice that might have been Susan’s own. Trapped behind him – couldn’t avert the catastrophe – prices are falling everywhere.
Susan studied the picture on her own phone and felt something shift deep inside her bones. ‘That’s the fourteenth line,’ she said, her voice a half-croak.
Oh my God, she thought. This is huge. Really, really huge.
And whether she liked it or not, she was going to have to tell Christian Ashford before he could pull the plug on her project.
Friday July 10th 2020
Andrew stared at her. ‘Are you hung over?’
Susan nodded, and took another sip of black coffee. Last night she’d wound up back in the Grey Lady with Metka, where she’d received an impromptu lesson on Polish drinking games by way of a celebration. ‘Yes, Andrew, I very much am.’
‘I see.’ Andrew placed his leather attaché case on a chair and perched on the edge of his desk. ‘Now do you mind telling me just what’s going on?’
She looked at him through bleary eyes. ‘Did Ashford contact you yet?’
Andrew’s face registered mild surprise. ‘Yes, in fact he did. He woke me up at some ungodly hour to tell me he’s midway across the Atlantic on a private jet. What’s going on?’ He glanced at the door beyond which lay the Beast, then looked back at her, eyes wide. ‘Have we made some kind of progress?’
Susan nodded and put down her coffee. ‘Were you aware Ashford was about to kick me off my own research project?’
Andrew’s face reddened, and he said nothing.
‘You did know.’ She glowered at him. ‘What did he offer you?’
‘I...’ He cleared his throat, trying and failing to mask his embarrassment. ‘How did you find out?’
She said nothing. His eyes darted towards Rajam’s workstation, and his shoulders sagged. ‘Don’t worry. I can guess.’
‘Rajam’s got nothing to do with this,’ she warned him. ‘Leave him out of it.’
‘I didn’t really have much choice in the matter,’ he told her, his tone almost pleading. ‘It was either keep running things here after you’d left, or I’d lose the chance to run my own research projects.’
‘Christian Ashford is an absolute snake,’ Susan snarled. ‘But for the moment we’re stuck with him because of those fucking contracts we signed.’
He peered at her curiously. ‘You’ve spoken with a lawyer?’
‘This morning. I could take Ashford to court, but it’d cost me everything and drag on forever. And in the meantime he’d get what he wanted while I was stuck on the outside with no career to speak of.’
‘Yes.’ Andrew’s voice dropped a little. ‘Yes, that sounds about right.’ He cleared his throat. ‘But at least that means you can understand why I –’
She shot him another look and he halted mid-sentence. ‘Fine,’ he said, and stood. ‘I can leave, if you’d rather.’
‘You can stay,’ said Susan. I’d rather keep you where I can see you. ‘And yes, we’ve had a breakthrough, in answer to your original question.’
‘So... Beauty and the Beast are talking to each other?’
‘No.’ She saw the surprise in his face. ‘We’ve discovered something entirely different has been going on the whole time.’
‘Such as?’
She gazed wordlessly back at him.
He nodded. ‘I see.’
‘You haven’t exactly given me reason to trust you,’ she said. ‘Mostly I’m just glad I didn’t come back to find the locks had been changed.’ She leaned back in her chair, arms folded.
‘You said we’ve discovered something,’ he said. ‘Who’s “we”? Do you mean Rajam?’
She thought about not telling him, but decided she wanted to see the look on his face. ‘Actually, Metka has been an enormous help. Without her insight, I might have missed something very important altogether.’
Andrew’s face coloured. ‘What did she do to help, exactly? Offer to realign your chakras?’
She felt the anger rise up inside her like something red and raw and alive. ‘Maybe you had the right idea in the first place,’ she said. ‘Maybe you should leave.’
His face coloured, his lips thin and bloodless. ‘Enjoy your time with Christian,’ he snapped. ‘You deserve each other.’
He turned, then, and stalked out the door. By the time she realised he’d left his case sitting by his desk, he was long gone.
She almost called after him, then thought better of it. Screw him, she thought, realising her coffee had turned cold. He could come back and collect it if he had the nerve to show his face again.
‘I have to tell you, what you sent me, well – it just blew me away.’ Ashford gazed up at the brightly lit exterior of Ashford Hall. ‘Blew. Me. Away.’
She wondered if it was her imagination that made her sense a touch of uneasiness as he surveyed the building. Ashford certainly looked the part of the West Coast billionaire, his face lightly bearded and his receding hair cropped close against his skull. He wore the standard Silicon Valley tech guru uniform of faded jeans and tennis shoes, but his long, dark coat and silk scarf, she suspected, cost more than some people made in a year. His eyes peered out from behind a pair of steel-rimmed glasses, his hands pushed deep into coat pockets.
‘It’s nice to finally meet you in the flesh, Mr Ashford,’ said Susan, shaking his hand. She’d gone home after her confrontation with Andrew and done her best to make herself presentable for Ashford’s arrival that same evening, but as much as it pained her to admit it, even to herself, it would have been good to have Andrew there at that precise moment. He was much better at dealing with people face-to-face than she had ever been.
‘Pleasure’s all mine,’ he said, putting a hand on her shoulder and nodding towards the entrance. ‘I never thought I’d see this place again.’
‘You weren’t here when they finished rebuilding it?’
He laughed at that, a high, nervous chuckle. ‘It isn’t officially open yet – not officially, that is. We’ll have a proper ceremony this autumn. I haven’t seen this old place in the flesh since it was still just a pile of mouldy bricks.’
He turned to speak to the man who had driven him here in a limousine, and who, judging by his muscular build and unsmiling demeanour, doubled as a bodyguard. ‘Wait in the main hall, Grigor. I won’t be long.’
The man grunted, then followed them into the main hall. Inside, Ashford cast a puzzled glance at the unmanned reception desk. ‘I see you’re still having staffing problems.’
‘They keep quitting,’ said Susan, regarding him levelly. ‘It’s because of the voices.’
He chuckled nervously again. ‘I guess I can’t blame them, even if you’ve proven they’re not ghosts. He looked at her. ‘That’s right, isn’t it?’
‘But these EVP’s or transmissions or whatever the hell you want to call them – they are all from the present? I mean, they’re definitely not connected with anything else that might have happened here before now, am I right?’
‘I’m quite certain all the EVP’s associated with Ashford Hall are purely an epiphenomenon of our experimental process,’ she lied. ‘They go from our present and into the past – not the other way around.’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’m relieved to hear you say that.’
She nodded. ‘Perhaps we should go up, and I can show you the Beast.’
Rajam was waiting for them in the lab, which looked marginally tidier than it usually did. Susan went through the motions of introducing them, trying not to think too much about the job offer Ashford had already made to Rajam, and which they were all pointedly avoiding discussing.
‘The array is through here,’ she said, leading Ashford into the room next door.
Ashford made his way around the edge of the table supporting the array and peered down at the ranks of components and lasers his money had paid for. ‘I’ve visited the other one in Berkeley, of course. I won’t pretend to understand as much of it as I’d like.’ He glanced at her. ‘Isn’t Andrew going to be here?’
‘There wasn’t time to let you know. He...’ her voice trailed off, unable to find the right words.
‘Quit?’ Ashford asked mildly.
‘He expressed some concerns over Metka’s involvement because of her association with Professor Bernard. To be honest, expressing concerns is what he mostly does.’
Ashford nodded. ‘Whether he’s here or not, he’s going to have to sign a new NDA. So will you, and anyone else with even the vaguest idea of what brought me here. That’s to protect me and you and all of us.’ He came back around the table and smiled. ‘I’m so excited by this I can hardly tell you. It could mean so many of the things we think we knew about how the world works are wrong.’