by Killip, Alan
“He was on a different time scale.”
She nodded and smiled. “Time passed about a thousand times faster for him. God knows why.” Her index finger swirled on the mouse pad of her laptop. “Fast forward an hour and he sounds really upset.” She jabbed the space bar, and the synthetic brogue sounded again.
“Why would you do this to me? Why, why, what for ? I'm no monster ...”
She jabbed her keyboard and the sound ceased. “Interesting how fear and desperation are reconstructed from the raw data. This is what would have animated his vocal chords, his lips, his tongue, his throat. And the weird thing, the voice gets hoarse.”
I nodded, unable to speak. The sounds and Addison's commentary fascinated and nauseated me in equal measure.
“Which you would think is impossible. There must some sort of proprioception, some feedback going on. What he experiences as his body is one big phantom limb. Even though he doesn't have anything to feel hoarseness, his voice gets hoarse, which is reflected in the diminishing strength of the voice.” She raised her hand to the keyboard again.
I raised a flat palm. “Addison, no more of that, please.”
She looked a little surprised, then nodded. “No, of course not. There'll be plenty of time to sift the data. It really is a gold mine, even though it looks like a failure at first glance.”
“How does it end?” I thought of the rapid decline of the activity graph.
“Not well. Not well at all. He becomes incoherent. After that the activity in the Broca's area becomes hard to decipher. The voice filter doesn't help. We just get a load of wailing, echoing and squeaking, like dolphins being tortured. In the final few minutes the activity goes into rapid decline and ceases around quarter to seven. So an hour for us ...”
“Is a thousand hours for him.”
“It's exciting Hammond. This is totally new.”
My stomach fluids had curdled. “We sent him to hell,” I said.
Addison tutted and snapped her laptop shut. “He's fine. Look.” I turned and looked at Gary raising a latte to his lips, transfixed by his screen. “He's in the zone. A happy geek.”
I shook my head, my eyes adrift. “That was someone experiencing terrible distress.” It's odd to recall my old self, crippled by conscience and a morbid imagination.
“It's a phenomenon, nothing more. Patterns output by a machine.”
“We created a being born to suffer.” I stared at her, and she shrugged. “And what are we going to tell Jack?” Jack represented the sponsor. His company funded our research.
“Tell him what happened.”
“He's going to pull the plug.”
“What on earth does he expect?”
I rubbed my forehead. “A game-changing breakthrough.”
“We're as good as there. I can think of loads of spin-offs with the work we've already done. A new lease of life for locked-in syndrome victims. Life changing prosthetics ...”
I let out a harsh little laugh and continued to rub my forehead. “That's not really Jack's bag.”
“No I get that, Hammond. But we're making progress at an astonishing rate.”
“Not quick enough for him.”
“As quick as is remotely feasible.”
“I know,” I said, sighing.
“So why are you stressed? You should be over the moon.”
I scrunched, then opened my eyelids, and watched Addison come into focus through the blear. The suffering we'd just heard was causing me stress, but I saw little point in discussing that with her. Something else was bothering me. Jack had a way of expressing himself that chilled me to the core. A recent example came to mind.
“Last night,” I said, “when I left you and Gary in the lab, I had a text conversation with Jack. He wanted to know how everything went. I told him that I hoped that things were fine. He picked up on the word 'hope' and asked me if I feared trouble. I told him, as I've done many times, that these are uncharted waters. Five minutes later I got one of those strange texts that he sometimes sends late at night. It said: On the eve of Trinity some thought the sky would catch fire.”
“What on earth did he mean by that?”
“I texted back a single question mark. To which he replied Lookitup ffs”
“And did you look it up?”
“No, I remembered.” In my inner eye I saw a white hot flash and a cloud rising like a demonic fist. “The Trinity tests. The first nuclear detonation.”
I watched a frown form on her beautiful brow.
“He's comparing it to that,” I said. “He's not interested in helping damaged and handicapped people. He wants us to help him make weapons. He wants us to help him be powerful.”
“Well, he'll have to be patient then won't he?” she said with a shrug and a smirk.
God, I envied her. Her intellect was vast, she hadn't burnt any professional bridges, and thousands of companies were crying out for her skills. The prospect of funds being withdrawn didn't frighten her at all.
If you enjoyed the stories and the sample, I think you’ll love the rest of the novel. Its riveting, warped and darkly comic and I’m putting the finishing touches to it right now. If you follow the link below and give me your email address, I can let you know when its out, and when I’ve got anything else coming out.
http://writing.killip.co.uk/keep-informed
… and you’ll find up to date info on all of my books on
http://writing.killip.co.uk/
Thanks for getting right to the end of this booklet, hope all is well with you.
Alan.