“He asked me to help and together we developed new clones that would have their chip implanted at very early stages, thus making the connection stronger and less prone to being rejected by the body. It took a lot of experimentation to perfect the method, and we were never quite successful in creating a true network that would allow human beings to function both in the real world and the virtual world.
“So we settled for the further development of virtual reality, trying to capture as many talented minds as we could. At the same time, I proposed the use of addictive chemicals that would lead to the decrease of our population in a humane way, and according to their wishes. Arthur helped by motivating the people further through the use of subliminal messages, placed strategically in commercials and entertainment programs. The things we could have accomplished if he was still alive… Our whole world would be connected together, with only the best of us alive, with clones that would give us the chance to transfer our essence from the central database to an organic form, to experience the joy of living, and then going back to the virtual reality realm.”
Jones knelt in front of Tom, his face a mask of madness. “Our spirits would live forever, back and forth between the real world and the virtual world. But for ten years, it’s been only me doing the good work, and we’re not there yet. And now the west wing lab is gone. What a pity, indeed.”
Tom was shocked and he felt sick to his stomach, yet at the same time he could not help but feel fascinated and awed at the extravagant, grotesque, unbelievable ideas he was hearing.
Then he realized that, for the last few minutes, as he had been listening, he couldn’t move his body.
Tom found his voice, finally. “I guess you do know about the chip I just showed you.”
“The implant? Of course. It’s based on Arthur’s design.”
“So you knew about my clone.”
“My dear fellow, I implanted it when the clone was just a fetus.” The doctor seemed very proud of his accomplishment.
“You’re a maniac,” Tom muttered as he tried to get up from the armchair. But his body had turned into stone, with no feeling at all.
“What have you done to me?” his voice croaked.
“Not much, don’t worry. Didn’t want to have you jump on me, or get away. You needed to hear my story. You have no idea how I longed to share it with you,” the doctor replied calmly. “I knew when you declined to order a clone that you’d never see things my way.”
“What are you going to do to me?” Tom asked in a shaky whisper, as he was losing control over his voice.
“My dear Tom, you are going to meet Arthur again,” the doctor smiled, and Tom could see a syringe in his hand, approaching his neck. He felt it puncture his skin and lost consciousness.
32
Allan was back at the mansion he called home. His father had called all of them to meet him there, to discuss the latest developments, including the discoveries about the subliminal messaging and the food poisoning. Together they would work on a plan, not unlike they had done while planning the attack on the cloning facility and the taking over of the city security forces.
Jules and Mel had come as well. It was their first visit to the house and Allan could see how amazed they were, looking at the extravagant interior of the mansion, so different from what they were used to. Why didn’t I have them here before? The work in the Scrappie compound took all our time, and we never had a moment just for ourselves. That would change. They could all live here. But somehow, he knew in his heart that the girls would not accept that offer. They’d rather be out there, helping the people they care so much about.
David arrived with Daniel in tow, and they too seemed awed by the expensive furniture and the generous size of the rooms, bathed in light, looking immaculately clean and airy. Serge was the last one to show up, and he seemed a bit withdrawn, with a deep crease on his forehead.
“Something troubling you, Serge?” Allan asked him. The answer was negative, yet Allan couldn’t shake his feeling that the older guy was troubled by something.
They made conversation, nothing of consequence, as if they were all waiting for Tom before getting deeper into the important things they were here to discuss.
~~~
When he regained his consciousness, Tom felt his whole body on fire. Sharp shots of pain seared through him and gripped his brain in a red hot crown of intense agony. His body, tied to the operating cube, was covered in sweat and shuddered in spasms whenever his nerves were triggered by the impulses transmitted through the myriad of connections and wiring surrounding his body.
He could see two other people in the room: Dr. Jones and his assistant, a young, petite nurse, both concentrated on their tasks at hand. How did I get here? What are they doing to me?” He could not make a sound, nor move at all.
Jones, what’s going on? He tried to form the words but could not move his lips. The nurse glanced at him with a detached look and continued the testing of the circuits. “Doctor, he’s awake.”
Tom’s head was immobilized but he could move his eyes. Dr. Jones came into view carrying a surgical knife in his gloved hand.
“Easy now, you’re ready to become one of ours,” the doctor said, lowering his face close to Tom’s. “Sorry to wake you up for this. I need to finish placing your implant and your neural reactions are better analyzed in an alert state. Not much longer now. We just have to turn you around to reach the cervical area of your spine.”
The calm tone of Dr. Jones’s voice nauseated Tom. How can he be so calm while doing this to me?
The upper frame of the operating cube lifted itself and rotated around its longitudinal axis, until Tom found himself facing down.
The pain of the first cut, right at the base of his skull, was almost unbearable. They hadn’t anesthetized him.
They’re cutting me open! Tom had never felt more terrified in his entire life.
He continued to suffer as he heard of various surgical instruments being called by the doctor to the nurse, in that impossibly calm voice.
Tom was screaming in his head because his vocal cords would not respond to the terror inside. Help, help me, someone, anyone, God, please help me.
Eventually he stopped thinking about anything else, feeling like a poor, tortured animal. All his humanity was stripped away and the primordial instincts soon took over. After what felt like an eternity, he thankfully lost consciousness.
~~~
Tom never showed up at the house. Repeated calls to his mobile were unfruitful. Serge tried calling him at the office, at the council building, at all the places he could think Tom would be, all to no avail.
“It’s been an hour since the appointed time,” Allan finally acknowledged. “I can’t think why father would be late. He’s a military man, he’s never late for anything.”
“What if something terrible has happened to him?” Mel sounded scared.
“He had enemies; didn’t he say somebody was tasked with killing him? Who was the guy who saved him, anyway?” Jules asked.
“It was me,” Serge admitted. “I intercepted an email with the order through the secure channels. We’ve been trying to find out who was behind the plot with no success. The only place I didn’t call is Dr. Jones’ office, at the hospital. I’m afraid that Tom might have gone to the doctor.” He paused, and then he shook his head, as if trying to make up his mind about something, and continued. “Look kids, I have to tell you something you won’t like hearing. We were hiding something terrible from you, something that Tom felt was best kept a secret.”
“What is it?” Allan said, almost frantic.
“After Thomas was killed, Tom asked for an autopsy to be performed. What we discovered was a series of computer chips that had been implanted in the brain, presumably while still in a fetus stage. I wanted to share that discovery with you, but Tom insisted we keep it a secret.” Before anybody had a chance to ask, Serge raised his hand to ask them to keep quiet. Then he continued. “You have to understand Tom�
��s point of view. He was afraid that Allan might try to stay too close to him and get killed in case another attempt was made on his life. Tom thought it unnecessary to add another dimension to the troubles we’re still trying to solve. I’m not saying he was right, because I didn’t agree with him, but he is still in charge here.”
Serge paused for a second, while everyone just stared at him, waiting. “That fact did not mean Tom was going to let it go. He planned on finding out more from Dr. Jones about what was going on, in the hopes that the doctor was privy to such information. So he decided that he would go and talk to Jones. If he couldn’t find out anything there, he planned in talking to the manufacturers in the city, while asking for David’s help.”
“I wish he’d done it, talked to me first, I mean. Why couldn’t he trust me, after all we’ve been through together?” David’s voice revealed how disappointed he was.
“I’m sorry, David, it was not about you. This was Tom’s problem, over-analyzing and trying to keep all the loose ends together in his hand. I know him better than any of you and this is what he’s been doing his whole life as the head of Secure-It. You can’t imagine how much information he’s had at any given point in time. He confided in people only if he needed their advice or input.”
“Maybe he’s going to change his approach from now on,” Daniel intervened. “Obviously, it’s not working very well for him or for us.”
“Let’s not judge him just now, please,” Serge insisted. “He’s a good man, and he has to think of everybody’s welfare. Anyway, he must be at the hospital meeting with Jones.”
“Wait a minute,” Allan had made a sudden connection. “When I got replaced with Lan, there was this surgeon in the OR. It must have been Dr. Jones. Why didn’t I think about this before? He must be in the middle of this nightmare. He must know what is going on. He was the one who made the memory transfer.”
“Are you sure about that?” Serge seemed doubtful.
“No, I’m not sure. I remember only sniffing an expensive perfume, which was somewhat unusual in a hospital.”
“What did he look like?” Serge asked.
“He had a calm voice. And he called me a dear boy.” Allan’s voice became unsteady, as he remembered the tragic events he had been subjected to.
“That sounds like Jones,” Serge admitted. “I could just be overreacting. Maybe we should give him another half an hour.”
“No!” Allan almost screamed, surprised at the urgency in his voice. “I have a bad feeling about this. The best thing is to go to the hospital now and confront Dr. Jones.”
“Have you lost your mind?” Serge counteracted. “What will you say to him?”
“For goodness sake, let’s just call the hospital and ask if Tom is still there. They must have him on the visitors list.” Daniel’s suggestion made sense, so Jules picked up the phone and called immediately.
The call to the hospital revealed that Tom had just left, and that the doctor was in the operating room, performing surgery.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Allan commented. “Father’s mobile would work then. Yet he’s not answering it. We’re going to the hospital. Now!” he walked towards the front door of the house, not even caring who was following him. The terror he felt in his heart that his father was going through something equally spine-chilling as he had been through was more than he could bear.
“Wait!” Serge exclaimed. “We need to have reinforcements. If we’re fighting manipulated clones, we’ll be no match for them. I’ll contact my men to meet us at the hospital. Let’s go!”
33
After an undetermined time, Tom woke up and noticed he was lying down on his back. It was hard to say where he was exactly, deprived of light and sound as he was. He tried to move slowly, to check whether he was under restraint or even capable of moving and discovered nothing held him down.
He sat up, moved his legs to one side of the bed, and then patted his arms, torso, and head to check for tubes or wires. When he found none, he stood up and stretched his body slowly, arching his back and bringing his arms together to the front, feeling like a leisurely tomcat, eight lives left.
Then the lights came on and Tom found himself in an incredibly large room. All sides, including the ceiling and floor, were a gleaming white. His body looked so weird; he could not take his eyes off it: his skin was a translucent, metallic grey. It was as if he was something else, not human, but a sculpture of a man, a moving statue.
I must be dreaming or else I’m dead. He started to move one foot in front of the other, watching in amazement how his feet were creating circular waves on the soft floor.
Suddenly, the figure of a man began to materialize in front of him, pixels of various colors appeared in the air and came together to form a long, white robe. Eventually, the robe filled with the body of a pale, bearded man with a halo around his head and deep blue eyes fixated on Tom, boring into his soul.
“Welcome to the kingdom, Tom. I am your god, I.M.. Surprised? You have been chosen. Transformed into one of my angels, ready to obey my orders and take them to the material realm.”
“Angel? Is this the afterlife?” Tom was utterly confused.
“Indeed. Except that you have the privilege of going back and forth between here and your previous world. I will be with you wherever you go, and I will speak through your mouth and hear through your ears. Thus, you and I will never be separated.”
Tom did not think he liked the sound of that. None of this makes any sense. What the heck is he talking about? “Where am I exactly?” he asked.
“Of course. Allow me to show you around.” Though he did not seem to be moving, Tom felt the air around him changing and all kinds of images rushed by, as if he was hovering over various kinds of landscapes, each one more amazing than the next. Some were atrocious, others divine. Beside him, I.M. assumed a seating position on a newly materialized throne of intricate design.
After a few minutes, he addressed Tom. “This is just an overview of the realm. I’ll show you my Hell first, so you can see what will happen to you if you choose to disobey me. I will remain here, so you can have a better view. But remember that I’m also with you everywhere you go.”
Tom suddenly felt immersed into the reality of the landscape, getting lower and lower, closer and closer. He was able to see at an arm’s length a multitude of three dimensional images in motion, and felt nausea enveloping him, caused by the speedy descent of the images in front of him.
The movement stopped suddenly and he found himself alone on the edge of a cliff, looking down in the abyss from which an unbearable stench was rising. In slow motion, the abyss moved towards him and he started to descend lower and lower into it.
After a few minutes of slow motion in a greyish light, he saw the ground, a rough terrain, and nearby, a red water bubbling pool in which naked people were trying to stay afloat, screaming at the top of their lungs.
On the ground, he stepped towards the pool and could feel the heat enveloping him, together with the terrible stench. With horror he realized those people were boiling in blood. Before he managed to scream, the view was gone and he started to descend further.
Tom arrived at a dense forest of a dusky color with gnarled and tangled branches. He could see monstrous creatures with broad wings and clawed feet, yet bearing human faces, lamenting upon the thorny trees. He tried to move farther away from them, but instead the forest came towards him in a rush and Tom broke a dead branch while trying to regain his balance.
A gush of dark red blood came out of the tree, which started to cry in a human voice, asking for mercy. Tom realized that it was not the monsters who had made the noise before, but the trees themselves, being terrorized by the creatures. He could see in the trunks of the trees desperate human faces sculpted in the bark.
Then Tom was rushed to another plane, deeper in the abyss. He saw a desolately arid land, with people weeping miserably while running from tongues of fire, burning their flesh to the bone.
> Next Tom found himself on a stony field the color of rusted iron, where demons with long and pointy forks were cruelly beating and stabbing naked people, driving them like a herd of animals this way and that.
Further on, in a moat, people were smothered in an unimaginable filth of feces, climbing on each other, trying in vain to escape.
Deeper still, people were trapped upside down in holes drilled in stones, and flames came out of the soles of their feet, while tormented cries of pain and despair could be heard.
But nothing was more horrifying than the terrible throng of serpents, among which naked people were running hopelessly, screaming in agony. Their hands were bound behind them with serpents, while other snakes were wrapped around and inside their bodies, consuming them.
The bottom of the great pit came as a surprise to Tom. In the twilight he saw what looked like a large tower, but it was in fact a giant, bound in enormous chains protruding from the rock. His body was covered in metal spikes that were going in and out of his flesh, causing him great pain and a lot of blood loss. The giant had his head down to the ground but he raised it as Tom approached. The face looked very familiar to Tom. It was his own face.
How can this be? Is it Thomas, maybe? None of this makes any sense. And all of a sudden, Tom understood. He had seen most of these before in the illustrations of Gustave Dore, the French artist, which had given him nightmares when he was a young reader. They were in Dante’s Divine Comedy, one of his treasured classics, which described the great Italian’s travels through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, but essentially it was an allegory of the soul’s journey towards God.
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