Atcode

by David Wake

  “Sure. Just pull the plug out and put a plaster over it.”

  “Right, and… plaster?”

  “I’ll have to cut into your forehead to insert the jack.”

  Braddon couldn’t help to glance again at the bloodied corpse, its head ruined by their butchery.

  “Cut my forehead?”

  “Don’t be a ninny, small incision to reach the socket. Ready?”

  “Sterilise the knife.”

  “Of course.”

  “And give me a slug of vodka.”

  Entwhistle did the honours, pouring two glasses and dropping the penknife into one. Braddon downed the other.

  “Hold still,” Michael said as he leant over Braddon, the fake scalpel wavering in his view, magnified by its close proximity. The steel reflected his eyes. Michael pushed his finger around searching for an indentation. Satisfied, he stretched the skin and made a tiny cut.

  “Ahh, for fuck’s–”

  “Keep still.”

  Michael took a cable and shoved it between the folds of the skin, feeling his way… but the jack plug wouldn’t engage. Michael bent down, blew savagely spattering his face with tiny droplets of blood, then he tried again.

  Braddon felt it pushing into his brain, penetrating and splaying like the agony of ice cream as a child, the cold stabbing up into his skull. He flailed about, his sense of position gone.

  “Keep still,” Michael shouted, his bedside manner exhausted. He let go of the surrounding skin and it bunched around the plug jutting forward from his head.

  “You’ve pushed it through my skull,” Braddon wailed.

  “Nonsense, it’s probably just static electrical charge equalizing along the neural filamentation.”

  “For… ah, I’m blind.”

  Michael shoved his hand towards Braddon, who shied away from the attack.

  “See, nonsense, just keep still.”

  “Easy for you to say.”

  “Yes, very easy.”

  Michael taped the other iBrow to Braddon’s forehead and placed some cotton wool wadding around the cut.

  Braddon reached up.

  “Don’t touch it,” said Michael, slapping Braddon’s hand aside.

  “Is it done? Is it safe?”

  “You need to do a couple of checks. What’s your battery?”

  “What? Oh. It’s forty… oh, oh…”

  “You’re getting an overlapping signal from both devices. It might be disconcerting.”

  “No kidding!”

  “Best not check your battery.”

  “That’s a good idea.”

  “Don’t think of the polar bear.”

  “What?”

  But Braddon already had, the thought formed, leapt to a different brow and he had the distinct impression of being someone else as it buffered. They were still in the Cage, so that was to be expected.

  Entwhistle leant over the computer screen. “Nothing.”

  “You are connected to Emile’s feed, aren’t you?” Michael asked.

  “Oh, it’s still the Detective’s.” – Entwhistle typed – “Yes, here… Polar bear.”

  “That’s good. We won’t know for sure until you connect to the network, but I’m confident.”

  “Just so long as you’re confident,” said Braddon. He sat up, desperately wanting to tear the whole hideous apparatus off his head.

  “Don’t scratch.”

  Braddon glanced at the screen. He saw the text: polar bear, emoticons, unpleasant and ‘this is odd’. It was all from Emile Larson – status ‘dead’.

  “I’m dead,” Braddon said.

  “Purge your buffers and delete the cache. Both yours and Emile’s.”

  Braddon did so, did it twice, pushing through to reach Larson’s brow. The status changed. They’d fooled the computer and its thought–reader, but would it work on the network?

  There was really only one way to find out.

  Michael handed him a small square of paper, a wrapping around… it took Braddon a while to figure out what it was: a plaster.

  “Thanks,” said Braddon. He put it in his trouser pocket. “Have you got any painkillers?”

  “It’s the tiniest cut.”

  “Hurts like hell.”

  “That’s not the cut, that’s the two batteries giving your head a stronger current.”

  Braddon wanted to punch him: Wipe the stupid smug grin off… ahhh…

  The thought seemed to echo: his cache was empty, Larson’s pending, then buffered due to a lack of network signal. He’d have to do some deleting.

  “We have to do that anyway,” said Entwhistle after reading Braddon’s leaked thoughts in Larson’s brow off the screen.

  Something beeped.

  “What’s that?” Braddon asked.

  “Alarm,” Mantle replied. He pointed at a bank of detectors in the ceiling: smoke and goodness knew what else. “Picks up your breath and detects when your dose is wearing off.”

  “Mine?”

  “All of us. One of us, probably Entwhistle as he was first in.”

  “I’m bleeding,” said Braddon.

  “It’ll heal,” Entwhistle replied.

  “It’s near my brow!”

  “It’ll heal.”

  “Let’s get on with it,” Mantle said. He went to the airlock.

  “Wait,” said Entwhistle. “Mister Mantle, you can’t go outside.”

  “Why not?” Mantle demanded.

  “Because any thought transmission from you will reveal that you are still alive and so jeopardise Braddon.”

  “I know that,” Mantle said, angrily. The leaked emoticons revealed that he hadn’t.

  “Sorry, sir.”

  Braddon lolled.

  “What’s so funny, Emile… I mean, Detective?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Entwhistle,” Mantle said. “Won’t they know they’ve failed because Braddon didn’t think about success?”

  “They won’t know that,” Entwhistle said. “All they know is that the Detective Sergeant made the attempt and all communication was lost. They know about this place, but all they can do is wait.”

  “They won’t wait forever.”

  “But they will wait.”

  Mantle hesitated: his emoticons made it clear he didn’t like being trapped. “So I have to rely on my would–be assassin.”

  “We have to hide here and keep as many secrets from them as possible,” Entwhistle said.

  “You and Michael have to stay too,” Mantle said.

  “Why me? I can’t use the Thinkersphere.”

  “You’d forget and then someone would see you, think about you, and…” Mantle ended with a shrug, real and in thought.

  “But once we forget,” Entwhistle said, “how do we stop ourselves leaving?”

  “Michael can tell us.”

  “And when he forgets?”

  “We can put a sign on the door.”

  “How do we know when it’s safe?”

  “You can monitor me on that,” Braddon said. “I’ll take this brow off and think. Or I’ll be dead. Then…”

  Mantle interrupted, “It could be days!”

  “We’ll get thoughts from you… Braddon, I mean, over the Thinkerfeed,” Michael said.

  “I’ll add remove the brow as the last card,” Mantle said, and he scribbled.

  Braddon went to rub his forehead, but Michael grabbed and held his arm.

  “Don’t scratch it,” Michael said.

  “Yes… I feel confused,” Braddon said. “Is that… is it destroying my brain.”

  “No, that’s the drug wearing off.”

  “So… oh shit.”

  “We don’t last as long,” Entwhistle said. “We’ve built up a resistance.”

  “So…”

  “Oh for god’s sake, man,” Mantle said. “We’ll all top up to stay in here.”

  He went over to a slot in the wall, pushed his hand in and winced. Entwhistle followed, then Michael. When Braddon went there, Ma
ntle stopped him.

  “No,” Mantle said, “time to put things into action.”

  Braddon nodded.

  “This Steiger was on the motorway gaining her alibi,” Mantle said, “so wherever she went…”

  “There’s nothing about that in the Thinkersphere,” Braddon said.

  “Not directly, she doesn’t have a brow, but her car did.”

  “Car?”

  “Satnav.”

  “She might have left it off.”

  “It would still be on for autonomous driving.”

  “If she drove on manual.”

  “She did, but the car still has to be ready and monitor speed restrictions and so on.”

  “Good point,” Braddon conceded, “but where did she go?”

  “Somewhere?” Mantle said. “They’ve some nest of zombies somewhere. Michael, can you find her car please?”

  “How?”

  “She must have parked at the service station.”

  “On it.”

  Michael typed expertly, but at a glacial speed in comparison to real thought.

  “Cars parked with an unbrow… two. Tiger Fire and a Panther Deluxe.”

  Braddon noodled… ouch, stupid cage.

  “It was the Tiger Fire,” Michael added, and he bent to his task again. “There!”

  The screen contained a variety of meaningless codes, an endless stream of numbers.

  “What does it mean?” Braddon asked.

  “No idea,” said Michael. “It’s in ‘car’.”

  “Well, that was a fat lot of use.”

  “We can rethink it to another Tiger Fire and then just let the car rerun the file.”

  Braddon looked at him.

  “Pop it on auto and it’ll do the same things,” Michael explained. “Don’t fiddle with any settings! You’ll just have to live with the air con level and suffer the music, and then it’ll go to its destination.”

  “You wouldn’t know where you are going?”

  “And you’d have to stop at the same service station.”

  Braddon nodded: it was a gamble, but Steiger must have been going somewhere, somewhere without brows. A nest of zombies?

  “Do we have a Tiger Fire?” Mantle said.

  “In the car pool… yes. Two.”

  “Pick one, upload the file and give me it’s reg.”

  “Will do. Done.”

  “That was quick,” Braddon said.

  “The beauty of the language of the automobile,” Entwhistle added. “Concise and unambiguous.”

  “So, I get in a car, drive to the arse end of wherever and then what?” Braddon asked.

  “I’ve cards for you,” said Mantle and he handed over a pack of cards. Here you are.

  Thanks, Braddon thought back on recognition, but he winced as it shifted through the piggybacked brow.

  Printed, so there’s no worry about handwriting.

  Printed?

  I have a machine… we lost several million with a bad ‘6’ once, so I had a special printer built. I handwrite, then print.

  Isn’t that duplicating effort?

  Belt and braces.

  Mantle put the cards down in front of Braddon. They were blank, but he knew that they were face down, like a dealt poker hand. This was a hell of a gamble.

  Do I cut, he thought.

  Absolutely not, they’re in a very specific order… oh. Mantle chuckled. Sorry, I’m a bit tense.

  You and me both.

  And you can’t look at them.

  I can’t look at them, then how–

  At the right time. Each card tells you what to do. When you complete the task, not before, you look at the next one. That way, anyone following you has no idea what you’re going to do next.

  I won’t know what I’m doing next.

  Exactly, you’ll have the element of surprise on your side.

  Ignorance is bliss.

  That’s it.

  I can check them now, though.

  No! Look there’s no point me explaining, you’ll forget. I’ve written instructions on the first few cards.

  Humour me. I’d like to know, even if I then forget.

  There’s Residual Organic Memory Echo, your unconscious brain can store information, not as accurately as a brow, but it can still store it, even with the nepenthatrine.

  Is that really true?

  Fact.

  Braddon followed Mantle’s thoughts and it was true: no emoticons to the contrary. He tried to noodle, but that was impossible in the Cage.

  “Entwhistle, is it true there’s such a thing as…” – he checked back – “residual organic memory echo?”

  “‘ROME’? Yes. Your unconscious… dreams, processes like that.”

  Braddon looked back at Mantle: You’ve done this before.

  Yes, many times. It’s the secret of my success.

  You’re the great entrepreneur because you don’t know what you’re doing.

  Exactly.

  The Cage, the unbrow Special Services, the injections… all of it.

  Mantle liked this: That’s it.

  One day you might come in here and not rediscover that secret.

  Mantle’s thumbs–up mood changed instantly.

  Not having a clue doesn’t come naturally to a detective, Braddon, then Larson, thought.

  Most of the time you don’t have a clue.

  Excuse me.

  We’ve followed your Thinkerfeed.

  Braddon took the pack of cards, slipped them into the top pocket of his jacket.

  “You’ll need to do something to ensure I read the first card and start following the program commands, won’t you?” Braddon said. “If I’m to be a machine.”

  “Not a cyborg any longer, but a fully–fledged robot,” Entwhistle said.

  “Fill this card in,” Mantle said. “You’ll believe your own handwriting.”

  “Really?”

  Mantle frowned: “You can handwrite, can’t you?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Braddon went over to the desk.

  This plan seemed worse and worse to him. The whole things seemed to be slipping away from him. That was the amnesia tonic working its chemical commands on his brain.

  What do I write? It buffered.

  He put the pen to the top left and made a dot.

  Tricky. Buffered and his forehead stung.

  “Check your signature – the one you’ve just written,” Mantle said.

  Braddon wrote that, and then added ‘Braddon, this is Braddon. You’ve had your memory wiped for protection. The Heath Robinson pain is a disguise. Follow the instructions in your…’

  “Make sure you don’t read ahead,” Mantle said.

  “Got it,” Braddon replied.

  Where was I?

  ‘…top left pocket. DO NOT READ AHEAD. Trust no–one, except yourself. Not even yourself. Good luck. Love, Ollie. P.S. EGBDC and Steiger is a blonde.’

  Mantle checked it. “Will that code suffice and that Steiger is blonde?”

  Every good boy deserves chocolate, Braddon thought, but his iBrow security setting intercepted his brow passphrase before it even reached the outbox to buffer. He hoped the description of Steiger would fix it in the present.

  “Yes,” Braddon said aloud.

  “Good, sign it,” said Mantle, directing him to the airlock. “Come on. Hold the pen in your right hand and this card in your left.”

  Braddon did so, feeling foolish: it said, ‘Sign here’.

  “Out through the door mechanism,” Mantle said.

  “How does it know I’ve forgotten?”

  “It monitors thoughts on recognition and knows what you think.”

  “But it would have to be a specific thought.”

  “It is.”

  “But how would it work on unbrows?”

  “They do the same thing, but aloud.”

  So, Braddon went into the airlock. The machinery whirred, the door hissed closed and he waited.

  A vo
ice spoke, “Purge your cache, please.”

  It was a woman’s voice, soothing and calm, some actress no doubt. It repeated in the same serene tones, and by the third time she was irritating.

  Braddon deleted everything, both his own and Larson’s, flinching as he switched from his brow to the piggybacked one.

  Both outboxes were empty.

  Despite being in a short corridor with only two doors, he felt directionless.

  What now?

  He deleted that too.

  Still nothing.

  There was something else, like a dream, but that too slipped away…

  FRIDAY, EVENING

  Where am I?

  Something beeped and a door opened with a hydraulic hiss: Door open, it thought.

  Braddon stepped through.

  It was the Cage room, but where was the Cage?

  He turned around and realised that he’d just stepped out of the airlock arrangement. How had he got in there?

  Inside, he could see Mantle, Entwhistle and Michael.

  What the hell? His thought was rethought by Larson, who Braddon recognized, but couldn’t see. Where was he?

  Rethought again.

  He looked round, but couldn’t see him.

  Braddon’s forehead hurt.

  Whatever the drugs were, they caused splitting headaches.

  And what in God’s name had been the point of going in there to investigate only to have it erased?

  The others were banging on the wall, pointing downwards.

  What?

  Carpet, his shoes… Braddon realised he was holding something: cards and, in the other hand, a pen.

  He looked at the cards. On the top one, in bad handwriting, it said ‘Sign Here.’

  Entwhistle’s hand gestures became frantic.

  Braddon signed his name.

  Entwhistle was miming turning over a card.

  Braddon did and read ‘Check your signature against the one you’ve just written.’ He did so and saw that the spidery scrawl was his own.

  He read on: ‘Braddon, this is Braddon. You’ve had your memory wiped for protection. The Heath Robinson pain is a disguise…’

  What Heath Robinson… what’s going on?

  ‘…follow the instructions in your top left pocket. DO NOT READ AHEAD. Trust no–one, except yourself. Not even yourself. Good luck. Love, Ollie. P.S. EGBDC and Steiger is a blonde.’

  Was that the sort of thing he’d write to himself? It didn’t seem convincing.

  He looked at Entwhistle for clarification, but of course, Entwhistle was in a Faraday cage and so any emoticons wouldn’t transmit. And the man was a zombie.