The Man Who Vanishes_a gripping horror thriller spanning 3 timelines_One Man. Everywhere.

by J M Gonzalez Riley

  Hopper was taking a chance coming down to her lab, even on a holiday. He knew how whispers spread like wildfire inside SunCorpSoft, just like when Dayna had visited him in his office late in the evenings. It was almost impossible not to be seen by anybody when travelling between floors, in a corridor or in the elevator. Dayna had been seen often, and she had made sure of it. It had been for this reason that their relationship had progressed to meetings in his car, away from the office. But by that time Dayna had enough rope to hang him with, enough dirt to make her demand: a twelve month research project, a bigger lab, access to all of SunCorpSoft’s resources and a hefty grant to cover costs.

  She realised then that it could not be Hopper. He simply would not have waited this long. Nor would he have knocked.

  Knock, knock. Who’s there. Someone beginning with…

  Adain smiled at her when she opened the door and pushed past her into the lab before she could stop him.

  ‘Who the fuck are you?’ she spat. ‘And get out of my lab. Now.’

  Adain looked around him, pausing at the particle assembler machine. He looked at Dayna, flashing her his winning smile.

  ‘I’m your new assistant,’ he said.

  ‘I didn’t ask for a new assistant,’ she told him sharply, holding the door open for him.

  ‘Hopper says you did,’ he smiled. ‘And I’m the one.’

  Dayna stared at him, thinking fast. Hopper had the upper hand now. She should have expected a move like this from him. Hopper wanted in and there was nothing she could do to stop him. This was his mole.

  She sighed. She would have to play by his rules. She had no other choice right now. On the plus side, keeping him happy might also keep him off her case for a little longer. That’s all she needed.

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘My name is Adain Platini. I worked with the graphical team in Seek.’

  Dayna recalled his face now. He was the handsome brat with the reputation for leading all the girls astray.

  Adain brushed his fingers through his thick blonde hair, turning his head slowly so that she could take in his profile, flexing his bicep through his thin jumper as his arm came up, for her benefit.

  What an imbecile, she thought.

  ‘Okay, Adrian,’ she said, turning away from him and walking toward the hydro-chair.

  ‘It’s Adain,’ he corrected her flatly, following her.

  Dayna smirked as she walked. This kid is going to be easy to taunt, she thought.

  ‘Come over here,’ she said, turning toward him. She pulled her lab coat off and flicked strands of her dark hair out of the way.

  Adain caught the way in which her full breasts expanded as she pulled her lab coat off and drew her shoulders back. He smiled to himself as he walked toward her confidently, watching her flicking her long hair sensuously out of her face. She was flirting with him. She was trying to keep the upper hand, pretending not to recognise him and bossing him about. But at the same time she was attracted to him, flirting almost instinctively.

  God, I love my genes, he thought, almost stepping on her boots.

  Dayna placed her lab coat on the hydro-chair.

  The bitch is talking her clothes off and putting them on the hydro-chair, where she can work at her favourite angle. Make or break, he thought. If I rise to the moment, I get to change the master-assistant relationship and sweep her off her feet. If I don’t, I slide down the snake to square one, and I get to play bellboy all day long.

  Adain reached out and grabbed hold of Dayna’s wrist. She scowled at him, feigning shock and confusion. But then she saw his face, his perfect smile, and her eyes flashed with something that appealed to Adain’s senses.

  She let herself be pulled away back gently toward the hydro-chair, but she seemed to be resisting him a little. He knew that she knew what was on his mind, and she was not refusing, just playing a little hard to get.

  Adain pushed on. He knew Dayna spent all her time buried in her work, that she was a loner. This girl did not get any loving of the kind Adain had in store for her. She simply could not resist.

  He grabbed her hand and placed it on his chest, sensing that she was impressed with his firmness. He moved her hand up and down, helping her explore him. Her eyes were wide, almost innocent. He pulled her closer and kissed her full lips. She was shy at first, but gave in as he began stroking her right breast. He heard a tiny moan escape her and felt himself grow hard almost instantly.

  Her lips were cold and moist, sending an electric tingle across his own mouth. He rubbed her breast faster, feeling the nipple harden under his strokes, squeezing it gently, hearing her small sigh. God, he thought, this woman is sexy. Her tongue pushed hard against his, urgently. All that pent up energy, he thought, and I’m going to unleash it.

  Dayna felt pain. She fought with the pain inside her neck, travelling up her shoulder blades, into her head. God, she wanted to scream. She felt a hot surge as Adain stroked her, a hot flush between her legs, making her heart beat faster. She could feel his excitement as he pushed her with his body against the hydro-chair.

  Adain took her hand down into his hardness, stroking it, making her gasp louder. He pushed her on to the chair, but she moved aside, grabbing him by the waist and turning with him until his back was on the hydro-chair. And then it was she who was pushing against him.

  She wants to straddle me, he thought, barely able to contain himself.

  He let himself be seated, growing excited when Dayna straddled him on the chair, pushing him back, reaching behind him, angling the chair: eleven o’clock, ten o’clock. Perfect. She was all over him, pressing tight on him and arching her back so that he had full reign of her breasts. He buried his head in her heaving breasts, and then hoisted her T-shirt up, his eyes feasting upon her sensuous curves, his heart knocking like a bass drum.

  And then Dayna was sitting up, getting off him, pulling her T-shirt back down. Adain watched her for a moment, confused. She was clutching at her chest and throat, grimacing, as if he had hurt her.

  ‘What happened?’ he asked her, watching her move toward the big machine from the university. She began twitching dials on the control pad as if she had suddenly lost interest in him. The change bordered on the surreal. One minute she was panting, ready to take him, the next she was back at work, as if all this had taken place only inside his head.

  ‘You can’t get up,’ she said, without looking at him.

  ‘Wha-’

  Adain tried to get up, and fell back agains the hydro-chair. The harder he tried to pull himself up, the harder the chair pulled him back, squeezing his ribs to breaking point.

  ‘What the fuck is this?’ he screamed.

  Dayna nursed her throat, studying the dials.

  ‘There is a pad inside the hydro-chair’s back,’ she said. ‘It works just like a magnet. When it’s active, it holds you in place, so that you could – if you really wanted to – work upside down. You have to deactivate it to get out. And I removed the control pad from the arm.’

  Adain looked at her in disbelief, the passion that had ran through him minutes earlier now extinguished. He thrashed against the chair, growling, but soon gave up struggling, breathing painfully and watching her sullenly.

  ‘So what are you going to do with me, Dayna?’ he said acidly. ‘Make me your sex slave?’

  Dayna smiled, walking over to the console and replacing the memory card with a new one.

  ‘No. I’m going to copy you.’

  Something about the casual way in which she spoke made Adain nervous. The ominous meaning of her words set alarm bells off in his head.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he said weakly.

  Dayna glanced at him, tilting her head as if she were studying a thing of curiosity. Adain cringed at how pathetic and quivery his voice had sounded just then. She seemed to pity him for his sudden lapse.

  He gritted his teeth, and exhaled hard.

  Stay calm. Get hold of her when she walks past and smac
k her hard in the teeth.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he repeated, forcing his voice deeper.

  Dayna was unfazed. She tapped an icon on her screen and watched the screen change colour. Then she turned to him.

  ‘What I said. I’m going to copy you. Onto that card.’ She pointed toward the console.

  Adain’s insides were in turmoil. He fought his bladder.

  ‘Shit,’ he said. The whine was back in his voice. This time he didn’t care to hide it. She already knew he was scared shitless.

  Dayna walked back toward him, skirting around him, just out of his reach. She tapped the big machine in front of him.

  ‘This,’ she said, ‘is a particle assembler.’

  Adain looked at the big machine in horror as she flicked a switch and the dials lit up, bringing life to the monster. Two barrels descended, pointing at him like cannons.

  ‘You are my assistant now, remember?’ she smiled. ‘So you will take part in the experiment.’

  ‘I didn’t want to do this!’ Adain cried. ‘Please. Hopper made me take the post. But I can tell him no, I’m not interested. I don’t want to work here anymore.’

  If Dayna pitied him for his tears, then she did not show it. Cold bitch, he thought with hatred, squeezing his fists until his wrists went numb.

  Dayna moved behind him and angled the hydro-chair up a notch. Then a shock travelled up Adain’s spine, as if a needle had come through the pad on the chair’s back.

  And then everything went black.

  Adain dreamed he was in some sort of parlour, attended by two beautiful girls who were there to see to his every need. They ran their slender fingers through his long hair and he leaned back, enjoying the tingling sensation on his scalp. He let them take his hands and they stroked each finger in turn, sucking each digit sensuously, bringing him to the brink each time until it seemed that his hands were aglow.

  The girls looked down at him, smiling, and he noticed then that they both looked identical, that they were in fact, the same. The girls flicked long strands of dark hair back from their faces and he saw then that they were Dayna.

  One is real, and the other is a copy. A perfect copy. Which one do you prefer?

  Adain felt uneasy. The choice disturbed him.

  The real one.

  But why the real one, Adain? They are both the same.

  Adain’s uneasiness grew. He did not like games like these, with hidden meanings and untold outcomes beyond his control.

  You don’t have a real Ferrari. Only a copy. One of many. And your clothes, they’re copies of a blueprint too. The data you work with everyday: it does not matter whether you work on the original or on a copy, because they are both identical. The world is nothing but a continuum of simulacrums.

  So choose: real or copy.

  Adain felt claustrophobic. He wanted to leave but he couldn’t move. The warmth in his hands turned to fire. He screamed, trying to wrench his hands away from the women…

  He screamed himself awake, from one nightmare into another.

  Adain’s fingertips had sprouted a mass of thin wires, strapped to each digit with see-through sticky film. His fingers stung, his hands glowing warm, pinned down by the hydro-chair, along with the rest of his body.

  Dayna hovered over him, looking down on him with a stony expression on her face.

  ‘You’ve plugged me into the VRN?’ he asked her, already knowing that she had, but failing to understanding why.

  ‘You are about to test the most advanced browser in the world,’ she said. ‘I call it Kronus.’

  Adain stared at her.

  Dayna sighed.

  ‘As in the God of time,’ she explained.

  ‘I know who Kronus is!’ he spat, lurching his chair, his eyes bulging as he struggled against the magnetic pull.

  ‘Kronus plugs into the VRN in exactly the same way that Seek does,’ Dayna continued, as if she were talking to a well-behaved classroom. ‘The only difference is that with Seek, you only pretend to go somewhere inside the Virtual Reality Network. You can see it all in your head, but you’re right here all the time. With Kronus however, a piece of you goes there for real. With Kronus, you live the experience.’

  Dayna moved over by the main console, which showed huge streams of binary code running up the screen.

  Adain was looking wildly at the data.

  ‘Kayn’s DNA,’ she explained, watching his face change.

  ‘Kayn has been working with me for the past three months.’

  ‘Where is he?’ Adain gasped, looking around him.

  Dayna shrugged.

  ‘He’s dead. But don’t worry, I made a copy of him,’ she said, without humour.

  ‘Please,’ Adain begged, tears spilling down his cheeks.

  ‘I pulled Kayn in when I was ready to test Kronus,’ Dayna went on, ignoring him. ‘I chose Kayn because he was brilliant. And because he hated Hopper, and I don’t want that bastard over my shoulder while I’m working. Besides, SunCorpSoft would never have approved of this type of research. They will approve of the result, of course, without dwelling too much on what it took to get there. Nobody likes to think about how many lab rats die to make a drug safe.’

  A strange calm began to descend over Adain. He was no longer shaking, no longer fearful. Perhaps this was delirium, or shock. Whichever it was, he found himself at peace, reconciled with his fate. He listened to Dayna in fascination, awed by her brilliance. Her work was beyond anything he might have imagined.

  Perhaps this had been his fate after all.

  Dayna angled the particle assembler until it was pointing straight at Adain’s forehead.

  ‘This machine is going to replicate and store what’s inside you, Adain, molecule by molecule.’

  He was pleased that she had used his name, finally.

  I’m going fucking crazy, he thought. But keep talking, Dayna, keep talking.

  ‘The white-coats at the university were already replicating objects twelve months ago. All I had to do was work out a way to project that data into the VRN, through a browser that was designed to do just that.’

  Adain felt himself welling up again, but this time with admiration. He could no longer see the attractive woman that was Dayna. Instead, he felt aroused by the sheer genius that lived inside her.

  Dayna looked at the particle assembler, as if searching there for her next sentence.

  ‘I copied Kayn, and sent him into the VRN,’ she said at last. ‘I watched him scream in horror at whatever he was seeing and feeling, so much so that I had to almost wrench the wires off him, thinking that something had gone horribly wrong. When I compiled his data from the copy and ran a simulation, I realised that the copy was incomplete. There were physical flaws, particularly in the digestive and reproductory system. But worse, there were mental anomalies. The copy had no recollection of the original Kayn. It had no self, and so it was scared shitless. I had created a halfwit that was scared of his own shadow, and that’s what poor Kayn had been experiencing.’

  Adain listened, his expression almost dreamy.

  ‘I made changes to the assembler’s settings,’ Dayna continued, ‘trying to correct the problem, and made two more copies of Kayn in the process, sending them into the VRN. Each time I ran a simulation using the latest copy, I saw I was getting closer to my goal. The last copy I made was almost perfect. It was Kayn, with severe amnesia, but the fear had gone and all the major physical flaws had been corrected.’

  Adain was overcome with reverence for her. He felt he had slipped back into the dream about simulacrums and longed for Dayna to start playing with words and meanings again.

  She caught the look in Adain’s eyes and seemed pleased, resuming her story:

  ‘I have since modified the copy method. And you, Adain, are going to be the first to test it.’

  Adain swelled with pride. The first, he thought.

  ‘Find Kayn,’ she said.

  The words reverberated in his head.

  Find Kayn. H
e had to find Kay, for Dayna.

  ‘Will I die?’ Adain asked, simply.

  Dayna looked at him for a long time and he saw pity in her eyes, and pain, and sorrow.

  ‘Kayn lapsed into a coma,’ she said, sadly. ‘Maybe he couldn’t take anymore, or perhaps there are some effects from overexposure to the particle beams. I don’t know. They wouldn’t tell me anything at the university. They’re pissed off that I took their machine away. I know they owe us big time, but even Hopper must have pushed his luck to get this. Even if it is only a copy,’ she said, offering an empty smile.

  ‘Will I die?’ Adain asked again, like an innocent child.

  Dayna scowled at him.

  ‘Fuck you if you do,’ she said, and pulled the switch.

  30

  The Near Future

  At a quarter to midnight on Saturday 22nd of December, Dayna Zoff was home. Sounds of people cheering and chanting, already in celebration, filled the night. Just like last year. And just like next year.

  Bastards, she thought. Noisy, pissed-up bastards.

  Dayna stared at her console screen, holding the transparent memory card in her hand. The card held a complete copy of Adain, cell by cell, from the nuclei level up. However, the copy was flawed. It was useless. All her effort of the past year had amounted to nothing.

  This time, the copy should have been perfect: a complete human being. Instead, the simulation showed brain damage, almost total memory loss. The whole thing defied her logic and humbled her as nothing had in years.

  And now, a copy of Adain was hurtling somewhere in the VRN, exiting at random points in reality, along with three versions of Kayn, all unable to return, lacking memory, flawed, lost forever.

  She should have tested in a private, closed-loop network, but she couldn’t afford to set one up on the company’s servers: they would have been detected, logged, backed up… discovered. So she’d had to test in a live environment.

  This was a huge screw up.

  The real Adain was back at the lab, strapped to the hydro-chair. She had left him there, gibbering like an idiot. She’d lain on her office couch, after plugging him in, and fallen asleep, waking up in the evening. Disoriented, she’d grabbed the data card off the console and left, intending to return first thing tomorrow, when she was able to think clearly.