The Dead Speak Ill Of The Living (The Dead Speak Paranormal Mysteries Book 1)

by Robert Wilde

“I don’t suppose they’ve labelled a cell?”

  “No, but I have thought ahead and there’s two possibilities, here,” and he pointed at the screen, “and here.”

  “Right, ladies versus men then,” Dee winked, took Pohl’s arm, and led her away.

  Pohl had considered doing many things in her fifties, but they were mostly publishing targets and theatre trips. What she hadn’t expected to be doing was flattening herself against a wall with a girl young enough to be her daughter, - but of course still in regular contact so not her daughter - with her hands in fists. But the security guard didn’t look down the passage, and passed them by.

  “Shame we can’t get those turned off,” Pohl whispered.

  “Where’s the futuristic robot security when you need it,” Dee came back.

  They continued down the passage, got to the target door, and examined it.

  “Looks like some sort of cold storage area,” Dee said as she activated the switch. Already hacked by Nizar, the door slid open and the women went in.

  Pohl soon wished she hadn’t, as on a table in front of them was a white sheet covering something. Something suspiciously human looking.

  “Do you want to look or shall I?”

  “No Dee, I’ll do it.”

  Joe and Nizar activated their target door, and walked into a lab space which looked much like the one back in Britain. Tables, equipment, workstations, all sorts. But this one had something which grabbed all the attention.

  “Is that what I think it is?” Nizar asked, more to his god than to Joe.

  “Err, yes. We are officially looking at a cliché.”

  They were standing in front of a machine, which was fine, but there was a large glass orb, filled with a thick liquid, and inside this was a brain. An actual human brain.

  “Any ideas?” Nazir asked.

  “None at all.”

  “I thought you were a cutting edge scientist.”

  “We don’t use animals!”

  Nazir turned to the more acceptable metal parts, and saw it was connected to a workstation, so he pulled the keyboard out, fired the PC up and… “Err, Joe, this PC is talking to me.”

  “Yes?”

  “No, talking as in speaking, words are coming up. Something is communicating.”

  Joe came over, and discovered it was more bizarre than he’d been expecting.

  “Hello, is anyone there? Anyone?”

  “Tell it hi.”

  Nazir typed this, and the got an answer. “Thank Christ. I can’t see anything, or feel anything, I was beginning to think I was paralysed. But I can speak at least.”

  “Should we tell him?”

  “No. But ask who it is.”

  “My name’s Doctor Scott.”

  “Oh fuck.”

  “Hang on, this thing has an aural unit I can turn on,” and Nazir flicked a switch. “Can you hear us now?” he said out loud.

  “I’ve always been able to hear you” barked the speaker.

  “Scott’s dead”, came an anguished voice from behind them, as Pohl and Dee came in, but they were stopped in their tracks when the disembodied voice explained “I’m very much alive.”

  “Have you got the machine on?” Pohl asked.

  It took a minute for the men to explain what they’d found, and Pohl had managed to look even more upset than before.

  “Do you know what you are?” Joe asked.

  “No, and isn’t that you Joe?”

  “It’s me, and you’re in Belgium.”

  “I gathered that. What’s happened to me?”

  “There’s another brain over here,” Dee said, looking at a device which appeared more worn, older. “Maybe this knows what’s going on.” Nazir came over to activate the device as best they knew how, but turned and said “I think this is already on.”

  “It is” came the voice.

  “And why have you been spying on us?” Dee asked. By now they were all around it.

  “I have very little else to do. I take it you’re from this British rival?”

  “I wouldn’t say rival,” Joe said. “What’s happening here?”

  “This laboratory is building the world’s greatest super computer, but they aren’t doing it by digging into the quantum field. They’re using biology. Human brains are vast and complex and very powerful, offering a whole different world of thinking. So they’re developing an array of brains to create a massive device.”

  “That’s pretty spectacularly illegal,” Pohl protested.

  “So why us? Why Scott?”

  “They had data saying you were on the verge of making a quantum brain, had succeeded, had done it. You were suddenly a rival, and a source of development.”

  “Not quite,” Joe said closing his eyes.

  “Hang on,” came Scott’s voice, “are you saying I’m a brain in an array?”

  “We found your body,” Pohl whispered, “and your brain isn’t in it.”

  Further conversation was halted by a gasp from the entrance, and all four turned to find an older woman in a white coat frozen halfway through the door.

  “Hello?” Joe tried, but the woman slammed the door shut.

  “Grab her!” Nazir said, “she’ll set off the alarm,” and Dee dived for the door. As she got there alarms rang, and as she opened it a security guard with his gun drawn turned the corner and saw her.

  “Bastards with guns,” she informed the group as she slammed the door and pressed herself against it.

  “Just give me a second,” Nazir said as he tapped at the laptop, and then Dee heard a mechanism locking behind her. “Right, I’ve put this place in lockdown, security will have to crack open every door individually. We’re safe for a while. And we can watch their progress on the security cameras. Look, armed people are massing in the foyer.”

  He looked pleased at his deft fingers, but wasn’t that pleased when Pohl looked over from her brother’s brain and asked “so how do we get out?”

  “Err… fuck.” They were trapped.

  “We could…” but Joe had nothing as he looked around.

  Now over by the older machine, Dee asked it “is there an emergency exit?”

  “I don’t know, I’m a brain in a jar.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “But I have an idea.” Everyone turned to the brain. “Through the door on the other wall is the Array. The most powerful computer on earth, well, when it wants to work, why not ask it?”

  “We don’t have any other ideas,” Joe added.

  Dee led the way, putting her hand on the switch as Nazir activated it through the laptop. This door slid back into the wall, and Dee and Joe were able to walk right in.

  “Well spunk on my tits” Dee said in awe.

  There was another room the same size as the previous lab, but this one had rows and rows of brains, all connected with cables, all on a metal support system. The array must have had two hundred, if not three hundred brains, stretching down the length in long rows. It was both awe inspiring and sickening, and the pair had to walk through the warm corridor left down the centre to get to a computer.

  “Do we type our question?”

  “You can speak, I can hear you.” This voice, although still digital, was deeper than any other they’d encountered recently.

  “We’re trapped in the labs, and we need to escape. Do you have any ideas?”

  “Let me access the laboratory’s information,” the machine replied to Dee, then added “I have studied your situation and have found a solution. I will contact the two authorities I believe are best placed to help you.”

  “And they are?”

  Steven Warricker was taking a nighttime briefing deep within the MI5 headquarters in London when the computer in the corner suddenly displayed a video message screen.

  “Hello,” came a woman’s voice he’d never heard before.

  The three people in the room, which included the head of MI5 in Warricker, turned in surprise.

  “Hello?” Warricker t
ried.

  “We’re British citizens under attack in a Belgium laboratory, and we’ve just discovered an illegal operation using dead bodies to create the world’s most powerful computer.” Dee finished, hoping that didn’t sound totally stupid.

  Many people would have dismissed this as the hoax it sounded, but Warricker turned to the other two people in the room with a question.

  “Exactly how difficult is it for someone to hack into the personal computer on my desk?”

  “I’d have thought impossible given our security.”

  “That’s what I thought, and yet they’ve done it. Does that suggest a hugely powerful computer at their end to you?”

  Dee turned to the group. “I think he believes us!” It was then a matter of giving their location and situation to Warricker, and letting him know the situation in more detail, aided by the Array sending over files filled with maps and breakdowns.

  “We’ll speak to Belgium and have someone there as soon as possible,” he confirmed.

  “What do we do now?”

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to wait and hope the doors hold up.”

  There now followed a period where the group stood nervously round Nazir’s laptop and followed the progress of security as they went from door to door, cracking each open. It was slow, but inexorable, and time was ticking away. However, the growing sense of doom only affected three of the group. One had other matters to occupy her.

  “What do we do with my brother? Can they put his brain back into his body?”

  “I’m afraid not,” the other device explained, “it’s a one way process. There just isn’t the technology for what’s effectively a brain transplant.”

  “So he’s stuck as a brain in a jar?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “No, no I refuse. I will not be a brain in a jar. I’d rather die. I am dead.”

  “Please, we can…” but Pohl realised she didn’t have the words.

  “You’ll have to kill me.”

  “We can’t kill…” but Pohl trailed off.

  “Okay, they’re almost here,” Nazir interrupted.

  “What’s Belgium for if you step through the door we start breaking shit?”

  Nazir looked over at Dee and nodded. “Worth a try.” The message was soon sent.

  “And?”

  “They’re having a discussion. Guns still out.”

  “Can you hear a helicopter?”

  Everyone stopped and listened to the new noise, then they started to hear deep popping sounds. “Is that gunfire?” Dee asked.

  “Oh that’s gunfire” Nazir confirmed. “The rescue party is here.”

  At this two people sprang into life. Joe ran over to the workstation with Scott’s brain and plugged a memory stick in. “I’m going to take a copy of this device, how they did it,” he explained. “And I think it best we don’t mention the machine to MI5, or they’ll take it.”

  “Agreed,” said Dee, who was looking at Pohl. She was pulling wires out of the back of Scott’s jar.

  “You’re killing him?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Thank y…” and the digital voice went dead.

  The sombre moment was broken by Joe handing Dee the memory stick. “Hide that in your bra or something.”

  “Subtle.”

  The battle for the lab was over quickly, and without casualties. The security guards were armed to deal with intruders, and while some of the guards had taken part on the assault in Britain, none were prepared to fight it out with the troops who landed, tooled up, and who’d decided to try a few warning shots.

  Soon all the guards had been herded off, representatives from Belgian and British intelligence had arrived, and the foursome in the central lab had been liberated. Although all this practically meant was they were waiting in the lab while the intelligence agencies conferred outside. Soon a man in a smart grey suit and short blonde hair came in.

  “Hello, I’m Peters, and I’m going to be the one to escort you back to the UK and debrief you.”

  “We can go?”

  “Yes Miss Nettleship, we have negotiated with the Belgians for you to be taken immediately back to the UK, while they deal with the situation here.”

  “Deal with?” Pohl said suspiciously, “will someone be charged for my brother’s murder?”

  “I’m afraid that’s still to be decided. The Belgians would like to keep this quiet, they don’t want another intelligence embarrassment, and they want this Array gone as soon as possible. So what we are finalizing now is we, MI5, will take the array to the UK, and they can tie ends up here as they wish.” Pohl did not look happy, so he continued. “This just means no trial. I’m sure the people who killed your brother will end up confined somewhere.” He said ‘I’m sure’ as if the decision was already taken. Which it was.

  “What does a debrief entail?” Nazir asked, wondering if his story would stand up to this.

  “Full statements from you all, questions from us, but none of it ever to be made public. From you or us. You’ll have to agree to remain quiet on the array. Completely silent.”

  “I’m sure we can do that,” Joe said for them all. “Who’d believe us anyway?”

  A week later, the foursome met in Dee’s house for a meal. As they arrived, all bearing bottles of wine, Dee and Joe dished out a roast beef lunch they’d made, and everyone sat down. The debriefing had taken a while, and then each had to go back to their normal lives and explain their absences.

  “I’ve been suspended,” Joe began. “With no one to run the project, and everything destroyed, Monroe doesn’t know if we’ll ever be able to restart. But rather than just sack us we’re all suspended on small pay until we know what’ll happen.”

  “How long will that take?” Pohl asked.

  “No idea. What about you?”

  Pohl poked some of the tender beef with a fork. “They slipped me into a sabbatical. I got a warning for vanishing for a week rather than just being ill, but when they heard my brother had gone missing they gave me all the time I would want to find him.”

  “Handy,” Joe replied.

  “Well I’ve been sacked,” Dee sighed. “There’s plenty of people who want to write for a shitty local paper, so when I went AWOL one of them got my job.”

  “What about you Nazir?” Joe asked, completing the circle.

  “I’ve still got my contract there if I want it.”

  Dee had a thought. “I suppose you’re the only one of us who’s been through something worse than this.

  “There have been an excess of gunmen in my life,” Nazir confirmed.

  “So, two unemployed, one on holiday, one still annoyed with tech support. What a group.” But as Pohl finished, Dee had an idea.

  “We’ve still got the machine right? We can still talk to the dead?”

  “Yes?” Joe confirmed nervously. MI5 hadn’t realised what he’d been carrying, and no one had mentioned it.

  “Let’s monetize it!” Eyebrows were raised at Dee. “Seriously, let’s use it. We must be able to make some cash out of speaking with the dead.”

  “We are not holding séances with this technology,” Joe said rather offended.

  “No, not séances but, I don’t know, solving murders or something.”

  “It’s all getting very Scooby Doo.”

  “Exactly Nazir, we’ll be our own group, only with no dog. Hang on, how do you know about Scooby Doo?”

  “We have YouTube in Syria. It’s not Mars.”

  “Right, so, are we in?”

  “Yes, I can see why this might be interesting,” Joe replied, hoping to put his machine to good use and really make the last few days’ worth it.

  “I’m in,” Nazir nodded, “Anything but dealing with people who can’t operate a printer.”

  All eyes turned to Pohl, and she looked at each in turn. In recent years, since her children left and failed to make much effort at communicating, Pohl had come to realise she’d neglected them for her studie
s, and wondered what life would be like in a family group. Now, as she looked at these four young from the same generation as her children, she thought she had a chance at forging a replacement family. “I accept.”

  Two: Fluffy Bastards

  “So does anyone have any ideas?” Dee said, looking down at a blank notepad.

  She wasn’t alone in the room, and the targets of her question were sat around her lounge: Joe having a coffee, Professor Pohl looking at the titles on the bookshelf as she sipped an orange juice, and Nazir, relaxing into the comfiest chair, joining Dee in a beer. But there was silence as brains ticked over.

  It had soon become apparent that, after deciding their parlous work situations would need remedying, using Joe’s machine to bring in cash wasn’t going to be straightforward. On the one hand, having a device that allowed you to talk to spirits without either dying yourself or messing about with a fraudulent medium should have bought them billions. In practice they couldn’t really work out how.

  “We could take an advert out in the papers,” Joe suggested, “a sort of ‘can we help?’ thing.”

  Dee wrinkled her nose up at the thought of newspapers, for whom she’d recently worked. “That might work, but we’d need the right paper. There’s a small number of, err, let’s just esoteric magazines we could try.”

  Nazir took a sip, and explained how he saw it. “Why don’t we find these mysteries to be solved ourselves. Turn up at murder scenes, find out who did it, solve it, bingo.”

  “Like a detective agency?” Joe pondered.

  “Yes, a bit like that.”

  “We still wouldn’t be getting paid unless someone hired us,” but Dee wasn’t throwing a huge spanner in the works. “Although, it is a good way to find cases to work on. We just need to tighten up the money aspect.”

  “A bit sick though,” Joe said, forgetting which room he was in.

  “Says the man who carries his dead telephone around with him everywhere.”

  Joe didn’t answer Dee, he just tapped the bag at his feet fondly.

  Having been looking at books, Pohl tried something grander. “Maybe we solve a few mysteries and write them up. We could shift a lot of books, the true crime market is huge.”