by Thom Parsons
Right on cue, the entire world of PRoGRaM swallowed them in its bright white light, exactly the same as when they were born from it.
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.
Chapter Seven
Date: December 15th 2035 (Present Day)
Location: Unknown
“And that’s it,” Owen said, reaching the end of his explanation. “That’s how things work on the inside of PRoGRaM.”
“What about on the outside?” Victoria asked, turning the conversation to the next logical theme.
“Well, you always need someone on the outside. Otherwise, how are you going to get out?”
She completely ignored Owen’s seemingly rhetorical question. “There’s no safety net in place?” she asked.
“No. But that’s no problem. Personally, I wouldn’t like the idea of working solo. Trusting a machine to wake you up? That’s just an accident waiting to happen. I’ll always believe that it’s best to have a man working on the outside. And Nick Sinclair was our man on the outside.”
Victoria, then satisfied that the timing was right, reached over to some of the files that she had brought in with her. She flicked through them until she found the one that she was looking for and pulled one of the pages out, holding it up for Owen to see.
“For the benefit of the tape, I am showing Mr. Archer a photograph of Nicholas Sinclair. Mr Archer, can you confirm that this man works with you?”
“That’s the man,” Owen said proudly.
“And he was a valuable asset to your team?” Victoria asked, trying to asses Owen’s and Nick’s professional relationship.
“There wouldn’t be a team without Nick,” Owen insisted. “You absolutely, have got to have somebody that you personally trust one hundred percent on the outside of PRoGRaM. It’s not safe to enter its digital world without them watching your back. More importantly, you’re going to need them to get out of there.”
Victoria let him talk, nodding every few seconds to show that she was still listening.
”Let me ask you,” Owen said, turning the interrogation around and firing the questions back at Victoria. “How do you wake your mind from an induced unconscious state?”
“I… I honestly don’t know,” she answered.
“The simple answer is, you can’t,” Owen said, shaking his head to emphasise his point. “That’s why people who use PRoGRaM always have a programmer on the outside. One that they can trust. One that looks after them, and also looks after the world that they are exploring.”
Victoria nodded her head in appreciation of all this new information. “Seems like your team had it all covered.”
“We did.” ‘Did' being the key word there. Owen thought.
They sat in silence, looking at each other for the moment before Owen broke in. “Lesson’s almost over,” he said, sensing Victoria’s agitation. He hadn’t even got started with his story yet, but he was slowly getting there.
“Please, continue,” Victoria gestured, before clasping her hands back together in front of her as she listened to him speak.
“Now that you know how PRoGRaM works, you need to know what it’s used for, because this is where I come in,” Owen explained. “There are many, many different uses for PRoGRaM, the main one being memory assassination, which I mentioned earlier. There’s also simulation, although due to the lack of PRoGRaM devices and the overshadowing of it’s other uses, this one is often overlooked, and it’s only really used for training new PRoGRaM users.”
“Like Katie Miles?” Victoria asked, finding another way to work her key questions in.
“Exactly,” Owen said, pointing non-threateningly at her.
Once again, Victoria started flicking through her files on the table until she found an image of Kate, which she held up in front of her for Owen to see. “For the tape, I am showing Mr Archer a photograph of Katie Miles. Mr Archer, I need you to-“
“That’s her,” Owen said, cutting her off mid-sentence. “You can cut the bureaucracy out. That’s the exact reason I quit being a detective.”
Victoria raised her eyebrows in surprise at Owen’s outburst, putting the photograph back into the file where it came from.
“Where was I?” Owen asked.
“Uses of PRoGRaM,” she answered as she straightened up the files on the table.
“Yes, that’s right. Well, there’s also a Prison System based on PRoGRaM, but we’ll get to that later. More recently thought, PRoGRaM is being used by the FBI's Special Projects Division in order to solve crimes.”
“How?” Victoria asked out of courtesy, even though she knew full well that Owen was going to tell her anyway.
“Well,” he started. “Your brain has the capacity to remember everything that you’ve ever seen or heard, regardless of whether or not you can recall it. All that the memory analysts need is to look inside your head using PRoGRaM. And do you know what we see?”
Victoria began to open her mouth to speak, but Owen answered his own question before she could speak out.
“We see everything.”
Chapter Eight
Date: December 8th 2035
Location: New York PRoGRaM Analytic Base
Owen, Kate and Eli left the digital wold behind, and came straight back into the physical one. Owen’s eyes flickered open in what seemed like seconds after the PRoGRaM world had bled out into a bright white light. But in reality, it had been over five minutes since Nick had killed PRoGRaM and began the wake-up process.
The first thing that Owen noticed was his own heavy breathing, followed by the feeling in his arms, hands and legs gradually coming back to him. He let the warmth of feeling spread back into all of his limbs before attempting to do anything else.
In time he managed to sit himself up, but his entire body still felt like a dead-weight. On his head, he could feel the Manipulator headset that he wore. It's weight was threatening to pull his entire body down to the floor unless he took it off soon. It wasn't even that heavy, but after the experience that he'd just been through, every little thing was being amplified to the maximum. Reaching up, Owen disconnected the metal headset that was wrapped around his brain, and placed it down on a small table next to his PRoGRaM chair.
He saw that Kate was just coming back around to consciousness. She was sat in her PRoGRaM chair next to him, hooked up to all the same equipment that he was. The chairs were nothing special, in fact, they looked more of less the same as the chairs that you sat in at the dentist. They were purely used to allow the user to be comfortable and perfectly still whilst PRoGRaM was active and their minds were inside it.
Like Owen, Kate woke up slowly, waiting patiently for the feeling to come back into the entity of her body before she detached all of the equipment that entangled her to the PRoGRaM device, albeit more slowly than Owen did. She was new to this game, so she took her time, taking everything off slowly and carefully. Only then did she allow herself to carefully stand up and stretch out her body, Owen gave her a small smile as she noticed him sitting up in his PRoGRaM chair, watching her.
“Wow,” Kate said with a genuine look of surprise on her face as she continued to stretch. The events of what had happened in the digital world were coming back to her. “There are more people out there with this technology?”
“No, there’s not. At least none like that guy,” Owen said slowly, thinking hard about his response and the questions that it raised as he pointed over to Eli. Kate took a seat on the PRoGRaM chair that she had just clambered out of and grabbed herself a drink of water. Owen followed suit and grabbed a drink from the table nearby, not realising just how dehydrated he was feeling. The exit from PRoGRaM could be pretty rough, just like being kicked out of a deep sleep in less than a second. The body just doesn’t know how to deal with something un-natural like that.
“There are only seven teams out there scattered across America that have access to this technology. That guy there,” Owen said, pointing to Eli on the bed across the room, still unconscious. “Is not a
part of one of them, and never has been.”
The two of them sat in their PRoGRaM Team’s New York City Analytic Base, an underground high tech bunker at a classified location underneath an undisclosed building in the centre of New York City. They were in the central hub. A huge, bright, single room that was roughly the same size as a football stadium. With a white floor beneath them and long lights covering the entire floor as far as the eye could see, it was like they were living in a huge, furnished version of The White Room. In his immediate vicinity, Owen was surrounded by multiple PRoGRaM chairs, and a few different computer terminals dotted about, all linked together.
Although despite its magnificent size, most of the central hub was empty and unfurnished. They were still in PRoGRaM’s trial period. At some point in the future, Owen knew that this base would be full of agents coming and going, each of them working a different case, using their own PRoGRaM devices, but those days were a few years away yet. Right now, they had this entire space to themselves. Better savour the calm atmosphere whilst we can.
Their central hub was secluded enough for Owen and his team to work peacefully in, without fear of being intruded upon. This was the place where his team spent almost all of their time, a place that they kept all of their PRoGRaM technology. It was like a second home to him.
The FBI’s Special Projects group kept the PRoGRaM teams under the radar and out of the eye of the major population. People just weren’t ready for the introduction of this technology into their lives yet. Usually, it was just Owen and Nick that worked here, but now, their team had expanded by one with the arrival of Kate.
This was a highly secured government facility, with state of the art security systems. No-one was getting near this place. After all, this building had some of the most advanced technology in the world inside it, hiding in plain sight.
Owen wasn’t sure what his next move was supposed to be now in relation to the situation that he was currently dealing with. He and his team had been contracted by some of the higher up’s at the NYPD to analyse Eli’s memory of the transaction that he brokered with the local gangs. But somehow we stumbled across a guy that knows about PRoGRaM and how to use it? And actually claimed to have a working machine? Something’s not right here. Owen knew it in his gut.
“We need to keep a hold of him,” he decided. “We have an obligation to follow up on some of the things that Eli was saying. We need to find out more about what he knows, who he knows, and where he found out all this information about PRoGRaM from. We need to put him in holding at a local precinct for the time being, and think on what we’re going to do with him. I’d love to keep him here, but we just don’t have anywhere to keep him securely.”
“Hey guys. How’re you feeling?” Nick said as he walked over to them from a computer station a little walk away across the central hub. He found the closest, most comfortable spot and then dropped himself down into it and put his feet up. Nick was the most easygoing guy that Owen had ever worked with. Although he often came across as relaxed, mentally, he was always ready to work. And there was no-one that knew computers, or the way that PRoGRaM worked like Nick did.
At thirty two years old, and clocking in at just under 6ft, Nick was a tall guy, but wasn’t exactly well built. Having never set foot inside a gym in his life, he was fairly scrawny for his height. But regardless, he still tried to keep himself in shape.
“Better than that guy,” Owen replied, pointing once again in the direction of Eli, who was still knocked out on a bed across the room from where he and Kate were sitting. The three of them looked over to the unconscious man.
His eyes were shut up tight, yet his body was slightly moving with every breath he took. His vitals seemed good, according to one of the machines that he was rigged up to at least. Owen and Kate had similar apparatus next to their PRoGRaM chairs, purely there for Nick to keep an eye on their heart rate and other vitals whilst they were inside PRoGRaM. They could never be too careful.
“What happened in there?” Nick asked seriously, cutting down the light hearted conversation that Owen had started. He readjusted his black baseball cap that hid his short, cropped black hair, and put emphasis on his rough, yet intelligent face. “How does someone like that know about PRoGRaM and what it’s capable of?”
“I have absolutely no idea,” Owen said honestly. “We found some disturbing things out in there. But there’s not much else we can do tonight. We need to think about this one, interrogate him face to face first, see what leads that brings up before we force him back into PRoGRaM.”
There were often cases in which Owen and his team would’ve had more than one memory to analyse or erase. That meant several trips through PRoGRaM. It also meant a longer operation. It wasn’t a matter of going in and out of PRoGRaM multiple times on the same day. Doing that could seriously overload anybody’s brain. In cases like these, Owen and his team had to stage the operation out over a longer period, usually over several weeks. The local NYPD Precinct was always happy to help keep a hold of some of their subjects in the downtime, even if they didn’t know what they were holding them for. Nobody dared argue with the FBI.
“Lets get him out of here,” Owen said. “Nick, if you and Kate could run him down to Kate’s precinct, that would be great. Kate will explain to them this is a FBI Special Projects issue. I’ll stick around here a little while and sort out the paperwork. I’ll send off the information to both HQ and the relevant people at the NYPD. Looks like tomorrow is going to be a slow one, so shall we all meet here in the office about ten?”
“Sounds good,” Nick said before turning to Kate. “Could you give me and Owen a minute please?”
She nodded and walked away, giving Nick the privacy that he wanted. “Owen,” he called out after his friend. “Can I have a word?”
“Sure," Owen replied. He noticed that Kate had headed off away from him and Nick, he knew what was coming. Today was his first day back on the job since the accident. It wouldn’t be unlike Nick to let that topic of conversation slide for the entire day, Owen knew that he was going to want to talk about what happened to Annie sooner or later.
“How you holding up?” Nick asked, quietly and seriously, addressing the elephant in the room, at least between the two of them. Kate had no idea of what was going on in Owen’s personal life. He wanted to keep it that way.
“I’ve been better,” Owen replied, vaguely, knowing exactly where Nick was going with his questions. He wasn’t sure if he was ready to talk openly about it. Not yet.
“It’s only been two weeks,” Nick said. “You sure you’re ready to get back into this game?”
Two weeks since the accident. Owen thought. The time has flown by.
“Yeah, Nick, I’m ready. It’s time to move on.”
“If you need more time…”
“It was an accident Nick,” Owen said bluntly, cutting him off, looking directly at him as he spoke. “There was nothing that I could have done.”
Annie. It had been two weeks since his wife had died in a car accident. Two weeks of feeling empty inside. “Let’s just drop it for now, okay? Trust me Nick. I’m fine.”
“Well, you know where I am,” Nick said, knowing full well that there was no use trying to talk to Owen about something he wasn’t willing to. It would have been like talking to a brick wall. He’ll come around in his own time.
On that note, the three of them all went their separate ways. Kate and Nick moved Eli, whilst Owen decided to call it a night and head on back to his apartment on the opposite side of the city.
For Owen, It felt like an incredibly long drive home that night, and he was getting exhausted. He took solace in the fact that at least now his team had nothing urgent on for a few days, except for the case with Eli, but that could end up being one of those slow-going jobs. Although saying that, every case that they worked was different, there was no telling how long they would end up working on Eli for. There were never any black and white defining set of rules for each and every job. Every
thing was a shade of grey, and you just had to take each job as it came, treat every situation differently.
It was late, just after midnight when Owen got back into his apartment. It had been one hell of a long day and he was tired. He realised that he hadn’t done any of the paperwork on Eli to send off to HQ, but at this point, he didn’t care. He collapsed backwards onto his bed and looked up at the ceiling. Then Owen let the world just drift away.
But little did Owen know, that world was about to be turned upside down.
Chapter Nine
Date: December 15th 2035 (Present Day)
Location: Unknown
“So there you have it,” Owen said, leaning back into his chair, satisfied. “PRoGRaM. Perception Recreation Geist-Reality Manipulator. The ability to enter memories. To simulate near enough any place in the world. To see what secrets people have been hiding. To erase specific memories from people’s minds altogether. I think that sums that up? Do you agree?” he asked.
“Yes,” Victoria said slowly, nodding her head and writing down some final notes. “You paint a rather vivid picture of this technology, Mr Archer. Now… onto the matter at hand. I need you to confirm that everything that took place regarding the events involving the three men known as Marcus Ortega, Alex Morgan and Ethan Darkes was done so personally, and that the United States Government, including the FBI, is in no way, shape, or form involved.”
Owen knew this bit was coming. He knew all along that this was the point of the interview that mattered the most to Victoria and the people that she worked for. To get him to denounce the role of the FBI in his actions, to confirm that he acted alone.