The Book That THEY Do Not Want You To Read, Part 2

by Andy Ritchie

  I’m not really sure what it was I expected to see. Part of me had sort of visualised a simple black box with a few wires coming out of it which connected to the inside of Tukaal’s skull, the box itself simple and square. Another part of me had decided that it would be like looking inside a computer, with lots of micro-chips and transistors and stuff, like when Yul Brynner’s face comes off in Westworld. Maybe that shows a lack of imagination on my part.

  What I saw was something quite, quite different, and just about the freakiest thing I am ever likely to see...ever.

  Firstly, Tukaal’s head was largely hollow, which was most unexpected.

  Secondly, the inside of his head was not at all dark, as I had imagined it would be. Instead, it was awash with a myriad of different shades, blues, reds, oranges, greens, you name it, that colour was in there somewhere, all radiating from different sized spheres that seemed to just be suspended inside his head.

  Thirdly, the whole thing seemed alive.

  I’m not sure how to explain it, but the neural net didn’t look like...well, it didn’t look like what I had imagined it would look like.

  Tukaal seemed to sense my confusion.

  ‘Astonishing to look at, isn’t it, and probably not at all what you expected to see.’

  ‘You’re right there,’ I answered. ‘It just looks like it’s a living thing.’

  There was a distinct note of awe and wonder in my voice that I did not try to disguise.

  ‘That’s because, to an extent, it is. The latest neural nets integrate organic and inorganic technology. The gathering of data through the senses, and the remote control of external equipment, that’s all done through advanced inorganic technology. But the actual processing and storage of data is done by a hybridised organic membrane grown around a central inorganic processing core suspended in a constant molecular flux field which enables high-speed data transfer.’

  I couldn’t think of anything to say in response to all of Tukaal’s techno-babble. Instead I found myself mesmerised by the floating, glowing spheres that constantly changed colour and intensity, almost as if each had a rainbow trapped within it.

  ‘When we remove the power cells, the molecular flux field will collapse. As a result of that, the links between the neural net and the external interface mechanisms will cease to function...’

  ‘And that means what, exactly?’

  ‘It means that whilst the neural net’s data will be intact, I won’t be able to use it to record what I see and hear and experience. Nor will I be able to use it to communicate with and direct other devices, either my own URG equipment or any of the simple pieces of electronic equipment you have here on Earth. I won’t be able to control any of the nanites remotely, either, though I’ll still have my SICPad for that.’

  ‘So it’s a setback, but not a disaster,’ I summarised.

  ‘Indeed,’ Tukaal replied.

  ‘So where are these power cells and how do I get them out?’

  The power cells, of which there were four, were located (quite bizarrely and quite awkwardly) in Tukaal’s throat.

  According to his instructions, all I had to do was insert my hand (it was fortunate that my hands are quite slender) through the hole in the back of his head and then bend my wrist so that my fingers could reach down into the throat area. There I would be able to reach the power cells.

  But before I started, he warned me about a few things.

  Firstly, I was to try not to touch the floating spheres because, apparently, they were quite delicate.

  Secondly, I was to try to make sure I did not damage any of the ‘tubes’ (that’s what he called them) that ran through the throat area.

  Thirdly, I was to avoid dropping any of the power cells as I tried to get them out.

  ‘Anything else?’ I asked sarcastically.

  ‘No,’ he replied, ignoring my sarcasm (if, in fact, he was even aware of it).

  My hands were sweaty, my forehead was sweaty, in fact every part of me felt sweaty.

  My hands were shaking as well as I gently, oh so gently, eased my right one through the hole in Tukaal’s skull, trying desperately to look at where my fingers were in relation to the floating spheres.

  The inside of his head was surprisingly cool and it felt as if I had put my hand in a fridge. I welcomed the pleasant sensation.

  With my hand now fully inside Tukaal’s skull (which is a hell of an expression to write, believe me), I bent my wrist as best I could, and immediately found my fingers in contact with the ‘tubes’ that Tukaal had mentioned...and these tubes were moving.

  When Tukaal asked...

  ‘Are you able to feel the power cells? They are smooth spheres and they should be warm to the touch.’

  ...I felt his windpipe and his larynx (or whatever it is he has) move against my knuckles. I could also sense a pulse against my thumb, probably because I was touching his equivalent of a carotid artery from the inside. As he swallowed (nervously perhaps) I felt the peristaltic movement of his oesophagus against the back of my hand (I always knew my grade B Biology O-Level would come in useful, though never expected it would be to assist in the description of some kind of sub-cranial power-cell-ectomy from an artificial, alien-inhabited human shell!)

  With a small yelp of excitement, I found the power cells, all four of them, neatly clustered together.

  ‘How do I get them out?’

  ‘You should just have to pull them out.’

  There was that really unnerving sensation again as Tukaal spoke, like something stroking the back of my hand. It made me shiver in spite of the fact that I was sweating like a pig.

  All I had to do was pull them out. Surely that can’t be too difficult.

  Gingerly, I placed my index finger and my thumb on either side of the first power cell and pulled.

  It came free relatively easily.

  ‘I’m going to have to do them one at a time,’ I told Tukaal, conscious of the fact that I could not keep hold of one of these power cells whilst trying to remove another.

  ‘That’s fine, Jeth, take your time. I’m not going anywhere.’

  I wish he had resisted the urge to chuckle at his own, rather wretched joke, because I felt the odd vibrations from that chuckle run all the way through my hand to the very ends of my fingers. It nearly made me drop the power cell.

  Fortunately, my once more sweaty fingers managed to keep a grip of it, and it was with much satisfaction and a considerable sigh of relief that I was able to place the first power cell on the work-top. As I did so, I noted that its mesmeric green glow had already begun to fade, and no more than ten seconds later, it looked like little more than a large, glass marble.

  ‘One down, three to go,’ I whispered, and once more carefully eased my hand through the gap.

  The second power cell came out quite easily, as did the third.

  Things were progressing well.

  The fourth power cell, however, proved difficult.

  The problem was that, because of where the fourth power cell was positioned, it was difficult to get a grip on it with my index finger and thumb. It was as if it sat in a recess in the inside of the back of Tukaal’s neck.

  I tried several times to get a grip on it, but each time my sweaty fingers were unable to gain sufficient purchase to ease it free. On two occasions, I took my hand out and wiped my fingers vigorously on the trousers I had borrowed from Tukaal in an attempt to make them as dry as possible, but even that was proving unsuccessful.

  ‘Is the last one proving problematic?’ Tukaal asked needlessly after about five minutes of ineffective fumbling.

  ‘I just can’t get a grip on it. It’s not like the others, it’s far more embedded in some kind of muscle tissue or something.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Tukaal said. ‘Why don’t you try using the thumb of your other hand and pressing on the outside of my neck as hard as you can, see if you can push it out enough to get a hold of it.’

  It sounded like a reasonable, if pretty gross id
ea.

  With my right hand already inside his head, I began to use the thumb of my left hand to press against the back of Tukaal’s neck...and it took about twenty seconds to locate the point on the outside of Tukaal’s neck which corresponded to where the fourth power cell was on the inside of his neck. Then, with a long, juddering breath, I pushed my thumb as hard as I could into his skin.

  On the inside, I felt the power cell move as the entire muscle wall bulged inward under the external pressure I was exerting. Even so, it was still difficult to grasp and so I found myself, somewhat desperately, start to dig my fingers into the muscle on the inside of Tukaal’s neck in an effort to gain some purchase.

  I know that, at some point, I growled: ‘Come on, you bastard!’

  I know that, at some point, something inside his neck tore because I felt it.

  I know that, at some point, my hand was further inside his head and neck than it had any right to be, and I know that, at some point, my wrist was pushing hard against his windpipe because I could hear him wheezing and gasping for air.

  I knew all of that, but ignored it all the same.

  Instead, I concentrated on getting my fingers around the last power cell, increasingly greasy due to my still sweating fingers, seemingly determined to resist my most desperate attempts to extract it.

  Then, all of a sudden, it was free.

  I gave a triumphant cry of ‘Yes!’ and, with the power cell firmly held by my fingertips, I began to quickly withdraw my hand.

  Too quickly, unfortunately.

  In my rush to extricate my hand and the hard-won prize it held, I allowed my knuckles to brush gently against one of the spheres of the neural net. The sensation was similar to touching a car and getting one of those little electric shocks, only quite a few times more powerful. It somehow made my hand go into a spasm...

  ...and I dropped the power cell.

  ‘Oh, shit!’ was all I could say.

  The strange thing was, in the tense silence of the camper van, I’m sure I heard it bounce off a couple of things as it clattered down inside Tukaal’s chest cavity and, I guess, came to rest somewhere near to tops of his legs.

  After a moment of angry contemplation, I pulled my hand out and wiped my damp fingers dejectedly on my (his) trousers.

  ‘Sorry about that.’

  Tukaal, however, was surprisingly phlegmatic about what, to me at least, was a disaster.

  ‘Not to worry, Jeth. The important thing is that the cell is disengaged, so it won’t be generating any energy and therefore it won’t be generating the signal that Mendelssohn and his men will be able to track.’

  ‘What about the other spheres inside your head. They’re starting to lose their glow.’

  And it was rather a depressing sight, watching those previously vibrant colours begin to fade.

  ‘I need you to take all seven spheres out...but very, very gently.’

  ‘Any particular order?’ I asked.

  ‘No.’

  I don’t know why I was surprised at that. Perhaps I’ve been watching too much Crystal Maze.

  ‘Will I get a shock from them?’

  This time I wanted to be prepared because the last thing I wanted to do was drop something else down inside Tukaal’s body.

  ‘They’re just running on residual energy now that the power cells are disengaged, going through their emergency shut-down routine. There will be a sensation when you touch them, but it shouldn’t hurt.’

  Shouldn’t, as opposed to won’t. It was a possible Freudian slip that made me somewhat wary.

  Once again I put my hand through the hole in the back of Tukaal’s head, only this time it was much easier because, not only was I not having to awkwardly twist my wrist, but, if I moved my hand to the side a little, I could actually peer inside his head to see what it was I was trying to get hold of.

  The first of them was the smallest, glowing still but now just a rather insipid pink. It tingled when I took hold of it in my fingers, but whereas before the contact had been painful, this sensation was strangely pleasant.

  Carefully, I pulled the sphere out and placed it on a work-top that was becoming increasingly cluttered with an array of alien technology.

  A few minutes later and the remaining six spheres lay beside the original small pink one, which had long since lost all of its remaining colour and now appeared not only colourless, but also strangely lifeless.

  The inside of Tukaal’s head was similarly devoid of life, now eerily dark and empty.

  ‘Do you want me to put the plate back now?’ I asked, eager to do so because suddenly there was something about the darkness, something about it which was akin to looking into a cold, dark well...and it was stirring within my mind a memory...an unpleasant memory, I sensed...

  ‘Yes, please,’ Tukaal replied, helpfully passing me the plate.

  With undue haste, I took the plate and picked up the Intergalactic Swiss-Army Knife, changing back from the metal spike to the Philips screwdriver. I then proceeded to seal up the hole and with it (thankfully) dispel whatever memory was trying to get itself remembered.

  ‘What about the skin?’

  Tukaal handed me the ‘pen’ which I had used (what seemed like a lifetime ago) to cut the skin open.

  ‘If you press the button on top twice so that you see an orange indicator, that will repair the skin.’

  Still not entirely comfortable with the sensation of handling a flappy bit of skin, I did as Tukaal instructed, using my left hand to position the skin as carefully as I could, and using my right hand to guide the little red dot of light over the point where the two pieces of skin met up.

  Almost magically, as I pressed the button near the tip of the pen, the unsightly gash between the two began to disappear...not just melting together to leave an ugly scar, but merging seamlessly, leaving no trace that the skin had ever even been touched.

  Even above the hairline where the original cut had destroyed so many hairs, it was possible to see hair follicles re-appearing within the repaired area...it was like touching up a photograph using the cloning tool in Adobe Photoshop and, after about ten minutes of careful work, I have to admit that I was rather satisfied with the job that I had done.

  ‘There,’ I said, ‘Good as new.’

  Tukaal moved his fingers over the area I had repaired and nodded appreciatively.

  ‘Good job indeed, Jeth. We may well make a surgeon of you yet.’

  I gave him a somewhat tired smile as I watched him carefully gather up the ten now lifeless spheres, along with the other tools and implements, and place them all carefully in his metal case which sat on the seat near the back of the van.

  ‘What will you do with all those bits we’ve taken out?’ I asked.

  ‘Well,’ he replied, ‘I think I’ll probably try to see if I can build something which will enable us to access parts of the neural net without having to use any of the power cells, using Earth power systems instead. Failing that, I could set something up to enable us to use it with a power cell, but we would only be able to use it if we were away from the electricity power grid. Either way, I still think we should be able to make some use of it, if only for limited purposes.’

  At this point, I suddenly stopped.

  Why?

  Because I’d realised that, as Tukaal had been talking, I had absently begun to make two cups of tea.

  I’d filled the kettle, I’d lit the gas ring, I’d gotten two mugs out of the cupboard above the sink, I’d gotten a bag of sugar and two PG Tips tea-bags out of the cupboard next to it, a teaspoon out of the cutlery drawer below the drainer...in fact, the only thing that had caused this sub-conscious flow of activity to be interrupted was the fact that I was trying to switch the kettle on in the way I switched on my electric kettle at home, by way of a non-existent switch.

  ‘That is so fucking weird,’ I said as I eventually realised that this kettle didn’t actually run on electricity.

  For a few seconds after that, I just stood
there, staring at the kettle and the cups.

  Tukaal stood beside me and patted me, a little awkwardly, on the shoulder.

  In a way, I was hoping he would say something comforting.

  But he didn’t. Instead, he just said...

  ‘A cup of tea. That’s a good idea.’

  ...and skirted around the subject not because he didn’t care, but because I think that he, too, didn’t know what to say that would make me feel any better. Perhaps he was still feeling a little bit guilty about the fact that my messed up head was very much his responsibility.

  I found myself hoping so.

  With the kettle boiled and the tea brewed, Tukaal set about treating the injuries to my wrists, ankles and forehead that had been caused by the leather straps of the chair in the interrogation room.

  To be honest, I’d almost forgotten about them, not because I’m as hard as nails (I’m under no illusions about that), but because they were just a few of the many aches and pains I had, all of which were kept mildly subdued by a suffocating blanket of fatigue. But they were, as Tukaal rightly pointed out, the only ones which were at risk of becoming infected.

  I didn’t have the strength to argue with him, choosing instead to let him patch me up whilst I reflected on what had been a hell of a morning. I’d taken a trip down someone else’s memory lane, covered myself in puke, stolen yet another car, cut open an alien’s head, performed brain surgery and made two cups of tea without even thinking about it.

  For a little while I just sat there, a wry smile on my face, enjoying the surprisingly painless way in which Tukaal was tending to my wounds.

  Could life get any weirder, I wondered absently?

  Unfortunately, it certainly fucking could.

  ‘There’s one more thing we need to do, Jeth,’ Tukaal said as he put the finishing touches to his repairs of my forehead, ‘and I doubt you are going to like it...at all.’

  Ominous words.

  ‘What?’ I asked pensively.

  ‘We both need to change.’

  I breathed a sign of relief.

  ‘Is that all?’ I said. ‘For a moment there, I thought it was something serious. I could get some new clothes...’