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

by Andy Ritchie

  Then I looked deeper into his sombre expression and realised that he was not talking about a simple change of attire.

  ‘Okay, so you mean my appearance, changing my hair colour, wearing a false beard and moustache, that sort of thing...don’t you?’

  He shook his head slowly, almost sadly.

  ‘No, Jeth, I’m afraid I don’t. You see, at this very moment, I suspect Mendelssohn and the people who work for him...’

  THEM

  ‘...are hacking into every security camera system they possibly can in this entire region, maybe even the entire country. Images of faces from every surveillance system, whether it’s in a shop like Debenhams, a petrol station, a town centre, maybe even speed cameras on the roads, are being gathered and automatically analysed as they try to find out where we are. They’ll probably use algorithms to identify faces by extracting key features such as the relative position, size and shape of, say, the eyes, the nose or the cheekbones, and then compare those features with those of the person they are looking for.’

  I had no idea what an algorithm was, but I got the general gist of what Tukaal was trying to say.

  ‘It’s very big in casinos in Las Vegas, apparently,’ I commented absently. ‘I remember it from that Kevin Spacey film about card counting...what was it...oh yes...’21’.’

  Tukaal seemed to ignore that comment completely.

  ‘And that’s assuming they’re not able to use the 3-D sensors which have been developed...’

  ‘Okay, so you’re saying we need to change our physical appearance...’

  ‘And the way we sound. They’ll also be connecting into every phone system and intercom, anything that carries a voice signal...’

  ‘We could put on false accents...’ I suggested lamely.

  ‘A false accent won’t disguise your voice, Jeth.’ Tukaal interrupted, somewhat irritably I thought, and as a result, I lapsed into a bit of a sulky silence which Tukaal eventually broke with a conciliatory explanation.

  ‘Look, Jeth. This isn’t just about considering Earth’s surveillance technologies. It’s about what else Mendelssohn may be able to get his hands on.’

  ‘You mean alien technology.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Tukaal replied, ‘and it’s not just the alien technology relating to facial recognition, speaker recognition or even retinal scanning that Mendelssohn may have at his disposal which worries me the most. You see, Jeth, there are many more ways to track an individual than simply spotting their face or picking up their voice.’

  I did not like the way this was going.

  ‘Life-forms can be tracked through their brain-wave patterns, through the DNA in tiny skin particles they leave whenever they touch something, even through the unique odour the body gives off. If Mendelssohn is able to use, say, an aerial drone or a fleet of URG Trackers or, worst of all, a Ghanalian Sprunt, then we will have great difficulty evading him, unless...’

  We’d got to the crunch.

  ‘Unless what?’ I asked worriedly.

  ‘Unless we change as much of you as we possibly can.’

  ‘And just how the hell are you proposing to do that?’

  There was a note of anger in my voice because I sensed, by the tentative way he was putting this proposition forward, that it was not going to be at all pleasant.

  ‘I need to introduce nanites into various parts of your body...’

  ‘Which parts?’

  Tukaal actually hesitated before he answered, and that made me feel a whole lot worse.

  ‘Your face, your eyes, your vocal cords, your brain stem,’ Tukaal mused, looking me up and down like a plastic surgeon eyeing up a potential client. ‘We won’t be able to do anything about altering your DNA...that’s too complicated...we may be able to tackle the odour problem to some degree by getting the nanites to alter the nature of your apocrine secretions... would be better if we could make changes to your MHC molecules but, again, we don’t have the equipment here to do that ...I guess we’ll just have to hope they’re not using a Sprunt...’

  ‘Tukaal,’ I interrupted forcibly, ‘can you just tell me what the fuck it is you are proposing to do to me.’

  Tukaal took a deep breath...the sort of breath I could imagine that a doctor takes when he’s about to tell someone they’ve got a terminal illness and will need to go through unpleasant bouts of radio and chemotherapy.

  ‘I need to introduce nanites into your apocrine sweat glands so they can alter the protein levels in your secretions which will alter the types of bacteria present which, in turn, will hopefully alter your odour; that can be done without injection but we...I mean, you will need to introduce nanites under your arms, around your anus and your genitals, around your nipples, your belly button and into your ears...’

  Sounded kinky, but otherwise not too bad.

  ‘...I need to introduce nanites into your vocal cords to change the way your voice sounds...’

  That didn’t sound too bad either.

  ‘...I need to inject nanites into various parts of your face to alter how you look...’

  That didn’t sound so good.

  ‘...I need to inject some nanites into your brain stem, through the back of your neck...’

  Now that sounded pretty damn serious.

  ‘...and finally, I need to inject nanites into each of your eyeballs so they can alter the colour and iris pattern of your eyes, as well as your retinal pattern.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I spluttered, almost choking on the last of my tea, ‘but did you just say that you needed to inject my eyeballs?!?’

  Tukaal nodded, his expression almost apologetic.

  ‘No fucking way...no fucking way at all...d’you hear...there is no goddam fucking way you are sticking a fucking needle into my eyes...’

  Tukaal started to try to explain why it was necessary, but I wasn’t listening.

  ‘I’ve already had a load of weird alien shit injected into me, and that fucking hurt...now you’re talking about injecting little machines into my brain...into my eyes...shit, no...absolutely fucking not...’

  Tukaal’s spoke once more, but this time his voice has hard.

  ‘If you do not do these things, Jeth, then it is highly probable that we will be tracked and caught. And then what? What do you think Mendelssohn will do to you? You broke his nose, remember? What he did to you in that cell, with the Bodaslod Duelling Gauntlet, that will be nothing compared to what he’ll do to you if he ever gets his hands on you again. He’ll make you suffer. You know this.’

  He stared hard at me.

  I stared hard back at him.

  ‘I cannot guarantee that these precautions will succeed. I cannot say that taking these precautions will be without pain and discomfort. I cannot say for certain that if you choose not to take them, our capture will be inevitable. But what I can say is that by doing this, by enduring the pain and discomfort, you are greatly increasing your chances of staying alive. I will leave the choice with you.’

  And with that, he gathered up the equipment with which he had been tending my wounds and returned to his metal case, leaving me to sit there in glum silence, staring balefully at him as I slurped the last of my tea.

  Fucking bastard, I thought angrily to myself. If he thinks he’s going to stick a needle in my eyes, then he can fucking well kiss-my-ass!!

  This was all his fault!

  If he hadn’t turned up, if he hadn’t landed in his spaceship and asked me for a lift, then none of this would have happened and I wouldn’t be sat in a dead alien’s camper van deciding whether or not I should submit to having tiny alien machines injected into various parts of my body so that I didn’t look or smell or sound like me anymore!

  Yes, there was a small part of me trying to say that this was not Tukaal’s fault, that he was only trying to do what he could to protect me, to keep me safe. But there was another part of me, a much bigger part of me that was violently disagreeing with that viewpoint, was instead saying that if Tukaal hadn’t appeared out of nowhere
and gate-crashed my dull but safe existence, I wouldn’t be sat there now, contemplating the thought of having things puncturing my eyeballs.

  But this was all pointless conjecture. The fact was that Tukaal’s arrival had indeed happened, that my life had indeed been hijacked. That was not worth debating. In reality, however much I might wish that I could go back to Friday evening on Winter Hill and tell the strange visitor from another world to ‘piss off’, I couldn’t.

  This was not a time for ifs, buts and maybes. This was a time of decisions in the face of danger.

  Tukaal had laid it out, plain and simple. There were no guarantees, no promises, only the opportunities to stack the odds in our favour.

  In the end, it came down to one simple question:

  WHAT WAS I PREPARED TO DO TO STAY ALIVE?

  And to that, there was only really one answer:

  WHATEVER IT TAKES.

  ‘Okay then,’ I said determinedly, ‘let’s get on with it.’

  Tukaal, to his credit, did not cheer, or smile, or whisper ‘Yes!’ under his breath. Instead, he handed me another cup of tea that he had been brewing whilst I was musing and patted me supportively on the shoulder.

  Tukaal’s preparations were quick, efficient and utterly terrifying to watch.

  First of all, he got a small bowl out of one of the cupboards and into it he broke four nanite pods. He then spent a little bit of time working on his SICPad, presumably to somehow program the nanites with their instructions for what they should do once they were inside me.

  He then took a hypodermic syringe from what looked like a small medical kit that was in his metal case and very carefully drew the mercury-like nanites out of the bowl and into the syringe.

  I was expecting him to do the usual ‘point the needle upwards and squeeze until fluid spurts out of the needle’s end’ routine, but he didn’t. I’m not sure why I didn’t ask him about that. Maybe I was just too frightened.

  He didn’t ask me if I was ready. He simply seemed to assume that I was.

  He started by making small injections into my face, ten of them in total; one above each eye, on below each eye, one into each cheek-bone, one into my chin, one into my nose and one at each corner of my mouth. Interestingly, because the needle he was using was so fine, and because he had dabbed the area of my face with some sort of anaesthetic/antiseptic cotton-bud-thing before he stabbed me, the injections themselves were painless.

  When he had finished injecting, the syringe was empty.

  ‘The re-structuring of your features will be painful, Jeth. Do you want to get that out of the way first, or do you want me to get the other nanites inside you?’

  Some choice, I thought to myself.

  ‘Haven’t you got any painkillers or sedatives or anything like that in your little medical kit thing?’ I asked hopefully (maybe almost pleadingly).

  Disappointingly (but not unexpectedly), he shook his head, and then went on to explain:

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t need anything like that. I can disengage from any pain which the shell may feel if I need to, and I’m afraid the painkillers for a Gao’An wouldn’t be suitable for you.’

  ‘Typical,’ was all I managed to say in response.

  Then, after a deep breath and through clenched teeth, I told him to ‘Do it.’

  ‘Don’t tense your features, Jeth, it won’t work if you do that. Just try to hold a normal, natural expression.’

  That was easy for him to say, I thought to myself, with his ability to disengage himself from pain. Some of us weren’t blessed with that kind of luxury!

  Anyway, after a few more deep breaths, I managed to let the muscles of my face relax.

  ‘Okay,’ I heard him say, ‘We’re off.’

  The next four or five minutes are pretty difficult to describe...but I’ll try.

  First of all, I felt heat, a lot of heat, initially only in the areas where Tukaal had injected me but, pretty soon, just about everywhere on my face...and not just on the skin, either, but deep down below the skin, almost as if my bones were getting hot.

  The heat slowly intensified and, after about a minute, I started to feel something else in amidst the heat...movement.

  And that really, really hurt!

  The only way I can describe it is like suffering really severe toothache all over your face, toothache that keeps moving.

  It was agonising!

  It felt as though my eyes were moving away from each other, as if my cheekbones were drifting up my face, as if my jaw was trying to pull itself away from the rest of my skull.

  I’m not sure how long I had endured the indescribable pain of feeling my face melt; Tukaal said it was about two minutes because that was how long the nanites needed to ‘get things pliable’ as he put it. To me it felt so much longer.

  Heat. Pain.

  Pain. Heat.

  Tears were streaming from my eyes. My nose was running. I think I dribbled a bit from the corner of my mouth.

  It was as if I had lost control of my own face!

  And then, quite bizarrely, in the midst the howling storm of agony, I heard Tukaal’s voice telling me to ‘take hold of this and open your eyes’.

  To be honest, I didn’t even remember closing them.

  I did as he asked, grabbing hold of a thin piece of glass about the size of an A4 pad that was held in front of me and, after blinking away the tears, I focused my eyes so I could look at...

  Shit, how the hell do you describe it...?

  It was a mirror, and in the mirror was the reflection of my face...but it wasn’t my face anymore.

  The eyes, for a start, were wider apart; not much, you understand, maybe only a few millimetres, but it was really noticeable. The shape of them was different as well...Val had always said that I had very sad eyes, ‘puppy-dog’ eyes she used to call them, capable of melting her heart...but the eyes that were looking back at me now were more...angry...angry to the point of appearing almost manic...it wasn’t the eyes themselves, they were still the same dark hazel they had always been, it was just the way the eyes sat on the face, the fact that the corners of the eyes were somehow higher than before, fractionally closer to the eyebrows...

  There was also now a squareness to the jaw that I had never had, emphasised by cheekbones that seemed more pronounced and by a lower jaw that seemed to protrude ever so slightly further than it used to.

  The nose was very different. Gone was the slightly bulbous nose that I always feared would one day take over my face completely, and in its place was something far slender, a little bit longer and ever so slightly hooked.

  And the mouth had changed. It was a touch wider now, and the lips appeared thinner than before.

  ‘I’ve made changes which I think would be sufficient to fool the algorithms of most facial recognition systems,’ Tukaal said as he furiously worked on his SICPad, occasionally glancing in my direction.

  It was only now that I realised that I was actually looking at my reflection in one of the mirrors from the toilet and I found myself wondering absently how Tukaal had managed to prise it free.

  My mind, however, did not linger long on that question because Tukaal was now asking me another.

  ‘What do you think, Jeth? I can make some more changes, if you like, just let me know.’

  How do you respond to that?

  How do you respond to someone asking you if you want to change the way you look, in real time, as you watch it happen?

  Well, the answer is simple because, when you’re face feels like its got boiling oil bubbling away beneath the surface, like someone has taken the bones and is either squeezing them violently together or ripping them slowly apart, you simply ask yourself if you look any worse than you did before and, if you don’t, you just shout:

  ‘If you’ve done what’s needed, get fucking finished!!!’

  I put the mirror down as Tukaal once more worked feverishly on his SICPad. Within just a few seconds of him touching the screen with a final flourish, I could
feel my face starting to cool and, in a sensation which even now makes me squirm, I could feel the bones beneath my skin begin to harden...and that hurt, too, a tightening pain as if everything was not just solidifying, but was locking irrevocably into place.

  For a brief, terrible moment, I feared that my jaw was going to set, that I wouldn’t be able to move it, to speak or to eat, so I opened and closed my mouth like a fish out of water....and slowly, achingly slowly from my perspective, the pain in the bones began to ease and I suddenly dared to believe that it was all coming to an end.

  Then it was the turn of the skin.

  At first it tingled, not pleasantly, but angrily, as if tiny bolts of lightning were coursing through it. Then it seemed to come alive of its own accord, as if I could feel the nanites crawling under the surface, moving like a swarm of ants beneath the flesh. Suddenly, I was overwhelmed with a desperate urge to scratch every inch of my face, wanted to tear it all away, right down to the bone and beyond...the desire for relief from that unbearable sensation threatened to be all-consuming...

  Amidst the chaos of my mind, I tried to tell myself that if I waited, if I endured, the pain would soon start to fade into discomfort and, eventually, the discomfort would fade into memory.

  But the pain and the feeling continued unabated, and I felt my resolve begin to crack, felt myself about to capitulate and allow my finger-nails to scratch savagely down my newly-established features...

  Relief...

  The pain began to subside and the sensation of movement began to ease. But it did not pass quickly. For at least a minute, there was pins-and-needles the likes of which I have never felt before...but even those, eventually, began to fade.

  I breathed what felt like my first normal breath in ages, slowly reaching down to pick up the mirror again.

  For some reason, I hesitated before looking at my reflection. I’m not exactly sure why. Maybe I was a little afraid.

  Anyway, after a few more seconds, I did...and I was able to study...I mean, really study...the vaguely familiar but undoubtedly different face that stared back at me.

  ‘Is it okay?’ Tukaal asked tentatively, putting down his SICPad and moving over for a closer inspection of his handiwork.