Yellowcake Springs

by Salvidge, Guy

  It was hot and musty in the carriages, and there wasn’t much room to move. Rion was about to give up when, in small, unmarked boxes held together with plastic wrapping, he found dozens if not hundreds of packets of batteries of a kind that looked very familiar indeed.

  11. The Doors of Perception

  Wei lifted his head, dimly aware that nothing he saw before him was real. Something needed to be tweaked or reconfigured, for it was like looking through glasses you didn’t need. It was giving him a headache, so he closed his eyes and leaned back against the concrete wall.

  “What can you see?” the voice inside him said.

  “I’m in a room,” Wei said, his voice resonating oddly. “There’s some kind of distortion.”

  “Is the distortion horizontal or vertical?”

  Wei opened his eyes. The room was swaying. “Horizontal,” he said, closing his eyes again.

  “Easy fix,” the voice said. “There, is that better?”

  Wei opened his eyes. The distortion was gone. He was in a small room with absolutely nothing in it except for a light fixture, a table and a single chair. This was the room he’d been in before he’d donned the Controlled Waking State helmet, except that the rows of consoles and equipment seemed to be missing. “That’s much better,” he said.

  “Excellent. You’ll notice that this is the same room with a few small alterations. Can you tell me what they are?”

  Wei explained that the consoles were missing, and that he could not feel the helmet he knew he was wearing.

  “Good, but there’s something else.”

  Wei cast his eyes around, but there was nothing else to fix his gaze on. The walls were blank. That was it. “No door,” he said.

  “Correct. There’s no window either. So how are you going to get out?”

  Good question. There were no tools and nothing to wield. Nothing under the table or hidden in the seat of the chair. Wei started to feel claustrophobic, as he often did in lifts. His palms were sweating.

  “Don’t stress, Jiang Wei. If you find yourself in an intolerable situation, such as when you encounter a bug or glitch, you can always get out of Controlled Waking State by saying this sequence of words aloud: ‘Disconnect 341 dash 1.’ Try it now.”

  “Disconnect 341 dash 1,” Wei said. He blinked and became aware of the apparatus on his head. The rows of equipment were back in their places, and he himself was standing near the door. He touched the handle for reassurance.

  “Where are you?” he asked out loud. “The person I was just speaking to?”

  “I’m in another part of the facility,” the voice said. “Are you ready to recommence?”

  “I am.”

  There were no words to say this time, no segue between worlds. But the door had disappeared once again.

  “Okay,” the voice said. “You’re in a room without a door or window. If not for the disconnect code, you would be completely trapped here. Agreed?”

  The walls felt solid, impassable. “I suppose so.”

  “But the door is still there, isn’t it? Do you remember where the handle is?”

  Wei went over to the spot where he thought the door was and groped around. Nothing.

  “A little to your left. Reach out with your left hand, a little lower.”

  He grasped it.

  “Now, does the door open inward or outward?”

  “Ah, outward?”

  “Inward. So you’ll need to take a step back, or you’ll bang yourself with the door.”

  Wei did as instructed and opened the door.

  “Good. The first thing you must learn is that objects in the real world are still there. You’re not in a fantasy world, just a controlled perceptive environment. Do you understand?”

  “I think so. But why make the door invisible?”

  “It’s just for the purpose of this demonstration. I can make it appear again.” The door returned. “So the first lesson is that objects can be hidden from view. Take the room in front of you, for example. What can you see?”

  An empty void. “Nothing,” Wei said.

  “That’s right, but the room is still there, isn’t it? It is just hidden from you. You’re standing in a corridor. There are no obstacles in your path, so you can take five small steps forward.”

  Wei stepped into nothingness. The door clicked shut behind him, even though he had not closed it. “There’s no light,” Wei said.

  “Calm yourself. It’s time for the second lesson.”

  Suddenly a brilliant object appeared in the void. It was a miniature sun, no larger than a tennis ball. The sun lit up the corridor with its steady light. There were various doors branching off. “The second lesson is that objects can be made to appear. You know intellectually that the sun is not there, but your senses tell you otherwise. Feel the heat on your cheek, for example.”

  It was true. The sun was warming him.

  “Now pick up the sun.”

  Wei reached out, felt the stinging heat on his exposed arm. He recoiled. “Ow! It’s too hot!”

  “It’s the sun. Of course it’s hot. This is the second part of the second lesson: objects made to appear are not just visual illusions, they are complete sensory experiences. The Controlled Waking State user has no experiential way of proving or disproving the existence of an object. Now open the third door on your left and close the door behind you.”

  Wei made his way along the corridor, hugging the wall so as to avoid the heat of the tiny sun. His fingers burned; he needed to run his hand under cold water. As he passed, he felt heat on the back of his neck. He opened the third door along and went through into a brightly lit room. It appeared to be a restaurant dining room, except that there was only one table set out. The rest of the large space was empty.

  “You want me to sit down?”

  “Please.”

  There was an embroidered tablecloth on the table, as well as one place laid out with plates, cutlery and an empty wine glass.

  “Let’s recap what we’ve learned thus far,” the voice said. “First, objects that are present in the real world can be occluded from view, but can still be manipulated, or bumped into. Second, objects that are not present can be simulated, and the user will have no way of exposing the object’s unreality, other than by logical deduction. How’s your hand?”

  The pain had gone. “It feels better.”

  “Good. The sun was not real, so you shouldn’t have felt pain, but you did. The pain lingered until such a time that it was removed, without you immediately noticing. Is this correct?”

  It was. “You can make me feel anything?”

  “Your entire sensory experience is being controlled, so yes.”

  “What about my thoughts? Can you read my mind?”

  “Your brain activity is being monitored or, if you will, read. To a limited extent, your thoughts can be influenced more directly, but this area is still experimental. For now, our trial has focused primarily on the sensory areas of the brain. This brings us to our third and final lesson for today. Consider the feast before you.”

  A banquet had been laid out without him noticing. There was a sliced roast beef, red potatoes, gleaming vegetables, and an open bottle of wine. His glass was half full.

  “Now, there are a number of possibilities,” the voice said. “The first is that the food was there all along and it was being hidden from you. In this scenario, the feast exists in the real world exactly as you see before you. Try the wine.”

  Wei picked up the glass and took a sip. It was a velvety red. “Not bad.”

  “Can you tell me what the second possibility is?”

  “Yes,” Wei said. “The food might not be real. The entire sensory experience might be being simulated.” Without being invited, he took the opportunity to take a slice of beef. He put the slice on his plate, cut it with the knife and fork, and took a bite. It tasted delicious.

  “So you agree that you have no way of knowing whether you are eating this roast beef? Logical deductio
n is no use here either, for the food could exist.”

  “That’s right,” Wei said, stuffing food into his mouth. There was some gravy and he wanted to try the roast potatoes. “No way to be sure.”

  “There is a third possibility,” the voice said. “You’ve forgotten about our final lesson.”

  Wei stopped eating. “Yes?”

  “How do you know that that’s beef? If we can conceal an object that does exist, or simulate an object that does not exist, then we can give an existing object the appearance of a non-existing object. Do you follow this line of reasoning?”

  “Not exactly.” He reached for the dish of potatoes again.

  “To put it another way, how can you be sure that the roast beef before you is not, for example, a roast newborn baby?”

  Wei put the fork down. “Logical deduction.”

  “A reasonable assumption. But the point is you have no way of knowing. It might be an infant child, and we might be forcing you to eat it as a way of proving that we can make you do anything at all while in Controlled Waking State.”

  “I suppose it’s possible.”

  “But you don’t believe that. Could you believe, then, that the food is not roast beef, but in fact pig offal not meant for human consumption?”

  “Disconnect 341 dash 1,” Wei said.

  12. The Receptacle

  David seemed to be fighting or grappling with something in his dreams, for his taut body was thrashing all around the bed, making a tangled mess of the sheets. He was a big man with a powerful grip, but his foe seemed to be gaining the upper hand. Sylvia considered waking him, but instead retreated into the kitchen and took the steps required to raise her tired mind to consciousness. This necessitated coffee, a bagel, and then more coffee. Before she knew it, Sylvia was running late for work.

  Too often these days she found herself slumbering and struggling her way through life. On an ordinary day, it took all her energy just to get dressed and make it to the bus terminal on time. People were always noting how tired she looked. Perhaps it was a consequence of too much CDS, or maybe just that she was getting older. She couldn’t attribute it to job stress. She nodded in the direction of the receptionist at the Receptacle’s foyer and made her way upstairs. It was shortly after nine, which made it time for another coffee. Apparently there was a meeting at ten. All staff. Retreating into her cubicle, Sylvia imagined herself as a small, burrowing animal, working her way downward into the earth.

  Her sanctuary, then: her cluttered desk. Once, Sylvia had had a perfectly neat and ordered desk. Everything was stacked and filed away. She would wipe the desk at least once a week, just to revel in a sense of order. But then a colleague informed her that an immaculate desk only proved that she wasn’t a hard worker, for look how messy the desks of her more earnest workmates were. After that she had taken to strategically leaving papers of an apparently urgent nature across the desk, and sloppily stacking files in the corner. Soon her desk screamed ‘hard worker!’ instead of ‘work harder!’ But then, as the months – and if she’d care to admit it, years – passed, her appreciation for order crumbled. What did it matter? She uttered these fours words as her mantra. The illusion of disorder was replaced, over the course of time, with genuine disorder. Now Sylvia couldn’t find anything and she spent hours looking for things she had mislaid.

  “Sylvia, are you all right?” Sylvia looked up. It was Tiffany. She looked well rested, a bottle of mineral water in her hand.

  “Just tired,” she sighed. “What are you up to?”

  Tiffany took this as an invitation to sit down. “This and that. We’ve got a meeting soon anyway.”

  “Any idea what it’s about?”

  “No, I haven’t seen Peters around yet. I think he’s married to his desk.”

  “Do you think it’s about...the ‘vert?” She meant to say, ‘about David,’ but held back.

  “Could be. I thought it came out fine. Didn’t you?”

  “Sure.” Their conversation petered out.

  “You look tired, Sylvia. Are you getting much sleep?”

  “It never seems like enough. I’m just...” She struggled to describe it. “I’m stretched.”

  “I think you’re worried about David,” Tiffany said. “Have you talked to him about the investigation?”

  So it was gossip she wanted, under the guise of concern for Sylvia’s well-being. “He didn’t get home until late,” Sylvia said. “So no, I haven’t. But I’m sure it’s nothing.”

  “Right.” And there their conversation ended.

  Tiffany scuttled back to her own desk, leaving Sylvia to ponder. In actual fact, she had tried to discuss the matter with David last night, when he’d finally arrived home after ten, but he’d been evasive. She hadn’t pushed him.

  Then there was the Rion problem. Why the hell did he want to meet her, and what had possessed her to tell him where she lived? Was it that she was tired, not just in the physical sense, but tired of her own mundane life? As in all such online trysts that threatened to break out into the physical world, there was the problem of appearances. Sylvia still had a reasonable figure, but she was starting to get a little pudgy. There was only so much exercise you could do while strapped to a soft chair.

  And then of course there was David. She’d already tested his patience with her virtual affairs – how would he take to a real one, especially in his strung-out state? It might push him to the edge. She’d wanted to ask him whether he’d heard of Misanthropos, but again she’d held back. So many questions, so few answers.

  It was almost ten, and she hadn’t even made the vaguest gesture of having started work for the day. That wasn’t good enough and she was angry at herself. It was necessary to maintain an illusion of interest, of dynamism. She needed to cultivate – or at least simulate – a ‘can do’ attitude.

  It was necessary to get up.

  The conference room was almost full by the time she sat down near the back. The big screen was blank, the podium vacant. There were about two dozen people here, which constituted Yellowcake Springs’ entire advertising department. Sylvia could see Peters sitting in the front row, which meant he probably wouldn’t be speaking. One of the higher-ups must be paying a visit, then. This relieved her, for surely it couldn’t be about David. It wasn’t Sinocorp’s style to humiliate its employees publicly like that.

  Now the lights dimmed and a vaguely familiar-looking Chinese man stepped onto the stage. Behind the black-rimmed glasses, behind the much discussed Mandarin inscrutability, lurked an air of...what? Was the man sneering at them? Or was his smile intended in good humour?

  “My name is Yang Po,” he said. Murmurs from the assembled crowd. “I have been invited to speak to you today about a matter of great importance. A truly momentous matter, and one that I have no doubt will impact on the work you do for our company here in years to come.” He had the crowd’s attention now; the chatter had died down. “You are of course familiar with Controlled Dreaming State technology. Some of you use CDS in the course of your daily work, and many of you use it in your leisure time. I did not come here to tell you this. Now CIQ Sinocorp proposes to turn dreams into reality. The next wave of direct brain interface technology is known as Controlled Waking State, or CWS. And now, a demonstration.”

  Another Chinese man, this one much younger, was ushered onto the stage. He was wearing clunky headgear that brought back memories of the old VR headsets. “This is Jun Shan,” Yang Po said. “He isn’t dreaming. He’s wide awake. But as far as he’s concerned, he’s quite alone. He doesn’t know you’re here. Now I invite you to see what Jun Shan sees, on the screen in front of you.”

  Yang Po had Sylvia’s full attention now.

  13. Way Out

  The day was overcast, befitting his clouded mind, but there wasn’t a breath of wind outside. At nearly ten in the morning, Rion was still in a messy, stained bed in a dark, smelly room. It took an act of supreme defiance to get out of bed when he felt so low, but he’d best get movi
ng if he was to leave this place forever, as was his intention.

  Yesterday – the day of the attack – had been a better day than today was shaping up to be. The pistol he found, a Browning P35 Hi-Power in excellent condition, had four bullets left in the chamber. After indulging fantasies of walking straight up to Gillam and shooting him between the eyes, Rion had traded the pistol in at Lydia’s in exchange for hiking boots, a backpack, and enough canned food to last a week. He’d move swift and travel light, taking the path of least resistance. The goal was Sylvia Baron and the town of Yellowcake Springs.

  He’d need to take the CDS console, though. It wasn’t particularly heavy, but it was bulky, taking up most of the room in the backpack. It also dug into his back when he walked. But he couldn’t leave it behind, so he wrapped it in a blanket and shoved it in the backpack with ten packets of batteries. He’d have to sleep rough, but then he supposed there would be plenty of abandoned houses along the way.

  There was one more thing he needed to do before he left, and it was the reason for his depressed state. The albums. He’d already loaded them up into a shopping trolley the night before, but now his reluctance to be parted with them was a visceral thing.

  But that was the only way out, he reasoned. His adopted family wouldn’t want him to come to harm; he’d return for them later, when the trouble died down. Lydia had promised to look after them for him, but he knew that that meant they’d sit mouldering in the corner of her shop until the old woman died, which might be sooner rather than later judging by the state of her health.