Terror Illusion

by James R Conway

It was nearly dark when Jonathan’s afternoon nap was interrupted by the sound of a buzzer indicating that someone was opening the front door on the ground floor with the apartment key. Jonathan got up, looked at the small screen next to the lift and saw that it was Karen on her way up in the lift.

  The lift doors opened and Karen stepped out, loaded with grocery bags. Jonathan grabbed a couple of bags and took them over to the kitchen counter. Karen followed with the rest of the bags. “Thank you,” said Karen, rather breathlessly, as she lifted the last bag onto the counter.

  “Is that all the groceries? There’s enough to feed the five thousand here!”

  “I’ve got to go down to get my suitcase, but that’s all the groceries.”

  “You’re staying over tonight?”

  “I sure am!”

  The buzzer sounded again and the face of Mac appeared on the screen alongside the lift as he came through the front door. Jonathan and Karen started unloading the grocery bags. Jonathan put the bottles of white wine in the refrigerator along with the cheesecake that Karen had bought for dessert.

  “I’ll finish putting things away and brew a pot of tea if you want to start preparing the meal,” said Jonathan.

  The lift doors opened and Mac stepped out. “Hello guys! Is there a cup of tea going?” He went to his bedroom and took off his overcoat then joined the others in the kitchen. Jonathan poured him a mug of tea. “Everything under control here?”

  “Perfectly under control,” said Karen as she finished washing the chicken and carried it to the roasting pan.

  When Jonathan had finished putting away the groceries, he took his mug of tea across the living room and up to the dining table where Mac was sitting looking at the lights along the banks of the river.

  “Did you have a good day?” said Mac.

  “Very good. Karen told me that she was part of the team.”

  “Good. I was hoping she would. What do you think about it?”

  “It’s fine. I understand why she couldn’t tell me until you had vetted me.”

  “You’ve got a good sense of security, Jonathan. That’s important in our work.”

  “When I was working in the movie business we had to keep secrets about the films and the special effects that we were working on.”

  “I’d love to hear about your time in the movie business sometime but tonight I want to introduce you to Roger.”

  “I’m looking forward to that, he sounds like an interesting chap.”

  “He should be here pretty soon. Can you line up a couple of your tricks to show him? I haven’t told him about what you can do.”

  “I’ll give him an hallucination.”

  “That will be very impressive.”

  The lift doors opened and a man stepped out. He walked straight over to Karen, who was standing at the sink peeling potatoes and gave her a big, tight hug from behind.

  “How are you doing my darling Karen?”

  “Careful Roger, I have a sharp knife.”

  “Charming,” said Roger and he poured himself a glass of wine and walked up to sit at the dining table with Mac and Jonathan.

  “Introductions if you please, Sir Fergus!” said Roger.

  Mac made the introductions and Roger and Jonathan shook hands.

  “Very pleased to meet you, Jonathan,” said Roger.

  “The pleasure is mine, Roger. Mac has told me a lot about you.”

  Karen arrived at the dining table with a glass of wine in her hand and she sat down.

  “Everything OK in the catering department?” said Roger.

  “All OK, Roger,” responded Karen.

  Roger turned to Jonathan. “Karen does a terrific job for me in the control centre. You must come over to my office and take a look at it while you’re in town.”

  “I’m sure he will,” said Mac.

  Suddenly Roger, jumped from his chair and ran over to the window. “Jesus Christ! What is that?”

  Mac got up and stood beside Roger.

  “There, coming up the river. It’s the bloody QE2 for God’s sake!”

  “Well, blow me down,” said Mac, who turned his head briefly towards Jonathan and winked. Karen simply sat quietly and took a sip of wine.

  What Roger was seeing was a ship coming up the river towards Tower Bridge. It was of course an hallucination implanted in Roger’s mind by Jonathan, but to Roger it looked as real as anything could be. Mac could not see the hallucination because Jonathan was concentrating on maintaining the it in Roger’s mind, but Mac was playing along as best he could to help reinforce the hallucination.

  “Look, Fergus! It’s not slowing down! Hell, it’s going to hit the bridge!”

  The ship’s bow, ploughing through the water, was getting closer and closer to the road level of the bridge, the part which normally opens up to let large vessels to pass through, but the bridge stayed firmly down and the ship showed no signs of stopping. It was about to hit Tower Bridge full on...and then the ship disappeared.

  “All right Fergus,” said Roger. “What the hell is going on here? Are you playing around with some hologram projection or something?”

  Mac put his hand on Roger’s shoulder and said, “It’s all right Roger, let’s sit down and I will explain.”

  Roger looked visibly shaken as he walked back to his chair at the dining table. Mac topped up Roger’s wine glass and Roger took a long drink from it and pushed it forward for refill. For almost the first time since he had arrived, Roger was practically speechless.

  “That,” said Mac, “was why I have recruited Jonathan onto our team. What you saw there was an hallucination, a kind of waking dream, but it was created in your head by Jonathan. It’s one of several very useful mental skills that Jonathan happens to possess.”

  Roger wiped his face with a napkin and took another sip of wine. “I don’t know what to say. It was so real, like I could reach out and touch it.”

  “Just like your dreams seem to be real at the time,” said Jonathan. “Full sound and glorious colour. You can even reach out and touch things in your dreams. This was just dreaming on a more conscious level. You were awake rather than asleep.”

  “But you triggered the dream or the hallucination or whatever in my head. How did you do that?”

  Mac interrupted Roger’s questioning and said, ”By the delicious smell of things coming from the kitchen, I think that the lovely meal that Karen has cooked for us is probably just about ready. Why don’t we serve up and then we can hear about Jonathan’s rather unique and interesting mental skills as we eat.”

  They all walked over to the kitchen where Karen had prepared four plates. “Serve yourself to vegetables,” she said.

  Once they were all seated back at the dining table, Mac invited Jonathan to tell Roger about himself. Between mouthfuls of chicken and roast potatoes Jonathan related how he had been in the movie industry, how his wife Jill had been killed in a car crash and how he had discovered that the circuit placed in his head had caused him to have these curious mental powers. Roger listened intently to Jonathan’s story. By the time Jonathan had finished they had all finished their meals and Karen got up to clear the table.

  Roger turned to Mac and said, “We can certainly use Jonathan on the team. I need to absorb all this and work out how best we can use him.”

  Roger suddenly turned back to Jonathan. “I’m sorry Jonathan, I’m sitting here talking about you as if you were some new kind of spy equipment. I do apologize!”

  “No problem, Roger. I’m just glad to join the team and do what I can to help.”

  “Let’s just get this straight. You can trigger hallucinations and you can put people into temporary seizures. Right?”

  “I can also sometimes hook into what they are thinking and seeing and hearing and I can dig into their memories.”

  Roger turned to Mac and said, “Fergus, now I know what the folks who cracked the Enigma code felt like. We must keep this thing ultra secret.”

  “Of course,” said Mac, �
�but the great thing about it is that people have no idea that they have had a seizure. They just have a sense of déjà vu, and they usually don’t recollect anything of their hallucinations.”

  “Right,” said Roger. “I think I see what you mean. It’s going to take me a while to get my head around this.”

  Karen had returned to the table to rejoin the group.

  “What we need to do now”, said Mac, “is to review where we are with the current project. Jonathan and I will be going up to Bletchley Park tomorrow morning. Mendellson is on the panel of Question Time which is being recorded in Bletchley Park tomorrow evening and Jonathan is going to see if he can get into Mendellson’s head.”

  “Good idea,” said Roger. “Why don’t we get together on Friday morning at my office and review the situation then? Karen, can you bring Jonathan over to my office on Friday morning on your way to work and I will show him the control centre.”

  “I’ll do that,” said Karen. “My first meeting on Friday is not until eleven-thirty. I’ll have plenty of time. I’ll be going back to my flat in Finchley after work tomorrow so I will get down here at about nine-thirty on Friday morning to pick you up Jonathan. We should be at your office by ten, Roger. ”

  Jonathan looked at his watch then stood up from the table. “I think it’s time for me to turn in,” he said. “I’m very pleased to have met you, Roger. I’m looking forward to seeing you on Friday.”

  “Sleep well,” said Roger.

  “Let’s plan to get going at about eight tomorrow morning,” said Mac. “I’ll knock on your bedroom door at seven.”

  Jonathan grunted his agreement and walked off towards his bedroom.

  Chapter 21