by Craig Boldy
I spent about ten minutes watching them setting up for the operation and testing the various machines in the room until Wilson made his excuse to leave and another nurse came in. She pulled a covered syringe from one pocket and a small bottle of something from another. She smiled at me as she filled the syringe from the bottle and removed the excess air from the needle. She bent down at my side and lifted up my sleeve. I smiled as she almost automatically muttered the words ‘sharp scratch’ under her breath. I tried to tell I her I wouldn’t be able to feel it either way but whatever she had given me was very fast acting. I felt myself slipping into unconsciousness almost as soon as she removed the needle from my arm.
I don’t remember anything about the duration of the operation other than the odd dreams I had while under anaesthetic; I was in a dark room on a metal table, I could feel the chill of the aluminium seeping into my back. Doctors appear out of the darkness, wearing big white space suits, and moving in slow motion. They gather around my head, and one of them places one gloved hand on my forehead and the other on top of my head. He presses down on both at the same time and begins to rotate the top of my head as if he is unscrewing a jar. He gives it a few hard turns, and I feel the suck and pop as my scalp separates from my head. I keep watching as the first doctor moves out of the way and a second takes out a large metal ladle. He begins to scoop out my brain, piece by piece and drops them into a jar next to the bed. It is a strange sensation like a cold scratching behind my eyes.
Once the jar fills, the pulp coalesces back into my brain. It’s a dark pink, and the folds seem to ripple in the fluid it sits in. A single condensation drip runs down the side of the jar.
The first doctor moves back into position, and this time I can feel the heat radiating through the rough material of the glove. He screws the top of my head back on and then sits me up on the table. I turn to see the third doctor wheeling over an old desktop computer on a rickety trolley. I shiver a little as the squeak of the wheels send chills down my spine. He lifts a large flap in the top of the monitor and holds it for a few minutes. The second doctor picks up the jar containing my brain, and I hold my breath as the condensation almost makes it slips out of his hands. He walks over to the computer and pours my brain into it.
The first doctor wheels the whole contraption towards me and picks up the plug. He lifts the visor of his helmet, and for a second I think that I am looking at a reflection until I realise that it is me in the suit. I open my mouth to scream, and the doppelganger pushes the plug into my mouth and down my throat. I lie back down on the table and close my eyes.
I woke up very groggy, laid in a regular bed. I took a couple of deep breaths and then looked around the room. It was either the room I had first been in or one exactly like it. I had the strangest sensation of pins and needles in my leg, and I realised this is the first thing I have actually felt since the accident.
I tried to shout out, to tell someone I was awake but there was something in my mouth. It tasted like plastic. I could feel it with my tongue. I began to choke as I realised it was down my throat and instinctively reached up to pull it out. I sat up and started to cough once I had removed the tube from my throat; taking big gasps of air and trying to stop my gag reflex from making me vomit all over myself.
I began to panic. I could move. I waved my hands and arms, flexed my neck left and right and then cautiously swung my legs over the edge of the bed. I slowly stood, my leg muscles felt weak, but I forced myself to take a step. After regaining my balance I managed to take a few more slow steps. The carpet was soft between my toes.
I felt a little more confident and jumped in place a few times. I could feel my heart beating hard in my chest, adrenaline forcing its way through my veins, and I began to shake a little. A feeling of great thirst overwhelmed me, and I dashed into the bathroom, slamming my toe into the foot of the bed in the process. I yelped, shouted a swear word and then marvelled at the pain. After years of not being able to feel anything, it was almost sublime. I limped into the bathroom sucking air through my teeth and feeling the throb of my toe at each step. I ducked my head under the tap and slurped at the cool refreshing stream of water while taking great pleasure in the fact that I was able to drink on my own.
I turned to go back to the door to ask someone to let me out so I could run around and thank the doctors when I got an almighty shock. The kind of shock you get when someone jumps out at you, especially when you don’t recognise them, a purely primeval fight or flight response.
I turned back to what had appeared in the corner of my eye to see a stranger in the bathroom. I whipped around to see who was there but I was alone in the room. I turned back to the mirror as my reflection did the same. I stood there for a moment, mouth gaping, as the stranger in the mirror did the same. I should have been looking at a reflection of myself; that was clear to see as it moved precisely as I did. However, it was not my face staring back at me.
The reflection had light blond hair with a military-style buzz cut; dark, deep-set olive green eyes; the bridge of the nose raised in such a way to betray a bad break which had not been set correctly.
The last time I looked in a mirror, I had dark hair, almost jet-black, and it had needed cutting. My eyes were a steely blue, and my nose was, thankfully, unbroken.
Something else began to bother me. Odd memories had started to creep into my thoughts. At first, I thought of them as half-remembered dreams, but they were stronger and clearer than any dream. I could remember my parents raising me on a farm out in the country, the earthy scent of the farm filling my nostrils as I stood there. I could remember the feel of the warm sun on my back as I tended to the animals and the chill of the early morning air as I started the milking rounds.
I had two conflicting memories of my past fighting for dominance in my head. I could remember the farm, but I could also remember attending my parent’s funeral, the few people around and their many well wishes. Before that, we had lived in an inner-city apartment. Even my parents lived in the suburbs. The closest I ever got to a farm animal was at a zoo.
I started to trawl through my memories, finding years of my life that just hadn’t happened. Military training and far off campaigns. Smiling parents and various medals. None of that had ever happened to me, but there it was, plain as day in my mind, fond and sad memories and everything in-between. A whole life not lived. I dug deeper, trying to remember how I came to be in this room.
A strong memory started to unfold in my head like the scene from a movie. I could see the person in my reflection drunk at a party. Checking my reflection in the rearview mirror. Weaving back and forth over the centre line of the road. Losing control on a corner and going over the edge. The feel of weightlessness before gravity inevitably took hold. The headlights illuminating the tree I was plummeting towards. The crunch of glass shattering. My head hitting the steering wheel. Blackness.
The memory of the pain suddenly became overwhelming. It started as a sort of burning behind my eyes and worked its way outward until it felt as if my whole head was on fire.
I fell to the floor clutching my hands to the side of my head, groaning louder and louder through my gritted teeth, until the pain made it impossible to control my body any more. I slipped down to the floor and passed out, screaming in pain.
∆∆∆
Chapter Three
I opened my eyes and blinked a few times while my eyes adjusted to the bright clinical lights, feeling the pain in my head lessen and eventually subside. I took a few moments to try to decide whether what I had just experienced was a dream and tried to put my hands to my head. They refused to move. As did the rest of my body as I tried, in turn, to move anything below my chin.
An unknown voice said ‘He’s awake’ and a few seconds later a tall man wearing a standard suit entered my field of vision. He walked over to the door without saying anything else, gave it three hard knocks and waited a moment for it to open. He took a step to one side as it opened and Filch, Sutton and Wilson filed
into the room.
Wilson sat on the end of the bed and looked into my eyes as if expecting to see something. I stared back at him, unblinking until he smiled and turned away. Sutton busied himself with the machines and gizmos around the room as Filch stood at the end of the bed, tapping away on a tablet computer, occasionally looking up at me and then going back to whatever it was she was working on.
“How do you feel?” Of the three people in the room, I was surprised that Sutton was the first to ask.
“I feel the same as I did before you put me under, a little groggy maybe. How long have I been out?”
“Three weeks” Wilson had an odd admiration in his voice as I looked at him in disbelief.
“What? You told me a couple of days at the most. What happened?”
“It was supposed to be,” Sutton replied, Filch continued to mess around on her tablet, “We operated for seven and a half hours on the first day, placing the nodes in your brain. You were unconscious for the next two days to give your body a little time to recover from the shock.”
“And then it was my turn,” Filch interrupted, finally putting the tablet under one arm like a clipboard. “I spent the next three days attaching the tech to your spinal cord.”
“That’s less than a week. What happened with the other two?” I asked, looking at Sutton.
“That’s where we’re a bit hazy. We put you in a chemically induced coma for the duration of the first ten days, but since then you’ve not had any anaesthetic at all. You haven’t been in a coma, but you have refused to wake up. The curious thing is that our machines say you were in REM sleep almost constantly for the whole of the last two weeks.”
“REM sleep? That’s what you get when you’re dreaming.” I said, remembering some medical article I had read at some dull point in my life in a waiting room somewhere.
“That’s right; Rapid Eye Movement. It’s connected with the cleaning of the brain, and it’s archiving of short-term to long-term memories. In our case, it is probably the best sign that the tech is operational.” Filch looked pleased with herself. I grinned, still not quite understanding everything that was happening. “Do you remember anything out of the ordinary? Any dreams that may have stood out as more ‘real’ than usual?” She actually used air quotes as she said real, almost letting her tablet slip in the process.
“I remember waking up in someone else’s body. Being able to move and running around the room like an idiot. I think I stubbed my toe at one point. That felt real. I didn’t recognise my face in the mirror either, and I could remember stuff that hadn’t happened to me.” I realised that my explanation was not as clear as I thought it had been, by the looks on the faces of my audience. I was struggling to remember any of the strange memories of the other life. They were just not there anymore; they had faded away the moment I woke.
Sutton and Filch glanced at each other and smiled before both turning to nod at Wilson.
“OK, now for the details you were promised.” Wilson stood to knock on the door, allowing Sutton and Filch to leave the room before three nurses entered and made themselves busy sorting out my bed and machines for transport.
He continued to hold the door open as the nurses pushed the bed out into the corridor before quickly jumping back to his sitting position on the edge of the bed and catching a ride down the corridor.
“We needed someone with a particular set of skills. Close combat and weapons training, soft and hard negotiating skills, diplomacy and a willingness to sacrifice themselves for the greater good, not to mention that particular injury of yours. The thing we are most excited about though is the strange dream you mentioned. Well, that wasn’t a dream at all. It was an unintended side effect of the technology that’s sat in your brain. One we didn’t even realise was possible.” I lay there listening intently, as we travelled slowly along corridor after corridor.
"The doctors explain it better than I can, but I think simpler is easier to understand. As you already know Filch and Sutton have come up with a way of implanting a human brain with a series of transmitter nodes and then using that technology to connect you to their mainframe."
"Yes, I remember the briefing."
"OK, the next step would be to amplify those signals and connect your brain to other receivers out there in the world."
As we rounded another corner Filch and Sutton were waiting for us, they broke off what looked like a disagreement as we moved closer, frustrated faces turning into smiles as they saw us.
"How are you feeling? Still OK I hope" I nodded at Filch’s question as they fell in alongside us, one either side but slightly forward so I could see them all at the same time. Wilson remained sat on the end of the bed facing me, obviously enjoying the ride.
"I was just explaining your work to our volunteer, would you like to continue?"
Filch and Sutton looked at each other and began to explain, each cutting the other off periodically to explain further.
A recent breakthrough in nanotechnology had allowed them to design microscopic machines, capable of deploying in thousands while still being undetectable. Able to reconfigure circuit boards from the inside and create whatever was required to take control of any system. They then lay dormant until activated by a signal, generally through a phone or Wi-Fi connection, waiting for that opportune moment where they can take control themselves or act as if whoever was supplying the signal was doing so directly through the systems own control mechanisms.
It had been used a few times in the lab until an unfortunate accident had lead to a further breakthrough. The machines were so small and resilient that they were able to interact with human tissue, most notably brain tissue, behaving the same way it would as if it were communicating with a computer network. They had managed to control the movements of the test subject to a slight degree before safely purging them from their body.
"This has basically revolutionised how an undercover agent works." Wilson was smiling and looking off into the distance as he spoke," Just imagine how much we can get done if the undercover agent was actually one of the leaders of whatever group we are trying to infiltrate. No more expensive operations taking years of building trust and rising up the ranks, all the while taking the risk of the agent’s cover being blown or even them turning. Just snap," he clicked his fingers," and our agent is whoever we need them to be and can take it down from the inside with no risk to the agent."
I was stunned. It sounded like something out of a science fiction movie. “Won’t the person who is being controlled remember what has happened to them, or try to fight back or something?” I asked.
“That’s the clever part. As far as they know, they just go to sleep, but the nanotech in their brain acts as a receiver to your transmitter. Your tech sends the signals directly from your brain, through our amplification network, over the telecoms network and into the host’s brain; basically acting as a relay from your body to theirs, all while the host has nice peaceful dreams and wakes up none the wiser."
I contemplated it for a moment as we were wheeled along in silence. I had lots of questions and many reservations, but a part of me was screaming to do it. I don’t know whether it was ambition, the chance to test out some seriously cool tech or that dark part of me that was telling me over and over that it would be my only chance to walk again.
We stopped for a second to allow everyone to swipe their access cards over a reader set in the wall adjacent to a wide set of double doors. The light flashed green on the side of the panel, and the doors swung open automatically, to allow us to enter the room
The room beyond was the size of a small warehouse. The ceiling was high and laced with various lighting rigs and air conditioning vents. The walls were solid brickwork except for the door we were entering through and one large shutter door at the far end. There were no windows or skylights to let any natural light into the room, but the harsh electrical lighting combined with the white walls and ceiling made the place seem too bright.
Lining the whole len
gth of one wall was what I could only describe as computer equipment. There were six-foot-tall cases filled with components and wires, all connected to each other running the length of the room. It looked like the pictures of server farms I had seen in magazines. Various people in lab coats were walking up and down with tablet PC's checking connections, installing components and generally doing other tech stuff I wouldn’t understand if I tried.
Dominating the centre of the room was a large metal structure. The floor level consisted of a caged area with what seemed to be power converters and various other electrical systems; there were the usual 'Danger High Voltage' signs with the skull and two crossed lightning bolts at periodic intervals.
Directly above this was a large platform with a glass barrier protecting three sides of its perimeter, with a line of computer consoles along the remaining side. A large cone hung suspended centrally above the platform, the inside was a constant ring of wires in various thicknesses and colours. As we moved closer, I could just make out small blue spheres, each the size of a large apple, dotted randomly inside the ring. They were spaced along the frame of the wire cone in such a way as to make me think of a peacock’s feathers.
Wilson’s basic description of the amplifier had not prepared me for actually seeing it; I just stared at it as they wheeled me further into the room. As we rounded the structure, I noticed Perspex walls sectioning off the far corner of the vast room. Inside, I could just see medical equipment and a couple of the nurses who had looked after me.
“This will be your base of operations." Wilson said, spreading his arms wide to take in the room, "The machine up on the platform is the amplifier we were talking about. When you are interacting with the system, you will be up on the platform, directly underneath the cone.”
“This all seems very far-fetched. How long have you been . . .” I stopped mid-sentence. I had just spotted the man from my dream. For a second I had to do a double take as I assumed my mind was playing tricks on me. I had heard the rattle of a metal table behind us but assumed it was just more equipment. Now I could see it, and more importantly, its occupant, I was shocked. He laid still with the ventilation tube protruding from his mouth; the same one I remembered pulling out.