The synapse sequence, p.12
The Synapse Sequence, page 12
‘Fine.’ Jake looked up at the air con as if nothing was the matter. ‘And I’m pleased to see your vitamin D levels are back up to normal. I assume you’ve been taking supplements rather than getting it naturally, but I appreciate the effort. Take a break before you connect to Durrant again, though, eh?’
18
I ROLLED UP the sleeves of my robe and inspected my arms. My skin was like crêpe paper, crinkling at my elbows. A perfect reflection of my age, all the youth sucked out until there only remained the thinnest veneer. Grace was running me a bath, the temperature controls set just how I liked it.
‘Anna?’
Grace had been chatting while I sat patiently in a chair beside the tub, wrapped in a thick robe that almost doubled my weight. I’d stopped listening to what she’d been telling me. Mostly, her words merged into nothing but the same old news and pearls of wisdom. The trick in keeping her going was knowing which noises to make to show I was still paying attention. And now I realised that I’d been too quiet. I tried to pretend I’d been struggling to hear over the running water. ‘Mmm?’
‘The young man,’ Grace repeated. ‘I think you actually enjoy his visits. Is that why you allow him back so often?’
She grinned at me over her shoulder, then moved to switch off the taps. I didn’t share her humour. Each visit from Sean was relatively short, or so it appeared. A function of my condition was that I easily tired. Facts became confused. Bits of information became lost. Forced interruptions were many.
I saw the frustration all too clearly in his face during the last visit. He obviously wanted to talk more about Tanzania, but I needed him to understand the context. What he saw as time wasted, I saw as very much essential. Even if it would take him more visits than he’d perhaps have expected to get what he needed for his research. And, anyway, perhaps I did enjoy it. Having a young man waiting on my every word.
Making him wait.
‘He’s lucky I’m speaking to him at all,’ I said.
‘I keep on expecting you to bring down the shutters again.’
I didn’t want to get into why I was now providing my confession. Especially not with Grace. Fortunately, she didn’t follow up her comment; instead she checked the temperature of the water. As per my instructions, the water would be the dull temperature of warm beer. A control system at the side of the bath allowed the nursing staff to adjust the temperature.
‘There,’ Grace said. She lifted me up from the bath chair as if I was indeed made of crêpe, and then slipped first my right arm, then my left, out of the robe. After the weight of the garment fell away, I was plonked back naked into my seat. Then I waited for my lower legs to be lifted up onto the chair’s supports so that my body formed an L-shape. But before Grace could push the chair along its runners and over the bath, a small light on her belt began to flash.
She frowned. ‘Emergency call,’ she said.
‘Which room?’
‘Now,’ Grace replied, scrabbling for the robe, ‘you know I can’t tell you that.’
Without saying any more, she wrapped the dressing gown around both me and the chair, tucking me inside to keep in the warmth. Which meant she was going to be gone for a few seconds.
‘I’ll be back in five. Don’t move.’
I glanced around me. Water on one side, the remainder of the bathroom empty on the other. And me in between: jacked up on a bath chair, my legs perpendicular to my body and now coddled in a bathrobe. ‘I’ll be waiting.’
Grace closed the door behind her, but that didn’t stop N’Golo. He appeared sooner than I’d imagined, merging into existence at the edge of the bath. He pushed into my consciousness and waited for me to notice him.
I didn’t move. I just looked at him, the scars on my forearms already beginning to itch. He always looked the same. The young man who should have had so much to look forward to, all of it cut short.
‘Are you going to say anything today?’ I asked. ‘Or will you just start repeating your numbers?’
I didn’t expect him to answer. His visits were irregular: sometimes I’d see him many times in one day; other times, he kept his distance. I’d not mentioned him to the nursing staff, although Grace had caught me whispering to him on occasion. Not that she could see him. Not that anyone could. Because he wasn’t really sitting there, watching me from the edge of the bath. He was only in my mind. A connection from the sequencer that hadn’t quite been successfully detached. A little etching of guilt that was too deep to remove.
‘Why are you telling the boy about Tanzania?’
The question boomed into the empty bathroom and caused my body to jerk. The robe loosened and slid a little from my shoulders. But not too much.
‘I think it’s time,’ I said.
‘Do you expect forgiveness?’
‘No, but I expect him to record the truth.’
N’Golo seemed to consider this, but I knew everything was happening inside my own brain. A devil on one shoulder, an angel on the other. Both whispering in my ears.
‘Are you going to tell him about the synapse sequencer?’
‘I don’t know…’
‘The two things are connected.’ He tapped his finger against the temple of his skull. ‘Up here, they’re connected. You can see that, can’t you?’
‘I…’
N’Golo’s eyes rolled up. His eyelids started to flutter. And then he started reciting the numbers. Always starting the same, but rapidly moving beyond that into a line of figures of which I couldn’t quite keep track. ‘N’Golo, I—’
‘Who’s N’Golo?’
I turned, my robe sliding a little further. The door to the bathroom had opened and the other nurse – Charley – stood framed. ‘Another one of your fancy men?’
‘Where’s Grace?’
‘Looking after a patient. She asked me to take care of you.’
‘No.’ I tried to move, to twist my legs off the supports, but I couldn’t. The aid was designed for safety, preventing unexpected tumbles into water. And Charley wasn’t going to allow me to get up anyway. She’d already pulled away my robe. And as I continued to shift and shuffle, she hit a button and the chair started to slide sideways. Slowly, I was being pulled along the rails by the chair’s underpowered motor.
I looked down into the water. The next step should have been to lower me down. But Charley was now examining the bath’s temperature controls, and had started to fiddle with them. ‘Grace has already done that,’ I said.
‘I don’t want you catching a shiver.’
‘It’s fine,’ I said. ‘It’s just as I like it.’
Charley ignored me, her finger jabbing at the controls. ‘You seem to be having a good time talking to your gentleman friend.’
At first I thought she was still talking about N’Golo, but then I realised she meant the student, Sean. I tried to see what she had done to the bath but the gauge was too far away. I didn’t need to read it to tell she’d made it hotter, though – a few wisps of steam were now rising up around the chair, dropping moisture onto my skin.
‘Are you going to tell him how you got all those people killed?’
I didn’t respond. The steam was getting thicker and hotter. Wrapping itself around my legs. I had bruised shins. I could see them clearly, extending away from my body as they rested on the supports of the bath chair. Part of the crêpe effect, any little knock or scrape seemed to create a dark, purple patch that took weeks to fully disappear. On some days I looked at my arms and thought I could perhaps push my finger right through them. No need for a knife now. There was no protection left. Nothing to dampen the pain.
‘You don’t feel any guilt at all, do you?’ Charley continued. She moved away from the bath and reached for the chair’s controls. A single push started the mechanism lowering. ‘This is just a chance for you to talk your way out of it.’
‘No!’
Up until that moment I’d tried to remain calm, but I’d let that word out as part of a shriek. The chair kept lowering and the steam was now making it difficult to breathe. Getting into my mouth, and pushing down my throat. I tried to think. To calmly reach out for some logic. The safety systems wouldn’t allow the water to get too hot. Not to dangerous levels, anyway. Unless they’d been overridden…
The backs of my legs were the first to touch the liquid. It felt like I was being dipped into battery acid. I took in a great gasp – but that just took more of the burning heat into my body.
The chair continued to grind lower. The water crept up my legs and washed over them, between them. Each cubic centimetre made me flinch – it felt like my skin was being flayed.
‘Seventy-five thousand,’ Charley said. ‘All those lives lost because of you.’
I still didn’t – couldn’t – say anything. But I could see a blurred shape over my nurse’s shoulder. I kept my concentration on him as the water reached my stomach. It kept rising until it covered my arms and chest, so that just the tops of my shoulders and my head remained untouched by the scalding heat.
N’Golo continued to recite his numbers. I tried to focus on them to take away the pain. But they were already being lost. I was going to lose consciousness.
‘How are you going to cope?’ asked Charley, grinning. ‘When you’re lowered down for the final time?’
19
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ANNA ARRIVED AT the synapse chamber to find Cody and Fowler already waiting for her. She adjusted her overalls as she entered, then made her way over to the workstation where the pair were chatting. They both slipped into silence as she approached. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she registered that Fowler wasn’t wearing any scrubs – he must have accepted her decision not to allow him back into the sequencer.
Cody whistled a few bars of an unfamiliar melody. ‘You been to see Jake?’ he asked.
‘Yep – he told me about the note.’
Fowler allowed himself a grim smile. ‘I was right.’
‘We have the go-ahead from Jake to continue.’ Both men looked relieved. ‘An Inspector Mitchell was with Jake when I met him. She said she knew you.’
The name had an immediate effect. At some point since their last meeting Fowler must have had a cursory shave; his pimpled, raw skin now flushed a heavier shade of pink.
‘She said you weren’t a big fan of S&P.’
‘Huh! Neither is she. Not really, anyway.’
‘You wouldn’t know that from the sales pitch she gave us.’
‘I used to be her boss,’ Fowler admitted. ‘Good analyst; poor investigator. But she had the sense not to question her metrics too loudly, so I guess she got what she deserved.’
‘A promotion – to your job? Did she push you out, Fowler?’
‘I told you, I don’t like S&P.’
Anna raised an eyebrow, but it was clear Fowler wasn’t going to tell her any more. ‘S&P’s internal audit protocols posited that you were planting evidence to secure convictions,’ she said. With the added information that he’d once been a police inspector, it hadn’t taken long to track down Fowler’s professional history on the boards. ‘Patterns and statistics all pointing in one direction. No wonder you don’t like them.’
‘I never once set anyone up who wasn’t guilty.’
She hadn’t wanted to believe it when she’d first read it. Maybe he’d found himself caught in the same situation as her, and hadn’t been able to escape the innuendo and the suspicion. But from his expression, Fowler didn’t seem concerned by it at all.
‘The leaflet in Beth’s room,’ Anna said, almost not wanting to enquire any further. ‘The one that I found in that ornament… You were in the room first. Between the time it was swept by S&P’s bots, and before I got there.’
‘I was right,’ Fowler said, his voice quiet. ‘The note from the kidnappers proves I was right.’
Anna let out a slow breath, trying to push the anger out of her system. She turned her attention towards Cody. ‘Are we ready?’
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Just waiting for the hospital team to sync.’
‘Okay.’ Anna had decided not to mention the attempt to poach him. Cody probably already knew the request had been submitted. And if it didn’t happen, he’d probably conclude she’d blocked it. That was a discussion that could wait. First, she had to confirm another point of contention. ‘I’m going in alone,’ she said, turning to Fowler. ‘I’m not going to debate the issue.’
‘Fine,’ he replied, taking a moment to snort something back from his nose into his throat. ‘Just so you know, though, I went out to the fields behind the Haydens’ house early this morning. It was just as we saw it. Right down to that little collection of cigarette butts.’
Yes, that was the best they were going to get in terms of calibration, thought Anna. Not via checking aspects they already knew once they’d first entered the in-memory construct; rather, they were going to have to record what she was exposed to, and validate as much as they could after the fact. Not perfect. But at least it would confirm that they weren’t just experiencing the dream sequence of a broken mind.
‘I also brought the files you wanted,’ Fowler continued. ‘Couldn’t email them because I shouldn’t really have them. Didn’t want to risk a trace.’
Anna hesitated, and glanced at Cody. Her technician looked like he wanted to voice a thought but was showing a bit too much deference. He’d probably been thinking about the issues they were facing too. And Fowler’s site visit had brought them into clear focus. ‘Thank you,’ she said finally. ‘But I’ve changed my mind.’
‘What?’
‘I don’t want to read them,’ Anna said. ‘Or rather, I very much do, but I think it’s best if I don’t.’
‘I thought you—’
‘We have a major calibration problem here,’ Anna explained. ‘And separation is the only thing that will prove what we’re seeing is real.’
‘You think I’m going to feed you duff information?’
Anna let out a semi-laugh. After what he’d just admitted? How else would he now be trying to influence her? ‘Possibly, probably. Either way, I don’t want my thinking contaminated ahead of asking an AI for a conviction. I’ll use the sequencer, and you can verify what I find in the real world.’
Fowler gave a grunt of acceptance. ‘Well, the other thing I found is that there’s a gap in the Amblinside security line. An old bridleway gate leading into the fields. Someone had forced it.’
‘So N’Golo could have got into and out of the estate without passing the sentry station?’
‘Yep. We already knew he pissed off to God knows where at night – now we know how.’
Behind them, a few things lit up on Cody’s workstation. ‘We’re ready,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, Fowler, but you can’t be here when Anna is submerged.’
‘Oh, come on!’
‘Internal protocol dictated by Jake,’ said Anna. ‘Technicians are the only people allowed to be awake inside the chamber during submersion. Though I’m sure we can make an exception…’
‘No,’ Cody said firmly. ‘No exceptions. I’m not losing my job over this, Anna. It’s a core hub protocol.’
‘Fine,’ Fowler replied, not hiding the fact that he was pissed off. ‘When you’ve finished, ping me. I’ll be grabbing something to eat. Just don’t forget this is attempt two: two of a possible seven.’
Once he had left, Anna opened her mouth to protest, but Cody cut her off. ‘You’re in charge, Anna,’ he said. ‘I get that. But this is still my synapse chamber. Think about all those cockpit rules. After a crash, you used to check each and every one of them had been followed, didn’t you? And I expect that if you’d found anything amiss, you’d report it in your conclusions? I know Jake’s checking my work, looking for mistakes.’
‘Okay, I agree. This is your chamber.’ Anna moved towards her synapse bench. ‘What are we going to do about him?’
‘Fowler?’
‘Yes.’
‘There’s little we can do – we’re his subcontractors. The client is his client.’
‘He’s going to fuck us over.’
‘Not if we get to the truth first,’ Cody replied.
Anna lay down on the bench, the coldness of the steel immediately easing through her clothes and into her shoulders. For no apparent reason, she thought about Kate. Sitting in her apartment, completely alone. ‘With no other witnesses to monitor,’ she said, ‘hopefully you won’t get too bored.’
‘Nonsense,’ Cody replied. ‘I’ll be too busy looking after you.’
* * *
AT FIRST, ANNA thought it was already over. N’Golo Durrant’s brain must have been fried. The sudden snapping of the previous attempt to reach him had been too much for his comatose brain. She was conscious, yes, but not inside a memory. Around her was blackness. Before she could feel any sense of guilt, though, she noticed one little detail that reassured her.
Her feet were grounded. They were touching soft, wet earth which she could already feel soaking through her shoes and into her socks. Sure enough, as she squinted into the dark she could just about see the edges of the track again.
So where was N’Golo?
The ditch and the hedgerow were just as she’d left them. But the slight hollow where N’Golo Durrant had lain was now empty. The boundaries of the memory were almost impossible to sense, but the little pile of cigarettes was still there, albeit with fewer stubs than last time, as were the lights from the Haydens’ house. The rooms on the ground floor were doused in darkness, leaving only two windows, both open, shining cleanly into the night.
