The Creative Sponge

  Chapter 7

  Present day

  It is necessary at this point in our story to take a temporary deviation from the narrative trail and jump forward by three weeks. The reasons for this will become apparent in due course, although not immediately- perhaps not even until the very end of this book. Yet trust me when I say that the events of chapter seven are vital to understand the event that took place at 9:13 p.m. at 16 Oxford Street in London, England, which will be covered in chapter 8.

  It is unusual for the narrator to interrupt a story in the fashion I am employing now, but I feel I owe you an explanation. This story, so far, makes little sense. It is surreal and meandering. Rest assured that, by the time you finish reading, all will have been explained and you will be left gasping with sudden understanding. It will not be easy, mind you- this story is not for the weak minded. It requires a dexterity of thought and a mental depth in order to comprehend the twists that will occur in logic and temporality. There may be times when you need to close this book and think about what has just happened merely to understand it. If this is not the story you seek, then read no further- although the fact that you have reached this page and this explanation is enough to tell me that you will read on.

  Our deviation takes us to a dining room on the third floor of an office block in central London. Our two protagonists are two doctors, who share a close professional but antagonistic relationship with each other. It is much like the great academic rivalries one sometimes finds, where two great minds have mutual respect for each other yet simultaneously deride each other’s work and constantly find flaws in it. However, the rivalry here is less academic and more ethical: what this means will become clear soon.

  Although the building is an office block on the outside, its interior is used exclusively for scientific research. The lower floors are dedicated to more mundane research such as the development of car parts and microchips, but the upper floors are reserved for research into the field of human consciousness. On each of these floors are several laboratories and “surgeries”, where patients are laid down on a bed and fitted to brain scanners. On the fifth floor special research is carried out- but more about this later. It is about this special research that our two doctors are discussing.

  We join the scene where our first protagonist, Doctor Jones, is already sitting down for his lunch. He is busily tucking into a bacon sandwich when our second character, Doctor Curtis, joins him.

  “May I join you?” he asks politely.

  Doctor Jones glances up from his bacon sandwich with a cold stare. “If you like,” he answers curtly, before returning to his food.

  Doctor Curtis seems unaffected by his friend’s animosity and sits himself down comfortably. Today the tension between them is more apparent than normal. It has been this way for just over two weeks now: Jones, who was once dedicated to his work and enthusiastic about this company, has grown sullen and withdrawn. Curtis has noticed this but as yet has found no explanation. His friend’s new state annoys him.

  Doctor Curtis, it is noted, does not have any food with him: he has come merely to speak with Doctor Jones. His manner is relaxed and business-like. It is almost too relaxed, as if he does not take his work seriously, despite the implications a mistake may have for one of his patients. Despite his relaxed demeanour, a cold edge runs beneath the surface: he is capable of purely rational decisions in the most emotional of situations, which sometimes leads him to committing acts which Doctor Jones would now deem “inhuman”.

  Doctor Jones does not share Curtis’ cold rationalism. Jones has often been compared to an excited schoolboy in his approach to his work, an attitude which had led him to put all his effort and enthusiasm into his job. Such an attitude is why Doctor Jones is head of the Cortical department and the inventor of much of the technology they use. Yet recently his concern for this company has transferred onto his patients; he has become much more the sentimental type. He now gets close to his patients, and can get so caught up in their lives that he stops focussing on his work altogether. By this I mean that, for him, the patient now comes first, even if such an approach conflicts with the job at hand. And in a place such as this, conflict often arises.

  It would be practically pointless to describe the appearance of the two men: I shall leave that down to your imagination, save a few specific details. Both men are similar height, similar age (49 going on 50), identical clothes (white lab coats with the company insignia emblazoned on the left lapel). Doctor Jones has a fairly podgy face and balding brown hair. Doctor Curtis has a more chiselled jaw-line and is blessed, even in middle age, with a full head of short auburn hair and handsome stubble.

  “How is our patient doing?” asks Doctor Curtis. It is important, at this interval, to note that both men are sharing the responsibility for one patient. While one would normally be by his bedside, the presence of a nurse in his private room allows for the two men to briefly meet, which is a rarity. Moreover, Doctor Jones was the last to administer to the patient; in fact, it has been a few days since Doctor Curtis was available to visit the patient, as he has just returned from a weekend by the coast with his wife. This is why Doctor Curtis has to enquire of the patient’s status from his peer.

  “Stable,” replies Doctor Jones curtly. “Just the same as you left him.” As he speaks, Jones refuses even to lift his head to look at his interrogator. He seems more interested in his meal and merely bothered by company.

  “Any developments since I’ve been away?” forwards Curtis, trying to glean a little more information out of his interviewee.

  “Nope. Just the same,” replies Jones.

  Curtis seems at a loss now to know what to say, and the pair fall into an uneasy silence. Jones seems perfectly unaffected by it, but Curtis appears slightly cross. He had been hoping for a more detailed report.

  Jones is nearing the end of his sandwich. He glances up and is only now aware of his colleague’s mood.

  “I mean, the cortical field readings spiked once or twice, but that’s it. He’s sleeping soundly.”

  Curtis sneers. “Sleeping. Anybody would think you had no understanding at all of the technology involved.”

  Jones sits up straight. Until now, he has been slouching over his food, almost leaving no gap between the plate and his mouth. Now, though, he is staring straight at Curtis.

  “Of course I understand it. I invented it.”

  He knows there was no point in replying to this personal sleight. Both men know that Jones was the original inventor of the concept and the machine; the insult comes from malice, not ignorance. As an insult, it is fairly weak, yet it bothers Jones greatly. Despite his few words, his glare says more to Curtis than words ever could: he knows his colleague is offended. Jones’ bitterness does not stem from intellectual pride- there are deeper causes at work here.

  “You seem very reluctant to put it into practice these days.”

  Jones merely grunts and returns to his food. A further, shorter, silence follows while Jones finishes his sandwich and pushed his plate aside.

  “You don’t believe in what we’re doing anymore, do you?” asks Curtis. The question comes out in the form of an accusation, which is quite appropriate really: due to the confidential nature of the work undertaken at this facility, security is tight- to the extent that the basement has recently become the firm’s own private prison and is home to those who dissent against the regime and dare to openly criticise it. If the public knew about what truly happened on the fifth floor, there would be an outcry.

  Jones hesitates, unsure how to reply. After a moment’s consideration he says, “Of course I do.” His words illustrate loyalty, but his tone indicates rebellion; the contortion of his face illustrates his actual disgust at the very same time as his words tell a bare-faced lie.

  “We’re doing it for the greater good,” opines Curtis. Jones is uninterested and is studying his plate, despite the lack of food. Despite this, Curtis carries on regardless. “Remember what you told me just a m
onth ago? This technology could revolutionise the world!”

  “And,” Curtis leans forward and puts his hand on Jones’ shoulder, “think of the power we will have over the whole of mankind!”

  Jones winces at the touch of Curtis’ hand. He feels sick, for he had indeed said those things. In fact, he was the one who put such ideas into Curtis’ head, and the guilt sits in his stomach like a kidney stone. Yet now he has been washed clean of those selfish desires and simply wants to put an end to his abominable research. He wants to pull his rival down from his pompous high horse and show him some human feeling. He wants to point out the value of human life, and that it cannot be shunted around like a commodity. Man is not God, and nor should he be.

  He wants to say all this, but holds his tongue. He remembers his position: if his employer pays so little regard to the dignity of its patients and the liberties of its employees, what is preventing Jones from being thrown in the cellar with the other dissenters? Curtis is cold and rational: he has no understanding of human feeling or loyalty. One indication of dissent, and the next thing he feels may be the burly arms of two security men dragging him down the stairs. Just one indication is enough… no, Jones wouldn’t give Curtis the satisfaction.

  So he smiles. He cannot bring himself to pledge his overt support to something he finds so abhorrent; so he merely smiles, and hopes this is enough to prevent him being reported to the boss.

  “I’m going to go and see to the patient now. It was nice talking to you,” says Curtis abruptly. He makes to get up from the table.

  “I’ll come too,” says Jones, equally as abruptly- perhaps too readily. Jones fears arousing the suspicions of Curtis- but what does it matter now? What’s done is done and cannot be undone; what’s more, it will undoubtedly be discovered sooner or later. Better to face the music with courage than to flee in fear.

  “Okay,” says Curtis, and begins walking in wide strides out of the canteen and towards the lift. Jones follows. They enter the lift and press the button for the fifth floor, which they reach in a matter of seconds.

  As the door opens, the nurse rushes in. She is flustered by something and appears unperturbed by the presence of two of her superiors in the lift with her. Curtis looks at her as if to accuse her of leaving her post by the patient’s side; the nurse looks back with hostility. The moment lasts but briefly, before the two doctors are forced to leave the lift and the nurse disappears out of sight as she heads down.

  They enter a corridor stretching to the left and right further than the eye can see. Before them are many doors, through which one could find the many patients present on the fifth floor. The pair turn left and head purposefully towards the door of room fifteen.

  In room fifteen, they find the patient wired up to a machine. At first impression he looks in a bad way: unshaven, unconscious, restrained, emaciated, and with a strange purple scar on his right arm. The patient has the countenance of a man who had once been strong and muscular, but who has withered away through neglect and starvation. He is lying upon a hospital bed with wires running into his head, with electrodes connected to various parts of his brain. Various drips penetrate his skin through holes in his surgical vest. The patient is completely unaware of his position, or even his identity, in this state: one would be forgiven for thinking he was comatose. In a way, this is true: only if he is, it is a deliberately induced coma, and really his state of consciousness is only described rather crudely by the word ‘comatose’: the reality is far more complicated.

  The wires leading from his head appear to connect to a complex machine to the patient’s left. The machine itself is nothing special to look at: to a layman, and even to a professional, the graphs and buttons and lines and beeps would be difficult to comprehend. However, this machine is merely an enabler. By this I mean that it merely enables operators to bring up a more user-friendly interface on the wall behind the patient’s head. It is like an interactive whiteboard, but the technology is slightly more advanced. When Doctor Curtis steps forward and utters the word “On!” in a loud and confident manner, the machine registers the command with voice recognition software and the ordinary piece of beige wall becomes a virtual projection of the man’s mind: it is suddenly possible to see an image of the patient’s most recent brain scan; a live graph showing the brain waves active in his head; a spreadsheet full of complex numbers and algebraic expressions, which is updating itself continually. The wall itself becomes a computer; and, what is more remarkable, it is a computer which has power over the patient’s brain. One touch, and Doctor Curtis could bring up his records from a day, week or month before; he could increase or decrease the supply of food and drink and drugs provided by his drips, or the voltage being applied to his neurological cortex at any given moment. It is truly a fearsome device, dangerous in the hands of one who is ignorant or evil: yet neither of these statements are true of Curtis. As will become apparent, his motives are not purely for the benefit of the patient. However, his own personal interest- the fear of the basement, found in every employee here- will ensure that he works to the best of his ability for the fulfilment of the task. And, luckily for the patient, the current task requires that the patient be looked after well.

  The wall is now a constantly changing and updating interactive image, with new information and processes appearing every second. To you or I or the untrained observer, the content of this wall would be utterly incomprehensible. Even to the best qualified candidates, the Wall is a challenge. Most employees here specialise in a certain function of the Wall and leave the other functions to other specialists. For example, Doctor Curtis here is a neuroscientist specialising in the interpretation and classification of brainwaves. Presently the window displaying the patient’s brainwaves are in the bottom left hand corner of the Wall, and it is with this data that Curtis is beginning to work. The rest of the Wall, full of detailed images of various parts of the brain, cell diagrams and patient history, are of no interest to him; if a problem were to occur in those areas, Curtis would be qualified enough to recognise the crisis, but would be required to call for specialised help before acting.

  Thus the current scene is as follows: we have the as yet unnamed patient lying comatose in the hospital bed; we have Doctor Curtis, manipulating data on brainwaves in the corner of the room; and finally we have Doctor Jones, standing idly in the doorway and acting uninterested in- or disgusted by- the whole process.

  Presently Doctor Curtis is startled. At first, his usually cool brow furrows in concentration; then, his eyes glaze over with a steely glare as he reaches a conclusion; finally, he turns squarely on his heel and glares Doctor Jones down.

  “He’s aware,” he says simply. His words are brief, but his rage is clear: burning deep down below the surface, like the deadliest volcano, invisible until it bursts, and then impossible to evade.

  Doctor Jones smiles. It is a fascinating expression: a fatigued yet victorious curving of his lips, as if one had just completed a difficult, dangerous task which exhausted all of one’s energy and was happy just to have come to its end.

  “Is he?” he queries simply. Both Doctors know he is; moreover, both Doctors know that Doctor Jones is responsible for this error. Clearly while Curtis was away, Jones’ discomfort with the procedure led him to make unauthorised alterations to it. Nevertheless, Jones knows the consequences: the basement. If, and it was a big if, he could feign ignorance convincingly enough, he might escape this fate and get away with his brilliant victory. He could, as it were, have his cake and eat it.

  Doctor Curtis rounds on his colleague. “It is,” he replies. “And you know it is. Because you made him aware. You messed about with his cortical field. You reprogrammed it.”

  Doctor Jones considers his options. For the moment, escape is not an option (however attractive an option it would be, were it practical: for if Doctor Curtis’ suspicions are believed by the executive directors, the basement is inevitable); he therefore chooses to be brave, remain present and remain silent. At
least that way he cannot incriminate himself further in the mind of his colleague.

  His colleague, though, is already convinced of Jones’ guilt. He turns away, uninterested in further conversation, and presses his finger against a central point on the Wall. This brings up a large image of a man pacing up and down on a pavement. He is outside an office block in London, apparently worried and mumbling to himself. He wears a suit which looks like it was once at the height of style and fashion but has since become tattered and worn through overuse and lack of care, and a trilby adorns his head. The whole appearance is reminiscent of attire from the 1920s. The reader would recognise the man in the image as Thomas, our missing hero and the subject of our heroine’s search. He is, however, acting out of sorts: the two Doctors are not perturbed by this, but were you or I or any of Thomas’ friends in the room, something would seem very wrong. Although the man in the image is clearly Thomas, his actions, mannerisms and voice seem to have taken on an individual personality of their own. In short, he seems a different man.

  This is, however, not in the considerations of our Doctors here. They have far more pressing concerns to do with the procedure at hand, the restrained patient in the room and the perceived failure of the machine- or of the machine’s operative. By this point Doctor Jones is struggling to conceal his worry. If he were in the position of Doctor Curtis, he knows what his conclusions would be, what his next move would be…

  …and he is proven right. On seeing the image before him, Doctor Curtis swings round on his heel to glare once more at Doctor Jones.

  “This image is live, and yet it is also old. This is happening now, but it happened three weeks ago too. I could bring up CCTV footage from three weeks ago, from Oxford Street, which would show exactly the same thing.”

  Doctor Curtis begins walking slowly, ominously, towards his colleague.

  “Do you remember what happened two weeks ago?” he asks. His voice, although remaining calm on the surface, is beginning to struggle to conceal the raging storm in the deep. “The intruders, the scandal- and you did this? You’re the one who made him remember on that night in November?”

  He swings around again to look at the image, before turning back to his colleague. Thomas is still pacing. He occasionally stops, as if having come to a revelation or entered a deeper level of thought.

  “And you did this?” asks Curtis. His voice is not raised. His voice is never raised. Yet he speaks with the kind of voice one fears to hear. Silent rage is often the most terrifying. If someone shouts and swears, insults and accuses, it is obvious and easy to deal with: silent, cold rage, which does not manifest itself in sound but which is clear in tone, is the mark of a secretive man; a man with absolute control over himself, but who is equally on the edge of losing that control. With such a man, one knows not to make him angry, because one knows that his anger will not merely result in noise and tears, but in action: devastating, terrible action. Jones knows now that the basement is inevitable for him. Jones knows that Curtis’ anger has a tiny bark, but a lethal bite.

  Presently the Thomas on screen stops walking and looks towards the bottom-right corner. His visage looks puzzled; we see our heroine, Kathy, running on screen and embracing her old friend passionately. He, for his part, looks shocked- he attempts to push her away. Kathy looks confused, offended, scared even; words are exchanged. Quickly Kathy’s confusion and fear grow as Thomas embarks upon a lengthy explanation of something.

  Curtis is still glaring at Jones with hatred, but Jones can see the video. The basement is inevitable now, but if he can distract Curtis for long enough, allow Thomas the time to explain, to bring about the inevitable events of two weeks ago…

  Curtis, however, catches the change of focus in Jones’ eyes. He turns slowly on the spot and instantly understands what he sees. The screen now displays footage of Thomas rummaging around in his pockets, searching for something apparently important. Wordlessly, purposely, Curtis walks towards the machine in the corner and twists a switch.

  The image disappears. In fact, the screen disappears: where once was interactive computer is now, once more, a simple beige wall. The patient begins to twitch; soon he will be awake; shortly afterwards, he will have recovered his senses sufficiently to be fully aware of his situation and identity. The damage has been stopped- yet a look of understanding passes between the two Doctors. The footage had been live, in a sense- but it had also been taken three weeks before. Ending it there could not prevent the events of that week, which had begun on at 9:13 p.m. at 16 Oxford Street and which had ended two weeks before. Now, the company was still afloat, just about. No permanent damage had been done. Indeed, the whole affair had ended comparatively well for the company: no witnesses, no survivors… well, in a complex sense at least. The protagonists were all still alive, technically. They were merely now no longer themselves. This will make more sense as the story progresses.

  Nevertheless, the two men understand completely the effect of all this. The events in that room had been the necessary cause of the embarrassment of the past month; yet in the immediate sense, they had also been merely reportage, a conclusion to the investigation of how they had occurred. Temporal causality… when your business is to use science to mess with the mind and time, sometimes the cause occurs after the effect.

  Curtis approaches his colleague and pats him on the shoulder, with the respect one would show a worthy adversary. Their eyes meet, briefly, just for one second- then they part just as instantly. An intense hatred, akin to betrayal, is present in Curtis’ eyes. It is said that the eyes are windows to the soul- there is truth in this. Even the hardest of people, with mastery over their tone of voice, their choice of words, their body language, find it impossible to conceal their true emotions in their eyes. It may seem perverse, but Curtis and Jones had once been close friends until a major professional disagreement- a disagreement, in fact, closely connected with the events of this story. Jones used to be one of the chief proponents of his invention. He used to work passionately for the development of his ideas, thinking nothing of the impact it had on his patients. Yet something about the man in the bed before both him and Curtis had changed his mind, forced him to confront doubts until then hidden deep in his unconscious and led him, inadvertently, to be the very cause of his own change in personality. Since this change, Jones sees Curtis as an unthinking, immoral, heartless human being for continuing to support the company; Curtis, on the other hand, had begun to view Jones as a traitor. The raw wound of a broken relationship is still sore for both of them- but neither man can bridge the gap now.

  Curtis reaches out to an intercom device on the wall and says simply “Security to room 15, floor five, please”.

  Jones’ shoulders sink. His doom is inevitable.

  Curtis begins to pace around the room once more. Jones watches, attentively. Presently Curtis walks coolly to the door and closes it.

  “Security will be here to take you away soon. But before they arrive, I want to know why you did it.”

  Jones simply stands there like a statue in stony-faced silence.

  “You’ve been acting strangely ever since the incident. I could sense you had begun to get cold feet about this whole enterprise. But I never thought you’d go this far.”

  Curtis is standing in the corner of the room, arms folded. His face is unreadable and he speaks in monotone; his anger is spent.

  Jones relaxes somewhat. After all, his fate is sealed; he cannot escape or prevent it. He approaches the patient and looks down at him. The man’s eyes are beginning to twitch and he is showing the beginnings of consciousness. Within a minute or so, he’ll be struggling against his restraints and screaming bloody murder until he is untied and freed. The image of this struggling victim fills Jones’ mind and he is sure of what he has done- the right thing. He tried to do good. Yet the inevitability of this man’s fate, the infinite loop in which he is trapped… it saddens him.

  The crushing failure of it all suddenly envelopes his head as he rea
lises he has not done good at all. Was it “the right thing”? Well, isn’t that grand! Or was it simply a twist of fate, this one cog’s role in the infinite turning of the machine of time? After all, viewed objectively, Jones had no choice in the matter- what he did now was merely the necessary precondition to a botched investigation which had already concluded. He had set this man’s mind free in the full knowledge that this would not lead to any great success, but would lead to him being tormented by the truth of his existence and, ultimately, arriving at Jones’ office in a stolen body watching his own capture. He would then be awoken, shown once more the reality of the torturous device to which he was hooked up, and the process would begin once more: an infinite loop of hidden identity and stolen souls.

  “Ruth,” Jones says with a weak, sad smile. “I did it for Ruth.”

  Curtis looks at Jones with puzzled expression; then, his face softens. Jones notices the strange occurrence of compassion appearing on his colleague’s face.

  “Oh, Earnest,” says Curtis. “What happened?”

  “I haven’t seen her for over two months now. I thought… I thought she had left me for another man,” he says, just managing to keep a stiff upper lip. His face is contorted in a painful expression. “But then I found out the truth. She had been faithful to me. She was always faithful to me. And she was better than me, too, for she could see the horror of what we were doing. She started plotting against us, trying to bring us down, to stop us from doing inhuman things to our… victims. And for that- well, she was sent to the basement. Nobody told me until after they had executed her.”

  “I’m so sorry,” says Curtis. He looks as if he is about to shed his cool exterior and go in for a hug.

  “She was a good person,” continues Jones. “A beautiful, kind, brilliant person. It took her death to make me see what a monster I have become.”

  Jones walks over to the man in the bed in the centre of the room and points at him passionately.

  “This man,” begins Jones, “had an identity. He had a job. He had a wife.”

  When Jones changes subject to talk about their patient, Curtis’ moment of compassion ends and his exterior returns to its previous cold, professional manner. Jones is appalled at how heartless he is.

  “Sure, he didn’t have the best life in the world. Not the most interesting. He had seen his dreams go unfulfilled, his heart broken and his ambitions disappointed,” Jones continues. “But it’s a life! It’s his life! And what right to we have to take it from him?”

  “He is not dead,” points out Curtis glibly.

  “He may as well be!” opines Jones passionately. “What has he left? Yes, he has life- but not his life. This machine, this accursed machine”- here Jones kicks it- “had been used to rob a soul of his body and a body of its soul. What is a man without his memories? Yes, he lives- his heart beats, his brain is active, his blood pumps- but does he live? We have taken from him his very identity and given it to another man. From the moment we put him into this infernal machine, this man has ceased to live and has taken on the identity of a stranger.”

  Curtis shrugs, completely uninterested. For him this is just a job. Questions of morality and ethics do not enter into his reasoning.

  “Well, that’s what you think,” shrugs Curtis nonchalantly. “But it doesn’t matter. You can’t change anything. You’re going where he was, soon, anyway.”

  Jones sits himself down on a chair and puts his head in his hands.

  “How can you be so… unfeeling?” he exclaims, exasperated.

  “There’s no harm done,” explains Curtis. “I mean, what have we done? His disappointing existence ends as soon as we hook him up to this machine, and he finds himself in the middle of a fairly successful existence with a comfortable home, a flourishing career and a whole set of new memories to replace his old ones. He forgets his old name; he gains a new name, a new life, a new identity: new friends, family and interests. But is he aware of any of it? Why should he be? So none of it bothers him; for him, he is now his new identity, and for the world, Thomas is still Thomas.”

  “And what happens to the original Thomas?” asks Jones coldly.

  “Oh, let’s not get into the metaphysics of it all,” Curtis waves the subject away. “What do you mean by the “original”? For all intents and purposes, Thomas has not ended, or died, or been evicted from his own head and replaced by another. The person called Thomas retains his memories, experiences, interests, etc- everything that makes him “him”. For Thomas, and for the world, nothing has changed- Thomas remains Thomas.”

  “If this is all true, then how do you explain what I did?”

  Curtis face glazes over with cold rage. “You put us all in danger,” he says blankly. “You know what happened! You know what they do to people who compromise trade secrets! The basement- that’s where you’re going, and where I would have gone if I hadn’t handed you in.”

  “You didn’t answer my question,” continues Jones darkly. “So I’m going to the basement- well, maybe I deserve it. I invented this damned machine, and I operated it unquestioningly for three years. I deserve my punishment for the evil I have done. But I asked: how do you explain what I did? You do understand what I did, don’t you?”

  Jones walks over to the machine and turns the screen back on. He replays the footage from earlier, with Thomas outside the office block. This time, it is not live in any sense of the word: it is pure footage.

  “You were right to say this was live,” he states. “When you played this, it was an exact showing of what our patient was doing. My machine put him inside the head of a man called Thomas. It replaced all of his original memories and personality with that of Thomas. Yet I realised the horror of my creation. And so I tweaked it.”

  Jones moves to the left and is now standing beside the screen, looking at Curtis seriously.

  “The machine works by manipulating the cortical field of the human mind. Some would call it the soul- or at least, the soul as explained by modern quantum physics. At any rate, my machine can move and manipulate the operation of the human soul, in layman’s terms. But you knew that.”

  “So it moves our patient’s soul into the body of a man called Thomas- for no particular reason. He was just a poor, random, unfortunate. And yet the whole tragedy of the situation is that he is completely unaware of his misfortune. And we’re doing this exact same procedure, this inhuman, unnecessary and perverse experiment, in innumerable rooms throughout this building! You understand why I did it, don’t you? Even through your cold, hard, emotionless exterior, you must have some empathy to understand my actions.”

  By this point, Jones has abandoned all inhibition. He allows his emotions, for once, to show, and lays into his colleague with no remorse.

  “So let’s return to my original question: how do you explain what I did? If Thomas was simply Thomas, then there is indeed no harm done. It does not matter who’s “soul” inhabits the brain, so long as it is Thomas’ brain- if this happens, then Thomas is still alive, yes?”

  Curtis is listening but refuses to dignify his colleague’s speech with a response. Jones continues regardless.

  “But I tweaked the machine. I allowed his cortical field a certain degree of freedom, so that our patient would inhabit Thomas’ brain, but retain his own personality, mannerisms and memories. In effect, for the last three days- since you left for your holiday- he has been inhabiting Thomas’ mind fully aware of what was going on. In fact, he has been aware for quite some time.”

  “So now we come to the full horror of the machine. It has taken a man’s soul and transplanted it into Thomas’ mind, yes… but what has happened to Thomas’ soul? Even if it is the case that whatever soul, whoever’s cortical field is inserted into the brain, the person’s behaviour will be the same, the soul manifesting that behaviour will not be. So we can conclude that Thomas’ soul has been displaced. Either there are now two separate people in one head, or we have effectively murdered a man by displacing his very
mind from his very head and replacing it with one identical- a form of cloning, you could say, or the very worst kind of identity theft. In short, Doctor Curtis, whenever we plug a person into this machine, we do two crimes: firstly, we murder the person who our victim’s mind will come to inhabit; secondly, we steal the identity of our victim. That is why I did what I did, Doctor Curtis. To get word out. To let the world know what is happening here. While we all think our friend here”- at this point he pats the patient on the shoulder- “is fully integrated into a stranger’s mind, he is actually fully aware of what is happening. He may go and tell someone. A journalist, perhaps, or the police. The word may spread. People may find out what is happening, and a protest movement might begin. That would be the beginning of our end, and finally this monstrosity may come to an end.”

  Curtis understands everything Jones is saying, but it is not news to him. They both understood the facts well enough before he had gone into his detailed exposition. Here, then, is the key difference between the two men: our repentant hero, Doctor Jones, is willing to sacrifice his career and liberty for what he now believes in; our villain, Doctor Curtis, is a cad who puts money and personal safety above all else.

  Unsurprisingly enough, then, Jones’ speech fails to win him over. He has little time to react before two burly men burst into the room and silently remove Jones from the scene.