Chapter 14
Doctor Jones withdrew a key from his pocket and opened one of the locked doors backstage. Kathy’s heart did a little jump in the vain hope that she would presented a route to freedom, but no such luck: her two friends, the security guards who had been standing behind her when she was sitting at the back of the auditorium, were once more blocking her way.
These were no generic security guards. They wore a black uniform with the Cybertech logo emblazoned on the chest and both had shaven heads. In fact, they both had the same square-shaped heads and bodybuilder-type bodies. Compared to Kathy’s skinny form, she was no match for them.
“We are not ready for you yet,” said Doctor Jones coldly. “Take her to the basement.”
Kathy looked back in horror. She did not know what the ‘basement’ was, but she could be sure that it was not a pleasant place. Besides, she knew precisely what awaited her eventually. After they had set up one of those rooms with one of those machines, she would be whisked away from the basement and plugged in. Her identity, memories and personality would be lost forever.
The guards cuffed her roughly and led her to the elevator. They keyed in a journey from the fifth floor down to the basement. The basement was clearly off limits to anybody but security or those with special clearance, for they needed to turn a special key in a lock in the elevator before it would allow them to descend.
They had practically manhandled her into the elevator. Kathy winced from the pain of their vicelike grip on her arms. She was almost looking forward to the basement because it would once more allow her blood to circulate freely.
The journey was short. She gazed longingly up at the screen in the lift when it told her she had reached ground floor, yet knew it would not stop there. No, it was going one floor below. The contrast between the two possibilities was striking: on one floor lay freedom; on the other, imprisonment. Yet she had no choice.
She noticed how silent the guards were. They did not speak to her nor look at her throughout their entire time with her. It was as if they were stone guardians or afraid to look because they knew what was coming for their prisoner.
Presently the lift arrived, and the doors opened. Yet it seemed that they opened onto nothing. The lift was so bright and shiny- like the rest of Cybertech’s building- that it contrasted deeply with the dark, dank black that lay outside the door and meant that anything out there was impossible for Kathy’s eyes to make out.
Nevertheless the guards maintained their grip on her arms and marched her forward. She could not see where they were going, yet apparently they could. While she stumbled on obstacles in her way as they evidently traversed long, unlit corridors, they had no trouble navigating or avoiding the things in their path. Perhaps they knew this area well or had night vision goggles, Kathy pondered: yet it was impossible for her to conclude anything in the pitch dark.
Her eyes began to adjust, however. From what she could see, this ‘basement’ was designed in exactly the same way as the floors above. Yet it was terribly cluttered. Bits and bobs of unknown origin were strewn across the floor. Sometimes they were hard, sometimes they were soft; Kathy opined that she probably did not want to know what they were, anyway. She swore that once, what she stepped on felt like a human heart or entrails.
She began to see more: there were doors here, too, on the left and on the right. Yet as she gazed through them she saw nothing of the sophisticated equipment of the fifth floor. Rather, she saw botched experiments and abandoned machinery and, in the odd room, bits of human tissue or skeletons where the experiment had presumably gone wrong.
It was, in fact, almost as if the basement she found herself in were not completely pitch black. Her eyes were now so used to her surroundings that she could make out most things, albeit in a muggy, shadowy manner as one sees things under the light of the moon. And then she saw why: in the distance, at the end of the present corridor, was a source of light. It almost blinded her after walking for so long in the dark corridors of the basement. A tiny, rectangular window, just above head height, was emitting long, dirty rays of sunlight into the maze-like system and illuminating a dusty series of cage-like prison cells.
So that’s where she was going. It became clear now: she would be thrown in here, abandoned for a few hours or days and then collected so that she could be put in one of the machines upstairs. Her head and heart sank in despair.
The guards had reached the cages by now. They unlocked the door and threw Kathy in, before disappearing once more into the black corridors.
“They’re dark so we can’t escape,” explained a mournful voice behind her. “Even if we break out of the cages, there’s no way we’ll be able to find the elevator to get out of here.”
“It’s a maze down here. Literally. They designed this floor as a labyrinth which only the guards know how to navigate. And they have some sort of genetic transplants or night vision goggles so they can see.”
Kathy turned her head slowly to see her only companion in this set of cages. She was a woman in her early fifties with dirty blonde hair and a dishevelled lab coat. She smiled a weak smile in Kathy’s direction.
“Please don’t hate me,” she pleaded. “I can tell you don’t work here. What are you, a spy? An escaped test subject? But don’t hate me for my white coat. Yes, I did work here. I saw the error of my ways, though- and they sent me down here.”
Kathy noticed the Cybertech logo on her lab coat, but only briefly: her cellmate covered it up with shame as she spoke.
“The name’s Ruth Phillips,” she introduced herself. “And yours?”
“Kathy Turner,” she replied weakly.
Ruth gasped. She crawled over to Kathy and gave her a weak hug. Kathy could feel dirty tears streaming down Ruth’s face and onto her shoulder.
“You poor, poor dear,” Ruth was saying. “You poor, poor thing.”
Kathy was bemused. She tried to push Ruth away, and her companion moved away obligingly.
“I’ve been down here for six weeks now. Yet I hear things. I’m still in touch with the world.” She tapped her head knowingly as she spoke. “I’ve heard the guards talking. I’ve heard them mention your name. They talk about you excitedly, and about some new development. Tell me: do you know anything?”
Kathy hesitated. She did not know if she could trust this woman, or how much she should say. Yet she reasoned that they were both in the same situation together. Indeed, Ruth did look like she had simply been thrown in here as a prisoner, rather than planted here by Cybertech for untrustworthy purposes. Her hair was dirty blonde not just in the sense that it was dark, but also because it was full of filth and dust. Her once pale, bright skin was now brown not from the sun, but from the dirt on the ground. Here there were no beds or toilets and Kathy realised with horror that she was probably sitting where previous inmates had once done their business and relieved themselves.
“I was in a lecture,” Kathy began. “They invited me in. It was weird. And they explained that they have a machine which can move one person’s mind into another person’s head.”
Her companion bit her lip in thought. “Yes, they had that before I was sent down here,” she said. “But the guards are mentioning something new. I thought you’d know, because they keep mentioning your name when they talk about it.”
“The lecture was by someone called Doctor Earnest Jones,” Kathy ventured. “And he mentioned something about now being able to manipulate the collective mind.”
“They used it on me,” she continued. It was painful to talk about how she had been used and violated by this obscene organisation, so she proceeded slowly. “They made everyone forget me. They wiped out all memory of me from the world.”
Ruth grabbed Kathy’s shoulders and stared directly into her eyes like a mad woman. The effect frightened Kathy. “And it was Earnest Jones who was talking about this, you say? You’re positive?”
Kathy backed away. “Yes. Positive.”
Ruth reeled back and curled up in
to a foetal position. “Oh, Earnest, what have you done?” she wailed. She began to sob quietly, and Kathy was unsure what to do.
She left Ruth to her privacy for ten minutes while she remained curled up in the corner. She could have spent her time thinking, but her mind was numb- comfortably numb. Every few seconds, an odd half-thought would float through her head, but she did not grasp onto any of them or follow any of them up: she merely sat in quiet meditation, waiting stoically. There was nothing else to do.
Presently Ruth recovered and tapped Kathy on the shoulder. Kathy turned to see that Ruth had been crying a copious amount of tears. There were two trails running down each of her cheeks where her pale skin shone through because her weeping eyes had washed away the filth that had been on her face. The picture was one of sad beauty.
“Earnest and I are lovers,” she explained. “I expected him to come searching for me, to rescue me when I was first missing. They don’t make a song and dance about it here when someone is taken to the basement, you see. But then he didn’t come for me. I’ve been here for six weeks. I suppose I can’t be that surprised…”
There then followed the love story of Earnest Jones and Ruth Phillips. It was a source of light in her dreary existence down in the cells; a source of interest and intrigue to keep away dark thoughts about her imprisonment and impending doom. It was days before anyone came back down to the cells even to feed or visit them, and so they spent a lot of time in each other’s company. During those days, Kathy spent most of her time listening while Ruth regaled her with stories of her and Earnest, and their life spent together.
Ruth and Earnest had practically grown up together. They had lived on the same street as children. Their mothers were firm friends, so when they used to visit each other they would leave their children playing together. Ruth told Kathy that she could remember sharing baths with Earnest and playing tag together.
Earnest had always been something of a geek. It had not mattered when they were children, but as they developed into their adult selves it created a gulf between them. It must be noted that both were clever- exceptional, in fact. Yet Earnest was not beautiful. Ruth was. She attracted the attention of all the boys in school and soon forgot Earnest, the boy she had played with during her childhood. Hormones raging, the fit, athletic boys of the sports teams had been more appealing to her than the overweight, spotty boy who lived down the road.
Of course, they remained friends. Yet a gulf grew between them. When once they had played together almost every day, soon they met barely once a week; then, once a month; then, not at all. Soon they both became mere memories in each other’s heads- a happy time in both their lives, but one that belonged squarely in the past.
Earnest developed into a straight A student and self-proclaimed genius. He was full of himself. He read books on the newest scientific theories and was a regular purchaser of magazines like New Scientist. Due to the misfortune of his looks, he spent most of his time at home reading and thinking. He had few friends and no girlfriends.
Ruth, however, flourished at secondary school. Her grades slipped as she tried all the different flavours of boy available. In one year, she had five different boyfriends. Her personal preference was the sporty type, although she found the arty, musical boys interesting. She went out with a few of them and enjoyed sitting in their bedrooms listening to them jam on their guitars or create masterpieces on canvas.
She once bumped into Earnest in the corridor during her last year at school. It had been years since they had last met. She barely recognised the shy, contemplative boy who bumped into her, and all they shared was an awkward smile. Then he was gone: she walked one way, he another.
Yet he would always think of her. In secret, he felt betrayed by the girl he thought would always be his best friend. In secret, he wanted her back- but he wanted her to be more than his friend. His hormones were raging, too, but while Ruth was enjoying hers by experimenting sexually, Earnest’s hormones were imploding within him. He would implore his emotions to stop tormenting him, to simply leave him alone- for what use were hormones for him? They were a mere reminder of his social position at the bottom rung of the ladder; of his complete inability to fulfil his desires and actually get the girl.
Ruth, too, sometimes remembered Earnest. She sometimes wondered what had happened to the boy down the road who she used to play tag with. She sometimes wanted to catch up with him. Yet thoughts of a relationship or anything sexual never occurred to her; besides, she was too caught up in the social tide of parties and drinking, of boys and life, that she never had time to follow up her curiosity.
Eventually, both of them had gone to university. Earnest tried to let go of his yearning for Ruth and turn his attention to other girls. Ruth also threw herself into university life. She now regretted her time at secondary school: it had been fun, sure, but the distraction of boys meant that she had not applied herself, because of which she did not get the necessary grades to go to her university of choice. Had it been worth it? At the time, she would have said yes; in hindsight, no. She now realised that she had always been secretly searching for the one, and none of her previous boyfriends had fitted the bill. As she looked back, she felt mere disappointment at a string of failed relationships with unsuitable boys, all of whom had let her down or used her. She had tasted life- as defined by the high school experience- and she had decided that it tasted bad.
Earnest had not had fun either. His teenage years had been lonely. His unfortunate looks and aloof attitude had meant that he left school with few friends and few happy memories. He was desperate to leave, to get out of his home town and go to university- in short, to start a new life.
By coincidence, both had followed the same path: biology. Ruth got a 2:1 from the University of Bristol and Earnest earned a first class degree from Cambridge University. Earnest had had a better time at University than at school: he had gained many like-minded friends and enjoyed a long term relationship with a girl named Sue, which lasted until six months after graduation. Ruth, too, had enjoyed her time at university. She had studied hard, while still enjoying herself with friends, parties and clubs. She had taken up kayaking during her time at Bristol and had become quite skilled.
Neither of them had ever forgotten the other, however. Earnest had never quite been able to silence his feelings for Ruth- a fact which had eventually led to his break-up from Sue. Ruth, for her part, had started to think that Earnest may have been the one for her. She had begun to think about her time at school and had begun to see her many sexual experiments with many different boys as a mistake. After all, not one of them had proved reliable or trustworthy. Earnest, however, had always been there for her- even when they had drifted apart.
Ruth had gone straight into work, while Earnest had studied for a master’s degree in neurology followed by a PhD in human consciousness. It was then that he discovered the secret of his Cortical Manipulation Matrix. The idea had come to him when he was sitting in a coffee shop during the second year of his PhD pondering a difficult question which was proving to be a stumbling block in his research: if the mind is simply a function of the brain, then how does one account for Near Death Experiences and Out of Body Experiences? The answer then hit him in his very own Eureka moment. He discovered that the cortical field, which gave the human brain consciousness, was detachable from the brain; that while it was in the brain, it was affected by physical stimuli, like chemicals and food, but once the brain died it was set free as a pure, rational mind- a ghost or spirit, you might say. It was this discovery, and his subsequent research, which led to the creation of his greatest invention.
When he had joined Cybertech Industries, it had simply been an organisation making car parts and microchips. Yet he revolutionised it. With the help of his discovery, the company had moved to a new, bigger complex and begun research into the use of the Cortical Manipulation Matrix.
It just so happened that Ruth joined Cybertech Industries at precisely the same time as Earnest. She
had, until then, been working at a garden centre. It was boring work. When she heard about the possible new developments at Cybertech Industries and the brilliant young Doctor Jones who was to lead them, she left her job immediately and applied to Cybertech. The idea of Earnest had been lodged in the back of her mind ever since she left university. She could not shake the idea that out of all the boys she had ever known, he might have been the one for her.
Of course, she was barely qualified: her specialism at university had been plant biology, not neural biology. Nevertheless, she had been accepted to work as a general machine technician in the microchip research department. She was chosen because they were pursuing an avenue of research to see if the molecular and cellular biology of plants could offer any insight into increasing the efficiency of their microchips, which were as yet very basic. This being the late eighties, computers were still a very modern development.
Despite now working in the same building, and despite the fact that Ruth was now interested in Earnest, for many years their relationship consisted merely of awkward greetings in the corridor whenever they passed each other. In truth, Earnest wanted to ask Ruth out on a date, but could never pluck up the courage to do so. His old insecurities from childhood, when he faced only scorn and rejection from the female kind, stayed with him. It seemed impossible to him that the only woman he had always loved, who had spurned him at secondary school for the advances of more athletic, muscular men, could ever say yes to him.
Nevertheless, in time they became friends once more. At first they met once a year; then, once every six months; then, once a month; then, once a week until finally, after a process that lasted for years, they were seeing each other almost every day- but as friends. None of these meetings had ever been a ‘date’, despite Earnest’s wishes. Ruth, by this point, had almost given up on Earnest. In fact, she had dated several other men during this time- unsurprising, considering how attractive she was. Her appearance was what many men would call a “perfect woman”- tall, flowing blonde hair, large breasts, and curves in all the right places. Yet all of these men were disappointments: each of them letting her down, abandoning her or using her in the end. It remained true that Earnest was the only man who had always been there for her with no obvious ulterior motives.
Several years after joining Cybertech, Ruth had the opportunity to move to a new department. Her plant-based research was going nowhere, so the company paid for her to do a master’s degree in neurology and afterwards sent her to work in the Cortical department of the organisation, headed up and started by the now “famous Doctor Jones”. Ruth was ecstatic, as was Earnest: by this point they had become best friends once more and now they were working together!
Yet as Ruth discovered when she moved departments, she was not the only one infatuated with ‘Earnest’. A company which had started up as a microchip and car part research and manufacturing business had evolved so that the bulk of it was taken up by the Cortical research department. There was a lot of interest- financial and academic- in the ground being broken and the technology being made by Doctor Jones and his ever growing team. Practically everyone who applied for jobs at Cybertech had been inspired by his research and ideas and relished the chance to work with him. In private as friends, they were close; yet at work, he was adored by all and had little time for her, preferring to spend his time being constantly followed by a crowd of admirers and questioners.
The tables had turned somewhat. The power began to go to Earnest’s head and he began to feel that he was now the one in control, popular and in demand. In this company, he could have anyone he wanted. He was no longer the overweight nerd at high school shunned by all. Meanwhile, Ruth had vanished into the crowd and was simply one of his many minions. Of course, this merely made Ruth want him even more, for there is nothing more attractive to a woman than a man who has the world at his feet and can lay anybody he chooses.
So imagine how special she felt when he finally did ask her out on a date. Because of his new popularity and success, he finally managed to find the courage to act on his feelings. It had become just about believable for him that she might say yes, and so, with heart pounding and legs shaking, he had asked her out. That had been six years ago and they had been together ever since.
So how had she come to find herself in this basement, this dungeon? As always, the story does not end when the couple come together. The relationship evolves. Despite- or perhaps because of- now having the girl of his dreams, Earnest became greedy for more power. He believed the sycophantic words of his followers when they admired and worshipped him for his brilliance and intellect. Until this point, it must be noted, Earnest had been a mainly good man. His Cortical Manipulation Matrix had been used purely for objective, scientific research into the nature of the human mind. Yet four years ago, he had begun new research which would end in creating the machine that Kathy had seen Gregory attached to. He began to ask whether one could manipulate the human mind to achieve one’s goals, to gain power. He wanted to control the whole company, maybe the country, maybe the world…
It sounds clichéd, I know, that this story has ended up being one about a mad scientist trying to take over the world. But did you, dear reader, see it going elsewhere? And in reality, this is no ordinary “taking over the world” scenario. In most stories, the evil genius wants to be worshipped by everyone as a god; to sit on a throne in the centre of the world and have its peoples bow down and obey his every whim. Doctor Earnest Jones, however, did not want fame. He wanted something much more sinister- and it seemed that he had found out how to do it. If he could control the collective mind, Ruth told Kathy, he could influence the thinking of the entire world. He could use it, if he so chose, to wipe an enemy from existence simply by removing all memory of them from the planet- as had been done in Kathy’s case. It was a dangerous tool for him to possess.
Ruth had discovered Earnest’s intention only last year. At first, she did not know how to deal with it. This was the man she loved, but she could not support him. It was evil. She knew in her gut that what he proposed was insupportable. Yet she could not leave him, and she feared confronting him.
So the knowledge had been eating her up inside for months on end. She had suffered sleepless nights and lapses of concentration. The final straw had come when his theoretical research was complete and the first machine had been built.
The first ‘patient’ was a homeless man by the name of Steven. He had no friends, no family, no job, no security- in short, he was the perfect candidate. Some Cybertech goons simply scooped him off the streets, dragged him to the fourth floor and plugged him in. The experiment was not a success. The machine had fried his brain and killed him in five seconds.
Further experiments followed. By this point, Ruth had stopped talking to Earnest. She could not stop herself loving him but she could not tolerate his experiments. She wanted to do something but the ever present danger of ‘the basement’ weighed heavily on her mind. Earnest did not even notice that she was more absent than usual, for he was so caught up in his work. When he finally did notice, he accused her of having an affair. She denied it. Yet when he asked why she was so vacant, so distant, fear lodged itself in her throat and prevented her words from being vocalised. She knew that any dissent would lead to her being ‘disappeared’.
It had not always been so. Yet since Earnest had started his research into manipulating people’s minds, his colleagues had grown fearful of him. He had cosied up to management and coerced them into employing more security. The basement, previously a storage facility for failed experiments, had become a makeshift prison at his request. Recently, Ruth told Kathy in terrified whispers, they had begun to execute prisoners if they could find nothing else to do with them.
Things came to a peak when Ruth went to a party in early spring and met a man from TGN. He had called himself Carl Bean, although in hindsight this was clearly an alias. Nevertheless, the pair of them had met completely by chance and together they planned for Cybertec
h’s downfall. By this point TGN was already investigating Cybertech and Carl was keen to discover everything he could about what was happening there. Ruth became TGN’s agent on the inside. She fed TGN with information about their machines; about their patients; about their staff. She was the source of the information TGN had given to Kathy, Gregory and Thomas before dropping them off on the inside.
TGN’s first offensive against Cybertech had been to leak information about their programme to the public. It had made front page news on the latest edition of Science Today in an article describing the theory behind the Cortical Manipulation Matrix and its possible applications. Cybertech Industries had not been mentioned explicitly, nor did the piece actually admit the existence of the terrible machines Kathy had seen, for TGN had not yet garnered enough evidence. Yet the message had been well received by Cybertech: someone is watching you, and we know what you’re doing.
The article had named no names. Ruth’s contribution to TGN’s intelligence had been inserted into the article as information procured by “anonymous sources”. Nevertheless, an internal investigation had been swiftly instituted and swiftly concluded with Miss Phillips as the obvious prime suspect: with no training in espionage, she had been less than discrete in her probing. Six weeks previously she had been in the middle of an important bit of research when two burly men grabbed her by the arms and dragged her to the basement. Nobody had been told. Officially, Ruth no longer worked at Cybertech: she had been fired for using up too many sick days. Earnest, who she had hoped would come to rescue her, had not even come to visit.
“He’s always been so insecure,” she admitted tearfully to Kathy one day. “He wouldn’t believe I wasn’t having an affair. He probably thinks I ran off with another man six weeks ago.”
And that was her story, finally finished. It had taken her three days to tell Kathy in full detail, and in that time the pair of them had not seen a soul. It goes without saying, therefore, that neither of them had eaten in three days, nor touched any water. They were both famished and parched. The story had taken the edge away from their malnourishment, and now that it was over Ruth practically collapsed in front of Kathy and lay down.
Ruth was silent. She soon began breathing heavily and Kathy guessed that she was asleep. Without any companionship she now had nothing to distract her from the pains in her body: her back was aching from having slept on a cold, stone floor; her throat was painful and sticky from lack of moisture; her stomach now housed a constant, gnawing pain which made her keel over periodically. She could swear that it had grown somewhat. She knew from documentaries and adverts that in cases of severe malnutrition, the belly swells up and gains the appearance of a beer belly or a pregnant woman’s bump.
The two of them lay there for many hours in silence: Ruth sleeping, Kathy clutching her aching stomach. Both had given up any hope of being freed or even of seeing another human face ever again. Kathy would honestly not have been surprised to have find skeletons in these cells of people who had been abandoned down here long ago and simply forgotten by those above.
A clanging on the steel bars roused both of them from their slumber. The pair looked up to see the severe face of one of their guards staring back down at them. He held a set of keys and mechanically opened the door for them. Yet he was not there to grant them freedom.
“Miss Phillips, step to the left. Your appointment is in ten minutes. Miss Turner, wait here. You are wanted upstairs.”
He spoke as mechanically as he walked and moved. The two women stepped out of the cell and embraced in a tearful goodbye. They were both crying, for both of them knew what lay in store for Ruth: her “appointment” was with death. Ruth had told Kathy during their three-day stay in the cells that execution was sometimes the fate reserved for dissenters. That word ‘sometimes’ may have been a source of hope- but given that Ruth was not just a dissenter but also a full-blown traitor who had been giving away company secrets, neither of them doubted that death was in store for her. Kathy, who was merely to be hooked up to one of the machines but would otherwise continue to live, was in a comparatively well-off position.
The guard gripped Ruth’s arm and walked away into the darkness. As she was dragged away, Ruth looked back with a ghostly look on her dirty face. She had accepted her fate and was saying goodbye.
A second guard stepped out of the shadows and gripped Kathy’s arm in a similarly vicelike manner. He silently led her away from the cages and towards her inevitable doom.