Chapter Fourteen
Sugar and Spice
“Are you sure this won’t hurt?” Julia Connors said.
“Of course it won’t hurt,” Glen Tyler replied curtly. He was busy attaching more electrodes to Julia’s head, and her continual protests were annoying him. “There’s nothing to be alarmed at. It’s all perfectly safe.”
Julia still wasn’t convinced. When Tyler had contacted her early that morning and asked her to go over to the computer centre in Exchange Quay, this was the last thing she had expected. She was sitting in the middle of the computer centre with so many little electrodes attached to her head that they could have hung her outside the window and they would have taken her weight.
“But why me?” Julia continued to protest. “Why not use one of your own technicians? Or Sam?”
“Because they don’t have what we want, and Rawlston is a man.”
“Gosh! I’m glad you told me! I’ve always wondered why Sam peed standing up!” Julia exclaimed in mock surprise. Tyler didn’t look very impressed, so Julia continued, “So what have I got that they haven’t? And why is being a man a problem?” Julia then shrugged and added, “Well, apart from the obvious, I suppose.”
When Julia shrugged, all the electrodes and wires jumped, and some of them fell off. Tyler shook his head in exasperation.
Fitting the electrodes to Julia’s head was hard enough without her moving about as well. When she had first arrived, Tyler had wanted to shave part of her head to make it easier, but Julia had backed away when she saw the razor, saying, “You are not coming near me with that!” and threatened to attack anyone who tried. Tyler had given up.
“Will you stop moving around,” he demanded. “I’ve got a flight to catch today, and if I miss it because you keep fidgeting, I’ll make sure that Grant knows it was your fault!”
“Alright, alright! Keep your knickers on! I’ll sit still.” Julia pointed her finger at him. “But I’m warning you, if this hurts one little bit, I’ll get even! I mean it!”
“It won’t hurt at all. Now stop complaining.”
“Then answer my questions. If it’s so safe, why not use one of your own technicians?”
“Because they aren’t field agents,” Tyler replied as he started to replace the fallen electrodes. “They don’t have the necessary expertise that I want. You and Rawlston do. But he is a man, and I don’t want the sexual difference to cause any problems. Not that I think it would, but it’s better to be safe at this early stage. There is a lot more analysis of the data we have retrieved yet to be done, so I wouldn’t even be doing this if Ben hadn’t insisted that we download something to the subject of our field trial. He wanted something that will have an immediate and noticeable effect as soon as she wakes. Well, he’s going to get it.
“You and Rawlston have a particular trait. It comes from a long association with the Corporation while carrying out it’s most sinister affairs. It’s a knowing sort of loyalty, one linked irrevocably with fear. A sort of worldly wisdom that comes from dealing in the dirt that we scientists and other personnel are shielded from. When Jayne Middleton wakes up, I want her to have that same wisdom, I want her to have that same understanding and acceptance of the Corporation. She won’t question where she is, or what happened to her, she’ll know. She’ll know and accept it all as her own memories.”
“You’re wasting your time,” Julia said derisively. “You could download the Encyclopaedia Britannica into sleeping beauty’s head and you’ll still get no results. If she wakes up, I’ll eat my first born.”
“She’s already breathing on her own.”
“I know, but so does a sponge. Try having a conversation with one.”
“We’ll see.” Tyler stepped back. The last electrode was finally in place at last. “This would have been much easier if you had let us shave your hair in a few places,” he remarked.
“Go suck,” was Julia’s tart reply.
Tyler sighed. It was very incongruous hearing such remarks coming from a woman with such a pure upper-class voice. He went over to the IBM mainframe where his technicians were all waiting expectantly, and sat down next to them at a desk in front of a keyboard and monitor. They began to go over their notes and discuss levels and neural pathways.
Julia was temporarily left on her own, sitting there feeling like a medusa that hadn’t had a snake cut in ten years. She tapped her feet nervously as she stared at the wires that trailed across the floor to the computer from the electrodes on her head. She wondered how long this was all going to take. She would only get a few hours rest before she would have to be back at the MedTec building to relieve Rawlston in the monitoring room, so the last thing she wanted to be doing was sitting here, wasting time.
She had come here straight after her night shift, hardly pausing to speak to Sandra for more than a few moments before she left. She was still wearing her nurse’s uniform, and she couldn’t wait to get home, take it off and have a shower. It had been a long night, Hall had been a pain in the arse, moaning all the time that his narcoleptic girlfriend wouldn’t wake up. By the time morning came, Julia would have been quite happy to put him to sleep with her. Now she felt tired and hungry, and was already looking forward to the pizza she was planning to buy on her way home.
“Right! Here we go!” Tyler announced, and began to type on the keyboard.
Julia’s head began to tingle all over, and her blonde hair stood on end from the static. “Ow!” she shouted.
“Don’t be such a big baby!” Tyler called to her. “It’ll be over in a few seconds.”
“I don’t like this!” Julia wailed. “Turn it off!”
“Just a moment! It’ll be finished soon.”
“Turn it off!”
“Just a few more seconds.”
“Turn it off! Now!” Julia almost screamed.
The tingling stopped, and slowly, Julia’s hair began to descend back to its normal position.
“There! It’s finished! I told you it wouldn’t take long,” Tyler said as he got up and came towards her.
Julia didn’t wait for him to reach her. She quickly tore all the electrodes from her head, flinging them in all directions. Then she stood up. It was a mistake, because she immediately felt light-headed, and swayed on her feet. Tyler had reached her by then and held on to her, steadying her.
“You might feel a little bit dizzy for a while, but it will pass,” he told her.
Julia looked up at him in a daze, but in a few seconds her expression hardened, and she quickly stamped on his foot. Tyler cried out with the unexpected pain, let go of her, and dropped down onto the chair she had previously been sitting on. “What did you do that for?” he demanded as he clutched at his toe.
“I told you I’d get even!” she announced in triumph. “Hurts does it? Well, serves you right! I’m leaving!” And she did just that, storming out of the computer centre without another word.
Tyler was left sitting on the chair, still rubbing his toe. He could feel it beginning to throb. “Maniac,” he muttered.
One of the technicians came over to him. “Mr Tyler,” he said, “Have a look at this.” He held out a computer printout which Tyler took from him and read carefully.
“This can’t be right,” Tyler said, the pain in his toe suddenly forgotten. “That’s a colossal amount of memory space. Far too much memory space for what we transferred.”
“That’s what we thought. It nearly filled one of the Crays.”
“And it’s all been downloaded to the implant?”
“Yes sir, the radio link worked fine, and it all went through a treat.”
“We must have under-estimated the amount of memory space we needed. Check over the figures again, just to be sure.”
As the technician hurried away to do as he requested, Tyler stared at the print out and rubbed his forehead. This wasn’t exactly what he had planned, but Ben Watkins had wanted something downloaded, and now that’s what he had got. And with th
e amount of data that this print out indicated, it would definitely be noticeable if, and when, Jayne Middleton woke up.