Switch 2
The car cut a swathe through the heavy summer air, shafts of light glinting through the partial canopy cover that the trees provided over the twisting mountain road. To our left the grass curb dropped steeply into the lush green of the deep valley. It was summer and the world seemed to be coming alive around us.
"Nice to be out of the city hunh?" Remy said, twisting the car into the next bend. I grunted and let the feel of the country wash over me. I loved to come here as often as I could, which was never as frequently as I would like. For most people born in the heart of the city, the country held a romantic fascination that rarely lived up to expectation. But I adored it. The mud and rain and earth made it real, vital in a way the muted concrete of the city never would be.
But this wasn't a pleasure trip. After the unpleasantness of the Van Sant incident, the chief had ordered us both out for a short while to let the public forget about it. To be honest, I was surprised by the fuss over it. When the evidence had all been properly examined he was clearly guilty and had committed suicide when confronted by a police officer. The chief had to fight down suggestions that I had manhandled him off his balcony. I suppose I hadn't helped. Van Sant was a homicidal narcissist with a penchant for the bizarre to colour his jaded pallet and I was glad he was dead. Although I probably shouldn't have said exactly those words to the reporter.
As the breeze drifted in through the open window, I felt it dissipate the tension of the past few weeks. Remy left me to my thoughts as he maneuvered the car over the undulating tarmac.
I'd almost fallen asleep by the time we pulled up in front of two enormous iron gates with the motto Fiat Lux emblazoned on them.
"We're here," Remy redundantly ventured as I gazed up at the distant ivy covered buildings. For a school it was pretty classy, large open playing fields teeming with identically garbed boys chasing some unseen ball in a game I'd once been forced to play but never knew the rules to. It seemed to involve a carefully measured level of violence and was probably meant to be confidence boosting. As I was one of the boys who'd stood on the pitch and got elbowed, kicked and punched out of the way, all it seemed to boost was my desire not to play the goddamn game.
The immaculate gravel crunched as we rolled up to the front entrance of the building. The crest on the gates was repeated here, dominating the arched door. Its austere facing was designed to impress onto small boys the absolute authority of the School and its Masters. The overtly serious demeanour implied any rebellion would be crushed and any deviation from the norm would be stamped on and destroyed. Private schools are not places where the weak, the different or the just plain weird thrive. They are independent fascist states bound by no laws higher than that of their supreme ruler, the Headmaster.
A squat black robed figure approached us from some unseen door in a state of high agitation.
"I told him to make sure you parked around the back! I don't want any disruption to the pupils, there's enough anxiety as it is!"
I looked back at the field full of laughing, shouting boys and then back at him. All the anxiety seemed to be emanating from this small red faced rotund man who could almost be described as jolly if not for the mortarboard and gown. This, and the stress and worry written clear on his visage, gave him the look of a fat man who's just seen the last doughnut being scoffed by someone else.
"Where shall I move the car to then sir?" asked Remy, politeness seeping out of every pore.
"Well, it's here now I suppose," remarked the man, all the bluster falling out of his sails. "I'm Thompson, the headmaster. You're the gentlemen Blunko sent?"
"Yes we are," I confirmed, storing away my superiors obvious school nickname for later use. "Can you show us the, urm..."
"Of course. This way please."
He turned gracefully for a gentleman of his girth and paced away through the main entrance. Remy and I followed him through the ivy covered archway.
"Charterhouse is one of this countries oldest schools." His words floated back to us over his wake. "We take the children of today and turn them into the leaders of tomorrow." He had clearly forgotten that Remy and I weren't prospective parents and was giving us the full spiel usually reserved for those rich enough to even consider sending their sprogs here.
"Our academic record is second to none with the highest proportion of students going on to the great triumvarate of Universities. But we believe a healthy mind must be supported by a healthy body. Physical education must be a primary concern of a Charterhouse man."
I'd done my research and behind all the bluster there did lurk a few nuggets of truth. The standard of education here was clearly head and shoulders above anything else available, even to the super-rich. The results spoke for themselves. Almost all graduates from Charterhouse went on to university and from there to the highest echelons of society. Captains of industry, political leaders; they had all at one time walked these marbled sunlit halls, including our very own police chief.
"We like to consider being at Charterhouse a passport to greatness," said Thompson, stopping outside a door marked Infirmary. "Which is why this issue needs to be dealt with quietly and competently." He looked at my partner and I as if he suspected us of carrying a live TV feed to the media.
He opened the wood panelled door and we stepped into a vaulted ward room with a number of occupied beds.
Three boys were sat in the beds, bolt upright, gazing vacantly in front of them. They were mid-teens with that well-fed, well-bred look that a certain level of privilege seems to bring.
However, belying this healthy image, the boys facial muscles were completely slack giving them the appearance of a vacant house. There, but not there at the same time. The eyes were totally dead as though no spark or soul was being held in that vessel.
I waved my hand in front of their faces but there was no response at all.
Remy took a pulse from one of the boys and peered deep into the eyes of another. There was no resistance to his gentle ministrations. It was as if they were simply lumps of meat with no reactions or feelings of their own.
"This is very interesting but shouldn't you have called in a doctor?'"
"We have a nurse on site and she did call for him but he could find nothing wrong. We thought they were acting up for being discovered where they shouldn't have been."
"And that was?"
"The library. Sitting up in the same manner you see them now." He looked at us intently. "We need to find whatever drug these boys have been taking and put a stop to it at once."
"A drug?" my partner replied, all innocence.
"I'm a man of the world, sir. I've seen my fair share and this looks like a drug induced coma to me."
It didn't seem much like a drug break to me.
I'd been walking the beat for the acid frenzy of '43, when a batch of pure LSD hit the streets. The stuff you normally encounter is watered down to be acceptable to the normal palette. Think about a glass of beer compared with a pint of 100% pure alcohol.
We filled the nut houses that summer. All these people just looking for a quick escape for a few hours suddenly finding their trip lasting for weeks or months with no let up, no escape. They couldn't sleep, they couldn't relax, most tried to beat themselves unconscious just for the peace.
You'd have to have a fairly firm grip on reality to survive that and if you're the kind of person who's taking acid for fun then you're probably not that person. Doors of Perception my arse.
But even those poor drooling freaks were a picnic compared to the eerie inhuman stillness that these three exhibited. The boys were really starting to creep me out.
"Maybe we should see the library, where it actually happened," I ventured.
The library was deeply impressive and yet suffocating. Dark oak surrounded us on two floors with the thick rich red of leather-bound volumes. Boys were scurrying around carrying huge books almost their own size.
"Where were they sitting?"
"Just over here." Thompson pointed to the head of the table. "I found them myself. I saw the light on as I took my usual rounds. I thought the caretaker had left it on accidentally. I had the shock of my life seeing them there."
"How were they sat?" I asked.
"They were bent over some art book or other. Jenkins sitting at the head of the table and the other two peering over his shoulders." He pointed to the head of the dark wooden table that covered more space than my apartment. The strong sunlight fell through an enormous window, highlighting the motes of dust, dancing in the breeze.
"Where is this book now?"
"Urm..." Thompson walked over to a recessed shelf and pulled a large silver book out.
"I believe this was it, although what something like this is doing in our library is a puzzle. It must belong to the art department."
The title was 'The Dark Hand - Nightmare Visions. Drawing and inspirations from Lovecraft'.
I was familiar enough with Lovecraft's work to know what to expect from someone 'influenced' by him, and the book didn't disappoint. Demons and humans, in hate and lust and a unshakable feeling of creeping dread. Evil images and dark forbidding pages shrieked of hidden twisted knowledge and eldritch magics.
"I don't believe in magic," said Remy, peering at the book over my shoulder.
"Magic is rabbits and hats and sleight of hand," I replied. "What happened to these children isn't magic. This is something much more sinister. Mr Thompson," I said, snapping the book shut. "I'm going to have the boys taken to the local hospital for further tests."
He was distraught at this prospect. "You can't take the boys out of school! They're my responsibility. We haven't told their parents yet!"
I restrained myself from reminding him where his responsibility had led these three boys.
"Actually sir, yes we can," I replied. "We'd rather have your permission but I do have the authority to take them without it."
"I'll speak to your supervisor!"
"By all means do so sir, but while he's confirming everything I've just told you, these boys will be in the hospital being examined."
He huffed for a bit and then stormed off without another word. He'd grown so used to being the ultimate authority that he simply wasn't used to taking orders.
"You've made an enemy there you know," said Remy.
"I'll have to learn to live with the pain," I said, turning back to the book.
I got the phone-call whilst I was sitting in the fourteenth interview of the day. It was with a small scared classmate of the three boys who, like his fellows, clearly knew nothing of what had happened. The scans had come back. There was a cloud over part of their brains all at the same point. Some metallic substance they said. A chill came over me. I'd seen this before.
I turned to Remy, interrupting his attempt to staunch the terrified tears from the boy.
"Get Delyth to meet me at the hospital and tell her to bring her full kit."
I drove myself there at full speed, leaving Remy to interview the rest of their class. I didn't think much good would come of questioning them. Even if they knew something, chances were that they wouldn't tell a police officer. Being expelled from the most prestigious school in the country was hardly the best thing to have on your resume.
I reached the room they were keeping the boys in. It had painfully bright walls and that smell of disinfectant and decay that my father always referred to as freshly scrubbed death. The three boys were still sitting bolt upright staring at the opposite empty wall.
Delyth was already examining the oldest boy, Jenkins Junior as he'd been called. There was very little junior about this tall muscular youth and only the tell tale rash of acne across his forehead gave away his teenage hormone crisis. She looked up at me when I walked in.
"This is absolutely fascinating!" she exclaimed.
Delyth was about as far from your typical IT person as you could get. She was short with glossy black hair a permanent smile and the quickest wits you'd see this side of a gameshow panellist. She didn't need glasses but wore them anyway. "People don't take attractive women seriously unless they're wearing glasses. Men are thinking about how to get me into bed and women tend to be distrustful if they see me as a threat."
"Is it what I think it is?" I asked, skipping the usual formalities.
"Yes, I believe so." She turned, focusing that thousand watt glare on me. "Although I'm intrigued by how you knew what to look for."
"Long story."
"And one day you're going to tell me that story."
We shared a tight smile.
"Let's just say China was quite an education," I said.
"For now." She shifted back into full-on professional mode.
"The metal that was picked up in the x-rays is a neural net. It's an inhalant computer. Absorbed through the lungs it travels through the blood stream to the brain, latches over the cerebellum and plugs in. It increases speed of thought, memory and basically boosts the brain to somewhere near genius level. My question is, where the hell did these kids get their hands on this kind of technology?"
I'd been asking myself the exact same question.
"I have my suspicions. Is the net still active? Can we talk to it?"
"Should be able to, it uses the same sensory pathways as the brain does, but remember the only things I know about these things are what I've read in speculative journals. This stuff is way in advance of anything I've encountered before. I'm going to try to access the computer directly via the low level system monitoring."
She reached into her bag and pulled out a small foldaway computer. The black rectangle opened itself like a book and floated above her knees as the screen flickered into existence in front of her.
"This may take some time," she said, putting a pair of headphones in Jenkins' ears.
She began entering commands and through the baffle of the headphones I could hear the tell-tale sound of computer noise.
For an hour Delyth typed commands into the laptop, looking for some reaction from the human statue in front of her. I was feeling rather like a spare part. I had already gone to get coffee and was considering going back to help Remy.
Suddenly Jenkins turned and regarded me with light again in his eyes. The movements were jerky and slow. It was clear whatever was left of the boy was not in control now.
"I think you may have cracked it." I said, feeling totally freaked out by the soul-sucking gaze locked onto my own.
//PATH//QUERY?
Delyth and I looked at each other. The words did not sound like the voice of a fifteen year old although they had just emerged from his mouth.
Delyth typed into the keyboard.
-Repeat.-
//PATH//QUERY?
The words shuddered out of his mouth giving them an electric quality. They had no accent or expression on them. The harsh language of the machine.
-Self Scan. Report.-
//REPORT//SCAN SHOWS 30% OPERATING EFFICIENCY. SEVERE DAMAGE TO ORGANIC SECTIONS A4E THROUGH E9B.//QUERY?
-Can the damage be repaired? Report.-
//REPORT//NO.//QUERY?
-Expand previous query. Report.-
//REPORT//NO. DAMAGE TOO SEVERE FOR RECOVERY. ORGANIC HOST LIMITED TO AUTONOMOUS FUNCTIONS ONLY.//QUERY?
-What happened?-
//REPORT//QUERY NOT UNDERSTOOD.//QUERY?
-How did the damage occur?-
//REPORT//OCCULAR SENSORY INPUT MISMATCH. EXTRA CEREBRAL RESOURCE USED. CASCADE EFFECT CAUSED ORGANIC SYSTEM DAMAGE. SHUTDOWN OF ALL AREAS. SHUTDOWN TO CONTINUE UNTIL FULL REBOOT.//QUERY?
So that was it. Jenkins had seen something that had caused the net such confusion it had pulled in all of its own resources to try and puzzle it out. Then, when it ran out of its own resources it pulled his in as well, using his own brain against itself. Total Shutdown. Except for the autonomous bits that he needed to keep breathing.
The question was, what had he seen? And what had the others seen after that?
"Ask it for the last image it saw."
Delyths fingers danced over the keys, and a picture emerged from the screen. A blasphemous 3D image resolved itself, like Escher possessed by the spirit of the Marquis de Sade. Bodies, human and otherwise, in various unnatural and disturbing acts. There was enough oddness and sexuality to attract the attention of three hormone ridden teenagers, but surely these perverted lusts were not enough to completely shut down three fully functional neural nets.
The frame around the picture attracted my attention. It had a series of runes or picto-glyphs running the around the entire border of the page.
"Look at those," said Delyth, her finger tracing the glyphs, one step ahead of me as ever. "It's a mathematical equation."
She copied the glyphs into a routine on her computer and pressed enter.
The image on the screen shuddered and died, leaving Delyth prodding buttons and swearing profusely and eloquently. When the torrent of abuse had stopped I asked her what had happened.
"It's an unsolvable equation. It has no solution. It's like a feedback loop, just builds up on itself becoming bigger and bigger with each cycle until it becomes too big for the computer to deal with."
She looked over at the three impassive faces staring at the far wall.
"Those poor bastards. One glance at that page and the net tried to process the equation, to make sense of it. When it ran out of its own power it started drawing in the surrounding brainpower. The boys wouldn't even know what they were looking at or why they couldn't look away as the neural net tightened on their cerebellum. Drawing more and more brain power away until they were left blank. Completely drained of thought and emotion."
"Is there..."
"No," she sighed shaking her head sadly, "They've been completely wiped clean. There nothing left in there now. Look." She held up her laptop. "Just an expensive paperweight now, everything's wiped. Their brains, the computer, total reset."
I burst into the heads office, through the protests of his secretary. It was, as you'd expect, stuffy and musty with leather and mahogany everything. Framed photos of austere gentlemen frowned down on us from every wall. But I wasn't looking at them, I was looking at the man that had caused irreversible brain damage to three innocent boys.
"What on earth...!?" he began.
"Sit down and shut up."
"I will do no such thing until you..."
"Sit down. Shut up."
He obeyed, my tone conveying everything I was feeling right then.
"I know about the nets."
His ruddy face paled and he waved off the secretary who shut the door behind herself.
"What nets?"
I smiled thinly.
"The neural nets you gave to those boys to keep their marks high. What was wrong with them? Too thick for Charterhouses' high standards?"
"I have no idea what you could be talking about."
"Play it dumb for now but we know it had to be you. Those boys didn't have the connections to get hold of those computers. You'd need major pull, huge finances and most importantly, trade contacts with China."
"China? That's preposterous."
"Is it? These things can only be made on the far side of the Silicon Curtain. We don't possess this level of technology any more."
I changed tack.
"We've got you clearly and cleanly. Protest all you want."
He sagged. He head sunk into his hands, knowing he had been caught out.
I softened my voice. There were still a few things he could resolve for me.
"Why these particular boys? That's the only thing I can't figure out."
"These boys?" he spat, the fire returning as he stared up at me, "You think its just these three boys? Everyone at Charterhouse has them. Everyone who has ever been to Charterhouse has them. Everyone!"
It was my turn to look stunned. Suddenly it all made sense. The high test scores. The schools unassailable position as the best in the country. All the achievements down to a micron thick layer of metal and silicon, processing faster than any unassisted brain ever could.
"Do you know what kind of genetic stock we've got now? Some of these blue-bloods have thirteen toes! We had to preserve the good name of this school. We add the supplement to their first medical here and they have no idea why they can suddenly understand concepts they couldn't even grasp before. The parents put it down to the Charterhouse way. We've been doing this for over two hundred years with no ill effects at all. Until now."
Everything started swimming in front of my eyes. Every living graduate from Charterhouse had been assisted by a computer and was still being assisted now. Some of the most important people in this countries most powerful positions.
The headmaster interrupted my brooding.
"Was it drugs?"
"Drugs?"
"That caused the boys to blank out. Are they better now, are they okay?"
I suddenly realised the enormity of what was before me.
Imagine the power. Imagine having a list of the highest placed Charterhouse old boys, and an email account with a scanned copy of the blasphemous page. One look at it would be enough. Overnight a thousand resets. Institutions, banks, businesses, government all rendered incapable of action by one single solitary picture.
What would you do?
Tell the truth and risk everything? Or lie, and pray that no one else ever figures this thing out.
What would you do?
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