Déjà Vu: A Technothriller by Hocking, Ian (ebook reader that looks like a book .TXT) 📗

ten hat shops in the last three hours. All of them had fingered the picture. None recognised the hat. Jean-Francois, however, clapped a hand to his forehead and exclaimed.

“You recognise it?”

“It is the eagle.”

“The what?”

He said, “Der Adler, you might say in German. Not only did I sell this hat, young lady, but I made it. Let me show you.”

They walked to the back of the shop. It was surprisingly small and dark. They shuffled past the exquisitely dressed attendant, who was standing near an alley window smoking a cigar. He stared at her. His tongue slowly emerged, snake-like, and tickled the end of the cigar. She remembered his earlier question. Have I seen you somewhere before?

They climbed down the narrowest stairwell Saskia had ever seen, slid through a tiny door and entered a room that was filled with hat boxes. It was lit by a single swinging bulb. Somewhere, high in the shadows, was the ceiling. Water dripped. She heard rats. Jean-François Champollion shouted, “Level ten, number three.”

There was squirt of compressed air and a box came sailing down through the void and landed in the little man’s arms. His hands were tiny. He gave her the box and removed the lid. Inside was a navy-blue fedora with an eagle on the band. “This is a design exclusive to my establishment.”

“Excellent,” she said. “Does it sell well?”

“Madame, I make them to order. This particular one is for an Italian duke.”

“How many have you made in the past six months?”

He paused and twiddled a sideburn in his fingers. “...Three.”

“I need to know who you sold them to.”

The man smiled. “Of course, madame. Please wait here.” He left and closed the door behind him.

Saskia waited for a while. She began to feel uneasy. Why did he take her to this room? What did she possibly need to see in a room full of hats? The light bulb swung. Shadows stretched and contracted.

She tried the door handle.

It didn’t move. She barged against it. Nothing.

There was a puff of compressed air and a hat box dropped out of the air. She stepped aside but it clipped her shoulder and she stumbled into workbench. Tools clattered to the floor.

She ran against the door once more. She hissed in pain. Wood splintered. Her shoulder would be like pulp in the morning. Her chest would be worse.

Another box hit the floor. And another.

She reached down and grabbed one of the fallen tools. It was some kind of awl. She forced it into the gap between the door and its frame. The wood split easily. There was a hiss of compressed air from above. She took one last run against the door and it fell like a drawbridge. She ran up the steps. At the top was the backroom. It was empty. She crashed into the shop proper.

The hat maker and the attendant were standing by the door. The attendant was helping the old man into his coat. He was still smoking the cigar. They turned as Saskia approached.

The attendant first: she slapped the smouldering cigar into his mouth and, as he gagged, she pulled his buttoned jacket down to his elbows. To keep the old hat maker busy, she chopped the side of his throat. The attendant cowered. She grabbed his balls. He bit the cigar in two.

“OK, what are you going to tell me?” she asked.

“Huh-huh-have we met somewhere before?”

Saskia shook her head. She certainly did not want to hear that. She swivelled her wrist. “Hhmmph,” he said, and dropped.

She turned on the old hat maker and pressed the awl into his midriff. He backed away until he reached the coat rack.

“Tell me all about it.”

“We were only trying to protect ourselves.”

“From who?”

“I’m not allowed to say.”

“You have five seconds.”

“Don’t kill me!”

“Four seconds.”

“Very well. I will tell you. Please take your fingers away. Let me breathe.”

Saskia did so.

The hat maker looked relieved. He pulled out a gun.

She swore.

Someone grabbed her shoulders. It was the assistant. He pushed her against the door. She could see the street outside through its marbled glass. A small boy saw her. He tried to attract his mother’s attention but she pulled him along. The butt of the gun hit Saskia near her ear and she slid to the floor, switched off.

A Walk in the Woods

The world was distorted. Light was scattered somehow. There were shapes. Forces. Temperature. He writhed. He wanted to rub his eyes but the mask prevented him. Then he realised that the shapes were clouds. He was in the upper atmosphere of Shimoda, the virtual planet. He could see little.

He shivered. His virtual arms were covered by a shirt and, as he checked himself, he realised with some relief that the computer was working correctly. So far. It was accessing the liquid storage device, supplying sound through the earpieces, vision through the mask, and feel through the microbots.

“Supervisor,” said David. The computer heard the keyword and checked his voice against a database. His voice had not changed in the twenty years since he had last spoken.

It asked, “Password?”

David said, “Prometheus.”

A white square appeared before him. It was perfectly two-dimensional. The square displayed a standard graphical user interface: a file system with various options like open, move, copy and shut down. One icon would summon The Word, the programming language that controlled this universe. He moved his hand over this panel and an answering blue dot appeared beneath his index finger. A touch of the panel would select the option. He hesitated over ‘shut down’. It would stop the program. It would send him back into the real world forthwith, game over. He could not guess where it would send Bruce.

He touched another icon. It was a picture of his younger self. The computer represented all organisms with a long genome. For visitors like David, the computer used his DNA. Many years before, he had contributed a blood sample. It had been read, decoded, and used to construct his virtual body: his body as it would