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

The coffin lay on a solid conveyor belt. Artificial flowers of white and yellow hid the hard edges. David could smell formaldehyde and decay. Again, he imagined the interior. It would be dark in there: air-tight; the air foetid, warm. Bruce’ s fingernails and hair would be growing still. His immortal skeleton, even if it was in pieces, would outlast the flesh. Unless they burned him. Burned his friend Bruce.

Jennier flew through trees, cartwheeled, and hit the ground. Went into the ground. She rose up again and found herself in orbit around the planet. She heard a voice in the distance: “Jennifer, think slow. The headset picks up your intentions, but not real well. It’s learning, but you have to learn too. Picture me.”

She pictured Mikey’s face and heard a little beep. The computer had matched the pattern from her visual cortex with its own representation of Mikey. Abruptly, she pitched towards the surface, rushed into the largest continent, into a patch of green, which turned out to be a forest, and down to a valley floor with a little stream. Next to the stream was a moving translucent shape. Jennifer remembered a dream and became scared. Then the shape moved forward. It stepped across the stones that forded the stream. It extended an arm and waved.

“Dude, it’s me.”

“Mikey?”

“Yeah. This is how the computer represents visitors in the artificial universe.”

Jennifer imagined herself walking closer and, sure enough, it happened. “What do I look like?”

“Trust me, not a patch on the original.”

“What is this place?”

“A whole other world.” The metal shape walked towards her and cast an arm. “All of the living things you see here, they’re real.

Real in the sense that have DNA. They were born here. They think and feel and see. This is their world.”

Jennifer walked down to the bank. The stream extended to the south, where the horizon was close. She heard the groan of a waterfall. She crouched and looked at the stream. There was not the slightest indication that a computer was behind these ripples, the glimmer of light, the occasional fish. “There are fish.”

“We have all kinds of animals here. But none of them are indigenous. I think your father’s research project had a large number of specialised organisms – they evolved basically from scratch, randomly. We don’t have time for that here. All of the plants and animals in this world are copies of the ones from the real world. So if we want to introduce a plant, we tear off a leaf, read its DNA, and then introduce it into the computer.”

“That simple?”

Mikey laughed. “No. There’s other stuff, which is Groove’s domain. The animals we introduce aren’t exactly born . .they appear as adults. So there are all kinds of things about the growth steps between the fertilized cell, the childhood, and the adult animal that we just miss. Now that’s fine for the plants. Here they are. But some animals, particularly the intelligent mammals, seem to require this development period. Mentally, I mean. When they appear as adults they lack a backlog of memories, of play, interaction with the world or other members of their species. They act weird.”

Jennifer looked into the forest. Its thick walls formed a green canyon. “Dangerous?”

“I guess you’d say ‘psychotic’. But they can’t touch you. You’re just made of light.” He added, quietly, “Like an angel.”

Jennifer did not feel embarrassed. She prided herself on a deficiency in that department. But she felt a little unsure. She knew that Mikey faced a severe penalty if she was discovered in his laboratory. Did that mean she owed him?

At that moment, Mikey’s hand went to his ear.

“Everything, OK?” she asked.

“Sure. Just a little problem Groove wants me to sort out. Stick around. When that’s meeting of yours?”

“About twenty-five minutes. You mind if I explore?”

“Mind? I want you to. It’s so rare I get to show this thing off.”

His image vanished.

David leaned forward and clasped his hands obediently as the vicar – or reverend, or whatever they called them in the Church of Scotland – went through a litany of prayer and empty comment. She was a tall woman and quite beautiful. She was in her forties. She was not Scottish. As far as David could tell, she was not English either. She had a careful and accentless delivery. She interested him, but his interest was passing. Like a rolling ball finding the lowest point on a landscape, his attention always came to rest on the coffin.

They sang a hymn: “All Things Bright and Beautiful”. It was pitiful. Bruce’s family were clearly non-practising Christians. David was no help. As a card-carrying atheist, he knew only the songs he had been required to sing in school. The one voice that rang true was that of the minister. During the hymns he would find her looking at him.

When they finished the final hymn, an old Beatles song began to play. The little curtains at the head of the coffin parted. It began its slow journey along the conveyor belt and, at length, was gone, but David wasn’t sure where. The church was surely too small to have its own crematorium. The minister walked over to a large device that he had not noticed before. It looked like a ‘ghetto blaster’ from the 1980s. She pressed a switch and retreated.

Bruce’s ghost appeared.

He stood a little hunched, smiling, his eyes blindly scanning the crowd. Everyone drew a sharp breath. The hologram raised its hands in benediction.

“When you see this hologram,” he said, “the rumours of my death will be, unfortunately, entirely true. I’m sorry I had to wait this long to make an appearance, but I couldn’t resist being late for my own funeral.” Bruce grinned and David laughed and a tear, finally, rolled down his cheek. This was Bruce, the old Bruce. David checked the audience. Bruce’s family were expressionless except for his father, who sat with a Mona Lisa smile and a constant, thoughtful nod.

“So, who do I see