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

is Kate Falconer, a forty-five-year-old art and design student who was kidnapped in Berlin two weeks ago. Her body will never be found. Jobanique is quite thorough. As for the identity of your body, a beautiful woman in her mid-twenties, nobody knows…though perhaps the woman herself does.”

Saskia stared into the fire. This body was not hers. She had the subconscious of a murderer, if Jobanique was to be believed. The paint of her personality – her self, Saskia – had been mixed with another. The notion of a dividing line was nonsensical. Bruce spoke of the conscious and unconscious. Saskia shook her head. She was not a pattern on water shaped by the rocks below. And yet she could appreciate an essential dichotomy between thinking and doing: her mind was uncontrollable within its own realm, but her body was assured and controlled. Her body would move only when her will exceeded a threshold. What did that threshold represent? What line could be drawn between her mind and her body? Between the mind of Kate Falconer and the personality she had usurped?

She closed her eyes.

Kate Falconer was dead. She was, Saskia Brandt was, dead too.

She saw the hawk.

The hawk that returned…The witches, the Fates: Clotho, she spins the thread of life. Lachesis, she determines its length. Atropos, she cuts it. What did those things mean? Was it a message?

Saskia opened her eyes. She needed to reassert control. She needed to escape from Jobanique. He could track her; he had the support of the law. There were few places on Earth she could hide.

She thought of the time machine. David had seen her aged forty. And now Bruce corroborated his story. She believed them both. In this research centre, in this virtual world staring at a fire that was not real, she realised that travelling back in time would not be such a bad idea. It was, possibly, the only place she could really hide.

But one question remained unanswered.

You are a detective, Saskia. Detect.

Why had her future self not visited her? A meeting would have dispelled all her doubts.

“So,” said Bruce. The fire crackled. “Your body is unknown to you. Your unconscious mind is a stranger, your conscious one a ghost. But it is a digital ghost. You are one of us now. Welcome to the land of the unreal.”

Ghosts

Before Saskia could reply, a sharp object jabbed into her sole. She looked down and saw that her spectral feet were now resting on the shingle floor. Heat assaulted her face and chest as though a furnace door had been opened. It was the bonfire. She could now feel its heat.

She stepped back. Instead of crashing into the cubicle door, she simply walked backwards. Her feet crunched over the ancient riverbed.

“What’s happening?” she asked.

In unison, Jennifer and David replied, “Microbots.”

“What?”

David said, “The little flying robots. As we speak, each of our cubicles is full of them. They act like large molecules. They can mimic are surface. They can mimic any temperature. This isn’t good.”

She imagined tiny robots creating temporary platforms beneath her feet. She stepped backwards again. The heat diminished. “But why is it happening?”

Another spectral figure appeared. It shimmered like a signpost on a desert road. It began to walk closer.

Frank did not feel well. His head hurt and he could not shake the ringing noise from his ears. He remembered nothing after leaning into Saskia’s car. She must have overpowered him somehow. She might have hit him with a rock. Crafty cow.

His orders were clear. Bring back Saskia for re-programming or, failing that, kill her. It would be a shame to lose Saskia’s body, but Frank knew all about orders. If he disobeyed, there would be another Frank Stone, from another FIB office, who could kill and dispose of him in the same manner.

He could not remember how he got inside the computer, but he had impressions of ghosts in the corridors, people ignoring him, and violence. He only knew that he was here. Inside the computer. It was a game. A computer game. His orders were to win. Saskia and her friends had to lose.

Frank hummed a Europop tune from the previous summer. It was called Yeah, Baby. He had heard it first on the radio when he drove out of Poland after his fishing trip. Loose ends. Had to tidy them up. Yeah, Baby.

David reached towards his headset and but it was blocked by an invisible shield. He prodded it systematically. Impenetrable. Whoever had activated the microbots had programmed some additional measures to stop him – and presumably the rest of them

– from leaving Asgard. The hairs rose on his neck. The fourth figure came closer. “What do you want?” David asked. Far away, so quiet it might have been a memory, he heard a man hum a tune.

The figure halted. They might die without even seeing the face of their killer. The microbots could mimic any surface from rocks to spears to boiling oil.

“What do you want?” he asked again. He looked Saskia and Jennifer. They were struggling uselessly against their headsets. Bruce was drawing in the shingle with his spear. Still, the new figure remained motionless.

The humming stopped.

Bruce shouted, “Computer, this is Heimdall. Password: Rebirth.”

The ground shook and they were thrown into the air. David saw the riverbed rush away. He clutched at it. He whispered, “This is not real, this is not real,” but as he reached apogee, and tumbled, and fell, it was real, it was real.

The ground charged towards him.

No, he thought, the microbots can’t mimic a surface at that speed.

He crashed feet-first into a cold lake. He dropped, barely conscious, until his feet found the single bottom once more. It was restful and silent. He kicked once and rose like a balloon.

David saw a huge white disc in the sky. It radiated moonlight. He saw two anonymous, spectral figures treading water nearby. Further up the ravine, a sodden Bruce sat on the roof of his log cabin. It had become an