"Sean McMullen - Alone in His Chariot" - читать интересную книгу автора (McMullen Sean)
Alone in His Chariot
Sean McMullen
Schilden, the Senior Research Officer in the institute, was already in, and had
just brewed some coffee in the staff room. Vuner slipped a capsule into his
mouth as he sat down at the table, then accepted a mug from Schilden and gulped
a mouthful of coffee. "Young
man, you look terrible, if you will pardon my saying," Schilden said in his
thick Swiss-German accent.
"I was out in the park with my telescope last night," admitted Vuner sheepishly.
"I just lost track of the time." "But the sky was clouded last night."
"Most of the time," agreed
Vuner, "but if you wait long enough there's always a few breaks to see through
to the stars." Schilden
poured himself another mug of coffee, shaking his head and smiling. "Ach, you
should have been in a bar, looking at girls." Vuner had no telescope, but having a
reputation as an amateur astronomer was a perfect cover for being up late on
most nights. He fingered the graze that the bullet had left. It was level with
his heart. If the Artery's hit man had been closer . . . "Piss on the Artery," he muttered
under his breath. He had put a dose of an experimental drug in with the last
amphetamine batch that he had sold to them - just for a joke. Some user probably
died of it. Users had neither identity nor humanity for Vuner and the thought of
possible deaths from his experiments moved him very little. He would have to
sell his drugs directly to the local pusher cells now, but that was not a
problem. Vuner always
smuggled his own chemicals into the laboratory. Ever since he had been employed
as a temporary technician he had taken it for granted that the place had
chemical audits and hidden cameras, so he never dared to steal his supplies from
there. He had a legally acquired supply of chemical precursors, and needed only
the right equipment to turn them into something marketable. Originally he had worked in the
bedroom of his flat, with improvised equipment that could be quickly dismantled
and hidden. Late one night he had been making methamphetamine, and was heating
hydriotic acid, ephedrine and red phosphorous. He had heard the siren of an
approaching police car, and by the time it reached his street he had the lights
out and was dismantling his apparatus. While fumbling with hot glass, he dropped
a beaker. The police drove past. Presence of mind had saved his life.
Holding his breath against the toxic fumes he switched on the fan above the
stove and opened all the windows. For the next two hours he had cowered in the
bathroom, toilet paper stuffed into the gap under the door. At 5am he went
outside and collected a dozen dead birds in the street and carpark, the only
victims of his toxic cloud. He flushed the bodies down his toilet, swearing that
now he would work only in proper laboratories. Vuner was curious about the drugs
being tested where he worked, and followed the experiments with rats as closely
as the scientists. Emily Cottak, Schilden's deputy, suspected him of being an
agent for some animal liberation group. This suited Vuner, as she always
explained to him what the rats were being treated with, and how it was safe and
humane. In her latest experiment they ran a maze while trailing fine tubes that
led from their heads to suspended bottles. "They're not in any pain," she said
as Vuner looked down at the maze. "The wires and tubes in their heads look
terrible, but it's only to get the TEFG-7 directly to their brains." "I suppose it wouldn't look so bad
going into their backs or something," replied Vuner, who had in fact been
wondering if the rats were getting any sort of high from the drug. "Yes, we could do that, but by using
intercranial dosing we can get measurable results from very small amounts of
TEFG. The less drug that you use, the less side effects." For a moment Vuner considered
intercranial administration for himself, but there was the problem of having a
hole bored in his skull. He wondered if an artery in the neck would be as good.
"So what's it they're mainlining into their heads?" he asked, then cursed his
choice of words. Warming to
her specialty, Cottak missed the expression. "They've had Trophic Enhancement
Factor, Group 7. It's a type of memory enhancement and brain repair drug that
affects the way neural pathways make new connections. Earlier today two control
rats ran this maze in a minute. The rats here were given leupeptin, which
degrades the activity of calpain in the neurons. A bit like amnesia." "They're very slow," Vuner observed.
"But not as slow as the two
rats in the maze on your left. They were given only leupeptin, no TEFG. After
nine minutes they are still only three levels from the start, and will probably
never make it. The two here are getting TEFG as well as the leupeptin, and they
are right near the end - there goes one now. Nine minutes and fifty seconds.
Almost ten times longer than the controls, but it should not have been able to
get through at all." Vuner
helped as she clamped off the pipes and wrote down the times and dosages for
each rat. "Er, is TEFG-7
poisonous or anything?" he asked. "Not any more than asprin. People
could take it." "What's it
like to take?" Cottak
laughed. "The rats have said nothing, but if it feels good someone will ban it,"
she joked. Vuner was very curious. "You mean they get a bit high on it?"
he ventured, unable to find more innocent words yet too interested to waste the
opportunity. "Once again,
how do you ask a rat? If a rat has TEFG by itself it becomes less active, it
'ponders', as we call it. The level of brain activity is very high when they do
that, so perhaps TEFG does give a pleasant feeling as a side effect." She disconnected the feed tubes from
the rats, then took the bottles down. Vuner was careful to help, and she gave
him the tubes to wash while she took the bottles off to lock in the safe. With
practiced sleight of hand he drained the TEFG into a sample phial while
pretending to wash the tubes. That evening Vuner lay on his bed
turning over the phial of TEFG in his fingers. Normally he only used the
laboratory facilities to make drugs for sale and to do his own experiments, yet
here was a research drug that was tested and safe. There was so little of it
that he would have to mix it with a sterile base to get a usable volume for his
syringe. He thought about the rats with needles inserted directly to their
brains, then felt for the carotid artery in his neck. The idea repelled him, yet
it seemed the only way to get an effective dose. It hurt less than he had
thought. Vuner fancied
himself as an explorer, and treated his trips on recreational drugs as exciting
odysseys. He was careful not to let himself become addicted to anything, and
always forced himself to dry out, no matter how bad the withdrawal symptoms
were. Minutes passed, then
half an hour. Nothing seemed to have happened. He got up and went to the window.
Wisps of cloud glowed scarlet in the light of the setting sun. A feeling of
nostalgia caressed him like a puff of warm air. Sunset. Friends going out. Mum
wants him to stay home and study. Become a doctor. She'll show her husband she
can bring up kids. Run off, will he? Sunset. Time to go out to the cinema, not
study! That's what sunset is all about. He put on a jacket and walked outside to
the bus stop. The sound of a
diesel engine approaching, diesel fumes as he boarded, counting out the right
change, flimsy scrap of ticket, roll it up tight and clean your fingernails with
it. Lurch as the bus starts, swing down into a seat using a handrail. Big git in the seat behind. Know him.
He'll be leaving school this year, thank God. Vuner had always been shorter than
average, and very thin. Always got bullied. Glad to leave school. Choose your
own company then. No more bullies crowding you. Sting, sharp and shocking as
finger flicks earlobe from behind. Inevitable. Again. "Don't act like you're two years
old." Mistake. Should have got up and sat near the driver. Stinging slap over
the ear. Arm twisted, face ground into dirty floor. Big kids laugh, nobody
helps. "Who's a two year
old?" demands Jason Dodsworth. "Not you. Leggo!" "Where's your manners? Say please."
"Please. Please." "Hey, don't you go killing anyone on
my bus!" shouts the driver. Nobody helps. Sickeningly hard kick between the
cheeks of the arse. Can't shit without crying for days. Vuner stepped from the bus, but the
memory of the old outrage remained, clean, raw and strong. Jay-Dod. Big Jason
Dodsworth. How he would like to meet up with him now. He would learn aikido or
something, and beat Jay-Dod until he wished he had never been born. He knew where his former tormentor
lived. The man was prominent and successful, a member of the local council, and
married to the mayor's daughter. The memory of that day on the bus burned bright
and clear, though worse things had happened to Vuner at school, even at the
hands of Jay-Dod. Change
buses. Walk. Hide in the garden. Nobody home. Have to wait. Waited so long, why
not wait some more? Wait till he comes home in his Jaguar. Learned aikido, know
how to fight. Use a fence picket, brain his pretty little wife, hit him in the
guts to knock the noise out of him, then beat, beat, beat. Beat to hurt, beat to
leave scars, beat to humiliate. Start on his wife. Make him watch. Vuner awoke the next morning with his
bedclothes tangled and drenched in perspiration. He sat bolt upright with the
memory that he had committed two murders and a rape! He'd been there, he'd done
it himself. His clock-radio delivered the morning news, but there was nothing
about a local councillor being murdered. He examined his hands. They were
scratched and dirty. His clothes were muddy as well. There were roadworks down
the street, and he remembered stumbling and falling on the rough ground. That
might explain it, but he also remembered hiding in the Dodsworths' garden, and
just as clearly. He showered thoroughly and washed his clothes. There was
another newscast, but still nothing about any murders. Perhaps they had not been
discovered. On the way to
work Vuner stopped at a public telephone and called Dodsworth's office. His
secretary answered. "Is, ah,
Mr Dodsworth in this morning?" he asked. "No, I'm afraid not," she answered.
Vuner's knees buckled. "Can
I get him to return your call?" "No! No, I'm driving around a lot
today." "Well, he's at a
Council meeting until noon. Would you like to try then?" "You - you've seen him?" gasped
Vuner. "Yes. He came in
about ten minutes ago to check the mail. Now who shall I tell him to expect a
call from?" Vuner hung up,
tears of relief streaming down his face. It was the TEFG-7. Christ, no wonder
the rats were 'pondering', he said to himself as he got up. It turns dreams into
real memories.
Vuner watched Cottak go into the Project Manager's office with a limp rat. He
also noticed that she had left the TEFG drip line dangling. He waited for a
minute. If anyone was watching a security monitor, they would have seen the
fluid dripping into the sawdust of the staging pen, and come out to stop it.
Deftly he took the TEFG
bottle down and ran a little into the phial while pretending to fumble with the
drip tube. By the time Cottak returned he had sealed the bottle and was washing
the tube. "You left the TEFG
solution dripping into the sawdust," he said calmly. "I thought I'd better seal
it up for you." "Thanks,
thanks," she replied, placing the rat in the staging pen and reconnecting the
encephalograph wires to its head. A screen trace showed strong, clear brain
activity. "I thought it
might be hard to make, or expensive," he said with a voice so carefully held in
check that it sounded wooden. "No, neither," she said without
looking away from the screen. So TEFG-7 was cheap, and easy to
make, thought Vuner. A trace of hydrochloric acid on the air took him back to a
school science lab many years before. Jay-Dod forcing him to drink from a bottle
labelled 'poison' - which turned out to be distilled water. Fear, humiliation
and rage boiled up in a livid flame. Within the flame was Jay-Dod's broken,
bleeding face, licking Vuner's shoe. "You dream it real," he said to
himself in wonder as the satisfaction of synthetic revenge soothed the old hurt.
Vuner knew that the police
had caught a lot of illicit drug makers in legal laboratories by noting those
who always worked back late at night. Thus he did his illicit chemistry during
the day, but at times when people would be too busy to notice what he was doing.
Today it was good old PCP.
Phencyclidine involved no more than pouring and stirring, and its manufacture
could be disguised as any number of innocent jobs. Behind the glass of her
office Cottak packed a sheaf of notes and printout into her desk and locked it.
He could wait until the rest had gone and try the lock, but if the laboratory
had a video recorder attached to the security camera he would be identified.
Best to wait until Cottak decided to make more TEFG-7. He would make sure that
he was there to help - and watch. That night Vuner made the drop off of
his PCP. The girl was a prostitute who worked for Hooker Cell. Her previous
client had left the money, the next would take Vuner's package. "Five hundred millis," he said as he
put the wrapped bottle on a bedside table. The girl handed him an envelope.
"We could use a lot more,"
she told him. "Your stuff's ace." "Couldn't risk it. You know my
operation - small but safe."
"So make it small. Ever tried making fenetyl designers?" "Might have something better. About a
tenth milli per hit, but great. New stuff." To his disappointment she shook her
head. "Don't like it. Bad
business if a few of our regulars become vegies on untried shit. Worse if they
died." "No sweat. I've
watched how rats tripped it, then tried it myself." He pocketed the money.
"We're just being careful.
Some big squire in the Artery tried what he thought was a 'phet cap - Slam! It
was some strange shit that made his fingers and toes permanently numb. It even
killed the nerves in his dick. The Artery keeps tabs on the batches with a
computer, and they traced it to a guy who wears shades and a yellow coat. Calls
himself Einstein. Right now he's also wearing a 20K tag for whoever delivers him
in a sack." "Stupid fart
probably mixed his stuff while on a hit," said Vuner as calmly as he could. "See
you next time." She lay back
on the bed, legs sprawled. They were shapely legs, and she wore a black bow at
each ankle. "In a hurry?" she asked. "The next pickup's not due for an hour.
Been on coke all day and I'm open house." "Don't you get enough customers?"
asked Vuner, beginning to tremble. The TEFG he had taken an hour before seemed
to amplify the sensation of his own hormones. "Not allowed any on a pickup night.
Come on, I can give you a skin if you're worried about catching AIDS or
something." While returning
home Vuner recalled reaching his climax with her a dozen times, each with the
intensity as undiminished as if it was actually happening. It was the drug of
the decade. Perhaps you could use it to remember a hit of something else as
clearly as if you had taken it again. Once home he tried it with LSD, and
confirmed his theory. Vuner lay on his bed dreaming - of bashing Jay-Dod, and
reliving the most minute details of mounting the pickup girl earlier that
evening. He drifted off to sleep, and the drug also fixed his REM dreams
securely. There were nightmares, too, but these were not a problem unless he
deliberately recalled them. It was perfect, and it was harmless. That worried
him, and he decided to establish a demand quickly, then sell the formula for the
best offer. Harmless drugs might be declared legal.
Schilden's visitor had an air of suspicion and authority that branded him as
a detective at once, and he suspected that the man had come about a chemical
audit of his laboratory. He decided to play the innocent scientist until the
other stated his business. To his surprise the man introduced himself as Drake,
a Homicide Branch detective, without a trace of deception. "About a week ago a councillor and
his wife were savagely bashed when they came home," Drake explained. "The woman
died of a cerebral haemorrhage and the councillor is still on the critical
list." "Yes, I read about
it, Mr Drake," said Schilden, relieved but puzzled. "Councillor Dodsworth, I
think." "That's right. He's
big and strong, he used to play professional rugby. Our prime suspect is small
and scrawny." "Perhaps he
studied karate." "Our
suspect denies that he has," said Drake, searching Schilden's face for a
reaction. "His name is Albert Vuner." Schilden sat up with a start. "Vuner?
From here? The Assistant Technician Class, er . . ." "Two," said Drake impassively. "A few
nights after the attack Dodsworth's neighbours noticed someone loitering in the
garden of the house. The police missed him that time, but decided to station an
unmarked patrol car nearby. Last night he came back. Dr Schilden, did Vuner ever
do any martial arts?" "Not
that I know of." "That's
what he told us, yet he threw one of our men around like a beanbag before his
offsider shot him." "Shot?
You mean he's dead?" "His
blood pressure was zero when the ambulance arrived, but he pulled through. This
morning he denied beating up the Dodsworth couple. He told us he was an old
school friend, that he just went there to look around." Schilden took off his glasses and
began to clean them very slowly. The world became blurred, less threatening, it
allowed him to retreat until a measure of confidence returned to him. "A little morbid, of course," he
said, "but some people do that sort of thing." "He confessed to making illicit drugs
in this laboratory."
"Impossible! I keep a video record from our security cameras for three days
past. You may check it for yourself." "I will. He also said he was using a
drug called TEFG-7."
Schilden's glasses slipped from his fingers. A detailed scan of the security
videocassettes showed that Vuner was as deft as a magician as he mixed the jobs
of washing laboratory apparatus and manufacturing illicit drugs. Schilden had
only ever scanned the tapes quickly, and noticed nothing suspicious until it was
pointed out to him. Vuner
was a prime suspect in the murder case. On the day that Jason Dodsworth died
Drake paid him a visit at the prison hospital. "We interviewed your teachers and
classmates, Vuner," said the detective. "They say that Dodsworth gave you a
really hard time at school." Vuner sneered. "We were just kids," he said. "Who
remembers kids' games?"
"Someone fooling about with a powerful new memory drug!" shouted Drake, slamming
his fist down on Vuner's meal tray. "As you have admitted yourself, the drug
allows you to live in pretty damn clear fantasies, then remember them like they
really happened." Vuner
laughed. "A dream's just a dream, even if it's on TEFG." "No Vuner, on TEFG-7 it's not. Dr
Cottak has a couple of rats that look dead, except that they still have a brain
trace. She thinks that they dream of having plenty of food, and no mazes, pain
or injections. They just turn off the outside world. TEFG-7 allows users to
reprogram synapse connections in their brain. If you're in a deep enough
daydream when it wears off, you lose the connection to your senses. You could
have been locked inside your own head!" "Well, I suppose I'm just lucky, Mr
Drake, but so what?" Drake
took a deep breath. "Do you know what charges you face?" "Hell, all I did was struggle with a
couple of cops who jumped me and mix a little speed at the lab. If I mainlined
some TEFG, then think of the advancement to science." "I have a prima facie case that you
sold the TEFG formula to a drug ring. A few weeks ago thirty thousand pounds
turned up in a bank account that we traced to you." "You can't prove a thing. I'm good
with money -" "Since then a
crude form of TEFG-7 has been turning up on the drug scene under the name of
Nostalgia. Users take another drug, say Ecstasy, then Nostalgia lets them
remember how good it was whenever they want. The trouble is that some kids don't
like coming back." "You mean
they, er, 'ponder', like Cottak's rats?" "The users call it dreamout. Already
we have twelve kids whose bodies are as limp as boiled spinach, yet their brains
have a strong, healthy trace. It costs a fortune to keep them in hospital and
feed them intravenously."
"The system screwed them long enough. It's about time they got something back
from it." "Vuner, we'll pin
this and everything else on you. You're not ever going to see daylight again."
He waited until Drake had
gone before he started laughing.
Cottak, Schilden and Drake were called to the coroner's inquest. It was not an official inquest into
Vuner's death, so much as an attempt to determine just what his legal status
was. "A person or persons
unknown smuggled a dose of the substance known as Trophic Enhancement Factor,
Group 7 into Vuner's cell," concluded the coroner in his opening address. "With
the aid of a hollow needle and a length of plastic tube he was able to
administer this drug to himself, then induce a state known as auto-neurosynaptic
catalepsy, or dreamout. The following note was found in his hand: "Bye pigs, and take good care of my
body. Jail it if you like, but I am free. You should keep all prisoners like
this. I am going to where I can do anything, and will never die. There will
always be hundreds of girls around, and I will always get it up. It was me who
mashed Jay-Dod and his lady. Maybe I thought about doing it so often that I
suddenly did it for real, but never knew. Piss on you all, Vudraken the God." The coroner ceased reading and looked
up. Drake cleared his throat and held up a report. "We have never been able to keep the
prison system totally free of drugs," he said, waving the folder. "No matter how
careful we are, even someone on death row can always get something smuggled in.
With TEFG only one dose is needed for a prisoner to . . ." "Yes?" prompted the coroner. "I don't know! We may have their
bodies behind bars, but are the prisoners being held? The law says they are, but
. . . look, is Vuner an escapee, legally speaking?" He turned to the scientists.
"Dr Cottak, have you got anywhere with the rats?" Emily Cottak looked haggard, and had
dark smudges under her eyes. Schilden, sitting beside her, was no better.
"I have been able to revive
one rat, number AT-BETA-16," she said listlessly. "In simplified terms, I
administered TEFG-7 to induce a plastic state in the synaptic cleft areas, then
directly stimulated the sensory centres of the brain with electrodes, bypassing
the usual nerve communication boundaries. The rat felt something good, and
wanted more. Being on TEFG-7, it could open up its sensory connections again. By
manipulating electrode-induced pleasure I kept it out of dreamout until the
TEFG-7 wore off." "You're
saying you can bring them back?" asked Drake. "I fooled one rat. I might do it with
a human, too, but only once. If they get another dose of TEFG-7 and return to
dreamout, they may ignore further stimulation." "You could try hitting the pain
centres," ventured Drake.
"Not so," Schilden interrupted. "There is evidence that subjects in this state
can re-interpret the sensation - perceive pain as a colour, perhaps." "I can't believe that medical science
can do nothing." Schilden
snorted. "I thought the AIDS crisis showed what we can and cannot do. Why worry,
though? If prisoners are in dreamout they need minimal security and care. No
bars, no warders, just rows of boxes with tubes going in and out." "But they're not being punished!"
exclaimed Drake. "Chrissake, how will the community take to someone committing
murder then spending the rest of his life in heaven? All we will be doing is
putting the criminals where they can do no more harm." "So what is wrong with that? The role
of the law is to protect the innocent." "It's not so simple," sighed the
coroner. "Look at history. Early last century Britain had a penal colony in
Australia, at Botany Bay. Did you know that Botany Bay was so good compared to
Britain that people committed crimes just to be sentenced to transportation
there? Once they were released food and drink was cheap, there was plenty of
work, and wages were good.
"Our situation is similar. Nostalgia sells for about ninety pounds a dose on the
drug network, though it costs only 1% of that to make. Any loser with nothing to
look forward to but cheap rooms and junk food for the rest of his life only has
to scrape up the cost of a dose, and one Conan movie. After that our taxes pay
for the intravenous drip and nursing, while he 'lives' in palaces. He - or she -
can have an improved body too." "It would never become widespread,"
said Schilden uncertainly. "Dreamout is like death. You never come back."
"Dreamout is not like
death," said the coroner. He looked to Drake, who nodded. "The addicts have been
doing experiments that the law forbids to you scientists. A willing dreamouter
can be brought back weeks later by another dose of TEFG-7. Undercover agents
have seen it done. They beat you to it, Dr Cottak." "But that's wonderful!" exclaimed
Schilden. Cottak grimaced, either in anger or frustration. "Not so," said Drake. "Their dreams
blend into their long term memory, become indistinguishable from reality.
Vuner's dream of beating up his old school enemy became so good that he could
not tell when he was really doing it. People who have been revived often have
very low violence thresholds. Spend a week as Conan or Rambo and that's who you
come back as. We can't afford to have people running loose who have spent much
time on TEFG-7." Schilden
sat back and folded his arms, shaking his head. "Not everyone is a psychopath,"
he said. "The problem only seems serious because criminals are currently the
main users." "No Rolf,
remember the work of Hall and Nordby in the early Seventies?" said Cottak, her
face a blank mask. "Eh? Ach,
the statistical work. I only glanced at their book. I am a neurochemist, after
all." "You should have read
it more carefully. The work is The Individual and His Dreams, Mr Drake. I
can lend you my copy. They took a sample of 1000 young Americans of both sexes
and found that nearly half of their dreams contained aggression - fights, rapes,
murders. The rate of murder among dream-characters was one in 150. That's about
100 times the real world average. The figures are similar for other
nationalities and cultures.
"Dreams and reality have been separated in nature as a survival trait. If an
Australopithecus dreamed that he could kill sabre-tooth tigers with his bare
hands, then believed the dream . . . well, he got removed from the gene pool
next time he met a real sabre-tooth tiger. REM dreams, and most daydreams, have
inefficient neurological access to long term memory. That's why we remember them
best if we write them down or talk about them: the act of describing them
'fixes' them. "The drug, my
drug, frees us from nature, which forces us to live in the real world. We must
isolate those who use TEFG. Once a person believes he has committed a murder, it
is easier to do it again, but in real life. Worse, they will actually be
stronger if it's part of their dream. Most people have greater muscular strength
than they realise. Alter their self-image and they can use it all." As she finished, Schilden took off
his glasses to retreat. Drake scribbled something on the report in front of him,
then flung the pen down. The coroner looked from face to face for a sign of
hope. "We may be forced to
covertly deal with the drug networks, and keep files of those who have tried
TEFG," he suggested. "That
may not be easy," said Drake. "This morning we found what the users call a 'time
machine'. It was just a bed in a locked room, but the dreamouter had rigged a
gallon of nutrient drip to hang from the ceiling and run a hose from his penis
to a bucket. A timer was connected to his other arm, and set to deliver a second
dose of Nostalgia after ten days. The man was middle aged and very successful.
His wife said that he'd watched his 'Neighbours' videos for twelve hours before
disappearing. She hired a detective to find him, she thought he'd run off with
another woman. In a way, he had." Cottak remained impassive. Schilden
laughed without smiling. "So
they can get back by themselves," he observed. "We can never be sure if someone
is secretly affected by dreamout." The coroner nodded. "We could even
impose the death penalty for TEFG-7 abuse, but that would only make more people
closet users. Society may soon be in a shambles."
Vuner was creating a world. It was not to be merely an image of Earth, but
totally new, condensed from a swirling dust cloud by the disembodied spirit of
Vuner himself, so that he would literally be the soul of this world, its
gaia. He revelled in the hot, fine dust, a young, vital god with eternity
before him. Over time, which
had grown meaningless for him, he had learned a great deal about being divine,
and had discovered that the worst problem was boredom. There had been too many
enemies effortlessly blasted to cinders, too many ultimate orgasms, too many
familiar images of Earth-like worlds that arose and dispersed at his will. He
had realised that he had been acting like a deified mortal, rather than a true
god. He would not merely control this new world and the laws that governed it,
he would actually be those very laws. Vuner the Law moulded a great vortex of
dust . . . Suddenly he
sprawled, powerless, and in a human body! The sand was cold beneath his naked
skin, and a pale, scarlet sun lit up the desert around him. A shadowy form
coalesced nearby. It had a vaguely human shape. Vuner gasped. "My interface chip recognised a sound
from your speech centre, Vuner," it said in a contralto voice. "Try to speak
normally." He burned it with
beams of light from his eyes. Abruptly the ground heaved, and several suns began
to dance in the sky. Then the world became livid, brilliant pain. As it faded
the shadow returned. "We've
made a lot of advances in neural interface methods over the last thirty years,"
it explained. "Dreamouters can no longer avoid the stimulation of pain centres."
"I'm your God!" shrieked
Vuner. "In the name of Vudraken -" "Vudraken, eh?" his tormentor
laughed. "I'm your doctor. I suggest that you conjure up a short, blonde woman
wearing a green smock." It was somehow easier for him to cope with the shadow.
"Are you a prison doctor?"
he asked, suddenly mortal again. "Hah, there have been no prisons for
decades. Those who can be rehabilitated, are. Hopeless cases, like you, are
forced to dreamout, and your bodies are put to better use. Your arms went to a
shark attack victim from Bermuda, I believe." Vuner looked down at his arms, then
raised them easily. "Very
good, Vuner," said the shape. "I registered arm movement." "What do you want? What the hell do
you want?" "Don't shout. It
only flashes the overload light on the ALC. As to what I want . . . maybe I
should tell you some history first. TEFG-7 really changed the place after you
went into dreamout. Seems like half the country started using it. Some said it
was the end of Western Democracy, that the Soviets would march in and take over.
Hah. In two years there were so many Russians in partial or permanent dreamout
that we had to go in and help them. "Things settled down though.
Dreamouters run factory processes now, in return for nutrient solution and a
bed, but they spend their free time in fantasies very like yours. The rest of us
live in quite a good world. It has to be, to stop people going dreamout."
"Go away!" he shouted. "You
can't do this. The law -"
Second Jeremy Reston Illustration He was paralysed. He could not move,
speak, or even blink. "Had
to power you down," said the shadow. "Too much struggling for the automedic to
finish working. Vudraken the God, what a laugh! Vuner, when the ancient Romans
had a military victory they put a slave beside the general as his chariot was
driven through the streets in triumph. Every so often the slave had to remind
the general that they were both only mortal. I'm sure no slaves did that in your
dreamout world, and that you were alone in your triumphal chariot . . . but
you're still mortal." The
sun faded, the sky and landscape glowed with a grey that became concrete walls
and ceiling. One wall had a barred door. Behind it stood a blonde woman in a
green smock. Vuner realised that his perspective was from only knee height. He
swivelled his lenses to look at himself: his body was squat and cubic, resting
on tractor treads. His arms were like robot manipulators. With a tinny scream he
backed away from the door, his motor whining with the overload. Pain raked his
back as he hit the wall.
"The unit I housed you in is covered with a type of inorganic skin, used mainly
to give industrial robots a sense of touch," the woman explained. "I wired the
sensor filaments right down into your brain. Hardwired them. TEFG-7 cannot
dissolve the link and let you dreamout. It took me five years." "Why did you do this?" wailed Vuner
through the voicebox. To his surprise tears welled from tubes on the rims of his
lenses. "Why? Who, Vuner,
who! I'm thirty seven years old: orphaned at seven, but by hell I became such a
good neurophysiologist that I'm even on first name terms with the great
Professor Cottak. Mind you, she doesn't know that I was christened Jane
Dodsworth -" His terrified
cry overloaded the automatic level control of the voicebox, and he rolled
frantically in circles.
"Society is not vindictive any more, Vuner, but I am! I found my parents lying
in their own blood and, and . . . putting your brain in a bottle but leaving
your mind free to play God is not my idea of justice! I'm very rich, Vuner: I
had this cell built under my estate especially for you, I falsified the records
declaring you dead, I'll keep you here for the rest of your life, and I swear
I'll outlive you through sheer spite!" She turned and walked away from the
cell. Vuner heard a large, heavy door boom shut and lugs thump into place, then
there was silence. He gripped the bars, and they were cold and hard beneath the
pads of his manipulators.
Originally appeared pp69-84, Eidolon Issue 04, March 1991.
Copyright © Sean McMullen, 1991. All Rights Reserved.
Reprinted with kind permission of the author.
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Alone in His Chariot
Sean McMullen
Schilden, the Senior Research Officer in the institute, was already in, and had
just brewed some coffee in the staff room. Vuner slipped a capsule into his
mouth as he sat down at the table, then accepted a mug from Schilden and gulped
a mouthful of coffee. "Young
man, you look terrible, if you will pardon my saying," Schilden said in his
thick Swiss-German accent.
"I was out in the park with my telescope last night," admitted Vuner sheepishly.
"I just lost track of the time." "But the sky was clouded last night."
"Most of the time," agreed
Vuner, "but if you wait long enough there's always a few breaks to see through
to the stars." Schilden
poured himself another mug of coffee, shaking his head and smiling. "Ach, you
should have been in a bar, looking at girls." Vuner had no telescope, but having a
reputation as an amateur astronomer was a perfect cover for being up late on
most nights. He fingered the graze that the bullet had left. It was level with
his heart. If the Artery's hit man had been closer . . . "Piss on the Artery," he muttered
under his breath. He had put a dose of an experimental drug in with the last
amphetamine batch that he had sold to them - just for a joke. Some user probably
died of it. Users had neither identity nor humanity for Vuner and the thought of
possible deaths from his experiments moved him very little. He would have to
sell his drugs directly to the local pusher cells now, but that was not a
problem. Vuner always
smuggled his own chemicals into the laboratory. Ever since he had been employed
as a temporary technician he had taken it for granted that the place had
chemical audits and hidden cameras, so he never dared to steal his supplies from
there. He had a legally acquired supply of chemical precursors, and needed only
the right equipment to turn them into something marketable. Originally he had worked in the
bedroom of his flat, with improvised equipment that could be quickly dismantled
and hidden. Late one night he had been making methamphetamine, and was heating
hydriotic acid, ephedrine and red phosphorous. He had heard the siren of an
approaching police car, and by the time it reached his street he had the lights
out and was dismantling his apparatus. While fumbling with hot glass, he dropped
a beaker. The police drove past. Presence of mind had saved his life.
Holding his breath against the toxic fumes he switched on the fan above the
stove and opened all the windows. For the next two hours he had cowered in the
bathroom, toilet paper stuffed into the gap under the door. At 5am he went
outside and collected a dozen dead birds in the street and carpark, the only
victims of his toxic cloud. He flushed the bodies down his toilet, swearing that
now he would work only in proper laboratories. Vuner was curious about the drugs
being tested where he worked, and followed the experiments with rats as closely
as the scientists. Emily Cottak, Schilden's deputy, suspected him of being an
agent for some animal liberation group. This suited Vuner, as she always
explained to him what the rats were being treated with, and how it was safe and
humane. In her latest experiment they ran a maze while trailing fine tubes that
led from their heads to suspended bottles. "They're not in any pain," she said
as Vuner looked down at the maze. "The wires and tubes in their heads look
terrible, but it's only to get the TEFG-7 directly to their brains." "I suppose it wouldn't look so bad
going into their backs or something," replied Vuner, who had in fact been
wondering if the rats were getting any sort of high from the drug. "Yes, we could do that, but by using
intercranial dosing we can get measurable results from very small amounts of
TEFG. The less drug that you use, the less side effects." For a moment Vuner considered
intercranial administration for himself, but there was the problem of having a
hole bored in his skull. He wondered if an artery in the neck would be as good.
"So what's it they're mainlining into their heads?" he asked, then cursed his
choice of words. Warming to
her specialty, Cottak missed the expression. "They've had Trophic Enhancement
Factor, Group 7. It's a type of memory enhancement and brain repair drug that
affects the way neural pathways make new connections. Earlier today two control
rats ran this maze in a minute. The rats here were given leupeptin, which
degrades the activity of calpain in the neurons. A bit like amnesia." "They're very slow," Vuner observed.
"But not as slow as the two
rats in the maze on your left. They were given only leupeptin, no TEFG. After
nine minutes they are still only three levels from the start, and will probably
never make it. The two here are getting TEFG as well as the leupeptin, and they
are right near the end - there goes one now. Nine minutes and fifty seconds.
Almost ten times longer than the controls, but it should not have been able to
get through at all." Vuner
helped as she clamped off the pipes and wrote down the times and dosages for
each rat. "Er, is TEFG-7
poisonous or anything?" he asked. "Not any more than asprin. People
could take it." "What's it
like to take?" Cottak
laughed. "The rats have said nothing, but if it feels good someone will ban it,"
she joked. Vuner was very curious. "You mean they get a bit high on it?"
he ventured, unable to find more innocent words yet too interested to waste the
opportunity. "Once again,
how do you ask a rat? If a rat has TEFG by itself it becomes less active, it
'ponders', as we call it. The level of brain activity is very high when they do
that, so perhaps TEFG does give a pleasant feeling as a side effect." She disconnected the feed tubes from
the rats, then took the bottles down. Vuner was careful to help, and she gave
him the tubes to wash while she took the bottles off to lock in the safe. With
practiced sleight of hand he drained the TEFG into a sample phial while
pretending to wash the tubes. That evening Vuner lay on his bed
turning over the phial of TEFG in his fingers. Normally he only used the
laboratory facilities to make drugs for sale and to do his own experiments, yet
here was a research drug that was tested and safe. There was so little of it
that he would have to mix it with a sterile base to get a usable volume for his
syringe. He thought about the rats with needles inserted directly to their
brains, then felt for the carotid artery in his neck. The idea repelled him, yet
it seemed the only way to get an effective dose. It hurt less than he had
thought. Vuner fancied
himself as an explorer, and treated his trips on recreational drugs as exciting
odysseys. He was careful not to let himself become addicted to anything, and
always forced himself to dry out, no matter how bad the withdrawal symptoms
were. Minutes passed, then
half an hour. Nothing seemed to have happened. He got up and went to the window.
Wisps of cloud glowed scarlet in the light of the setting sun. A feeling of
nostalgia caressed him like a puff of warm air. Sunset. Friends going out. Mum
wants him to stay home and study. Become a doctor. She'll show her husband she
can bring up kids. Run off, will he? Sunset. Time to go out to the cinema, not
study! That's what sunset is all about. He put on a jacket and walked outside to
the bus stop. The sound of a
diesel engine approaching, diesel fumes as he boarded, counting out the right
change, flimsy scrap of ticket, roll it up tight and clean your fingernails with
it. Lurch as the bus starts, swing down into a seat using a handrail. Big git in the seat behind. Know him.
He'll be leaving school this year, thank God. Vuner had always been shorter than
average, and very thin. Always got bullied. Glad to leave school. Choose your
own company then. No more bullies crowding you. Sting, sharp and shocking as
finger flicks earlobe from behind. Inevitable. Again. "Don't act like you're two years
old." Mistake. Should have got up and sat near the driver. Stinging slap over
the ear. Arm twisted, face ground into dirty floor. Big kids laugh, nobody
helps. "Who's a two year
old?" demands Jason Dodsworth. "Not you. Leggo!" "Where's your manners? Say please."
"Please. Please." "Hey, don't you go killing anyone on
my bus!" shouts the driver. Nobody helps. Sickeningly hard kick between the
cheeks of the arse. Can't shit without crying for days. Vuner stepped from the bus, but the
memory of the old outrage remained, clean, raw and strong. Jay-Dod. Big Jason
Dodsworth. How he would like to meet up with him now. He would learn aikido or
something, and beat Jay-Dod until he wished he had never been born. He knew where his former tormentor
lived. The man was prominent and successful, a member of the local council, and
married to the mayor's daughter. The memory of that day on the bus burned bright
and clear, though worse things had happened to Vuner at school, even at the
hands of Jay-Dod. Change
buses. Walk. Hide in the garden. Nobody home. Have to wait. Waited so long, why
not wait some more? Wait till he comes home in his Jaguar. Learned aikido, know
how to fight. Use a fence picket, brain his pretty little wife, hit him in the
guts to knock the noise out of him, then beat, beat, beat. Beat to hurt, beat to
leave scars, beat to humiliate. Start on his wife. Make him watch. Vuner awoke the next morning with his
bedclothes tangled and drenched in perspiration. He sat bolt upright with the
memory that he had committed two murders and a rape! He'd been there, he'd done
it himself. His clock-radio delivered the morning news, but there was nothing
about a local councillor being murdered. He examined his hands. They were
scratched and dirty. His clothes were muddy as well. There were roadworks down
the street, and he remembered stumbling and falling on the rough ground. That
might explain it, but he also remembered hiding in the Dodsworths' garden, and
just as clearly. He showered thoroughly and washed his clothes. There was
another newscast, but still nothing about any murders. Perhaps they had not been
discovered. On the way to
work Vuner stopped at a public telephone and called Dodsworth's office. His
secretary answered. "Is, ah,
Mr Dodsworth in this morning?" he asked. "No, I'm afraid not," she answered.
Vuner's knees buckled. "Can
I get him to return your call?" "No! No, I'm driving around a lot
today." "Well, he's at a
Council meeting until noon. Would you like to try then?" "You - you've seen him?" gasped
Vuner. "Yes. He came in
about ten minutes ago to check the mail. Now who shall I tell him to expect a
call from?" Vuner hung up,
tears of relief streaming down his face. It was the TEFG-7. Christ, no wonder
the rats were 'pondering', he said to himself as he got up. It turns dreams into
real memories.
Vuner watched Cottak go into the Project Manager's office with a limp rat. He
also noticed that she had left the TEFG drip line dangling. He waited for a
minute. If anyone was watching a security monitor, they would have seen the
fluid dripping into the sawdust of the staging pen, and come out to stop it.
Deftly he took the TEFG
bottle down and ran a little into the phial while pretending to fumble with the
drip tube. By the time Cottak returned he had sealed the bottle and was washing
the tube. "You left the TEFG
solution dripping into the sawdust," he said calmly. "I thought I'd better seal
it up for you." "Thanks,
thanks," she replied, placing the rat in the staging pen and reconnecting the
encephalograph wires to its head. A screen trace showed strong, clear brain
activity. "I thought it
might be hard to make, or expensive," he said with a voice so carefully held in
check that it sounded wooden. "No, neither," she said without
looking away from the screen. So TEFG-7 was cheap, and easy to
make, thought Vuner. A trace of hydrochloric acid on the air took him back to a
school science lab many years before. Jay-Dod forcing him to drink from a bottle
labelled 'poison' - which turned out to be distilled water. Fear, humiliation
and rage boiled up in a livid flame. Within the flame was Jay-Dod's broken,
bleeding face, licking Vuner's shoe. "You dream it real," he said to
himself in wonder as the satisfaction of synthetic revenge soothed the old hurt.
Vuner knew that the police
had caught a lot of illicit drug makers in legal laboratories by noting those
who always worked back late at night. Thus he did his illicit chemistry during
the day, but at times when people would be too busy to notice what he was doing.
Today it was good old PCP.
Phencyclidine involved no more than pouring and stirring, and its manufacture
could be disguised as any number of innocent jobs. Behind the glass of her
office Cottak packed a sheaf of notes and printout into her desk and locked it.
He could wait until the rest had gone and try the lock, but if the laboratory
had a video recorder attached to the security camera he would be identified.
Best to wait until Cottak decided to make more TEFG-7. He would make sure that
he was there to help - and watch. That night Vuner made the drop off of
his PCP. The girl was a prostitute who worked for Hooker Cell. Her previous
client had left the money, the next would take Vuner's package. "Five hundred millis," he said as he
put the wrapped bottle on a bedside table. The girl handed him an envelope.
"We could use a lot more,"
she told him. "Your stuff's ace." "Couldn't risk it. You know my
operation - small but safe."
"So make it small. Ever tried making fenetyl designers?" "Might have something better. About a
tenth milli per hit, but great. New stuff." To his disappointment she shook her
head. "Don't like it. Bad
business if a few of our regulars become vegies on untried shit. Worse if they
died." "No sweat. I've
watched how rats tripped it, then tried it myself." He pocketed the money.
"We're just being careful.
Some big squire in the Artery tried what he thought was a 'phet cap - Slam! It
was some strange shit that made his fingers and toes permanently numb. It even
killed the nerves in his dick. The Artery keeps tabs on the batches with a
computer, and they traced it to a guy who wears shades and a yellow coat. Calls
himself Einstein. Right now he's also wearing a 20K tag for whoever delivers him
in a sack." "Stupid fart
probably mixed his stuff while on a hit," said Vuner as calmly as he could. "See
you next time." She lay back
on the bed, legs sprawled. They were shapely legs, and she wore a black bow at
each ankle. "In a hurry?" she asked. "The next pickup's not due for an hour.
Been on coke all day and I'm open house." "Don't you get enough customers?"
asked Vuner, beginning to tremble. The TEFG he had taken an hour before seemed
to amplify the sensation of his own hormones. "Not allowed any on a pickup night.
Come on, I can give you a skin if you're worried about catching AIDS or
something." While returning
home Vuner recalled reaching his climax with her a dozen times, each with the
intensity as undiminished as if it was actually happening. It was the drug of
the decade. Perhaps you could use it to remember a hit of something else as
clearly as if you had taken it again. Once home he tried it with LSD, and
confirmed his theory. Vuner lay on his bed dreaming - of bashing Jay-Dod, and
reliving the most minute details of mounting the pickup girl earlier that
evening. He drifted off to sleep, and the drug also fixed his REM dreams
securely. There were nightmares, too, but these were not a problem unless he
deliberately recalled them. It was perfect, and it was harmless. That worried
him, and he decided to establish a demand quickly, then sell the formula for the
best offer. Harmless drugs might be declared legal.
Schilden's visitor had an air of suspicion and authority that branded him as
a detective at once, and he suspected that the man had come about a chemical
audit of his laboratory. He decided to play the innocent scientist until the
other stated his business. To his surprise the man introduced himself as Drake,
a Homicide Branch detective, without a trace of deception. "About a week ago a councillor and
his wife were savagely bashed when they came home," Drake explained. "The woman
died of a cerebral haemorrhage and the councillor is still on the critical
list." "Yes, I read about
it, Mr Drake," said Schilden, relieved but puzzled. "Councillor Dodsworth, I
think." "That's right. He's
big and strong, he used to play professional rugby. Our prime suspect is small
and scrawny." "Perhaps he
studied karate." "Our
suspect denies that he has," said Drake, searching Schilden's face for a
reaction. "His name is Albert Vuner." Schilden sat up with a start. "Vuner?
From here? The Assistant Technician Class, er . . ." "Two," said Drake impassively. "A few
nights after the attack Dodsworth's neighbours noticed someone loitering in the
garden of the house. The police missed him that time, but decided to station an
unmarked patrol car nearby. Last night he came back. Dr Schilden, did Vuner ever
do any martial arts?" "Not
that I know of." "That's
what he told us, yet he threw one of our men around like a beanbag before his
offsider shot him." "Shot?
You mean he's dead?" "His
blood pressure was zero when the ambulance arrived, but he pulled through. This
morning he denied beating up the Dodsworth couple. He told us he was an old
school friend, that he just went there to look around." Schilden took off his glasses and
began to clean them very slowly. The world became blurred, less threatening, it
allowed him to retreat until a measure of confidence returned to him. "A little morbid, of course," he
said, "but some people do that sort of thing." "He confessed to making illicit drugs
in this laboratory."
"Impossible! I keep a video record from our security cameras for three days
past. You may check it for yourself." "I will. He also said he was using a
drug called TEFG-7."
Schilden's glasses slipped from his fingers. A detailed scan of the security
videocassettes showed that Vuner was as deft as a magician as he mixed the jobs
of washing laboratory apparatus and manufacturing illicit drugs. Schilden had
only ever scanned the tapes quickly, and noticed nothing suspicious until it was
pointed out to him. Vuner
was a prime suspect in the murder case. On the day that Jason Dodsworth died
Drake paid him a visit at the prison hospital. "We interviewed your teachers and
classmates, Vuner," said the detective. "They say that Dodsworth gave you a
really hard time at school." Vuner sneered. "We were just kids," he said. "Who
remembers kids' games?"
"Someone fooling about with a powerful new memory drug!" shouted Drake, slamming
his fist down on Vuner's meal tray. "As you have admitted yourself, the drug
allows you to live in pretty damn clear fantasies, then remember them like they
really happened." Vuner
laughed. "A dream's just a dream, even if it's on TEFG." "No Vuner, on TEFG-7 it's not. Dr
Cottak has a couple of rats that look dead, except that they still have a brain
trace. She thinks that they dream of having plenty of food, and no mazes, pain
or injections. They just turn off the outside world. TEFG-7 allows users to
reprogram synapse connections in their brain. If you're in a deep enough
daydream when it wears off, you lose the connection to your senses. You could
have been locked inside your own head!" "Well, I suppose I'm just lucky, Mr
Drake, but so what?" Drake
took a deep breath. "Do you know what charges you face?" "Hell, all I did was struggle with a
couple of cops who jumped me and mix a little speed at the lab. If I mainlined
some TEFG, then think of the advancement to science." "I have a prima facie case that you
sold the TEFG formula to a drug ring. A few weeks ago thirty thousand pounds
turned up in a bank account that we traced to you." "You can't prove a thing. I'm good
with money -" "Since then a
crude form of TEFG-7 has been turning up on the drug scene under the name of
Nostalgia. Users take another drug, say Ecstasy, then Nostalgia lets them
remember how good it was whenever they want. The trouble is that some kids don't
like coming back." "You mean
they, er, 'ponder', like Cottak's rats?" "The users call it dreamout. Already
we have twelve kids whose bodies are as limp as boiled spinach, yet their brains
have a strong, healthy trace. It costs a fortune to keep them in hospital and
feed them intravenously."
"The system screwed them long enough. It's about time they got something back
from it." "Vuner, we'll pin
this and everything else on you. You're not ever going to see daylight again."
He waited until Drake had
gone before he started laughing.
Cottak, Schilden and Drake were called to the coroner's inquest. It was not an official inquest into
Vuner's death, so much as an attempt to determine just what his legal status
was. "A person or persons
unknown smuggled a dose of the substance known as Trophic Enhancement Factor,
Group 7 into Vuner's cell," concluded the coroner in his opening address. "With
the aid of a hollow needle and a length of plastic tube he was able to
administer this drug to himself, then induce a state known as auto-neurosynaptic
catalepsy, or dreamout. The following note was found in his hand: "Bye pigs, and take good care of my
body. Jail it if you like, but I am free. You should keep all prisoners like
this. I am going to where I can do anything, and will never die. There will
always be hundreds of girls around, and I will always get it up. It was me who
mashed Jay-Dod and his lady. Maybe I thought about doing it so often that I
suddenly did it for real, but never knew. Piss on you all, Vudraken the God." The coroner ceased reading and looked
up. Drake cleared his throat and held up a report. "We have never been able to keep the
prison system totally free of drugs," he said, waving the folder. "No matter how
careful we are, even someone on death row can always get something smuggled in.
With TEFG only one dose is needed for a prisoner to . . ." "Yes?" prompted the coroner. "I don't know! We may have their
bodies behind bars, but are the prisoners being held? The law says they are, but
. . . look, is Vuner an escapee, legally speaking?" He turned to the scientists.
"Dr Cottak, have you got anywhere with the rats?" Emily Cottak looked haggard, and had
dark smudges under her eyes. Schilden, sitting beside her, was no better.
"I have been able to revive
one rat, number AT-BETA-16," she said listlessly. "In simplified terms, I
administered TEFG-7 to induce a plastic state in the synaptic cleft areas, then
directly stimulated the sensory centres of the brain with electrodes, bypassing
the usual nerve communication boundaries. The rat felt something good, and
wanted more. Being on TEFG-7, it could open up its sensory connections again. By
manipulating electrode-induced pleasure I kept it out of dreamout until the
TEFG-7 wore off." "You're
saying you can bring them back?" asked Drake. "I fooled one rat. I might do it with
a human, too, but only once. If they get another dose of TEFG-7 and return to
dreamout, they may ignore further stimulation." "You could try hitting the pain
centres," ventured Drake.
"Not so," Schilden interrupted. "There is evidence that subjects in this state
can re-interpret the sensation - perceive pain as a colour, perhaps." "I can't believe that medical science
can do nothing." Schilden
snorted. "I thought the AIDS crisis showed what we can and cannot do. Why worry,
though? If prisoners are in dreamout they need minimal security and care. No
bars, no warders, just rows of boxes with tubes going in and out." "But they're not being punished!"
exclaimed Drake. "Chrissake, how will the community take to someone committing
murder then spending the rest of his life in heaven? All we will be doing is
putting the criminals where they can do no more harm." "So what is wrong with that? The role
of the law is to protect the innocent." "It's not so simple," sighed the
coroner. "Look at history. Early last century Britain had a penal colony in
Australia, at Botany Bay. Did you know that Botany Bay was so good compared to
Britain that people committed crimes just to be sentenced to transportation
there? Once they were released food and drink was cheap, there was plenty of
work, and wages were good.
"Our situation is similar. Nostalgia sells for about ninety pounds a dose on the
drug network, though it costs only 1% of that to make. Any loser with nothing to
look forward to but cheap rooms and junk food for the rest of his life only has
to scrape up the cost of a dose, and one Conan movie. After that our taxes pay
for the intravenous drip and nursing, while he 'lives' in palaces. He - or she -
can have an improved body too." "It would never become widespread,"
said Schilden uncertainly. "Dreamout is like death. You never come back."
"Dreamout is not like
death," said the coroner. He looked to Drake, who nodded. "The addicts have been
doing experiments that the law forbids to you scientists. A willing dreamouter
can be brought back weeks later by another dose of TEFG-7. Undercover agents
have seen it done. They beat you to it, Dr Cottak." "But that's wonderful!" exclaimed
Schilden. Cottak grimaced, either in anger or frustration. "Not so," said Drake. "Their dreams
blend into their long term memory, become indistinguishable from reality.
Vuner's dream of beating up his old school enemy became so good that he could
not tell when he was really doing it. People who have been revived often have
very low violence thresholds. Spend a week as Conan or Rambo and that's who you
come back as. We can't afford to have people running loose who have spent much
time on TEFG-7." Schilden
sat back and folded his arms, shaking his head. "Not everyone is a psychopath,"
he said. "The problem only seems serious because criminals are currently the
main users." "No Rolf,
remember the work of Hall and Nordby in the early Seventies?" said Cottak, her
face a blank mask. "Eh? Ach,
the statistical work. I only glanced at their book. I am a neurochemist, after
all." "You should have read
it more carefully. The work is The Individual and His Dreams, Mr Drake. I
can lend you my copy. They took a sample of 1000 young Americans of both sexes
and found that nearly half of their dreams contained aggression - fights, rapes,
murders. The rate of murder among dream-characters was one in 150. That's about
100 times the real world average. The figures are similar for other
nationalities and cultures.
"Dreams and reality have been separated in nature as a survival trait. If an
Australopithecus dreamed that he could kill sabre-tooth tigers with his bare
hands, then believed the dream . . . well, he got removed from the gene pool
next time he met a real sabre-tooth tiger. REM dreams, and most daydreams, have
inefficient neurological access to long term memory. That's why we remember them
best if we write them down or talk about them: the act of describing them
'fixes' them. "The drug, my
drug, frees us from nature, which forces us to live in the real world. We must
isolate those who use TEFG. Once a person believes he has committed a murder, it
is easier to do it again, but in real life. Worse, they will actually be
stronger if it's part of their dream. Most people have greater muscular strength
than they realise. Alter their self-image and they can use it all." As she finished, Schilden took off
his glasses to retreat. Drake scribbled something on the report in front of him,
then flung the pen down. The coroner looked from face to face for a sign of
hope. "We may be forced to
covertly deal with the drug networks, and keep files of those who have tried
TEFG," he suggested. "That
may not be easy," said Drake. "This morning we found what the users call a 'time
machine'. It was just a bed in a locked room, but the dreamouter had rigged a
gallon of nutrient drip to hang from the ceiling and run a hose from his penis
to a bucket. A timer was connected to his other arm, and set to deliver a second
dose of Nostalgia after ten days. The man was middle aged and very successful.
His wife said that he'd watched his 'Neighbours' videos for twelve hours before
disappearing. She hired a detective to find him, she thought he'd run off with
another woman. In a way, he had." Cottak remained impassive. Schilden
laughed without smiling. "So
they can get back by themselves," he observed. "We can never be sure if someone
is secretly affected by dreamout." The coroner nodded. "We could even
impose the death penalty for TEFG-7 abuse, but that would only make more people
closet users. Society may soon be in a shambles."
Vuner was creating a world. It was not to be merely an image of Earth, but
totally new, condensed from a swirling dust cloud by the disembodied spirit of
Vuner himself, so that he would literally be the soul of this world, its
gaia. He revelled in the hot, fine dust, a young, vital god with eternity
before him. Over time, which
had grown meaningless for him, he had learned a great deal about being divine,
and had discovered that the worst problem was boredom. There had been too many
enemies effortlessly blasted to cinders, too many ultimate orgasms, too many
familiar images of Earth-like worlds that arose and dispersed at his will. He
had realised that he had been acting like a deified mortal, rather than a true
god. He would not merely control this new world and the laws that governed it,
he would actually be those very laws. Vuner the Law moulded a great vortex of
dust . . . Suddenly he
sprawled, powerless, and in a human body! The sand was cold beneath his naked
skin, and a pale, scarlet sun lit up the desert around him. A shadowy form
coalesced nearby. It had a vaguely human shape. Vuner gasped. "My interface chip recognised a sound
from your speech centre, Vuner," it said in a contralto voice. "Try to speak
normally." He burned it with
beams of light from his eyes. Abruptly the ground heaved, and several suns began
to dance in the sky. Then the world became livid, brilliant pain. As it faded
the shadow returned. "We've
made a lot of advances in neural interface methods over the last thirty years,"
it explained. "Dreamouters can no longer avoid the stimulation of pain centres."
"I'm your God!" shrieked
Vuner. "In the name of Vudraken -" "Vudraken, eh?" his tormentor
laughed. "I'm your doctor. I suggest that you conjure up a short, blonde woman
wearing a green smock." It was somehow easier for him to cope with the shadow.
"Are you a prison doctor?"
he asked, suddenly mortal again. "Hah, there have been no prisons for
decades. Those who can be rehabilitated, are. Hopeless cases, like you, are
forced to dreamout, and your bodies are put to better use. Your arms went to a
shark attack victim from Bermuda, I believe." Vuner looked down at his arms, then
raised them easily. "Very
good, Vuner," said the shape. "I registered arm movement." "What do you want? What the hell do
you want?" "Don't shout. It
only flashes the overload light on the ALC. As to what I want . . . maybe I
should tell you some history first. TEFG-7 really changed the place after you
went into dreamout. Seems like half the country started using it. Some said it
was the end of Western Democracy, that the Soviets would march in and take over.
Hah. In two years there were so many Russians in partial or permanent dreamout
that we had to go in and help them. "Things settled down though.
Dreamouters run factory processes now, in return for nutrient solution and a
bed, but they spend their free time in fantasies very like yours. The rest of us
live in quite a good world. It has to be, to stop people going dreamout."
"Go away!" he shouted. "You
can't do this. The law -"
Second Jeremy Reston Illustration He was paralysed. He could not move,
speak, or even blink. "Had
to power you down," said the shadow. "Too much struggling for the automedic to
finish working. Vudraken the God, what a laugh! Vuner, when the ancient Romans
had a military victory they put a slave beside the general as his chariot was
driven through the streets in triumph. Every so often the slave had to remind
the general that they were both only mortal. I'm sure no slaves did that in your
dreamout world, and that you were alone in your triumphal chariot . . . but
you're still mortal." The
sun faded, the sky and landscape glowed with a grey that became concrete walls
and ceiling. One wall had a barred door. Behind it stood a blonde woman in a
green smock. Vuner realised that his perspective was from only knee height. He
swivelled his lenses to look at himself: his body was squat and cubic, resting
on tractor treads. His arms were like robot manipulators. With a tinny scream he
backed away from the door, his motor whining with the overload. Pain raked his
back as he hit the wall.
"The unit I housed you in is covered with a type of inorganic skin, used mainly
to give industrial robots a sense of touch," the woman explained. "I wired the
sensor filaments right down into your brain. Hardwired them. TEFG-7 cannot
dissolve the link and let you dreamout. It took me five years." "Why did you do this?" wailed Vuner
through the voicebox. To his surprise tears welled from tubes on the rims of his
lenses. "Why? Who, Vuner,
who! I'm thirty seven years old: orphaned at seven, but by hell I became such a
good neurophysiologist that I'm even on first name terms with the great
Professor Cottak. Mind you, she doesn't know that I was christened Jane
Dodsworth -" His terrified
cry overloaded the automatic level control of the voicebox, and he rolled
frantically in circles.
"Society is not vindictive any more, Vuner, but I am! I found my parents lying
in their own blood and, and . . . putting your brain in a bottle but leaving
your mind free to play God is not my idea of justice! I'm very rich, Vuner: I
had this cell built under my estate especially for you, I falsified the records
declaring you dead, I'll keep you here for the rest of your life, and I swear
I'll outlive you through sheer spite!" She turned and walked away from the
cell. Vuner heard a large, heavy door boom shut and lugs thump into place, then
there was silence. He gripped the bars, and they were cold and hard beneath the
pads of his manipulators.
Originally appeared pp69-84, Eidolon Issue 04, March 1991.
Copyright © Sean McMullen, 1991. All Rights Reserved.
Reprinted with kind permission of the author.
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