Déjà Vu

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Their footsteps echoed on the iron stairs. Jennifer led, followed by her father, then Saskia. The top of the column was edged by an artificial parapet of rock. They stopped at a chain-link fence with an inset door. Next to its handle was a slot. Jennifer swiped her card and they passed through. Met Four comprised two prefabricated buildings. An array of antennas and dishes sat on top of the first. Above the second, there were two flags: the Stars and Stripes and the pennant of the US meteorological office.

A man emerged from the first building. He was unarmed, but Jennifer knew that his colleague stood by in the second building with a sub machine-gun.

‘Morning, ma’am,’ he said. If he had said, ‘Morning, miss,’ this would have been a coded instruction to go home.

‘Morning.’

‘Guests?’

‘That’s right.’

They entered the first building. Inside, it was unremarkable. A ranger sat behind a desk, his hands at keyboard. Nearby, a secretary placed some papers in a filing cabinet. Jennifer had walked into the same room once a day for more than a year. The woman and the man had never changed their positions.

‘Good morning, Jim.’

‘Morning, Jennifer. Who are your friends?’

‘Professors Stiefel and Whitney from Caltech. They should be expected.’

Jim checked his computer. ‘They are. Have a great day.’

‘Thanks.’

Jennifer led them through a chipboard partition to a cloakroom. She placed her coat on a hanger and did a twirl for the microwave camera. Saskia and her father did the same. Jennifer showed them where to put their thumbs against the wood. Their nail beds glowed pink. Partial sections of her DNA were read and checked. Thanks to the work of Ego behind the scenes, they matched those held by Met Four Base. The floor sank. When their heads had passed below the floor, a panel closed the top of the shaft. A gap appeared at their feet as the lift slid into a room.

‘Where are we heading?’ asked her father.

Jennifer studied her father in the growing brightness. When she had argued for improved computing support at a committee meeting the day before, she had ridden her anger hard, as always, and she knew its source. She had not shouted at the chairman but at her father. At her father, who had dumped her in a school in New York and left for England. But now, in his presence, her fury had died to an ember. He had given her the best education. For him, that was the first priority. It was his one true aspiration. He had put that aspiration above their relationship. He was a principled man.

‘Through the looking glass, Alice.’

They spoke little for the rest of the way. They descended further into the rock and took their first steps into the research centre proper. Jennifer explained that the low-ceilinged, busy corridors comprised the Stack, which was the vertical structure that threaded the enormous, tunnelled spiral of Met Four Base. The Stack housed administrative offices, workshops, recreational facilities, a canteen, and a water processing system connected to Lake Mead. Five minutes later, they took a horizontal corridor leading away from the Stack. Jennifer gestured to the door at its end. Its sign read, ‘Project N25136 (Looking Glass)’.

Jennifer opened her eyes. She was in orbit around the virtual planet. Clouds wheeled across oceans that glistened in the light of the local star. The vapour met her as she passed through. Beneath were mountains, forests, and the trails of great rivers. Further she fell. She turned to her right and saw the sun set behind the planet’s belly. Two evening stars fell with her: Saskia and her father. They stopped in water at the base of a ravine that ran north-south into the foothills of a mountain. It was widest at her point of landfall. To her right was an expanse of shingle, which reached out for a kilometre before meeting the wall of the ravine. At its face was a hut. It was crude but solid. From this distance, nothing could be seen but for the bonfire set before its porch. It produced a weak, shifting light.

She closed her eyes and imagined the bonfire. She was transported in an instant. Saskia and her father settled nearby. The fire sounded like rain on glass.

‘Computer, run program “knock knock”.’

The bonfire erupted to twice its height. Then it settled back to a murmur.

Jennifer watched as a man stepped from the hut. He held a spear. He was wrapped from head to foot in fir fronds.

‘Welcome to my parlour.’

‘Oh my God,’ her father whispered. ‘How?’

Bruce Shimoda approached the bonfire and sat. ‘I arrived two days ago, David. Moments before you destroyed the Onogoro computer, a stream of information representing me was uploaded to a server, then downloaded to Project Looking Glass, here in Nevada.’

Her father’s voice was incredulous. ‘You’re a back-up?’

‘I don’t have time to answer your questions, David. Not right now. I need to talk to Saskia.’

‘Me?’ she said.

‘Listen.’

Bruce looked into the flames and sighed.

There was once a planet called Onogoro. It was home to many creatures. Some ran, some flew, and some swam. Many of them were copied from another place called Real World.

One day, visitors arrived from Real World. They wore long white coats and did not appreciate the beauty of Onogoro. They only appreciated ‘Cash’. They were Gods. They could change the way a creature grew, where it grew and if it grew at all. They could raise oceans, sink mountains and know the mind of any creature but Themselves.

Thousands of years passed in silence but for the ticking of a great clock that no inhabitant of Onogoro could hear.

Then, one day, the Visitors returned. They brought with them a girl. She was not really a girl, of course. Nothing in Onogoro was real in the same way as the things in Real World. This girl was a long, long series of zeroes and ones. She was just information about how to build a girl.

She ran and played and fell down and bled, but she was not real because only things in Real World were real.

The Visitors observed her and ticked boxes on Their questionnaires. They returned to Real World and reported. Their Leaders nodded in a solemn fashion and handed over more Cash.

The Visitors came back and continued their observations of the girl. They observed as she ran away from predators and searched the planet for company, but They did not help her because she was not real. They watched as she grew into a woman. They watched as she slipped into a stream and drowned.

When the Visitors returned again to their Leaders, the Leaders nodded in a solemn fashion. ‘You must test some more,’ they said. More Cash was produced.

And so it went on.

A hundred years passed. The number of humans—though they were not truly human, they were just long, long strings of zeroes and ones—increased. They developed a language, and clothing, and built huts, and cooked their food. Some died of a mysterious sickness carried by the air; some were eaten. The Visitors observed. They ticked boxes on questionnaires.

Children were born at a steady rate. But these children were not identical to those in Real World. They were born with two heads, or extra-long tongues, or fluorescent fingernails. Some would never learn to talk. Some were born insane and grew into monsters and were banished.

Still the Visitors ticked the boxes on Their questionnaires. But They were less happy with Their job. It was not because of the Cash. The Cash was good. The Visitors were becoming squeamish. They had seen so much suffering that They began to regard the Onogoro people as Real. It was difficult because They knew that the Onogoroers could never be Real. To be Real, you must be born in Real World. After all, that is what Real means.

But Their doubts remained. They told Their Leaders. Their Leaders nodded solemnly, produced more Cash, and told stories of glory in genetic research: a cure to aging, brain disease and anything wrong with Real people. The Onogoro people would give them the information they needed.

And then, one day, a certain boy was born in Onogoro. He was perfect but in all but one respect. He had no eyes. Now, one of the Visitors, Bruce, was also blind. You might not guess that because this person was very cavalier and helped by His great friend, David. In fact, He had never seen Onogoro. It had only been described to Him. When Bruce learned of the child who had been born without eyes, He returned to Real World and shouted at His Leaders.

They did not nod solemnly. Instead, They told Him He was suffering from stress. They told Him that Onogoro people were not real. How could they be Real, when they were just zeroes and ones? They could not be Real because only people in Real World are Real. After all, that is what Real means.

Bruce talked to His friend, David, until They were both in agreement. They decided that the Onogoroers had been treated unfairly. Bruce and David knew that They should stop interfering with their zeroes and ones, but even if They never came back, other visitors (with their taste for Cash) would continue Their work.

They decided to delete Onogoro.

Their plan was complex and took weeks to prepare. Finally, the day came. The hours ticked by. Three hours before They were due to carry out their plan, a terrible explosion blew through Real World. Onogoro was damaged but it was not deleted. It slept.

When the fires were doused and a new morning came, David and Bruce were summoned to Their Leaders. The Cash stopped. The Leaders wanted to jail Them both.

But David and Bruce were innocent. They went free.