Déjà Vu

Chapter Eight

David surfaced in the interstitial moments, gasping, his vision blurred. The memories of childhood holidays around the beaches of Padstow—deep water—were hard against him. He tried to wipe his eyes but his wrists were bound to his chair. He slumped asleep. Woke again. Slept. Troughs of anxiety. Peaks of fear. David rolled through the minutes.

‘David Proctor,’ said McWhirter, as though distracted by a certain music in his name.

A nurse.

A nurse moved away from David’s arm, where she had stopped to tend something.

To adjust.

A drip.

‘Mc,’ David said. ‘Whirter.’ His voice was crumbly, flawed.

‘That will be all.’

‘What will be?’

‘I’m not talking to you.’

David felt the nurse leave the room. She closed the door with the care of a butler.

‘I feel sick.’

‘The old research centre is not a healthy place to linger.’

‘No, sick of you.’

McWhirter laughed, and David focused on his moustache. Brush-like.

‘Look around,’ said McWhirter.

He was in an empty luggage store. Still in the hotel, then. A blank table separated him from his interrogator. He noted the clear, hanging bag and tried to guess which chemicals it contained, but the only memories at his recall were sentimental. His father painting the house with a brush like McWhirter’s moustache. Two-tone. Black and white. His daughter as a girl, drawing a house on sugar paper.

‘Beautiful, Jenny. Do you think you can draw it without taking your crayon from the paper? Good girl. And can you do it again without tracing the same line twice. Jenny? Hey, clever girl.’

‘How long have I been in here?’

‘Let’s start at the beginning. Why did you come, Proctor?’

‘You invited me as a consultant.’

‘Why? Isn’t there another reason?’

‘To talk to Bruce. To find out why he came. Is he still down there?’

‘Yes. Why?’

Jenny asking, ‘Why?’ and David answering over and over, each explanation a cheerful retreat, until he backed into atoms, to orbits, quarks, the Higgs field.

‘I’ll tell you everything if you’ll tell me one thing.’

‘Let me guess. You want to know if the research centre has been evacuated.’

A sucking, heavy despondency pulled at him. What did McWhirter know? What drugs had they given him?

‘Why?’ asked Jenny.

‘Yes.’

‘Looking for this?’

McWhirter held Ego in his fingers.

‘Fuck.’

‘My security staff found enough explosive in the core of this computer to finish the demolition job on your laboratory. You weren’t happy with the destruction you caused the first time. You wanted a second go. But why this? You would have killed your friend, man.’

‘The Onogoro computer needs to be destroyed.’

‘Listen to me, David. See that drip? You’re on the cusp of irreversible brain damage. You’ll feel the lights going out, one by one. Now. Why destroy Onogoro?’

‘To stop…’

‘Concentrate. Who?’

‘Hartfield.’

‘What does it have to do with Hartfield?’

‘And to kill Bruce.’

‘Bruce is your friend.’

‘Dead anyway. Viruses.’

McWhirter flashed his knuckles across David’s forehead.

‘Wake up. How did you expect to get away with it?’

David licked his lips sleepily. ‘Relied on a weakness.’

‘What weakness?’

‘You.’ David opened his eyes. Woke in this gap between moments. ‘As head of security in 2003, you failed. Now, in 2023, you will fail again.’

‘Talk to me.’

‘You’re a one-trick pony. I knew you would order a fast search of the laboratory, find the card, and wave it in front of me. But think. How could I, above ground, expect to communicate with a computer in the research centre?’

‘A timer,’ said McWhirter.

‘Then why would I ask if the centre had been evacuated? The logical solution, Colonel, is two computers. The Ego unit in your hand has already interfaced with the local ELF transmitter. Now it is ready to trigger the second Ego unit I hid somewhat more expertly. Is this not true, Ego?’

‘Yes, Professor,’ said the card.

McWhirter held his stare. ‘You have control, Proctor. I concede that. Now easy. Think about it.’

‘Get fucked.’

Ego bleeped. ‘Ignition signal transmitted, Professor.’

‘David, you understand that nothing will be the same again?’

‘I understand.’

The explosion came like a croak of thunder. The table buzzed against the metal band of McWhirter’s watch. He did not move his eyes from those of David, and when a uniformed officer returned with news of smoke from the evacuation shaft, McWhirter spoke in his ear before resuming the interrogation.

The minutes collected. David watched the questions pass. They did not touch him. He smiled and remembered the questions of his daughter.

Jenny asking, ‘Why?’