far corners I could see what looked like a hospital bed surrounded by all sorts of equipment. To my right there was a doorway. I checked the open space but did not advance further into it. I headed straight through the doorway.
I found myself in a comfortable living space. It looked to be set up for four people, but again there was nobody here. I guess this was where the staff lived. It also looked like they’d left recently. My mind screamed trap, but I was in here now so I had to check.
Back out into the main area of the warehouse. I didn’t want to think too much about the dark stains on the floor or the racks of horrific-looking instruments on the wall. Still checking all around, I headed towards the bed.
I suppose the emaciated mess of scar tissue covered by medpak-controlled medgels looked a little like Vicar. They’d properly worked him over, but it looked like it had been done a while ago and he’d just been left there to rot. Along with the various life-support equipment that was prolonging his existence, I noticed a sense machine next to the bed. A cable ran from the machine to one of the four plugs at the base of his neck. Sense technology was the ultimate in interrogation/torture technology. Any torture that could be imagined could be carried out and drawn out. An hour could seem like a year. And that’s before they start to play the head-fuck games – is it real or is it sense immersion? Made me wonder why they bothered with the physical stuff. Then again, I reckoned you had to be messed up in the head to do this sort of work. Maybe they just enjoyed it.
‘Jakob?’
I don’t mind admitting that I nearly jumped out of my skin and shot Vicar. The voice was tinny, modulated. It came from a speaker clipped to the head of the bed. I wasn’t sure whether it genuinely sounded like Vicar or I just wanted it to sound like him.
‘Vicar?’ I asked uncertainly.
‘I’m sorry, Jakob.’
Sorry? ‘What for?’
‘I talked, Jakob.’
‘Everyone talks, you know that.’
‘I held out as long as I could.’
‘It’s okay, we’re going to get you out of here.’ Yeah sure. I had no idea of how to even start going about that.
‘It wasn’t very long. They were hurting me.’
‘Don’t worry about it, man.’
He must either have been tranced into an isolated network or he was talking to me from inside a sense programme. That didn’t make a lot of sense. If they’d tortured him or just imprisoned his mind, why provide him with external communications?
‘I need to talk to you, Jakob.’
It was weird that he hadn’t quoted Revelations once.
‘We’ll get you sorted. Should I unplug you? From the sense machine, I mean.’
‘No, I need you to come in here.’
I stopped. Was this the trap?
‘There’s only me here, Vicar. I don’t think that’s a very good idea.’
‘Please, we need to talk. You need to know about Operation Spiral.’ Operation Spiral had been a joint US National Security Agency and UK Government Communications Headquarters project designed to hack Their comms structure. In effect to hack Their hive mind, not that it had been properly understood at the time. Thing is, it was old news for me.
‘I took the lock burner out of my anus,’ Vicar said.
I stopped my inspection of the medical equipment. That was a weird thing to bring up. He was right, the lock burner that I’d used to get into the cargo airlock on the Santa Maria during the mutiny had been in his arse. It was something that Vicar would definitely know. On the other hand, if he’d been extensively interrogated then his mind was an open book. But then why would an interrogator ask about that or even know enough to ask about that?
‘Okay,’ I said carefully. ‘So?’
‘So I need to speak to you, in here.’
‘It’s really not safe. Where are your interrogators?’
‘I’ve no idea. I’ve no idea of time. I’ve little idea of what’s real or not. In many ways nothing’s changed. Demons still roam the stars and you still owe me. In here. Now.’ It was starting to sound more like Vicar.
I found a doubled-ended jack and plugged one end into the sense machine. I looked at the other end. I hadn’t used sense since this whole mess started. I was trying to get to like the real world. It was a hard world to like. I reached behind my neck and felt the disconcerting click of the jack sliding into a plug embedded in my own flesh.
He was ready for me. I appeared as a very well-rendered icon. It was just me as I’d looked on the Santa Maria before this had all started. I was a bit thinner, a bit unhealthier-looking. I didn’t like it. There was even a pack of virtual cigarettes in the pocket of my combat trousers. I thought about having one because it wouldn’t hurt, but it would just make me want one back in the real world.
He looked sane and well. He still had his beard but it was trimmed, as was his hair. The ugly integral military computer that normally stuck out of half his head was missing. He was still dressed as a priest. We were in a church but it wasn’t like the one on the corner of Commercial and High Street in Dundee. This one was open and airy. Sunlight streamed in through huge stained-glass windows. The sunlight illuminated the motes of dust that filled the atmosphere. The walls were undressed stone. It looked very old and felt peaceful.
Over the altar in place of a cross was a constantly changing fractal spiral pattern. All the stained-glass windows showed variations of the same scene. Some sort of mighty beast, a dragon I guessed, with many heads. There were crowns and horns in the images and the beast seemed to be causing the stars to fall. As I watched I realised the stained glass was animated. In the final panel there was a glowing woman. She had the face of Morag.
‘I found your demons,’ I said to him.
‘They found me.’
‘What did they get?’
‘Everything I knew of relevance, little about you and her, but everything about our attempt to make God.’
‘Where are we?’ I couldn’t think of anything else to say and Vicar was just looking at me.
‘A church near where I grew up in Lincolnshire. It used to be a Templar church.’
‘Who?’
‘Warrior monks.’
‘Like the Wait?’
‘I don’t know who that is.’
‘I mean, where are we?’
‘Oh, we’re in the sense machine. They automated my interrogation using a simple AI program. More like a computer game where you’re constantly the victim. Very crude. I made a sanctum.’
‘You hacked your way out of your own interrogation?’ I asked, impressed. Obviously you’re not supposed to be able to do that. I guessed the God conspirators really were among the best hackers in the world.
‘To a degree.’
‘Where are your guards?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps I was forgotten.’
‘Nothing gets forgotten any more. God’s always there to remind us.’
‘Did God work?’ Vicar asked.
‘Define “work”?’
‘Tell me everything.’
I glanced around the church. I don’t know why, habit really; after all, we were in part of a sense program. I wouldn’t see them coming. ‘I don’t think I’ve got much time.’
‘More than me.’
‘Can’t we get you out of here first?’
