‘In here sirs,’ she said.
Once they were inside, she locked the door behind them, plunging them momentarily into tar-thick blackness before she hit a light switch. A row of icy fluorescent globes flickered to life, revealing a long, narrow passage stretching down to the end of the room. On either side of the corridor were rows of steel doors, each fitted with a small one-way glass window. Ms Fang flicked on another switch, and lights in each of the cells came on.
‘It’s one-way glass on the door windows,’ she said. ‘We can see inside the cells, but the subjects can’t see us. Come, follow me.’ The men strolled along the corridor behind Ms Fang, listening to her speak as they glanced into each cell they passed. ‘All of these subjects have successfully undergone the procedure. Their brains are equipped with fully functioning D-Immz chips, which are connected to our fledgling network.’
Ms Fang stopped in front of one particular cell and beckoned the men over to the door. Mr Wang and Mr Ma walked over to the cell and took turns to peer through the window. What they saw was a small, bare concrete cell, unfurnished aside from a toilet and a sink in the farthest corner. Upon a grubby straw mattress on the floor a thin, balding man in his late thirties was sprawled out. He was naked aside from a pair of grubby underpants, and his body was inked with black, poorly done tattoos from head to toe. The light was rousing him from his slumber; he was beginning to stir.
‘This one,’ said Mr Wang, pointing a finger at the sleeping man, ‘who is he?’
‘He’s a low-ranking triad member and a convicted murderer,’ Ms Fang replied flatly. ‘One of the many death row prisoners we have been using for our human trials. Shall I show you what our device is capable of?’
‘Please do.’
She reached over to the wall next to the door and opened a small panel, revealing a control panel. With a quickly suppressed flicker in her eyes, which could have been some sort of sadistic delight, she pressed a button. Sprinklers in the ceiling started spraying the man with cold water. He jumped up and scrambled to his feet, yelling and cursing with anger and surprise as he retreated to a corner of his cell.
‘The subject is now fully awake,’ Ms Wang announced, shutting off the water.
The man peered up at the ceiling, his eyes wide with fright, and he crept back against the wall, cowering like a hunted creature, his eyes darting wildly from side to side.
‘Now that he’s awake, I’ll show you what the MANMO-M Condor smartphone can do in conjunction with the chip in his brain.’ She unlocked another panel on the wall and took out a MANMO-M Condor phone. ‘This phone is calibrated to this man’s chip, and his chip only. Every phone and every chip are calibrated with a unique sequence, so they cannot be used on anyone but their owners.’ She booted up the phone, and, when it was ready, she showed the men the app that was used to control the sleep function. ‘I’ll set his sleep period for five minutes. And … done. I just sent a signal to the chips to stimulate the part of the brain that will induce a state of sleep.’
Despite the man’s obvious state of fear and paranoia, as soon as Ms Fang hit the button he yawned and began to look visibly calmer. He shuffled over to his straw mattress and lay down, and within a few seconds he was snoring.
‘Sleep is typically activated in less than a minute for almost all subjects,’ Ms Fang said, speaking with clinical coldness.
Mr Wang nodded, clearly impressed. Mr Ma simply stared intently at the prisoner, his face set in a stony and almost brutal expression of masochistic intensity.
‘At this point,’ Ms Fang said, ‘the network is only in its embryonic stage. We’ve been able to connect all of the human subjects on a small proto-network, but, of course, functionality is very limited. Each man in this lab is able to communicate with and interact with the other subjects in this facility in their dreams. This occurs in perceived real time, simply in terms of saving and then replaying messages when a subject enters the “InDream” state. Mostly, however, these men seem to dislike communicating with each other. They all come from different prisons, and most are quite antisocial, and are generally not predisposed towards making new friends.’
‘The point we are most impressed with is that you’ve got the system working smoothly. That in itself is an utter marvel.’
If Ms Fang was flattered at all by this compliment, it did not register on her marble-cool face.
‘Let me show you what our current network is capable of. We have decided to focus on two main areas for the purpose of this element, two extremely primal areas: sex and violence. We’ve created one network in which our programmers have holographically captured popular pornographic film actors and actresses’ bodies, in addition to their mannerisms, vocalisations and patterns of movement. The programmers have also mapped out the actors’ skin tones, hair textures and eye colours, and have classified their skin and breath scents on a scale that is graded on increments of a few hundred thousand, while the exact tones of their voices have been digi-captured from—’
‘Excuse me for interrupting,’ Mr Wang said, ‘but are you saying you’ve essentially replicated the porn stars exactly as they are in real life, to enable these convicts to interact with them in their dreams?’
‘That is exactly what we’ve done, yes. Because it
