Mind Games (8 page)

14

I stand in the door to the hall, not sure I can bring myself to go in. They want us to work in
here
today, after what happened last night? I can’t stop myself: I wedge a chair in the door.

I sit with my group. Anne raises an eyebrow. ‘Feeling a bit claustrophobic today, are you, Luna? That’s not very rational.’

I stare back at her. ‘Are you serious? After last night I didn’t want to risk getting locked in here again.’

They all turn and give me odd looks; no one answers.

‘Locked in here
again
?’ Anne finally says. ‘What are you talking about?’

There are footsteps behind, and I turn. Danny?

‘Can I borrow Luna for a sec?’ he says, and I get up, walk with him away from the others.

‘Do you remember what happened last night?’ he asks.

‘You mean lights out, locked in, panic and fake gunmen? Yep. You too?’

‘Yes. So does Jezzamine. She denies it, but she’s lying.’

‘She kind of likes going with the crowd. From the front, of course.’

‘The others just remember it as if it were a proposed test of a crowd bias that we all talked through. They don’t think it actually happened. What does it mean?’

‘No idea,’ I say, but then there is a noise by the door – the chair stuck in the door is being pulled out of the way, and in steps Dr Rafferty. He looks at the table where I should be, then around until he spots me. Gestures for me to come to him. ‘But somehow I think I’m about to find out.’

‘I’ve been asked to interview you about last night.’ Dr Rafferty gestures at a chair opposite his desk. I sit down.

‘That sounds serious.’

‘It is. Serious. Very serious, actually, Luna.’ His face is grave. ‘First I need you to tell me exactly what happened.’

I consider giving him the fake version that Danny alluded to, the one everyone except us and Jezzamine believes to be true. But what is the point? They’ll know it all. So I do; I tell him the whole story.

‘So you were given a direct instruction to not tell anyone what you could perceive with your senses. You were told that breaching this instruction would result in automatic failure of the RQ test, yet you did it, anyhow. A very irrational decision in view of your instructions and the consequences specified. Can you explain why?’

‘You weren’t there. It was horrible! Everyone was scared. People thought they were dead or dying.’

‘So, would you say it was compassion for others that made you act as you did?’

I nod. It was that, and
fury
at what was being done to everyone. But I don’t say that out loud.

‘I’ll make a case for you, Luna. But I’m not sure they’ll listen.’ He sighs. ‘You can go. Back to your group.’

‘I have a question, too. Why’d they do it? It was cruel.’

He tilts his head. ‘The testing means are within the purview of PareCo under their contract. But whatever you may think of their methods, Luna, they are designed to filter the rational from the dysrational. This is of vital importance to the safety and future of this country and everyone else around the world. It isn’t taken lightly.’ He smiles. ‘Go. Try not to worry too much. Remember what I told you the last time: what happens to you if you fail the RQ?’

‘Nothing happens to me. I’ll be monitored, an appropriate job chosen.’ But now this doesn’t feel reassuring like it did the other day: a job where I can’t make decisions that could harm anyone. One where I’ll always be watched, to make sure my dysrationalia doesn’t manifest. My skin crawls.

I step out of his office, back across the quad. I start to walk towards the hall but then think, stuff it. There is no doubt this is a do not pass go, do not collect two thousand pounds moment. I’m not going back in there.

First: rattle the chains of my prison. I head down one of the passageways between two buildings: is the force field on this time of day? A shimmering light in the air greets me. I try again to push through it, but like the last time I get a bit of the way in and then it’s like it pushes me back out again. There is no escape.

I slip back to the side of the hall, look around: no one is in sight. Climb up to the balcony, curl up on the bench where Gecko and I sat in darkness the night we were both trying to escape. Where I saw the silver swirls in his skin, so like Astra’s that the rush of memory made me run. Does he remember what really happened last night? How upset he was when he thought I was shot? That he put his arms around me.

Somehow it is important that he remembers.

Late that night I return to the balcony. Just as I’m starting to wonder if Gecko ignored the note I slipped him at dinner, I hear quiet steps, below. He climbs up.

‘Heh. You came.’

‘How could I resist?’ He smiles in the moonlight, and moves with more of the swagger he had that first night, when he thought I was staring at him because he was so gorgeous. I flush. I was, then, but this is now, and there is something more important to deal with.

‘Shut up, sit down, and listen.’

He’s startled. Sits down. ‘OK. What is it? I’m listening.’

‘Right. You remember the wall you can see but I can’t – the force field?’

‘Of course.’

‘It is a false image. Put there by Implants. Right?’

‘Yes, but—’

‘So how do you know you aren’t seeing false images from your Implant all the time?’

He shrugs, uneasy. ‘I don’t
know
. Though there’d need to be a good reason for doing it on a large scale – the force field being a wall is a simple, static image that serves a definite purpose. I don’t know that they even
can
do more complex images convincingly.’

‘They can, and they do.’

‘Tell me.’

So, I do. All of it: the lights out, the screaming, people being shot. The instructions I breached. How Gecko thought I was shot in front of him; how Jezzamine could see through the Implant images, and got everyone to overcome them. How only those who could see through the images seemed to remember it as it actually happened the next day. He gets me to describe it over and over again, every detail I can remember, to see if it brings any of it back, but then gets a terribly pained look on his face.

‘Dammit. This is freaky. Who knows when they use our Implants to make us see what they want, when they want? Or even if they don’t, worse: to change what we remember about things that happened, afterwards. The really weird thing is that if I try to remember what really happened last night, it’s like my head hurts, my thoughts slide away from it. I can’t. But I can think about what you told me about it.’ He shakes his head. ‘And what was the point of that whole thing?’

‘I don’t know. I was thinking it was some sort of rationality test, but it was so random and violent. I can’t see how it tests anything useful.’ I pull my arms in tight around myself. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Why are you apologising?’

‘You were happier not knowing all of this, right?’

‘No. Thank you for telling me the truth.’ He grips my hand tight, but it’s not flirty Gecko now. ‘Now, what am I going to do with it?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Nothing. Everything.’ He shakes his head, and turns back to me. ‘And what about you, Luna? The RQ test is tomorrow morning. Take the test, go home, go to university and live happily ever after. Put all this out of your mind.’

I bristle. ‘That is
so
not happening. Besides, I’ve got
dysrationalia reject
stamped in invisible ink on my forehead right now.’

‘I can’t see it.’ He grins. It is a cloudy night, no stars – no silver around his eye tonight, but I know it’s there. Just like the stamp put on me. I sigh. Lean back into the bench, and he slips an arm around my shoulders.

‘I thought I was so lucky to get this Test appointment. Even though I was scared of flunking. Rafferty told me they were giving me a chance, because of how smart my mother was.’

I feel rather than see him shake his head. ‘Giving you a chance out of the goodness of PareCo’s black corporate hearts?’ He snorts.

‘Well, it sounded good at the time.’

‘It is probably more like this: they are scared of you, Luna.’

‘What? Scared of
me
? What nonsense.’

‘They don’t know who you are or anything about you, because you haven’t got an Implant. That, together with Astra being your mother, made you a risk they needed to investigate.’

‘Oh yes, I’m very frightening to
them
.’

‘Maybe your RQ test will be like my IQ.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I failed the IQ; they said I passed. They said you are failing your RQ. What if it is all smoke and mirrors, and no matter what, we’re both through? Because we’re too dangerous to leave alone.’

‘There go your delusions of grandeur again,’ I say, but this time he laughs. He takes his arm off my shoulders, turns to face me. His smile is a sexy ghost in the darkness.

He leans forward and my breath catches in my throat. His lips brush my forehead, warm and soft.

‘I’m the one who should be apologising.’

‘What for?’

‘I didn’t take you seriously the other day. I should have told you how to get through a force field, but now it’s too late. You’re marked.’

A shiver runs down my spine. ‘So, how do you get through a force field?’

‘Don’t push. As soon as you apply pressure, it pushes back. Just close your eyes and very, very gently become one with it until you get through to the other side.’

‘Become one with a force field? Now you’re making fun.’ But even if I could get through it, is there any point to running away now? Could I get away before they label me, officially? And monitor me for the rest of my life.

‘Tempted to run?’

‘Very. But where would I go?’

‘Already more rational than when I first met you.’ I hit him on the arm. ‘Ouch. But just as violent. Go, get some sleep.
Try
on that RQ test tomorrow, and who knows? Anything may happen. Whether you want it to, or not.’

The next morning we all report to the hall as instructed. Langdon is there.

‘Good morning, everyone! You are probably expecting to do your RQ test now. But I’ve got news for you. You’ve already done it.’

Murmuring quickly spreads through the crowd.

‘Listen, and I’ll explain. We’ve found in the past that some of the very intelligent dysrationalic are adept at giving the answers we want to hear on an RQ test, and some were slipping through our attempts to catch them out. The solution? Reality tests. That has been what has been going on the last few days. All week we’ve being keeping an eye on each and every one of you, how you react in group tasks, to each other, to challenges. This data will be analysed to reach your RQ results.’

Everyone is exchanging glances, nervous thoughts ticking over behind their eyes as they sift through their words and actions over the last few days.

‘Once you leave here today, speaking to anyone about the conduct of the RQ this year breaches the rules and will result in failure. An Implant block will be put in place to prevent inadvertent slips. So now it is time to go and pack your things; transport home has been arranged for everyone. Be ready to leave in an hour. Final test results and placements will be sent through to all of you next week.

‘Good luck!’

We trickle out, go back to our rooms to pack, then wait out front for transport. Gecko’s school is the first to go. He runs over, gives me a quick hug, and is gone. The loss at his absence is sharp. I’ve only known him for what: three days? It feels longer.

Everyone is talking about the RQ while we wait. Many are incredulous that they aren’t being given an actual test; more are nervous how they’ve done, evaluated when they weren’t even aware of what was going on.

Was that gunmen episode all part of this test by stealth?

At least
they
were all where they were supposed to be yesterday, not hiding out on a balcony. At least
they
didn’t breach an instruction with the express penalty being RQ test failure. Rafferty may be trying his best to convince them my reasoning was good.

But I don’t need luck. I need a miracle.

Refusal to believe until proof is given is a rational position; denial of all outside of our own limited experience is absurd.

Annie Besant

15

The door opens as I walk up to it.

‘There you are! How did it all go?’ Sally says.

‘Let me in, and I’ll tell you,’ I say, and she moves out of the way. I come in, dump my bag on the floor and pull the door shut behind me.

‘You’ve not looking happy.’

‘I don’t think I did very well. Results are coming next week. All right?’

She shakes her head, arms crossed. A look on her face that says she expected nothing better. ‘I hope you did everything you could to do well, I really do.’

‘But you don’t believe it, do you? So what does it matter?’ I look around the room and realise what is missing. She’s usually here this time of day, humming in a chair in front of the vid.

‘Where’s Nanna?’

‘In her room. She’s not been that bright while you were away.’

Before she finishes the sentence I’m already halfway up the stairs to Nanna’s door. It’s locked? I grit my teeth and enter the code. She’s in bed, eyes closed.

‘Nanna, Nanna – it’s me, it’s Luna.’

She stirs, doesn’t open her eyes.

Sally follows me in.

‘I’m sorry, Luna. The doctor isn’t happy with how she’s doing. She really needs care all the time now. Your father and I feel that—’

‘No. You are not putting her in an institution.’

‘But Luna—’

‘No. I’ll look after her. I shouldn’t have left her to you.’

Sally shakes her head, and leaves.

I stay with Nanna all afternoon. She stirs a few times; her eyes open and look at me at one point, and she smiles, but doesn’t really wake up.

It’s early evening when Jason opens the door. ‘Mum says to tell you dinner in five.’

‘That gives us time to talk. Did you miss me, monkey?’ He comes in a few steps but then stops, hesitant. ‘It’s OK. Come in. She won’t bite. But I might!’ I grab him in a headlock, twist him around, and he giggles.

‘We need to have a serious word,’ I say, and let him go. ‘Do you go to school with a boy, second name Taylor? Older sister Jezzamine?’

‘Yeah. That’s Ollie. Why?’

‘Did you tell him about Nanna? About how she freaked out the day Melrose was here for lunch?’

He doesn’t say anything, but his face says it all. I sigh. In a twisted kind of way, I’d almost hoped that Jezzamine was lying. Now I know how wrong I had things with Melrose, and it really hurts to think how awful I was to her. I should have believed her, shouldn’t I?

‘Jason, it’s not good to talk about family to other people like that, OK? He told his sister, who made a big deal about it and told loads of people. In a not nice way.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘No dramas. Just don’t do it again. Deal?’

‘Deal.’

Some things are best not put off. Sally’s plugged in and Jason is asleep: it’s time.

I stare dubiously at the small box in my hand,
Anti-nausea Drugs
printed across the front. I’m scared to try them, scared not to. Could it
really
be this simple?

My PareCo PIP is emblazoned, like they all are, with the source of the company name:
Parasensory Artificial Reality Enhancement
. The big breakthrough so many lifetimes ago that made perfect virtual experiences possible for the first time.
Realtime is just like reality, but better! Be who you want to be; go where you want to go
.
With PareCo
. So the advertising went. But never for me. The dizziness and nausea have always pulled me away, made me feel separated from myself – inhuman.

I swallow two with water, then wait a while in case they take time to kick in. I’d eaten as little as I could at dinner without arousing Sally’s wrath, and I’m nervous. I’m not anxious to repeat how sick I was the last time.

I turn out all the lights in my room, and block the hall light from coming in under the door with a jumper. I feel my way to the PIP. Right, this is it. I settle back into the sofa, feel the warm fuzz of the neural net reaching out, reaching in, enclosing me.

The Realtime hallway appears at my feet as always. I step forwards. I should visit Dad, but this has to come first.

Melrose’s door is still unlocked to me: at least that is something. I stand outside it for a while, staring at the door. I’m not feeling nauseous? It is all kind of weird still, in that I am standing here, and lying there in my room, and aware of both. But I’m not having to breathe in and out to calm my stomach the whole time. Could these tablets actually be working?

I hear low voices and laughter through the door. She’s there, and she’s not alone. Maybe I should message her to meet me on her own?

No; she might ignore a message. Just get it over with.

I knock, open the door. Look in.

Melrose is curled up on a huge beanbag with Hex, arms wrapped around each other. I don’t think they’re expecting company. They jump and start to spring apart, and I turn away and talk to the wall.

‘Sorry. I’ll…um…come back later.’ I start backing out.

‘Luna? Is that really you?’ Melrose says.

‘Yes. It’s me.’

‘You’re
plugged in
?’

‘Apparently so.’

‘Don’t go. What do you want?’

‘I just wanted to apologise. I should have believed you when you said it wasn’t you who told Jezzamine. I’m really sorry.’

She’s standing up, facing me now. Hands on hips. ‘I heard Jezzamine told you it wasn’t me. So you believed her, but you wouldn’t believe me.’

‘No. Not really. I mean, Jason backed her up. But either way, I’m really, truly sorry.’

‘Wow.’ She looks at Hex, still on the beanbag.

‘Double wow,’ he says.

‘What?’

‘Not only have you apologised multiple times, you’ve done it
here
. You must be really sorry to come here to say it.’

‘I am,’ I say miserably. ‘Sorry, that is. I’ll go now.’ I start backing towards the door, convinced she’ll change the locks the second I’m gone.

‘Don’t be such a dys,’ she says. ‘Stay.’

‘You’re sure? I mean,’ I look between them, ‘you want to be alone, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ says Hex, and she gives him a look. ‘I mean, no! Please stay. Here, make yourself comfortable.’ And he gets up and pulls a sofa out of nowhere and plonks it down. Advantages of dating a Hacker? Instant furniture upgrades. I look around me more now and realise there is no ceiling– it is a night sky, but not like the real thing. The stars are so huge and bright it’s like we’re out there, in space.

‘How’d you do with the RQ this week?’ Hex asks. Someone had to ask, didn’t they?

I slump back into the sofa. ‘Totally rubbish.’

‘Don’t always think the worst,’ Melrose admonishes. I raise an eyebrow. ‘You do!’ She throws a pillow at me. ‘You never change. You even look exactly like you always do here,’ she observes.

‘Damn. I’m not magically virtually pretty?’

‘You don’t need to be, you already are,’ she says, but
yeah right
.

Melrose and Hex are both themselves, but like turned up a few factors. His shoulders are broader; her waist is narrower. And her skin has the most incredible glow. Or maybe that is just from the serious stuff going on on that beanbag I interrupted.

‘Do I really look just the same?’ I say, and Hex pulls a mirror out of the air. ‘It is most disconcerting when you do things like that,’ I say. I look into the mirror, and do a double take. I am me, exactly as always, but there is silver swirling around my left eye. Silver Hacker marks, like my mother had. Like Gecko.

‘Hex,
how
do people look different here than they do in real life?’

‘Without getting too technical? It’s keyed into how you want to look, the things you want to be different about yourself in the real world. So you must be self-satisfyingly smug about your appearance.’

I glare at him, then look back at the mirror. So, no surprises there: I want to look like the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen – my mother. And they obviously can’t see the silver swirls that I can see, or they would have said so. I stare at the mirror, resisting the urge to trace them around my eye.

‘Give it a rest,’ Melrose says. She takes the mirror, hands it to Hex and it disappears.

‘Lemonade?’ Hex says, and hands me one out of thin air.

‘It’s not cold, Hex.’

‘Damn. I’m slipping.’ He takes it and hands it back again. Ice cold.

‘
How
do you do that stuff?’

‘I’m magic,’ Hex says. Melrose smacks him with a pillow, and it turns into a cloud of feathers that then vanish.

‘Show-off,’ she says. ‘Answer the question.’

‘OK, you asked for it. In real terms I’m hacking PareCo. I’m manipulating infinite strands of virtual time and space, changing what you can feel and see. Kind of like spinning a sensory web with code.’

‘So none of it is really here. Kind of like we’re not really here, in a physical sense.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Sure. Thanks for clearing that up. Since you’re so clever, how do you think
you
did on the RQ?’ I ask.

Hex shrugs. ‘OK, I think. I—’ And he stops, a kind of pained look on his face, then shrugs again.

‘Can’t you talk about it?’

‘It’s weird. We sort of can, but can’t,’ Melrose says.

‘They said they put an Implant block on it. Can you hack around it?’ I say to Hex.

‘Haven’t tried,’ he answers, and frowns. ‘Focusing on it gives me a headache; it’s like when I try, my thoughts slide away from it.’

‘Does you being here mean you’re not a Refuser any more?’ Melrose asks.

‘I don’t know what it means. But I’m not changing anything at school. Not when the year is nearly over.’ Not when it would make Goodwin so happy to think she finally crushed Refusing out of me.

‘Time check?’ Melrose says.

‘Five minutes,’ Hex answers.

‘Till what?’

‘There’s a midnight party tonight: celebrating the tests being over.’

‘At midnight? Don’t you ever sleep?’

They exchange a look. ‘Don’t need to,’ Hex says. ‘Your body is suspended in the PIP, right? More restful than sleep.’

Not sure that’ll work for me, since my body is most definitely not asleep, and my PIP is a basic model: no life support. I’m doing my best to ignore my body, but the awareness is there all the time. Even though I’m not nauseous with these tablets in my system, if I don’t concentrate on being
here
and deliberately block out
there
, it still feels all wrong.

‘You must come to the party,’ Melrose says. Somehow they convince me, and we time ourselves to be twenty minutes fashionably late. My stomach feels funny and I’m starting to worry, wondering how long it’ll be before the ANDs wear off and I start spewing all over them. Maybe it is just nervousness bubbling in my stomach and nothing worse.

We head down Melrose’s Realtime hallway. She’s a group admin of the school party, and sends me an invite so the door will let me in. On the way, she has so many doors: friends, groups, games. The trail of her life since we stopped hanging out. The other side of things I know nothing about. There is an ache inside at all the things I’ve missed. What if all I needed was these tablets, and I could have been one of them?

We reach the door at the end of her hall. Hex pulls it open, holds it as Melrose and I step through. There is a sea breeze, fresh on our faces; surf crashes on the shore of an endless stretch of the
most
beautiful sandy beach. A virtual beach party? It might be midnight in the real world, but here the sun is shining, and feels good on my skin. Bare skin? I look down; there’s been a wardrobe change as we stepped through – Melrose and I are now in bathing suits, colourful sarongs tied around our waists. Flowers around our necks. Hex is in wild rainbow board shorts. He frowns and they change to black.

‘Come on; I need a drink,’ he says, and we start walking across the sand towards everyone at a beach bar.

‘Something’s wrong; it’s too quiet,’ Melrose says. When we get there, a huge crowd from school are huddled together, but no one is in party mode, no one is happy. Some of them are crying.

‘What is it? What’s going on?’ Melrose says.

One of her friends comes over to us. Her eyes are red.

‘I can’t believe it, I just can’t. She was there just this morning, and – and—’ Her words catch.

‘Who? What’s happened?’ Melrose says.

Another girl looks up. ‘It’s Jezzamine. She’s died in a car accident.’