The computers looked slightly different from the ones she was used to, but they displayed the familiar GunHo logo. Of the three machines currently not in use she chose the one furthest from the corridor that ran through the open-plan office. She sat down and entered the new membership number she found in the promotional material Paula had given to her. No use entering her old number, the one she had learned by heart, so often had she typed it in.
After a perceptible pause, the program went into its start-up routine.
Teresa watched the display screens flick from one to the next, and she realized that between this day and the time some eight months in the future when she had been regularly using this system, there must have been a round of upgrades. The software looked much the same as the program she was used to, but it was obviously running at about half the speed. The keyboard and monitor also looked slightly different from the ones she remembered. She had always felt intimidated by the ferocious speed with which the software responded, and this earlier version actually suited her rather better.
The program paused, displaying the principal menu of options. Teresa glanced over it, and felt, without being able to be certain, that there were not as many options as she was used to. No matter.
Now then. She had to think.
She was faced with two explanations of her present dilemma, both based on impossibility.
All the evidence was that she was now living eight months in the past. Even as she stared blankly at the monitor, yet another piece of evidence for this swam into her awareness: the program always displayed the day’s date in a tiny box at the bottom right of the display, and according to this the date now was June 3. The day of Grove’s massacre.
To accept this would mean accepting that she had moved back through time. There were the dates on her credit card, the change in weather, the many small differences at the ExEx building. In the February of her real life, Paula Willson had told her that membership of the Bulverton ExEx facility was almost at capacity, and that they were planning to close the place to new members. A few minutes ago, the same Paula had pressed on her all the paraphernalia of a sales or membership drive.
But the whole concept of travelling back through time was, for Teresa, almost impossible to accept. She had never understood it on a philosophical level, and anyway she felt that all around her was practical disproof.
If entering the Grove scenario, then leaving it, had taken her eight months into the past via the medium of Gerry Grove’s disgusting consciousness, how come she had turned up here in the same clothes she was wearing when she left the hotel this morning? How come she had the same shoulder-bag? Carried the same credit cards? Had the same tissue in her pocket when she needed to mop her face, the first time to wipe away the rain of a freezing day, the second time the perspiration of a heatwave?
More to the point, how had she lost her ExEx identification card, if Grove had not taken it when he needed to?
That wasn’t consistent, though. The cards were electronically coded: when Grove gave his (or hers) to Paula, the receptionist had found records of Grove on her computer.
Teresa gave up that line of thought.
Her rental car had also disappeared, and she gave up on that too. All scenarios had inconsistencies, brick walls where you expected an Underground station to be.
It must mean she was in extreme experience, not living this as part of her own life. But it was no longer the scenario of Grove’s day of murder: that was the scenario she had consciously entered, the one that had placed her within his mind, behind his eyes, as a witness to his crimes. She was herself, not Grove in any form.
Although the hyperreality of a scenario no longer surprised her, she had never been able to take for granted the sheer wealth of detail, the tiny plausible details, the irrelevancies, the unexpected and the accidental. All these underlined the sense of a heightened reality.
She could feel it now: looking around, she sought evidence of unexpected detail, and instantly found it.
The nail of her left index finger was broken: she had snagged it the night before when opening a drawer in her bedroom at the White Dragon, and had only had time to smooth down the break with an emery board. It was the same now as it had been this morning. Outside the cubicle in which she was sitting was a Swiss cheese plant in a pot, and it clearly needed watering or a spell in direct daylight. Three of the leaves were turning yellow, and about to fall off. On the far side of the open-plan office, barely visible above the partition walls, was a fluorescent light with a strip that needed replacing: at odd moments it flickered quickly, a constant minor distraction at the edge of vision. A dropped or discarded ballpoint pen lay on the floor behind her chair; she had not dropped it, it was not hers, and until this moment she had not even noticed it.
(But moments later she realized that the complimentary pen Paula had given her was no longer where she had placed it, that she must have knocked it off the desk, that the pen was after all hers. Details were maddening.)
Of course, such evidence would also underline the condition of reality, but Teresa had advanced beyond that.
Wherever she was, it was no longer the objectively real world.
But if it was a scenario, why had she been unable to abort it?
‘Do you need a hand with running the software?’
A technician, a young man Teresa had never seen before, had paused while he passed the cubicle.
‘No…I’m just trying to make up my mind what I’d like to do.’
‘I’m here to help you, if you require it,’ he said. ‘You looked as if you were having trouble running the program.’
‘It’s fine. Thanks.’ He could have no conception of the trouble she was having.
She waited until he had gone, then narrowed her eyes and again tried to think.
The rules had changed. When Grove entered the Shandy scenario, all the standard procedures for going into and out of extreme experience had been left behind. This, presumably, was what Ken Mitchell had meant by crossover: he described it as false memory syndrome, post hoc invention, interpretative spin. When she aborted the scenario she had imagined herself into existence here: there had been no corporeal body called Teresa Simons in a simulation cubicle, here, in the ExEx facility, on June 3. Yet she had returned from the Shandy scenario, and still was here.
The logic of the scenarios had been destroyed by Grove. The linearity Ken Mitchell held to be so essential had been given a third dimension, made matrical.
She began to browse as she had done so often before, but whereas previously she had been impelled mostly by curiosity now she had a purpose. She was looking for the area of the database called Memorative Principals, and recalled that when she had been searching for the extra information about Shandy it had not been accessible from any of the main option menus. She tried to remember how she had done it then, but saw nothing that reminded her. Back at the main screen of options, she finally noticed a small box in the bottom corner: Run Macro. She clicked on this, and to her relief saw yet another huge menu of options. One of these was Connect Memorative Principals.
She typed in ‘Teresa Ann Simons’, added ‘Woodbridge’ and ‘Bulverton’ as defining physical locations, and clicked to see what would happen. Nothing happened. Not even the first scenario she had ever used, the target practice, was on file. But that, of course, was then. Back then, some time in the future, next February.
She typed in ‘Gerry Grove’, added ‘Bulverton’ as a location, and then as an afterthought put in ‘Gerald Dean Grove’ as an alternative name. After a perceptible pause, the computer said that Grove appeared in three scenarios. Teresa ran the list of them. Two were shown as having no hyperlinks; there was a similarity to their code numbers that made them look as if they were the same kind of thing. The third looked different, and Teresa clicked on the video icon.
It was in a car, parked on the seafront at Bulverton. Sunlight poured in from the direction of the sea. Hands were tightening a hot-wire connection ben
eath the dash. A figure stopped beside the car, shading the flood of sunlight.
The video preview ended.
A familiar sensation rose in Teresa: that of imminent overload, constantly diverting her to new matters. The program was showing her more information than she could take in. The sequence she had just watched was the opening of the scenario she experienced with Grove: the drug deal, the theft of the car, the taking of the guns from his house…
This was the scenario she had been in, and had eventually aborted, the one that had trapped her within its time frame. Yet this scenario could not possibly exist today, the day on which the events actually occurred!
Meanwhile, what of the other two scenarios? She hadn’t seen them in connection with Grove, in earlier searches of the program.
She clicked on one, and immediately recognized it. Grove had used the range for target practice; the video preview reminded her of the one occasion she had used the same facility. She let the preview run to its end, then clicked on the other and watched that as well. It was much the same. She looked at the back view of Grove’s stocky figure with dislike.
The range itself did look slightly different, though, from the one where she had recorded her own target practice. Noticing an information button marked Location Code, she clicked on it and saw a narrative breakdown of part of the reference number. This identified the range in use as being the GunHo Licensed Extreme Experience facility, in Whitechapel Street, Maidstone, Kent.
She thought, I’m losing my grip on this. There’s too much information coming at me.
Grove had said to Paula, as he checked into this ExEx facility, inside the scenario, folded back somewhere in her memory, Grove had said to Paula that he had used the Maidstone range, presumably implying that he did not normally come to this place.
Why had he said Maidstone? During her researches Teresa had read every available scrap of information about Grove, and she didn’t recall a single mention of that Kentish town in his context.
She knew he had said Maidstone because she had prompted him to. She had been wondering how he was going to lie his way past Paula. He had reached into his back pocket and found a plastic ID card that had satisfied the girl, and whose identifying number was acceptable to the computer. Teresa must have inspired the off-the-cuff reference to Maidstone herself, perhaps dredging it up from the memory of Paula telling her about the waiting period for membership.
She looked away from the screen, with its burden of unexpected information. She stared at the keyboard, lightly running her fingers round the edge of the plastic case, trying to clear her mind. She thought, Any more of this and I really will be lost.
In the end, the information about Maidstone was irrelevant. It led up a blind alley, or at least into an alley into which she didn’t want to venture.
She clicked back through the screens, to the one where she could search for links between principals. Once again she entered her own name and the defining locations, and the two versions of Grove’s name, and waited to see what would happen.
There are 4 hyperlink(s) connecting ‘Teresa Ann Simons’ to ‘Gerry/Gerald Dean Grove’. Display? Yes/No.
Four links had come into being, where none had existed a few moments earlier. Again with the feeling that her ability to understand was slipping away from her, Teresa clicked on Yes.
The first new link between her and Grove neither surprised nor worried her: it was to Shandy and Willem in their lustful clinch under the glare of the film lights. Neither did the second: this was Grove’s deadly ramble around Bulverton.
It was the last two links that frightened her.
She now appeared to be connected with his target practice sessions in the Maidstone range. The list gave the dates and the code identified the location; the tiny video frames repeated what she had watched for herself only a few minutes earlier.
Had the act of briefly previewing those two scenarios somehow activated them, and linked her to them? But she had not actually entered the scenarios; she had merely viewed the video clips! In earlier sessions with the program she had previewed videos, without creating a hyperlink. It was only a computer program, a glorified card index system.
She clicked on the video icon of the Shandy scenario, saw the young woman go yet again through her awkward movements as she tried to ease her uncomfortable clothes. When it finished, a new message was on the screen:
There are 72 hyperlink(s) connecting ‘Teresa Ann Simons’ to ‘Gerry/Gerald Dean Grove’. Display? Yes/No.
Seventy-two, when only a few moments ago there had been four? Dreading what might be happening, while still not comprehending it, Teresa again clicked on Yes.
The list unfolded slowly before her: she was hyperlinked to Grove’s target practice sessions in Maidstone, and he to hers in Bulverton. In addition they were both hyperlinked to Shandy and Willem, Elsa Jane Durdle, William Cook…
She moved the mouse pointer rapidly to Cancel, and clicked. The listing ceased at once and the screen cleared. A feeling gripped her that Grove was insinuating himself into her life. She had a bleak, vivid impression of his consciousness, somewhere in virtual reality, moving through every experience she had ever had, linking himself with her, crossing over from his blighted life to hers.
After a long pause, the screen once again showed the message in which the links were declared. It now said:
There are 658 hyperlink(s) connecting ‘Teresa Ann Simons’ to ‘Gerry/Gerald Dean Grove’. Display? Yes/No.
Where would this end? With every minute, more links were being added and at what felt like an exponential rate of growth. Once again, she clicked on Yes, and stared at the screen with dread.
The list scrolled sedately up the screen, with some of the items taking longer to appear than others.
Many of them were familiar: Grove’s two target practice recordings in Maidstone, and the one of herself in Bulverton. Shandy and Willem were there again (five in total, but freshly linked to another one hundred and sixty-five unlisted scenarios). Some scenarios were new, but unsurprising: the Mercer family had thirteen scenarios linked to the shooting of Shelly. Others did surprise her. Who for instance was Katherine Denise Devore (ten links), and what was her connection either with Teresa or with Grove? Dave Hartland’s name unexpectedly appeared (twenty-seven times), and there were sixteen others, in which Amy Lorraine Hartland, née Colwyn, and Nicholas Anthony Surtees were named as memorative principals. Rosalind Williams appeared on the list (four), then Elsa Jane Durdle (fifteen; why had some been added since she was last here?).
To Teresa it seemed as if a patchwork version of her life was being assembled inside the computer.
She clicked on the first of Elsa Durdle’s video icons, and saw the swaying palm trees, the glowing sunlight, the shining parked cars. So much had that simple scenario meant to her, because it had first given her the idea that she was free to explore, that like a child returning to an old toy for comfort she was tempted to select it once again. She wanted to drive through Southern California in Elsa’s big comfortable car, listening to Duke Ellington and Artie Shaw on the radio, watching the town move away and re-form around her as she travelled the endless highways of memory and mind.
Continue with 658 hyperlink(s) connecting ‘Teresa Ann Simons’ to ‘Gerry/Gerald Dean Grove’? Yes/No.
Teresa clicked on No. She scrolled back through the list, and paused on the name Katherine Denise Devore. Who the hell was this woman, that she was suddenly significant to her?
She thought hard: Katherine, Kath, Kathy, Kathie, Kate, Katie? Had she ever known anyone with these names? Or Denise? Anyone at school, for instance? Teresa had repeatedly changed schools as her father was moved around from base to base. Most people grow up with a few old friends from their schooldays, but Teresa had hundreds of acquaintances and almost none she remembered as friends. Surely, somewhere, there would be a Katherine? Or maybe at one of her early jobs, at university, or at the Bureau? There ha
d been a trainee on the ExEx course with her at the Quantico Academy, called Cathy Grenidge, whose full name was presumably Catherine…but now she thought about it she had never seen her name written down. She might easily have been Katherine or Kathy. What had happened to her? Something shadowed the memory of Cathy Grenidge. Teresa thought hard, consciously using a memory technique she had been taught long ago. Federal agents have to be able to retain a lot of names and faces out of the hundreds they encounter, and there were ways of recalling them. What was the mnemonic for doing that? She cleared her mind, concentrated on the face, and then she had it. Agent Grenidge; she had graduated at the same time as Teresa, then was posted to Delaware, someplace like that? They’d lost contact, swept away to their own careers in the Bureau. No, Cathy married, then left the Bureau after a few years? No, she hadn’t quit. Teresa remembered that she and Cathy had married at about the same time, but Cathy was posted to somewhere in the Midwest soon afterwards. What had happened to her? She’d died in an accident, hadn’t she? Or was it on an assignment? Who married her? Somewhere far away, a mental glimpse: Cathy and the guy she married, another agent, a practical joke at the wedding, something to do with a pack of cards and a trick, a brilliant piece of card manipulation that made everyone roar with laughter; a guy with large hands and a heavy body. Cal! Calvin Devore; Andy’s friend Cal, the big guy with the large hands and the dainty movements that always amused and impressed her. Oh Jesus, Cal! His wife had been shot, trying to arrest a suspect in Dubuque, Iowa, hit in the head by a bullet, lay in a coma for a week, then died. Kathy Devore.
Continue with 658 hyperlink(s) connecting ‘Teresa Ann Simons’ to ‘Gerry/Gerald Dean Grove’? Yes/No.
Teresa clicked on No, irritated with the program for seeming irritated with her.