A Race Of Minds (Kosmos Book 1)

  A RACE OF MINDS

  By Simon Horrocks

  Text Copyright © 2017 Simon Horrocks

  Cover Design © 2017 Simon Horrocks

  All Rights Reserved

  To Andrea

  About This Book

  The following story is a continuation of the Kosmos Kickstarter-funded movie, currently free to view on YouTube here.

  If you haven’t watched yet, feel free to go ahead and do that first before reading this book. But if you’d rather just start reading, that’s fine too. The following is a brief recap of everything that’s happened so far. Again, if you prefer, you can just skip straight to the story and dive right in.

  The story so far...

  Amy Huyt has been in a coma for over 3 months and doctors say there’s no chance of recovery. Philip, her husband and a gene therapy scientist who’s taken time off work to be by her side, refuses to give up hope, against the wishes of her parents, Michael and Diana Lord, who want her life support switched off so they can have closure. Then Louis Lewis - a rep from the company covering Amy’s health insurance - points out something mysterious: nobody connected to Amy knows why she’s in a coma.

  That night, Philip is woken by a crying baby, even though the hotel receptionist claims there are none in the building. He hears strange noises coming from the elevator and calls it, but is found next morning in the elevator lobby unconscious. Louis says his company will withdraw finance for Amy’s care unless they know the cause of her illness but offers to help, suggesting they use a new technology for detecting psi complexes: activity deep within the brain. With no other hope, Philip allows him to implant a device into her head - it will flash green if it detects any brain activity. After 5 days, with health care funding to soon run out, Diana and Michael press Dr Dills to find out what’s going on. Louis then reveals another side to the psi complex tech, sending a memory from his mind to Philip’s. Using 2 devices, he claims to be able to directly experience Amy’s dreams and memories. But Philip refuses to let Louis to invade the privacy of his wife’s mind, volunteering himself instead.

  With Amy neither dead or alive, the emotional stress finally takes its toll and Philip begins to wish for an end. Choosing her moment perfectly, Diana persuades Philip to sign the form allowing her life support to be switched off. As soon as she leaves the room, however, Philip sees the device flash green - Amy’s brain is active! Philip runs to tell her parents, hoping to catch them before it’s too late, but finds Michael in their hotel room badly beaten (Diana had attacked her husband when he questioned whether Philip might in fact be right). He spots Starla - a young woman who sent him a mysterious video message saying “just pick a number from 1 to 6 and call me” - and chases her to the top floor of the hotel where she vanishes. However the rooms are numbered 1 to 6. He chooses number 4 and inside finds Amy lying on a circular table, under bright light.

  A device is implanted in both their heads and Philip finds himself in Amy’s dreams and memories. He wakes from the surreal experience back in his hotel room then, back at the hospital, Dr Dills tells him they’ve detected activity in Amy’s brain. He returns to the hotel and asks to be moved to room 4, but finds only a normal hotel room. Philip waits to meet Louis at a nearby cafe but sees Starla and follows her to the roof. He thinks he’s persuaded her not to take her own life, but she says “you can let me go now” and jumps off the building. He runs back down but all he finds is a guy in a wheelchair selling glowing cubes to an excited crowd.

  Philip visits Michael in hospital and asks if he was attacked by Diana. Michael begins to talk but becomes silent when Diana appears, having been listening from behind the curtain. When Philip leaves, Michael tells her he tried to hurt them. Diana says she felt it too. Louis then prepares to get Philip back into Amy’s mind, telling him he’s adjusted the filters on the device so their memories shouldn’t get so mixed up. When her device flashes green, he implants the device into his own head and makes the connection between their minds. But suddenly the life support begins beeping alerts. Philip’s device turns from green to red and he collapses onto the bed.

  The story continues...

  Prologue

  I was in a dream. The dream of a twelve-year-old.

  She was the last of us. Running beside a grey, muddy river. No people anywhere. More like a canal than a river. Buildings on either side. There was a sickness somewhere. That’s what she was running from. I had no idea what the sickness was, only that she had to get away.

  There was a boat, but she couldn’t get on. Like a big, powerful yacht. She would run ahead to find a place to jump aboard, but always it was too fast or too far away. Then it was gone, up the canal, and she would run after it again.

  Like her, I was in my own bizarre dream. Trapped in my wife’s mind. Entangled in her dreams and memories and I needed to find a way out. Before they let her die. Before they let us both die.

  What was it Lewis said in that dream? We were sitting in a room. There was a bed with red covers. A bedroom. No – a hotel room. He took a device from his silver case, spoke about “neural transfer”, then showed me how it was done.

  But maybe that was a memory. Ah yes. Amy was in a coma and nobody knew why. Neither the doctors, her family, nor me – crazy. And then... I dropped down the rabbit hole with her. Fell into this... nothing. Locked in; her thoughts and mine, together. Thoughts that were never ending – “thought, eternal”.

  There was another memory. Lewis and I were in a cafe in a city and we couldn’t move without smashing the crockery. The waitress said if they ran out of crockery everyone would die. To save the world, I should follow the memories.

  “Follow the memories,” she said and a memory drifted into my mind...

  1.0

  The early pale light of dawn covered the city like icing, as the tanker passed through the tall, black steel gates of the hospital. Down in the underground bay, another gate lifted automatically into the ceiling as the tanker approached. Strip lights flickered on across the low, grey concrete ceiling, as the truck rumbled slowly up to the bay where steel girders and lifting chains rose into the distant darkness. The tanker whined a mechanical sigh and came to a halt.

  Lewis spoke to the guard in the office and a moment later a tired-looking facilities manager appeared. Lewis knew he’d be at the end of a night shift and less alert. The man rubbed his stubbled chin. “What’s this?”

  Lewis handed him the documentation. “Collection. Two tanks.”

  “Just says coolant.”

  “In titanium tanks. And the tanks suspended in insulator.”

  “Insulator?”

  “Yeah, imidazolium-based. So, we’re going to roll these in, then fill it.” Lewis nodded to the long, black tanker trailer. Hit them with nonsense jargon so they feel out of their depth.

  But the manager was tired and irritable. “Why does coolant need insulator?”

  Lewis took a moment to think. Trick is, if someone does question you, up the stakes. “Because it’s only about 30 degrees above zero.”

  “30 degrees? Are you kidding. My sun bed has colder settings.”

  Luckily, this guy is an idiot. “30 degrees Kelvin. That’s about...” Pause for dramatic effect. “...minus 430 degrees Fahrenheit.”

  The manager shot back the documents as if they were minus 430 Fahrenheit themselves and got to work fixing a hose to the tanker trailer.

  What they were putting in was an aluminium hydroxide solution (side note: good for heartburn). Funny, the old tinfoil hat paranoids were onto something. Aluminium does block them. Of course, a simple hat won’t work. You need to wrap your whole brain in aluminium. With this set up, the entire body was encased. So, nobody would know what he
had in these 2 tanks.

  Not even Core.

  1.1

  In the back of the truck, inside a cuboid tank designed to provide BLS (basic life support) for astronauts crossing the vast distances between solar systems, with his and his wife’s minds now permanently connected, Philip was experiencing an entirely new state of consciousness.

  A castaway in an ocean of thought, the civilising physical existence was now no more than a memory. And memories were the flotsam and jetsam of this endless ocean – mental driftwood with which he hoped to construct a life raft and sail home.

  During his physical life, he remembered, he’d been a leading research scientist working in the rapidly advancing field of gene therapy. He hoped to return soon. Because science is a race and while he was trapped in this situation, the also-rans would be catching up.

  A memory bobbed up onto the surface – one of Amy’s – and he slipped inside: A group of girls out on the damp, sweet green grass of a playing field. Looked to Philip like a school sports day. About four alpha females at the centre of the group were backing themselves to win. Amy was predicted to scrape 5th, at best.

  Philip experienced the memory as if it was his own: the crack of the gun; the raw sound of girls and parents cheering them as they set off, alphas at the front. Amy tried to imagine her mother was cheering, too.

  She started slow and was somewhere in the middle of the pack. But when she looked up the alphas were tired already, confidence replaced by reddening cheeks and fear in their eyes. She let her body take control, eased past them and hit the finishing line first. When she turned, almost apologetically raising her arm in a victory salute, she saw the humiliation on the alpha girls’ faces, eyes glaring. But her mother was almost smiling as she said something falsely modest (no doubt) to a nearby teacher.

  Then the memory faded from Philip’s mind, leaving him drifting again. Drifting through the vast, empty nothingness of their shared inner space.

  1.2

  “Retinol mint. It’s a new flavour.” Louis Lewis emerged from his thoughts to find Ulyana, the driver of the tanker, offering him some green gum. “Helps you see in the dark.”

  “Lights.” Ulyana looked at him blankly. Lewis raised his eyes to the traffic control beams. “They’re green.”

  The trucker dropped the packet of gum back on the dash and quickly rammed the tanker into gear. The engine growled, powering them across the intersection. “Just had some kind of head freak déjà vu.” She lowered the window and let the cool air wash over her face. “Need more caffeine.”

  “Déjà vu?”

  “Trying to get a fifty foot, forty tonne tanker through crawling traffic at three in the morning? Yeah, it all feels very familiar. Haven’t had a day off in three weeks.” She tapped a couple of icons on the dash and the self-drive took over.

  Could be tiredness, or they could be using an antenna, thought Lewis. “How much further?”

  “Probably another forty, forty-five minutes.”

  “It’s in self-drive – take a nap,” said Lewis. Better if she’s asleep and not thinking about where we’re going.

  “That’s illegal. Anyway, I’ll be fine.” She pulled off her military-style jacket to reveal a grey t-shirt with Bread & Roses written across the front.

  “Swap seats. Who will know?”

  “Could lose my license.”

  “Just worried you’ll hit something. And this cargo is too valuable to risk that.”

  “And my license is too valuable to risk sleeping on the job.”

  Lewis reached into the inside pocket of his grey suit jacket and pulled out his phone. “Wanted to say... impressed by the tip function. Cool idea.”

  “What?” She screwed up her face.

  “Every risk has a price.” Lewis gave her a simple, impish smile. “I used to work in insurance.”

  Ulyana sighed and shook her head. Lewis keyed in a number and presented her the phone. The figure on the screen read: Tip: $10,000.

  She looked at the figure. Then back at Lewis.

  1.3

  “Do you remember what happened?” Lewis asked, his voice suddenly in Philip’s mind.

  “Is that Louis Lewis?” Philip said, with his mind’s voice. If Lewis replied then he must be real, right?

  “Yes! Connected! Thought we’d lost you, buddy.” said Lewis. Like Philip’s mind’s voice, just there. Just words. Yet his mind seemed to add an idea of tone. Sometimes distant, sometimes close.

  “What’s going on?”

  “What’s the last thing you remember?”

  “Last thing: I was with Amy. Her device turned green. I put on my device. We connected. I saw a long tunnel. And a circle of light around the tunnel. After that – chaos. Thoughts and memories and dreams... all kinds of shit mixed up. I lost track. Then your voice, just now.”

  Philip’s mind heard some background sounds, like through a microphone: A man’s voice, low and strained. Some mumbling between them.

  “You still there?”

  “Listen, you’re locked in,” said Lewis.

  “In where?”

  “In Amy’s comatic state. N.P.E.”

  “N.P.E?”

  “Neural pathway entanglement. Your mind’s locked into Amy’s.”

  “That’s a thing?”

  “That’s what I’m calling it.”

  “What happened to the filters?”

  “Philip, hang in there. We’re going to get you... disentangled. But I need your help.”

  “Uh hu.” He’d heard that before.

  “We need to unlock target memories... targets in Amy’s mind.”

  “Uh what?”

  “I’ve run some psi-complex analysis. If we unlock certain memory areas, this’ll activate key neural pathways and induce full consciousness. And because your pathways are interlinked, you’ll come up together. Like a bubble. A memory bubble. We need to fill the bubble. Philip, this is all about memory, do you understand?”

  “Memory, yeah.”

  “OK, listen. It’s pretty simple. One mem--” Lewis was cut short by an intense screeching sound in Philip’s mind. He found himself beneath a burning sky, surrounded by the sound of thundering footsteps, like charging cattle. Stampeding creatures – hulking, bare-skinned humanoids – swarmed around him. Then the fire fell from the sky, smothering him in pain.

  1.4

  Thirty-eight meters below ground, the two BLS tanks were now installed. Like a pair of huge black dice had been dropped into the decommissioned nuclear bunker – now a makeshift psi-complex facility. The tanks were wired for neural transfer between the occupants, as instructed, and both had a panel for communication with the outside world.

  Lewis achieved contact with Philip but panicked when the magnetic resonance imaging flipped a blank and alerts sounded on both their vital signs. Had he pulled off the theft of the century only to be thwarted by a tech screw up?

  He was a little startled when Hexo-G nudged him aside and viewed the laptop screen (he had a habit of creeping up on you). The black-suited, physico-chemical wizard stroked his grey pointed beard, then tapped a few keys. The Huyts’ vital signs quickly returned to safe levels.

  “If oxygen levels drop, the MilloAngels can’t breathe. They just sink to the bottom.”

  “MilloAngels?”

  Hexo-G tapped a few more keys and the black walls of the tanks cleared revealing Amy and Philip’s naked bodies within, suspended in a greenish, glutinous liquid. A mass of thin, opaque tendrils began to rise from the floors of the tanks. The strange creatures ran their gentle fingers over the bodies, working their way up from the feet until Amy and Philip were both covered in the wriggling worms.

  “Bioengineered by CNSA to provide BLS. The resonance imagining works on blood-oxygen, too. That’s why you lost connection.”

  Hexo-G stepped away from the laptop to let Lewis move back to the controls. Indeed, the connection to Philip’s mind had been restored.

  “How are you always in the right place at the
right time?”

  “Synchronicity,” said Hexo-G, the green light from the tank reflecting off his hexagonal-shaped dark glasses. Lewis felt no the wiser.

  “Hey man, we did it,” said Lewis, ready to celebrate.

  “We have the safe. Now we need to crack her open,” said Hexo-G.

  They gazed into Amy’s tank where she floated, motionless. Her long, golden hair flowing out, tinted greenish by the liquid containing electrolytes, proteins and carbohydrates (and other essential substances). A kind of amniotic fluid for grown-ups.

  She looked to Lewis like a beautiful mermaid waiting to be born. He followed the MilloAngels with his eyes as they gently caressed her skin, on their way slowly up her legs, around her groin and towards her abdomen.

  “Information is the key to her lock,” said Hexo-G. “We need to know everything: her family, friends, pets… lovers. People always use the things they love for their passwords.”

  “First thing I ever hacked was my dad’s laptop – always used his own name,” said Lewis, but found himself alone again. Hexo-G had slipped away as quietly as he’d arrived.

  An alert pinged on the dash – boom: a key memory triggered! He moved up to the side of the tank and spoke into the com-panel.

  “Philip...”

  1.5

  Philip was lost in a dream – Amy’s dream – as flakes of white ash fell from the sky and she had to run underground to escape the flakes, which were poisonous. Then she climbed a ladder up a long shaft and through a hatch into a warehouse. The warehouse was by a port. Now Philip saw himself in the dream. They were to take a ship to the other side of the world on an archaeological expedition. Next thing they were on the ship but her mother was there, pouring oil on everything and saying she was making things run smoother. But their hands kept slipping off the controls. They couldn’t steer the ship and Philip said they should go back. Her mother was furious for some reason and kept shouting that they had blood on their hands. When they looked at their hands the oil had turned to blood.