Déjà Vu: A Technothriller by Hocking, Ian (red scrolls of magic .TXT) 📕

turned. The entire congregation had poured from the church. In his bright orange overalls, he was not challenging to locate. Leading the charge was Mary, the WPC. They would reach the tree in half a minute.

“Can we move on to the next stage? Hello? Hello?” There was no sound from the tree. David stepped about, peered into the branches. He couldn’t see her. But he did notice something circling overhead. It was the glider he had spotted earlier. It circled like a vulture and trailed a cable.

“Look out,” the minister called. She landed nimbly next to him. In her hand was a thick cable with a hook at the end.

David looked at the hook.

He looked at the glider.

He looked at her.

He looked at the crowd running towards him.

He backed away. “What I said about things only happening in cartoons...” He looked up again. The glider was no longer circling. It had peeled away. Its tow cable grew taut.

Mary, the WPC, rushed up. She grabbed his arm. “Gotcha.”

“Then hold tight,” the minister said, and looped the hook around the chain between his cuffs. David felt the cuffs rub against the sacking she had stuffed underneath them. The sacking would not prevent his wrists from breaking.

Mary frowned. David took a breath. The minister said, “Until we meet again.”

And then David was jerked towards the sky with such force that his rising arms struck his face. He tore through the tree and departed the church and the funeral unconscious. He did not hear Mary cry out in frustration, or the minister whoop with delight, or the fluttering of his paper overalls in the wind.

Jennifer flew over the edge of the waterfall and, as the ground fell away, she gasped. It was a world perfectly imagined. She could discern not the slightest error in perspective. The forest continued on either side. The fall erupted into a large lake. In the distance, she could see the beginnings of a large delta, and perhaps the ocean. She settled on a rock near the lip of the fall.

She would soon have to leave for her meeting with Michaels.

And then a black speck appeared in the sky. It was impossible to tell its size, but it fell in a straight line. It passed through a rainbow and landed in the lake with a brief flash of foam. Jennifer craned to see it. As she squinted, the computer read her thoughts and propelled her towards the centre of the lake, towards the landing splash.

Her stomach lurched. She was aware that she was both flying, somehow, but that she was standing perfectly still. The images washed around her. The world moved. She remained at rest.

The lake rushed up. The water was calmer here. It was perhaps twenty or thirty metres deep, though it was near the shelf. The water was very clear. Fish swam in shoals and a naked man rose to the surface.

He burst through with enough force to rise halfway out of the water. He took an enormous breath, went under, and then bobbed up once more, treading water, choking, wiping the long, matted hair from his face and wringing the water from his beard.

For moment Jennifer thought he was crying, but it was hysterical laughter.

Glider Down

Thursday, 14th September 2023

First, he noticed the wind. It was loud and strong. Then the wetness beneath his head and legs. Then the cramp. He opened his eyes. It was evening. He remembered everything. He had been grabbed by the ankles, pulled down into the crypt, had walked around the land of dead with the fake minister, and been yanked into the sky by the tow cable of a glider. He smiled. Things were unreal: memories from someone else, inserted into his mind piece by piece with no attention to overall coherence.

He was dangerously cold. His neck was stiff. It was difficult to breathe. There was a familiar pain in his chest. An old rowing injury. He raised his head. He was on a hillside. In the darkness he could see grass in every direction. The sky was grey-black. The bleating of sheep came from lower down the field.

He stood and the wind brushed the last traces of heat from his body. He was too cold to shiver. Deep inside his mind, where the cold had yet to penetrate, a voice said, Find shelter.

He staggered forward. His wrists were bleeding from the cuffs. The blood did not feel warm. The chains around his legs jingled like the bells on Santa’s sled. The ground became white. Was it snow beneath his feet? Could he hear children singing? Was it Christmas?

The voice said, Hallucinations. Your core temperature is dropping.

He raised his head to the wind and sniffed. Yes. There was...something. A clue in the air. It was not an odour. It was heat. Warmth.

He shuffled windward. Somewhere ahead of him, in the darkness, was shelter. There had to be.

What month was it? September? October? Perhaps it was even December. Christmas time. He smiled. The warmth of the fire. A good brandy in the right hand, TV remote control in the left. Funny paper hat on the head. King’s speech.

There was something white ahead. It was not a building or a sleigh. It shined; it was plastic. It jutted skyward.

Jingle-jingle, went his chains. Whose ghost was he? Bob Marley. That was it. The Dickens story. Bob Marley’s ghost.

He wanted to whistle that he had shot the sheriff, but his lips would not work. They were broken. If he was in Jamaica, he would be warm. He wouldn’t be able to even imagine the cold. It would be a hot night, the shirt stuck to his back, the buzz of mosquitoes, a rum and coke.

David tripped and seesawed over the glider’s fuselage. He regained his composure and, with a clearer mind, looked hard at the glider. It canted to one side because the design meant it would never stay upright while it was on the ground. David blinked, slowly, and examined the cockpit. It