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

was a pause. Saskia opened one eyelid. Through a crack in the curtains she could see daylight outside. She had not slept long. She stretched and found that the revolver was still in her hand, pointing to her chin.

“Saskia, you have a call.”

“Who is it?”

“It is Jobanique. I have the authority to wake you if Jobanique calls. If you wish to review your authority list, you may do so at any time.”

“Fuck off.”

The computer paused again. “Shall I tell him to call back?”

“No, tell him,” she paused, smiled, “to fuck off.”

There was a non-compliant buzz. A man’s voice said, “Your computer has blocked access to the following potentially unsafe statement: ‘Jobanique, Ms Brandt would like you to fuck off’. For more information concerning expletives, call for Help.”

Saskia said, “Tell him I’ll call back.”

She donned a black trouser-suit with a white shirt. She upturned the collar. She brushed her shoulder-length hair until it assumed a reasonable shape. She applied some eye shadow. Put on some nice shoes she had found in the wardrobe. They fitted perfectly. She applied a little more makeup: lip gloss, red nail varnish. She looked at her nails and remembered her Russian nickname. The Angel of Death.

She opened the curtains around the apartment and the windows too. The gloom left with a bow.

“Computer, call Jobanique.”

“Certainly.”

The apartment rattled with the sound of ‘Greensleeves’ played on a mouth organ. After ten seconds, a voice said, “Jobanique can speak to you now,” and her boss appeared on her white, bare wall. The computer drew some curtains to enhance the image.

Saskia said, “Hello.”

Jobanique said, “Hello.”

“I like your ‘hold’ music.”

“Why thank you.”

“Shall we?”

“Lets,” he said. Then his head turned, like a newsreader moving on to a new story. “A man has escaped custody. He is a wanted criminal. A murderer. It is a matter of global security. I have been asked to handle this case personally.”

“I see.”

“My assistant has completed its meta-analysis. It’s trawled through years of information, picked up impressions here, guesses there, the occasional fact. It has produced a psychological profile based on the frequency of certain trait-based behaviours and put them into a model.” He shrugged. “I find them useful sometimes.”

“Go on.”

Jobanique put the lid on his pen. “His name is David Proctor. Look at the photo. This was taken in Oxford, England. It was published five years ago in the local newspaper. His hair is whiter now. Some background, then: our man is born in France in 1971 to Amelie Lombard, a language student, and Duncan Proctor, a student of human nature and alcohol, in the middle of Duncan’s year abroad. Duncan and Amelie have known each other for over three hours when David is conceived. Duncan panics. He goes back to university to complete the final year of his degree. We don’t know what he studied. Both Amelie and Duncan are nineteen at the time.

“That Christmas, Duncan flies back to France, finds Amelie and proposes to her. There is no clear reason for his change of mind. Amelie’s parents are disgusted and oppose the marriage, but Amelie is adamant. She wants him. They return to England and marry. For the next ten years, both of them fall in and out of various jobs. There is no evidence to suggest the home was unhappy. The young David’s school reports are average. They move house almost constantly. Duncan Proctor manages to hold down a job with a computer company in Reading as a marketing assistant.

“Meanwhile, young David’s school marks imrpove. In 1982 he scores a maximum mark on his primary school leaving test. There is a dramatic scene at the school: the headmaster calls him a cheat in front of David’s parents. The headmaster is verbally and physically assaulted by Duncan. David then wins a scholarship to a school for gifted students called Two Trees. The school is in Kent and he refuses to go. David and his father have the first in a series of serious arguments. In the event, Amelie convinces David that he should go. He does. Diary entries indicate that David was extremely unhappy in his first year.”

“You read his diaries?”

“And his report card. He was a troublemaker in that first year. It was only in the second year that he began to improve, following the mentorship of a maths teacher. He excelled in the sciences, particularly physics. He learned Latin and Persian. According to his physical education teacher, he had poor hand-eye coordination, frequent bouts of asthma, though none serious. However, there are some reports that he entered the cross-country team in his final year and won an inter-school medal.”

“Is this relevant?”

“In 1987, he left Two Trees for a university course in artificial intelligence at Durham. He married Helen Cassidy in his second year. They were both aged eighteen. They made repeated attempts at children –”

“Artificial intelligence?”

“The development of virtual or physical machines designed to display behaviours consistent with human intelligence in the solution of particular, well-defined problems. For more radical researchers, a long-term goal is to reproduce the human mind within a man-made machine.”

“I see. Back to the children.”

“There were none for several years. Aged twenty-one, David left to complete a PhD in artificial life systems at Dartmouth College, North-East United States. The degree was completed in three years. He did not like America or his career direction. He returned to England in the summer of 1994 and began a medical degree. He dropped out after three years and took a junior psychology lectureship at Durham. Then, one year later, he moved to Scotland.”

“To do what?”

“The following information was difficult to obtain. It was procured using the USA’s Freedom of Information Act. There is no such act in Britain, but America had a certain interest in the affairs surrounding David Proctor.”

“What affairs?”

“The West Lothian Centre. So code-named. A classified research institute. It was a public-private scientific think-tank funded mostly by the British government, partly by the American government, partly by John Hartfield.”

“Who?”

“Third richest man in the world. The aim