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

make more typos. His rage grew. He looked at the wall again. Underneath the large glass chamber was a sign that read, “Use Ax in Fire Emergency. Do not use Hose on electrical fires. Know your exits!”

The madman I let in, he thought.

He turned back to the screen.

He tried everything – crashing the system, rebooting it, invasive diagnostics designed to overload the computer – all came to nothing. His rage intensified. His glances at the axe became more frequent.

The screen went blue. In the middle, a white text box read, ‘User 4 has locked you out.’

“Frank, you bastard, die,” he shouted, and flung the keyboard across the room. He reached up and elbowed the glass container. Reached inside. Hefted the axe.

It was perfectly weighted. He tossed it from hand to hand. Time to shut down the computer. He rotated the axe to use the blunt, hammer-like end. He whirled it like a lasso. The axe smashed the desktop processing units. Electricity sparked. His monitor he clove in two. The coffee machine he obliterated. Again and again the hammer fell. He smashed the desks, the chairs, the lights, and, when he finally dug the axe into an electric outlet and his muscles arched with the strength of ten men, and when his brilliant mind thought, You’ve killed me, you’ve killed me, he died.

The lightning had stopped. The battle was over. Jennifer put a finger to her lips and Saskia nodded. Perhaps they would make it difficult for Frank to find them if they remained silent. Saskia looked up at the white featureless disc that provided light. She felt an urge to pray. But to whom? Frank was God. For him to hear, she only needed to speak.

“Frank, we need to talk,” she said.

Frank appeared in front of her. He said nothing but she could hear his irregular breathing over the open microphone.

“Frank, I want you to think about what you’re doing. I want you to think about the rationale behind your orders.”

He paused. “There is no rationale. There are orders.”

“Why?”

“You’re a witness.”

“A witness to what?”

“What happened to the third one of you? The man?”

Saskia ignored him. “What are we a witness to?”

Frank was interrupted by a dull clang. There was nothing metal in Asgard. It had to come from the real world. Frank seemed to realise this and, though Saskia was interested in the answer to her question, she was happy to see him distracted. “Did you hear something?” she asked mischievously.

Time traveller, she thought. David’s time travel theory. She had quite forgotten about it. It had been corroborated by Bruce. If it were true that she would travel back in time – and she had been spotted aged forty – then she was indestructible.

Frank said simply, “Time’s up. I have to kill you now.” He sounded empty, a bored actor just reading his lines.

Jennifer stammered, “N-no…please.”

Saskia stepped between Jennifer and Frank.

There was another dull thud. This time, it was accompanied by the treble of breaking glass. Saskia smiled. It was David. He had managed to free himself. The damsels would be rescued. “Did you hear that?” Saskia whispered again.

Frank stepped back. Saskia waited. Then, sure enough, he doubled at the waist and fell prone. Saskia heard him gasp for air.

Jennifer said tentatively, “Dad?”

“He can’t hear you,” Saskia murmured. The seconds passed and nothing happened. David, finish him, she thought. Frank felt the space around him. There was something invisible at his feet. Saskia sighed with disappointment. Frank was touching David’s physical form in the cubicle, and the computer was projecting that motion here.

Frank turned to them. “He’s dead.”

“No,” Jennifer whispered. She was about to collapse. Or become berserk. Saskia could not be sure. She put an arm around her shoulders.

“We don’t believe you,” she said.

Frank laughed. He kicked out with his foot. “Seems pretty dead to me. Not breathing. I reckon he’s bled out.”

Saskia could feel the sweat under her headset. If she did not survive this moment, she would not be able to travel backwards in time. But she already had. David and Bruce had said so. Surely Time Itself, an unthinking God like Frank, would intervene to avoid the paradox?

Time passed.

She felt Jennifer straighten her back.

Her invulnerability melted away. David and Bruce were mistaken. She was going to die.

The Enchanted Sleeper

Frank raised his arm. Saskia guessed it was a signal to the computer that would see Jennifer and herself evaporated, or pummelled to a paste, or drowned, or burned, or something only a psychopath like Frank could dream. He raised the other arm. The gesture was almost benedictory. Saskia grimaced and waited.

Nothing happened.

Jennifer twitched nervously. “What’s happening?” she whispered.

Saskia said, “Frank?”

He growled, “I can’t move. I’m stuck.”

“Like a fly in amber,” came a fourth voice.

A figure strolled briskly into view from behind Frank. He was completely naked. Saskia marvelled at his comical appearance. The damsels had been rescued after all.

“Hello, ladies,” he said. “Pardon the attire.”

Tearfully, Jennifer said, “You were killed.”

Bruce’s smile faded. “Yes, I saw my body. This body, me,” he touched his chest, “is a back-up made when I was sitting on the cabin. I was born about two minutes ago. I’ve been inside the cabin writing more instructions for the computer. Still alive, Frank?”

“I can’t move,” he spat.

“No. Your privileges have been suspended.”

Jennifer said, “Bruce, Dad’s hurt. Let us out of the computer.”

“Already done. Go.”

Jennifer vanished.

Saskia was subdued. They had been saved by Bruce Shimoda. But this was not really him. It was a digital ghost based on a computer file that contained the real Bruce Shimoda’s DNA and the wiring of his brain. He was not real.

She remembered Bruce’s story. The digital creatures were not Real because they were not from the Real World.

She still believed that Bruce was not Real, but here he was, naked, a man who had risked his existence to save them. She struggled for a new word: a word that meant alive but not biological. In English and German the only candidate was ‘soul’.

You are not real, she