neural.coder 0x07
Geoff wins the lottery, but will he get a chance to tell anyone before disaster strikes?
Missed the beginning, see the first chapter.
Geoff sat perched on the edge of the sofa, toying with the corner of a cushion. The TV was on and the live lottery show had just started. Andy was still out at work, Geoff glanced at the clock, not long till the draw.
The D-list celebrity presenter was prattling on about nothing important then the machine began to spin and the celebrity dramatically intoned, “Release the balls!”
Geoff leaned forwards, he hadn’t watched a draw in years, just relying on notifications about the small amounts he’d won over time. The machine span faster, and the jumble of balls bounced around like an unbalanced washing machine as the voiceover spoke about set of balls number something and that the machine was called Guinevere.
“And our first ball tonight is… sixteen! Number 16 has been chosen 5 times this year already.”
Geoff was calm, it’s not the first time he’d seen one ball or even two. The machine span.
“Here’s our second ball, it’s a 23! The first number that was drawn on the first ever draw and the number that’s been drawn the most.”
Geoff clutched his ticket, he didn’t need to check the numbers that he’d used for decades, yet still he did.
4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42
“Our third ball is… fifteen! Thirty seven percent of all draws have at least one pair of neighbouring numbers.”
Geoff held his breath, clutching his ticket and cushion tight.
“And ball number four is… four! How four…tuitous!”
Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit! It only bloody worked! Geoff leaned forward, barely remaining on the edge of the sofa. The announcer continued.
“Ball number five… here it comes… yes it’s eight, eight for ball number five”
Geoff thought he heard a noise from the stairs up to the front door. He muted the TV for a moment and turned to listen. Must have imagined it, he thought, un-muting the telly.
“And the final ball! Ball number six. Here it comes, good luck out there… and it’s forty two. The answer to life the universe and everything!”
Geoff leaped up off the sofa, punch the air. “Yes!’ he shouted, “Fucking yes!” He heard laughing from the stairwell and moments later Andy stumbled through the door, keys in hand held out like the opening of the door had surprised him.
“Geoff!” he yelled, tripping on the doormat before righting him self and asking, “Whocha doing?”.
Brushing aside Andy’s drunken state, Geoff blurted out his good news, “Andy I’ve only gone and bloody won…”
Before he could finish Andy reached through the open doorway and gently pulled a woman by the hand into the flat.
“Geoffrey,” he gestured toward me with this free hand upturned, “meet Hannah. Hannah, meet my favourite flatmate in the whole damn world, Geoff.”
Geoff decided not to finish his sentence, instead he collapsed back in the sofa and said, “Hi. Pleased to meet you Hannah.”
“What kind of greeting is that?” she said as she approached Geoff, “Let’s have a proper hello.” She offered her hand and Geoff went to shake it, but she pulled him off the sofa and into a full on drunken hug.
Geoff looked at Andy there standing behind her and raised a quizzical eyebrow.
“We met at after-work drinks, friend of a colleague,” Andy said.
Hannah was still holding Geoff tight, she smelled of vodka, and her short cut hair felt soft against his ear. He prised himself from the embrace and smiled.
“Well it’s good to meet you, are you staying for some food?”
“No can do old chap! We’re taking you out for a well deserved celebration of your new found self-employment.” Andy said, he could never decide on an accent when drunk.
“I thought I was working for you!?” Geoff smiled.
“Come on, let’s eat out.” Hannah said, “Andy’s been failing to explain your break-through to me.”
“Break-through?” Geoff asked?
“The dome phone dream reader thing, you know.” Andy said.
“Oh.”
“You can explain it better I’m sure, over some food,” Hannah said.
Geoff looked at Andy, he desperately had to tell him about the lottery win, but in private. “Righto then, I fancy some decently crispy pizza, let’s go to the Italian?”
The meal was unsurprisingly uneventful. Geoff liked “Amore” for the decent prices, the entertaining owner who was all endless energetic and flamboyantly every cliche about an Italian restaurant owner rolled into one.
Hannah showed a lot of interest in Geoff's work with the dream reader and Geoff couldn't find a private moment to tell Andy about the lottery numbers.
Hannah explained that she was working in neural imaging research. His suspicions somewhat averted, Geoff showed Hannah some of the less disturbing dream videos.
“How have you managed get enough resolution with just a simple electrode cap?...”
“Dome phone!” sniggered Andy.
'...How many electrodes are there?” Hannah fired questions off one after another. “I’ve seen similar machine learning concepts using a high resolution MRI, but I’ve never see results as clear as you’ve achieved here?”
“Some clever software interpolation was key,” Geoff said, it wasn’t a complete lie, he was pretty sure he’d written the code, even if he had done it in his sleep, something that thankfully Andy had not mentioned, “I went for a middle out approach, combined with some unusually useful leaps of intuition.”
They chatted more over pizza and wine, but Geoff was still suspicious and gave away as little as possible about what he knew of the inner workings of the dream reader. He deliberately didn’t mention anything about the mystery phone apps or dream-written code.
Conversation drifted away from the dream reader and Geoff began to relax and enjoy himself. After a couple of glasses of wine he almost even forgot about the lottery for a while.
As they were getting up to leave, Hannah finally left Geoff and Andy alone for a moment.
“Jeez I’ve been waiting all night to tell you this,” Geoff said.
“What is it?”
“I’ve won the lottery!”
“Another tenner yeah?” said Andy.
“No! All six numbers!” Geoff attempted to but failed to put on his most serious face.
“How much?”
“I’ve no idea, haven’t looked it up, it happened just as you arrived and I didn’t want to talk about it in front of a stranger.”
“Why not?”
“Err…” Geoff paused, “I didn’t exactly just win out of the blue.”
“What are you on about?”
Geoff checked over his shoulder, leaned closer to Andy and lowered his voice, “I used one of the apps I’d written in my sleep. I entered my numbers, the ones I’ve used for years, and then those were the numbers that came out of the machine!”
“It could just be coincidence?”
“Unlikely,” said Geoff.
“But how does something like that even work?” Andy asked. “How can an app on your phone make a particular ball come up?”
“Abso-fucking-lutely no idea.”
“Is it safe?” Andy said, “What about those warning texts messing with financials?”
“I didn’t mess with any bank balances, I just bought a ticket with the same numbers I buy every week. I’ve had no warning texts at all.”
“Well didn’t you dump your SIM card into a pint?”
“Damn, I keep forgetting that,” Geoff checked over his shoulder again, Hannah was coming back, “Anyway let’s talk more about it later, when we’re home alone.”
“Mate, I think she’s wants to come back with me,” Andy grinned, “At least for a bit.”
“Well that’s okay then, cos it’ll only be a short bit,” Geoff sniggered.
They drunkenly climbed the stairs up to the flat’s front door. Geoff pushed his key into the lock but the door swung open, twisted and hanging off a single hinge.
Andy stepped into the flat, “Shit! We’ve had a break in,” he said.
The living room was a mess. Every drawer, box, and shelf had been turned out or stripped clean, the contents scattered across the floor.
“They left the TV,’ Geoff said, numbly staring around the room.
“I hope they’ve left my bed,” Andy giggled, “It’d be shame if they’d taken that, eh Hannah?”
There was no reply. The two flatmates turned and looked back down the stairwell, there was no sign of Hannah at all.
“She was right behind me.” Andy said.
The lights in the stairwell blinked out and the sound of heavy boots stamped up the stairs. Suddenly a flashlight was in their faces, blinding them both.
“Down on the fucking floor!” a voice shouted, “Now!”
Geoff felt himself pushed to the floor, as more flashlights entered the living room from his bedroom. He could make out four gas-masked figures dressed all in black, flashlights attached to the end of futuristic looking compact submachine guns.
“Face the floor and don’t fucking move!” the voice threatened, punctuated with a swift kick at Geoff’s head. All he could see was the man’s military style boots. All heavy black nylon, eyelets and laces.
Another voice, much softer, but more sure of it itself, “Who’s the owner of this phone?”
Geoff and Andy said nothing, terrified.
“Okay then, we know who’s phone it is. Which one of you is Stalinsky?”
“Me,” said Geoff.
“We have him,” the authoritative voice said. There was a moment of silence. “Yes ma’am, will do.” He pointed at Geoff. “Prepare this one for transport,” he nodded towards Andy’s prone form, “and silence the spare.”
There was a dull metallic click-thud and Andy slumped to the floor, instantly still, forming a static tableau among their scattered and discarded possessions. Someone grabbed Geoff from behind and something was placed over his head and pulled tight around his neck, shutting out even the bright light of the flashlights. He was dragged to his feet, arms pulled behind and bound with what sounded like giant zip-ties.
“Okay lads, the wagon is here, let’s get this terrorist back to the boss.”
Geoff was manhandled down the stairs, guided forcibly from behind. Blinded by the hood his feet tripped down the stairs and he would have fallen if he wasn’t being held in some thug’s vice like. His left foot slammed hard into the floor, jarring pain lanced through his leg. His body had expected another step down.
“Oi You,” the tough guy said, “in the van. Sit there, and don’t move.”
He was shoved down onto a seat, his hands still tied behind his back, the immediate leverage of landing with his arms behind him shot pain through his broken ribs, “Arghh fuck!” he screamed.
“Shut it you!” the in-charge voice said, “Right then. We have three phones, two laptops and the bike helmet thing yes?”
“Err bike helmet thing?”
“For fucks sake Jones, you better go back for it, she says it’s important. Mac, go with him and babysit the idiot.”
Geoff heard bodies moving within the van’s interior and then the sound of a sliding door being slammed shut. There was a knocking sound like someone’s knuckles on glass.
“Ready to go as soon as they’re back?”
“Aye, boss. Almost full charge and everything ready.”
Geoff shuffled on his backside, trying to reposition his hands behind him to take some of the pressure off his broken ribs. It was futile, there was no comfortable position.
“Who are you? Where are you taking me?” he said.
“Silence is your best course of action son, be quiet now or you’ll end up like your friend.”
“We haven’t done anything wrong!”
The was a chuckle and a snort, “If you had done nothing wrong son, I am quite sure we would not be here taking you in. Now please be quiet, it would be a shame to have to…”
There was short intense and extremely load crashing bang followed by a rending crunching noise as Geoff’s world tumbled and he was thrown off his seat. There was a cracking of bone and a man's cutoff scream close to him. It felt like the van had been turned on its side. He sensed movement and heard the squeal of tyres as if the van was being pushed along by another vehicle, the sound of steel panels screaming with the pain of a tarmac induced road rash.
The van stopped dead accompanied by the sound of the roof crumpling inwards, then there was silence, only disturbed by a gentle pinging sound of pained metal panels settling.
Disorientated, Geoff tried to right himself, only to fall down. There was a stab of pain in his right forearm and he felt a wetness running down over his bound hands. Quickly he felt around for what had cut him, finding a torn and ragged piece of metal. He sawed at it with the plastic cuffs, desperate to free his hands and get the claustrophobic bag off his head.
The cuffs broke through and Geoff tore off the constricting hood. Streetlight filtered in through the blacked broken windows that were now the ‘roof’ of the van. A groaning sound came from the screened off drivers compartment, the driver was just coming around. Geoff reached up to the sliding door above him.
“You stay where you are...”, the driver slurred, holding a hand up to a deep cut in his forehead that was gushing blood down over his face. He was trying to get his own door open now.
Geoff tried to climb higher to reach the door but stood on something that gave way, he glanced down and saw it was the in-charge man, unconscious on the floor. He had to get out of here before the two goons returned from the flat! He braced his leg against the bench seat and push up towards the door.
Just as he was reaching for the handle the sliding door was torn open, the back of the van filled with the bright led light of the street lamp. Geoff fell back and looking up saw the silhouette of a person, peering down into the van.
“Come with me if you want to live,” a woman’s voice.
“What?!”
“Sorry I’ve always wanted to say that,” the silhouette said. “Here grab my hand before the others work out how to get out of your front door, given that I’ve rammed their van right up against it,” she said.
Questions could wait till later, so Geoff grabbed the offered hand, gripping the woman’s wrist tightly as she hauled him up onto the side of the van. The driver, still struggling with his door, looked back and saw them. He was speaking into his radio, his words unintelligible and blocked by the thick armoured glass.
Geoff looked at the scene around him, the van had been forced onto the pavement and slammed right up against the ground floor of his apartment block. Slammed right up against the van Geoff saw an old garbage truck, clearly this woman’s weapon of choice for ramming the ominous black van.
“You could have killed me ramming us with that thing!”
“My pleasure I’m sure,” she jumped down to the road and started to climb into the cab of the truck, “Come on you idiot, move it! You can come with me or stay with your new friends here, your choice.”
“Who... What... Oh fuck it,” Geoff slid down to street level and climbed in the other side of the truck cab.