neural.coder 0x08
Who is Geoff's mystery rescuer? Can they escape together? Is Andy really dead?
Missed the beginning? Go back and read the first chapter.
Note to the Geoff fans: In more recent chapters I’ve been introducing some future slang to give some distance between Geoff’s language and Jenn’s. I need to go back and revise earlier chapters to introduce some of these. That will happen magically in the background.
Geoff looked at his saviour. She looked to be in her forties, and a little malnourished. He could not stop his mind leaping to an image of the emaciated dead tramp he’d seen that morning. He studied the profile of her face as she reversed the garbage truck from the wreckage, and surged off down the street. The dense roar of the aging diesel echoed through the night.
“Who the hell are you?” Geoff said, “What the fuck is going on? Where are we going?” he was still staring at her, “and have we met before somewhere?”
“I’m Jenn, I’m here to rescue you. We’re going away from here, as fast as possible, I’m not going to say where,” she jerked at the steering wheel and swerved around a parked car, before diving hard into a ninety degree, right-hand corner, the truck threatened to tip over, Geoff was flung against the door. “We’ve met only once before, you were lying in the road blabbering nonsense. I fixed your phone. Now put your seat belt on.”
Geoff’s mind was racing, he shook his head, This can’t be real. He grabbed at the door handle, “Stop this deathtrap and let me out!”
Jenn—if that was really her name—turned and stared at him, brow furrowed, head tilted. Her head gave a single micro-shake, “You’re an idiot Geoff, they’ll find—”
“Tramp!” he shouted at her.
“You ungrateful bastard—”
Geoff pointed out the window, at the homeless man crossing the residential street the truck was barreling down, “No! Tramp! In the road!”
“Fuck!” Jenn stamped on the brake pedal, tyres squealed, and the ABS shuddered and banged. Geoff was thrown violently into the dashboard, his reflexively outstretched arms crumpled as the shock reached his ribs, triggering intense stabs of pain. His head smashed against the brittle, aged plastic, cracking it.
Dizziness washed over him as he achingly sat back up straight, the homeless man was standing in the middle of the road shaking his fist at them, shouting something Geoff could not make out. A cold wetness ran down Geoff’s face. He reached up to his face and felt blood, running from a cut in his temple.
“Thanks,” Jenn said. She reached into the door pocket and pulled out a yellowed chamois cloth that she tossed to Geoff, “Press this hard against the cut, and please don’t try to leave, you’ll die out there.” She shifted the gearbox into first and revved the engine. The old man, his protestations complete, shuffled off-road. Jenn floored it, and they were back off careering through narrow, car filled streets, round more ninety-degree corners, and speeding over speed bumps.
The scenery rushed by in a blur. Geoff’s head ached—a soporific dizziness threatened to overcome his consciousness. Every bit of trim in the cab rattled as it knocked out a hypnotically rhythmic soundtrack, interspersed by loud bass drum thumps from the knackered suspension every time they hit a speed bump.
Geoff held the cloth tight to his head, all thoughts of running abandoned for now. He looked in the huge side mirrors, “No sign of any police.”
“You don’t realise who you’re dealing with, they ain’t police. They don’t use them, they know how to stay below the radar. Whoever they are, they have the darkest of dark budgets and like to stay out of sight, so they keep to small teams.”
“Surely they’ll give chase somehow?”
Jenn pulled out of the estate onto a main road into busier evening traffic, she slowed to a more law-abiding speed. “Their van won’t be going anywhere soon, and their roof-box full of tricks was smashed into the front of your flat, so they don’t even have drones to chase us with.”
They continued on in silence, travelling west down the main road. Geoff’s thoughts returned to his flat, realisation hitting him hard, “They killed Andy.”
“Crap. Kinda their thing that,” Jenn said, “I’m sorry, but they don’t mess around.”
“Who are they?” he demanded, wincing at the pain in his head.
“Just look after your head, I’ll explain when we get to my place, save your energy for the next part of our journey.” She pulled over to the side of the road, carelessly parking the bin lorry diagonally across a bus lane.
She’d parked directly across from Brixton tube station. “Fancy going underground?” she said, jumping down from the cab to the street below. “They won’t take long to track us to here with their backdoor access to CCTV, but we can get lost in the tube easier.”
She pulled out her mobile and tossed it in the back of the garbage truck, “That’s no use now that it’ll be associated with you.”
Geoff looked around at the busy street, people were starting to stare at the strange sight of a garbage truck this late in the day. It might not be long before someone starting filming with their phone.
“Here,” she pulled a baseball cap from inside her battered coat and handed it to Geoff as they walked across the street, “wear this, and avoid looking at the spy cameras,” she said, as she pulled up her hood and drew it low over her face.
After a convoluted combination of three different tube lines and the old driverless DLR, they arrived at Canning Town. Jenn had refused to explain anything on the way. The rattling old carriages were filled with half of London travelling home after a Saturday night out, and she’d explained that London has ears everywhere, well phones, and you can’t trust anyone’s phone. Geoff had no phone, the paramilitary thugs had taken it.
After a short walk from Canning Town station, under a dark underpass and down an alleyway, they made their way to a main street.
“I’m in there,” Jenn said, gesturing at the tall building on the other side of the road.
It was an old red brick building, last century. Georgian windows. A giant pentagram featured in a large circular stained-glass window. A rainbow lettered sign read, Marge’s.
“Apparently, it was a church before that went totally went out of fashion,” said Jenn, “then for years it was a children’s play and activity centre.”
“I thought pentagrams were occult,” Geoff said.
Jenn shrugged, “Who knows. It’s been derelict for years, no one bothers me here, we’ll be safe at least for a while.”
Down an alley and round the back, the entrance vestibule was paved in marble. Jenn locked the door behind them, and pocketed the large iron key. She led Geoff through double doors into the main body of the building.
The floor here looked assembled from padded rubber tiles jig-sawed together. The ceiling was Geoff didn’t know how high. Consuming half this interior space was a series of metal framed cubes, encased in nylon corded netting. They formed an interweaving collection of padded primary coloured vinyl walkways, tunnels, climbing nets, ladders, tube slides, and even a pool full of dented plastic balls.
“You’ve got a ball pool?” said Geoff.
Jenn sighed, “Fuck’s sake, you’re so easily distracted.”
“It’s been an odd few days, okay?”
“I know. Come,” she said, “it’s time to talk.”
She led them around the play structure towards the end of the church, a marble altar still stood dominating this end of the large room, looked over by the strange pentagram stained-glass window. Through a small but solid wooden door on the left was a short, stuffy corridor. It smelled of damp and decay. There were several interior doors, and one exterior exit. Jen led them through a door into what was once an office. A large wooden, leather-topped desk faced the door. It was covered in scattered papers, printouts, and other junk surrounding a vintage looking computer. It wasn’t a laptop, you wouldn’t even call it portable. It was like a vintage cyberdeck, but much bigger. Looks more like some slim carry on luggage,Geoff thought.
A comfy chair sat before the desk, a more functional office one behind it. Jenn gestured to the first chair, “Take a weight off,” she said, turning to two waist-high filing cabinets that formed a counter-top upon which was an electric kettle, a few mugs and everything that was needed to make a comforting cup of tea.
Geoff settled himself gently back into the armchair, his ribs were still bruised and healing, and he’d learned to take it easy on them throughout the journey to this strange dilapidated church building. He looked around the office, it had once been a fairly grand affair. Dark oak panels adorned two walls, the exterior walls were of dressed stones, not a crack visible between them. The antique desk was solid and looked well-made, with a dark green leather top aged by use and time.
“How do you want your tea?” Jen asked.
“White, no sugar,” Geoff replied. It all felt too normal after this evening’s fractal blur of events. He didn’t know what to do, or what to think at all. He was trying to get that click thud sound and Andy’s lifeless body out of his mind. He looked again at the paper strewn desk and the interesting looking old cyber-deck style computer.
It was not a model that he recognised. It was a beige plastic clamshell design, but with what looked like a fully mechanical keyboard. The fold out screen was maybe 15 centimetres or so diagonally, accounting for only a third of the length of the whole device. A chunky plastic handle protruded from one end, it was this that had triggered the impression that the computer was more luggable than portable. He’d never seen the likes of it before. It must be decades and decades old.
Jen handed him a chipped mug of hot tea and sat down behind the desk with hers.
“Interesting cyber-deck you’ve got there.”
She didn’t reply, instead she unrolled a cloth wrap, like an artist’s roll for brushes. From inside, she took a small aluminium tube about twice the thickness of a pencil, and half the length. Unscrewing a fine threaded cap, she tipped out two round white pills. Placing the pills on a small square of paper she crushed them with the base of the tube and then carefully brushed the powder into her mug of tea.
Wrapping the mug in both hands, she lifted it to her lips and drank at least half of it straight away. Geoff looked at his mug, it was still far too hot to drink. Hot drinks were always too hot to drink. He’d wait to drink them, only for them to end up going from too hot to too cold at time point. He could never find the right timing to drink them.
Jen placed the mug down with one hand, while flipping the screen of her relic computer closed with the other. She then closed it up and pushed it and the piles of papers aside, clearing the desk between them.
“I’m sure you’ve got more important questions than being nosy about my PC.” she said.
“Well, yes. To be honest, I’m totally overwhelmed right now,” Geoff said, “I really have no idea what just happened.”
“Drink your tea, it’s good for shock. I’ll try to answer any questions I can.”
Geoff sipped at the rim of his tea. It was still too hot. He placed it down on the desk to let it cool some more, It’ll probably go cold. he thought.
“First of all,” Geoff said, “who the hell are you, and how did you know I needed rescuing? Who were those spec-ops guys? What did they want? Did you send me those messages? Why did they kill Andy? Wait. Who was that Hannah woman? Did I really win the lottery? Did they really kill Andy?”
“Sorry, I really never know what to say when someone dies,” Jenn said, “I know all the words that people usually say, but those words are so hollow and don’t do the situation any justice, so I just say nothing instead.”
Geoff looked at her, she did look genuinely concerned, or confused, it was difficult to tell the difference, her face was not the easiest to read. “You still didn’t answer my question,” he said.
She smiled, “You didn’t exactly ask one question! I can answer some of them, but there are others I don’t have answers for.”
She sank into the chair, cupping her mug of tea in both hands before continuing, “My name is Jennifer Alban.”
Geoff nodded, shifting in his chair but letting her continue.
“I was born in Harlow, and I’m just under…well enough about me,” she stopped, eyes thinking. “As to how I knew you needed a hand, I had some messages about that.”
“You’re getting messages too?” Geoff asked, “So it wasn’t you who was sending me warnings. Who’s sending me messages then?”
“Take a chill pill, won’t you,” she said, “you can’t keep adding questions. I’d pegged you as an idiot, but I’d not truly realised how impatient you are.”
Geoff sipped as his tea, it was still too hot, “Sorry.”
She smiled, “Let’s address the messages later, that’s not an easy answer. First of all you asked who’d stormed your flat. Those gun-toting embassy balcony wannabes are, I think, from a part of the government so deep and darkly funded that I’m not even sure what they call themselves.”
“Balcony?” Geoff asked, confused, “they came through the front door, we don’t—”
“Christ!” she rolled her eyes at the interruption, “It’s just a turn of phrase, don’t get your knickers in a twist.”
“Get my knickers in a what? Your words are so damn fractal.”
“Just keep up will you, you’re doing my head in. Do you want answers or not?”
“Sorry.”
“Yeh, you say that a lot Geoff. Now, don’t be a muppet for once and maybe just listen—”
“I’m no one’s puppet—”
“Shitting Nora! Just listen will you.”
Geoff was about to ask who Nora was, but instead he pressed his lips together into a thin line and just nodded.
“Listen right, I don’t actually know who they are, or even what they are after, just that they seriously mean business. The messages I received said you needed help, where I could find you, and pointed me to the location of that old bin lorry.” She paused, putting down her empty mug. Geoff had barely started his, it was still too hot. “The driver's door was unlocked, and the keys were in the ignition.”
“Sounds like someone prepped that for you?”
“I thought the same, no idea who. There was nobody in sight,” said Jenn, “I parked up where I could see your flat, halfway up the street that joins yours. I sat there wondering what to do next. The lights were off, and it didn’t look like anyone was home, so I just sat and watched. Ten minutes later you and your friend arrived, he had some woman in tow behind him. You unlocked the door and went in, your flatmate, Andy, was it?”
Geoff nodded.
“He followed you in,” she said, “but the woman stayed outside, got out her phone and started to call someone, walking back the way you’d all come. I got out, thinking she’d left and this was a good time to come and get you out of there. I was just about to cross the road when that black van screeched to a halt and out poured a stream of raging testosterone.
“They spoke to the woman briefly, then stormed your flat, the door was still open. One of them stayed by the van, scanning the area. He couldn’t fail to see me of course, and there was no way I could get to you now. So I nonchalantly turned the corner instead of crossing the road. Once I’d reached the next corner, I was free to leg it and run all the way around the block back to the bin lorry.”
She paused, as if for breath.
“I’m not as fit as I once was,” she said, “it was quite a distance.”
“You can’t be much more than forty,” Geoff said, examining her features closely in the dim light of the church office.
She looked at him disapprovingly, “Didn’t your mother teach you anything?”
“What?”
“It’s rude to ask a woman her age.”
“Is it? Why? I’ve never heard of that before.”
Jenn shook her head at him, “You people…”
Geoff didn’t know what to say, she talked strange at times, there was something about her choice of words that reminded him of his old Gran, she was from Essex too, maybe it was a regional thing.
“I was raised by my grandmother until the age of twelve, I never knew my mum. Gran never had much good to say about her, always said she was a loser, a desynced pinhead incapable of being maternal.”
“We know who you inherited your lack of focus from then,” Jenn said, “Do you want to know what happened next?”
“Sorry, yes.”
“By the time I got back around to the bin lorry and had jumped back into the driver's seat a hooded figure, I presumed yourself, was being bundled into the back of the van. Most of the Rambos had gone back into your flat. I had no time to think. The bonkers idea to ram you with my lorry just came to me in the moment.”
“It worked. I think you might have saved my life,” Geoff said. “What did they want with me though?”
“I don’t know for sure. What had you done to attract the darkest of government funded good squads? Done anything illegal?”
Geoff sipped his tea, he could have a good guess at why they were interested in him. The tea was cold, of course, he leant forward and popped it on the desk. He examined her face, could she be trusted, she had saved him from some uncertain fate, that was true?
“How do I know if I can trust you, Jenn from Harlow?”
“I saved your life.”
“It could be a scam, you could just be working for them for all I know.”
Jenn laughed, “Oh it’s good to see you’re not a complete numpty, that’s the first sensible thing you’ve said.”
“So you agree you’re part of their circuit!”
“No, I’m not with them. I think I’d be in serious trouble if I’d just wrecked a high-tech company van and stolen a detainee, but it’s nice to see you’ve started to use that big old brain of yours.”
Geoff smiled, he was happy that she wasn’t pissed off with him for once.
“Now if you don’t want to tell me what you did to attract their attention, let me take a guess,” she leaned back and pulled a pack of cigarettes from a desk draw, lighting one up with a metal lighter that clicked open and shut with a satisfying sound, “I’m guessing you discovered some code you had written that you don’t remember writing?”
“How do you know—” Geoff said, looking at her, blue smoke falling from her slightly open lips. “Wait. It was you!” he pointed his finger at her accusingly, “You were there when some voidhead ran me off my bike,” he was starting to put things together, “and earlier you said something about how you’d fix my phone. That was you, you were smoking then too! You know that’s bad for you, no one does it anymore.”
“One thing at a time, Geoff. Yes, that was me.”
“What did you do to my phone?”
“Nothing, I just touched my phone to yours, that’s all. I’m not entirely sure what that did.”
“Why?”
“I had a message that told me to.” Jenn said, looking down.
“What kind of betaface does whatever some random messages tell them!”
“Your bizarre insults aside, I’ve learned to … trust these messages over time,” Jenn said, “we’ve been on quite a journey.” Jenn said.
Geoff didn’t know what to think, she’d been there, she’d screwed with his phone. She’d even run him off his bike for all he knew. She could not be trusted. How did she know about the code he’d written while dreaming?
“It’s important you tell me about the programs you wrote,” she said, flipping up the computer screen and turning it on.
Geoff stood up, diving forward and slamming her computer screen shut, pushing it aside.
“Hey—”
“No!” Geoff shouted, “You tell me why the fuck I should tell you anything at all?”
“Sit down Geoff, chill, there’s no need to throw a wobbly—”
“Fuck you! I quit. I’m out of here.”
Geoff crossed the room, opened the door, and strode out into the body of the church. He’d had enough of this, he didn’t know what was going on, he didn’t trust this woman. He just wanted to escape it all. Moonlight filtered through the large stained-glass window, reflected in the thousands of fist-sized balls in the ball pit.
What am I doing trusting some rando who lives in a satanic church with a ball pit? he thought.
He passed the tower of children's playtime and headed for the exit they’d come in by. He had to get out of here and find somewhere safe. Maybe he should even go to the police?
“Geoff!” Jenn called out, her voice echoing across the large space, the soft sound of her footsteps running across the padded tiled floor. “Stop! You’re gonna die out there when they find you. Remember what they did to your flat mate!”
Geoff refused to turn, continuing towards the door.
“Come on,” she said, grabbing his arm. He shook her off and twisted to face her, she was breathing heavily. “If they don’t kill you, then I’m sure they’ll find something worse to do to you.”
Geoff sighed, deflated, “Will you give me the cleanfeed?”
“Look, you’re not the only person who has written things in their sleep, okay?” she said, “It happened to me too.” she took his hand more gently this time and urged him back towards the office.
Geoff’s urgency had drained from him, “Okay, okay. You promise to tell me everything?”
Jenn nodded.
They were sat back in the office. Jenn had poured them both a sizeable whiskey. Geoff faced her, waiting, as she readied herself.
“Come on then,” he said, “tell me all.”
She looked reticent, flipped her computer screen back up, then knocked it back down. “Fuck it,” she said, and she picked up her whiskey and drank it down in one quick, well practiced motion.
“Well,” she said, “yes, I’ve written code in my sleep.”
“Really?”
“Yup. It was some of the best code I’ve ever written, much of it I didn’t understand at all.”
Geoff said nothing, waiting for her to continue.
She continued to speak while simultaneously taking a bottle of pills from a rucksack on the floor, “There were programs on my computer that I’d definitely not written, and some things I had been struggling to write that had been finished.” She shook a pill out of the bottle and popped it in her mouth, poured some more whiskey and chased it down.
“What were you making?” Geoff asked.
“Stock market simulations. I was trying to predict market movements using various financial modelling algorithms, but the code had changed a lot, there were more predictive features that I’d planned but not yet implemented.”
“Did you run it?”
“Yes. It predicted a massive recession, triggered by the collapse of the New York Stock Exchange on a Monday morning, sometime in the autumn.”
“Like this coming autumn?”
“No, a previous year,” she said.
“Cool, so how did you avert it then, did you warn anyone?”
“You think anyone’s in New York is gonna listen to a bonkers young girl from Harlow who says her computer is telling her the future?”
“So what did you do?”
“I used what my program was telling me about the future to short some stocks and make a quick quid or two,” she said, “it was the first thing I could think of, and I figured it would give me more reach. Maybe with money, people would believe me.”
Geoff said, “Did it work?”
“Yes, if you mean the stocks, and the first thing I bought was a brand spanking new Golf GTI. I’d been hankering after one for yonks. Unfortunately, buying that and the stock transactions left quite a paper trail and the same agency tracked me down, captured me, locked me up and interrogated me.”
“So you know who that Hannah woman was?”
“Never seen her before,” Jenn paused, “maybe she's newer…anyway…”
“Sorry, go on.”
“They took my computer away, questioned me day and night. They were overly interested in my dreams, or if I’d had visions, and constantly quizzed me about my inspirations. Eventually, they brought me my computer…and well, eventually I escaped them and have been running since. That’s just about all I know.”
Geoff looked at the wall clock, it was later than he thought.
“You look like you need some sleep,” Jenn said, “but before we knock off, I’d like to hear about how you attracted their attention.”
Geoff recounted how he and Andy had discovered the dreamcatcher recorded videos—although he called it the dome-phone—and the new dream analysis code, as well as BALANCE and LOTTERY apps on his phone. He told her how they’d changed his bank balance and drank the proceeds, about the text messages and their panicked decision to delete the BALANCE app.
“Oh shit,” Geoff said, “I also won the lottery!” He delved into the back pocket of his trousers and pulled out the crumpled lottery ticket. He stared at it for a moment, “This here is worth a couple of million pounds, I’ve no idea how much exactly.”
“That’s bound to have flagged up for them,” Jenn said, “there’s absolutely no way you can cash that in, it’s not like you just walk into the newsagents, and they give you a million quid. You absolute wally.”
“But I just bought a cold ticket, it’s not attached to my name. I didn’t use the lottery app, wasn’t logged in.”
“Lucky dip?”
“No, I used my usual numbers…”
“That’s probably enough if they're looking for you, that’ll flag up. Did they take your phone?”
Geoff sank his face into his hands, “Of course, we could do with that phone right now, it had a third miraculous app on it called ESCAPE.”
“That would have been handy, nothing quite like stupidly running yet another random rules of physics changing app we don’t know what it does at all just for the fun of it.”
“Physics?” Geoff asked.
“Well, how else do you explain the lottery results?”
“Some kind of electronic hacking thing, I was thinking…” Geoff stopped, “Damn, no, they still use physical machines and balls for the Saturday draw. Fuck, you’re right, how the hell did that work?”
“We don’t know, there’s a lot we don’t know. Who is this agency, who was that woman, what are they going to do next, how long until they find you?” Jenn raised her eyebrows, “They’ve got your phone now, and all your other equipment, so they’ve got all your code too, how long until they’re writing universe altering programs? They hold all the cards Geoff, and all the knowledge, so clearly we need to know more. We could make use of those tools, so you need to rebuild your dome phone program. And quickly.”
She stretched her arms above her head, her shoulder joints made a loud crack that didn’t seem to bother her.
“We can’t do that,” she said, “without fresh heads, and new equipment. So let’s get some rest, and go shopping in the morning.”
Geoff was unsure, but it was at least a way forward, and she made it sound easy, “Sounds like a plan, also, that’s a lot of questions all at once…” he tried to recall the phrase she’d used, “take a…pill chill?”
“It’s a chill pill, numpty.”
I’m releasing this story as I write it and it’s the first novel length story I have ever released into the wild at the ripe old age of 50. If you like it then please let me know. If you hate it let me know as well. If you want to let loose theory crafting then do that too!
And if you want to read more then please subscribe. Subscriptions are only £1 a month!