‘Of course I should, I’d love to,’ Jones replied resignedly. She wasn’t keen, but she’d known this was going to happen sooner or later. And she’d grown fond of Ed. She valued their easy relationship. She didn’t want to offend him.
Ed duly arranged a visit a couple of days later. He led her to the Science Research Building and through a network of corridors before pausing outside a stained wooden door. ‘Room 38’ was scribbled in faded biro on a piece of yellowing white card held in place by a rusted drawing pin. It was RECAP’s only announcement of itself.
‘This is it,’ he said, his voice a mix of awe and pride.
‘Great,’ she said. ‘Shall we go in?’
What she had meant, of course, was, shall we get it over with.
They were greeted by a tall angular woman with a mane of wild red hair, standing in the centre of the most extraordinary laboratory Jones had ever seen.
Several smaller rooms, doors all wide open, led off one central one in which place of honour was given to a low squashy sofa housing a host of cuddly toy animals. A young man sat in the middle, almost submerged in a heap of fluffy rabbits and bears. Green plastic frogs were balanced on the back and arms and gathered in occasional piles on a desk in the corner and elsewhere throughout the room. There were other toys too, and assorted mobiles dangled from the ceiling.
The young man on the sofa broke off briefly from staring at a giant pinball machine on the wall opposite him, and waved cheerily.
Clutter was everywhere. The walls were covered in the kind of plastic wood cladding that at the time was a favourite of mass-market DIY stores worldwide, and further adorned with an extraordinary selection of pictures and slogans.
Jones realized she had stopped dead in the middle of the doorway. Whatever she’d expected it wasn’t this.
‘Come on guys, don’t be shy.’
The red-haired woman beckoned them forwards. Jones guessed she was probably in her late thirties or early forties. Her smile transformed a long, narrow, and otherwise quite plain face. It radiated warmth, caused her eyes to sparkle with life and mischief, and instantly made her look not only years younger than she probably was, but almost beautiful. She had a great smile. She had great eyes too. They were a vivid green and perfectly oval.
Yet Jones quickly realized that this was that rare human being who genuinely had no personal vanity. Her face showed no trace of even a dash of make-up, and her clothes were truly awful. Indeed, by comparison, she made Jones, in her habitual jeans and nondescript shirt, look rather well turned out. The woman was wearing a baggy tunic top in a particularly startling shade of orange, and ill-fitting murky grey trousers that might or might not have begun their life black.
A button badge pinned to her T-shirt proclaimed: ‘Subvert the dominant paradigm’.
Jones smiled in spite of herself. She couldn’t imagine ever being any kind of rebel. She was a thoroughly logical, extremely ordered, and ambitious young woman blessed with a brain like a bacon slicer. But all she wanted to do was fit in to the academic world, not radically challenge it.
None the less she appreciated the message on the badge, maybe even envied slightly the spirit that lay behind it. And as an analytical scientist she understood the message absolutely.
Subvert the dominant paradigm. Subvert meant change, turn upside down, forcefully. Dominant paradigm was the accepted pattern. It was a call to rip aside parameters. And it was, of course, what scientists were supposed to do.
Jones stepped forwards. As she did so, she felt her right foot slip and very nearly lost her balance entirely. Grabbing the door jamb for support she only narrowly avoided falling to the ground. Looking down she saw that she had stepped directly onto one of several pieces of newspaper spread across the tiled floor of the lab.
The piece of paper was still beneath her right shoe. She lifted her foot. The paper was stuck to it. She noticed that it was wet and stained a rather suspect yellow colour, with one or two even more suspect brown patches. She shook her foot but only managed to detach the unsavoury looking paper by scraping her shoe against the edge of the door.
‘Sorry,’ said the woman. ‘It’s Paul’s new puppy. She hasn’t learned the ground rules yet.’
‘Right.’ Jones moved further into the room, this time looking carefully where she put her feet. Ed followed, closing the door behind them.
‘I’m Connie Pike,’ said the woman. ‘You must be Ed’s new friend.’
‘Yes, Sandy Jones,’ said Jones.
And if it wasn’t for being Ed’s friend, there was absolutely no way she would ever visit a place like this. It was clearly a madhouse. Jones was mainstream. She already knew exactly what she wanted to do with her life. Did these people really believe that mind power could alter the pattern of machines, for God’s sake? It was lunacy.
‘Good to meet you,’ said Connie Pike.
‘And you,’ responded Jones disingenuously.
Not that I have any desire to meet you, she thought, and not that I have any interest in this project which I reckoned was completely off the wall even before I saw this room, and now I am even more convinced of it.
‘We never try to convert anyone here, but if you’re prepared to suspend your disbelief I will gladly show you round.’
Jones blinked rapidly. She was momentarily startled by the insight Connie Pike had displayed with this remark. Could the woman read her mind, or what?
Fortunately Ed stepped in whilst she was still searching for the right response.
‘But Connie, Sandy doesn’t have disbelief,’ he said. ‘She’s fascinated by what you’re doing here. I’ve told her so much about it all. She’s already convinced. That’s why she wanted to come here and meet you, and Paul, and maybe take part in the experiments.’
‘Really?’ Connie Pike raised one eyebrow quizzically in Jones’s direction.
By then Jones had found her voice again.
‘I would absolutely love to look around the lab, Connie,’ she said, surreptitiously checking her watch.
Four
Sandy Jones would never forget that first day in the RECAP lab. She sceptical, bordering on cynical. Ed so eager. And Connie just being Connie. Getting on with it. Prepared to talk, to share her ideas with anyone who would listen. Jones had assumed that she was used to being dismissed as a nutter, accustomed to mockery.
‘This is our pinball machine, giant size, five thousand marbles. And this is Stephen, one of our volunteer operators.’
Connie gestured towards the young man sitting on the sofa, who again waved a hand while keeping his eyes riveted on the machine.
‘Simply put, the question is, can Stephen’s mind power alter the pinball’s accepted function?’
‘I see.’
Jones tried to keep her voice non-committal. She was actually wondering why the university even allowed this lab to operate on campus.
Connie led her into one of the smaller rooms off the main reception area.
‘That’s our REG,’ she said, pointing at a box-like structure with dials which could, Jones thought, have come straight out of a very early episode of Doctor Who.
REG. Random Event Generator. Jones knew vaguely what it was and what it was supposed to do, and she also knew it was Professor Paul Ruders, director of the RECAP project, who had invented the curious machine.
‘It’s fascinating seeing something I’ve heard so much about,’ Jones said. The remark was half true, and not entirely down to Ed, but misleading in that the handful of mentions she had spotted in scientific journals had almost all been disparaging.
Connie smiled that small enigmatic smile Jones was to become so familiar with.