Jones glanced involuntarily towards the unlikely looking box. Her gaze travelled again around the equally unlikely and curiously homely decor of the lab, the panelled walls, the carpet, the squashy sofa and the cuddly toys. It was like a room in a home that was properly lived-in, and almost certainly by a happy family. The lighting was low, and came mostly from various small table lamps. The aroma of fresh coffee filled the lab. Music was playing softly, so softly that she could barely discern its nature. It was something classical, something gentle, something dominantly piano. Mozart perhaps?
‘The decor is deliberate, you know,’ said Connie, breaking into her thoughts.
‘I assumed so.’
‘Yes. We encourage relaxation coupled with an almost playful approach, and the lab staff interfere as little as possible. Our operators take part in the experiments as and when they are in the mood, and sometimes if they are in a particular mood or emotional state, if they are aware that their attitude at a certain moment is particularly negative or positive for example, then they may wish to explore the effect on their performance.’
‘Can I have a go?’ Jones startled herself with the request.
Connie, however, did not look even mildly surprised. Jones considered it likely that most visitors to the lab found it impossible to resist wanting to take part. You might think the whole thing was a load of baloney, but there was still an almost irresistible urge to see if you, personally, could upset the accepted laws of physics.
‘What, now?’ Connie asked.
‘Why not?’ Jones shrugged. ‘I’ve nothing else to do except complete a thesis on super conductivity by tomorrow night.’
Connie grinned.
‘Perfect attitude,’ she said.
Jones found herself grinning back.
‘But weren’t you coming with me to the library?’ asked Ed, who had been almost entirely silent until then. Reverential, Jones thought.
‘Sod it, I’ll do what I have to do first thing tomorrow, get up at dawn,’ responded Jones.
‘Well, I’m going to have to go now,’ said Ed. ‘I’ve got hours of work to do before the morning.’
‘OK. You go on. Maybe I’ll catch up with you later.’
‘Right. I’ll be off then...’
Ed hesitated at the door, glancing back over his shoulder. Sandy didn’t notice.
She gestured to the armchair in front of the REG.
‘Is this where I sit?’
Connie nodded, and pointed at a piece of paper, upon which was a typed chart titled ‘REG Experimental Options’.
‘You can choose the number of bits, coin flips if you like, per second, and the number of trials you wish to undertake by turning these switches.’
She indicated four raised knobs on the front of the REG next to a round dial.
The whole thing was more than a touch Heath Robinson, Jones thought. None the less she was now intent on seeing for herself what it was all about.
‘I would suggest a counting rate of a thousand bits per second and five hundred trials. That will probably take about an hour.’
Connie glanced at her quizzically.
‘Can you spare an hour, Miss Jones?’
Sandy held out her arms in a gesture of submission.
Connie opened the top drawer of a filing cabinet which stood beneath the table carrying the REG, removed a ledger and passed it to her.
‘Our log book,’ she said ‘Now, first you must record the choice of programme you have selected in the book, then set the REG controls accordingly.’
Jones did so dutifully, passing the ledger back to Connie, before focusing her full attention on the REG. The controls were fairly self-explanatory, the purpose of each ridged knob clearly labelled. She needed only a very little additional prompting from Connie in order to complete the task.
‘OK, now what?’ she asked.
‘You need to decide what direction you are going to take,’ replied Connie. ‘In other words, whether you want more ones than zeroes or the other way around — and then record that in the log.’
She passed her the big ledger again. Jones was aware that Connie had not looked at what she had written. She once more did as she was told and, when she passed the ledger back, Connie again did not look at it. She passed Jones a small handheld remote-control device, not unlike a television remote, but simpler, containing only an on and off switch.
‘When you are ready, activate the REG with that remote, and do your best, with the power of your mind, in any way you wish, to influence the output of the machine so that it conforms with your intentions, the intentions you have already recorded in the log,’ Connie instructed.
Jones nodded. Connie held up a hand, her body language telling Jones not to flip the switch yet.
‘It’s usually best not to concentrate too much,’ she advised. ‘This is about your inner consciousness, an area of our being most of us barely acknowledge. We are rediscovering a forgotten art here.’
A forgotten art. This was the first time Jones heard Connie use that phrase. She did it in such a way that Jones, an arch cynic, found herself meekly accepting what was being said as fact. For that moment, at any rate. And in the surroundings of that laboratory.
‘It’s not about will power,’ Connie went on. ‘It’s much more than that. You have decided on your intentions, so just relax. Let your inner consciousness take over.’
Jones smiled, a little of her natural scepticism resurfacing.
‘You sure I have one?’ she asked.
Connie smiled back. ‘Sure I’m sure,’ she said. ‘Whether it’s still operating after the neglect you have no doubt shown it throughout your life is another matter.’
‘Touché,’ Jones responded, as she flicked the switch.
Almost exactly an hour later the REG shut down. It had completed the programme she had set for it.
Connie, who had retreated into her little office and left Jones alone, re-emerged by her side.
Jones watched expectantly as she began to check the dials on the machine.
‘So, was it ones or noughts that you went for, young lady?’
‘Ones,’ Jones replied.
‘Umm. And what sort of result do you think you’ve had?’
‘I have absolutely no idea.’
‘In the way that I explained it to you — the REG flipped fifty-two per cent ones during your hour of operation.’
‘One per cent more than the average, yeah?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Is that good?’
‘It’s not supposed to be good or bad, Sandy. But the odds against that two per cent swing being chance could be a trillion trillion to one.’
‘I don’t understand “could be”. Surely, with your knowledge of this phenomenon and the data you have already accumulated, the odds of probability are not a moveable feast, are they?’
‘Damned right they’re not. But you have completed just one experiment, you need to complete a full series in order for your results to have any real significance.’
‘Right, but just say that it stays at fifty-two per cent. What would that mean?’
‘It would mean you are more receptive than most of our operators, that’s all. Just a fraction more actually, but highly significant, in fact, phenomenally significant, in terms of the odds involved.’
Jones felt a quite idiotic surge of pride. There was something extraordinarily seductive about the RECAP project, she realized. She supposed that was why there were always so many willing participants for experiments like these, however time-consuming they were. Most people liked to think that they were particularly perceptive, blessed with greater depths and a deeper sensitivity than those around them. Most human beings liked to think themselves special. You could call it what you liked, but in Jones’s experience people often got a huge buzz out of thinking they were psychic.