Shana smiled, a smile that was subtly different from those he had seen before. ‘No need to be coy, Jon. I know what my new holes are for. Just as I know what your new appendage is for. Maybe we’ll try a practical lesson one day instead of all this theory. We might even have better luck than we had the last time, we certainly couldn’t do any worse.’
Jon was so taken aback that for a moment he failed to realise that the visual disturbances had ended and he was now the possessor of a mere headache.
She pulled him upright. ‘There, there. The worst should be over now. ‘
He nodded and gingerly placed his feet on the floor.
‘Yes, I’m alright now. I think we need to eat again after all that.’
She shook her head. ‘Not yet. We will need to eat but we need something else first.’
‘And that is?’
She climbed back onto the couch, lay on her back and closed her eyes.
‘Sleep.’
And they did.
Jon did not know how long they had slept; they were in an environment in which there was no way of measuring the passage of time. The Education Room looked exactly the same as it had before. The only difference was internal; his hunger was even more urgent now than it had been before sleep.
He roused Shana and they went back to the food dispensing room which was as generous and accommodating as they remembered. When they could eat and drink no more he turned to his companion and said, ‘We now know most of what was hidden before.’
‘Most,’ she replied, ‘there are still mysteries.’
‘Yes, of course,’ he replied, somewhat irritatedly, ‘but we have to deal with what we do know. And there is something very big about to happen.’
She waited.
After a tension-filled pause, he continued. ‘Jarz said that soon the army would enter the Gate of Light. We now know that was just the simulation’s metaphor for awakening from stasis. But it means that all the bodies in the caskets will soon be awakening and awakening as fanatical warriors of the Protectorate. But there is something different about you and me. Something happened to us which gave us independent thought, so we were never just loyal clones of the Protectorate.’
‘In which case our time of freedom will be coming to a very premature end,’ Shana said and gave a shrug of resigned acceptance.
‘There is a possible way that we can prevent that happening.’
‘And that is…’
Jon leaned forward with a strange light in his eyes. ‘Remember when we were in the Educator we could look into minds. I could see your mind but more importantly, I could look into the sleeping minds of the people in the Stasis Room. If we can get into those minds before they wake, perhaps we can influence them to have independent thought.’
‘And how will we do that?’
Jon’s smile became grim and resolute. ‘They gave me huge amounts of knowledge. Knowledge only to be used in the unthinking service of those monsters. It was never intended for beings of independent thought. But I am independent.’
He stood up and pulled Shana to her feet.
‘And I will use it.’
Five
Concern was written all over Shana’s face as she stood before Jon. ‘If you go back in you’ll be at the mercy of that Maroun-thing. You can’t risk it!’
‘No other way,’ Jon replied, ‘I’m not telepathic. The only way I can influence the other minds is through the Educator which connects us into some kind of neural network. And what’s the alternative? If we wait for them to wake up under their own volition they’ll be fanatical Protectorate supporters. And that will be the end of us.’
Shana was silent for a while and then nodded. ‘Alright.’
He grasped her shoulders and pulled her near. ‘That’s not all. You have to come in with me.’
He saw the alarm come into her eyes. ‘Why Jon?’
‘I have to know what the differences are. I have to compare a mind that is not enslaved to the Protectorate with one which is. I can’t read your mind without the Educator.’
She stared at him for a few moments longer and then said: ‘Let’s do it.’
‘When we’re in, you have to think about the Protectorate and the Degenerates. And Korok. I have to see which areas light up.’
He saw her flinch slightly at the mention of the dread name but she nodded again.
Shortly they were both back in the almost tangible blackness of the Educator. This time there were no revolving polyhedra. Only the darkness.
And something else. The incorporeal nearness of another mind. Shana’s.
Jon – I can see your thoughts! came a thought into his mind; a thought that was not his.
Good. Now do as I said: think about the Protectorate. Maroun. Korok.
He was aware of her distaste as he sent the instructions. He searched in the darkness for a visualisation of that thinking brain – and found it.
He saw schematics of the amygdala, the claustrum, the hippocampus. In glowing lines in the darkness.
But he saw more. He saw consciousness itself as minute transient fluctuations in the entangled quantum states at the very molecular level.
He watched the changes as the mind which rested upon this delicate substructure intoned the hated names and concepts to itself.
Far down in his own mind he embedded the images of what he had seen into his deepest memory and then thrust his straining mentality up, up through the entangled states, through the organic molecules, through the brain structures, to the uppermost level.
Now! he sent to Shana Do the same with me!
He set his mind to thinking about what he had seen; the callous overthrow of a peace-loving culture; the reduction of an entire people to servitude and worse.
Do you see it! He sent to Shana Do you see the structures firing?
There was no reply for some time and then Shana’s thought came to him, thin and despairing. Jon – I can’t do it! I can’t see you!
He groaned in the fastness of his mind. He had feared that Shana did not have the talent and it had turned out as he had feared. He alone would have to carry out the task.
Do what you can he sent See if you can find out more about where we are and why we’re here!
And with that, he disengaged his rapport with Shana and sent it into the Stasis Room.
His mentality hovered intangibly over the sleeping minds of the occupants of the caskets. He saw in which ones the rising bubble of awareness was closest to breaking the surface of unconsciousness and sent his own mind into the sleeping brain.
He found the flickering entanglements of thought and saw the unmistakeable signs of rigid control by an outside force. He reached in and tried to remove those mental fetters but found they were deeply embedded in the very substance of that brain and resisted his efforts to wrench them away. Still he struggled until with a sudden release of tension he had pulled them away and watched them disintegrate.
He knew then that the release of the hundreds of minds in this room was far beyond his abilities. At most he could free ten individuals before exhaustion overtook him.
As it transpired, that was an over-optimistic estimate. He succeeded in freeing three males and two females. His last success was a female and as he pulled away he realised that this individual was one of the Shana clones! His mental vision was confined to the image the person had of him or herself: he had no direct experience of their outward shape. But the image held in the last female’s brain was unambiguous – the female was identical to Shana!