A Philosophical Investigation

7

When Jake had finished making her report to the Assistant Police Commissioner, Gilmour chewed his finger absently for a few seconds before uttering a profound sigh.

‘Does Professor Gleitmann know about this yet?’ he said wearily.

‘Yes, sir.’

Gilmour’s bushy eyebrows moved in to ask a silent question.

‘He wasn’t very pleased, sir,’ said Jake.

‘I can imagine. But you’re satisfied that it wasn’t Sergeant Chung’s fault, this logic bomb?’

‘Wholly satisfied, sir. Chung’s boss from the Computer Crime Unit has been over to the Institute to investigate exactly what happened. He has already confirmed Sergeant Chung’s account.’

‘Good. The last thing we want is the Home Office trying to post the blame for this one through our door.’

Gilmour leaned back in his chair and swivelled around to stare out of the window of his New Scotland Yard office. They were only a kilometre away from the Tate Gallery, the site of the last Lombroso murder. Somewhere overhead could be heard the sound of a police helicopter as it constantly patrolled the rooftops around the Home Office and the Houses of Parliament, looking out for terrorists or lone crackpots. Jake knew that aboard it were cameras powerful enough to have photographed the comb in her hair and quite possibly the string on her tampon, not to mention the sophisticated eavesdropping equipment the helicopter carried. The temptation to use this equipment was obvious and sometimes the Police Airborne Surveillance teams went too far. The newspapers were still full of the political scandal that had been the result of one airborne team having recorded the compromising conversation of two homosexual Members of Parliament as they sat eating their sandwiches in Parliament Square.

‘So what’s next?’ asked Gilmour.

‘Well, sir, Sergeant Chung tells me that with the computer system the BRI have been using, it is sometimes possible to recover material that has been accidentally deleted. It’s called an electronic spike. I’ve told him to make that his first priority.’

Gilmour shook his bald head and proceeded to stroke his Mexican-style grey moustache nervously. ‘I don’t understand these blasted computer people,’ he said irritably, transferring his attention to the buttons on his well-pressed uniform. ‘Either something has been deleted or it hasn’t.’ Anger made his light northern burr become more noticeably Glaswegian.

‘That’s what I said,’ Jake reported. ‘But Chung says that sometimes artificial intelligence will find a way of erasing something from a file directory and yet keep it hidden safely, somewhere within the main memory.’

‘Any other bright ideas, Jake? Mayhew’s last words. What about that?’

Jake shrugged. ‘It could be he thought that the Lombroso people set him up to be killed. It could be he was even right. Could be he was just paranoid.’

‘Yes, well I know just how he must have felt.’

‘Sergeant Chung has had one other idea, sir. He thinks he’s got a way of breaking into what’s left of the Lombroso database. You’ll recall that the Lombroso computer is connected to our own at Kidlington? And that their system is supposed to alert us if a name which we have entered into our computer, in the course of a violent crime investigation, should be on the Lombroso list of VMN-negatives?’

Gilmour grunted an affirmative.

‘Well, Chung wants to take the entire UK telephone subscribers-list, which exists on a series of discs, and feed all the names and numbers at random into the police computer within the context of a fictitious murder investigation. It might take a while, but the idea is that one by one, Lombroso will be forced to release all the names and numbers of those men classed as VMN-negative. Or at least the ones it has left since the killer’s logic bomb went off. That way we can at least keep some of them under surveillance.’

Gilmour held his head weakly. ‘Spare me the technical explanations, Jake. Do it, if you think it’s a good idea.’

‘I’ve also prepared a letter addressed to each VMN-negative person who has elected to receive psychotherapy. There are about twenty of them. Professor Gleitmann has agreed that Lombroso counsellors will give these letters to their patients. The letter asks each man, for the sake of his own safety, to contact me in total confidence. The only trouble is that these men aren’t much disposed to trust the police. They think it’s part of some grand plan that at some stage we’re going to round them all up and put them in a special prison hospital. But I still think it’s worth a try. I’d also like to take out some advertisements in the newspapers. Just a list of codenames, nothing else. But warning them to get in contact with a number.’

‘I think I’d have to clear that with the Home Office,’ said Gilmour.

‘We’ve got to try and warn all of these men,’ said Jake. ‘Surely—’

‘I’ll see what I can do, Jake. But I can’t promise anything.’

Jake felt herself frown.

‘Was there something else?’

‘Perhaps now is not the best time,’ she said defensively. ‘It’s a bit wild.’

‘No, I’d rather hear it, Jake. No matter how fantastic.’

She led Gilmour up to it gradually, telling him how she already had a team of officers checking the sales of gas-guns and combing the police files for those who had a record for unauthorised computer entry. Finally she described how one of the counsellors at the Brain Research Institute remembered having talked to the man, codenamed Wittgenstein, now assumed to have committed the murders.

‘At least, he can remember the codename and not much more,’ she explained. ‘So what I want to do is hypnotise him to see if his subconscious can make a better job of a description.’

Gilmour pulled a face and Jake wondered how much longer he had before retirement. Not very long, she imagined. But he nodded.

‘If you think that it’s necessary.’

‘I do, sir.’

The nod turned into a shrug of resignation.

‘There’s something else, sir. I’m convinced that our man believes that what he’s doing is in the public interest.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Killing men who have tested VMN-negative. Men who are potentially killers themselves. I’m sure that — our man...’ She still couldn’t bring herself to refer to the killer by his codename. It seemed too absurd that a homicidal maniac should be named after one of the twentieth century’s greatest philosophers. ‘Well, he might just have worked out some sort of justification for his actions, sir. I’d like to draw his fire a little. Try and engage him in some sort of dialogue.’

‘How would you manage that?’

‘I’d like to arrange a press conference, sir. To talk about these murders. Naturally I won’t refer to the Program itself. But I would like to try and provoke him a little. Talk about the complete innocence of the victims, how these murders were committed without reason, the work of a lunatic, that sort of thing. If I’m right, he won’t like that much.’

‘And suppose you only succeed in provoking him to go to the newspapers to explain what he thinks he’s up to? We’re just about keeping the lid on this as things stand. But if this lunatic were to go to the newspapers with a story, that would be it, I’m afraid.’

‘No, sir, I’m certain he wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t want to alarm all the other VMN-negatives he’s got on his list. It would make his job a lot harder if they were all scared shitless and looking out for him as a result of reading his story in the newspapers. No, sir, my guess is that he’d try to contact us, to try and put the record straight.’

‘And if you do manage to get him to contact you, then what?’

‘Depending on how he chooses to make contact, there’s a lot of valuable profiling data we might be able to obtain: handwriting analysis, linguistic analysis, personality assessment — all of this would be invaluable in tracking him down. I’m sure I don’t have to remind you, sir, that this is notoriously the most difficult kind of killer to catch. It may look as if we’re grasping at a few straws here but frankly, sir, it’s only these small fragments of data that will enable us to build up a complete picture of our man.’

Jake paused to see if Gilmour was with her. He wasn’t, she knew, a sophisticated kind of man. He was one of the old school of policing: left school at sixteen to join the force and then up through the ranks. The Scot knew as much about forensic psychiatry and criminal profiling as Jake knew about Robert Burns. But seeing that his eyes hadn’t yet glazed over, she kept on going.

‘I’m talking about systematic composite profiling,’ she said.

‘We’re trying to establish the type of man responsible, as distinct from the individual. The Yard’s own Behavioural Science Unit has already compiled in-depth psychological studies of everyone from the Yorkshire Ripper to David Boysfield. We’ll be using their body of work as a comparison in an attempt to identify the type of offender that we’re looking for. But I can’t make bricks without straw. I need some data. Contact with the killer would give us something.’

Gilmour nodded gravely. ‘What kind of man do you think we’re looking for, Jake?’

‘My guess?’ Jake shrugged. ‘Well, this is no disorganised asocial we’re dealing with, I can tell you that much. He’s a cunning, methodical, calculating killer for whom homicide is an end in itself. That is, on its own, highly unusual. Most serial killing is driven by lust. But this man is inspired by nothing other than his own sense of mission. It means he has no obvious weakness, and that makes him very dangerous.’

Gilmour sighed. ‘All right, Jake, you’ve made your point. You’ll get your press conference, if I have to go down on my knees to that bitch.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘One more question, Jake.’

‘Sir?’

‘Exactly who was this fellow, Wittgenstein?’

The psychiatrist who remembered counselling a VMN-negative codenamed Wittgenstein was Doctor Tony Chen. Like Sergeant Chung, he was another immigrant from Hong Kong, only a little older and better-mannered. He seemed pleased to cooperate with Jake’s inquiry, even one which involved raiding his own subconscious mind.

‘I don’t remember too much about the guy,’ he admitted. ‘I’ve counselled quite a few VMNs since then. After a while, it’s difficult to separate them. Especially the ones who don’t come back for regular counselling. Wittgenstein didn’t; that much I can remember.’ He rolled up his sleeve. ‘All right, let’s do it.’

Doctor Carrie Cleobury, the Lombroso Program’s Head of Psychiatry, took charge of her colleague’s hypnosis in her office at the Institute, accompanied by Professor Gleitmann and Jake. Having injected Chen with a drug to help him to relax, she told him that she would induce trance with the aid of both stroboscopic light and a metronome.

‘This has the advantage of combining auditory and visual fixation,’ she said to Jake. ‘I find it the most effective technique.’

Jake, who herself held an M.Sc in Psychology, was already well aware of this, but she remained silent on the subject, reasoning that she preferred having Doctor Cleobury working for her rather than against her.

Chen sat in an armchair facing the light, and waiting for the drug to take effect. After a minute or two he nodded at Doctor Cleobury who switched on the light machine and set the metronome in motion, adjusting the speed until it matched the flashing of the light. Then she began her induction talk. She had a pleasant voice, calm and self-assured, with just the trace of an Irish accent.

‘Keep looking into the light and think of nothing but the light... In a little while your eyelids will begin to feel heavy and you will feel drowsy... and relaxed, as your eyelids become heavier and heavier...’

Light and shadow flickered on Chen’s broad Oriental face like the wings of a great moth, and as the minutes passed, his breathing grew more regular and profound.

‘... you will want to close your eyes soon, because they are becoming so heavy and you feel so drowsy...’

Chen’s small nostrils flared, his mouth slackened a little as his eyes grew so narrow that it was soon impossible to tell whether they were open or closed.

‘... and now, as your eyelids close, you will relax, deeper and deeper... and your head will fall forward... and you will be pleasantly, comfortably relaxed...’

His head swayed and then dipped inexorably towards his chest. Cleobury continued with a series of suggestions, gradually narrowing Chen’s conscious mind and removing any distractions that might have inhibited the impact of what she was saying. She turned off the light, but her voice kept the same even reassuring tone, as if she was coaxing a cat to come to her.

‘And with every breath you take, you will become still more deeply relaxed... deeper and still deeper...’

Jake noticed a slight quivering of Chen’s eyelids and a twitching around his mouth. As his respiratory movement slowed it was clear he was entering a light trance.

‘Pay attention to my voice. Nothing else seems to matter, just the sound of my voice. There’s nothing else to disturb you now. There is only my voice.’

The first part of Doctor Cleobury’s induction talk had been made in a slow, even tempo as if she had been reciting a prayer in church, but now her voice became more incisive and calmly assertive. And her suggestions of relaxation involved larger and more complex muscle groups. When at last she was satisfied that her colleague’s body was completely relaxed, Doctor Cleobury turned off the metronome and set about deepening Chen’s trance through the use of fantasy.

‘Tony,’ she said. ‘Tony, I want you to use your imagination now. I want you to picture yourself standing in an elevator. If you look up you can picture the floor counter. We’re on the tenth floor right now, but in a moment I am going to operate the elevator and send you down to the ground. And with each floor we pass, the elevator will take you into a deeper sleep. Deeper with each count I make. Keep your eyes on the counter. I’m starting now...’

She began to count backwards from ten, and when she reached zero, and the ground floor of Chen’s imagination, she told him to step out of the elevator and to remain there, ‘in this deep, deep state.’

Chen’s jaw was now resting on the upper part of his clavicle. At the same time there was a perceptible rigidity about his arms and torso, like a convict in the electric chair awaiting the switch to be thrown.

‘You will remain comfortable in this deep, deeply relaxed state,’ said Doctor Cleobury. ‘I am now going to give you some simple instructions. I won’t ask you to do anything you will not wish to do. Please nod your head so that I will know you understand what I am saying.’

Chen’s head stiffened and then nodded.

‘Lift your head, Tony, and open your eyes.’

As he obeyed her instruction, Doctor Cleobury stepped forward and, with a pencil torch, checked Chen’s eyes for light sensitivity. He bore the light shining directly into his pupil without so much as blinking, and Doctor Cleobury nodded at Jake to turn on her discrecorder.

‘It is towards the end of last year, Tony. November 22nd, to be precise. A patient testing VMN-negative has been sent in to see you for counselling. You’re holding his computer card in your hands. The codename at the top right-hand corner of the file card is “Ludwig Wittgenstein”. Tell me if you can see it.’

Chen breathed deeply and then nodded.

‘I want to hear your voice, Tony. Speak to me.’

Some words emptied from Chen’s slackened mouth. Jake understood none of them.

‘English, Tony. We’re speaking English now. Tell me if you can see the name.’

He frowned as his subconscious bent itself to Doctor Cleobury’s suggestion. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I can see it.’

‘Now I want you to look at the man who is sitting opposite you. The man codenamed Wittgenstein. Do you see him?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you see him clearly?’

‘Clearly yes, I see him.’

Jake’s heart leaped at the thought of what Chen’s unconscious mind was looking at: the face of the killer himself. The possibility that she might obtain his description in this way might even make a subject for a future paper.

‘Can you describe the man to us?’

Chen grunted.

‘Tell us about Wittgenstein, Tony.’

Chen smiled. ‘He is a very logical, passionate sort of man. Argumentative, but intelligent.’

‘What about his physical appearance? Can you tell us something about that please?’

‘To look at — ?’ Chen’s frown deepened. ‘Medium to tall in height. Brown, wavy hair. Large, quick blue eyes. Thoughtful brow: I mean, his forehead constantly bends itself to thought. Sharply featured. The nose is a little hooked. And the mouth, a bit petulant, perhaps a bit effeminate, as if he looks in the mirror a great deal. Lean-looking, but not fit: it’s not exercise but lack of food that keeps him slim. Intense...’ He was silent for several seconds.

‘Any distinguishing features?’

Chen shook his head slowly. ‘Nothing, except maybe his voice. He speaks very properly. Without an accent. Like on the BBC.’

‘What does he say to you, Tony? Does he tell you anything about himself?’

‘He’s angry. And scared he says.’

‘They usually are,’ Professor Gleitmann whispered to Jake.

‘When I told him what the test meant, he asked me to explain how he could know this to be true. I said I could show him the PET scan we had taken of the inside of his head. He said that I might just as well show him the inside of a rhinoceros head, for all the difference it would make to him. Whatever I told him was merely a concept derived from experience and he couldn’t accept it as a fact, only as an asserted proposition.’ Chen’s head began to nod again.

‘Ask him if he gave any indication of his identity,’ said Jake. ‘What sort of job he does, where he drinks, that kind of thing.’

‘Listen to me, Tony,’ said Doctor Cleobury. ‘Listen to me. Did Wittgenstein say anything about himself? Did he tell you what kind of job he does, where he lives?’

Chen shook his head. ‘He said he didn’t much care about himself, that’s all.’

‘Clothes,’ prompted Jake. ‘What was he wearing?’

‘Tony, can you tell us what he’s wearing?’

‘A tweed sports jacket, white polo-necked sweater, brown corduroy trousers, sturdy sort of brown shoes which look expensive. A beige raincoat on his lap.’

‘Age.’

‘What age is he, Tony?’

‘Late thirties, maybe.’

‘Tony, I want you to tell me how you counselled him. Tell me about that, will you?’

‘We made an appointment to discuss his future psychotherapy. And some drugs. I gave him a course of oestrogen tablets, and some Valium.’

‘All right, Tony. Let’s move forward in time now. It’s the day of the patient, codenamed Wittgenstein’s first appointment. Tell me what happens.’

Chen shrugged. ‘He doesn’t show up, that’s all. He never called to cancel. Just doesn’t come.’

Doctor Cleobury looked at Jake. ‘Is there anything more you would like to ask, Chief Inspector?’

‘No,’ she said, ‘but when you’re ending the trance I’d be grateful if you could tell Doctor Chen to remember everything he can of Wittgenstein’s appearance. When he’s fully conscious I’d like him to spend some time with one of our ComputaFit artists. Maybe we can work with something more tangible than just a verbal description.’

Jake switched off her discrecorder and dropped it into her bag. Doctor Cleobury started to count Chen out of hypnosis. Professor Gleitmann followed Jake to the door.

‘I wonder if I might have a brief word with you in my office,’ he said, holding the door open for her with one of his impossibly hairy hands. ‘There’s something I’d like you to see.’

They took the lift up to the top floor, and from one of his cherrywood bookshelves, Gleitmann removed a book which he opened and laid on the conference table in front of Jake. There was a photograph of a man. Jake glanced at it and then at Gleitmann.

‘I don’t know whether or not you noticed it,’ he explained, nodding at the picture, ‘but just about everything Doctor Chen said could equally apply to him, the real Ludwig Wittgenstein.’

‘I don’t quite follow you.’

‘Well you see, Chief Inspector, the unconscious mind doesn’t always distinguish things with any degree of precision. It is quite possible for Doctor Chen to have lied under hypnosis, albeit without culpability. I’m not at all certain that he did manage to distinguish between the man codenamed Wittgenstein by our Lombroso computer and the real one, the philosopher. It’s quite possible that he may have merged them both together in his subconscious mind. For instance, take Chen’s description of the patient’s physical appearance: brown wavy hair, large blue eyes, petulant mouth, sharp features: all that could be said of the real Ludwig Wittgenstein.

‘And do you remember that remark that the patient supposedly made about how nothing empirical is knowable, or words to that effect — how he would admit only to the existence of asserted propositions?’ Gleitmann shrugged awkwardly. ‘Well I don’t remember much of what Wittgenstein actually wrote, but that sort of thing is pretty close to the man’s general — Weltanschaung.’

‘Yes, I see what you mean, Professor.’

‘I’m sorry, Chief Inspector. It was a bold idea you had there, but the mind can play tricks on us.’

‘What if Chen knows nothing about the real Wittgenstein? Wouldn’t that make it more likely that his unconscious mind was speaking the truth?’

‘It’s a possibility. But Chen is an educated man, Chief Inspector. I can’t see him not knowing something about Wittgenstein, can you? Good Lord, he read Psychology at Cambridge.’

Jake shrugged. ‘So did I, Professor, and to be quite frank with you until a couple of days ago, you could have written what I knew about Wittgenstein on the back of a postage stamp.’

For a long time Jake had known the name merely as something of emblematic power, a name that was replete with intellectual symbolism, like the name of Einstein. Perhaps after all it was that Semitic suffix which helped to explain the exotic power of the name. But now that she had read Wittgenstein’s shortest and most explosive book, the Tractatus, she had a better idea why he had been such an influential figure in philosophy. Quite apart from the enigmatic, almost hermetic quality of his writing, there was the subject of his investigation: how is language possible? It was something people, especially policemen, tended to take for granted, even though it provided the very stuff of man’s inner life. Even more important than Wittgenstein’s attempt to explain what language was capable of — or so it seemed to Jake — had been his attempt to explain what language was incapable of. This touched something deep within her soul, something that even bordered her own sexuality.

‘Knowledge is a queer phenomenon,’ said Jake. ‘At least that’s Wittgenstein’s opinion.’

‘Well I see you haven’t wasted any time in filling in the gaps,’ said Gleitmann.

‘Filling in the gaps is my job,’ said Jake. ‘But there is one other possibility, of course. That this killer may actually resemble Wittgenstein in more than just a name spewed out by your computer. Suppose for one minute that he is indeed an intelligent, well-educated sort of man. Suppose for instance that he has read about Wittgenstein before, perhaps even been impressed by his thinking. Now isn’t it possible that the shock of being tested VMN-negative might have triggered some kind of psychopathological disorder? A paranoid schizophrenic delusion, perhaps?’

Gleitmann rubbed his blue jaw thoughtfully. ‘I suppose it might be possible. But as quick as that? I don’t know.’

‘Suppose he already had a diathesis, a predisposition towards the illness. All that would then be required would be some kind of stress situation to transform the potentiality into an actuality. A stress situation such as being told that you were VMN-negative perhaps.’

‘That might do it, I suppose.’

Jake smiled thinly at Gleitmann’s reluctance to admit the possibility of what was to her increasingly obvious.

‘Come on, Professor,’ she said. ‘You know damned well it would.’

When their meeting was over, Jake left the building. Outside the Institute, she found a yawn turning quickly into a stretch that demanded some kind of greater response than a brief flexing of neck and shoulder muscles. Exercise. Air: even the combusted air of Victoria. She decided not to take her car back to the Yard and having collected her gun from the glove compartment, she dismissed her driver and set off up Victoria Street.

Most Londoners, finding themselves in Jake’s position, would soon have turned northwards in the direction of St James’s Park. But the pull of the river was too strong for someone who had lived most of her life beside the river.

Even so, the view from Westminster Bridge was fraught with danger, there were so many beggars and petty thieves along the embankments, and the gun was a necessary precaution.

It was a sight which always managed to touch her soul, although the smog-laden air prevented the sun from lighting the saloon-bar boats, the glass tower-blocks, the satellite mushrooms, theatres and mosques. A feeling of calm overcame Jake as she watched the muddy brown Thames glide underneath her feet. She wondered if Doctor Cleobury’s trance-through-relaxation technique might not have also worked a part of its spell on her.

Traffic was lighter than normal and she crossed from one side of the bridge to the other, stepping coolly over the supine form of a drunk sleeping in the gutter. Even the Houses of Parliament seemed to be asleep. She smiled as she tried to imagine the lies that were probably even now being told in that heart of democracy by the likes of Grace Miles.

This sense of calm refused to desert Jake despite the drunk waking up and, with an almost complete lack of consonants, demanding money of her. She reached into her bag and keeping one hand on the 30-shot automatic, she took out a five dollar bill with the other and gave it to him. The man stared dully at it for a moment, nodded, grumbled a reply, and then, thinking better of snatching the tall woman’s shoulder bag, moved on, unaware of how close he had come to being shot.

Jake watched this majestic piece of work as he walked unsteadily along the pavement, towards the nearest off-licence, and felt nothing but contempt, for him and all men. She would as soon have blown his head off as rewarded his menacing demand for money.

It was the sight of the river, not the man, which had moved her.

I keep two notebooks. Particularly beautiful books, with smooth, creamy paper, a little yellowed by age, but of a kind that has not been manufactured for many years.

There is this one, containing my journal, which I call my Brown Book. And there is another, containing the details of those few individuals whom I have executed, or am planning to execute, which I call my Blue Book. I write with an old fountain pen. I’m not very used to it. Like most people I normally write something straight onto the computer, however I feel that that would be to remove me from the immediacy, the improvised character of these, my thoughts, which only a pen can translate.

Neither of these two books is particularly good, but they are about as good as I can make them. I dare say that they will only be finished when I am. In other words, their publication (about which I am having a few misgivings) will not be an event in my life.

Of course, it is not without the realms of possibility that, taken together, it should be the fate of these two humble volumes, in their poverty and in the darkness of this time, to bring illumination into one brain or another. But then, how things are in this world is a matter of complete indifference for what is higher.

Next to each other, these two books amount to a sort of a system. This is what is important for logic. Because the only necessity that exists is logical necessity. And the idea that there is some kind of natural explanation for everything, and that this natural law is something inviolable is, frankly, nonsense.

Turning to the Blue Book for a moment, you will see how, for each individual, a series of pictures serves to represent precisely how I will carry out his execution. (All right, I did depart from this in the case of Bertrand Russell, but that was a mistake; anyone can make a mistake.) These are simple, childlike drawings, such as might be made when completing an accident-claim form from a motor insurance company.

As a picture of a possible state of affairs, it’s all logical enough. Of course it’s not every picture that corresponds with reality in this way. You just have to take a walk around the Tate Gallery to appreciate that. In there are a great many pictures on view in which an arrangement of objects bears no relation to a state of affairs. This is the freedom of Art. It is what is sometimes called artistic licence, almost as if you had to write away to Swansea in order to get one.

As well as my Brown Book and my Blue Book which, taken together, represent my system, there is the approximate reality of my work.

To enter an approximate world you need the right equipment. My own RA machine and its body attachments represent the state of the art and cost me almost EC $50,000. The main part is just a box, about the size of a cereal packet which you attach to your computer. Then there is a full-face helmet that resembles something a motorcyclist might wear, and a rubberised exoskeleton suit that’s more like what you see a frogman wearing. Inside the helmet, the visor acts as a projection screen, which is where you see the approximate world, and a loudspeaker over each ear lets you hear it. The suit is a flexible composite which enables you to touch and be touched by approximate things and approximate people. You switch on or off simply by lowering or raising the helmet’s visor.

Originally I bought RA as therapy for my aggression, customising several of the existing program disks to my own specifications. When I felt more than normally hostile I would don the body attachments and plug myself in. Seconds later I would be in an approximate world, armed with a selection of lethal weapons enabling me to murder, maim and rape my way through a selection of highly realistic victims. But these days I find that I don’t have to feel hostile to want to use this particular program, and I find that it keeps me on a fairly even keel.

Of course there are many other approximations of reality which one can explore. These other RAs include the erotic, the romantic, the fantasy, the comic, as well as the musical and even the intellectual. Many of these programs I have devised myself, and I look upon these pictures and sensations as a kind of art form, like cinema.

Of course RA is not without its drawbacks. Like any form of escapism such as drugs, or alcohol, it can become addictive for the weaker-minded individual. But that cannot be a problem for me.

It has been said, by the manufacturers of RA and other products like it, that what is real and what is unreal we must merely apprehend, for both are incapable of analysis. But this seems to me to be nothing more than the kind of tautology that typifies advertising.

The fact of the matter is that nothing empirical is knowable.