Cry Darkness

Three

Jones had not even heard of RECAP when she arrived at Princeton in 1994. But her, at first reluctant, association with the charismatic underworld of the project and its people began by accident just a few weeks later.

Princeton itself had been a culture shock. And Jones was still getting used to the air of unreality about the place, from its perfectly manicured lawns and immaculately sited sculptures to its curiously out of place architecture.

Mock Tudor mansions dominated the campus, most serving as dining halls for students. To Jones, accustomed as she had quickly become to the famous dreamy spires of Oxford, arguably the grandest old university in existence, it all looked totally false. The buildings didn’t really belong. Jones thought they were like a cross between the more pretentious examples of English suburbia and the set of Stepford Wives. Everything about the place created an atmosphere of some kind of alternative world. Students and staff wafted about in a bubble of their own superiority, a state not uncommon in great universities internationally. But at Princeton this seemed to be taken to extremes, without a hint, of course, of what Jones considered to be the saving grace of good old British cynicism and self-deprecation. Princeton and its people, she learned, took themselves and their reproduction architecture very seriously indeed.

When Jones had excitedly told her favourite Oxford lecturer that she had landed a place to study for her doctorate in America, at the famous Ivy League university, the man, a somewhat grizzly and very English don of the old school, replied sagely, ‘America? Princeton isn’t in America.’ Jones soon learned exactly what the lecturer had meant. Moreover, she quickly concluded that not only was Princeton most certainly not in America, it probably wasn’t even on planet Earth. But that didn’t concern Sandy Jones at all.

Whatever she felt about the curious unreality of Princeton, Jones knew she had been given a wonderful opportunity to complete her studies there. Princeton was at the cutting edge of her area of science. And it was where probably the greatest physicist of all, Albert Einstein, had sought his ultimate refuge from Nazi Germany and completed so many of his great works.

However, to begin with, she thought she was never going to fit into the place. She was a blue stocking with few social graces. The air of casual sophistication she acquired later in life was still a long way off. She hadn’t known how to dress then, and in any case had yet to acquire any interest in clothes. And she hadn’t a clue about make-up. She reckoned, in those days, that she was skinny rather than slim. Her breasts had barely developed since adolescence, which embarrassed her — particularly after the doctor who carried out her Princeton medical told her she was the nearest thing he’d ever seen to a hermaphrodite. However she had good skin, intelligent hazel eyes, and unusually glossy black hair, shaped into a sharp bob. She did know she was not entirely unattractive, and there had been one boyfriend — or very nearly — at Oxford, who had relieved her of the burden of her virginity. But after three rather fraught months he ended it, telling her that he couldn’t cope with being treated as a biological experiment. And Sandy Jones was honest enough to accept that he’d probably assessed her attitude to sex rather accurately.

She became something of a loner at Oxford, and felt destined to become even more of one at Princeton. She was, in fact, painfully lonely — and therefore receptive to, and even grateful for, the attentions of fellow student Ed MacEntee.

Ed was a brilliant mathematician, a child prodigy, but, not unlike Sandy, something of a lost soul away from his own rarefied world. He was, however, clearly smitten with Sandy Jones from the moment they met.

They became friends, at first no more than that, very quickly studying together in the evenings at the Firestone Library, and often sharing a table at the dining club at mealtimes. They walked around campus together. They pooled their resources to occasionally visit the town’s hippest bar — not that Jones considered anything Princeton, town or university, could offer to be remotely hip really. They went swimming together in the campus pools, and at weekends they would sometimes go to the movies, or a nearby bowling alley.

Ed was tall, thin, and more than presentable, even though he was already losing his wispy blonde hair. He was also the kindest and gentlest of men. Best of all, because of him, she was no longer lonely.

When the friendship ultimately moved on, and they became lovers, Sandy Jones was glad, if only because this surely made her like everybody else. The earth most certainly did not move for her. Ed, in the second year of his BSc was a year or so younger than Jones, and possibly even less experienced. But the sex was pleasant enough, and she at least tried not to give the impression that she was treating it as a scientific experiment.

Perhaps surprisingly for a mathematician, Ed, it turned out, was heavily into RECAP. He frequently talked to her about the project, but most of the time she didn’t even listen properly. After all, he was inclined to tell the same thing over and over again.

One warm summer’s evening when they were sitting in the shade of Nixon’s Nose — the irreverent name given by the students to Princeton’s massive Henry Moore sculpture which from a certain angle is considered to resemble the profile of the disgraced former president — Ed was particularly persistent.

‘I mean, people think it’s weird, but it’s not,’ he told her. ‘Connie says it’s all about studying powers of the human mind which have always been there. We’ve lost the use of them, that’s all, just like you’d lose the use of your legs or arms if you didn’t exercise them. That’s partly why Paul came up with the name, RECAP, because at least part of the purpose of the project is to look way back in time over the way the mind has developed and changed, in order to move forwards...’

Jones nodded sagely. Connie this... Paul that. She really wasn’t that interested.

‘The thing is nobody can explain why it happens, but laboratory condition experiments across the world are proving that it does happen.’

‘Uh huh,’ Jones responded. Why what happens? She couldn’t even be bothered to ask. In any case he had probably told her already. Repeatedly. She just hadn’t taken any of it in properly. She had her own work to think about.

‘You know, you should come along and meet Connie and Paul, see what they’re doing first hand,’ Ed continued.

‘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.

‘“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” Arthur C. Clarke, Clarke’s third law,’ she said suddenly.

Jones did a double take. She had suddenly realized that whilst Ed might accept her bogus interest in RECAP at face value, Connie Pike was not the tiniest bit taken in by her. She knew Jones thought the whole thing was hocus-pocus. She damned well knew.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Jones.

Connie smiled and shrugged. Unfazed. Jones glanced towards Ed who looked puzzled.

‘I really would like you to tell me about the REG,’ she told Connie. After all there wasn’t much point in making the effort to come to the lab and meet the team if she didn’t try to at least appear open-minded.

‘Really?’

‘Really,’ said Jones.

Connie Pike stared at her for a few seconds, almost as if considering whether or not she was worth the bother, Jones thought. Then Connie nodded, and placed one hand on the REG, a rectangular box about a foot high and deep and eighteen inches across.

‘This machine repeatedly generates at random numbers one and zero,’ she told Jones. ‘As I’m sure you know very well, the laws of physics dictate that these numbers, over a sufficient period of time, will be produced equally. We, however, are in the process of proving that under certain circumstances random events can alter the results.’

‘Events or people’s minds?’ asked Jones.

Connie smiled.

‘Both,’ she said. ‘Our experiments with meditation seem to prove that the machine’s sequence can be affected by the power of the human mind. Yet we cannot explain why. Now, you are a scientist and a sceptic...’

Jones opened her mouth to interrupt.

Connie waved a dismissive hand at her.

‘No, you are, and that’s fine. We like sceptics here. Keeps us on our toes, and it’s the only way to spread the word, isn’t it? What’s the point in preaching to the converted?’

Jones nodded her head in meek acceptance. To her surprise, she was beginning to rather enjoy this visit.

‘As I was saying,’ Connie continued. ‘You are a scientist and a sceptic, so let me give you some data. Some indisputable data, we think. To date, forty-seven different operators have generated two hundred and ninety complete REG experimental series, all under strict laboratory-controlled conditions. That’s a total of over two and a half million trials. We make a graph of the results, a cumulative deviation graph.

‘Now, we accept that the laws of physics dictate that over extended periods of time the line of the graph will be level, because pure chance will ultimately produce exactly the same number of zeros and ones, or heads and tails, if you prefer. Right?’

She paused, studying Jones as if to see if she was listening. Jones was concentrating hard.

‘Right,’ she said.

‘OK,’ Connie continued. ‘If at any time you want to study these graphs you are welcome, but in overall terms of a fifty per cent hit rate, i.e. fifty per cent zeros and fifty per cent ones, which is what would be expected if left entirely to chance, our experiments with operators showed an overall deviation of one per cent. In other words, varying between fifty-one per cent zeros, forty-nine per cent ones, and conversely.’

She paused again.

‘Doesn’t sound like much does it?’

Jones shook her head.

‘Statistically the odds on that level of deviation happening by chance are a trillion to one,’ Connie said quietly.

Jones did another double take. She had no idea that this kind of data even existed, and there was something about Connie’s calm and considered approach that left her in little doubt of its accuracy.

‘Are you sure?’ she asked none the less.

Connie nodded.

‘Absolutely. Look, I’m just giving you the results. The data is all here.’

She gestured towards a row of battered filing cabinets.

‘I told you, take a look any time. Help yourself.’

Jones responded thoughtfully.

‘Let’s take it that your results, as they stand, are unimpeachable. But how can you guarantee the integrity of the REG? If it is possible that the machine might at any stage cease to function perfectly, then your entire database loses all scientific value.’

‘We don’t allow that to happen,’ said Connie. ‘A Random Event Generator is based on a source of electronic white noise generated by a random microscopic physical process. That’s how it gets its name. Several other research establishments now have them. Ours utilizes as its random source a commercial microelectronic noise diode unit commonly incorporated in a variety of communications, control, and data-processing equipment circuitry, rendering this noise into an output distribution of binary counts, and entailing extensive fail-safe and calibration components which guarantee its integrity—’

‘Hold on,’ interrupted Jones. ‘You’ve totally lost me.’

It was clear that, beyond the cuddly toys, this project was considerably more hard-nosed than she had expected it to be. It was also a world away from her field of scientific expertise.

‘All right,’ said Connie. ‘Just think of it as a sophisticated electronic coin-flipping machine with loads of built-in safeguards. Instead of heads and tails it flips numbers.’

‘Ah,’ said Jones. ‘Why didn’t you say that in the first place?’

‘I kinda thought I had,’ responded Connie, grinning easily.

‘So, have you recorded any deviation in the results attributable to individual operators?’ Jones continued.

‘Yes, we have discovered operator patterns. We have also found that the effect is on average generally greater if more than one person is using the same mental intention on the same REG. We experimented with co-operating couples, and we have even found that the composition of the pairs is a factor. It is not just a case of two people automatically getting results that are twice as large as one person’s results.

‘Same sex pairs, men or women, tend if anything to produce more negative results, in other words they often influence the REG less than one individual. But opposite sex couples have consistently produced an effect that is indeed approximately twice that of individuals, and, beyond that, emotionally linked pairs — lovers, close family members, spouses — have consistently produced an effect more than four times that of individuals.’

Jones cocked her head to one side, intrigued in spite of herself.

‘So what you are establishing here is not only the power of consciousness, in these instances, and in the most simplistic terms, the possible power of mind over matter, but also how much greater that power is if two minds are linked together and dedicate themselves to one purpose?’

‘Exactly.’ Connie beamed at her.

‘So, leading on from that, how much greater is the effect if a large number of minds are concentrated together in this way?’

‘Ah, the power of global consciousness,’ Connie said quietly. ‘Now that is the most exciting prospect of all.’

Global consciousness. It wasn’t the first time Jones had heard the term, but there was something in Connie Pike’s voice when she spoke of it which made the hairs on the back of Sandy Jones’s neck stand up.

‘We have considerable evidence of the REGs being affected by the mind power of the masses,’ Connie continued. ‘And also by monumental and emotionally charged events.

‘We have recently developed a field version of the REG which we have taken to places where something enormous, something tragic perhaps, or something wonderful, has happened — a natural disaster, a murder, a huge rock concert — and the graph has been significantly affected. But if the event is big enough you don’t have to take the REG anywhere. Live Aid in 1985, which was almost a celebration of global consciousness, resulted in a marked deviation on this REG right here.’

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.

Rather to her surprise, even at Oxford, where a certain degree of intellect was supposed to be taken for granted, there had been a Psi Society made up entirely of students who believed that they were psychic. Jones had previously been inclined to regard such tendencies as the prerogative of the less cerebrally gifted. Indeed, she’d always avoided the term psychic in almost any context, and had considered the bad press levelled at psi over the years to be totally justified. Obviously Connie Pike and Paul Ruders were having to fight against that. Jones’s own initial attitude to the project was proof enough. And yet, in spite of her innate prejudice against everything RECAP and the REG experiment was about, she felt herself being drawn in.

‘But why?’ she asked suddenly. ‘That’s the question, isn’t it? Why did I get these results? Why, if I were in this room with my mother, or my husband, if I had one, would I probably get even more significant results, according to what you have told me today? Why?’

Jones raised her arms and placed the fingertips of both hands against her temples, as if willing her brain to tell her what was going on inside her head. Inside her mind.

‘We don’t know why, Sandy.’

Connie produced a packet of cigarettes. Jones watched silently as she removed one and lit up. As an afterthought she held the packet out towards Jones inquiringly.

Jones declined. Apart from the obvious more serious consequences, cigarettes made your breath smell and discoloured your teeth.

‘If we knew why, then we would have solved the secret of consciousness. And that, Sandy, as I am sure you know, is arguably the last great mystery of mankind.’

Jones nodded.

‘Thing is,’ she responded, ‘you are compiling evidence put together under laboratory conditions. That’s valid and inspiring scientific exploration, Connie. But it is just so hard for someone like me, for most people, I think, to accept that the power of the mind could possibly affect a machine like this. I mean, I’m a person who has never accepted psi at all...’

Connie took a long pull on her cigarette. The little room was filling with smoke. Jones was not surprised that she so blatantly ignored the university’s no smoking rule — she assumed that Connie Pike would ignore any rules that didn’t suit her.

‘Sometimes I think the terminology is wrong,’ Connie replied. ‘Certainly the way we look at things, the way we see what’s around us, is highly suspect. The lay person, but probably most of all the scientist, has an attitude all too often governed by the times we live in, by a pragmatic materialistic society, and by the dictates of a regimented kind of thinking that is imposed upon us from birth. Let me turn it around for you.

‘Do you really think that man is on this earth merely as a visitor whose presence has absolutely no effect on the world he meanders through?’

‘Well no, of course not,’ responded Jones. ‘Most of us leave a mark of some kind, good or bad, and many of us, particularly scientists, medical practitioners, creative people too, architects, designers, writers, artists, can change the world significantly.’

‘Yes, but you are still looking through eyes with limited sight. You are seeing only the material, the tangible. Only what you can reach out and touch. Take that a stage further, Sandy. Move on to what you can feel. Take our traditional way of thinking to the other extreme. Turn it around, a full one hundred and eighty degrees. Embrace ancient and traditional concepts, cultures and beliefs from other eras. Recognize that within you, somewhere, the memories of lost skills remain, skills which it might not be impossible for you to retrieve by the simple inexplicable power of your own mind.

‘Try to imagine that it is possible for every single experience that you have in your life time to be created by your own consciousness. Can you even begin to get your head around that, Sandy?’

‘Probably not. It’s a quantum leap, isn’t it, Connie.’

‘It certainly is. But most of us can probably cope with the in-between ground. “We are both onlookers and actors in the great drama of existence.”’

‘Neils Bohr,’ said Jones.

‘You’ve read him?’

‘Of course. I am a physicist. Read a bit of Shakespeare too. “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”’

‘If you like. But Sandy, do you see that if you take those two diverse perspectives and explore the ground in between, if you accept that consciousness involves at least some mixture of the passive and the active, and if you then do what we are doing here, which is to record and collate all of this in an approved mathematical manner, then at the very least, Sandy Jones, we are embarking on probably the most thrilling, and most significant scientific journey of discovery of our age.’

Connie’s eyes were not shining any more. They were blazing. Jones had the feeling she had said all this before many times. It did not make her outburst any less genuine nor any less passionate.

‘Wow!’ she said.

Connie laughed abruptly.

‘Sorry. I get a bit carried away at times.’

‘You’re allowed,’ said Jones.

She was going to say more when the door to the lab opened and in walked a big, bumbling sort of man, probably not a lot older than Connie but with thinning white hair. He had a straggly white beard, and was wearing an untidy tweed jacket and baggy grey flannels. He was surely everybody’s idea of an absent-minded professor. Under one arm he carried a Yorkshire terrier puppy, with which he seemed to be engaged in conversation.

‘Now, you’re going to sit in your basket like a good girl, Lulu, aren’t you? Aren’t you, honey? And when you want a wee you’re going to tell me, Lulu. Like I’ve taught you.’

With that the big man placed the small dog in a basket, surrounded by more newspaper, which stood in one corner of the room.

He then turned towards Connie and Jones as if noticing their presence for the first time.

‘Good afternoon, Connie, and who’s your new friend?’

Connie introduced Jones.

‘And this, Sandy, is Professor Paul Ruders, the director of RECAP,’ she said.

‘I’m very pleased to meet you, sir,’ said Jones.

‘Good show. Good show.’

‘Sandy’s been operating the REG today,’ continued Connie.

‘Good show. Good show.’

Paul Ruders smiled benignly and disappeared into an office next to Connie’s. The Yorkshire terrier puppy followed at once. Ruders either didn’t notice or was used to being disobeyed by the creature. He simply closed the door, shutting himself in with the little dog.

‘Don’t be misled by appearances,’ Connie instructed. ‘Paul is the brains behind RECAP. He’s quite brilliant.’

Brilliant or deluded? Jones wasn’t sure. But against her better judgement she found that she wanted to know more. She turned again to study the REG, that Heath Robinson wooden box with its range of dials and switches. Maybe it did hold the key to man’s most extraordinary secret. She had no intention of allowing herself to become too fanciful — but she realized suddenly that she did want to continue to explore the possibilities. To take a further part in Connie’s scientific journey, and at least discover just how much the parameters of her own mind could be expanded.

‘So how many more sessions would I need to do here before my data became valid?’ Jones asked.

‘We’d need to complete a series, and the length of the series should be set now, at the start of the experiment,’ replied Connie. ‘A series typically consists of 2500 or 5000 trials in blocks of fifty or one hundred runs. And a full series usually takes an operator anything between two and six weeks. I’m afraid it does call for quite a major commitment, particularly when you consider that almost all of our operators, like you, have their own heavy workloads away from RECAP. But we have found that only series on this scale produce the absolute minimum base of data from which consequential systematic trends can be reliably extracted.’

‘I see.’

Jones turned away from the REG to directly face Connie.

‘Right, then. See you tomorrow? Same time, same place? And let’s go for the full series of 5000 trials in a block of one hundred runs, shall we?’

Connie Pike raised her eyebrows in surprise, but this time Jones wasn’t so sure that her behaviour was genuine. She must be well accustomed to the affect she, her project, and her unlikely laboratory had on people, Jones reckoned. Converting sceptics was probably her house speciality.

‘Abso-damned-lutely!’ said Connie.

She showed Jones to the door, then put a restraining hand on her arm.

‘Wait.’

Connie turned on her heel, disappeared into her office for just a few seconds, and returned carrying a blue button badge, just like the one she was wearing.

Smiling she pinned it to one of the lapels of Jones’s denim jacket.

‘Have a good evening,’ she said.

‘You too,’ Jones replied, touching the badge with the fingers of one hand. ‘And thanks for this.’

Once outside she remembered the time, the all too pressing thesis she had to complete, and the fact that she’d only visited RECAP to keep Ed happy.

‘I must be going barking mad,’ she muttered to herself as she hurried along the corridor and out into the grounds en route to the main building. When she reached the entrance hall, she unpinned the little blue badge Connie had given her, held it in the palm of her hand and looked at it.

‘Subvert the Dominant Paradigm.’

She muttered the words aloud, wondering what it was about Connie Pike, and the whole RECAP project, that was sucking her in so quickly.

Nonetheless, she then tucked the little button badge into her jeans’ pocket. She might be turning into a psi freak, but she had no intention of advertising the fact.

Five

From that very first visit to the RECAP lab, flattered by the possibility of being a particularly receptive operator, captivated by Connie Pike, in awe of Paul Ruders, whom she came to believe really was a genius, Jones was hooked.

Until nearly the end of her four-year stint at Princeton she spent much of her spare time at the RECAP lab, endlessly operating trials on the REG, correlating results, making up graphs. And always working in the dark, with little idea really either of what was likely to be achieved or even of what it may be possible to achieve, yet nonetheless enthralled by the prospect of what might be.

The secret of consciousness, the last great mystery of the human race. Most people, Jones realized, had a story to tell of sensing something strange, or of an awareness of a situation or an event which contemporary science could not explain. Being aware of eyes staring at you, even from behind your back, was perhaps the most common experience, followed closely by having some kind of knowledge of the death or injury of a loved one in another place. But all these stories, at the end of the day, were merely the kind of anecdote that had been related and passed on throughout the ages.

The trials being conducted at Princeton and elsewhere, as initiated by Paul Ruders, were something different. This was valid correlated scientific exploration. At the beginning Jones, always a sceptic at heart, looked everywhere for flaws in the way the various tests were conducted. She could find none. Just as Connie had told her in the beginning, all RECAP experiments were governed by the strictest of laboratory conditions.

She therefore came to the conclusion that the results of the RECAP trials were inarguable.

Yet they remained inexplicable. Paul Ruders never seemed to doubt that one day the mystery of consciousness would be solved, but he didn’t say a lot. Connie, on the other hand, talked enough for both of them. And always colourfully.

‘Chasing the rainbow,’ was how she usually referred to the ultimate aims of RECAP.

‘Do you realize we could find what we are looking for and not even know it?’ she remarked one night when she and Jones were alone together in the lab in the early hours, Professor Ruders, the by-then at least partially house-trained Lulu trotting along behind him, having finally gone home to his wife.

‘I’ll know,’ Jones replied at once.

Connie raised both eyebrows.

‘Not short of confidence are you, Sandy?’

‘Maybe not,’ Jones replied. ‘Mind you, I was absolutely confident that I would never in my life get involved in anything like RECAP.’

‘Well, we’re all very glad you did,’ Connie told her.

And Jones felt a warm glow in her belly.

The glittering academic career to which Sandy Jones aspired, was a world away from the psi experimentation of RECAP, and she was aware that her association with the programme might be regarded by the academic establishment as the only blot on an otherwise exemplary residency at Princeton. But she continued to risk it, ignoring the odd puzzled frown from the hierarchy. The REG programme fascinated her. She couldn’t leave it alone.

However, ultimately the natural conflict between the hard fact of her ambition and the seductive vagary of RECAP led to Jones having to make a choice. A choice, deep inside, that she had probably always known, was inevitable.

During her final year at Princeton, she began to think seriously about her immediate future. The American university was rich, both in material wealth and in opportunity. She had been left in little doubt that there were openings within its diverse employment structure which were hers for the taking. And she and Ed had somehow drifted into discussions about their joint future, almost as if that were inevitable. Nobody proposed marriage, but Ed did mention casually more than once that if she married him, the resulting American citizenship would remove any obstacles there might be to her enjoying a high-flying career in the States. Then, towards the end of her last semester, when her final thesis had been completed and her doctorate was about to be bestowed, she learned that she was being considered for a particularly sought-after research fellowship back in the UK, at London’s Goldsmith College. It was a position considerably more senior than would usually be offered to a newly qualified doctor, and one which she knew would open the door to the most elevated areas of British and international academia.

She told Ed that she wasn’t sure if she wanted it, which was a lie, and that she didn’t think she would get it anyway, which was true. And she reminded him that acquiring nationality by marriage worked both ways round, which she really shouldn’t have done because she had absolutely no intention of marrying Ed MacEntee.

She flew back to London to meet the Goldsmith hierarchy, and it was there that Professor Michael O’Grady came into her life. He was probably Britain’s top biologist, not only was he brilliant, and a TV star with his own BBC Two series, The World Around Us, but he was also handsome, and oozed Irish charm. He was known as Dr Darling. And Sandy was later to wonder how she had failed to realize immediately that he had to be too good to be true.

Instead, she fell under his spell from the beginning, and, even though he had made no secret of being a married man, allowed herself to be seduced by him that very first night. O’Grady was everything Ed wasn’t. He was an accomplished and passionate lover, and the sex was by far the best Sandy Jones had ever experienced. She hadn’t realized that she could care about it that much. But during those few days in London, O’Grady overwhelmed her, physically and in every way. When they weren’t in bed, he whisked her off to the best restaurants in town, to a reception at 10 Downing Street, and to a garden party at Buckingham Palace.

It was all totally seductive for the girl from the wrong side of the track. In just a brief few days she fell head over heels in love, for the first time in her young life. And her head was totally turned. She realized also that what O’Grady had could possibly also be hers, that maybe she could be a part of that world. Indeed, amongst the high-flying media people he introduced her to was the TV executive who would one day offer Sandy Jones her first opportunity in broadcasting.

She quickly learned that O’Grady, who was fourteen years her senior, had a reputation for being an inveterate womanizer, but she didn’t care. It would be different with her. She would change him.

On the day before she was due to return to Princeton she was formally offered the Goldsmith research fellowship and accepted it on the spot. She travelled back to Princeton merely to collect her belongings and formally receive her doctorate.

She told Ed as little as possible, indicating disingenuously that the Goldsmith position was not a permanent one, and she had made no long-term decision.

She certainly did not mention that she’d fallen heavily in love with another man.

Ed appeared to take the news well enough, even congratulating her on her appointment, but she could only suspect what he was really feeling, this quiet, genuine man who had been her very best friend for four years, and whom she knew loved her in a manner she had never quite been able to reciprocate.

‘Just say the word and I’ll come and join you,’ he’d remarked lightly.

‘Oh, I’ll be back before you know it,’ she’d replied, knowing full well that was another lie, and that she was almost certainly about to break Ed’s heart.

She realized that she was being cowardly, but she couldn’t face telling him that their relationship was over.

Ultimately she only remained in Princeton for a few days, during which she avoided Connie, and all concerned with the RECAP project, as much as possible, merely letting them know casually that she would not be staying in Princeton after all. She was vaguely aware that Connie and Paul, Connie in particular, were deeply disappointed. But, at that moment in time, Jones didn’t care.

Back in England, she at once became so immersed in her new life that Princeton and most of what had happened there slipped swiftly into a compartment at the very back of her mind. She and Connie kept in touch, but she very soon broke off all communication with Ed. Without a word of explanation. Not least because she had no idea what to say to him. She knew how shabbily she was behaving, but didn’t seem able to stop herself. She was already pregnant. Unlike with Ed, she and O’Grady had never taken any precautions. She didn’t even remember the subject being mentioned. The whole thing was crazy. But quite wonderfully so. At first.

O’Grady divorced his wife, not only with unseemly haste, but also with apparent ease. Jones eagerly agreed to marry him as soon as he was free. The birth of their twin sons, Lee and Matt, led her new husband to commend her on her efficiency in producing an instant family. For a brief period she took a break from her academic work, and was blissfully happy caring for her new babies, and basking in the love of her charismatic husband. Or that’s how she saw things. But in what seemed like no time at all, O’Grady’s perennially roving eye reasserted itself, and alighted upon a research assistant even younger, and certainly prettier, than his wife. History repeated itself. Within three years Sandy found herself divorced and bringing up her sons largely on her own.

Only then, not infrequently besieged by a terrible sense of emptiness, did her thoughts turn to Princeton again, and she would experience the dull ache of regret, and an overwhelming longing for what might have been.

Two decades later, flying across the Atlantic in the aftermath of tragedy, the memories were suddenly startlingly vivid, including her shameful behaviour when she had so carelessly cast it all aside.

And it caused Sandy Jones more pain than she would ever have believed to know that Connie and Paul were dead. That she would never see either of them again.

Their work had mushroomed, of course, beyond Paul and Connie’s original dreams. The computer age and the Internet had seen to that. Jones knew there were now more than a hundred Random Events Generators throughout the world, more than a million series of laboratory condition tests had been completed, producing literally billions of trials, all with similar results to those achieved at RECAP from the beginning.

These REGs, sometimes known as RNGs, or Random Number Generators, were installed at various accepted academic and scientific establishments not only across America but in all five continents, in cities as diverse as Beijing and Edinburgh, Tokyo and Sydney, Amsterdam and Moscow. All of them were linked to a database at RECAP, the home and the heart of the Global Consciousness Project, under Paul’s directorship. Or rather, they had been until the lab had been destroyed and Paul killed.

They weren’t Heath Robinson boxes any more. Nowadays a REG was a USB device, not much bigger than a standard memory stick, which merely plugged into the appropriate computer outlet. And many of those who had installed them worldwide — often post-graduate students yet to be pressurized into moving away from such a controversial area of science — were initially sceptics, just as Jones had been to begin with. Often, they barely believed the results of their own experiments. Yet they were united in being convinced of the accuracy, and also in believing that the Global Consciousness Project was at the very least nipping at the ankles of something quite extraordinary and revolutionary.

In spite of that, RECAP had remained ever under pressure, always under some sort of threat, usually financial. Jones was acutely aware of how much she could have helped the project over the years, had she wished to do so. But they’d never asked for her help — not until Connie’s call of a few days ago, that is — and she had never offered it.

Yet now, when it was probably too late, certainly too late for Connie and Paul, she was jetting off to the rescue. And a good half of her didn’t know what the hell she thought she was doing, nor indeed who the hell she thought she was. A cross, perhaps, between Wonder Woman and her near namesake, Indiana Jones?

At times during the journey she tried to sleep but largely failed, her brain racing as she began to consider the task ahead. Whatever exactly that might prove to be.

She didn’t even know if her dead friends had any relatives. Paul had been a widower, and Jones was aware that his only child had died very young. As for Connie, well, to her shame, Jones realized that she’d never known anything much about Connie Pike’s personal life, beyond the fact that she had been married as a young woman and quite swiftly divorced. She had no idea what relationships Connie may or may not have had since then. It had always seemed to her that Connie’s whole existence revolved around RECAP and those who were involved with the project. She’d always been there for Sandy Jones, and for the others. But, looking back, it had all been rather one sided. Which, perhaps led to the real reason why Sandy Jones was on this aircraft. She felt so guilty about so much.

The instructions were given to fasten seat belts for landing. Jones decided that all she could do now was to take things step by step.

At JFK she would grab a yellow cab to New York’s Penn Station and then catch a train on to that so familiar other-worldly university town. Newark would have been a more convenient airport to fly into en route to Princeton, but there had been no suitable flight available.

She checked her watch. The flight was due to arrive at four thirty p.m. and appeared to be on time. If she was lucky she could be at Penn by around six. The train journey to Princeton Junction would take just over an hour, the trains were frequent, and Jones was travelling light with only hand luggage, just the one capacious shoulder bag.

Suddenly she knew exactly what she was going to do first when she reached Princeton, whom she would visit straight away. She doubted she’d be welcome, but she didn’t care. And she certainly did not intend to give any warning.