FUTURES RESEARCH

9028 - THE SPACE TRAVELLER'S TALE contd. 2 - 1998

[As explained earlier, the stories were linked by an ‘operator’s’ narrative. The last two sections, therefore, contain this linking material]

POSTSCRIPT (part A - from the space colony)

THE HEROIC SACRIFICE

It falls to me, Gloria, to add a final footnote to DiMee's diary entries. The three of us, David, DiMee and myself, eventually concluded that the consignment - whatever it was - had to be delivered in Lucius's capsule; perhaps sarcophagus was a better term. Of course, we examined the capsule, every inch of it. But we found nothing; except that there was a large amount of space for an illicit cargo as well as him. It could contain, literally, a ton of dope or computer chips; and, as DiMee recorded, earlier in this diary, there were innumerable locations on board the colony where such cargo could be secreted until the very last minute before it was transferred to the capsule.

Everything came to a head, therefore, at what turned out to be almost a wake. The Professor himself had just wanted to disappear into the void without ceremony, but the rest of us needed some form of cathartic relief - which the 'farewell' party provided. Thus, all of the group were gathered in one of the cargo bays, toasting the brave explorer - whether of the Rings of Saturn or of the After-Life was not clear! All of us were, though, uncomfortably aware of the capsule lying in the airlock next door - ready to carry its human cargo on that last fateful journey.

I was even more aware of that fact, for I was acting as lookout for my two colleagues, who had slipped in to make a last minute examination. If there was to be a delivery it had to be in place by then. What we would do if they did find anything - and we were confident that they would - we had not really decided. Whatever we chose to do would put a real dampener on the wake. Not least, it would delay the Professor's departure - the need to recover evidence would be paramount. Maybe it would delay it so much that he would never be able to make that journey. I must admit I dreaded facing him with that news. He was, after all, the innocent victim of this affair,

I could not see what my colleagues were doing. I couldn't even hear them on my micro-communicator - I had it only to warn them of any problems, otherwise radio silence was the rule of the day. I was, therefore, as shocked as everyone else when the explosion occurred. The mighty sound, and the blast wave that knocked me off my feet, occurred simultaneously. My immediate reaction was for everyone to get out of the cargo bay. I need not have bothered, they were all falling over each other in their rush for the doors. As the last of them came out I slammed the massive doors shut and closed all the interlocks. With the cold vacuum of space just a few feet away, our immediate thoughts had been of self-preservation. Only when I turned to face the wall of shocked face did I even think of the fate of my two colleagues. I knew that they must be dead, but it was then that I started to ask myself why.

The Professor didn't make that final journey. I believe that, when his illness had finally run its course, he was cremated on one of the asteroids. His ashes were scattered in space, to be carried by the solar wind out to the stars. It wasn't what he had wanted, but it still had a degree of poetry which he might have appreciated.

It wasn't just the investigation that stopped his departure. His capsule had been blown apart so thoroughly that only finger-sized pieces could be found; and the same was true for my companions. If it hadn't been for the DNA tests, on the crumbs of human material which they found, we might not even have been sure that they had perished. I scrutinised the tapes, from the video cameras which had been covering the airlock at that time, dozens of times; but even I could not be sure what had really happened. Unfortunately, the first priority in the design of the cameras had been ruggedizing them against the vacuum of space. The picture quality was secondary. So, although I could clearly see the two of them opening the capsule and then starting to open the various compartments within it, I could not see the sort of close detail I usually expected from surveillance cameras. Even so, the progress of the event was clear enough. One minute the cameras were showing them poking around inside the capsule, the next the cameras were dead - as were my friends.

Despite the scale of the damage to the inside of the airlock, the hull had not been breached; a testimony to the skills of our space engineers. So, fortunately, all the fragments had been contained. Even more fortunately, despite the shock I had the good sense to set in motion the standard procedures. This was doubly fortunate, for we found - even before the doors were opened - that there were very high levels of radioactivity. This made our subsequent investigations much more difficult, but it made our initial conclusions easy. The illicit cargo had been a nuclear device! It hadn't, thank god, been a nuclear explosion; despite the skills of the space engineers, that would have almost certainly have destroyed the whole colony. It had been merely a booby-trap, using conventional explosives to destroy the evidence - which it had done very effectively. But, along with the radar track of a space yacht which soon afterwards left the moon for the inner planets - where it was eventually lost from the screens of the following military force - it changed the direction of our investigation. But it was an investigation which now had substance. We soon found the colony engineer who had been bribed to put the package onto the capsule - he was as horrified at the turn of events as the rest of us - and this meant that there had never been an enemy agent on board. So much for our anxious investigations of our fellow passengers! But the price for this discovery had been the lives of my two friends. That was, though, the risk you always took on active service.

POSTSCRIPT (part B - from elsewhere)

A MYSTERY, AGAIN

"Shit, Shit, Shit..." was what I had said! It was perhaps an especially appropriate reaction, where I had lost count of the number of enemas that had recently abused my body. As a legal requirement, it had been brought to my attention when I had purchased the ticket. Yet I had pushed it to the back of my mind. Thus I had still been shocked when I had been processed with the ruthless efficiency demanded by the best hospital practice. Featureless white tiled room had succeeded featureless white tiled room, as I moved from diagnostics to preparation - including all those enemas - to embalming - where the newly created voids inside me were filled with fluids chosen by the medical staff rather than those of my own desires - to the final indignity of rape by a hundred catheters. Indeed, despite that fact that the last had taken place after I was sedated, the whole process had seemed far worse than rape, dehumanizing me; the helpless victim of a technology gone mad.

"Shit, Shit, Shit..." The realization hit me that, in any case, it had all been for nothing. Far from travelling the length of the solar system I was still in that obscene factory. I was slowly regaining consciousness in that same white tiled room I was supposed to have left hundreds of thousands of kilometers behind. The same white garbed nurse was holding my wrist, taking my pulse. But, wait a minute, hadn't I already been through this whole thought process. The feeling of déja vu was intense. Then I remembered the nightmare I had been involved in. So it had all been a horrible dream. Thank god for that at least. I had never left Earth. What had seemed like months of time were actually the few minutes, certainly no more than hours, until the effect of the sedative had worn off. I didn't know what had gone wrong; and I didn't care! I didn't even care that I would have to go through the whole terrible process again. Anything was better than a continuation of that nightmare. I shuddered again. It had been so horribly realistic, and yet so terribly insane. I had felt like a rat caught in a maze from which there could be no escape, and no end. Thank god it had just been a nightmare - it had called the whole of my life into question.

There was still one remaining problem for me to solve. My mouse wasn't receiving any messages. This was possible, after all it was still in the development stage. Perhaps the low temperatures had damaged it. Presumably that was why the trip had been aborted. Without it I was little use to the Agency; and I was defenceless. No problem for me, I would just have to wait for an Agency engineer to attend to me. It had happened before, and it was no more of a problem than going to the doctor for a routine check - indeed, as they both relied on banks of computers rather than on their own skills, it was difficult to tell the two apart! No doubt Central already had that engineer waiting for me. But it was a problem for the Agency. They would have had to find a replacement at very short notice. I would miss the trip, but I can't say I was sorry. Two years on the colony was no sinecure for someone like me, whose whole life revolved around active service. What was more, I was still suffering the after effects of that nightmare. I know it was illogical, but it had been so realistic that I suspected I would have dreamed it again every night on the voyage! Now I could put all of that behind me, and get on with the rest of my life - at least with the life the Agency now had planned for me.

It might seem I had a very casual approach to my work, but these days everything was so high-tech that you had to be prepared to abort a mission at a moment's notice. You couldn't go into an operation with only half of you working. That would be suicidal for you, and for any colleagues also taking part; and might expose the Agency itself. I wondered how, though, they had been able to find a replacement so rapidly.

Back in the recovery room, I relaxed; and even went to sleep. There was no point in doing otherwise. The travel company rules said I had to be under observation for at least three hours, and that would be - exactly - how long I would be there. At the end of that time I got dressed, in new clothes; presumably my own were still on their way to the asteroids. That would prove an interesting experience if my replacement was a man.

Outside, there was a limo waiting; and I relaxed back into its cushions as - once away from that anonymous factory estate - we purred through the familiar manicured countryside of Earth. It was a shame to have missed one of the modern wonders of the universe, but it was - I decided - wonderful to be home. The driver eventually turned into a long tree-lined drive which led up to what might reasonably have been called a mansion. My debriefing - such as it would be, after just a few hours of sedation - would at least take place in comfort. At the door the butler took my luggage, god knows what was in it, and showed me directly into the library. Two chairs were placed in front of a roaring log fire - a real one, this really was the de-luxe treatment - and a tray with coffee and biscuits sat on the stool between them. I did not wait, but helped myself immediately. Despite the rehydration drips I was still thirsty; and all those enemas meant that I felt like I hadn't eaten for months! I was so engrossed in enjoying the last of the biscuits that I didn't even notice the door open, and my debriefer sit down opposite me.

When I did notice him I almost dropped my coffee. It was David from my nightmare! But that was not possible. I had never met him, save in that dream, so how could that dream have been so realistic that I recognized every line of his worn face. Had I been exposed to some new form of hypnotherapy? I knew that the Agency employed this for it interrogations of captured enemy agents. Did it think I had been turned to become a double-agent? But, if so, why had it taken the form of such a horrendous nightmare? I needn't have asked myself that one, the Agency did not worry about niceties; it did whatever was necessary - the enemy agents, if they lived, ended up as broken personalities. Oh god, was that to be my fate too? From the way my debriefer reacted, my own responses had been expected.

He might just as well have been a psychologist rather than an Agency specialist; though the difference between the two was often difficult to detect! But, to my surprise, all he wanted to know about was my dream; or at least about its final stage. He seemed to know about the earlier stages - just as if he had been involved in them himself, as of course he had been! So it must have been planted in my sub-conscious. At least I wasn't going mad!

The nightmare had taken the form of a perverse mystery story; and incredibly complex one, with all sorts of false leads. All he wanted me to do was to solve it. Was it some test of my abilities, or were they really trying to solve some strange puzzle of their own? I had heard that they sometimes used this technique, with operatives reliving events others had experienced, to see if there was a solution when other minds were applied. So maybe that was the game we were playing.

It was with some glee, therefore, that I told him of the failure of most of my mission. It served them right if they had deliberately exposed me to that nightmare. I even rubbed in the fact that Gloria and himself had been just as lost for a final solution. We might have discovered the possibility of a delivery; but we weren't even sure that was the case, and we certainly didn't know what was involved or who was perpetrating it. Even more gleefully, I pointed out that they had hauled me out at the key moment, I had blacked out just after we entered the airlock. But, I suppose, that was the point of the puzzle. They too knew no more, so they couldn't have added any further details to my dream!

Even so, I was now sure it had been a delivery. I was startled, therefore, when he asked me to consider what the solution might have been if we assumed that was just a red-herring; deployed to throw us off the real scent. Well, in that case I just didn't know. Silently, I added to myself, and I don't care! That evasion clearly didn't satisfy him. So he firmly took me back to the very beginning of the 'voyage'. We would, he told me, work our way - rigorously - through the various stories; until we had solved the puzzle. His tone was so authoritative that I knew I had to participate, otherwise this debrief was going to become the longest on record! So, let us now look at these stories once again:

THE FAT HYENA - it looked, on the surface at least, as if he had very good reasons to be on the run. Who, but a fool, would give away hundreds of millions of creds to the Revenue, simply to set up an alibi? But, let us look at all the possibilities, what if he was even richer than I thought - and these were almost petty cash to him? It still didn't make sense for him to be an agent. That surely was not his scene; and would an agent spend all his time in his cabin? But what if he wanted to play a bigger game, bigger even than those he had previously played? Wouldn't the asteroids offer an ideal location? Wouldn't the new frontier, with its freedom from constricting rules, offer the best setting? It was possible, I conceded, but hardly likely. So, his original story held more water than this flight of fancy. In any case, his previous history indicated that even if he were setting up a new game it would revolve around the money markets. In a society where money was respected above almost all else, wouldn't that be welcomed rather than being seen as subversive? In any case, surely it wasn't a threat to global security!

THE FAMILY AT CHRISTMAS - his questions here were much more relaxed. Indeed, I soon realized that he - and presumably the Agency - didn't rate Mo and John as any threat. He was, I recognized, using this story almost as a 'control'; teaching me what might be seen as 'normal', so I could better detect the abnormal when I stumbled over it in the later stories. I suppose the events it described were normal these days, even if the families involved would once have been considered dysfunctional!

THE CANYON - even I recognized that my earlier investigation had been less thorough than perhaps it might have been. Maybe I had been swayed by how attractive I found Che; and he was a wonderful lover! We returned time and time again to the single question, as to why he was making the journey to the asteroids. Why would he leave a community, which -despite his superficial air of cynicism - he clearly loved deeply? What greater love might draw him away from it? When I made the obvious suggestion, he simply asked if there was any evidence of any special woman, or man, on his life. There was, of course, no such evidence in our files - but they were not always complete in terms of all personal details. I decided that it was unnecessary to throw my own experiences into this particular pot; but I had a horrible feeling that he must know about that anyway - after all, it was in my mouse's diary, which he must have had access to.

I was nonplussed by his next question, however. Why were two such high-powered individuals, he was referring back to the Fat Hyena, in our group? What were the odds on that? I had to admit that they must be pretty low, but the New Frontier Corporation was heavily promoting itself as the ideal new home for such people. I couldn't cope with his next question, what relationship might they share. Might they be owner and chief executive? I suddenly had a mental picture of the Hyena, in his mud hut, ordering Che around. I am afraid I laughed out loud.

MEMBER OF THE FAMILY - as this was his own story, I was not surprised when he skipped over it. I was, though, disappointed, for I would liked to have the chance to ask some awkward questions of my own!

HOME ON THE RANGE - you will remember that we had started to talk again about this one in the dream itself. Its description of the old political parties had led to our most trenchant criticism of the Agency, and the outdated policies it was still following. So what lessons had we learned? I initially clamed up when he issued this challenge. I frantically tried to think through what the implications of the various answers possible. Had he, in any case, known what conversations Gloria and I had on the subject; and had he really been party to those which also included his alter ego? What would happen if I admitted how critical we had been about the Agency? The Agency was not renowned for its sense of humour. I was in a quandary. If he didn't know the full truth, I could try and lie my way out of the problem. But perhaps that would give them the very evidence they were looking for; after all they had planted the story in my mind in the first place. An untrustworthy agent is soon a dead one! So I chickened out, and sort of told a half-truth; carefully filleting out the worst elements of our criticism. Surely he couldn't have known exactly what I had been thinking. Even so, I was relieved when he seemed to accept this version, and moved on to the next series of questions; returning to the subjects he seemed obsessed by. Yes, I answered, the odds against another exceptional individual joining the group must be growing by the minute! Yes, such an individual would be a catch for any organization; or at least one needing a creative communicator, even one as hypothetical as the one we were now pursuing.

He could clearly see I was getting ratty and, indeed, I had suddenly become dog-tired; the adrenaline had finally run out. So, after a token meal, I was allowed to retire to my bed. I had expected to be dreaming about my experiences all night, but I was so tired that I passed out almost immediately.

The next morning I felt refreshed, especially after soaking for more than an hour in my private Jacuzzi; they really were looking after me well - but would it be the good cop bad cop routine? Even though I felt I could have taken on the whole Agency, I had my breakfast brought to me in the bedroom. It was strange that there were no mirrors, but there were no cosmetics either, the surroundings might be luxurious but that didn't mean the Agency had finished playing games with me. So, back to the debrief and to the stories;

HALLELUJAH - I was expecting this to be another control, so I was caught off guard when David only asked questions about the religion. I must admit that even in the dream I had not taken it seriously. I certainly couldn't now!

CAT'S EYES - This did turn out to be another control!

THE TOURIST - it was inevitable, in view of the central nature of his capsule to my final solution, that this story was pursued further. For my own part I wondered what had happened to Lucius. Was his body even now peacefully circling Saturn? My god, I was beginning to believe my own dream! But I sensed that David was not really interested in this story, which was strange; for it was absolutely crucial to my own interpretation of events. But, then, I suppose he had asked me to put aside my previous assumptions. I was expecting him to comment to this effect, but he simply moved on to the next narrative. Why wasn't he interested? It still had the ripest smell of any of the stories; and surely that couldn't be just because it was the ripest of red-herrings!

A SURVIVOR - I gloss over this one. My emotions were just as raw as they had been in the dream. Indeed, it was this experience which had turned that dream into a nightmare. Even so, despite my sensitivity, he pursued the story at length; for the rest of the day indeed. But he did so in a much gentler manner, almost like a genuine psychoanalyst, helping me to come to terms with it - almost suggesting that it offered a form of beneficial catharsis, to bring to an end this episode to my life. Tens of thousands might have died in that incident, but the political changes which had resulted from it had benefited billions. At the end of the session I actually felt much better than I had in years.

Once more, though, I collapsed into my bed and fell asleep immediately, but this time it was closer to the sleep of the innocent. The next day I was apprehensive about how the interrogation might proceed. Yesterday must surely have been the good cop part:

BUBBLES - she too was exceptional, there was that question again! But thank god she was an exceptional woman for a change, so I could at least empathize with her. Even so, David's repeated questions were beginning to get under my skin. He was right. The coincidences could not be ignored. Yet I had ignored them. Why? Had the LA Incident thrown me so badly that I had no longer been capable of doing my job? Oh no, there I went again; acting as if the dream had been real! But, coincidences or not, I still couldn't see what they added up to. They formed no pattern in my mind. They were still pieces of a highly coloured jigsaw lying on the table in front of me. It was disconcerting in the extreme. They had to mean something. I was not normally so slow on the uptake. They certainly couldn't all be agents, that would be ridiculous. Who would run so many valuable operatives on just one mission? Oh, and in answer to the second question, she would make an ideal combination of senior manager and pollster! But what strange organization would want to hire such an animal? I could see even less pattern in the answers to these second questions. My head was starting to hurt! In any case, why bring so many experts together on a sterile asteroid? They might have been priceless as a team on Earth, but would be worthless out there where the miners ruled!

WOMAN POWER - of course this had to be another control! But I thought David was pushing it somewhat, even though I was well aware that a vibrant sub-culture had recently been built on such 'normality'! On the other hand, it was his game to play how he liked.

JOCKY, JOCKY - by now I knew just what was expected. So, perhaps somewhat tongue in cheek, I responded that all the best organizations needed a top-hundred web jocky! He obviously detected the note of sarcasm in my answer, but - as it was his call - chose to ignore it. What if he was right, though? What would anyone want with such a strange individual?

AN AGEING SWINGER - for the first time I was certain of my answer; after all, Gloria had talked to me about it at length. Even so, he went into his psychoanalytical mode; using my feelings about her treatment by the Agency as a surrogate to explore my own inner thoughts. This was going to be even tougher than I had expected. Again this approach posed major questions about how honest I should be. Should I admit that I was now quite disenchanted with much of what the Agency stood for? That would be asking for trouble. So, once more, I told some half-truths, and once more I seemed to get away with them!

THE ENCHANTED ISLAND - we had rather neglected this story in my dream. It too was a mystery, but unconnected to our own one - and we were far too desperate, trying to find a solution to our own dilemma, to take on anybody else's! But, in the context of the rules I was now following, it was clearly not a 'control', So what was it? Indeed, my interrogator seemed to be fascinated by this one; and surely it was not just because of the intellectual challenge it posed? But I could still see no way we could crack the riddle. We certainly hadn't in the dream; not even with all three of us working on it!

This time he wouldn't accept defeat. After all it was the last one, and if we hadn't found the solution by this time we never would. Even so, he did go on and on and on! What is the story really about? The strange disappearance of some families. Which families? Pretty ordinary ones. Really? Struggling for answers to these staccato questions I eventually had to pick on the most obvious way that they were supposed to be different. Well, I suppose they had high innovation quotients and, of course, they had taken the drug. Good, at last you are starting to think like a real agent! So what happened to them? Well, presumably they had some sort of reaction to the drug; otherwise there would be no mystery!  What sort of reaction? They died? To me that seemed the most likely outcome. But I received an immediate put-down. Now that's just sloppy thinking! They were seen walking away, into whatever future they had, so they could scarcely be dead! He was right, of course. I wasn't taking this seriously enough; and, if it was a real test, I better had! Otherwise I would soon find myself on Earthport detail, forever stuck behind a two-way mirror watching a sea of faces to find the ones on the Agency's wanted list! I shuddered involuntarily; and resolved to take the game much more seriously.

So, why, if they weren't harmed, did they leave? The question, for once, was mine. But it only led to another question in return. What if they were changed? In what way? How do you think they might have changed? Well, they took the performance-enhancer earlier, so maybe it affected their behavior. Good, but how might it have affected it? Well it wasn't dramatic, in terms of their appearance or public behavior, or not enough that others noticed it. Very good indeed! So, in what form was the change likely to have evidenced itself? I suppose the obvious answer has to be in the area of innovation; after all that was their unique aptitude, and was what the drug was supposed to address. Once more, very good. So why did they need to disappear? I suppose the supplier wanted to hide the problem. You're not thinking again! Was there any evidence for this? How did the supplier find them so quickly, they left just hours after they had taken the drug? That, of course, had been the poser, which had led to our decision that it was an insoluble mystery; the supplier had an unbreakable alibi!

So, if they weren't abducted by anyone from outside, what must be the only other alternative? They chose to go into hiding themselves?  Why, then, should they suddenly choose to do that? I was beginning to ask questions of myself! Worse still, my questions made no sense! Of course hundreds of people did disappear each day.  But they were almost always individuals, running away from personal problems. They were almost never whole families. In any case, we had no evidence that they had any such problems. What was the connection, then, to the drug? Perhaps it was yet another coincidence, but there had already been far too many of those! What did they want to hide? What did they need to hide? I began to feel that I was, at last, starting to get a hold on the game. But they clearly hadn't turned into monsters, that only happened in science fiction fantasies! So what strange fear had energized them? At last David interjected a question. There are all sorts of monsters - always assuming that they had changed in this way - so what form might their changes have assumed? This line of questioning surprised me. I didn't really even know how to start to answer. I had run out of sensible ideas. Even so, I hazarded the wild guess; super intelligence. Bulls eye! A broad grin spread over my interrogator's face. So that was what the Agency feared!

Let's go back to the earlier evidence. But before we do let me remind you of that old story about the security guard on duty at a building site. He was sure that one of the workers was stealing something, but every evening when he searched the straw that the worker was wheeling out in a barrow he could find nothing of value. Weeks later, when he met the worker in the local superstore, he could hold back no longer; and asked him what it was he was stealing. 'Wheelbarrows' was the simple response! So, we now have a number of super-intelligent beings hiding away from the rest of us. Where are the likely to go? To the asteroids, where the new frontier is just waiting for such developments? It had indeed been a delivery, but the cargo had been the passengers!

For once, I was sorry to be released that evening; but he was right to do so - once more I was near to collapse with tiredness. The picture was beginning to form, and I desperately wanted more answers. But they would have to wait. As a result, I tossed and turned the whole night long, trying to find the solution. A race of super-intelligent beings floating around amongst the asteroids? I could see why they might want to hide. It sounded more like the beginning of a horror film! No wonder the Agency was worried. It posed a threat to the whole of humanity.

The net result was that, the following morning, I was to be found vociferously demanding answers. It would be tedious to report the whole torrent of questions and answers which actually occurred, so I will restrict myself to just a summary of David's explanation.

We still don't know how it happened, but the drug worked in a strange way on those of us - for I am one - who had this peculiarity of the brain. This was his opening, tossed in almost as an aside, but it had momentous implications. Up to that point I had assumed that I was taking part in an Agency debrief. True, the Agency had betrayed me, and consequently lost a great deal of my loyalty, but it was known territory. With his words I suddenly realized I was, instead, in the heart of enemy territory. This was no debrief. It was an interrogation; and it was one which had been superbly handled, a masterpiece of deception! What secrets had I revealed? Who was this enemy, they didn't seem to be CIA? Were they really super-intelligent beings, or was that another ploy to unbalance me? Was one of them facing me across the desk? He looked normal enough, and he behaved normally. Was it, indeed, yet another trick by the Agency to test me? With my mind in a whirl, all I could do was sit back and listen - and try to hatch an escape plan!

His explanation had continued almost without a break, even though he must have known its impact on me. There is no physical evidence, even our brain scans look normal, but it seems to those of us who have experienced the change as if our whole brain is expanding - to become the size of a house. For the first few hours it is terribly disconcerting, indeed you think you are going mad. We now think what may be happening is that the axons on the neuronal dendrites make fuller use of their neurotransmitter potential. Maybe there are just more layers of connections, or - more fancifully - there are more dimensions involved. Whatever the reason, your brainpower moves up a whole order of magnitude. Until you can control it, it feels you are riding a runaway horse. When you eventually gain that control, and your brain is calm but certainly not quiet, you see everything differently. You understand as you never understood before; even those things which you did not even recognize existed before. With that understanding comes the ability to do so much more. Not least, we were able to track our new brethren almost before they changed, and certainly before your security services or the drug supplier! Thus we were able to spirit them away into the dark of the night.

His manner was so matter of fact that I had to believe him. But what he said was unbelievable. A race of super-beings that we, in the Agency, didn't even know about? And he, looking so normal, was one of them?

He continued without pause. Now, as you realize, we are creating a new universe, for a new species. What form that universe will take, or even what form we - its new inhabitants - will take, I cannot say. But, as you have now seen, even from the start it will contain a very comprehensive range of skills.

Thanks to his calm delivery, I began to believe the unbelievable. Looking back, I think I already understood much then, and I came to understand much more later. But one thing still puzzled me: "But what has this to do with me? What really happened on that voyage?" For I now realized that it had not been a dream, but a genuine real-life nightmare.

The first question is easy to answer, and I am sure you already suspect what I am about to say. You can be one of us! You have not taken the drug, but even without it you are approaching the levels of performance we see in the new species. Who knows what you will do once you have taken it.

It seemed to be the logical progression of all that had happened to me - and I had seen enough horror films to know that this was the time when the heroine faced her worst fears. The problem was that, much as in the average horror film, I couldn't see what all the fuss was about. Surely there must be others who would have been easier to recruit; and there were surely none of the sexual overtones which seemed to permeate the Hollywood equivalents? I still couldn't see my own role in this drama, or was it a farce? But, even though he must have seen the expression of alarm flit across my face, he continued to calmly plough on; and I, once more, pretended to follow his words with interest.

You aren't yet one of us, and we will force nobody to join.

That, at least, was reassuring; if it was true. I couldn't forget those damned horror films!

But I think you will take the drug and join us. If nothing else, your curiosity will drive you to do it; just to see if this incredible story has any basis in truth! In answer to your unspoken question, again you must have guessed part of the answer. We needed your mouse. Our technology is racing ahead, our innovatory skills are even in advance of our overall intelligence; hardly surprising when you consider the genesis of our species. But, even so, we are well behind on the development of our own mouse; and, in particular, in its testing. Being able to copy your own version has saved us many months of effort.

The fact that they knew about the mouse, and knew so much about its capabilities, was yet another shock. It meant that the Agency's innermost secrets had been penetrated. Worse, in the short term, it meant I could not count on using my own mouse to expedite my escape.

In answer to your second question, the answer is inevitably much longer and more complex. The gist of it is that, once having determined to capture you, perhaps to retrieve you from the clutches of the Agency might be a kinder way of putting it, it was the only way we could safely accomplish this. In particular, it was the only way we could bypass the mouse, without the Agency realizing that you had escaped its control - and activating its self-destruct mechanism, which incidentally would also have self-destructed you! So, the mission to the asteroids was started simply by placing some juicy tit-bits of information where the Agency would stumble over them! Like most arrogant organizations, it can be easily led. Then we had to play the game itself. I regret that your capture was not quite as important as you might have thought; based on the level of resources we deployed. In fact, I was the only individual specifically dedicated to the operation. The others helped, but it was pure luck that there were so many of them already on their way to the stars - where they would be needed for our new universe. Of course, your own Agency threw in considerable resource, more even that we did, though we had expected that!

To retrieve you, we ultimately had to break that link - and bypass the mouse - and do it in such a way that the Agency did not suspect what was happening. For this to happen, you had to die. And, to the outside world, that is exactly what happened. Just seconds after I injected you with the sedative an explosion wrecked the airlock. That was, actually the most expensive aspect of the whole operation. Copying your DNA was relatively easy, even your Agency can do that - though it doesn't suspect others can. But obtaining a real nuclear device, we needed to make the 'delivery' story credible, to blow up with you was remarkably expensive. It wasn't difficult to obtain. There are dozens of them floating around, if you have the money - and, of course, we have the Hyena's money. But it was morally repugnant, and some of our assembly of minds felt we should not use such a weapon even in these circumstances. But, you will be flattered to hear, your importance was such that we managed to overcome those objections. Of course, I apparently suffered the same fate, killing two birds with one stone!

After I had smuggled your sedated body off the colony it took us just four months to travel back to Earth. I regret that I had to keep you sedated for so long. Had you awoken any earlier, before we had modified the mouse but, more importantly, before the Agency had discontinued its routine sweeps for signs of mouse activity, that would have been the end of you. I must also apologize for the fact that this was not under suspended animation - so we really have taken four months of your life away from you - but we needed to work on the mouse and your own reconstruction. With this he opened a side cupboard, in which stood a full-length mirror - and there, reflected back to me, stood a complete stranger. He continued, whilst I recovered from the shock, we have changed all your physical characteristics, including your fingerprints. Unfortunately it is, as yet, too dangerous to change your retinal patterns, and of course it is still impossible - even for us - to change your whole DNA structure. So we took the easier way out; we simply changed those on the Agency's files!

We needed to make the changes for you to cope with whichever of the alternative outcomes you choose. If you do choose to join us, and I sincerely hope you will, to fulfil your continuing role as top operative - this time working for us - you must be undetectable. Alternatively, if you choose to go free - and that is a genuine alternative on offer - we have to make certain that you will not reveal our plans, or even our existence; you will understand why we might want to ensure your silence on these matters. But, unlike the Agency, our morals will not let us kill you. So, you might think cynically, we will let others do that for us if you should try to tell your story. You will know what the Agency might think, if an individual who does not match any record on their vetted files appears with such an outrageous story; even claiming to be one of their own operatives who was tragically killed some months before! You, as much as we, know what the Agency's response would be - they dare not release you, for you would then have shown that you knew some of its innermost secrets. They would have only one option; and they would do our dirty work for us!

He was, of course, correct. They had very effectively neutralized me. He had also discretely dangled a fat carrot under my nose. He was right to think that I would want to go back to being an operative. It was the only job I knew, and one which - for whatever perverse reasons - I loved.

But he continued with what, I now realized, was his sales pitch; you should by now be able to put the Agency into perspective. It is not the perfect machine you used to love.

He could say that again, it had tried to have me killed. Worse, I now realized that its values were so egocentric, so protective of the establishment it dominated, as to make it an enemy of the people. But, was this new species any better. They might be more intelligent, but did that make them any more moral?

That night I once again tossed and turned, trying to think of another option; another escape route. But, whichever way I looked at the problem, I had to return to the two choices he had offered. I was sure that I could walk free if I wanted to. I don't know why I believed him, after all he had admitted to being the agent of a genuinely new - and very potent - foreign power that was literally alien to everything that the Agency stood for. But they had made certain I couldn't return to the Agency, and what sort of life would it be, no matter how free, if I could no longer be an operative.

The following morning David opened up by echoing these thoughts. There would be no strings attached to my freedom. They would not apply the harsh sanctions which came naturally to the security services; and again I believed him. But, to emphasize the point, he took me into one of the best data retrieval suites I had every see. It wasn't a total immersion suite, thank god they didn't want to brainwash me, but that was not its purpose - it clearly was designed for serious research, What he gave me access to was, though, a shock.

Before me he laid out the Agency's top management communications logs. These were supposed to be only accessible by its six directors. God knows, this outfit should never have got within a million miles of these. But they obviously had, so they must be - as they claimed - the most powerful kids on the block.

An even greater shock, however, was the content of the communications. My loyalty had been built on an image of the Agency as the guarantor of world security. It, almost alone, looked after the interests of the little people against those of the powerful fat cats. Even though my personal loyalty had now been severely dented, I still held those views. But, laid out in front of me I saw this confounded. The image was pure PR, indeed pure propaganda! It turned out the carefully nurtured image was just about as far away from the truth as you could get. The directors' sole priority was to protect their own position. If this required illegal operations, even covert use of force and sometimes civil wars, they authorized these. The 'little people' came nowhere in their black calculations. They were dispensable, grist to the mill of the power structure which was the Agency. I realized, with yet another shock, that - as far as the directors were concerned - I was one of those little people; and quite dispensable. I had been sacrificed without a qualm on their part - even, I detected, with a certain degree of glee amongst those directors who headed up the divisions which had been my internal competitors!

David widened the links, and I began to see that the Agency directors were part of a web of similar people, pillars of the establishment, which ran most of the power structures around the world. The few structures which still remained outside of their authority were the targets for subversion. The power-net clearly hated anything it could not control, and the Agency was the establishment's tool for bringing them into line. Divisions of Agency operatives, people I never knew existed, worked to destabilize these troublesome bastions of individual power. Worse still, even where it had total control, the power-net even chose to destabilize parts of its own structure - simply as an excuse to continue its own repressive activities. The enemies, the subversives, I had long fought were just as likely - it turned out - to be operatives from other parts of the Agency! It needed such 'threats' to maintain its own hegemony.

It was an incredibly depressing view of what I had previously seen as an open society; and which I had been proud to serve. I even began to have doubts as to whether I wanted to rejoin it, even as one of the anonymous little people. Was this a distorted picture though? Was I seeing society through a glass darkened by my captors? But, as I was allowed to roam freely through the data-warehouses, and recognized more and more that I knew personally, it became clear that it would have been an impossible task for them to fake so many telling details. Indeed, what I had previously believed in represented the false picture!

I think the factor which finally swayed my decision about my own future was not David's careful exposition of his own civilization's values. I was impressed with these, not least their refusal to destroy my own society, even if it posed a threat, but instead building a parallel one in space. No, the deciding factor was his giving me free access to their own files. I spent hours roaming through these. They showed that, despite their intelligence, they were not perfect. I almost said they were only human, but I suppose they weren't; though they did show some appealing traits inherited from the shared past. I found faults appearing in their society, and being corrected, mistakes being made and - again I almost said only human - personality clashes, and so on! But throughout all of this was what I can only describe as a commitment to honesty. And that was refreshing after what I had seen in the Agency's files. Above all, what I found was a commitment to an honest debate about how they should build a better society, a better universe; better for everybody.

I spent several days immersed in these files, and discussing their contexts with David. At some time during those days, I can't remember exactly when, I suppose my decision was made; and I switched from finding evidence to support my decision-making to preparing for my new role. I like to think it was the genuine morality of their new civilization which made the difference; but I have to admit I had no real choice. Morality or not, I was a dedicated operative, and couldn't face life without the buzz I got from doing my work. No magic philosophy, or wonder drugs, could ever compensate for that. Even so, I wonder what my new life will really be like.

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