Ian Hocking - Déjà Vu

An answer entered her head. It had a fundamental strangeness that took her a moment to identify: it did not use the same voice as her thoughts.

Synaesthia, in this context, is the experience of sensation in a modality that did not trigger the initial sensation. For example, a voice might be described as ‘crumbly, yellow’.

‘What was that?’

‘Intel. Don’t worry about it. The important thing is that you haven’t had any synaesthetic experiences. It’s an indicator that the operation went wrong.’

‘Operation?’

Klutikov exhaled smoke from his nose and beckoned Saskia. Again, her understanding lagged. Oh, he wanted her to lean forward. When she did, he put his hand on the back of her head. He touched a scab that Saskia had not noticed.

‘This is where they fired it in.’

‘ You lean forward.’

Klutikov paused. Then, with a nod, he bowed. He let Saskia search his hair. She found a knot of skin no larger than a vaccination scar. Klutikov sniffed and checked the other customers.

‘The chip is a small computer, but quite powerful. One of its talents is telecommunication.’

‘It connects to the Internet?’

‘Just so.’

‘What else?’

‘The specifications aren’t well known. To me, at least.’

‘Who made it?’

‘That’s above my pay grade.’

‘Does it suppress my memories? Why can’t I remember anything?’

‘No, that’s not it.’ He jammed his cigarette into the ash tray. ‘Your brain is made of little cells, following? The reason that I’m me and you’re you is that the cells are wired differently. One pattern of wiring is me, one pattern is you, and another is the King of England. It’s all about the pattern. If you took a recording of my brain and imposed that pattern over another brain, then that brain, and therefore that person, will start to sound and act like me. They’ll think that they are me, and, in important ways, they will be. Your chip contains the memories of another person in a compressed, digital form. Reasonably high fidelity. It would take an expert to tell the difference.’

‘An expert?’

‘The chip is connected by tiny filaments to more than half the neurons in your neocortex. Your neocortex is where the more “human” functioning goes on. The chip remains in contact with your brain and constantly imposes the donor pattern over your own.’

Saskia looked at her hand. She realised that she did not know whose hand she was looking at. The chip is like a parasite with its feeding tube in my brain. She moved a finger. No, the parasite moved the finger.

‘That’s enough, Klutikov.’

I’m the parasite.

‘No names. Are you going to be sick?’

‘No.’

‘Good, because I haven’t finished. The imposition of the donor pattern must be constant. If not, the original pattern—that is, the personality and identity extant in your brain—will resurge. If you switch off the chip, you switch off “you”, the you you now know as yourself.’

‘My…body’s personality—my original brain and body before the chip—was convicted of murder.’

‘Don’t get distracted. You need to protect that chip. If you ever receive an electric shock, say goodnight. Likewise don’t let yourself be put in a scanner that uses magnets. You could get a bracelet like mine. It says I have metal in my head from a hunting accident.’

‘I can use a gun, a computer, and I know the layout of this city. Why can’t I remember anything else?’

‘Slow down. You’re conflating episodic and procedural memory. Speech, for example. You haven’t forgotten that. Walking too. That’s all procedural memory. Some of those skills will come from your brain, some from the chip. If you’re talking about memories of people, holidays, and your childhood, that’s episodic.’

‘Then why don’t I have any of those memories?’

‘I guess our boss didn’t think you needed them on the chip.’

Klutikov shook his wrist to expose his watch. ‘I have to go soon.’

‘What’s your story?’

‘My story.’

‘Why did our boss recruit you?’

‘The same reason her recruited you.’ He lit another cigarette and put it in her mouth. ‘My body, the criminal, will talk to me through inspiration, intuition, gut feeling—call it what you like. That gives me an operational advantage. My mind—the donor pattern on the chip, what I feel is the real me—gives me the discipline, the analytical firepower, and keeps the instinct in check.’

‘What you’re telling me is unbelievable.’

‘Then you must concentrate. First, you need to understand that you’re not responsible for the crimes of your body. You—the person I’m talking to—are completely different. You’re brand new. You’re not answerable for the crimes of your body any more than you’re responsible for the crimes of your parents. Understood?’

‘No.’

‘Good. That’s honest.’ He looked past Saskia’s shoulder. ‘One year ago, I discovered that I was a fraud. In my own mind, I had been working criminal cases for ten years, but, of course, the truth was that I’d been active for less than two months. Before that, I—well, this body—had been a real terror. When our boss told you what you were, he let you keep your memory of the event. You have Beckmann’s explanation for why you are who you are. Not me. He wiped my memory soon after telling me. My big wake-up call came this summer when I was on holiday in Poland.

‘I was out fishing. A man walked by with his two sons. He took one look at me and literally had a heart attack. Fortunately, I had my field kit, so I could treat him. Shouldn’t have bothered. When he woke up, he shouted to his sons that I was the bastard who killed their mother during a bank robbery the year before. I…’ he shrugged. ‘I buried them where I shot them, the sons and the father. By morning, I was two hundred miles away. I went straight to Beckmann, confronted him, and he told me everything. Since then, I’ve found it difficult to concentrate. So I do odd jobs.’ He paused. Saskia did not know what to say. ‘There is one more thing,’ he said. ‘It’s the answer.’

‘The answer to what?’

‘The question you’ve been asking yourself since yesterday.’

Klutikov reached for his coat. He withdrew a broadsheet newspaper and handed it to Saskia. The script was Cyrillic. The lead story was accompanied by a picture of her.

No, not me; this body I’ve infected.

Her hair was much longer and the wind had blown it wide. Two police officers held her arms.

‘Sorry it’s in Russian. I could translate it for you.’

‘Could my chip translate it?’

‘Given time, you will be able to translate anything.’

‘What does this bit say?’

‘“Angel of Death in Custody”.’

Saskia felt the words in her belly. ‘They call me the Angel of Death?’

‘Yes. You were a mass murderer. You were captured at the German border.’

‘No. No .’ She wiped away a tear with her knuckle.

‘Listen, you were a murderer. Past tense. That was just your body. You’re a blank slate now. Look at your badge. Ex tabula rasa .’

‘But surely I’m still responsible?’

‘Don’t get philosophical about it. Be pragmatic. Do you feel like a murderer? Could you kill someone now in cold blood?’

Saskia’s eyes were fixed on the article. The Cyrillic letters seemed to warp. ‘You did,’ she said. ‘That Polish man and his sons.’

The end of their conversation. Coffee in a cinder-grey room, murderer to murderer. Saskia put her lips to the cooling rim of her cup. Klutikov gathered his cigarettes and flung his coat about his shoulders.