Крис Бекетт - The Turing Test

The second thing he noticed was that the radio alarm hadn’t gone off. It was now 8.00 and his plane home flew at 8.45.

“Shit!”

He leapt out of bed naked – a big, broad-chested, athletic man in his late forties, with thick silvery hair – and grabbed the phone to get a taxi. But the line, unaccountably, was dead.

“I do not believe it!”

He pulled on his trousers and headed for the bathroom. But it was locked.

8.03, said the clock as he went to the door of the room and found that locked too. The phone rang.

“Mr Slade, please come to the door of your room.”

“It’s locked.”

“Please come to the door and walk through.”

Beyond the door, where the hotel corridor should have been, was a large almost empty room, entirely white, with three chairs in the middle of it. Two of them were occupied by men in cheap suits. The third, a tall straight-backed thing which reminded Karel both of a throne and of an electric chair, was empty.

The two men rose.

One of them, the tall, wiry black man with the gloomy, pock-marked and deeply-lined face, went to the door that Karel had just come through, closed it and locked it. The other, the rotund Anglo-Saxon with the curly yellow hair and the affable expression, came forward in greeting.

“Mr Slade, good to meet you, my name is Mr Thomas. My friend here is Mr Occam.”

Karel did not take the extended hand.

“Who the fuck are you and what the fuck do you think you’re playing at?”

There were those who said that Karel was surprisingly foul-mouthed for a prominent Christian leader, but as he often pointed out to his family and his friends, coarse language might be undesirable but it wasn’t swearing and had nothing whatever to do with the third commandment. You had to have some way of expressing your negative feelings, he always argued.

“Sit down,” said Mr Occam shortly, returning to stand beside his colleague.

Mr Thomas gestured to the throne.

“No,” Karel told him. “I don’t feel like sitting. I do feel like listening to your explanation.”

“Sit!” commanded Mr Occam.

“Yes, do sit,” said Mr Thomas, “and then we can talk sensibly.”

He returned to his own chair. He was one of those people who manage to be both plump and nimble. His quick, graceful movements were almost camp.

Karel shrugged, went to the chair and sat down.

With a buzz and an abrupt click, shackles came out of the chair legs and fastened themselves around his shins.

“Lay your arms down on the rests,” Mr Occam told him.

“What? And have them shackled too!”

The black man approached him.

“I will hit you Mr Slade if you don’t put your arms on the rests.”

Karel did as he was asked.

Buzz. Click. The shackles slid into position.

Mr Occam nodded curtly – a taciturn man acknowledging a small courtesy – and took his seat alongside Mr Thomas.

“Now Mr Slade,” said the more amiable of the two men, “let’s see if we can answer your questions for you. Who the fuck are we? Well, suffice to say that we work for a government agency. What the fuck are we playing at? That’s easy. We’re carrying out an investigation. An investigation concerning a terrorist organisation. And we believe you may be able to help us with our inquiries.”

Mr Occam gave a small snort.

“He is going to help us with our inquiries.”

Mr Thomas turned to his colleague gravely.

“Do you know what Mr Occam? I think you may be right.”

God help me , Karel prayed.

He was very very afraid but trying hard not to show it.

Please God, help me!

As ever, when he needed it most, his faith seemed to have deserted him. But we should expect that, he reminded himself. In the darkness and confusion of a fallen world, we should expect that . After all, if the world wasn’t fallen, people wouldn’t need belief. They would just know .

Please God, help me! he tried again and this time help did seem to come. For a merciful moment he was able to hold the thought in his mind that all this was only happening to one man at one particular point in space and one particular moment in time. Beyond this room, outside of this moment, the world was still the world. And beyond the world, that tiny inconsequential speck, there was eternity. There was always eternity. The same as it ever was.

“I have rights,” Karel said. “You can’t detain me and shackle me and question me without a warrant.”

“With respect,” said Mr Thomas, “I think we’ve just demonstrated to you that we can.”

“But you’re breaking the law. You’re violating my constitutional rights. Sooner or later you’ll have to release me, and then this will get out. I’m a prominent man. I head an organisation with more than two million members. I have connections. I…”

“Why do you think we’ll have to release you?” queried Mr Thomas with what seemed like genuine curiosity.

“Well of course you…” Karel broke off, realising that there were, after all, other theoretical possibilities.

“Listen,” he said, “if I’m not out of here very soon, my family and colleagues will start demanding explanations. And they’ll go on until they get explanations. And then you two men are going to be in deep trouble.”

“You think so?” Mr Thomas wiggled his head from side to side doubtfully, weighing up the merits and demerits of a questionable argument. “Well who knows? Who knows? But you should let us worry about that. After all, you’ve got other things to consider.”

“Yes,” said Mr Occam. “Like for example your membership of the SHG.”

“The Soldiers of the Holy Ghost,” said Mr Thomas regretfully, almost as if embarrassed to bring it up, “an illegal terrorist organisation responsible for several hundred deaths over the past five years.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Karel. “I’m Executive Director of Christians for Human Integrity. It shares some theology with the SHG, yes. But it’s an entirely legitimate organisation, properly registered with all the appropriate authorities.”

“It’s a front for the SHG,” stated Mr Occam.

“And you, Mr Slade,” his colleague continued, “are a leading member of the SHG’s strategic command. Why deny it? You can see for yourself that we know it, so what would be the point?”

While Mr Thomas was speaking, Mr Occam leant forward and stared intently at Karel’s eyes.

Don’t try too hard to look sincere, Karel told himself. It was the mistake that liars always made, like drunkards trying too hard to act sober, like unfaithful husbands trying too hard to appear uxorious, rushing home from their mistresses with chocolates and bunches of flowers for their wives.

“I do deny it,” he said. “I deny it completely. Now let me call my lawyer.”

“No, Mr Slade,” said Mr Thomas. “That’s not going to happen. And don’t lets go on and on about it, eh? Or it will get so …”

Mr Occam broke rudely across him, leaning forward to bark a question into Karel’s face.

“Do you deny you support the aims of the SHG?”

“No I don’t deny that. Like the SHG, I’m opposed to any form of artificial life or artificial reproduction of life. I’m opposed to artificial intelligence, I’m opposed to cloning, I’m opposed to designer babies and I’m opposed to field-induced copying of human tissues. But it’s not a crime to object to tinkering with human identity. Millions agree with me. A majority of the population quite possibly.”

“And do you deny that you support the methods of the SHG?” asked Mr Thomas.