Martyn Vaughan - The Cave of Shadows

‘No other way,’ Jon replied, ‘I’m not telepathic. The only way I can influence the other minds is through the Educator which connects us into some kind of neural network. And what’s the alternative? If we wait for them to wake up under their own volition they’ll be fanatical Protectorate supporters. And that will be the end of us.’

Shana was silent for a while and then nodded. ‘Alright.’

He grasped her shoulders and pulled her near. ‘That’s not all. You have to come in with me.’

He saw the alarm come into her eyes. ‘Why Jon?’

‘I have to know what the differences are. I have to compare a mind that is not enslaved to the Protectorate with one which is. I can’t read your mind without the Educator.’

She stared at him for a few moments longer and then said: ‘Let’s do it.’

‘When we’re in, you have to think about the Protectorate and the Degenerates. And Korok. I have to see which areas light up.’

He saw her flinch slightly at the mention of the dread name but she nodded again.

Shortly they were both back in the almost tangible blackness of the Educator. This time there were no revolving polyhedra. Only the darkness.

And something else. The incorporeal nearness of another mind. Shana’s.

Jon – I can see your thoughts ! came a thought into his mind; a thought that was not his.

Good . Now do as I said: think about the Protectorate. Maroun. Korok .

He was aware of her distaste as he sent the instructions. He searched in the darkness for a visualisation of that thinking brain – and found it.

He saw schematics of the amygdala, the claustrum, the hippocampus. In glowing lines in the darkness.

But he saw more. He saw consciousness itself as minute transient fluctuations in the entangled quantum states at the very molecular level.

He watched the changes as the mind which rested upon this delicate substructure intoned the hated names and concepts to itself.

Far down in his own mind he embedded the images of what he had seen into his deepest memory and then thrust his straining mentality up, up through the entangled states, through the organic molecules, through the brain structures, to the uppermost level.

Now ! he sent to Shana Do the same with me!

He set his mind to thinking about what he had seen; the callous overthrow of a peace-loving culture; the reduction of an entire people to servitude and worse.

Do you see it! He sent to Shana Do you see the structures firing ?

There was no reply for some time and then Shana’s thought came to him, thin and despairing. Jon – I can’t do it! I can’t see you!

He groaned in the fastness of his mind. He had feared that Shana did not have the talent and it had turned out as he had feared. He alone would have to carry out the task.

Do what you can he sent See if you can find out more about where we are and why we’re here !

And with that, he disengaged his rapport with Shana and sent it into the Stasis Room.

His mentality hovered intangibly over the sleeping minds of the occupants of the caskets. He saw in which ones the rising bubble of awareness was closest to breaking the surface of unconsciousness and sent his own mind into the sleeping brain.

He found the flickering entanglements of thought and saw the unmistakeable signs of rigid control by an outside force. He reached in and tried to remove those mental fetters but found they were deeply embedded in the very substance of that brain and resisted his efforts to wrench them away. Still he struggled until with a sudden release of tension he had pulled them away and watched them disintegrate.

He knew then that the release of the hundreds of minds in this room was far beyond his abilities. At most he could free ten individuals before exhaustion overtook him.

As it transpired, that was an over-optimistic estimate. He succeeded in freeing three males and two females. His last success was a female and as he pulled away he realised that this individual was one of the Shana clones! His mental vision was confined to the image the person had of him or herself: he had no direct experience of their outward shape. But the image held in the last female’s brain was unambiguous – the female was identical to Shana!

He had known this was possible from his experiences on the hill of course;

But Shana had said she could distinguish between Jon11 and Jon21. He hoped that when he met this woman he would be able to tell her and Shana apart; the thought of two identical Shanas was deeply disturbing.

Exhausted beyond the possibility of further action he withdrew the tendrils of his questing mind from the female’s container and searched in the velvet darkness for “his” Shana’s mentality.

He found it but in a deeply troubled state.

Shana have you found anything out ?

Yes came the flat response.

Then let’s get out and you can tell me.

How do we do that?

That stopped Jon. At the end of their previous immersion, the Maroun avatar had ejected them when their lessons had been completed. How did they eject themselves?

He sent his mind out into the Education Room, searching, searching.

There was only one way.

Shana he transmitted Visualise yourself taking off the headset. Visualise yourself getting off the couch and standing up.

I’ll try .

Jon did as he had instructed Shana. He could not see his body directly but he poured all his strength into the visualisation that he had described.

And he found his eyes had opened and he was able to take off the headset. He leapt up to see if Shana had joined him.

She had not. She was still lying completely motionless on the couch, face completely blank, eyes shut tight. She could not get out.

Jon found his heart hammering as he removed the headset. What if her mentality was forever trapped in the strange world of the Educator and her body no more than an empty structure that its occupant was now barred from?

She lay still for some time and then her eyelids fluttered and she very slowly raised herself into a sitting position. Her hair cascaded over her face, hiding her frightened expression. Eventually she turned to him. ‘Jon I’m not going back into that horrible place. I couldn’t get out! I was trapped in darkness!’

He held her close and nuzzled her hair.

‘No you won’t go back in. I’ve done all I could in there. I don’t know if I achieved anything. We’ll just have to wait. But did you discover anything, something that can help us?’

She nodded.

‘What did you find out?’

‘I can’t speak at the moment, Jon, my whole body is shaking. I have to sleep.’

And with that Jon felt her go limp in his grasp. She was asleep.

Shana lay there for a long time and Jon himself fell asleep after a period of watching her to see when she came back to him. When he finally regained consciousness, as usual he had no idea how much time had passed but by the stiffness of his limbs he surmised it had not been a short period. He stood up and looked down on Shana, her still face framed in an expanse of amber-gold hair. Once again he felt that stirring of emotions that he had so little experience of; a desire to pull her up from the couch and press his lips on hers. From the Educator he knew what lay behind those feelings but that did not in any way diminish the strength of his desire to do all he could for this woman; to protect from the horrors that circled them.

Finally, she stirred and he saw her gaze dart from corner to corner of the room.

‘It’s alright,’ he said, at once bending down to be as close as possible to her, ‘you’re out. And you don’t have to go back in.’