Patrick Thompson - Execution Plan

‘Just my course.’

‘And how much do you have on at the moment? This is a single afternoon. You won’t miss an afternoon. You can do programming in your sleep.’

‘One afternoon? And I get a hundred quid?’

I didn’t know why I was quibbling. I had already decided to do it. A hundred would buy new games, with maybe some to spare for pens and paper. I could also buy a couple of floppies to save my work onto. The college computers used a variety of floppy disk that I never saw anywhere else, 7¾-inch things with hardly any capacity. Unlike modern floppy disks with their protective plastic covers, these were genuinely floppy. If you waved them in the air they flapped, and you lost all of your data.

‘Cash in hand. Money for next to nothing,’ said Tina, still under the impression that I needed persuading. The bar was quiet, as it always was. The locals went to other pubs if they went anywhere at all. Perhaps they all stayed in.

‘You’re doing it?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ll do it. But if he asks me about my mother I’m leaving.’

She gave me a strange look.

‘Is there anything else you’d like to talk about?’ she asked.

‘Like?’

‘Any niggling worries? Anything on your mind?’

‘No,’ I said, ignoring the niggling worry about the ‘just friends’ business. I had got used to ignoring that. The only time it became difficult was when I was trying to go to sleep at night.

‘Should there be?’

‘Not if you don’t think so.’

I didn’t think so. We drank our drinks and set out for the walk back to the campus. There was no one out, although I knew that if we scrambled up the sea wall there’d be a few people walking dogs along the hostile beach. There was always someone walking a dog along that beach.

‘Let’s walk on the sea wall,’ Tina said suddenly, already well on her way up.

‘What for? It’s windy up there.’

‘We’ll be able to see more.’

‘More Borth. Who wants to see more Borth?’

‘Oh come on,’ she said, grabbing my arm and hauling me up after her. ‘Look at the sea. Don’t you want to swim in it? Don’t you just want to throw yourself into the sea?’

‘Are you mad? It’s night and it’s cold. There are things in it.’

‘Well do you want to cut through the golf course then?’

What was she getting at? She wasn’t planning to seduce me in a dark corner. We were just friends. We’d both agreed to that except for me.

‘What are you on about?’ I asked her.

‘Ask me again next week,’ she said, and then, as though it was just a throwaway line:. ‘Did I tell you I’d met somebody?’

No, she hadn’t. That explained her peculiar mood.

After that, we had a very quiet walk back.

Although I had been at the college for almost three years, I had never been to the third floor until I turned up to earn my quick hundred quid. I had thought about it, and had decided that it couldn’t do any harm. I was surprised to see that the stairs continued on up past the third floor, through a locked grille. Presumably they led to an attic or loft. The doors were numbered. I was after 304. It was eleven in the morning and there didn’t seem to be anyone around. Didn’t they have psychologists in Wales? With all of that research material going free? That seemed a terrible waste.

‘I didn’t think you’d turn up,’ said Tina, trundling round the corner with an armful of brown folders.

‘I’m getting paid for this. We are still getting paid, aren’t we?’

‘We are. Don’t worry about the money. Now, lets see if he’s in.’

She knocked on the door. On the lower floors, the doors had glass panels at head height. Even the door of the server room had one. Up here in the realms of the headshrinkers, the doors were of flimsy but unbroken wood and painted a matte white. She knocked again.

‘Come on in,’ said someone. Tina opened the door and bundled me in.

‘This is him,’ she said, meaning me.

‘Ah,’ said the man in the room. He was a young man, probably no older than twenty, and he was wearing a lab coat. He looked like he might be related or married (or both, this was Borth) to one of the computer technicians from the ground floor.

‘Pleased to meet you,’ he said in a nervous voice. He gave me a limp, sweaty handshake. It didn’t seem like the sort of contact he was used to. There was a good chance that he wasn’t used to any at all. He had the sort of sparse ginger hair that shows a lot of scalp without the need for total baldness. His eyebrows were invisible unless he stood at the right angle in strong light. His eyes were a watery blue and he did his best to keep them from looking directly at you. When he spoke, he sounded as though he might stutter. He never did, but there was the feeling that he might. He was always fidgeting with the skin around his fingernails, and from time to time he’d absently bite off a stray strip. To do this he’d bend an arm across his face, turning his hand to the necessary angle for auto-cannibalism.

The top of a black tee-shirt was visible in the V-shaped opening at the throat of his lab coat. There was no writing on it.

‘I’m Betts,’ he said, letting go of my hand with evident relief. ‘I’m the technician. The lab technician, I mean. I’ll run you through what we’re about, then Dr Morrison will run through the experiment. It won’t take long. ‘I’ll give you some background first. If that’s alright?’

We said that it was.

He told us about some tricks you could do with mirrors.

At the time, the technique was new. One or two progressive European clinics were using it. Dr Morrison was a fan of progressive European techniques.

‘What’s it a technique for?’ I asked.

‘Whatever,’ said Betts. ‘It can relax the mind. Sometimes it can provoke reactions. It’s all to do with self-image.’

He went into a spiel about the Self while Tina and I sat at a desk. I didn’t want my Self getting any ideas so I looked out of the window until it was over. It was like being in a lecture, from what I could remember of them.

‘You can try this one,’ he said. ‘This one shows you what I mean. Here. Put your hand flat on the table. Palm down. Now, watch this.’

I had my hand palm down. He ran his index finger along each of my fingers.

‘There, you can see what I’m doing and you can feel it. That makes sense to you. Now, keep your hand flat but hold it under the table.’

I put my hand under the table. He continued to run his right index finger over my hand, but now he kept his left hand on the table, following his right hand. At first it didn’t seem to be doing anything. Someone was tickling my hand and a table. Then he got his hands synchronized. As he touched the back of my index finger – which was out of sight, under the table – with one hand, he touched the same place on the table with the other. Every time he touched me, he also touched the matching place on the table.

My eyes decided that they knew best, and overrode everything else.

I lost my hand.

All of a sudden it wasn’t there. I could see my arm going under the table, but the sensations weren’t coming from there. They were coming from the table. The table felt as though it was part of me.

‘Ah,’ said Betts, reclaiming his own hands. ‘There. You’ve remapped. Your hand is mapped to the table. See how easy that was? That’s how it works.’

‘Let’s have your hands where we can see them,’ said Tina. I pulled my hand back into view. It didn’t feel quite right. It was numb. I patted it with the other hand and it was normal again.

‘It’s sight that does it,’ said Betts. ‘If you mix the signals, give a visual stimulus that doesn’t match a physical stimulus, the body doesn’t know what to do. It can’t interpret the signals. You could see me copying what I was doing under the table with my other hand, and because you could only see that one you mapped the sensation of touch to match the vision. Dr Morrison uses mirrors.’