The Griefing

By Huck Walker

For most of us the sudden end of the world is a fantasy, but for others it is frighteningly real. What would it take to end the human world? Who would be responsible and what would push them to doom us all?
Tommy is moved by a dead man’s words, searching for a radical, biological protocol that shapes all life. Stayshia’s hard-won objectivity is fractured by a machine that defies logic and threatens the foundations of her psyche. Mark doesn’t know which of them will give him what he wants, but he will keep them close until the time is right and he can ride the wave of their discovery. Graham is just looking for a new house mate and the next big party.
An amazing medical breakthrough promises fame and fortune but also hides the key to damnation. Accident gives way to injury and a bitter hand exacts a terrible revenge.
The stakes are raised as humanity is dragged to a point of no return. From blood and fire to ashes and dust, this is the beginning of the end. Humans will die how they lived; with gnashing of teeth.
This novel is not for the faint of heart.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Huck Walker
• Release date: Apr 6, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301749515

Book preview

THE GRIEFING

Book One of The Holocene Extinction

By

Huckleberry DJRTD Walker

Copyright 2013 by Huckleberry DJRTD Walker.

Smashwords Edition

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the work of this author.

*****

For Birgit

With special thanks to Meg Vertigan, for making me a better writer and to Bloody Fist Records (and all associated peoples) for providing the soundtrack to the apocalypse

~*~

Griefing - (verb)- intentionally disrupting the

immersion of another player in their gameplay.

~*~

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 1

To the young Tommy, it felt like he was having a limb removed.

His family were standing in the front yard, just behind the low scatter of bushes along the side fence. Tommy’s mother was behind him, resting her hands on his shoulders. His older sister was close by, clinging to their father’s arm. They stood watching the chain of uniformed people strutting in and out of the house next door, each of them carrying a piece of their neighbour’s life to put into one of the waiting vans.

As he stood watching the costumed people looting the house, Tommy recognised the signs that he had ignored or misunderstood; the distractedness, the little mistakes and the irrelevant statements; Mr Virco telling him how he enjoyed his company, how he appreciated Tommy’s assistance with his work and his willingness to think and experiment. Mr Virco had mentioned several times what he would like for Tommy, for Tommy’s life, when he was gone.

Later, after his mother dragged them indoors and away from the gathering reporters, the family had a visit from the uniforms. Tommy watched them from his bedroom window on the second floor as they headed to the house. There was a low mumble of conversation that carried up from the lounge-room below, then footsteps on the stairs followed by a knock on his door. Tommy opened it to find his father accompanied by a chunky man and a severe looking woman.

We want to talk to you about your neighbour, Mr Virco. The man said. Tommy nodded and stepped aside. The three adults piled into his room.

The cramped space was full of colour and activity and the visitor’s eyes darted around. One whole wall was filled with aquariums of varying size. Bugs, arachnids, reptiles, amphibians and various other mini-beasts scrabbled and stalked around their plastic or glass enclosures. Home-made posters lined the door and framed the window over the desk; sections of the periodic table, sketches of insects, mites and amoeba complete with hand printed labels.

The wall above the bed was devoted to pages depicting important scientists and mathematicians from throughout history. Mr Virco had cut the pages from his beautiful books and given them to Tommy, one at a time, as a reward for some particular display of dedication or insight. The two uniforms tried to hide their glance at each other but it was obvious that they found his room strange.

Why don’t you sit here, Tom? said the chunky uniform, indicating Tommy’s bed. The man’s knobbly hand grabbed the study chair, dragged it from under the desk and over to the bed. He sat close enough for Tommy to smell his halitosis.

How are you Tommy?

Tommy answered the question with a shrug.

Do you know what happened to Mr Virco? the man persisted.

The story was all over the internet. Tommy had had enough time to read several articles before anyone thought to pay him a visit. The executives and board members of a large pharmaceutical company had received identical letters from an anonymous source. The letters accused each of them of producing and distributing a lethal product, deliberately hiding their knowledge of the potential side effects of their drug and perverting the course of subsequent investigations when people started to die. Each letter invited the recipient to meditate on their crimes and each letter was laden with spores of mutated anthrax. Six people were dead and fourteen had been hospitalised.

The authorities raided the house next door in the early hours of the morning, finding the body of Dr Virco, along with what they were calling a ‘secret laboratory.’

The laboratory was not a secret to Tommy. He had been in there many times. The native precursor strain to the anthrax was most likely selected from soil samples that Tommy had helped his neighbour collect on one of their many field trips, probably at the abandoned sheep farm. But Tommy didn’t see a reason to reveal what he knew to the big man in front of him.

Is Mr. Virco coming back? He answered the question with a question while three pairs of eyes studied him.

Tommy, the broad wall of suit shuffled himself even closer, Mr Virco did a very bad thing.

The crickets that Tommy used as feed for the carnivores in his collection had escaped their enclosure at some time in the distant past and propagated in the spaces behind the cupboards, shelves and books throughout his room. Their swelling population provided an ever-present chorus for the spaces in between conversations. They chirruped their way through the long, uncomfortable pause.

What do you mean? Tommy thought this was a safe response, Dad? he pinned his father with a glossy eyed stare. His father dropped his eyes, mumbled an apology and shuffled out of the room. The two uniforms watched him go. They looked at each other and then stared around the room while the crickets continued their concert.

Listen, Tom, the suit began again, Your parents have told us that you spent a lot of time with Mr Virco, that you helped him with his work and that he taught you a lot about science and mathematics and things like that.

Tommy nodded. Mr Virco’s natty argyle vest leaped to his mind, his dull frayed pants and his battered footwear. Tommy pictured him, bent over a desk, soldering and measuring.

Well, Tom, we just want to make sure that, um, that he was, ah, a good tutor.

He was the best, Tommy blurted. I could ask him anything and he would help me find out about it. He gave me projects all the time. He always listened to me. Hot saline fluid leaked from his eyes and nose.

Tommy, I have to ask. Did he give you anything, anything in particular?

He gave me... he gave me... it was hard to talk, so Tommy pointed at the pages of scientists and mathematicians with their careful illustrations and black and white photos, the strip of biography never doing justice to these heroes of human endeavour.

He gave me these, and Tommy could see Mr Virco handing them to him, rare moments when he would look Tommy in the face and smile proudly at him. Then there were the books. Tommy wormed his butt off the bed and went over to the desk to run a finger along all his old, worn text: geometry, anatomy, geology, tanning, weather, sewing, woodwork, refrigeration, spine after dull-looking spine, stretching the full length of the shelf.

...these. ...precious gifts... his eyes couldn’t see properly through the haze, he wiped at his face and continued. Some of these... hic... were his and... hic ... we got the bugs feh… hic ... for free cause we... hic... found them, ...and they are checking bug traps. Measuring rainfall. Noting temperature, salinity, turbidity. Typing the data into the noisy computer in the corner of the musty study at his house.

Tommy blinked hard against the memories as he looked back at the uniformed pair. They avoided his gaze. The suited woman lifted her eyes, squinted at the window then looked straight at the seated man. She shook her head and left. The big man pulled a white envelope from his pocket and held it up. The jumps in Tommy’s chest subsided as he looked at the white rectangle and the man’s hard, calm face.

I think you know that he isn’t coming back. The man held Tommy a moment with his stare and then turned away, placing the envelope on the bed beside him. He left this for you. We had to open it and read it just to be sure. I think you will understand, in time.

The man stood and walked to the door. He paused and looked back as if he had something more to say, his narrowed eyes rested on Tommy, then he turned and left.

Tommy was left alone in his room with the ever-present striating of the crickets and the letter lying on the bed. He sat, pulled the single thin sheet from the envelope and read.

My Dear Thomas,

They will say that I have committed evil, that I have hurt people.

I know that you won’t understand why I have done what I am planning to do, or why I would take my own life when it seems so illogical, so I won’t try to explain it or reason it out to you.

I want you to know that you are the last person I would want to be hurt in all this. I am sorry, but I had pledged myself to this course of action long before you appeared at the side fence and started asking your excellent questions.

Even after my preparations were complete I waited an extra year. Perhaps I was nervous, scared of the great adventure of losing consciousness forever, but I think the real reason I delayed my final project was you, Thomas. I wanted to give you as much as I could at this vital part of your development. I knew that once I initiated my plans I would not be able to give you anything for later.

Farewell my friend.

Isaac Virco

The letter was stunning. There was no great revelation about why Mr Virco had done what he had or who these people were that he had murdered, but there was a message; innocuous to any third party reading the letter were those two words hiding near the bottom of the note; ...for later.

Those two words threw Tommy into a reverie that bashed any melancholy from his head. He remembered it, over a year ago; he had let himself into his neighbour’s house and went from room to room, looking for Mr Virco. He wasn’t in the study, so Tommy checked the bedroom, he poked his head into the bathroom and then he looked in the kitchen. When he didn’t find Virco there, Tommy went to the big kitchen’s pantry and lifted the trapdoor. The dim light from the hole in the floor glinted off the aluminium rungs of the ladder that descended into the laboratory. He climbed down.

At the bottom of the ladder was a short corridor, lined with deep shelving, with the glass box of a clean room up one end. A large desk was recessed into the shelving, just outside the room. The only light was coming from a computer sitting on the desk, flickering slightly as it monitored the conditions in the air-tight area.

The lab was empty. Tommy was about to leave when he heard a thump and the muted sounds of scraping coming from the clean room. Confused, he went to the tempered glass wall at the far end of the corridor, looking for any sign of disturbance. The room was as he remembered it; the ‘L’ shaped workbench with equipment neatly arrayed up one end and the cylinders of compressed air underneath, the opposite wall lined with containers, cages and aquariums. The mice were scratching about and one of the lizards was digging in the gravel lining its enclosure, but that wasn’t what he’d heard.

A faint crash and grumbling and Tommy’s eyes were drawn to the open end of a corrugated plastic pipe in the upper corner of the clean room. The pipe was the extraction point where gasses were sucked out of the glass room and pumped up into the sterilisation unit in the shed. Tommy headed back towards the ladder. Mr Virco was in the shed, and he was up to something.

Tommy went out the back door in time to see Mr Virco trundling a wheel barrow out of the shed. Virco parked the barrow amid a collection of baking trays, buckets and a couple of digging tools that were lying on the grass in the middle of the yard. He glanced at Tommy.

Good morning, my boy, Mr Virco said with a smile. Will you help me with a little digging? Tommy nodded and went to join him.

Mr Virco triangulated the area for the project, pointing out a tree trunk, two corners of the yard and the middle of the back step, drawing the imaginary lines between these points and marking where they would intersect. Like everything else they did together it was methodical; first, three neat rectangles of grass were cut with the sharp, square edge of the shovel then lifted and stacked into a deep baking dish and put aside in the shade. The soil underneath, dark and wet, was dug up and dumped into one large bucket after another. They took samples of the soil they were digging. Mini-beasts were teased out of the muck and put into a container for future examination or to become feed for one of the animals in their shared menagerie.

There was a half metre of this thick wet loam before they hit a solid grey wall.

This clay has its uses, Mr Virco said, putting another loam-filled bucket aside and grabbing an empty one. The pair stabbed and pried at the heavy material in the bottom of their hole, dragging out chunks and slippery blobs of clay that had to be scraped off the blade of the shovel.

Before long the hole became too deep to get leverage with their long handled tools. Under Mr Virco’s instruction, Tommy jumped in and began to lift and tear at the clay with his bare hands, throwing it into the bucket. Virco emptied the bucket into a large outdoor sink near the back door. He ran water into the sink and stirred. The water became murky, resolving into a milky-grey slurry.

Most of the inconsistencies will either float to the top or sink to the bottom. We can remove the heavier contaminants with a sieve and skim off any lighter organic particles and oils with a straight edge or a bowl. What name would you give this process please Tommy?

Primary rectification.

Yes, that would be acceptable. Very good my boy.

It was slow going but an absorbing exercise for the pair. Tommy had long been accustomed to the unpredictable nature of his time with Mr Virco; they often swapped between quiet contemplation and vigorous activity without preamble, so the act of digging a hole needed no explanation.

In the few short years he had known Mr Virco, Tommy had developed the ability to divine some link between one activity and the next. He could often pre-empt the relevance of a particular task to their larger projects or research. This time, as Tommy clawed at the grey muck, he was struggling to see any connection at all between the hole and their various other endeavours; the chemistry, the programming, the electronics or the experimentation in the laboratory.

The bucket had filled way beyond its previous empty points and Mr Virco showed no sign that he was going to empty it. Tommy hefted then balanced a large wad of clay on top of the teetering pile.

That will do, Thomas. You can get out now. Virco reached out an arm and pulled the wiry boy hard enough to launch him out of the hole.

Mr Virco. Why are we digging a hole? Tommy asked, feeling a tinge of disappointment that he had missed its underlying purpose or lesson.

Wait. I have something for you, Mr Virco answered. He turned and shambled into the laundry, emerging again carrying a hefty rectangular bundle.

Help me will you? He grunted as he lowered the awkward package towards the hole. Tommy grabbed the upper side of what looked like a collection of irregular sized tomes and folders all covered in many layers of clear plastic sandwich wrap. They lowered the package towards this fresh excavation, both of them leaning in as far as they could before letting it fall the last little bit. As soon as the package landed in the base of the hole, Virco tipped the clay from the bucket in after it. The clay slopped on top in an irregular cone.

Get in there and even that out, would you please, Thomas? Don’t be afraid to jump on it, I’m sure the contents of the parcel will be unharmed.

Tommy hopped back in and stomped down on the clay until all the larger pockets of air farted their way out and the bottom of the hole was flat. He clambered back out and noted that, as usual, Mr Virco was unerring with his calculations; the material dumped into the sink was almost exactly the same volume as the package, so that the level of the clay in the hole, once packed down, lined up neatly with the transition back to the darker loam up the sides of the hole.

The soil fluffed up when we removed it, so you will need to stomp on it as we fill it back in.

Although still puzzled by the relevance of this activity, Tommy could appreciate that the package was being hidden in such a way that even the most persistent and thorough of searchers would find it difficult to discover. The light of day was beginning to fade when they poured in the last of the black soil from the buckets. They tamped it back down and neatly re-laid the rectangles of grass. Tommy grabbed the hose and gave the grass a quick spray to ease its stress and encourage regrowth. Mr Virco nodded his approval.

The edges of the dig site were streaked with mud and there was a noticeable bulge in the middle of the yard, but Tommy knew that the dirt would settle and the grass would rebound in a matter of weeks. Mr Virco pointed at a few errant clods of dirt and Tommy sprayed them with the hose, the water breaking them up, the specks disappearing into the lawn.

When the watering was completed, Tommy packed away the hose and joined Mr Virco at the site of their exercise.

It’s for you, Thomas. It’s my life from a time long ago, one that they robbed from me... one that you can choose to follow, perhaps even see the fruits of the work that I could not. Virco was talking to Tommy but looking out, towards something that was not there. He paused, examining this phantom a moment longer, then he kneeled so that Tommy stood a head taller than him.

Mr Virco gripped Tommy’s shirt front.

You must promise you will tell no-one about this.

Tommy nodded.

People will come one day. They will look for anything, take anything they can from here. No clue must come to them that this is here.

Again Tommy nodded.

This is for you, this gift. You are not yet ready for it. Remember, this is for later. Mr Virco stabbed his eyes into him in behaviour so totally alien that it made Tommy’s blood run cold. Virco poked him once in the sternum with his huge index finger. ‘This is for later.’ Say it to me.

This is for later, Tommy said flatly.

Mr Virco stared a moment longer, then deflated, dropping his eyes and relaxing his grip, For later, yes. Thank you my boy. Thank you.

Mr Virco heaved a breath and stood, turning away from the dig site and towards the house. He placed a meaty arm around the boy’s shoulders.

Now you can put it from your mind. You had best go home. We have a more interesting day for tomorrow, collecting seeds and hunting for larvae. Virco’s normal self returned, any sign of his recent tension was gone. Tommy jumped the fence and did just what he was asked. He put it out of his mind.

~~*~~

Tommy didn’t go after the package straight away. He suspected that he was under surveillance from his parents. While his late neighbour’s house was empty, Mr Virco’s secret legacy was safe from damage or discovery. So Tommy waited.

Tommy thought that he would miss his neighbour more, but it seemed that Virco’s memory and the promise of the mysterious gift buried in the backyard were enough to sustain him in his friend’s absence. His parents, usually content to leave him to his own devices, made a short lived effort to take him on outings to the museum, library or camping, clumsily attempting to take his mind off his loss. It was on these excursions that Tommy would miss Mr Virco the most; when observing some intriguing phenomenon or organism, when speculating on its relationship with its surrounding environment, there would be nobody there to point out some aspect unique to the situation, nobody there to provide an insight into the entities’ interactions on a chemical, physical or biological level. Just his parents, whose efforts were noted, but lacking;

That’s nice, dear, they would say with a smile and a familiar crease between their eyebrows.

School was strange for a while. The friends of Tommy’s older sister led a wave of inquisition, peppering him with questions about ‘Anthrax Virco’. But when Tommy didn’t reveal any knowledge of a secret stash of corpses, didn’t wail or catch on fire or attempt to retaliate to their pointed questions or jibes, the questioning abated. As none of his classmates had ever accepted Tommy into the inner sanctum of their friendship or marked him as an enemy, they soon learned to ignore him again.

It was the teachers who were odd. It was as if they were watching him to see when he would break and collapse in a crying heap or pour insidious white powders into a random, poorly policed coffee mug. For his part, Tommy continued to hide in whatever book he was reading or join in on the less violent ball games during recess breaks to avoid drawing further attention to himself. Before long, the lesser and more insistent daily emergencies of their profession overwhelmed the attention span of the teachers, and life returned to normal.

It was six months after the loss of his friend when a sign went up on the front lawn of Mr Virco’s house. That was when Tommy knew it was time to retrieve the gift.

The next day he pretended to be ill. Not so much as to require parental or sibling care, but too debilitating to allow him to go to school. Tommy’s mother fussed, wondering aloud if she should stay home from work or perhaps get his older sister to stay with him. Tommy was able to convince her that he would be fine with just a generic pain killer and a little more sleep. At fourteen he was more than capable of taking care of himself, he told her, and as this was the most convenient arrangement, she did no more than purse her lips, leave a list of emergency phone numbers and bustle away leaving him alone in the house.

His mother’s car had driven fifty metres down the street when he was out the back door and throwing tools, buckets and a few large rocks over the fence. Tommy clambered over the fence, feeling a sense of dislocation and a dull ache in his chest at being back in his dead neighbour’s yard. He threw off the feelings with a deep breath, remembering that time was short.

No precise marker had been left to show him where to dig and despite his memory giving him a detailed description of the triangulation process, Tommy was anxious that he might have to dig more than one hole before uncovering his goal. The digging took most of the morning. Tommy was careful to replicate the original efforts in burying the package; sectioning and lifting the grass and using containers salvaged from his home to store the different kinds of soil.

After striking the plastic coating of the package in the middle of his hole, Tommy discovered that he had uncovered more than half of it with his first attempt. Rather than widen the hole from the surface, Tommy jumped in and scraped into the grey muck with his hands, digging the hole sideways until he had cleared all around the upper side of the package. He got his fingers under its leading edge and lifted. At first it would not budge. Tommy shifted his legs, repositioned his hands and pulled upwards. The package gave a tearing sound, deepening to a scraping slurp as air sucked in between the plastic and clay. With a few full body wrestles Tommy hauled the package from its hiding place and hefted it up to the grass, clambering out after it. A few groping breaths later and he started to fill in the hole, trying not to slow down as his muscles began to shake with fatigue.

The shade had crept to a point indicating early afternoon. The grass was back in place and the hose had done its job, both hiding much of the evidence of the excavation and cleaning the worst chunks of clay from the parcel.

Tommy was covered in mud and knew he had to move quickly to get himself cleaned up and back in place before his sister, who possessed the normal teenage girl’s knack for intrigue, returned from school. Tommy took one look at the high fence separating him from his home and knew there was no way his beleaguered body could climb back over it with the package in his arms. He crept between the fence and the house, went through the side gate and came to a point where the fence-line dipped to a much more neighbourly half metre. He levered himself over and ran to the back yard, hoping that none of the annoying retiree neighbours were on vigil across the road.

Once at his back door, Tommy un-wrapped the first layer of plastic from the parcel. He balled up the dirty wrapping and buried it deep in the garbage. His clothing found its way into the bottom of the washing basket and the clean package was secreted under his bed. Minutes later, Tommy lay between the sheets of his bed, showered and sore, drifting to sleep through sheer exhaustion.

Hours passed before the sounds of crockery being shifted about in the kitchen roused him and the smell of food wafted into the room. Tommy was ravenously hungry, but he lay still. It was not the heaviness in his arms and back that pinned him down but the thought of what lay beneath him, under the bed. He toyed with the idea of locking his door and opening the parcel right away. He pictured himself pulling the parcel from underneath the bed and tearing at the plastic, the contents fairly glowing with promise.

The sound of his father’s car pulling up in the driveway made him draw away from his fantasy. It was all too likely that one of his parents would soon come up to his room to check on him and he couldn’t risk having the parcel half unwrapped in the middle of the floor when they knocked on the door. There was also the slim possibility that an elderly neighbour would pay a visit to his parents to ask why Tommy was jumping fences instead of going to school. Tommy let those scenarios roll around in his head a while, allowing their implied threat cool his enthusiasm. Eventually he pulled back the bed-sheets, swung his feet to the floor and headed downstairs to eat.

He waited a full forty eight hours, trying to adhere to his regular patterns of behaviour while his mind struggled to ignore the contents of the package hidden in his room. Tommy wanted to be certain that nobody had spotted him, that nobody was watching him to see what he was up to or reporting his movements to his parents or any other authorities.

Two tense days was all he could manage, but still, when his self-appointed cooling off period was over, Tommy made sure that when he returned from school, he snacked in the usual manner, waiting for his mother and sister to debrief while he sat in plain sight nearby. The progression of their patter dragged itself over its typical route of school drama, miscellaneous gossip and a thorough edit of their weekend shopping plans. Only when the ritualistic exchange was completed did Tommy allow himself to make his excuses and go to his room.

Within moments of closing his bedroom door the last of the plastic wrapping was tossed in the bin. The contents of the package were laid out before him; two brown hard-covered books, three ring binders, a folio that bowed outward in the middle and a large manila envelope emblazoned with the following message;

Thomas. Read ‘letter one’ inside this envelope first and nothing else.

Inside the manila envelope were three smaller envelopes. He opened the first, marked with a numeral one.

My dear boy,

You remembered.

I know that when you open this letter I will not be there to guide you on the next phase of your journey. I only hope that what little I can leave behind will be of assistance to you.

I will disappoint you when I tell you that I do not want you to open any of the other letters, books, binders or folio. Not yet. I ask you to do this for two reasons; the first is that although some of the contents would be accessible to you, you do not yet have the skills to operate fully in this field. The second is that I want you to open each of these as a reward to yourself when you are able to achieve each of the milestones that I will set out below.

We have always conducted your edification in this manner. You know that it works. In the past I would hand you these incremental rewards, now you must cultivate that most rare of traits; self-discipline.

Please find overleaf a list of texts that I want you to pursue. Complete all of the exercises and experiments contained in their pages when and where you can avail yourself of the appropriate equipment. There is no pass mark. I expect you to use any number of supporting materials to complete this first task. Master these fields at the ability level implied by the texts before you open the second envelope.

Please understand, Thomas that this first task may be more than you wish to accomplish. It may take several years of concerted study. I cannot hold you to this course, and not merely because I will not be there to support you. If at any time you wish to turn away from these studies, know that I could never be disappointed in you. I only ask that if you do decide to pursue other lines of enquiry, please honour my memory and destroy the materials that I have left for you.

I know that you will do what is best.

Your trusted colleague,

Dr Isaac Virco.

Tommy could hear Mr Virco, could almost see him by his side as he read. Tommy turned over the page to look at the list of text that had been prepared for him. He was not surprised to see the names of the books or that there were a lot of them. The titles hinted at their subject matter; mathematics, chemistry, biology, biochemistry, pathology, physics, elementary laboratory practices, matrices and vector applications, logic and inductive reasoning, computer programming and electrical wiring principals. The list also included some obscure texts, the application of which totally eluded him. At the bottom of the page, removed from the list was a single sentence.

‘Which came first, the chicken or the egg?’

This little question barely touched the sides of his consciousness. Tommy sat on the floor in the middle of the files, folios and folders, revelling in his message. Reading and re-reading the words and the list contained on the page.

After the initial euphoria abated he took another look at the various repositories of information arrayed before him, then he gathered them up and pushed them back under the bed. Two things were immediate and paramount in his mind; he had to start collecting these diverse titles and he had to find a more permanent place to hide Mr Virco’s gift.

~~*~~

The crickets scratched and chirruped in the spaces around the enclosures, struggling for existence in the thin gaps between the shelves and aquariums. The population had reached the carrying capacity of its food supply, surviving on a combination of spilled feed from the adjacent pens, dead skin cells and the cannibalisation of their weaker or slower brethren.

A taller version of Tommy sat at his desk, coming back from a daydream in which he returned to that moment, reading and re-reading the first of three letters from Mr Virco. He had one of the texts from the list in front of him; a pathology textbook made for undergraduates. It was opened to a section devoted to warts. The miniscule text on the page was accompanied by a series of pictures exploring the Papilloma virus from several different perspectives; the external effect on hands and feet, cutaways of the dermis, microscopy of the infected sites and life cycle diagrams. It was these pictures that had reminded Tommy of his neighbour and set his mind wandering. Mr Virco had never shied away from showing him robust examples of medical pathology or scientific practice and Tommy had never hidden from them; each picture promised a unique adventure, another example of biology locked in conflict with its environment.

Tommy stared at the images on the page, no longer able to take in the accompanying information. The flag had gone up and his brain was full. He yawned, rolling the weight of his body deep into the study chair. As he leaned back, his eyes were drawn to a framed black and white photo hanging amidst the graphs, diagrams and sketches above his desk. Behind the glass, he and Mr Virco stood in front of a tumble of rocks at the base of a rough-hewn quarry wall. They had taken the picture during one of their many field trips using a pinhole camera of their own construction. The shot had required a full two minutes of exposure and while the rocks had remained stationary, a thin halo surrounded Mr Virco and Tommy blurring their features, a permanent record of their slight movements.

Tommy coasted over the picture ignoring the skinny boy and the tall man, tracing a nearly imperceptible buckle that marred the smooth surface of the photograph. Letter number two was hidden there, taped to the back of the paper thin image of the rock wall. Tommy had looked at that photo many times in the two and a half years since he had opened Mr Virco’s package. Usually just a glance at the picture was enough to launch him back into his studies, to push through fatigue and tackle another textbook or experiment, but it wasn’t enough tonight, his eyes lingered and his mind fogged.

When Tommy began collecting the various texts that Mr Virco had included in the first letter, he had no idea of how much work would be involved in obtaining or mastering the various materials. Two and a half years later he had worked his way through only a third of the books on the list. It wasn’t that the text themselves were difficult to obtain, on the contrary, Tommy was convinced that Mr Virco had put the list together by visiting the local libraries and second-hand bookshops, so that Tommy could uncover the books during his normal wanderings.

The biggest challenge was that whenever Tommy went to obtain one of the books on the list he would find other interesting material sitting on the adjacent shelves. He kept leaving the shops and libraries burdened with three or four times as many books as he had intended to get. He had allowed himself to become side-tracked by these other, titillating texts and often spent extra time on experiments, playing with ideas not covered by the books. Looking back, Tommy felt no regret that he had allowed himself to be distracted, he was sure that his old neighbour and mentor would have approved of this additional exploration.

The blurred, black and white face of Mr Virco smiled calmly from the wall and Tommy conjured his even tempered, measured voice in his mind.

"Knowledge is not a race to a finish line with a prize at the end. It is more like the building of a dam into which we accumulate understanding through the interplay of data and reason.

Most often, when we are conducting research or study, it doesn’t seem as if anything is changing at all; we spend our time attempting to reconcile new ideas with our current understanding of the universe, exhausting ourselves and often feeling frustrated with no clear signs of progress. At these times, the slow times, we are exploring the topography of our conceptual environment, laying the foundations of potential understanding, shifting rocks and building structures so that when a rush of realisation arrives we might catch this flood of information and retain its energy potential for future applications."

A smile tightened Tommy’s eyes. Recently he had become more focussed. He could see no particular reason for the change, but he had ceased to be lured by peripheral materials and had begun pitting his wits against the core challenge that Mr Virco had left for him. A feeling of urgency had gripped him, some unjustifiable impression that time was running out. The second letter hidden behind the glass, wedged between the photo and the backing of the frame, had begun to burn into his psyche. It was no longer just another snippet from a lost friend, it was the passport to the next stage in his obsession.

Tommy was roused from his stupor by a noise. He straightened in his study chair and stretched, listening. The sound of someone coming up the hallway was followed by a soft tapping at the door.

Tommy, can I come in?

Sure Mum. It’s okay.

Tommy was glad that he had closed the text book. His mother found medical images disturbing and there was no profit in upsetting her. She opened the door, craning her head in without fully entering.

I’ve just finished feeding James and put him to bed.

Tommy was unsure why his mother would think he needed to know that.

Come in Mum. It’s okay.

She came one body-width past the threshold.

Studying for a big test?

Tommy’s sister had moved on to university and in her absence his mother had become aware of how little time she had devoted to her clever, quiet middle child. He weathered her increased attentions. He thought that her behaviour was a reasonable response to the conditions of their situation. Tommy was a low maintenance spawn. He didn’t have any interests that required expensive uniforms, registration or course fees, he didn’t need driving too and from venues on a weekly basis, he didn’t cause problems at school and he didn’t whinge. If anything, the absence of his sister had made it all the more obvious how little his mother had to do with him, how little she knew about him or perhaps, how little he needed her.

So the nightly visits had begun; she would come before bed, try to engage him in conversation and of course…

Would you like a hot chocolate, Tom? She was picking at her finger tips.

Tommy knew that she felt him drifting away. It was there in the corners of her mouth, at the edge of her smile.

Yes mum. I’d love a hot chocolate. Thanks, he said, returning her smile.

Okay, hon. I’ll be back in a minute. She closed the door as she left and Tommy watched as envelope number three swung into view. This envelope was hidden, like number two behind a picture in a frame. The picture was of Albert Einstein sticking his tongue out. His parents had gotten it for him, thinking that it was funny, but the old man’s mocking visage succeed only to remind Tommy of how little progress he had made through this first stage.

Tommy stared at the cheeky old man then he took a breath, swivelled back to his desk and cracked the textbook open again.

Chpt. 1.1

The pool table was near the back of the bar and a fresh game was in progress. Mark was leaning against the wall, working some chalk onto his cue. ‘The gold rarely lies on the surface,’ he reminded himself as he watched the younger man circle the pool table, ‘Sometimes you have to dig deep to find what you’re after.’

Mark’s opponent was squinting and bobbing, mumbling to himself as he sighted along his cue at the balls on the crowded table top. Mark noted that he was wearing the same faded tee shirt he had worn to the Film Club meeting the night before. There was a fresh splatter of what Mark hoped was toothpaste smeared onto the fading superhero on his chest. Mark grimaced. ‘Sometimes you have to dig very deep.’

At the start of the year Mark would not have guessed that he would be dipping so low into the talent pool. Back then, there looked to be an abundance of gifted, imaginative students at the university and most of them had been keen to share their dreams and aspirations, eager to find like minds with which to form their friendship groups. Mark had moved easily among them, arranging casual meetings and impromptu encounters, catching, inspecting and releasing them one by one in search of that special something.

As the weeks turned into months and Mark’s list of primary contenders began to run low, he started to worry. The students formed into their cliques and factions, making it increasingly difficult to get them by themselves. Then the quality of the candidates began to slip and Mark became desperate. His personal stock of motivational phrases started wearing thin as their potency diminished through repetition.

Recently an edge of cynicism tainted his thoughts, the bitterness compounding as each carefully sculpted interview ended in disappointment. It had become difficult to identify any talent or potential in the people around him, and looking at the man across the table, Mark suspected that he was down to the dregs.

It’s all angles, you know, the guy said, still wincing and tilting towards the felt surface.

Jacob, you’re slower than a wet week, Mark replied, forcing a smirk.

Jacob had arrived late and people were starting to drift up the external stairs to sit on the benches that ran around the wide deck. Others came inside to stake out a table or a nook before the lunchtime rush filled the bar. Mark swapped his attention between the growing crowd and his opponent, wondering if he would get an opportunity to interview Jacob before the room got too crowded or he just ran out of patience.

Jacob finally lined up his shot and pumped the cue. The ball rocketed across the table, ricocheting off several coloured ones. There was a lot of movement and noise then the balls slowed and stopped.

Oooooh, close one, Mark said, straightening to take his turn. He drew a bead on a corner pocket then flicked hard on his cue, emulating Jacob’s action. A coloured ball rattled against the rim of the pocket then jumped back out again.

Oh. Bad luck, Mark, Jacob said, resuming his angle dance. His greasy brown hair flapped back and forth, his eyes bulged and shrank behind his glasses every time he ducked his head. Mark stepped back and sat on a nearby stool. He decided that the time had come to find out if Jacob was an eccentric genius or a geeky slob.

So, tell me about your big idea.

Jacob didn’t respond straight away. He was too busy straddling an invisible horse and making a spider on the table with his hand. Mark breathed slowly and deliberately as Jacob worked the cue back and forth before launching the white ball. A ball found a pocket and Jacob frowned at the new configuration on the table.

What’s that?

Last night at the club meeting, just before we went in, you started talking about an idea that you had for a game or something.

Oh, yeah, cool. Jacob turned to Mark, Okay, so, have you seen those computer games they make for kids? You know, the ones that are supposed to be educational?

Mark shook his head, I can’t say I’m very familiar with them.

Well, I’ve looked at lots of them, heaps of them really, and every single one looks like it was made about twenty years ago. They are clunky and boring, the handling is always bad and they can barely keep up with the current operating systems. So, my thing is, why can’t you make an educational game that doesn’t suck?

Okay.

It wouldn’t be that hard, I mean, the three main things that educational games are missing are the high end graphics, good handling and an addictive mechanism. Jacob lowered the blunt end of the cue to the ground, the pool table was forgotten as he worked himself deeper into his big idea.

What do you mean, an addictive mechanism? Mark asked.

"Well, most educational games are so tightly scripted that there’s little self-direction. The player is given limited choices or no choice at all, which is restrictive and annoying. Then, they also don’t have a human component, there’s no player versus player or co-operative mode so there’s no real feeling of competition. Nothing to evoke the emotional response you need for those higher levels of engagement. The randomisation is limited to numbers or lists of words and only a few of these games have any real complexity.

If you look at any of the big-name games on the market, they all have these things because that’s what makes them addictive.

Right. So, you want to make a game that educates children and isn’t boring.

Yes, Jacob said, leaning his pool cue against the table. So here’s the game, right? He put on a serious expression and chopped both hands down like he was placing a box in front of his navel. You pick your character, your name, race and all that. Then you start in a little village. You have a small kit bag with some tools in it and a simple weapon. You and your friends have to fight creatures, explore and complete quests, just like all those other games, but you have to do it using chemistry and geometry.

Chemistry and geometry?

No, no, don’t get me wrong. It’s not like you have to go into a lab or anything. You have to use chemistry and geometry concepts to cast spells and craft items. Look, imagine that the elements from the periodic table are scattered around the game world as items that can be salvaged from creatures or mined from the environment. The player has to combine these items, using the laws of chemistry, to make molecules and compounds. Then these compounds can be used to cast different spells or to improve your weapons and armour.

And you think children are going to be able to play a game like this? Mark asked, trying to keep his voice as neutral as possible.

"Kids already use vast amounts of mental energy to remember huge lists of fantasy objects. They have to learn recipes, codes and sequences just to unlock better weapons or secret attacks in games. You just have to replace those empty, fictitious models with the more realistic elements from the periodic table. Like, instead of joining fur and a gem with a rusty dagger to create a better weapon, you could combine nickel with sulphur, hydrogen and oxygen to electroplate your weapons and improve your armour. If kids could learn how to make simple organic compounds they could use them to buff their attributes or heal their character.

They don’t have to know that the chemistry works in real life before they start playing. They can just learn the elements and get to know how they combine to make specific molecules. If they play for any length of time they will end up with some idea about chemistry and where you can use it in the physical world.

Okay, so where does the geometry come into it? Mark asked.

The geometry is part of the visuals so that the higher the level of the spell the more complex the symbol is that appears around you when you cast it. Also, I think different geometrical designs could be unlocked as you progress through the game and be used as triggers for reactions or as a replacement for catalysts. I’m not sure, I haven’t fully worked that part out yet.

What about the graphics and the handling?

Ha. That’s the easiest part. You just do what most game developers do and take out a licence for the latest graphics engine, then, for the handling, you copy the standard controls for a first person shooter or role-playing game across each platform you’re releasing it on.

The bar was more than half full. All the nooks against the walls had been claimed and the tables nearby were beginning to fill. The noise level was rising. Mark straightened on his stool. He was resisting the temptation to be drawn into Jacob’s idea, still trying to gauge the weight of the concept and the calibre of its source.

So what kind of a market do you think it might have? Mark asked.

Well, I don’t know. But I reckon if it was done right then most kids who buy multiplayer games would want to at least try this one. And then there’s the educational market, the schools and parents who would get it for their kids so they can learn chemistry while they play. I mean, that’s a pretty massive audience right there. A lot of the good, contemporary first person shooters and role playing games can make upwards of a few hundred million dollars these days.

Mark closed his eyes and dropped his chin, trying to block out the rising babble around him. What do you think you might need to get started? he asked, clearing a working space in his mind.

Well, first you’d have to get the hardware then you’d need the people. When you look at some of the more successful games, the credits can be as long as your arm. It takes a heap of programmers, developers and designers to make the game itself and then you need your producers and promoters just to get it out to the public. I guess the most important thing you would need is time and money, and I don’t really have either.

Mark shifted on his seat, doing some rough calculation. So if you didn’t have to worry about money, would you have enough time?

I guess, but look, a project like that could take years and you’d have no money coming in while you were doing it. And even then, there’s no guarantee that it would be successful. Besides, I couldn’t start something like that now. Not while I’m finishing my degree.

The familiar turn in the conversation was as painful as it was predictable. Mark felt his insides twist. He looked up sharply, unable to disguise his frustration. The excitement that had animated Jacob’s features evaporated.

Aren’t you studying computer science? Isn’t this exactly what you are training for? Mark asked.

Jacob seemed to remember that his cue needed chalking. He avoided Mark’s gaze as he scraped the blue cube of chalk over the tip of his cue. I dumped computers at the end of last semester. I’ve swapped to education now.

Mark watched as the bright towers of possibility that had been forming in his mind fractured and dimmed.

You dumped computers? Why?

"There just isn’t enough security in the computing industry and there is so much competition, even for the low-end jobs. If you’re not in, like, the top five percent or whatever, you won’t get one of the good jobs and I don’t want to end up in some computer support department at some crappy company, fixing other people’s mistakes and endlessly servicing their computers. Every day it’s just the same thing, and you don’t have any lasting effect because the technology is always changing.

I want to study something that’s going to give me some job security and a bit of personal satisfaction. I want to make a difference in the world and if I can’t do it in computers then I think teaching is a good alternative for me. You know that old saying? Feed a man a fish and he’ll be fed for a day, teach a man to fish and he’ll be fed for a lifetime. That’s what I want to do. I want to empower kids for a lifetime. Jacob finished chalking his cue and leaned on the side of the table, looking at his feet.

Mark let out a long sigh and slipped off his stool. His eyes darted over the surface of the pool table. That is an old saying. And it’s one that’s out of touch with the real world. He leaned over and casually punted the cue ball across the table, sinking a ball. I’ve got a different saying for you. Sell a man a fish and you have a customer, teach a man to fish and you have competition.

Jacob opened his mouth like he was going to say something, but Mark kept talking.

You know, while you were telling me about your idea two men came into the bar. Don’t bother looking, there are lots of guys in here now and you don’t know these two. They are chemistry students who cook up their own drugs and then sell them around the campus. Mark let his last statement hang while he lined up and sunk another ball.

Whether you think it’s right or wrong, they saw a business opportunity and they acted on it. The money they make from the sale of their goods isn’t anything like the small fortune you could make from your idea. And the risks they are taking are quite real. Another ball rebounded into a side pocket and Mark calmly brushed past his stunned opponent to position himself for his next play. There is every chance that the police or their competitors will eventually tire of their indiscrete operations. These men could get themselves thrown in jail or beaten senseless by the other dealers in the area. But for now at least, they are making a steady income, far surpassing the average university student’s allowance, and they are gaining invaluable knowledge and experience.

The number of balls on the table was thinning. Mark had mesmerised Jacob with the even timbre of his voice and the mechanical slotting of one ball after another. "Who can say that their experimentation with the illicit drug trade won’t run its course without incident? And when it has, they will have accumulated both money and skills that are unavailable to the average student.

You see, Jacob, there will come a day when you will regret this compromise, when you will look back on this great idea that you once had for a video game, back when you were still a passionate student with a fertile mind and the freedom to pursue your dream. You will try to console yourself with soft platitudes and with the security of your employment, but nothing will bring you back to this point in time. Nothing will remove the knowledge that you let your own opportunity slip away.

The white ball tapped the black. The obsidian sphere rolled to the hole and disappeared. Mark placed the cue on the table. He looked up at Jacob who was frowning at the table top. Mark startled him by smiling and thrusting out his hand, the gesture reminiscent of a handshake except that his palm was face down. Jacob reached out and they shook.

Anyway, ignore me, Mark said jovially, grabbing Jacob’s forearm with his free hand. I hope you get what you want out of teaching. He looked Jacob straight in the eyes before he released his arm and made to leave.

Oh, hey, Jacob said as Mark walked away. You know I sunk that ball? It was actually still my turn.

Mark turned, but kept moving. I know, but you didn’t take it, and now the game is over. Spinning away, Mark wove between the packed tables to get to the door.

Mark headed for the nearby cafeteria, wanting to throw something onto the slow churning in his stomach. The congestion in the corridors was exacerbated by the small groups of people clinging to the doorways. In his distracted state, Mark almost walked into one of these groups as it burst without notice, dispersing students into the walkway and confusing the traffic around them.

The cafeteria was also busy. Mark joined the long line behind a short young woman wearing a fuzzy pink top. He positioned a tray on the waist-high shelf and started the slow shuffle to the register, trying not to listen to the girl’s shrill conversation. Mark’s initial frustrations had mellowed to disappointment and the forced confinement of the line caused him to fall into deep thought.

Jacob was just another student with a big idea and a weak-will. Another promising, imaginative and intelligent person who lacked the confidence and conviction to chase down his own fortune. Was it fear of failure that stopped them? Was it just that the kind of imagination required for these amazing ideas was also too ready to supply their creator with ways in which their endeavours might fail? Or perhaps it was just apathy. The voice of the short girl in front of him cut across Mark’s meditation.

Yeah, I got the last bus and crashed at Bobby’s place. I barely made it here and now I’m going to have to pull an all-nighter to get that essay done. The general hubbub helped to drown out the comment from her friend further up the line but Mark couldn’t ignore the short girl’s reply, Yeah, I need to keep my average up, that way they’ll keep giving me my scholarship. The giggling that followed reverberated through Mark’s head.

Perhaps this was the real reason he hadn’t found what he was looking for. These people were at ease with their state of trajectory. They might have some strange ideas now and again but these fantasies wouldn’t be allowed to interrupt their lifestyle or interfere with the comfortable future